Out of State Testing

[WheatonHeat]

Well I FINALLY decided to test out of state. I have thrown in an application to the Dallas Police Department, lets all hope it goes well....

[SeVere]

Good Luck!

[yogao]

Good luck. I have a friend that decided to apply and was hired by Dallas PD. He's going on almost 3 years, and really enjoys it.

[park88]

How does Dallas PD process out of state applicants?

[sketchy002]

Good luck to you WheatonHeat! lol my first LE test was an out of state one...NYPD!

[Item9]

Good luck! I've thought about relocating to AZ or TX several times. Outside of huge departments that do out of state testing, it's nearly impossible to complete the process. I can't fly down there every weekend for police tests.

Keep us updated on the process. I've heard good things about Houston and Dallas for out of state testers.

[dansik]

Take a look at Virginia Beach. 3 trips required total (testing, polygraph/BI, final steps). Academy is about a mile from the oceanfront which means most of your long distance runs will be on the beach. Big city with all the specialty units you want. Lots of action, but also consistently ranked as one of the safest cities for its size. Taking apps for the Feb 12 and Aug 12 academies now. Seems most classes have about 20-30 in them. If anyone has any questions, feel free to PM me. Best decision I've made was to start testing out of state.

[WheatonHeat]

Thanks guys! I'll keep you all updated on how everything goes. Also Dansik tell me more about Virginia Beach, I haven't heard anything about them..

[3531Marine]

I know VA beach was a fun place to party, I was there in the winter though, twice. They got a lot of bars and hotels right on the beach, seems like a nice place to be the police.

[dansik]

It depends on what you want to know exactly. It's a very large city geographically. It stretches from the Chesapeake Bay to the North Carolina border. It's got a rural area, an oceanfront, a mini-downtown center (which they are trying to make into a true downtown). It's actually kind of hard to describe. If you can imagine 10 Gurnees + a huge rural area, you would have Virginia Beach. The department has around 850 sworn officers policing around 450k residential population with around 3 million tourists annually. It has every specialty unit you can want from narcotics to SVU to auto theft to robbery to fatal accident to marine patrol. It's an independent city which means it is not part of a county. The sheriff's office doesn't do patrols, they only handle the jails.

The academy is about 6 months long. You go home at the end of the day. Para-military but they treat you like an adult, you're only getting yelled at when you earned it. Very PT orientated staff. You'll do a lot of scenarios during the academy. Driving, shooting, and DT were done in the first 5 weeks for my class. If you have a desire to go federal, the department is supposedly a pipeline into that. Some of the instructors have asked how many of us have bachelor's degrees, and then said we'll all have federal jobs after 3 years (for those that want that). Almost all of your equipment will be provided to you.

As I said before, the academy is about 1 mile from the oceanfront so most of your long distance runs will be to there, and along the beach which makes long distance runs a lot more pleasant.

The entire application process took just under a year for me. I applied in Feb, tested in June, had my polygraph in September, and finished the process in December with the academy starting in Feb. Other people in my class had a shorter process. They seem to like out of state people, I would say about half of my class is from out of state. The age range of my academy is 21-51 with the majority of us being in the 21-25 range. 8 prior military, most everyone has a bachelor's degree.

I love it out here. It was hard moving away from family and friends, but I don't think I could ever not live here. If there's anything else I didn't mention that you'd like to know, I'll be happy to try to answer.