Nevada Metropolitan Police commented that there should be an on-line police academy to bring such courses to police officers more quickly and efficiently. But simple ideas can be complex to realize. It took four years to bring Cobb's simple idea to fruition and it is still evolving. But after its first year, OPA had few courses in its catalog and a only dozen students enrolled. The project is now being redesigned and is hosted by the College of Lake County, a two-year community college in Grayslake, Illinois, with some 14,000 students.
Some police academies offer courses by correspondence.
Earl M. Sweeney, director of the New Hampshire Police Officer Standards and Training Council, says he hasn't classroom space to provide basic training to part time officers. So he offers a correspondence course. OPA was designed for traditional correspondence courses, except they could be taken either on-line or by mail. That is, the course manual could be retrieved from the web site or paying a slightly higher tuition to cover printing costs got you a printed course manual in the mail. Either way, students could email questions to the instructor and likely have a response the same day.