MORE RIGOUROUS POLICE TRAINING IMPROVES STATE LAW ENFORCEMENT

JEFFERSON CITY -- A significant increase in minimum basic training standards for police officers in Missouri during the 1990s has put better, more capable officers on the streets, according to several members of the law enforcement community.

In the early part of this decade, becoming a state-certified police officer required just 120 hours -- only three weeks -- of training, putting the state behind all others in the nation in terms of law enforcement training standards.

"At the time when Missouri required only 120 hours, not another state would recognize 120 hours as sufficient for officers to be certified in that state," said Chris Egbert, who administers officer standards for the Missouri Department of Public Safety. "We had the lowest training requirement for peace officers in the entire industrialized world.

In 1993, the Missouri General Assembly passed legislation requiring 300 hours of basic training for an individual to become a licensed police officer. The bar was further raised to 470 hours in 1996.

Instead of bringing up the rear nationally, Missouri's current standards rank it in the middle of the pack -- 27th -- compared to other states.

Some law enforcement agencies in the state have even higher standards. Departments in first class charter counties -- Jackson, St. Charles and St. Louis counties -- require officers to have 600 hours of basic training. Also, officers with elite agencies such as the Highway Patrol, Water Patrol and the Department of Conservation must have 1,200 hours of basic training.

Many individual departments also set higher minimum training standards than required by law. Minimums of 800 hours of training or more are common throughout the St. Louis, Kansas City and Springfield areas.

"The better trained law enforcement officers are, the better service they can provide to the community," said Egbert, a retired Columbia Police Department captain. "The better service citizens get, the better thought of the law enforcement profession is.

"It is my belief that having no cop is better than having a bad cop. The harm that a non-trained, ill-equipped officer could do in a community far exceeds the good he could do."

Lt. Chris Ricks, assistant director of public information for the Highway Patrol, called the old standard "nowhere near adequate."

"Police officers by law, if the circumstances are correct, have the legal right to end a person's life by deadly force," Ricks said. "That gives a lot of responsibility to young men and women. You can't train them enough."

Not only are new officers today better qualified, the more stringent standards help weed out individuals not fully suited for the rigors of law enforcement.

"It takes quite a bit of commitment from an individual," Ricks said.

With the old 120 hours requirement, prospective officers could be hired and put on the street -- armed and with full authority -- without so much as a single hour of training. However, they had to accumulate the full amount of hours within one year.

Today officers are required to be fully trained and licensed before being hired.

"Hopefully we have more professional law enforcement," Ricks said. "The days of finding the biggest, toughest guy in town, giving him a gun and sending him out to be a police officer are gone."

Chief Robert G. Lowery Sr. of the Florissant Police Department is chairman of the Police Officer Standards and Training Commission. The nine-member panel is appointed by the governor and establishes the curricula for prospective officers.

Lowery, a 38-year law enforcement veteran, has been involved in the movement for improved standards since the beginning.

"There were peace officers in the state who had no training at all," Lowery said. "That was unconscionable."

Under the commission's direction, certified officers must obtain an additional 48 hours of continuing education every three years. Such education must include four hours each of legal instruction, technical training related to their speciality and interpersonal matters such as cultural diversity and stress management.

While the current minimum is a vast improvement, Lowery feels 470 is still not sufficient and suggests a uniform minimum of 600 hours. That standard would rank Missouri ninth in the nation.

While Lowery feels most of the commission would support such a change, he doesn't expect legislative approval in the near future. However, he believes an elimination of the exemption from the standards for communities not in first-class counties with populations under 2,000 will be eliminated.

Despite the near quadrupling of number of required training hours, the Department of Public Safety's Egbert said police departments, cities and counties are not forced to bear the cost.

Since job candidates must be licensed before being hired, would-be officers pay for their training themselves, Egbert said.

However, many grant programs exist to help qualified cadets pay for tuition at the 18 certified officer training academies in the state.

Also, some departments choose to pay for training in exchange for an obligation for a certain term of service as a way to attract the highest caliber candidates.

For example, the Cape Girardeau Police Department adopted such a policy last year. Qualified candidates may be hired as clerks or some other non-officer position and paid a salary while undergoing basic training at the department's expense. Such candidates must agree to work for the department for three years. If they leave before that time, they must reimburse the department for training costs on a prorated basis.

However, spokesman Sgt. Carl Kinnison said all of the department's hires in that time have already been certified, so the tuition program has never been used.