By DEANNA WRENN, The Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Newly hired officers must sometimes wait months to get into Indiana’s police academy, a delay that can tempt police chiefs across the state to put rookie officers on the street before they have completed basic training.
Indiana could enlarge classes at the academy or create other training facilities elsewhere, but officials say both options would require more money.
The Indiana Law Enforcement Academy admits about 120 officers each time it begins a 15-week training session.
The academy’s January class is already full. A session scheduled for April is packed. And at least a few officers will have to wait until August to enroll, even though they are already working for police departments.
The backlog confronts police chiefs with a tough decision: Either assign new officers desk work until they can get into the academy or allow them to have full arrest powers without completing basic training.
Police training has been under scrutiny statewide since Nov. 8, when a rookie campus police officer at Ball State University shot and killed an unarmed student in Muncie. The officer said the student lunged at him and ignored commands to stop.
Less than a month later, the university changed its police-training standards, requiring officers to complete basic training before patrolling alone.
Scott Mellinger, who runs the law-enforcement academy in Plainfield west of Indianapolis, said if the state had more resources, all officers could be trained at the academy soon after they were hired.
“In a perfect world, I would prefer that all of them come here first,” he said.
Every Indiana officer has to go through a one-week course before being granted arrest powers. Departments also offer their own field training, which typically lasts three to four months.
Sometimes that’s long enough to get newly hired officers into the academy. Then they may go directly to the academy and begin work when they graduate.
That’s how the Brownsburg Police Department works in suburban Indianapolis. During field training, officers learn geography and local laws and patrol with veteran officers.
“Then when they go to the academy, they’re not so overwhelmed with everything,” Chief David Galloway said. “I have confidence in our training.”
But Assistant Police Chief Rob Paris in Avon, west of Indianapolis, said new officers should learn basic policing concepts before tackling specific laws and duties.
“It’s like going from 12th grade back to first grade,” Paris said. “They get a mind-set like ‘I already know all this stuff.”’
Many departments try to hire officers right before a new academy session begins so they don’t have to wait.
But staffing is sometimes limited, making it attractive to use officers who have not completed basic training.
“It’s real tempting to go hire them as soon as you can,” Paris said. “But I personally couldn’t do it.”
Kokomo officials have a similar policy.
“We’re not going to put an officer on the street alone until they’ve been through the academy and through our field-training program,” Assistant Chief Jack Adams said.
If class size at the academy is expanded, fewer officers would have to wait. But that’s unlikely unless the academy receives more money from the state, Mellinger said.
The state could also create more training sites, a system some other states have used. Ohio, for example, has 85 training facilities. But Mellinger doubts whether that would work as well as one central location.
“My fear is that you lose consistency in instruction,” he said. “And it takes a great deal of funds.”