An Indiana House bill that would restrict the duties of reserve police officers and limit their authority is sparking concern among local officers and police chiefs.
House Bill 1186, authored by Rep. Steve Bartels, R-Eckerty, would restrict the law enforcement duties of reserve police officers and limit their ability to work off duty. It also would, as of now, restrict reserve police officers from exercising jurisdiction outside of the agency they are affiliated with, meaning that reserve officers that respond to assist in other areas would face limits on their authority.
The bill passed out of the House in an 88-8 vote Feb. 13. Reps. Rob Greene, R-Shelbyville, Craig Haggard, R-Mooresville, and Peggy Mayfield, R-Martinsville, voted in favor; Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, voted against. It’s now before the Senate Corrections and Criminal Law Committee, where it awaits a hearing.
Many communities utilize reserve officers as a way to support their departments’ manpower without having to find a way to fully fund them, as the reserves are volunteer. Smaller departments in particular, such as Edinburgh and Prince’s Lakes, rely on them to fill in coverage gaps. The reserves help fill spots when full- or part-time officers are sick or have vacations, for example.
“I feel like you’re cutting the reserves that really want to be police officers [with the bill]. You’re cutting their ability to do their job,” said Greg Southers, chief of the Prince’s Lakes Police Department.
What the bill does
Under HB 1186, the reserves, who often are trained to state standards or have state accreditation, would be restricted to patrolling only within their town boundaries. They would not be allowed to enforce the law or back up officers in neighboring municipalities unless they underwent Tier I or Tier II basic training requirements as required by law enforcement training board.
These officers would, however, be allowed to operate outside their jurisdiction only if their employing agency has an agreement in place with other area agencies.
Per Indiana law, candidates have to complete a prebasic training course to be a reserve officer. The Tier I and Tier II trainings go beyond this.
The Indiana Law Enforcement Academy offers three tiers of basic training: I, II and III.
Tier I training is the typical training most officers in the state receive. Consisting of over 600 hours, the training covers criminal and traffic law, firearms, emergency vehicle operations, physical tactics, EMS awareness and human behavior and more.
Tier II training is designed for special enforcement agencies that make occasional arrests. These agencies include Gaming Agents, Hospital Police and town marshal programs with three or fewer paid officers. It is about half the time of the Tier I training, according to the ILEA.
Tier III training is for certain agencies geared toward investigative duties, like Medicaid fraud or Secretary of State investigators. The minimum certification required to become a full-time law enforcement officer in Indiana, the training is about three weeks long, with part of the program incorporating the Indiana Law Enforcement Training Board’s prebasic course.
The prebasic course is about 40 hours, can be done without going to the ILEA and is what’s required for a reserve officer to take part in law enforcement activities. While there is no requirement that a reserve officer attend Tier I or II training at the academy, departments can require the officers to undergo additional training if desired, according to the ILEA.
The bill would also put limits on the off-duty employment of reserve officers who often take side jobs as secondary or primary sources of income so they can volunteer shifts at their home department.
‘Truly affect the job’
For Prince’s Lakes, Southers said the bill would “truly affect the job” his reserves can do. The department is located in the rural southern part of the county, often assisting the Johnson County and Brown County sheriff’s offices, and the Edinburgh and Trafalgar Police departments.
For Edinburgh, Police reserves saved the town over $30,000 in wages and covered over 800 hours of police time doing the same job as full-time officers. The agency has been relying on reserves so long that 12 of the 14 full-time officers were initially reserves before being hired on full-time, said Doyne Little, police chief.
Prince Lakes has three full-time officers, two paid part-time officers and six reserves. Edinburgh Police has 14 full-time officers, and four reserves.
Both departments are concerned over the potential limits to reserve officers’ authority. Both departments routinely patrol outside of their town limits as part of their duties, including patrols by reserves — which are now in question.
The town of Prince’s Lakes has a lot of water and sewer facilities across the southern part of the county, as the town utility supplies water and sewer to the areas of Nineveh, Trafalgar, Edinburgh, Camp Atterbury and northern Brown County. Because this is a town-owned utility, the police department patrols facilities in these areas too, Southers said.
