Thursday, July 28, 2011
The Greenwood (Miss.) Commonwealth: Good for the Mississippi Highway Patrol brass for sticking up for the rigid regimen at the trooper school in Rankin County.
The news media has reported extensively on the number of dropouts during the current session of the Mississippi Law Enforcement Training Academy. The training is required before applicants are certified as state troopers.
Training commander Capt. Chris Gillard says 140 applicants were accepted for the class, which began July 10. Six did not show up. Out of the 134 who did, 73 remain. Seven had to be sent to the hospital for various reasons.
Naturally there have been complaints from some quarters that the training is too rigorous, especially in the current heat. Addressing those complaints, Highway Patrol leaders invited the media to the academy and allowed cadets to be interviewed.
Officials say the training has not changed since 1938, and they don’t intend to change it just because the applicant pool may be in poorer condition than in the past. Mississippi now leads the nation in per capita obesity among its citizens. We’re sure that would not have been the case in 1938 had such statistics been kept.
Not everyone is cut out to be a state trooper. The academy is right to weed out those who aren’t.