MEDIA RELEASE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DATE: FEBRUARY 15, 2022
AGENCY: SEDGWICK COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
LOCATION: WICHITA/SEDGWICK COUNTY, KANSAS
TELEPHONE: (316) 660-3900
CONTACT: COLONEL JARED SCHECHTER
The American Jail Association has named Lieutenant Fabiola Torres the 2022 Correctional Training Officer of the Year. The 3,000 member American Jail Association recently named her to this award for her excellence in the area of training at Sedgwick County Law Enforcement Training Center. Lieutenant Torres will receive the award this spring at the AJA’s annual conference in Long Beach, California.
Like all Detention Facilities, the Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office has struggled over the last several years to maintain staffing levels. Being in the unique situation where the Sheriff’s Office has control over the Academy and how it is run allowed something completely new to be tried in the Academy starting last Spring/Summer.
Prior to her promotion to lieutenant, Fabiola had been the training academy sergeant for the Detention Bureau. She was tasked with completely revamping our Academy from the ground up by creating phased training and adult based learning. This was done to not only improve retention, but try to hire new deputies quickly and safely.
In order to attempt this the concept the Sheriff’s Office hired deputies in small groups and only trained them to the point to run housing units. Later these deputies would be sent back to the Academy for another training cycle to work in Booking and respond to emergencies.
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The Academy also moved away from lecture style, death by PowerPoint, classes to adult based learning. Where a recruit would learn a concept in the morning and then spend the afternoon in on the job training immediately applying the new skill. For example, training the recruit on the jail management software in the morning and then the recruits work in a housing unit but only doing the computer work while the senior deputy handles all other day to day operations.
Lieutenant Torres was given the basic outline of what our goals were and was tasked with revamping all the classes and developing a new schedule. She was also told there would be times when she would be running multiple academy classes at one time and she needed to plan for this.
On April 12, 2021 the Sheriff’s Office began this process with 17 recruits doing a four week adult based training academy followed by two weeks of field training. Quickly command staff received very positive reviews from frontline supervision about how knowledgeable and confident the recruits were because they were able to apply concepts and see them work right away.
None of the above could have been possible without the dedication and extreme hard work of Lieutenant Torres to operationalize a completely outside the box idea and implement it for the betterment of the agency. This implementation required many extra hours of work by Lieutenant Torres and the finding of sometimes creative solutions to problems.
In the end through this entire process Lieutenant Torres showed amazing creativity and desire to produce a revamped and successful training program for our new deputies. She is more than deserving of this national award.
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