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Senate Judiciary Committee hears law‑enforcement leaders on training, decertification and recruitment
Summary
State training officials and law‑enforcement leaders told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Arkansas requires ethics and bias training across police academies, that the state can decertify officers for ethics violations, and that recruitment and funding shortfalls are stressing departments statewide.
Senator Clark convened a Judiciary Committee hearing where Jamie Cook, secretary of the Arkansas Department of Public Safety and director of the Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training (CLEST), and law‑enforcement leaders outlined how the state trains officers and handles decertification.
Cook told the committee CLEST oversees roughly 600 departments and 11,000 officers and supervises basic police academies, and said Arkansas requires a two‑hour racial‑profiling component in continuing education each year and integrates ethical instruction into every block of academy training. "Every block of instruction, regardless of what the subject is, has to include an ethical component," Cook said.
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