An Atlanta Police Department audit has found at least 85 current officers who had fallen short of mandatory training hours and did not have the authority to make arrests.
The findings released Wednesday by the APD were from an internal audit that started a year ago after academy staff found training deficiencies in the files of officers returning to duty after being away for extended periods.
Two weeks ago, when the problem first became public, APD Chief George Turner said he didn’t know whether the training issue could jeopardize convictions or pending cases; that is a matter for the courts.
Turner was unavailable for comment Wednesday but his spokesman, Carlos Campos, said "our time and energy right now must be devoted to correcting the problem.”
For more than two decades, Georgia law has required law enforcement officers to have at least 20 hours of training a year. In 2006 the law was changed to require at least one of those hours cover use of firearms and another hour must focus on the use of force; 55 of the 85 officers had not had firearms or use-of-force training in at least one year.
Officers are not authorized to make arrests in any years following one in which there was a deficiency in training hours until that lost training is made up, said Ken Vance, executive director of the Peace Officers Standards and Training Council, which certifies law enforcement officers in Georgia.
By Wednesday, the training failures had been corrected for all but seven officers, who remained on administrative duty, Campos said.
Some of the 85 officers had gaps in their training discovered as far back as two decades, according to the APD audit.
“Some criminal convictions may be at risk,” said Cristina Beamud, an attorney and executive director of the Atlanta Civilian Review Board, which hears complaints from the public against Atlanta Police Department officers.
“Of course, there’s a good public policy reason surrounding the requirements that officers be trained properly," Beamud said. "The work that they do involves a substantial amount of risk and much of the training is things they don’t practice every day. It’s troubling that they may not have had powers of arrest and the legal problems that may create, but it's trouble when officers don’t complete the training requirements because their work is so complex.”
“We're all on notice now that there is a potential issue,” said defense lawyer Seth Kirschenbaum, a former member of the Atlanta Citizen Review Board.
Still, some defense attorneys said Wednesday that training failures may not necessarily harm pending cases or those that have been closed with convictions.
"Will it ultimately result in throwing out these hundreds and hundreds of cases? I don’t think so," lawyer Marcia Shein said.
There may be problems if the officer had been told to make up missing hours but didn't, the lawyer said.
The files of 1,816 active officers have been reviewed and now the audit moves to retired officers, Campos said. The review of the files of reserve officers should take about three weeks.
The officers, not the agencies, are responsible for getting the mandatory training. But POST was installing a new computer system Wednesday that would make it easier for the state to track 59,000 Georgia law enforcement officers, Vance said. Until now, POST has depended on paper files to monitor officers.
The problem is not limited to APD, Vance said. "It’s a problem Georgia-wide. A lot of these older cases are popping up now.”
John Bankhead, spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, said agents called in to review shootings involving police are seeing more instances where there is a training deficiency.
“There will be a lot of lawyers arguing that without the proper certification they didn’t have arrest powers,” Bankhead said.
In the past few weeks, the Georgia State Patrol identified issues involving 92 troopers. Of those, 24 had fallen short of the required 20 hours of training and another 13 did not get the required annual use-of-force or firearms training. The others simply had not been reported to POST or were clerical errors.
“All are in compliance now,” GSP Capt. Paul Cosper said.
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