CJK0072 – Crimes Against Persons is a 48-hour course within Florida's 770-hour Law Enforcement Basic Recruit Training Program, carrying zero credit hours as a clock-hour academy component. It is one of the larger blocks in the academy.
The course teaches recruits to recognize, investigate, and document the offenses in which a person is the victim — homicide, assault and battery, sexual battery, robbery, kidnapping and false imprisonment, domestic violence, stalking, child abuse, and abuse of vulnerable adults. For each, recruits learn the elements under Florida law, what evidence establishes them, the immediate actions required at the scene, and how the initial response shapes whether a case can be prosecuted.
That last point is the emphasis. A patrol officer is almost always the first responder to a violent crime, and decisions made in the first minutes — whether the scene was secured, whether a dying declaration was captured, whether the victim's account was recorded before contamination, whether evidence was preserved — frequently determine the outcome months later. The course teaches the initial response as investigative work, not merely as scene control.
Victim treatment is integrated rather than separate. Florida's constitutional victims' rights provision (Marsy's Law, Art. I § 16) creates enforceable obligations, and the course covers notification, victim advocacy referral, and trauma-informed contact. Recruits learn that how a victim is treated at first contact affects both their wellbeing and their willingness to participate in prosecution.
The course is offered at approximately 20 Florida institutions, all of them state colleges operating criminal justice training centers or regional public safety academies: Chipola, College of Central Florida, College of the Florida Keys, Daytona State, Eastern Florida State, Florida Gateway, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Gulf Coast State, Hillsborough, Indian River State, Miami Dade, North Florida, Northwest Florida State, Palm Beach State, Pasco-Hernando, Pensacola State, Santa Fe, South Florida State, St. Johns River, and Seminole State.
The Law Enforcement Basic Recruit Training Program (LEBRTP) is a 770-hour academy required for certification as a sworn law enforcement officer under Chapter 943, Florida Statutes. The curriculum is written and maintained by the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission (CJSTC) through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, so content is consistent statewide. The full sequence:
Every component is a clock-hour course carrying zero credit hours, and none counts toward an associate degree.
Completing this course does not certify anyone. Recruits must finish the full 770-hour academy, pass the State Officer Certification Examination (SOCE), and satisfy the employment and background requirements of Chapter 943, F.S. Certification is granted by CJSTC, not by the college, and an officer must also be employed by an agency to be certified.
Requirements attach to the academy rather than to this individual course: minimum age 19, U.S. citizenship, high school diploma or equivalent, no felony convictions or disqualifying misdemeanors, a background investigation, a physical examination and drug screening, and a passing score on the Florida Basic Abilities Test (CJBAT). Requirements are set in statute and by the training center.
Academy training is PSAV clock-hour instruction, not college credit, and does not transfer as general education. Many Florida colleges award block credit toward an A.S. in Criminal Justice Technology for full academy completion plus certification, under local articulation agreements rather than statewide SCNS equivalency. Confirm terms with the receiving institution.
Officers already certified in another discipline — corrections to law enforcement, for instance — complete abbreviated crossover programs drawing on a subset of these courses rather than the full academy. Candidates should work from the crossover curriculum published by their training center.
The practical theme running through this course is that patrol officers, not detectives, make the decisions that determine whether a violent crime can be prosecuted. Scene contamination cannot be undone, a victim interviewed badly may not cooperate again, and physical evidence not collected in the first hours is usually gone. Instructors typically teach from real case examples where the initial response succeeded or failed.
This course covers homicide, sexual violence, and the abuse of children and vulnerable adults in operational detail, including case imagery at many academies. Some recruits will have personal experience of these crimes. Academies generally address this directly, and recruits should know that training centers can connect them with counseling resources, that agencies provide employee assistance programs, and that finding this material difficult is not a disqualifying reaction. The professional standard the course teaches — treat victims with respect, investigate competently, and take care of yourself so you can keep doing the work — applies to recruits as much as to the people they will serve.
Generated August 31, 2026 · Updated August 31, 2026