Law enforcement training requirements increasing; agencies deal with low applicant numbers

As of Jan. 1, 2017, law enforcement officers across Missouri will be required to undergo additional training than in prior years.

The Missouri Department of Public Safety increased training requirements from 48 hours every three years to 24 hours each year. In addition to the increased hours, officers will be required to take specific classes including fair and impartial training, mental health and officer well-being, and de-escalation tactics.

“What we need is officers to be doing continuing education,” Adam Duncan, Law Enforcement Training Center instructor, said. “So, we don’t wait for two and a half years with no training and then cram in whatever training we can find that last six months of the third year reporting period.”

Duncan said training is important, and something he and other instructors have been advocating for for awhile. But he recognizes the strain it may put on some agencies.

“The problem that we run into is officers are busy,” Duncan said. “They’re working shift work, midnights, weekends, holidays. They’re trying to balance family lives, many of the have second jobs. So they’re very busy. And it requires really the department to support training if they are going to get good continuing education.”

Major Brice Mesko with Mexico Public Safety said administrators may not like the extra reports that come along with the increased training requirements.

“We used to send a report every three years and now its every year for every officer,” Mesko said.

The department is typically also responsible for paying for the training.

“It is an ongoing kind of balancing act,” Duncan said. “It wouldn’t make sense to have officers in training all the time because they would never be on the street to respond to 911 calls. At the same time, we need to make sure they are getting continuing education, really, throughout the course of their career.”

“I think smaller departments will struggle or are already struggling with that,” Mesko said. “But for a department our size or larger I don’t know it will negatively affect us.”

Duncan said a good portion of the training can be done online. That allows officers to take the classes during downtown while on shift, pausing it when necessary to answer calls.

“As a matter of fact, now with the new requirements, a majority of the training can be done online,” Duncan said.

With the new requirements, officers will also need to take a fair and impartial policing class. The Columbia Police Department has already started teaching this class to their officers. They have also held a class for citizens.

Fair and impartial policing helps officers recognize inherent bias so they can better police in high stress situations.

“By being aware of where my bias lie, I am able to recognize whenever it is influencing my behavior,” Duncan said. “I am also able to recognize it whenever I’m interacting with the public, they have bias as well. So whenever I can recognize those bias and the effects of those bias, I then get to make a decision on whether that is actually legitimate, the way this should work. Or whether I need to control the influence of those bias and work toward a different goal or a different approach to that situation.”

Duncan said the fair and impartial policing class, along with the rest of the additional training requirements, could help ease some of the tension between officers and residents. He said when the public loses trust in their officers, the respect typically goes as well.

“That goes all the way back to elementary school,” Duncan said. “When you ask kids what they want to do when they grow up, ‘I want to be a police officer, a firefighter,’ they want to be a hero. If law enforcement isn’t seen as being the hero within their community, if we become a boogieman, there’s not that sense this is a noble profession. Whenever we lose that support from the community, we are going to have more difficulty in recruiting.”

In addition to the extra training, agencies are also trying to find ways to recruit more candidates. There are a handful of agencies around mid-Missouri that are short-staffed, including Columbia and Mexico.

Mesko said it has been difficult in the last year to find and recruit good applicants.

“We have about 25 percent of the applications we used to get when a job does open up,” Mesko said.

Duncan said many departments have turnover from early retirements, officers moving to bigger departments, or officers getting injured. But he also said the current climate between law enforcement and community members could be playing a role as well.

“If I am going to get paid whatever it is that I get paid,” Duncan said. “And I can have a job where everyone I meet is upset with me, I work odd hours, it’s very tense, threatening situations that have been demonstrated to shorten my life expectancy and have a strain on my marriage and personal life, or I can get the paid the same amount to work in manufacturing or human resources or insurance field which doesn’t have those same detriments.”