Everyone is aware of the fact that money is tight at every level these days. That being the case, public safety professionals can use all the help they can get. Volunteer officers have been a valuable resource for agencies struggling to provide communities with adequate police protection. But what about liability issues related to volunteers’ training? In Tennessee police recruits get 400 hours of rigorous training before they hit the street.

Volunteers have the same powers of arrest, wear the same gun and badge but undertake just 80 hours of training time. Rex Barton, a police consultant with University of Tennessee’s Municipal Technical Advisory Service, said most reserve officers don’t have policing experience beyond the training they take a couple of nights a week.

“If you go in front of a jury where failure to train becomes an assertion of the plaintiff, you will have difficulty defending yourself,” Barton told Kate Howard of the Tennessean newspaper.

“In most cases, it would be difficult if not impossible to show that training over several years of part-time experience is equal to 400-plus hours of officer recruit training.” Barton says he’s in favor of a rule, under consideration by the Tennessee Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, that would mandate officers without any full-time experience to play a secondary role in policing.

The idea is about cutting down on the chances of something going bad. Jim Brown, associate director of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, said volunteer policing means different things in different places. Brown said in some tourist towns, college students and others get two weeks of training and patrol the beaches. But in Ohio, state law requires the same training for a reserve officer as a full-time, paid officer.

The Tennessee commission recently changed its rules to require agencies to give their reserves equal training to stay accredited. Officers typically must meet the same standards as a full-time officer applying for a position.

They must pass a psychological exam, lie detector tests, drug screens and background checks. It’s when the backups take the lead that experts say the liability concerns come into view. White House, Tennessee Police Chief Jerry Herman said he has no plans to let his reserves, with or without law enforcement experience, work on their own.

He plans to require all of the officers to go beyond 40 hours of in-service per year and learn all of the policies and laws the department has to follow on their time. “If we were to have a lawsuit situation, I can testify that my officers were ordered to train, read and understand our policies and have been practicing them,” Herman said.

“If they don’t do it, our city’s liability will be reduced and it’ll be on them.”