Upleveling Training: Peace Officer Continuing Education and Training

It seems like law enforcement agencies are faced with a new challenge every day. To stay on top of advances in technology, changing community expectations, and rapidly evolving legal standards, officers need to be provided with comprehensive, up-to-date training.

In a recent webinar – “Uplevel Your Peace Officer Training: From Academy to Active Duty, Part 2” – we discussed how certifying bodies and agencies are ensuring officers are receiving the continuing education they need to be successful.

Presented by Vector Solutions, the discussion was moderated by ret. Sgt. Doug Kazensky, Senior Solutions Engineer at Vector Solutions and featured:

• Bryant Orem, Deputy Director at the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy
• John Cunningham, PTC Administrator at the New Jersey Police Training Commission
• Tykeria Lockhart, Analyst at the New Jersey Police Training Commission
• John Jacobs, Director of Curriculum at the Utah Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST)

What kind of complexity currently exists for law enforcement training?

In-service law enforcement training and continuing education has undergone rapid change in many states in the first half of the 2020s. Staying on top of new legislative mandates and evolving policing best practices has been difficult for many agencies.

In addition, some states have implemented new certifying authorities or officer licensing procedures, completely reshaping the training and compliance landscapes.

Indiana is one such state. According to Orem, the state created a new POST organization at the directive of Governor Eric Holcomb in 2022.

“Governor Holcomb said we need to professionalize and move towards and standardized curriculum,” Orem said. “We are a brand-new POST and we’re still trying to figure out how we do things.”

Today, law enforcement officers in Indiana are required to complete a minimum of 24 hours of training on an annual basis, with different topics having varying requirements for the number of hours that must be completed and whether they must incorporate hands-on training hours. Of those hours, approx. 8-10 hours are typically spent on mandated training topics, and the rest is at the agency’s discretion.

For the mandated training hours, the training must come from an Indiana-certified instructor or training provider. However, to reduce the amount of time that’s spent reviewing and certifying training courses and instructors, they are looking into IADLEST’s National Certification Program (NCP).

“We don’t have the time and manpower to vet every class that comes across our desks, so we’re hoping to turn a lot of that work over to IADLEST,” Orem said.

The NCP program establishes minimum standards for law enforcement continuing education and ensures training content meets or exceeds any individual state certification requirements. NCP certified courses are accepted by all participating POST organizations for in-service or advanced training credit and are recognized by all 50 states, regardless of their participation status.

Vector Solutions currently offers 60+ courses certified by IADLEST as part of the NCP program.

Like Indiana, New Jersey also recently made extensive changes to law enforcement standards by formalizing the New Jersey Police Training Commission (PTC) as a certifying authority and implementing a new officer licensure program as of January 2024.

“This was our first renewal cycle…It’s the first time that we’re actually setting the standard for in-service training,” Cunningham said. “Before, the Attorney General would issue guidelines, but this is the first time it’s being tracked by the Police Training Commission.”

The PTC is also now responsible for tracking in-service training. Before, some of the training would be tracked by the county prosecutor’s offices.

“Now that we have licensing, the commission has become the centralized clearing house for all in-service training,” Cunningham said.

The PTC issues a mandatory list of training, which includes defensive tactics, firearms qualifications, use-of-force, domestic violence, and legal updates which officers must complete to maintain their licensure.

“A lot of these things were mandatory in the past but were tracked by 21 separate entities. Now, it’s all tracked at PTC,” he said.

In contrast to Indiana and New Jersey, the Utah POST has been around since the 1960s. However, as a result of legislative mandates, in-service training requirements have undergone rapid change in the last few years, creating complexity for the POST and for agencies.

“For a long time, we had a simple 40 hours a year requirement determined by the agency. So, the POST would just need to know that at a minimum, officers got 40 hours,” Jacobs said. “After George Floyd and several high-profile cases in Utah, our legislature started changing things around.”

However, those changes created confusion for agencies and the POST. As a result, the state has gone back to a simpler system for mandated in-service training.

“We’re rolling with the punches and that’s why we have Acadis. We’re able to work through that [confusion,]” Jacobs said. “We’re working with our partners in the legislature and stakeholders to try and figure out what’s best. And whenever they say, ‘how much will this cost to track?’ it’s been great to be able to say there’s no development cost [because of Acadis.]”

How is law enforcement training compliance improved with Acadis?

After training is legislatively mandated, the next step is getting those requirements translated from the statutes into easily understood language and implementing needed changes. In Utah, this has meant creating categories in Acadis that agencies can select during the reporting process and then providing agencies with guidelines related to the training topics.

