South Carolina officials have approved a plan that allows law enforcement recruits to complete the first part of their training at state technical colleges, a change that many in the law enforcement community are announcing as a leap forward into the profession. .
The plan, approved by the state’s Law Enforcement Training Council in late February, establishes a 14-week certification course. Once completed, recruits can participate in their final eight weeks of training at the SC Criminal Justice Academy if they pass cumulative and physical agility tests.
The change comes at a time when state officials continue to struggle with the urgent need for more officers and limited space at South Carolina’s only training facility in Columbia. For several years, police chiefs like Luther Reynolds in Charleston and Reggie Burgess in North Charleston have been pushing for a more regional approach to law enforcement training, which they deem necessary to alleviate the bottleneck.
Training council and academy officials saw efforts to establish regional academies as a threat to their funding and to the consistency that comes from training all new officers in one place.
“By statute, we are the only institution that can train and certify police officers,” said Jackie Swindler, director of the state training academy.
Last year, representatives from the SC Technical College System met with Swindler to discuss the collaboration, he said. The colleges argued that it could be a resource to increase the training offered at the academy, not to supplant it.
“They launched the idea of collaborating with us, without taking anything from us,” said Swindler.
For decades, all training was completed at the state academy, but the drop in prison and ticket revenue used to fund the academy and the 106-day waiting lists for recruits forced the director to look for alternatives.
Amid the build-up, the Lowcountry chiefs proposed a regional basic training academy, run by Trident Technical College or the police, but the proposals were rejected by the 11-member training council.
Instead, authorities launched a four-week program of virtual classes in 2019. The academy recorded its instructors and sent the footage to law enforcement agencies across Palmetto state. Each agency was then free to conduct initial classroom training before sending recruits for their final eight-week period in Columbia. The move reduced the waiting time to 14 days.
Swindler sees the new certification program as a natural evolution of this initiative.
Authorities originally wanted to keep the college’s training program in four weeks, but found that extending it to 14 weeks – a semester – would allow recruits access to state lottery enrollment assistance and SC WINS scholarship funds, he said.
And that funding means that law enforcement recruits can cover the full cost of the 14-week certified course while earning credits for an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, said Swindler.
“This is big and bold, I think,” he said. “It is a victory for all communities.”
The 14-week program for the Pre-Academy Police Training Certificate from the Technical College System is comprised of four courses covering topics such as introduction to criminal law; courts, crimes and procedures; basic patrol operations; domestic violence; report writing; repression of drugs; and basic collision investigation.
Swindler said college officials plan to launch classes in time for the fall semester.
For Tim Hardee, the president of the university system, the partnership with the criminal justice academy is a natural step.
“Our mission is to develop the workforce,” said Hardee. “We really have the ability to … make (training) universally accessible.”
Recruits will be taught by qualified criminal justice instructors, and campuses aim to provide an immersive experience for anyone interested in becoming a police officer, he said.
Among those instructors is Shawn Livingston, a former Mount Pleasant police supervisor who heads Trident Tech’s criminal justice program in North Charleston.
“It takes them to the door and immersed in the culture,” said Livingston. “They have skin in the game and can use academic credit, transferable university classes.”
The former police officer said he knows that having well-trained police officers is critical, given the current challenges in the field.
“When I passed the police academy in South Carolina, it took me eight weeks,” said Livingston. “I went through a few more weeks of field training, but in my opinion, looking back, it is completely inappropriate.”
Having college-level classroom instruction should prepare recruits for success and get them through the academy on a more solid basis, he said. Eventually, he would like to see other topics incorporated into the certification course, such as cultural awareness training and modules on how to scale and mitigate various situations.
Greg Gomes, deputy chief of police in North Charleston, called the move a big step and said he hoped state officials would expand the program to a regional model.
“The chief (Burgess) has been at the forefront of this issue for years,” said Gomes. “Our technical schools have done a phenomenal job of preparing our workforce. We believe this is a step in the right direction.”
Like Livingston, the assistant chief said he hopes to see additional topics added to the curriculum, such as cultural awareness, prejudice and community policing.
And he said he believes transferring classroom education to technical colleges will increase public confidence, because the certification program is not limited to police recruits.
Anyone can take courses, obtain a certificate and receive the same training that all police officers in South Carolina receive, even if they have no plans to enter the profession, Gomes said.
“This is a giant leap for our profession,” he said. “I think this is great.”
Palms Island Police Chief Kevin Cornett said he was hopeful about the new program.
This is the first time that police training has been carried out on a large scale at South Carolina’s technical colleges, and Cornett said that fact made him hesitate.
However, the chief said he was excited to see state officials working together to address training challenges.
Cornett said he also knows firsthand how this program can help small rural agencies.
Before coming to Palms Island, the chief headed the Springdale Police Department, which had 10 officers when he left for Lowcountry in 2019.
Having technical colleges conducting mandatory video training at the state academy means that small departments don’t have to take officers off the streets to oversee that instruction, Cornett said.
“Some (departments) are small enough for the boss to work on the road,” he said. “They are at a greater disadvantage. We even talked about it when I was in Springdale, how we could use technical college to help us.”
Reynolds, the Charleston chief, said he had mixed feelings about the plan.
While supporting any effort to improve training and saying that he believes putting officers in the path of university-level training is positive – Charleston requires recruits with no previous experience to have a bachelor’s degree or higher – Reynolds said he does not believe in the plan’s technique from college goes far enough.
The Charleston Police Department runs a 14-week pre-academic course before sending recruits for the past eight weeks at the state academy, the chief said.
“I feel strongly that a robust and substantial police academy is needed to develop the best police officers possible,” said Reynolds. “In my experience, the average basic (national) training is approximately 26 weeks. This is one of the most complex and challenging times in our history, and we have to prepare our people. Basic training is not something I want to delegate.”
While he argues that large agencies like yours have the ability to fully train and certify their employees, he recognizes that smaller agencies are unlikely to be able to.
“There is a part of this that is an incremental step in the right direction,” said Reynolds. “Having the authority to have our own training academy is where we should go. I think we need to continue to raise the bar and raise our expectations.”
Authorities will have a chance to evaluate the system as early as 2021.