COLUMBUS, Ohio – It should be more difficult to become a police officer in Ohio and recruits who make the grade should be trained longer and better. So says a panel appointed by the state’s top law enforcement official.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
Ohio requires a minimum of 605 hours of basic training to become a police officer, compared with the 888 hours in Kentucky and 835 hours in West Virginia required to earn a badge.
Once on the job, Ohio officers must take a minimum of four hours of training annually; Kentucky officers must complete 40 hours and Indiana officers 24 hours.
And, although most local agencies have higher standards, Ohio is one of only three states that do not require officers to have a high-school diploma.
Not good enough, concludes Attorney General Mike DeWine’s Advisory Group on Law Enforcement Training.
Saying it’s “a matter of life and death,” DeWine called yesterday for Ohio to expand and improve training and entry-level qualifications for its 34,000 officers as his panel unveiled recommendations finalized after four months of meetings.
Ohio lags behind many states in police training, and more attention must be paid to helping officers deal with the mentally ill and deciding when to use — and not use — deadly force, the group said.
“Every police officer in the state of Ohio has the right to have the best possible training we can give them,” DeWine said. “Citizens have the right to have the officers keeping them safe have good training.”
Many of the recommendations can be enacted by the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission, but “the big question” is where to find the money to pay for changes in training, the attorney general said.