New York City Police Academy

The New York City Police Academy is the police academy of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Within the organization of the New York City Police Department, the Chief of Training oversees the Training Bureau, which includes the Police Academy, the NYPD Cadet Corps, and other units. History The old Police Academy opened in 1964 and was located at 235 East 20th Street in Manhattan, in the Gramercy Park area. Within 25 years, however, the facility was regarded as antiquated and obsolete, and no longer had capacity for larger classes of police trainees. Jeremy Travis (then the special counsel to the police commissioner, and years later the president of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice) urged construction of a new facility in 1985. In 1989, Mayor Edward I. Koch promised a new facility to be located in the South Bronx, and in 1992, during the mayoralty of David N. Dinkins, architects were chosen and plans were released. However, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani canceled the plans for a new facility. In 2007, plans for a new police training center were revived under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, with the new facility to be located on a 35-acre tract in College Point, Queens, that previously housed a police tow parking lot owned by the city. Seven other locations, including the decommissioned Flushing Airport, the Seaview Hospital and Farm Colony in Staten Island, and Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, were considered before the College Point site was ultimately chosen. Groundbreaking officially occurred in December 2009. Phase One opened in December 2015.