LAW BOOSTS TRAINING

Until today, Missouri ranked dead last in the nation in the amount of training required to be a police officer or a sheriff's deputy.

A new state law has increased the minimum number of hours of training from 120 to 300, and the minimum will ultimately climb to 470 hours on Aug. 28, 1996.

The law applies to both regular and reserve officers, but police and sheriff's departments in third- and fourth-class counties can elect to remain at the 120-hour level.

In addition, persons who are currently in law enforcement will be grandfathered in, so they don't have to meet the new training standards.

The state also still exempts very small towns from minimum police training standards.

"There are still towns where you do not have to have any training at all," said Sgt. Carl Kinnison, who is in charge of training at the Cape Girardeau Police Department.

Under a state law that has been in existence for years, towns with populations of less than 2,000 and fewer than four full-time officers are exempt from minimum training requirements.

Still, area police officers and a criminal justice professor at Southeast Missouri State University say the new training standards are long overdue.

"Everybody needs to face it; this is the modern day," said Chaffee Police Chief Jerry Bledsoe. "You just don't pull a guy off the street and have him raise his right hand and throw him a gun and say, `Go, get 'em.'"

Chaffee, population 3,500, is in Scott County, a third-class county. As such, the seven-member police department could exempt itself from the new training requirements.

But Bledsoe isn't looking for an exemption. He said he wants future police-officer applicants to meet the minimum training standards.

Michael Brown, a criminal justice professor, directs the Southeast Missouri State University Law Enforcement Academy. Brown said it still takes more hours of training to be a beautician than a law enforcement officer.

But he said that the 470-hour training requirement for law enforcement officers will put Missouri at about the 60th or 65th percentile. "That training requirement will meet or exceed any of the states contiguous to Missouri."

The increased training, said Brown, should improve the professionalism of law enforcement in the state.

The Missouri Highway Patrol and urban police departments have had higher training standards for years, but the 120-hour training minimum has been the standard in most areas of outstate Missouri.

The Southeast Missouri police academy will begin offering a 470-hour training course on Sept. 9. The training, at a cost of $1,600 per person, will be offered mostly on weekends and run through the middle of July. The old, 120-hour program cost only $350 a person.

Area law enforcement officials said most Southeast Missouri police and sheriff's departments probably will adhere to the new training standards for regular officers. But departments in third- and fourth-class counties likely will keep the 120-hour minimum for their reserve officers.

The Cape Girardeau Police Department, however, doesn't have that option since it is in a second-class county. New applicants to the department's reserve unit will have to meet the higher training standards, said Kinnison.

The result is that only those who are interested in making law enforcement a career are likely to seek reserve-officer status in the future.