They know it's going to hurt, but south Georgia police and city officials are asking how much.

Advertisement

State subsidies for police officer training are on the chopping block as Georgia lawmakers struggle to reduce a multimillion-dollar revenue shortfall without raising taxes.

The elimination of training funds is among a series of budget cuts targeting city, county and state law enforcement agencies proposed by the House Appropriations Public Safety Subcommittee chaired by state Rep. Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta.

"It's disturbing because it's a lose-lose situation," Waycross City Manager Pete Pyrzenski said Thursday. "We don't have money right now in our budget to make up for the loss of this state funding."

With the state subsidy, it costs about $4,000 to $5,000 to send one new recruit through basic training at Georgia's police academy, area police chiefs said.

That expense will jump to $8,150 per officer without the state funding, said Frank Rotondo, executive director of the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police.

In addition, it can cost $500 to $1,500 per officer for advanced training, police officials said.

The subcommittee also is proposing to eliminate all state training and program money for police chiefs and county sheriffs, Rotondo said.

"It's going to be catastrophic for small police departments," said Lt. Todd Tetterton, spokesman for the Kingsland Police Department.

The extent of the funding cuts won't be known until Thursday, which is crossover day in the General Assembly when every measure must pass either the House or the Senate to continue toward final approval.

Rotondo said any cuts conflict with the intent of Georgia voters when they approved a constitutional amendment 32 years ago mandating state funding for police training.

The 1978 amendment states an additional 10 percent will be added onto court fines statewide to fund training for law enforcement officers and prosecutors.

The revenue collected "may be used" for that training, but the amendment does not say "it shall be" used for that purpose.

"The voters wanted that 10 percent to go to law enforcement but that has not been the philosophy of the General Assembly," Rotondo said.

Under that rule about $25.6 million was collected, primarily through arrests made by law enforcement officers, during the past fiscal year. The General Assembly, however, allocated only $12.6 million of that money for law enforcement training, Rotondo said.

The lawmakers diverted the remaining $13 million to other items and projects, he said.

"It's evident that the will and expectations of the voters is not being upheld by members of the General Assembly with respect to the money being collected in the court systems that should be going to train law enforcement officers." Rotondo said.

Police already have been shortchanged on training money, said Glynn County Police Chief Matt Doering, who expects a bad situation to get worse.

"It's been a dramatic impact already," Doering said. "It's hard to get officers into training because there are few classes being offered and more money has to come out of our budget to pay for training."

Doering and other police chiefs are using a combination of strategies to reduce training costs.

His department typically sends five officers a year to the state police academy for training. Doering's had a longtime practice of hiring experienced officers who already completed that state certification training.

All officers, he said, also must complete four days of in-service training each month.

"The state allows us to train in-house for some courses, and we're doing more of it in-house," Doering said.

Those courses range from firearms training to pursuit driving and legal updates on procedures like searches and seizures, he said.

"It's saving us money, and it's providing good quality training to our officers," Doering said.

Brunswick police also generally hire four or five new officers annually. Most are patrol officers, said Officer Alex Robinson, the department's recruiter and spokesman.

"We try to stick with applicants who have already completed the basic training and are state-certified," Robinson said. "Right now my certified applicant list has about 20 to 25 people on it."

Pyrzenski said the process in Waycross now is an emphasis on applicants going through the police academy at their own expense, or those who already have state certification.

Kingsland police are training closer to home, Inspector Richard Sapp said.

"We've always done some training locally, but in the past 14 months we've probably done 90 percent of our training here," Sapp said.

Police departments typically will share training whenever possible to keep expenses down, officials said.

Doering said he doesn't have the money in his budget to replace any state training funds cut. It's unfair to ask county taxpayers to pay for training when the state already has collected money for that purpose, Doering said.

Reach teresa.stepzinski@jacksonville.com, (912) 264-0405