Project 2025’s plan to cut several offices from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would shut down the biggest school in the country for federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement officers. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) would be collateral damage in the authoritarian playbook’s ideologically driven dismantling of DHS, the department created to protect America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The FLETC is a top-level organizational component of DHS listed as a peer to the U.S. Coast Guard, the Secret Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Former Trump administration official Ken Cuccinelli, in his Project 2025 chapter on DHS, advocates for the total breakup of the department. He recommends sending some components to other agencies and dismantling the rest. The FLETC apparently does not make Cuccinelli’s cut, as he does not recommend moving or consolidating it.
Although training is but one component of the comprehensive reform that America’s law enforcement agencies badly need, it is an indispensable component. A 2016 report from the Center for American Progress notes that “Given their enormous authority and the responsibility that it carries, quality training is essential.”
Closing the FLETC would be enormously disruptive. The FLETC’s more than 1,000 employees train more than 20,000 federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement officers per year. Further, the FLETC serves more than 100 federal law enforcement agencies across the government, many of which have transferred some or all of their training activities to it.
The FLETC offers more than 300 different training programs for officers at all levels. Its 64-day basic training course is tailored to the specialized needs of federal law enforcement, including an extensive unit on counterterrorism. Beyond standard courses on firearms, self-defense, and emergency driving, the FLETC provides instruction in such areas as tactical emergency medicine, leadership for women in law enforcement, active shooter situations, and investigations into grant fraud and internet crimes.
By training the trainers, the FLETC multiplies its efforts. It teaches instructors to educate law enforcement officers on the proper use of force and on how to de-escalate and defuse conflicts during citizen encounters. Training on such “critical elements” as de-escalation “should be consistent across departments nationwide,” according to the Council on Criminal Justice.
These topics balance out firearms and self-defense training that have traditionally dominated law enforcement training offerings. According to a 2024 CAP report, they also “equip officers with tools to defuse encounters before they lead to physical force and can reduce use-of-force incidents and lessen officer injuries if appropriately implemented.”
The FLETC also trains federal, state, and local law enforcement officers to identify and investigate human trafficking. Recent activities have included a three-day virtual symposium in April 2024 and an in-person training in North Carolina in December 2023.
Cuccinelli wrote that breaking up DHS would serve a goal of “more limited government,” but his plan to shut down the FLETC would limit something else—the federal government’s ability to train law enforcement officers at all levels of government which would make everyday Americans less safe.
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