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When does a trainee become a peace officer? It depends largely on what state you’re talking about, and in states like Arkansas, that question is almost impossible to answer. There, many agencies (particularly smaller ones in rural areas) allow recruits to hit the street before they’ve ever set foot in a police academy. That was exactly what happened with a Hot Spring County Sheriff’s deputy who rode with another deputy for less than two days before heading out on his own in 2003.
Three months into his job, that deputy, Joseph Fite, instructed a woman in custody to bare her breasts before sexually assaulting her. According to police reports, the deputy had arrested the woman on outstanding warrants for driving offenses after she refused to go out with him on a date.
Recently, a judge found that the assault was a violation of the woman’s civil rights and awarded her $130,000 in damages, a verdict that wasn’t hard to see coming. But in a controversial move that surprised local law enforcement officials and is thought to have set new precedent in Arkansas, U. S. District Judge Robert Dawson then brought the hammer down on then-Sheriff Ron Ball for putting the deputy to work with virtually no training.
The Judge said it “directly caused the incident.” “Fite was given a badge, a gun, and a vehicle with no more idea of the laws he was enforcing or the rights he was protecting than he did when he worked for the sausage company,” Dawson wrote in a 17-page order.
“The Court finds Sheriff Ball’s decision to place a Deputy on duty with no meaningful training is both shocking and alarming.” Ball and Fite jointly were held responsible for $15,000 of the damages. “Amen. Amen,” said Robert Harrison, Texarkana police chief and chairman of the Arkansas Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training, when he learned of the ruling. Harrison says turning officers loose without proper training is a “liability nightmare.” Texarkana is among a handful of agencies in the state, including the Little Rock Police Department, the Arkansas State Police and the Washington County Sheriff’s office, that require new officers to complete a police academy as well as weeks of supervised work in the field before working on their own.
According to a recent article by the Associated Press, Harrison thinks fielding cops with no training is a practice that needs to end. “Administrators are really facing a lot of liability issues because officers are not properly trained first,” he told the AP.
“I think all people who have not gone to academy need to go to academy before they are placed on the streets.” Others disagree, and say that they have to look for warm bodies and try to put boots on the ground – training or no training, while some bosses say that they want to see the new officers in action before paying their wages while they attend the three-month-long academy.
“I may send him to academy and he may not work out for me,” Newton County Sheriff Keith Slape told reporters. He says his office is understaffed and underfunded. “They are an investment. I’d hate to just go in there and pay their salary and turn around and be rid of them.” And all the training in the world wouldn’t necessarily stop a bad cop from being a bad cop, said Dallas County Sheriff Donny Ford.
Ford said he typically promotes part-time deputies who have undergone roughly 100 hours of training for auxiliary officers when he has an opening in his five-man office. The ruling could have severe effects for sheriffs and county budgets, said Chuck Lange, director of the Arkansas Sheriff’s Association. “The sheriff really needs the leeway to have those bodies out there,” albeit under supervision, he said.
“We will have to watch this very, very closely. . .because it could have a tremendous impact.” Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder told the Associated Press that he sympathizes with smaller agencies that have a hard time finding quality recruits and training them.
But he would still support a state mandate to require the training academy to be completed on the front end. “I think they ought to be trained before they hit the street,” said Helder, who runs one of the largest agencies in the state, with around 350 employees. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites        
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