text: Oregon’s basic police academy -- closed for coronavirus - to partially reopen in mid-May - oregonlive.com
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  Coronavirus
  Oregon’s basic police academy -- closed for coronavirus - to partially reopen in mid-May
  Updated: Apr. 23, 2020, 1:00 p.m. |
  Published: Apr. 23, 2020, 12:43 p.m.
  The state’s emergency coordination center moved to the largely-empty public safety department’s site to allow for greater social distancing, but its operations will be “ramping down’’ by the end of May, according to Eriks Gabliks, director of the public safety certification agency.
  NEW!
  By
  Maxine Bernstein | The Oregonian/OregonLive
  The state’s basic police academy in Salem, closed last month by Oregon’s coronavirus outbreak, is reopening in mid-May with a class of 38 recruits.
  The academy will take extra steps to promote social distancing -- with students and staff wearing protective masks and those housed in dorms living in single-occupancy rooms, said Linsay Hale, acting director of the state Department of Public Safety Standards & Training.
  The students will return to the Salem campus on May 11 to complete the last four weeks of their 16-week training so the class can graduate on June 3. The academy shut down on March 17 after several students living in dorms on campus tested positive for the virus.
  Training on vehicle stops, firearms, defensive tactics, pursuit training, mock trial, as well as the final exam, a final project and the Oregon physical abilities test are among the hours of classes still needed to be completed.
  "None of the training delivered will involve close contact activities that cannot accommodate social distancing,'' Hale said.
  The students who require dorm accommodations will be put into single-occupancy rooms and a rigorous cleaning schedule will be adopted to make sure all venues are cleaned multiple times a day, according to Hale. The agency will share its training safety plan with the Oregon Health Authority and the governor’s office.
  The completion of four other basic police classes that were suspended mid-course and the start dates of future classes remain to be determined. About 125 other recruits, for example, had been scheduled to start basic police academy classes on April 16.
  Hale has been acting director of the police certification agency while Director Eriks Gabliks has worked with the state Office of Emergency Management’s emergency coordination center, now temporarily housed at the academy site.
  The emergency center moved to the site to allow for greater social distancing among those staffing the center, but its operations will be “ramping down’’ by the end of May, Gabliks said.
  “The way we do training in the future will be different,’’ he said.
  The returning class “will be a good beta test for what future training will look like," he said. "We still know there are people being hired who we need to train.’’
  Yet, according to Hale, "We aren’t seeing a tremendous amount of hiring, which we can attribute to the unknown financial impact of the COVID crisis on communities around the state.''
  -- Maxine Bernstein
  Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com; 503-221-8212
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