Committee approves amendment to SB 525 to set sheriff training tiers, expand public-safety status for corrections staff and raise penalties for recklessness

The House Committee on Veterans Affairs and Public Safety unanimously approved Amendment 8 to Senate Bill 525 on a voice/consent roll call, moving the bill forward as amended with 11 members voting in favor and one member excused.

The amendment establishes tiered training and certification changes for Marion County sheriff’s deputies, clarifies benefits eligibility for Department of Corrections employees, modifies rules for school resource officers, raises the penalty for criminal recklessness and adds new language criminalizing shooting from or into vehicles or buildings.

Representative Ireland, the bill presenter, said the “first 4 pages is really the meat of this bill, which is a, an agreement between all the stakeholders,” and thanked the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy, the State Police, the Marion County Sheriff’s Department and other stakeholders for cooperating on the language. He described the main training provisions as giving deputies who completed academy training by the end of the year a Tier 2 certificate, and directing the Marion County Sheriff’s Department to adopt a Tier 1 training curriculum set by the board and to certify graduates locally rather than sending them to the academy in Plainfield.

The amendment provides a timetable for issuing Tier 2 certificates, allowing the academy until March 1 to distribute them. It also adds Department of Corrections correctional professionals, officers and other employees to the statutory definition of “public safety officer,” Representative Ireland said, a change intended to make those workers eligible for line-of-duty death and injury benefits.

On school resource officers, the amendment requires officers to be Tier 1 or Tier 2 and grants them statewide jurisdiction; it also restores the ability to charge fleeing-related offenses that had been exempted under earlier statutory language, Irish said. The amendment raises the penalty for criminal recklessness from a Class B misdemeanor to a Class A misdemeanor and defines an offense for shooting from a vehicle into another vehicle, a building or other places where people are likely to be present. The text also criminalizes conduct by passengers in those incidents by adding passenger liability at the level 6 felony range.

The amendment incorporates language added in November related to the Department of Corrections and includes a provision creating a summer study committee to examine the sheriff’s department training structure, the possible adoption of a merit system and whether the statute that consolidated police and sheriff functions should be modified or repealed. Representative Ireland described that study committee as a stakeholder-driven review rather than an immediate structural change.

Committee chair Steve Bartels solicited consent to take the amendment; a member moved to second the consent request. The committee then called the roll. Chair Bartels and 10 other members recorded affirmative votes; Representative Pax was recorded as excused. The committee secretary announced, “Bill passes as amended 11.”

No substantive questions or debate were recorded during the committee’s consideration of the amendment. The committee adjourned after the vote; members thanked the chair and left the meeting.