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P R O C E E D I N G S
Dr. Pam Collins CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: Good. We'll now turn to our last substantive section, and this will be presented by Dr. Pam Collins and Dr. Kathryn Scarborough of Eastern Kentucky University. The subject is internet CD-ROM training for law enforcement officers. You have their resumes before you. Dr. Scarborough is an associate professor in the College of Law Enforcement, Department of Police Studies, at Eastern Kentucky University. She is a former police officer and a Navy Veteran. Dr. Collins is in the Loss Prevention and Safety Department at Eastern Kentucky University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Loss Prevention Administration and a Master of Science in Criminal Justice, and a Doctorate in Education from the University of Kentucky. She's been an industrial securities specialist and has a lengthy resume that I'm going to read. They both do. So welcome. And a five-minute break in order to do the technology, but no one is allowed to leave. [Recess.] DR. COLLINS: I'm going to let Kay have the microphone, since I can, I think, maybe carry my voice a little bit further than her. Let me begin by saying thank you to the Chief Justice and the DNA Commission members for inviting us and giving us the opportunity to share with you some of the things that we're doing, and, also, to Chris, he's not here, but I will say that he very politely pointed out to Kay and I that we, in essence, are the only thing that stands between the Commission today and adjournment. So having said that, we'll certainly keep that in mind.
We wanted to just give you a brief overview of a recent proposal that we submitted to NIJ with regard to training and technology and what our intentions are and what we intend to do with that. The goal of the project, the project that we developed, was simply to look at the development, delivery and evaluation of interactive of alternative technologies to training. And let me just kind of tell you a little bit about who we are and what we do and why did we come to this point. Kay and I are affiliated with the College of Law Enforcement at Eastern Kentucky University and we also have partnerships with the Regional Community Policing Institute, which is also housed within our university, Kay is the co-director of that, and, also, the third component or the third partner or partnership that's very important is the Department of Criminal Justice Training, and that is the Justice training cabinet that does the training for police agencies throughout the State of Kentucky. So there is a natural relationship that we have on a day-to-day basis with teaching service, research and training of law enforcement. So the whole objective of this particular proposal was to look at alternative technologies, because the focus of what we do, specifically the RCPI, and Kay will talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes, is small town and rural law enforcement agencies that are sometimes often remotely located and have difficulty being able to get the training. And some of the things with that -- and I'm going to turn it over to her in just a minute to talk about why there is a problem or what we saw as a problem over the years of things that we've done with regard to getting technology to these small and rural police departments. So having said that, Kay? DR. SCARBOROUGH: We've heard issues the last couple of days with respect to police training and a few things that we know that are very pertinent to this discussion are that 90 percent of the police departments in the United States serve smaller communities and consist of ten or less police officers. Historically, what we've done with respect to research and training in law enforcement and even looking at the criminal justice system at large has focused on the larger organizations, the metropolitan communities. Furthermore, we've taken what we've found and done in those organizations and communities and tried to generalize it to the entire law enforcement population and we found that that's not appropriate. There are unique circumstances in small communities that may not be present in urban communities. So the reason that we have focused on this area, besides the facts that Pam has already pointed out, is because the smaller organizations have been left out and you could look at here, urban police departments have spent $144, whereas smaller agencies have spent roughly $95 to train law enforcement officers. Consequently, barriers, specifically for the small organizations, have been identified. Some of these still may occur in the urban agencies as well, but we know that these particular barriers, like the distance to the training facilities, the budgetary restraints, the relative content that are specific to the smaller organizations, and the fact that historically in law enforcement we've done the platform-based instruction, some agencies or training entities are moving to more interactive adult-based training now, but most of them still do the 40-hour block, specifically with respect to in-service training, things like that. We have a pre-test and a post-test, and that's it, and this has been very limited for the small organizations, as well. So our goal has been to try to develop training that would be more useful to the smaller organizations and more accessible, for example, having mobile training that can actually be delivered to the departments when you're dealing with a small three-officer department, say, you can't afford to send them somewhere for a week, because that means your whole operation will be staffed with two officers, and when you have three shifts, that makes it very difficult. However, although our focus is with the small and rural departments, what we have been developing and will continue to develop will also be useful to urban agencies, as well, especially with the model that we're going to talk to you about specifically with respect to DNA. DR. COLLINS: What I want to do is just briefly go over what are you going to do in this project, but let me just point out very quickly, you'll notice this