ADDITIONAL POLICE TRAINING PROPOSED

Next year, Missouri law enforcement training standards might catch up with the rest of the world, said a state Department of Public Safety official.

Many police and sheriff's departments now require only 120 hours of law enforcement training before hiring someone to fight crime, said Chris Egbert, director of Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.

"There is not another state in all of the United States that will recognize 120 hours as enough to enforce the law," Egbert said. "We are among the lowest as far as this standard goes in the whole industrialized world."

Bills now in the Missouri General Assembly would make 470 hours the standard for all officers hired after July 1, 2001, Egbert said.

This legislation is separate from another bill requiring 470 training hours for sheriffs, who are now not legally required to have prior law enforcement training.

The standard of 120 hours of education has been an exception granted to smaller police and sheriff's departments since 1994, when training hour requirements made the first of two jumps over two years. In 1994, 300 hours were required, and the level jumped to its current 470 in 1996.

Third-class counties and their municipalities have been able to get by with the lower requirement if local officials passed either an order or ordinance permitting officers with only 120 training hours to work.

The proposed law, appearing in the Legislature for the third year in a row, would also eliminate a provision that has allowed towns of 2,000 or less and counties with three deputies to hire officers with no training.

Egbert is familiar with one tiny Missouri town that has a convicted felon on patrol. The man spent three years in prison, Egbert said.

"You have to work pretty hard to spend three years in the state penitentiary as a non-violent criminal," he said.

A 470-hour law would not stop anyone who is working now from continuing in police work, Egbert said.

Cape Girardeau and New Madrid counties, which have first- and second-class status respectively, are already required by law to hire deputies with 470 training hours.

Cape Girardeau County Sheriff John Jordan believes an increase to 600 training hours is not unlikely by 2004. Officers in St. Louis County are already required to have 600 hours.

Stoddard County Sheriff Steve Fish helped establish the 120-hour standard in the 1980s as a member of the Department of Public Safety's police advisory board, he said. Before then, no state standard existed.

But more is needed, he said.

"One-hundred and twenty hours is not adequate training for any kind of an officer," Fish said. "But at that time we had nothing, and we knew we couldn't require something like 600 hours. There wasn't enough money to pay officers in these smaller places."

Several Southeast Missouri counties have passed ordinances to allow hiring of persons with only 120 hours, including Bollinger, Butler, Mississippi, Scott and Stoddard counties, Egbert said.

Nevertheless, few of them are using their status now to employ deputies with less training.

A minimal amount of turnover has helped Mississippi County, Sheriff Larry Turley said.

"Our guys with 120 who were grandfathered in are already experienced people," he said.

Fish sees that his Stoddard County deputies get much more than the 48 hours of training required every three years by the state to keep a professional license. He said they are closer to 48 hours a year.

The proposed increase to 470 hours might be hard for some police agencies in third-class counties but not Scott City, said Danny Clubb, police chief. Most of his officers already have 470 hours, Clubb said, and others who were originally hired with 120 have almost caught up to that level.