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Anyone hear anything or know anything about the reform bill in regards to part time officers. Hearing things like they are not going to have them anymore (eliminating the use of them), to some sort of training to get them on par with FT requirements / hours...

Information online from Scheft is vague.
 

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Anyone hear anything or know anything about the reform bill in regards to part time officers. Hearing things like they are not going to have them anymore (eliminating the use of them), to some sort of training to get them on par with FT requirements / hours...

Information online from Scheft is vague.
There are some depts in the Comm where the whole dept is part time including the chief. There are other such as my own that relies heavily on them to cover patrol shifts IE if a FT guy wants a day off we page it out to the part-timers first if there are no takers it gets offered to FT as over time if there are no takers the request in declined.
 

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Anyone hear anything or know anything about the reform bill in regards to part time officers. Hearing things like they are not going to have them anymore (eliminating the use of them), to some sort of training to get them on par with FT requirements / hours...

Information online from Scheft is vague.
I would assume it would be like other states with a POST system. NH for example limits the amount of total hours a PT officer can work in a year.
As I said in the other thread, in PA they have a POST system (called MPOETC there) and both part and full time academies have the same amount of hours, with PT academy stretched out over a longer period of time. I believe Florida does the same thing. In PA, this hasn't changed the fact that the vast, vast majority of PDs, including the ones surrounding big cities like Philly and Pittsburgh, heavily utilize part time officers.

Like in MA, there are some PDs where everybody, including the chief, is part time. But because everybody has the same training, everybody is on the same level of their full time counterparts.
 

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Anyone hear anything or know anything about the reform bill in regards to part time officers. Hearing things like they are not going to have them anymore (eliminating the use of them), to some sort of training to get them on par with FT requirements / hours...

Information online from Scheft is vague.
If the information is vague, that is because neither the Senate nor the House Bill is clear. The provisions in one or the other or both may not even make it into the actual law.

The Senate version seems to be least likely to continue the current system of part time training. (And, as PG1911 said above, some states have gone to requiring full and part time officers to attend the same "full time" academy.) The House version seems to talk about a standard for part time training among the four or five standards discussed. But BOTH bills contain a section saying that part time academy trained officers will be INITIALLY certified, and during that first certified period will be required to attend additional training that is not described, but will be designed by the training agency. So, some decisions seem as though they will be made by the training agency and the new certification authority, and we don't even know what that training agency and the certification authority will be, much less what decisions they will make.

That is, I assure you, as much as can be understood at this point from these two bills. They were written by legislators who are not intimately familiar with our current part time training system (if you can call it a system) in which the state's police training agency has not actually trained any part time officers for a decade or two, but has left the job instead to regional chiefs' groups and private enterprises.
 
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Discussion Starter · #6 ·
Shameless bump.

anyone heard anything new. Heard rumor of bridge academy. Then also recently heard that will NOT be happening. Which leads me to believe they will either grandfather us in or phase us out as we are unable to attend traditional FT academies?
 

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Post wants every thing set to a standard so my theory is pt guys currently working will be grandfathers in and become post certified over night (kinda like the 94 state police merger with capital, registry. Metro and DMC police, over Night they all became troopers) as of July one this year when it takes effect. I do believe extra traing will happen but not as involved with a full time mptc academy. Any one wishing to become a police officer, be it full time or part-time, must have a full time mptc academy to work post July 1.
 

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Post wants every thing set to a standard so my theory is pt guys currently working will be grandfathers in and become post certified over night (kinda like the 94 state police merger with capital, registry. Metro and DMC police, over Night they all became troopers) as of July one this year when it takes effect. I do believe extra traing will happen but not as involved with a full time mptc academy. Any one wishing to become a police officer, be it full time or part-time, must have a full time mptc academy to work post July 1.
I have heard this same thing, anybody with a reserve academy certificate dated before July 1, 2021 will be grandfathered into POST and not need to attend a full time academy while anybody seeking any type of law enforcement employment after July 1, 2021 would need to go through a full time MPTC academy even if they're only going to work in a reserve status.
 

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According to the Scheft handout it only states the initial certification for reserves will be ok for now. Once they have to renew they will need the additional training (ie full time academy)

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What they're telling us in the reserve academy is that the bridge academy is going to be used for the reservists who will be grandfathered in, it'll be a mix of EVOC, firearms/DT, and then more in depth constitutional and criminal law.
 

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I think part timers will be a thing of the past . Law enforcement will cost $$$ the smaller communities that rely on them .
Not necessarily. There will be folks that have a main job that want to stay involved whether they work for another agency, used to work FT, or have a full time non-LE gig and do the PT stuff on the side. Many states require the same training from part timers as they do full time officers and make no distinction in their training requirements. Basically either you're a certified police officer or you aren't.

How the smaller agencies that rely on part times remains to be seen - whether they do more self sponsors, hire, sponsor, and pay part timers to go through the academy, etc. In the end we will hopefully see more academy classes and evening classes to adapt to the educational requirements and demands. Other states do FT academies on nights and weekends, similar to what some reserve academies have been doing.
 