line here. This is our feeble attempt at DNA strands. So I changed it, I had a whole different PowerPoint picked out, and I said, wait a minute, there's a tie in there that I think I could use for this. Kay and I have been working on the development of this probably about six months ago looking at some of these issues and some of the things that we continually came up with and in writing the project, we came up with three things that we wanted to be able to do with this research in the development phase. And part of the way we wanted to move with the delivery of it was what kind of technology -- and I heard some of you talk about technology here, but what kind of technology is out there that we could take this training to the police officers in these small communities. So one of the things that we came across was computer-based training modules and we have a working example that we'd be more than happy to show any of you who would be interested after we finish. We won't do it now, but just to show you what some of that might look like in terms of -- and it's just on a CD technology. And what we do in proposing this project is curriculum development around a particular subject matter, and we'll talk a little bit more about how we do that, and then just digitizing that concept into a computer disk that we would send out. The delivery of this, we've got a three-pronged component to it, but the delivery of it is what I would call hybrid deployment system, and that means that we're going to use obviously a control group, where we have our training group, but in addition to that, we're going to use an off-site, distance learning site, and one of the things that we have with the Regional Community Policing Institute is a relationship with the Hazard Police Department, not to be confused with the Dukes of Hazard or anything like that, but I will say this, and Kay didn't know I was going to say this. Kay has officially become a duchess of Hazard as part of this. So she has the key to the city. So it's a really good relationship between the two. But we have identified a community that we're going to work with and what we'll do is using a regional development center that we have in Kentucky, we'll use that as our server site, if you will. So the hybrid gets into play where you have a CD, but within the CD are embedded hyperlinks to web sites. For example, under the DNA component, we could put the DNA Commission's web site, for example, that they could go to, if they wanted to, within this training. And then the evaluation will be three-pronged. We'll have the control group, as I mentioned, in which we'll have a standard platform-based instruction, augmented by video using a community policing model of instruction, and then we'll have a rural distance group, which is Hazard, that I mentioned to you, and then we're going to use the individual user. We want to take a look at, okay, what if we were to just mail these out, something you talked about yesterday, you're talking about the AOL and all those CDs you get. So what would it be like if we could just mail these out from the Department of Criminal Justice training along with accompanying educational materials to support that and what would happen for that officer in that location. So we're going to do pre-test and post-test and evaluate those kinds of components when we look at the project. And then the fourth thing that we're going to do, I don't have up here, but the fourth thing that we're going to do is then have a six-month pre-assessment, where we come back in and we look at -- we survey some of the supervisory comments about with regards to training or application. We talk with the officer and try to get to attitudinal issues, as well as competency issues, on that subject. So the development, Kay is going to talk about this, we have basically three levels of the development process. DR. SCARBOROUGH: Not to exclude the urban departments, we wanted to ensure that we had different levels of training that could be identified; in other words, what could be appropriate for an individual user could be self-identified. We would have pre-tests for each individual so that they would know where they should be trained and consequently tested. We have other subjects that we are addressing in this project, but the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels would enable it to make it more broad-based so that our focus would not only be on the small and rural for purposes of this particular CBT, but would be useful to everybody. Some discussion has occurred with respect to who actually will be collecting this evidence and some feel that the first responders won't necessarily do that, but it's absolutely imperative to ensure that they know how to protect the crime scene and at least know what kinds of evidence will be useful with respect to the DNA. If you look back at the number of small organizations that we have, that first responder will be that evidence technician and everything else. That person is a generalist. So he or she will have to know the whole range, not only to be able to answer those questions for the victim, like you discussed earlier, but to know how to protect the crime scene, how to collect the evidence, how to transport the evidence, et cetera. So when you put it in those terms and realize that those numbers are very significant with respect to numbers of agencies, to have the three levels would be extremely useful, especially for the DNA. DR. COLLINS: And, again, I've already mentioned some of these. These are the partnerships that we have already established. We also would like to mention that within the State of Kentucky, through the collaborative efforts of these different agencies, we've developed what we call TAC-STAR, but it's the Technical Assistance Center for small town and rural law enforcement, and, again, trying to get at those issues of the rural and small police departments and what kinds of things do they need, how is that different from a larger urban area. So I just wanted to reemphasize the partnership, again, that we have. Now, let's talk about this. What I've put up here is just to give you an idea. We have a chart that