Civil service members want city to consider cost of police training

 

Civil service board members John Smith and Kathy Elam approached the city council finance committee recently to discuss ways to increase the pool of candidates for police officers.

“In the past few years we’ve run several tests for firefighters and police officers,” Smith said. “We haven’t had a problem with the firefighters in the past, but with police officer, we’re told they have to be OPOTA (Ohio Peace Officer’s Training Academy) certified and we’re finding in difficult to find applicants,” Smith explained. “Last time we had three show up and pass.” He said a recent firefighter’s test had more than 30 applicants.

Smith suggested perhaps the city could change the rules and open the pool of applicants to people who are interested and otherwise qualified and send the successful candidate to the police academy.

Smith said the 16-week OPOTA class is $3,800; the Ohio State Highway Patrol class, which is 18 weeks, costs $2,500. The local academy at Collins Career Center is nine months or longer, he said.

“I think these are minimum amounts to invest in a well-trained police officer,” Smith said.

“If we pay for this, we should be able to get some sort of commitment (of service),” council chairman Mike Lutz said. Smith suggested each applicant using the city’s money to pay for his or her training could be required to stay for a certain amount of time; if they left before then, they would be required to pay back the city for the cost of their training.

Council member Aaron Bollinger asked about how the city would pay these people who would be city employees but not actually working while they are in training. Smith suggested they might be classed as cadets and receive a small salary until they graduate.

“I think that would be a tough thing to do,” council member Bob Cleary said. “You hire someone. They get a union contract and you have to go by the contract by the date they hired in. I think we tried this once before and the (police) union wasn’t happy.”

Smith said the city could possibly hire such cadets but not consider them full-time until they graduate from the academy.