I attended the police academy at Indiana University.

At the time, it was one of the only academies outside the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield that the state officially recognized as a full police certification academy.

The program itself was unique. While a full-time student with Indiana University you had to apply for the IU police department. The application process was very similar to getting hired by a police department. If accepted they put you through the complete Indiana Law Enforcement Academy over the summer while you were at IU.

But what really made the academy different was the way we were trained.

Most police academies in America were — and still are — based on a military basic training model. Drill instructors screaming at recruits, constant stress, punishment, collective discipline…You know, a lot of bullshit.

That wasn’t us.

We lived in our own apartments. We showed up for PT at six in the morning, then class at eight. We trained hard, studied hard, and we were treated like adults preparing for a profession instead of recruits surviving boot camp.

And a lot of cops around the state used to joke about it. They called it the ‘Country Club Academy.’

The implication was always the same — that somehow we had it easier.

But over the years, I watched the people who came out of that academy go on to become outstanding police officers, investigators, supervisors, and leaders at all levels of policing from local police chiefs, to sheriffs, to federal officers.

And I started realizing something:

maybe treating recruits like professionals actually produced better professionals.

Maybe teaching officers how to think was more valuable than teaching them how to endure screaming.

Maybe our so-called Country Club was working a whole lot better than the boys club.