The budget impasse in Springfield is causing a key police training organization to shut down some of its classes in the Chicago region and causing Lake County police agencies to put off training for now or spend extra, even though the funding is sitting in an account downstate.
The North East Multi-Regional Training (NEMRT) has already canceled classes, and a spokesman said they would need to close temporarily if the state doesn’t pay its fair share. About 44 percent of the training facility’s budget comes from the state. Municipalities cover the rest by paying tuition for their officers, as well as receiving their regular salary while they attend the training programs.
“We don’t know how we can continue past November,” said Phillip Brankin, NEMRT’s executive director.
“It wouldn’t be a total, final closing, but a temporary one. I can’t even explain how bad it is,” he said.
The training organization will have to close if it doesn’t receive its third-quarter payment from the state, which doesn’t look likely, Brankin said, because he is still waiting on July’s first-quarter payment and October’s second-quarter payment.
NEMRT is one of 14 state-funded mobile units across the state, which together provided training to more than 57,000 officers in 2014. The Northern Illinois unit provides about 750 classes each year for 20,000 officers from police agencies in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Will, Lake and McHenry counties, Brankin said.
The estimated $16 million allocated annually by the state for training comes from fines paid on traffic tickets and other convictions. But the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board can’t access the funds until Gov. Bruce Rauner signs off on a budget. Plus, Illinois lawmakers recently approved a bill mandating additional law enforcement training — part of a response to fatal police encounters in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri, New York City and Baltimore.
In Round Lake Beach the closings of classes will have an effect because they have officers training nearly every month and they also serve as a host site for many classes, said Deputy Chief Michael Scott. They have been a member of NEMRT for 10 years.
“It’s incredibly important to us keep the officers trained, we have officers going to training every month of the year,” he said, adding that departments pay a per-officer fee for membership and many classes are free. Classes requiring more expertise can have an additional fee.
“They are a staple in our training program, that’s going to hurt,” he said. And while lawmakers have required new minimum training requirements, Scott said, “We’ve never had a problem meeting minimums.”
In Waukegan, officers set to take evidence technician training may have to wait. Cmdr. Joe Florip said the training organization is very important to their department.
“Although the budget issue has slowed some of the training, it (has) not affected our police operations or how we provide police services to the community,” he said.
For the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, the problems at NEMRT have cost them more money so they could stay on their schedule, but Undersheriff Raymond Rose said if the training slowdown continues, it can have more serious implications on things like liability if the department is sued.
He said the first thing attorneys ask for when suing a police officer is what kind of training do they have.
“It really causes us a lot of different problems on a lot of levels,” he said, “It becomes a real problem for us.”
The sheriff’s office had plans to train 11 deputies as mental illness first-responders so they can cover any part of the county 24 hours a day. He and Sheriff Mark Curran have indicated they run the largest mental health facility, the jail, in the county. They decided not to cancel the training, but instead they paid full price even though they have a membership.
“They can respond quickly with the first responders and an offender may be put in treatment where they need to be,” Rose said, instead of entering the jail system.
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“We ended up paying the full fee for that training, but we were not going to let them derail it,” said Rose, adding training for the use of body cameras is another issue that is coming up and he doesn’t like the way the legislature passes a mandate on training and then undercuts the effort.
“So now they mandate us to have training, but the legislators are not funding the mandated training,” he said, “They aren’t thinking this through.”
NEMRT’s Brankin said he predicts the closure will be temporary, lasting only until the budget stalemate ends. About 100 classes were canceled for September and October due to lack of funding. These classes, some of which specialize in dealing with the mentally ill, proper use of force and sex crime investigations, are crucial for in-service police officers during a time of heightened tension between police and the communities they serve, Brankin said.
“If we can’t get this resolved, if this budget impasse continues, it will be detrimental,” Brankin said. “It’s crucial that these officers get training. This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s a citizen issue.”
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The Beacon-News’ Erika Wurst and freelancer Janelle Walker contributed.