Kentucky State Police report higher applications but persistent cadet attrition

Colonel Philip Burnett Jr., commissioner of the Kentucky State Police, told the House Committee on Safety and Judiciary that recent trooper cadet classes have shown higher numbers of complete applications but still face high attrition before graduation.

Burnett said the agency filed quarterly reports required by House Bill 6 and that those reports cover recruitment, retention and demographic statistics for trooper cadet classes. "We have submitted 2 of those, 1 in November and 1 in February," he said.

The report details for cadet class 104 (fiscal year 2023–24): 547 applications were considered complete; the average age of applicants was 27, with the largest single age cohort 22. The class began in January 2024 with 72 cadets; 37 graduated on June 21, 2024. For cadet class 105 (fiscal year 2024–25), Burnett said 814 applications were considered complete; the average applicant age was 26 and most applicants were 22. The agency issued 89 conditional offers for class 105, 83 recruits arrived the first day, and 33 remained in the academy at the time of the committee briefing; that class is slated to graduate May 2, 2025.

Burnett summarized the eligibility pathways KSP uses: a high school diploma or GED plus three years' work experience; 60 college credit hours; two years of military service; or two years of prior law enforcement experience. To assist applicants who apply under the high school/GED + work-experience pathway, KSP contracts with Bluegrass Community and Technical College to provide night courses so recruits can obtain an associate degree while in the academy.

Graduation-level education/workbreakdowns differed from application totals. For class 104, Burnett said 35 percent of graduates had a high school diploma or GED with three years of work experience, 51 percent had 60 college hours, 5.4 percent had two years of law enforcement experience, and 5 percent had military service. For class 105, the academy cohort breakdown Burnett cited was roughly 42 percent high school/GED, 36 percent 60 college hours, 6.5 percent military and 5.49 percent law enforcement experience.

Committee members pressed KSP on causes of attrition. Representative Sharp asked which parts of the physical fitness test recruits most commonly fail. Burnett said the test follows traditional POST standards—bench press (percentage of body weight), push-ups and sit-ups in two-minute windows, a 300-meter run and a 1.5-mile run—and that running is a common challenge. On dropout reasons more broadly, Burnett said many resignation letters cite missing family and home as a principal reason. "There is just some specific things that they have to be able able to do, to be a trooper," he said.

Representative Kulkarni asked whether recruits who leave ever reapply. Burnett said some do and that those who return “have been very successful.” Representative Decker asked whether physical-fitness failure rates are increasing; Burnett said he did not have exact figures available from recruitment but believed those failures had increased.

On staffing totals, Burnett said KSP currently has 845 troopers on the rolls not counting the 33 cadets currently in training and what he described as "the 66 trooper hours"; combining those figures, he said, yields 944 when cadets and that other category are included. He noted the highest headcount in agency history was 1,006 troopers at a point when incoming classes were counted as cadets.

Burnett told the committee KSP has expanded recruitment staff and that recruiters act as mentors, providing candidate support and guidance on preparing for academy standards. He said the agency has tailored recruitment to some posts by promising applicants who apply through certain posts that they will return to those posts after the academy; that approach, he said, aims to improve retention in hard-to-staff areas such as Western Kentucky.

The commissioner said KSP is actively recruiting for cadet class 106, with applications so strong the agency planned to stop accepting new completed applications in March and start the class in August. He also described the academy as a residential program that releases recruits Friday afternoons and returns them Sunday nights.

The committee did not take formal action on KSP staffing or training during the hearing.