Task force recommends more law enforcement training

By Marc Kovac | April 24, 2015 at 12:05a.m.

COLUMBUS

A task force has recommended increasing training for law enforcement and requiring high-school diplomas and drug and mental health testing for training-academy enrollees.

Additionally, the Attorney General’s Advisory Group on Law Enforcement Training wants to increase oversight of law-enforcement training academies, reducing the number of those facilities so they can be more-easily managed.

The recommendations were released Thursday by the group’s members and Attorney General Mike DeWine, who formed the task force after the shooting death of a Cleveland youngster and other police-shooting incidents in Ohio and other states.

The panel’s main goal was to question whether current officer training is sufficient and whether additional coursework is needed, particularly concerning officers’ use of force and interaction with minority communities.

“Every Ohio citizen deserves to have police officers who are trained the best they can be trained, and every police officer in the state of Ohio deserves the best training,” DeWine told reporters during a news conference near the Statehouse. “It is a matter of life and death, and for those men and women who put their lives on the front lines every single day, we owe that to them and we owe that to the citizens that they interact with.”

The task force offered more than 30 recommendations for improving officer training, including ensuring academy enrollees have a high-school diploma or equivalent degree and can pass drug screenings and psychological exams, with automatic disqualifications for those convicted of sex offenses or violent crimes.

Other recommendations included “substantially” increasing basic training hours (605 hours currently are required in the state) and upping annual training to 40 hours from four.

“Anytime you are looking to educate police officers more than what they’re getting, it should have an impact,” said Vince Peterson, an Akron-area pastor who works in the Trumbull County Adult Probation Department and who served on the task force. “The more knowledge we have, the more powerful we are.”

Some of the recommendations will require lawmaker action; others can implemented by rule.

The attorney general’s task force is separate from a police-community relations panel formed by Gov. John Kasich. That group is completing its own recommendations, which are expected to be released in coming weeks.