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Criminal Justice Academy seeks authority to investigate officers' false certification statements; subcommittee advances rules
Summary
The Criminal Justice Academy asked a House subcommittee to add investigative authority to pursue officers who willfully provide false information on certification paperwork and to correct a standard-of-proof phrase; the panel approved moving both items forward.
Jimmy Fennell, general counsel for the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, told a House Regulations subcommittee that proposed changes would give the academy explicit authority to investigate and, where necessary, prosecute officers who willfully provide materially false information on certification paperwork.
Fennell said current statute and regulation create an "absurd result" where certification-misconduct (including material false statements) is defined but the academy lacks a clear mechanism to investigate when the employing agency does not pursue the matter. The proposed regulation (Document 5302) would allow the Criminal Justice Academy to notify an officer, set a contested-case hearing if requested, and have an academy attorney prosecute the case before a member of the Law Enforcement Training Council acting as hearing officer.
Fennell told the subcommittee the academy receives about 15–20 reports a month alleging misconduct or discrepancies in certification paperwork and has one investigator assigned to handle those cases; he called the proposed language a necessary, practical means to address instances where an employing agency declines to proceed. Fennell also explained that the draft uses the permissive term "may" rather than "shall" for initiating an investigation so the academy’s governing board and director retain discretion; several committee members questioned why the regulation did not require ("shall") investigations when an officer appears to have lied.
Separately, the academy asked the committee to update wording in Document 5304 to use the correct evidentiary phrase "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "substantial evidence." Fennell said the change corrects a prior oversight in the agency’s regulations.
The subcommittee voted to move both documents to the full committee for further review. Members asked the academy to follow up with the agency director about a longer-term statutory redraft that could further clarify investigative authority.
