Sc Continuing Law Enforcement Education Credits

South Carolina officials have approved a plan allowing law enforcement recruits to complete the first portion of their training at state technical colleges, a change many in the law enforcement community are heralding as a leap forward for the profession.

The plan, approved by the state's Law Enforcement Training Council in late February, establishes a 14-week certificate course. Once completed, recruits can attend their final eight weeks of training at the S.C. Criminal Justice Academy if they pass cumulative and physical agility tests.

The move comes as state officials continue to grapple with a pressing need for more officers and limited space at South Carolina's sole training academy in Columbia. For several years, police chiefs such as Luther Reynolds in Charleston and Reggie Burgess in North Charleston have been pushing for a more regional approach to law enforcement training, which they see as necessary to ease the bottleneck.

Officials with the training council and the academy viewed efforts to establish regional academies as a threat to their funding and the consistency that comes from training all new officers in one place.

"By statute, we are the only institution that can train and certify law enforcement officers," said Jackie Swindler, director of the state training academy.

Last year, representatives from the S.C. Technical College System met with Swindler to discuss collaborating, he said. The colleges argued they could be a resource to augment the training offered at the academy, not supplant it.

"They pitched the idea of collaborating with us, not taking anything away from us," Swindler said.

For decades, all training was completed at the state academy, but falling arrest and ticket revenue used to fund the academy and 106-day wait lists for recruits forced the director to look at alternatives.

Amid the backlog, Lowcountry chiefs proposed a regional basic training academy, run either through Trident Technical College or by police, but the proposals were nixed by the 11-member training council.

Instead, authorities rolled out a four-week program of virtual classes in 2019. The academy recorded its instructors and sent the footage out to law enforcement agencies across the Palmetto State. Each agency then was free to conduct the initial, classroom-based training before sending recruits for their final eight-week stint in Columbia. The shift brought wait times down to 14 days.

Swindler views the new certificate program as a natural evolution of this initiative.

Officials originally wanted to keep the college training program at four weeks but discovered that extending it to 14 weeks — one semester — would allow recruits access to tuition assistance from state lottery and SC WINS scholarship funds, he said.

And that funding means law enforcement recruits can cover the entire cost of the 14-week certificate course while earning credits toward an associate or bachelor's degree, Swindler said.

"That's big and bold, I think," he said. "It's a win for every community."

The 14-week program for the Technical College System's Police Pre-Academy Training certificate is comprised of four courses covering topics such as introduction to criminal law; courts, crimes and procedures; basic patrol operations; domestic violence; report writing; drug enforcement; and basic collision investigation.

Swindler said college officials aim to roll out the classes in time for the fall semester.

For Tim Hardee, the college system's president, partnering with the criminal justice academy is a natural step.

"Our mission is workforce development," Hardee said. "We really have the capacity to ... make (training) universally accessible."

Recruits will be taught by qualified criminal justice instructors, and campuses are aiming to provide an immersive experience for anyone interested in becoming a law enforcement officer, he said.

Among those instructors is Shawn Livingston, a former Mount Pleasant police supervisor who heads the criminal justice program at Trident Tech in North Charleston.

"It gets them in the door and immersed in the culture," Livingston said. "They have skin in the game and they can use the academic credit, transferrable college classes."

The former officer said he knows having well-trained law enforcement is paramount, given current challenges in the field.

"When I went through the police academy in South Carolina it was eight weeks," Livingston said. "I went through another few weeks of field training, but in my view, looking back, it's completely inadequate."

Having college-level classroom instruction should set up recruits for success and see them move through the academy with a more solid foundation, he said. Eventually, he'd like to see other topics incorporated into the certificate course, such as cultural awareness training and modules on how to escalate and de-escalate various situations.

Greg Gomes, assistant police chief in North Charleston, called the move a great step and said he hopes state officials will expand the program into a regional model.

"The chief (Burgess) has been at the forefront of this issue for years," Gomes said. "Our technical schools have done a phenomenal job of preparing our workforce. We think this is a step in the right direction."

Like Livingston, the assistant chief said he hopes to see additional topics added to the curriculum, such as cultural awareness, bias and community policing.

And he said he believes moving classroom instruction to technical colleges will bolster public trust because the certificate program is not limited to law enforcement recruits.

Anyone can take the courses, obtain the certificate and receive some of the same training all officers in South Carolina get, even if they do not plan on joining the profession, Gomes said.

"This is a giant leap for our profession," he said. "I think it's great."

Isle of Palms Police Chief Kevin Cornett said he was hopeful about the new program.

This is the first time law enforcement training has been conducted on a large scale in South Carolina's technical colleges, and Cornett said this fact gives him pause.

Nevertheless, the chief said he was excited to see state officials working together to solve training challenges.

Cornett said he also knows firsthand how this program could help small, rural agencies.

Before coming to Isle of Palms, the chief led the Springdale Police Department, which had 10 officers when he left for the Lowcountry in 2019.

Having technical colleges conduct the state academy's mandated video training means small departments don't have to pull officers off the streets to oversee that instruction, Cornett said.

"Some (departments) are small enough that the chief is working the road," he said. "They're at a greater disadvantage. We had even talked about that when I was in Springdale, how can we use the technical college to help us."

Reynolds, Charleston's chief, said he has mixed feelings about the plan.

While he supports any effort to improve training and said he believes putting officers on the path toward college-level training is a positive — Charleston requires recruits with no prior experience to have a bachelor's degree or higher — Reynolds said he doesn't believe the technical college plan goes far enough.

The Charleston Police Department conducts a 14-week pre-academy course before sending recruits for their final eight weeks at the state academy, the chief said.

"I feel strongly that a robust and substantial police academy is needed to develop the best possible police officers," Reynolds said. "In my experience, the average (national) entry-level training is approximately 26 weeks. This is one of the most complex and challenging times in our history, and we have to prepare our people. Entry-level training is not something I want to delegate."

While he argues that large agencies like his have the ability to fully train and certify their officers, he recognizes that smaller agencies likely can't.

"There's a part of this that is an incremental step in the right direction," Reynolds said. "Being able to have the authority to be able to have our own training academy is where we need to end up. I think we need to continue to raise the bar and raise our expectations."

Authorities will have their chance to evaluate the system later in 2021.

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Source: https://www.postandcourier.com/news/sc-to-shift-basic-law-enforcement-training-to-technical-colleges/article_ecf3c392-7d40-11eb-a446-e7c7b3687717.html

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