OC just missed

To describe it in football terms, it was a matter of inches that separated the Odessa College Law Enforcement Academy from holding on to its license and the right to train peace officers in the Permian Basin.

One student missed one question on the county corrections exam, causing the academy to miss its first-time pass rate requirement by a few percentage points, said Greg South, dean of career, technical and workforce education at OC.

“We had 13 out of 16 students pass the exam,” South said at a press conference Tuesday. “If 14 had passed, we would have maintained our license.”

The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education Board voted Thursday to revoke the academy’s license because it failed to meet a first-time pass rate of 85 percent for both its peace officer and corrections programs. That standard, which according to the commission is 5 percentage points higher than the usual state standard, was put in place two years ago after the OC academy posted dismal first-time pass rates in consecutive years.

OC officials say they did all they could to improve the program, hiring new personnel and revamping the curriculum. But the academy fell short again last year, even if just by a hair. The peace officer program scores — once among the lowest in the state — increased significantly last year to 96 percent. But South said that one missed question put the corrections program pass rate at about 81 percent.

On Tuesday, South defended the progress the academy has made since being placed on probation, calling it a “tremendous turnaround” that turned the academy into “one of the better programs in the state.”

“The graduates speak for themselves,” South said, adding the academy plans to re-apply for its license after a mandatory five-year waiting period.

Many law enforcement officials across the Permian Basin worry the academy’s closing will negatively impact their own departments as they’ve come to depend on OC for new recruits and officer training. Odessa Police Chief Tim Burton said Monday his department could avoid the ripple effect by arranging for new recruits to train at the Permian Basin Law Enforcement Academy in Midland.

Before revocation, a number of sheriffs and police chiefs in West Texas voiced their support for the academy, expressing in letters to the commission their appreciation for the academy and their fear of the impact its closure might have on them.

“It will probably hurt because we don’t have anything available (nearby),” Crane Police Chief J.D. Smith said in a phone interview Tuesday. Smith said his officers would have to find another place to receive some training, which could mean longer trips and more expenses for things like overnight stays. 

“Our budget is the biggest thing,” he said. “It’s all about money of course.”

In a letter of support, Billy D. Hammitt, chief of the Monahans Police Department, spoke out against TCLEOSE, accusing the commission of focusing too heavily on test scores, a paradigm he contends “ignores the multiple dimensions involved in the law enforcement profession.”

“We are more concerned with teaching them to pass a written exam,” Hammitt wrote. “This paradigm simply produces successful test takers that are woefully unprepared to fill peace officer and jailer positions.”

TCLEOSE officials on Tuesday defended their decision to revoke the license, saying OC was given ample time to correct problems and pointing to other academies in the state that drastically improved their scores during similar probations. If the academy missed its marker by a nose this time around, it was miles behind the rest of the academies in recent years, they said.

“It’s not about one test,” commission chairman Charles Hall said. “This is about turning out better police officers. When that guy comes out of the academy, (law enforcement agencies) want them to have their tool box full of tools.”

Addressing criticism of the commission’s reliance upon test scores, Timothy A. Bratten, executive director of TCLEOSE, maintained the tests are the best known way to gauge the qualifications of the students and the success of an academy.

“There is not yet a designed way that you and I can predict who is going to become a good peace officer other than going through the system we have now,” he said Tuesday. “If you’ll teach the learning objectives, you don’t have any problem passing this test.”

Asked whether the commission was too strict in following through with the revocation despite the academy’s progress, Bratten explained himself using football terminology.

“We’ve seen ‘close’ in Super Bowl games,” he said. “This is a contract. It’s sad that it was such a close call, but the commission made their decision.”