BARRINGTON, R.I. — A Senate bill would create a system to certify commander-level training for police officers, according to an announcement by its sponsor Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.
The Promoting Police Leadership Act, which was introduced in April, would require the U.S. Attorney General’s Office and the Department of Justice to create a framework for training curricula designed for officers in commander-level positions, according to the release. It would also establish a voluntary certification process for high-quality training programs.
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The legislation is intended to “enhance police operations, increase officer accountability and wellness, improve resource management, and strengthen community relations,” according to the release.
The bill passed the Senate unanimously in June and is awaiting a House vote.
Would nationally certified training programs better prepare officers for command roles? Why or why not?
Police1 readers respond:
- This is not a good idea. The states have vastly different laws, ideas and means of enforcing the law. Training command staff to a national level that is not endorsed or supported by states will be a disaster. Having a command staff trained to a conservative standard, then expected to uphold those standards in Oregon or California, seriously. Those liberal states don’t enforce laws as it is now you want to throw varying ideologies into the mix? Who chooses the curriculum? This scenario is the same if the exact opposite is done.
- FBI-LEEDA should be the model for this
- No. There is already the National Incident Management System that requires law enforcement and all other emergency personnel to adhere to several of the training curricula. Moreover, historically, law enforcement’s participation within the incident command system and structure have been sub par so developing something “specific” for them does not make any sense and pulls away from the other, just as important, emergency services that provide the life saving measures. This would further silo the respective industries and put the nation back to pre-9/11 disorganization.
- I would be interested in this course. I carried the Sig 320 for years never had an issue with the gun. I prefer this gun over the Glock any day.
- Many states have advanced training and so does the FBI.
- A national framework for all police positions should be established. Each state has different criteria; a required standard is needed in modern law enforcement to ensure all police positions are qualified.
- I think it’s a noble idea. I think it should be tailored to differing agencies. What’s urbane to an urban 1000 officer department is quite different to a command-level person in a rural 10-person department. Much less the 8k-person mega departments like LAPD. And if the curriculum is built by PERF, it certainly will be different than command courses in the Midwest. And commanders from huge agencies already get command-level courses from the NA or NW or SPLC. It is the smaller agencies that suffer the lack of this level of training due to budgets and staffing.
- I am suspicious of things mandated by the federal government but voluntary sounds decent. There are currently too few highly competent law enforcement leaders in the country for various reasons. True leadership, tactics, and planning and organization are often left out of many agencies promotion processes and training programs for leaders. I am also in favor of more standardized acceptance of training like the paramedic and nursing licenses allow.
I’m not sure how a nationally certified training program would work. I think this would be very difficult as state law varies by state. If state laws were not part of the training program, training similar to or was the FBI LEEDA Trilogy course I would say yes. FBI LEEDA was without a doubt the best law enforcement training I have attended in my 25-plus years in law enforcement.