we went through that showed implementation and tracking and time line, but this is kind of an example of how we broke down different partners. Now, I've added the DNA component here. One of the things that I wanted to say to the group was that we come here more with, I think, a lot more questions than we do with obviously findings of any sort, because we're looking to this agency to guide us or direct us in the kinds of people we should be working with, and we have some suggestions as we get through that. But this is just to show you the model that we reviewed. Curriculum development, we, at the university, would take the lead on that and then we turn to what's called a subject matter expert, a SME. So that's where we are going to rely upon this community or this group to point us to those kinds of folks to provide the curriculum development, to work with us closely on that. Then the computer development, we're going to be using a subcontractor, a private vendor to help us with the computer-based training module, the actual technology that goes into that, and that just kind of shows you how we broke down the different subjects of this particular project. Then a SME, as I said is -- and I mentioned before, we have four subjects, DNA is one of those, but we also are doing officer ethics, and school safety, and survival Spanish. We're going to be simultaneously developing those CBTs under each of the different categories. And this is just kind of an outline of what we want to do. I don't know that it really has any relationship to this group necessarily, just some of our own planning into how we would go about developing the different modules. Then Kay is going to talk a little bit more about project planning and development model. DR. SCARBOROUGH: In our efforts with respect to training and technology in law enforcement, we've come up with a very simplistic model and we think it has relevance to your discussion with respect to the recommendations that you're going to make to the Attorney General. This just puts it in very simple terms as to how we approach the big picture with respect to getting the kind of information that we need to, to law enforcement. You all are already at the information dissemination stage with your brochure and I think some of the comments that were made by the Chief are extremely important and we found the same to be true. At this stage, we're not in a position to prescribe the kind of training that you need, but we certainly want to make the information available. The information dissemination stage actually has two components to it. One is to provide the general information on the DNA like you do in the brochure. But the second component is getting the support from those critical decision-makers who have an impact on designing the training and approving the training, like you mentioned with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and I have a couple of other organizations that I think would be certainly supportive or be key in your efforts with respect to opening law enforcement's eyes as far as the training is concerned. The training would be the computer-based training that we're proposing to do for you or other kinds of training that may be appropriate. The curriculum that will be developed then will also be platform-based instruction, would also be available, too, for those individuals or agencies who could not use the CDs for the training. We've found that the technical assistance phase is always the most vague for us because we develop that based on primarily what we learn in the training. What more do these agencies need, what more do these officers need? A couple of examples that I might give you would be the development of a 1-800 number for the technical assistance, where agencies could call in with questions about DNA evidence collection or perhaps site visits by teams of officers and other experts to organizations that would be able to give them some advice, to include, of course, lab personnel and various individuals that would have input into the whole notion of what is appropriate as far as the DNA evidence collection is concerned, because as we've seen in here, everyone has a very specific focus and if we don't communicate amongst ourselves to tell each other what our needs are, then we can't get the best product that we need. So the technical assistance phase that we have been using in other projects has been very beneficial to us in this regard. So when you are discussing the recommendations that you would make perhaps to the Attorney General, along those lines, this model we thought might be useful to you in that regard, although you all have to do this by August the 1st and certainly wouldn't -- I don't think you'd be able to complete all of that between now and then. Still having foresight with respect to future work might be beneficial to you. DR. COLLINS: Let's see what else we've got. Let's see. This kind of again shows how that DNA CBT module might be developed, working with crime scene investigation. These are the things I guess that kind of brings us to the discussion point, if we could. Is this the last one here? DR. SCARBOROUGH: I think the next one. DR. COLLINS: Why don't we just jump to that, because of the time. But this is really what we'd like, to have discussion and maybe have you -- I'm sure you maybe have some thoughts on what we've said, but -- or any questions that you might have. But here is where we think we're at, here is where we're at right now. What's the time line? You obviously have a particular time line that you've got to follow. We certainly do, as well. What's the impact of the minimum standards on the substantive content for the CBTs? We haven't talked a lot about it here, I don't think, but we can address that, if you want to, law enforcement approval training, both informal and formula. We have a system in Kentucky where we'll have to go before the Kentucky Law Enforcement Commission to get approval of curriculum before it can ever be taught in the Academy. Then what is the next step? Where do we need to be? DR. SCARBOROUGH: And if I could add a little bit to some of this. The minimum standards, the part of the