Law enforcement agencies statewide are investigating whether their deputies and officers lied about completing required training or whether a glitch in the then-new on-line course showed they took the courses in a fraction of the time it should have taken.
The Peace Officers Standards and Training Council has notified police chiefs, sheriffs and jail administrators of the issue that also could cause problems if officers with ethical problems are called to testify in court.
POST said there could be at least 500 officers and deputies who jumped to the end of the on-line course without going through the entire process. The executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police said he believes that number is low.
The assistant director of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center, which developed the on-line course in an attempt to save money, said there was no way to know how many officers might have cheated. The head of each agency will have to go to a non-public website and check the training claims for each of their officers.
The fallout since the problem was discovered in March has ranged from officers losing training hours to dismissal.
“It’s a credibility problem,” said training center assistant director Keith Howard. “We don’t believe it’s out of control and people are lying, cheating and stealing.”
He said the glitch in the $1,000 upgrade has been addressed and the state agency is spending about $50,000 to add servers and to change the program so that training credits won’t be allowed if the officers do not go through the entire course.
Certified Georgia law enforcement officers are required to have a minimum of 20 hours in continuing education training annually to ensure they stay current with trends, policies and laws, including one hour of weapons proficiency training.
So to save local agencies money and officers the time it would take to travel to training sites, the Georgia Public Safety Training Center began offering some of that training online.
Among the 38 topics offered online are policies on deadly force, how to use the data base that contains criminal histories and outstanding arrest warrants, new policies and laws, and how to identify signs of sexual exploitation of children and signs of elder abuse.
The center plans to expand online training to fire fighters and EMTs.
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