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Training Academy Screw-Ups Send 35 Officers Back For Classes

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The police academy run by Prince George’s Community College has been barred from conducting new police training classes until it can assure the state that it is providing proper instruction.

Thirty-five rookie officers who graduated last year and this year and are working for local departments also have been forced to return to the academy. They were brought back in the past month to repeat classes or tests because the college’s records on them were in “utter disarray,” said Lee Goldman, deputy director of the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commissions. Some officers returned for a few hours of work, others for almost a week.

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Goldman, whose agency enforces training standards, said the trouble lies with the academy, not the officers.

The academy trains officers for many of the area’s smaller municipal departments but is not the training arm for the county’s police force.

The academy did not supervise weapons training or driving skills, Goldman said; instructors at the state commission conducted those classes. But academy courses covered other required areas, including criminal law, searches, use of force, investigations and court testimony.

Goldman said he could not recall another program in which auditors found such extensive problems documenting what had been taught and tested.

“When they had to go to five different filing cabinets to answer one question about one person and still couldn’t answer it, something was very wrong,” said Goldman, whose staff uncovered the gaps during what was intended to be a routine audit. Some academy instructors also had expired certifications for the topics they were teaching, Goldman said. The instructors have since renewed their certifications.

“What surprised me was the volume” of missing information, said Goldman, who said it stretched over two years in multiple courses taught by various instructors.

A total of 21 police agencies have been affected, most in Prince George’s. The academy trains 40 to 60 cadets a year during a 24-week course. Some students pay their own way to position themselves for jobs, but the costs for others are covered by police departments.