discussion you had earlier this morning, but in a logical thought process, to think about how those are going to develop and what kind of impact that might have on what you want to present as training initially might be useful. With respect to the law enforcement approval of training, this is more long-term, but it's an issue that's very pertinent to us. Because most of our training has been traditionally platform-based, it's very easy for us to account for the hours, 40 hours equals 40 hours. When you're dealing with computer-based training it's more difficult and not many training entities have dealt with that yet. This is something that we are prepared to deal with with respect to the State of Kentucky, because of this project right now, but that's going to be an issue that's going to come up for us in the future. And the informal approval of training speaks to that second part of the information dissemination with respect to getting that critical support of those decision-makers in law enforcement that have a definite impact on what training looks like and what training is approved and issues such as that. DR. COLLINS: So I guess at this point, Chris, this concludes what we wanted to share with you about the project and really just open it up to any kind of discussion or questions you might have. CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: To what extent are computers available to small police departments? DR. COLLINS: Well, this continues to be an issue. In this particular case, we have taken the position that assuming that they may have one computer for the whole department, so part of what we'll be doing is with the deployment method is taking laptops out to the community. But one of the things, and Kay can respond to it, as well, but one of the things, in talking to some of the representatives from the National Institute of Justice, there is a -- I guess an interest on their part, because this is an issue that comes up a lot and the response is, well, at some point -- what was the analogy we gave yesterday, climbing Mt. Everest. At some point, you have to say this is where we want you to be, and so we're going to have to start moving toward that. Now, in our particular project, I guess we have built in the fact that we don't think they will have the computers they need. Now, in Kentucky, we have regional development centers that have those kinds of things. We also have community colleges that have those kinds of things. So we're -- CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: What about videoconferencing? DR. COLLINS: Again, we would rely on our -- in Somerset, Kentucky, it may not have relevance to you, but we have a regional development center and in that center there is a teleconferencing capability. So, again, police departments would have to go either to their courthouses or to their community colleges for that kind of technology. COMMISSIONER DAVIS: When it comes to computers, there's two kinds. There is the computer that belongs to the department, which is already programmed for certain departmental uses and so forth. But then there is the individual home personal computer. Now, I don't know how frequently those -- or how those are spread around Kentucky, but if Kentucky has got teenage kids, there must be one heck of a lot of those out there. I would suggest that you take a look at what the families are of these police officers in these rural areas. DR. SCARBOROUGH: That is part of the individual user or part of the component, because some of these might be individual users through the agency or they may be individual users at home, that may or may not have internet access. Certainly, some folks may have the computers at home, but may not have internet. COMMISSIONER DAVIS: If they've got teenagers, they've got everything. DR. SCARBOROUGH: One thing that I'd like to point out with respect to what we know about computers and small agencies or even large agencies, not a lot, especially with respect to the small agencies, though, in another project that we're involved in, we're going to be doing a national needs assessment of small agencies to find out what their capabilities and needs are to hopefully better define the methods for training. DIRECTOR ASPLEN: Dr. Forman pointed out that in terms of teleconferencing and such, that the technology, in the recent exhibit, there were a number of them, about 200 or something, that were less than $1,000, the point being that technology is moving very rapidly, which will make it much more accessible in the future. The other thing, to clarify, for you folks and anybody else out there who may misunderstand, in terms of the Commission recommendations, the only recommendations due to the Attorney General by the Commission by August 1st are regarding the issue of taking DNA samples from individuals arrested. So all the other issues that we have are a bit more -- DR. SCARBOROUGH: So you may be able to get through all that. DIRECTOR ASPLEN: But I think it's also important to emphasize your time line, your April time line, everybody always wants everything yesterday. There is a particular urgency in this regard, though, because the key to success of this is going to be the Attorney General's ultimate promotion of it and, as such, we need to assure that that occurs before change of Administration, quite frankly. So it would be of particular urgent nature that the time line that is set is actually met. DR. COLLINS: I guess in this case, we have not solidified the order in which we're going to do these, but certainly we would entertain -- DR. SCARBOROUGH: A changing order. DR. COLLINS: Yes. We don't have -- we're not working directly with any other groups, and we would be open to that. COMMISSIONER GAHN: I came in a little late and I don't know if you -- is this going to be an interactive type? DR. COLLINS: Yes. Adult interactive multimedia. It's a computer disk that they would use. COMMISSIONER GAHN: The only other -- DR. SCARBOROUGH: It has the potential to be, but it doesn't have to be interactive, if it won't support it. CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: I'm sort of sorry that the Chief of Police and the Sheriff -- but