WDTC law enforcement training program fails to meet state requirements

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - Western Dakota Technical College’s (WDTC) ties with the state have been cut. At a Jan. 3 Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Training Commission meeting, the nine commissioners voted to terminate their agreement with WDTC. The agreement created a fast track for law enforcement students to become state-certified officers. The termination will be effective March 4.

“That will demonstrate that the training standard at WDT or any technical school is appropriate and in line with that state training requirements. So, when that reciprocity test is passed, then the state certification is granted,” Steve Allender, a commissioner, explains the reciprocity.

In the spring of 2022, five of the twelve WDTC students taking South Dakota’s law enforcement reciprocity test failed. WDTC then asked the Law Enforcement Training Division, under the office of the state Attorney General, if those students could retake the test, saying the state rushed the process. The state later discovered that WDTC selected the original testing date. The lack of knowledge of the testing date sparked an audit of the program ahead of the next school year.

The audit revealed that WDTC’s Law Enforcement Training Program:

submitted inaccurate or false reports
tested students before the end of the program
failed to record and report required retention information
failed to present instructor credentials.

A review of records submitted by WDTC discovered that some police instructors needed to be appropriately certified in Emergency Vehicle Operations.

“In this academic setting with students, only the certified instructors should have been teaching those courses,” says Allender. “The Western Dakota Law Enforcement Staff position was, ‘Well, if the police department or the sheriff’s office supplied the instructor, then we get to assume that they’re certified.’ Some of them we’re not.”

When the Law Enforcement Training Division found the discrepancy, the Division of Criminal Investigation presented the commissioner with three options:

consider amendments to the articulation agreement,
end the agreement with a 60-day notice or
formally place WDT on at-risk status and a one-year probationary period.

The commissioners chose to terminate the agreement, effective March 4.

The lack of instructor documentation can harm agencies hiring WDTC graduates. WDTC law enforcement training graduates typically end up at the Rapid City Police Department or the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office, according to WDTC President Ann Bolman.

“It always comes down to the officer’s training. So routinely, when an officer fires their weapon, they would provide training records for examination. They would follow up and find out if there was a gap in the training or a lack of certification or something like that, to maybe show cause why maybe this wasn’t a good use of a firearm,” explains Allender, former Rapid City Police Department Chief. “That’s why it’s so important to keep the training up and to keep it documented, and therefore to keep your instructors documented.”

For WDTC law enforcement students, becoming an officer means extra time and money.

“The departments can still hire students from our program who don’t have [reciprocity agreement] completed. They can have the students go through their own training and then send them to the state academy,” explained Bolman. “The downside for students is that they have to do the entire academy. "

Bolman hopes to have the program in agreement with the state again in one year. Current Law Enforcement Training students can take the test before March 4 and still fast-track their certification.