LONDON, Ohio (AP) - Ohio police officers would have to have high school degrees or their equivalent, and a cap would be lifted on the amount of training required to become an officer, under actions taken Thursday by the state’s police training commission.
Both changes mirror current proposals before lawmakers but the commission’s recommendations can take effect without action by the General Assembly.
The commission is at the beginning of historic changes to the way Ohio trains its police officers, said chairman Vernon Stanforth, the Fayette County sheriff.
“We are going to be changing law enforcement for the next generation of police officers, and for many generations to come,” Stanforth said.
Police academy instructors would also have to teach entire lesson plans; community mental health panels would be included in basic training dealing with mental illness; and officers would get more training dealing with stressful situations, in other measures approved by the commission.
The changes follow recommendations from task forces convened by Gov. John Kasich and Attorney General Mike DeWine to examine training and community-police relations after several fatal police shootings and protests in Ohio and nationally.
In response to recommendations from those panels, Kasich created a board to oversee departments’ use of force. DeWine is pushing increased training hours.
The current cap is 650 hours, and the training commission’s most recent curriculum requires 605 hours. Eliminating the cap gives the commission the flexibility to add increased training requirements.
The commission put off any decisions about use of force training until the governor’s board sets forth standards.
It also didn’t deal with advanced training requirements. Ohio currently requires only four hours of training annually for police officers after they’re sworn in, far below most states’ requirements. DeWine wants to see annual training raised to 40 hours in line with several states, including neighboring Kentucky.
But that carries a huge cost. At 40 hours a year, just reimbursing departments for the time their officers are being trained would cost $28 million a year, Mary Davis, the training commission’s executive director, said Thursday.
Legislative leaders said earlier this week they’re looking at other ways to fund more advanced training.
Several police academy instructors attended Thursday’s meeting to express frustration that DeWine’s committee recommended dramatic reductions in the number of academies without consulting them.
Patricia Wagner of Youngstown State’s criminal justice department said the university’s academy has spent thousands of taxpayer dollars to upgrade its equipment.
“If you just come in and arbitrarily close us because you need lower numbers of academies, I think you’re going to get a lot of public blow back that you closed an excellent academy that taxpayers spent a lot of money investing in,” Wagner said.
Stanforth downplayed talk of closing academies, which currently number around 60. The focus will be on improving the quality of instruction, he said.
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