both just could not stay and be here for today's session. But I would hope that we would communicate with them and maybe you already have about this, but -- and is anyone else here from the crime investigation work group? DIRECTOR ASPLEN: Jan is on that group. COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: I'm on that group. I noticed that you didn't talk about it, but you've listed that you'd be working with the group, because I think that's important. We've already collected a lot of information and we can point you to -- in terms of the content of curriculum and so forth. DR. SCARBOROUGH: And that's exactly the kind of assistance that we need. DIRECTOR ASPLEN: As soon as we can, we will schedule a working group meeting and schedule a lot of time for you folks to go through and kind of outline the issues that we think need to be addressed. COMMISSIONER GAHN: But I suspect your goal is that this would be something that would be used at every police training academy for the new officers coming on and part of -- made part of the curriculum of the academy. DR. SCARBOROUGH: I would say to you that the reason that we have the three levels would make it -- because there is a difference between the basic academy training and the in-service training. This project was designed with in-service training in mind, but because we have the basic, intermediate and advanced levels, it would be useable at every phase of training for the officers. DR. COLLINS: And in order for us to do this project, we will have to get sign-off by the Kentucky Law Enforcement Commission to be able to integrate that into their training. DR. SCARBOROUGH: Which is our training approval body for the state. And most post Commissions or training entities have similar approval processes and agree relatively well. COMMISSIONER DAVIS: Let me ask a question about the politics of these training commissions. Is there any feeling out there that the people who make the decisions as to what's acceptable for training and what's not acceptable for training, that they may be, say, devoted to centralized or already established training centers and that the concept of sending out a disk, like AOL mails out to everybody in the country, is an anathema to them. Is that a consideration? DR. SCARBOROUGH: I think that's something that we have to deal with just by virtue of the fact that we're trying to use technology and the training varies so much from state to state. For example, we have a Department of Criminal Justice training that trains all of the officers, with the exception of the Louisville, Lexington and the Kentucky State Police. I was trained at a regional academy in the State of Virginia. So there is so much variation that we're not really sure what we're dealing with, but garnering the support of International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs Association, the Association of Law Enforcement Trainers, and another one, in my mind, that would be critical to you all would be the National Center for Women in Policing. They have a two-fold mission, and that is increasing the number of women and supporting them in law enforcement, but their second initiative is with domestic violence and sexual assault. So to include them in on this, because they work very much with the Violence Against Women's office. So getting their support would be certainly beneficial, as well. And the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers and the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives would certainly be in positions to give you input and give you ideas about how best to disseminate this information, as well. CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: So what is our next step? Are you going to work with the crime investigation work group? DIRECTOR ASPLEN: I think the next step is to set up a meeting, working group meeting, where we kind of help you get an idea of the kinds of things that we think should be addressed. DR. SCARBOROUGH: The parameters and issues that we talked about with respect to the guidelines for competency that you all were discussing and how it would seem very logical that that relates to whatever training that will be developed. CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: An interesting project. DIRECTOR ASPLEN: It's exciting. It's an exciting opportunity. CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: In Wisconsin, the technical colleges do police training, too, so you've got the academies and the technical college. I don't know if that's prevalent across the state. DR. SCARBOROUGH: In Ohio and Indiana and South Carolina, I believe, but with the variety as far as the states are concerned, to try to get any kind of standardization, and I think you all discussed that very readily this morning, is real difficult because of the differences in the states and the agencies and communities. CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: But these national groups could be helpful. DR. SCARBOROUGH: Absolutely, because the representation is from all of the states and generally these folks are the decision-makers, chief executive officers that have the last say. CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: On behalf of the Commission, we want to thank you both for a very interesting presentation. DR. SCARBOROUGH: Thank you. DIRECTOR ASPLEN: Thank you very much. [Applause.] DIRECTOR ASPLEN: If I could perhaps get a copy of your slide presentation. DR. COLLINS: Yes. We're going to do that and, also, as I mentioned before, we'd be more than happy -- we have the demo of -- it's a global positioning system. It's about patrol operations and it's really unrelated to DNA, but it does show the concept of computerized training. So if anybody would like to see that, I'd be happy to pull that up after. CHAIRPERSON ABRAHAMSON: They're kind enough to duplicate their disk and Woody Clarke will duplicate his disk and both of these will be given to our reporter so that she can use them, if that's okay. Does that lead us to the public discussion? Unless there is something else that any of the Commissioners want to raise.
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