PLAINFIELD, Ind. — Classes at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield have been suspended due to a "significant outbreak of COVID-19 among students."
The academy doesn’t know the full impact of the outbreak yet or how many recruits could still come down with COVID-19 after being exposed.
What they do know is that most of the 117 recruits in the class were unvaccinated.
The recruits were four weeks into their in-person training at the academy when they were sent home.
“Where it came from, I don’t know,” said director Tim Horty, explaining that the issue started last week.
“We had several recruits tell us they were feeling poorly. We sent them home,” Horty said.
Five in that first group tested positive for the virus.
“We thought that was a pretty high number for the number of basic recruits we had,” Horty said.
This week, that number grew, with 10 more recruits testing positive. Nine others had inconclusive results and must be tested again.
50 other recruits, Horty said, must quarantine because they’re showing symptoms of the virus or had close contact with someone who tested positive.
“We just felt like that number was too high for us to continue,” Horty said.
It's not clear when in-person training could resume at the academy, where recruits stay Monday through Friday and return home on the weekend.
The latest recruit class has seven more weeks of training to go.
“We have to make certain everyone who returns is healthy, first of all,” Horty said.
This isn’t the first time the academy has suspended training because of the coronavirus. Training was halted when the pandemic started in March 2020 and again later that year, but this is the first time a class has been sent home because of an outbreak.
“We strongly encouraged the vaccine, but again, we can’t mandate it, so now we have to live with the consequences that training so many young unvaccinated individuals presents to us,” Horty said.
Horty can’t say if the academy could end up mandating the vaccine in the future or if this recruit class would be required to get it to finish their training.
“That will be up to the law enforcement training board and the governor’s office and the health department to make those kinds of decisions,” Horty said.
The Indiana Department of Health will again provide specific protocols, such as cohorting students and masking requirements, for all ILEA operations.