CHARLOTTESVILLE (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — The Charlottesville Police Department will be hosting its Fall Community Police Academy later this month. The course will provide everyday civilians the opportunity to receive training on the daily operations and functions of the department. 

Sgt. Eric Thomas, the department’s Community Involvement Coordinator, told Cville Right Now the department feels the academy is “a great opportunity for community members to build strong relationships with our officers and to ask questions directly.”

The course will give citizens a behind-the-scenes look into the department, with lessons covering all of the department’s divisions as well as many of the department’s policies. This includes lessons on general investigations, forensics, the emergency communications center, firearms and use of force and the K-9 unit, among other topics.

“I strongly believe that people watch TV, and they think policing is one way,” Thomas said. “In reality, it may be similar, but it’s not exactly how you see it on TV.”

Thomas, who has been the department’s Community Involvement Coordinator since 2024, went on to say that he loves the Use of Force lesson in particular, as participants get to go through scenarios that require them to make split-second decisions, the same type of decisions regularly made by officers that in many cases have come under public scrutiny after the fact.

“Some of those decisions may come with force,” Thomas said of the scenarios participants will go through, “and sometimes it may come with deadly force based on what you’re given, but then after everything is said and done, was it the right call?”

Ultimately, Thomas says the academy is one of the department’s biggest initiatives in terms of offering transparency to the community, which he called one of the department’s biggest goals.

“This helps us live our motto,” he said. “Our motto is ‘Community Partners in Safety.’ The community and the officers need each other to, in some cases, prevent crime, and when there is a crime, solve said crime. But we’re partners, we’re a team, and that’s what we want everyone to see.”

The course is completely open to the public, with applications being accepted until Friday, Sept.19 at 12 p.m. The link to the application can be found on the department’s Facebook page. The nine-week course will run every Tuesday from 6-8:30 p.m. at the Charlottesville Police Department, starting on Sept. 23 and ending on Nov. 23.

Thomas said despite the limited seats, he encourages “as many people as possible” to apply.

“Even if you didn’t have the best relationship or best encounters with police” he said, “this may be an opportunity for you to see or to get a better understanding of why things may have happened as they did. But also, if you’re interested in applying to be a police officer, this may be an intro in what it looks like to be a police officer here in Charlottesville.”