“Once they were given that guidance, agencies were able to go in and start entering training,” Jacobs said. “And once they met [in-service requirements] …the certification would renew automatically for another year.”

In addition to their Acadis instance, the Utah POST also makes use of AgencyConnect™, which is the only technology solution that connects local agencies with state level certifying bodies and academies. With AgencyConnect, local agencies utilizing TargetSolutions can automatically submit training submissions to the Utah POST Acadis system and eliminate the need to enter training completions into multiple systems.

“AgencyConnect has lifted a burden on us, and it’s also lifted a burden on the agencies,” Jacobs said.

Acadis for Certifying Authorities

Support continuing education and ensure in-service training compliance with Acadis and AgencyConnect.

 

• Easily Access Records

Quickly access comprehensive hire-to-retire records and provide accurate, real-time data in minutes.

 

• Integrate with the Academy

Integration with Vector’s software for law enforcement academies centralizes all relevant documentation in one system

 

• Self-serve Portal

A secure, self-serve portal that allows officers, instructors, and local departments to access records and easily comply with reporting mandates.

 

• Legally Defensible Documentation

Manage investigations, disciplinary claims, training, and compliance records in a single system.

 

• The Only State-to-Local Connected Solution

AgencyConnect is the only system that can automate training submissions from local departments to state agencies.

 

• Reduce the Cost of Compliance and Meet State Mandates

Eliminate manual processes and enable broader access to nationally certified training content.

 

• Improve Emergency Preparedness and Response

Aggregate critical data for better comprehensive first responder preparedness insight.

 

To stay on top of their new licensure requirements, the New Jersey PTC is utilizing Acadis, which was initially implemented for their academies in 2019. With Acadis, the PTC tracks PTC-approved instructors and utilizes the Acadis learning management system (LMS) to automatically populate officer training records with training completed in the LMS.

“Using Acadis and having a centralized system has really helped us, especially when it comes to the renewal of licenses,” Cunningham said. “The learning management system helps us tremendously.”

As shared by Lockhart, who supervises the team managing their Acadis instance, they are also utilizing Acadis to distribute mandated training from the Community-Law Enforcement Affirmative Relations Continuing Education Institute, which focuses on topics like community policing and cultural awareness. The CLEAR institute was created by the New Jersey Attorney General.

“[2024] was our first instance of using Acadis for the CLEAR requirement and we released it to all 40,000 law enforcement officers in the state,” Lockhart said. “We’re able to track through the Acadis who has taken it and who has not.”

According to Cunningham, the success they’ve had over the last few years of rapid change largely comes down to effective communication. The PTC team regularly attends events like Chiefs of Police meetings and also provide their own presentations at local conferences, as well as utilizing the Acadis portal to disseminate important communications.

“We want to make sure to communicate with the people in the field,” he said. “We invited about 42,000 people to the portal and the learning management system.”

As with any new process, there was an adjustment period for agencies in New Jersey when Acadis was first launched. However, officers have come to appreciate being able to log into Acadis and view their training progress.

“[Before Acadis,] there was no portal or website for them to log onto to see their PTC training,” Lockhart said. “We would get a lot of phone calls. ‘Do I have my 40 hours?’ etc. So, I think there were very happy about the portal.”

In Indiana, they utilize Acadis to simplify tracking in-service training compliance.

“I can pull a simple report to see which officers out of the 18,000 officers in Indiana finished their 24 hours of training last year,” he said. “When we became a POST a couple years ago, we really started holding agency’s and officer’s feet to the fire. This might have been ignored before, but we’re no longer playing games. We have the resources to track in-service training, we have the resources to notify you, your agency, and prosecutors that you did not complete your in-service training [and that your law enforcement authority is suspended until the in-service training is completed.]”

As one of Acadis’ earliest state certifying authority partners, the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy’s system has evolved with them as their training requirements have changed.

“It’s morphed and developed over time,” Orem said. “If we’ve got an issue, it’s easy for us to do some training and figure out what’s going on.”

Learn more about how to streamline law enforcement training and continuing education with technology

In the past, manual and paper-based processes would cause bottlenecks, increased risk of human-error, and a lack of insight into training progress and preparedness. Today, there’s a better way. Through the strategic use of technology, law enforcement agencies and certifying authorities can easily improve operations and efficiency.

By partnering with Vector Solutions and implementing Acadis, agencies and certifying authorities can simplify annual in-service training and continuing education and ensure training compliance.

To learn more about what Acadis can do for your agency, request a demo today!

Vector Solutions’ suite of industry-leading software solutions includes training management systems, online training courses, FTO and live skill evaluations, academy automation, equipment and inventory management, shift scheduling, and an early intervention and conduct management system.