Corrections officers train at Grissom Aeroplex

Posted: Sunday, August 23, 2009 12:00 am

Peter Adelsen Staff Writer padelsen@kokomoperspective.com | 0 comments

Dozens of corrections officers made there way to the Grissom Aeroplex this week to attend the North Central Indiana Law Enforcement Training Council's jail school training course. This year marked the first time that the Howard County Sheriff's Department sent its civilian support staff to the training. The training services the 14 counties in north central Indiana, about a third of the state.

Throughout the week, instructors from the Indiana State Police, Howard County Sheriff's Department and the Kokomo Police Department taught the new corrections officers and civilian support staff, said chief instructor Bill Ebert, Howard County Sheriff's Department. Some of the topics of training were ethics, inmate classification, legal issues, booking and admissions, stress control, medical considerations, jail security, drug recognition and report writing. Indiana state law states that all jail officers must attend a 40-hour jail training course in their 40 hours of employment. The training at the Grissom Aeroplex is a satellite campus to the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy.

"When you get into corrections, we are the place where there is the highest liability," Ebert said. "The most money is usually spent in corrections, but the law dictates that we only have to have 40 hours in an entire career of training. I would definitely love to see that increased. Everybody has a training program, unfortunately some of them are just job shadowing, basically."

Ebert said the Howard County jail population is among the largest in north central Indiana and because of this, the jail ends up with a lot more personnel than most jails. This was the first class offered to the jail's civilian support staff that includes its food service, clerical staff and medical staff. Indiana law currently does not require support staff to attend a jail course.

"These people work in a secured environment and we thought this would be best and we think it could reap big benefits," said Captain Harold Vincent of the Howard County Sheriff's Department. "This is a pilot class for them."

A large part of the training goes into what could happen at a jail.

"We go though jail officer safety, jail security, possible escapes, mental health, medical considerations," Ebert said. "The largest place where jails spend their money is in medical cost for inmates."

Ebert is optimistic about what this class offers to corrections officers, but he says it could always be improved.

"If they did not have this then we would still be back in to the stone ages," he said. "And this is nowhere near adequate. This is just the beginning of adequate. If these jail officers didn't have this all they would ever see would be the person that they are shadowing or their specific department policies and procedures that are constantly being revamped. This gives them an idea about what everybody is doing in the state so they can go back and make changes in their own departments. This program is very vital to them, but it is not enough."

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