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Putnam County law enforcement officials attend yearly driver training
PLAINFIELD -- Several Putnam County law enforcement officials descended onto the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy in Plainfield Monday for their yearly emergency vehicle operations training (EVO).
Greencastle Police Department Sgt. Charles Inman, along with Indiana State Excise Cpl. Jerrod Baugh, conducted the training, as they are both state-certified EVO instructors.
"Certified law enfor-cement officers in Indiana are required to complete a minimum of two hours in-service training a year in EVO," Inman explained. "We try to come up here three or four times a year. We believe that the minimum training is not enough. It's enough to meet the state requirements, but in Putnam County we're pretty adamant about the professional development of our officers."
The training itself was split into two courses; one called the Outside Road Course 1 and the other called the Inside Precision Course, both tested the driver's ability to get to the emergency scene, safely without incident.
"The outside course is driving at higher speeds with more braking and steering input as well as all the other skills that come with driving faster," Baugh explained. "The inside course will have more backing and things like that. It's slower with more precision. "
Both Baugh and Inman noted that emergency vehicle operation in itself is something that police officers do everyday. However, it's the training at various speeds in critical driving conditions, including road hazards and obstacles, that is most important.
"For police officers the majority of the driving isn't at high speeds, but when you need to, that's where that training comes in. The officer gets to find out what the thresholds are with the vehicle and equipment," Baugh said. "My experience has been with the interactive simulators, they don't teach that ability to make sure that the driver has a connection with the vehicle. You can do video games and all the Power Points you want, but actual skills training is where it's at."
Although it's not required, many officials in Putnam County attend the training sessions whenever they may be offered throughout the year.
"We have some officers come up and do their two hours, but we have some officers that will come up each and every time and put in hours and hours of training," Inman said. "There are three distinct psycho-motor skills that police officers in the State of Indiana must regularly show proficiency. These skills include firearms proficiency, physical tactics and emergency vehicle operation.
"Each one is equally as important, but I like to look at it from a driving perspective as we may not fight every day, we may not shoot every day, but we drive every single day. I believe that this training is extremely important to our officers and the communities we serve."
Each time officers descend on the emergency vehicle operations course at the police academy the course setup for training is different. Most officers will never repeat the same course twice.
Although, the outside road course is at higher speeds, the training stresses going through the course smoothly, without hitting any of the cones rather than time.
"It's much more important to us that they're getting through the course cleanly, meaning zero cones," Inman explained. "If you don't get there safely, you simply can't help anyone. If we hit a cone in training it simulates hitting a curb on the street, striking a parked car or even worse. That takes us out of the pursuit or simply out of the ability to respond to the emergency. We emphasize arriving safely."
Inman and Baugh are not the only local officers to guest instruct at the police academy. Local officers such as Greencastle Police Capt. Chris Jones, Officers Matt Huffman and Eric Vaughan and many others instruct their own areas of expertise at the academy several times per year in disciplines such as Physical Tactics and S.T.O.P.S (Strategies and Tactics of Patrol Stops) and many others.
"Whichever police agency we're representing earns hours here that we can come and use their facilities," Inman explained. "So for example, each time we come up here and use the course it's not costing the City of Greencastle to lease the cars or the course because we're paying for that through hours banked training other officers. This also includes use of academy lease cars to help save the wear and tear on the local agency police vehicles.
"For example, the vehicles that we're utilizing tonight are retired patrol cars donated to the academy by the Whitestown Police Department and Indiana State Police. We encourage the officers to train in the vehicles that they regularly drive each day, but we recognize at the same time that budget restrictions affecting maintenance and repair costs sometimes make this impossible."
This year alone, across the nation 25 officers have died due to auto-related accidents, making it the No. 1 cause of line-of-duty deaths.
"More police officers have been killed this year from vehicle accidents than firearms," Baugh said. "It's something we have to train for. I believe in it, otherwise I wouldn't teach it."
Inman agreed, stating, "Traffic collisions take more lives and end more careers every year than any other type of police action. This is one area where we have control. We can reduce these numbers significantly when we hold ourselves accountable. That's why we train."