Governor Charlie Baker visited a new police training center in Lynnfield yesterday, where some of the more than 3,000 police officers will go to meet legal requirements.
The brand new training center will be responsible for bridging the gap between an officer’s basic police training and new law enforcement techniques and requirements enshrined in law or developed by the new Standards and Training Commission state police officers.
The idea, according to Baker, began in conversations with black and Latino legislative caucuses and culminated, in 2018, in the creation of a “strong and permanent” certification process for the more than 20,000 police officers in the state. Bay State.
“So think about it for a minute: you have a lot of people who have a responsibility to serve their communities as law enforcement officers, but a lot of them work in small communities where they work part time. or have part-time with another law enforcement agency and there was no organized or structured way for them to continue to receive ongoing training,” Baker said Thursday.
The pandemic caused a delay, but Floyd’s death at the hands of police and the protest-induced violence that followed — in other states, Baker noted, not Massachusetts — made the need for a reform all the more urgent.
“There was a very intense debate and discussion about this legislation, it was appropriate and necessary, but it never, throughout the duration of the discussion, escalated into some of the really unfortunate behavior that was happening in many places. other parts of the country,” Boulanger said. “We have signed major police reform legislation on both ends of this equation.”
“Creating a certification program that creates a whole new set of responsibilities for law enforcement officials, and significantly strengthening and expanding our commitment to both training those who want to become sworn officers and continuing education for those who are,” he said.