Lisa Vest, a 17-year reserve officer with the department, said changes lead to questions about whether she could respond to a non-emergency call while patrolling the town’s water facilities outside the town limits. In Edinburgh, Little has similar concerns.
“If there’s a crime that occurs outside of the town limits of Edinburgh that’s a non-emergency crime, they can’t respond unless they’re asked by another agency to come help them,” Little said.
For example, a reserve officer wouldn’t be able to respond to a property damage crash with no injuries just outside town limits. However, they would be able to respond to a life-threatening emergency or crash, he said.
“You’re kind of trying to split what you can or can’t do on the run, which is going to be very dangerous,” Little said.
Edinburgh Police is also in a unique position in that the town is in three counties — Johnson, Bartholomew and Shelby. The town also has a joint enforcement district with Columbus and Bartholomew County officials for the industrial area to the south of the town at Indiana Premium Outlets.
This area isn’t technically within Edinburgh limits, but the town provides utilities to this area. With the joint district, the town patrols it with Bartholomew County law enforcement, he said.
“If a reserve officer is on duty and there’s something at the mall, I have a lot of questions about if they can even respond at all if it’s not part of our town limits,” Little said.
Other issues
As it stands now, reserve officers who go off-duty wouldn’t be allowed to carry their badge, gun or anything that says police. Little gave an example of how an off-duty reserve officer could witness a shooting at an Indianapolis mall, but they couldn’t respond as a police officer because they don’t have police powers.
Staffing more full-time officers would present financial difficulties for smaller departments, the chiefs said.
For Prince’s Lakes to staff additional full-time officers, the town would have to have monies for salaries and benefits, including insurance and pension contributions. These are things that are not feasible, Vest said.
It also would not be feasible for many reserve officers to get weeks off of their full-time jobs to go to training, Vest said.
“We cannot go weeks away from our full-time jobs to get a Tier,” Vest said. “There is just no pathway for us to be provided a Tier Academy.”
The state requires that the reserves go through mandated yearly training, as well as practical training. Prince’s Lakes Police does more than 24 hours of training through multiple methods with ILEA-certified training courses, and training is a priority for her police chief, she said.
“We all train with the full-time officers, we even have training with other area small departments to help cover costs of training because we all work together when needed,” Vest said.
Little says Edinburgh’s reserves undergo “a lot more” training than other agencies because of the department’s own standards. Along with the prebasic training, they have to do a 40-hour firearms defensive tactics class, evening trainings hosted by Little, field trainings and more. The department holds its own academy for this, he said.
“We chose to do that because I want my officers very trained when they go out there, whether reserve or full time, you don’t know the difference,” Little said.
By the time they are done, the reserves have almost 400 hours of training, he said.
Southers believes the bill dates back to the issue of some departments having reserve officers that do off-duty work in Indianapolis, working event security, for example. He said there were some smaller agencies that might have been abusing the reserve system by having dozens of reserve officers who could work off-duty at events with police powers.
“It all started up in there with that, and now it has trickled down to ‘We’re going to go after the reserves and make it harder for them to do their job,’” he said.
Southers doesn’t allow his officers to work part-time in Marion County, he said.
“I have a good group of men and ladies that help protect our community,” Southers said. “And I just, I feel like certain people feel like they need to cut the wings of reserve officers because of certain groups that have abused what they have when the rest of us are following the rules. We play by the rules — we train. We do everything that the state training board asks us to do, and I just feel like it’s a kick in the knee.”
What’s next
Little has also planned to reach out to local representatives to see what changes could be made, and was working with Vest on the issue, he said. She met with three state lawmakers about the issue Thursday, and said there is “still a lot of work to do” to bring attention to the language concerning reserve officers.
Southers is fine if lawmakers want to stop reserve officers from working part-time, but they shouldn’t take away their police powers, he said.
“Don’t take the ability to do what they do everyday, when they come out here and they’re not getting paid, and they love doing what they do, because of a few bad eggs,” Southers said.
Little said there is room for reform on reserve officer training. For example, lawmakers could make training more uniform across the state.
However, the highest priority should be focusing on changing laws to ensure criminals are kept in jail and not on the street reoffending instead, Little said.
“That’s something that I think they need to concentrate on,” he said. “Let us do our job as police officers, whether you’re reserve or full-time.”