43 new troopers graduate today for Ohio State Highway Patrol

COLUMBUS (AP) — Dozens of new Ohio troopers are joining the ranks of the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

The agency says the 155th academy class graduating today includes 43 cadets. John Born, the former patrol superintendent and current director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, gave the commencement address.

This group is smaller than each of the two classes that the patrol graduated early last year. Those classes added about 140 troopers, giving the patrol about 1,600 sworn officers in the state, a level it hadn’t seen in years.

The organization had been seeking to increase its number of sworn officers after losing people through attrition and not graduating cadets in 2008 and 2010.