The Illinois State Police is offering a new training program to attract more potential troopers and fill vacancies around the state.
The Lateral Entry Training Program is designed for local law enforcement at the municipal and state level who are looking to become an ISP Trooper.
ISP Director Brendan Kelly says that the new Lateral Entry Training Program will incorporate much of the current FastTrack Program curriculum and time frame, but provides for training to take place regionally: “What this program does is take people who have prior law enforcement experience, and we will be able to give them that Illinois State Police training and that Illinois State Police standard; but we will be able to do a lot of that training locally. We are also going to allow them to return to the area that they came from and be able to serve in the Illinois State Police there. We have vacancies everywhere across the state that we need to fill, so we will take people who are transferring laterally from other agencies and we’ll return them to the area that they came from.”
Potential cadets will still have to spend the first three weeks of training with their cadet class at the Illinois State Police Training Academy in Springfield.
Additionally, a new state law signed by Governor J.B. Pritzker last Friday lowers the retirement age for state troopers from 60 down to 55. More information can be found at the ISP Merit Board website www.illinoistrooper.com.