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I think part timers will be a thing of the past . Law enforcement will cost $$$ the smaller communities that rely on them .
I doubt it. Part timers cost a lot less money. What WOULD end part timers is if they ended sponsorship and only allowed hired cadets to attend the academy; no department is going to drop thousands of dollars and wait 6 months for a guy to only work 20 hours a week.
 

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One thing is certain. We're ALL indulging in sheer speculation at this point. Nobody right now knows for certain where, when, or how this is going to shake out, till at least Summer or Fall.
 
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I think part timers will be a thing of the past. Law enforcement will cost $$$ the smaller communities that rely on them.
Maybe not MSP but I could see more departments explore the idea of regionalizing resources, it seems they have been testing the waters for this for this over the last several years with department like:

Wachusetts Regional Dispatch who cover for West Boylston, Holden and Princeton.

Rutland Regional Dispatch who covers Rutland, Barre, Hubbardston and Oakham.

Nashoba Valley Regional who have been dispatching for not just for several towns, Lunenburg, Lancaster, Harvard, Devens Community, Bolton, Berlin, Townsend as well as Devens Military Police and MSP (C9).

I doubt it. Part timers cost a lot less money. What WOULD end part timers is if they ended sponsorship and only allowed hired cadets to attend the academy; no department is going to drop thousands of dollars and wait 6 months for a guy to only work 20 hours a week.
You are all correct but also keep in mind there would be a huge turnover rate. A smaller Town let us call it "Podunk, Ma" drops a chunk of change on a 21-year-old kid for the full-time academy only to have him/her bail after 6 months to go to a bigger municipality thus leaving the sponsoring town in the lurch and stuck with the bill.

I work only as a part-time LEO. The reason I can do this and remain financially stable is the fact Part-time police officers in my department have the first right of refusal for any all-open patrol shift. In exchange language was written into our union contract where full-time officers SHALL get offered ALL details first, if the detail cannot be filled by a full-time officer it is then paged out to the part-time officers and can then bid for the job.

Now on the flip side if a patrol shift cannot be filled with part-time officer it would be paged out to the full-time officers for overtime.

Now let us say if a patrol shift cannot be filled by either full or part-time officers, we will just drop down to one officer working alone the road, this can be either part-time or full-time guy. We normally try to run two guys per shift however we are down full-time position. I have been working there for some time now and I can count on one hand the times a full-time officer was ordered to stay. So, the idea of part-time jobs going away is highly unlikely at least in my department with all the vacation, personal, comp-time, sick time the full-time officers get per our union contract. All those open shifts would have to be filled by overtime, and most of the time that would be involuntary with officer who still have Quinn or a educational incentive.

And that's not mention open shifts due to full time vacancies, in-service training or if the detective, who also works patrol is working on an investigation they will call a third guy to cover.

That's a fuck load of a funding increase for just a 9 man full time police department in a town of about 3500 residents.
 

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I don't see the exact correlation between regional dispatch, and regional PD's. Dispatchers training and "liability" issues, coupled with staffing comparison doesn't equate to the sworn personnel requirements for regional PD. Nashoba is also having issues with at least two towns not happy and looking to leave. Devens doesn't have any MP's either.
 
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Maybe not MSP but I could see more departments explore the idea of regionalizing resources, it seems they have been testing the waters for this for this over the last several years with department like:

Wachusetts Regional Dispatch who cover for West Boylston, Holden and Princeton.

Rutland Regional Dispatch who covers Rutland, Barre, Hubbardston and Oakham.

Nashoba Valley Regional who have been dispatching for not just for several towns, Lunenburg, Lancaster, Harvard, Devens Community, Bolton, Berlin, Townsend as well as Devens Military Police and MSP (C9).

You are all correct but also keep in mind there would be a huge turnover rate. A smaller Town let us call it "Podunk, Ma" drops a chunk of change on a 21-year-old kid for the full-time academy only to have him/her bail after 6 months to go to a bigger municipality thus leaving the sponsoring town in the lurch and stuck with the bill.

I work only as a part-time LEO. The reason I can do this and remain financially stable is the fact Part-time police officers in my department have the first right of refusal for any all-open patrol shift. In exchange language was written into our union contract where full-time officers SHALL get offered ALL details first, if the detail cannot be filled by a full-time officer it is then paged out to the part-time officers and can then bid for the job.

Now on the flip side if a patrol shift cannot be filled with part-time officer it would be paged out to the full-time officers for overtime.

Now let us say if a patrol shift cannot be filled by either full or part-time officers, we will just drop down to one officer working alone the road, this can be either part-time or full-time guy. We normally try to run two guys per shift however we are down full-time position. I have been working there for some time now and I can count on one hand the times a full-time officer was ordered to stay. So, the idea of part-time jobs going away is highly unlikely at least in my department with all the vacation, personal, comp-time, sick time the full-time officers get per our union contract. All those open shifts would have to be filled by overtime, and most of the time that would be involuntary with officer who still have Quinn or a educational incentive.

And that's not mention open shifts due to full time vacancies, in-service training or if the detective, who also works patrol is working on an investigation they will call a third guy to cover.

That's a fuck load of a funding increase for just a 9 man full time police department in a town of about 3500 residents.
You have to remember when laws are written generally they are not very well thought out . This may ended being a mandate which is unfunded by the state .
 
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