CITY POLICE TO BE GIVEN LESSONS ON DEFENSIVE DRIVING

CAPE GIRARDEAU - Defensive driving is being made a required course for Cape Girardeau Police officers.

"The idea is to prevent officers in our department from having accidents," said Cape Police Sgt. Carl Kinnison. "It lets them know their own ability, number one; plus the ability of the automobile that they drive."

Kinnison and a department lieutenant, Dennis Dolan, attended a defensive driving course Monday and Tuesday at the Law Enforcement Training Institute run by the University of Missouri-Columbia, police said.

In the early 1980s, police said, all of the department's officers were trained in defensive driving through the Missouri Safety Center at Central Missouri State University at Warrensburg. The new training will now be passed on to department officers who haven't had any such training, police said.

Police said the training course at Columbia basically taught evasive maneuvering techniques. One day was filled with class work, they said, while the other was all driving.

"Research over the past 10 years has indicated that most police-related accidents are from the normal day-to-day, routine driving, rather than responding to calls or pursuits," said Kinnison. "As a result, this training was designed to teach how to avoid most ... of those accident situations."

The department isn't providing the training because of any increase in accidents by officers, police said. It was unknown Wednesday when the training would begin.