Kip Wilson, interim director for the Regional Law Enforcement Academy at Missouri Western State University, said several decades ago small agencies often put officers on the street with little training, especially when compared to today’s standards.
“It was not uncommon for a smaller department to put a badge and a gun in someone’s hands and say go to work,” Wilson said.
The POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) program started in 1979. At that time, Mike O’Connell, spokesman with the Missouri Department of Public Safety, said the state mandated most counties to require 120 hours of training for a peace officer license. Officers in some larger cities and counties — St. Louis City, St. Louis County and Jackson County — were required to have 600 hours of training.
In 1994, O’Connell said, the number of required training hours rose to 300. Wilson said 300 was the state’s minimum at the time Missouri Western started its academy.
“That’s when we established the academy here at Missouri Western. We started out at 400 (hours). We’re now over 900 hours of training,” Wilson said. “We do extra certifications that are valuable to agencies and we do some training I think will be a value to the individual officers themselves.”
The state again increased the mandated training hours in 1996 to 470 hours. By 2007, the number of hours required statewide had risen to 600, which is the current minimum number of hours needed to obtain a peace officer license in Missouri.
“However, all basic training academies in Missouri offer hours beyond 600, with some programs requiring up to 1,200 hours of training to graduate,” O’Connell said in an email.
On Friday, 23 cadets graduated from the Regional Law Enforcement Academy at Missouri Western. The St. Joseph Police Department hired eight of them.
Wilson said Missouri made the changes in training hours to help improve policing. He thinks the current requirements are a good balance between what officers need to know and cost. Wilson said that while the state always could require additional hours, there comes a point where the expense associated with the program may not be productive and may be problematic.
Some law enforcement agencies hire individuals then pay them a salary while they attend the academy.
“You have salary you have to pay someone for six months of training when they’re not doing anything for you except sitting in a class learning how to do the job,” Wilson said.
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