Police training council short on cash

[Silent_Bob]

http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20151122/NEWS/151129863

CONCORD – The New Hampshire Police Standards and Training Council, which runs the academy to train every law enforcement officer in the state, is in "financial crisis," its leaders announced.
The reasons are twofold, said Capt. Benjamin R. Jean, support bureau commander for the PSTC. One is that the Legislature has moved millions of dollars from the council's budget to the state's general fund, he said.
The other, said Jean, is that the PSTC is funded from penalty assessments – fees added to traffic tickets and fines for criminal convictions – and that revenue continues to decline. The idea behind penalty assessments, Jean said, was to have those who cause the need for police services help pay for it.
The council runs three full-time police academies annually, minting as many as 60 new police officers per class. Every member of law enforcement is required to be certified by the academy, which is a residential and paramilitary training ground for state, county and local police officers.
"The intent was to self-fund and have one year's budget in reserve," Jean said.
But the reserve was drawn down when the Legislature moved $1.3 million from the PSTC budget to the general fund in two transfers during 2009 and 2010, Jean said.
"And we had transfers before that," said Jean, who reported a total of $5.7 million was moved out of the PSTC budget by the Legislature during the last 20 years.
"A bill gets passed and the money goes," he said.
The lights are on and the academy continues to train cops but, Jean said, the council's budget to run the academy has been "declining year after year." Meanwhile, he said, the council has cut staff and programs, including an interactive training program for seasonal Hampton police officers need for the influx of people during the beach's busy summer seasion, and $1,000 grants for officers across the state to receive specialized training.
The short-term crisis is to keep the training going, Jean said. The long-term problem is "to not be in this situation again."
During an emergency meeting of the council last month, a list of police chiefs voiced support for its survival and the council voted unanimously in favor of writing to the governor's office and state legislators, asking "for their guidance and feedback on how to fund the Police Standards and Training Council," according to meeting minutes.
Jean said the theory behind shrinking traffic ticket revenue is that fines were raised and officers are "taught to use compassion." As a result, he said, many officers give warnings instead of tickets.
Jean said some people don't pay their tickets, others negotiate lesser fines at court and sometimes judges suspend the fines. It all reduces the penalty assessments and therefore money for the academy.
"Crime hasn't gone down," Jean said. "A lot of variables feed into what it is."
Frank Warchol, Portsmouth's acting deputy police chief, said, "We don't have (ticket) quotas in Portsmouth and we never have." He said every municipality has its own goals and missions and "there are communities that want their police departments to hammer everyone." In Portsmouth, he said, "the mission is to make the roads as safe as possible with the discretionary use of verbal, warnings, written and tickets."
"I think the community wants that," he said. "You have to have that wiggle room."
Like everyone in law enforcement, Warchol noted officers on the streets have the discretion to write a ticket, or give a warning. Drivers who get written warnings get logged into the police database, so if they're stopped again, that driving history is revealed and, as Warchol said, it becomes known that "obviously, they haven't learned their lesson."
"The next time you can more easily justify a ticket," he said.
How fast over the speed limit a driver goes and the driver's history are top considerations when deciding whether or not to issue a ticket, Warchol said.
Jean noted it was never the intent to have tickets written for the purpose of generating academy revenue.
"That's not even what we teach," he said. "You want to change driving behavior. The average officer doesn't even consider revenue and I think the majority of people don't know where the revenue goes."
Retired Manchester Police Chief David Mara, retained as Portsmouth's next interim police chief, said he attended a recent presentation by PSTC and it's his opinion that the academy "shouldn't depend on how many tickets we write."
"We have to fund it, no question," Mara said. "I look at it this way, in these times with everything going on with police departments, it's not the time to be quibbling about money for training."
Mara praised the academy for providing "excellent" and consistent training for police officers in New Hampshire and said it's a 24-hour-a-day program that reveals how police candidates behave under pressure. When candidates graduate, he said, police departments know they've met a state standard.
"Especially in this time in our history," he said, "it's important that every officer is getting consistent training." 
As for the funding the program, Mara said it's not his job as a police chief to decide. That's up to the Legislature, he said.
Alternate funding sources suggested by the PSTC include changing state law so penalty assessments are imposed on total fines, including suspended fines and amounts diverted by community service. The council has also suggested the Legislature could add an assessment to inspection stickers, vehicle registrations, vehicle or home insurance, or driver's licenses to fund the academy. Another idea is an assessment to road tolls, the beer tax or the gas tax.

[Free libertarian]