BOISE, Idaho — Idaho's Peace Officer Standards and Training, also known as POST, is the accrediting body for police standards and training across the state.
New police officers in Idaho are required to go through academy training within their first year in the force.
POST approves law enforcement academies, like the ones Boise and Meridian police departments run. But POST also has its own academy where most agencies send their officers.
On Thursday, POST sent out a memo to police chiefs and sheriffs across the state that they will be canceling three upcoming academies.
The three academies that are being canceled are:
- Patrol Academy (Jan. 9 - Apr. 14)
- Adult Detention Academy (Feb. 6 - March. 17)
- Emergency Communications Academy (April 16 - April 28)
They cited heightened inflation and increasing costs for the academy cancelation:
The legislature passed HB469 in March 2022, after POST fought for another steady stream of revenue to sustain their operations. The bill gives Idaho POST another ~$800,000 a year from the state's liquor fund, on top of POST's $4-5 million yearly budget.
But Johnson says the cost of running these courses is greater than the money coming in at this time, and they acted as quickly as they could.
"In the past three to four years we’ve been about $800,000 short in our revenue. So the legislature would give us spending authority to spend X amount of dollars but we only had $800,000 less than that in actual revenue for our dedicated fund," Idaho POST Administrator Brad Johnson said on Monday, "So each year they gave us a one-time transfer to get us through that fiscal year. This $800,000 from the liquor fund - that was intended to keep pace with that shortage that we’d had year after year. And it should have. Except that costs have gone up ridiculously for us and it's far more than we can afford within that revenue stream at this point."
Johnson says budget constraints have been an ongoing issue with POST for years, prior to him working there.
"What we found is that with rising costs through this inflation that we're all experiencing, that just wound up not being enough. Not through anybody's fault. Just rising costs have gone up. We have to pay almost double for meals for those we train here on the POST campus than we had to before. Those are costs we can't absorb. So we're going to continue to need to work with the legislature and figure out how best we can afford to provide the training that we're mandated by statute to provide," Johnson said.
KTVB reached out to several law enforcement agencies across the state that received these cancelation notices.
Several of the agencies expressed frustration with the cutbacks, particularly amid a law enforcement shortage that cripples many agencies. One department KTVB spoke with said they had a new officer scheduled for training in January, and now they will have to wait until May.
Another department said it is difficult to put officers in the field when they have not gone through training.
Two agencies said they would not be affected, because one agency does their training through a separate accredited academy, and the other department said they do not have any new officers, but when they do, they try and get officers through training during slower times - like the winter.
While smaller agencies expressed displeasure with POST's cancelations, larger agencies could be impacted as well. A police chief at a smaller department told KTVB he was calling Boise and Meridian to see if his new officers could train at their academies, which could put a strain on resources.
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