How A TMS is Helping Baltimore PD Manage its Consent Decree

Beginning in the 1990s, police consent decrees have been utilized by the federal government to intervene and effect change at local agencies. Their use has variably waxed and waned since, but as it stands today, nearly two dozen consent decrees are being enforced by the Department of Justice (DOJ) at law enforcement departments across the country.

Baltimore Police Department is one such department. The city and police department entered into a consent decree with the DOJ after an investigation in 2016. In the time since, the three entities have worked together on topics including:

• Crisis Intervention/Behavioral Health
• Impartial Policing
• Misconduct Investigations & Discipline
• Officer Assistance and Support
• Use of Force
• And more

In a recent webinar, Strong Record-Keeping: A Means to Better Accountability and Strengthening Public Trust, Gary Cordner, Academic Director at Baltimore PD, shared how utilizing a training management system (TMS) has positively impacted management of the department’s consent decree.

The Role of Training in a Police Consent Decree

In his role at Baltimore PD, Cordner provides leadership on the development of curriculum and instruction for the department’s police academy. This includes ensuring that the right topics are being taught and that the content is updated and refreshed to meet current best practices.

As shared by Cordner, police academies in Maryland are required by the state’s Police Standards and Training Commission to teach “several hundred” terminal objectives. Should the commission choose to audit a law enforcement academy within the state, the academy must be able to satisfactorily prove they did teach and test on every single objective.

On top of those terminal objectives, Baltimore PD’s academy also provides training on topics specific to the needs of the department. For in-service training, curriculum is based on an internal analysis of the performance of the department and new training trends around the country. In addition, Baltimore PD, like a handful of other departments around the country, is also completing training as directed by the department’s consent decree.

The consent decree that Baltimore PD is under requires training on specific topics, typically on an annual basis. Training topics must be developed and completed to the satisfaction of a monitoring team on behalf of a federal judge. When developing training, the department works with subject matter experts and provides the Baltimore community with the opportunity to comment on the training plan before it is implemented.

Once the training plan is finalized, it can take up to four months and 60-70 training sessions for a new training course to be delivered to every officer.

“It’s a laborious process, to be honest,” Cordner said.

According to Cordner, the department has implemented a blended learning model where appropriate, but it is a strategy the department is still learning how to utilize to its fullest degree.

Re-establishing Trust with the Community

By working hand-in-hand with the DOJ through the department’s consent decree and improving transparency related to training, Baltimore PD’s goal is to rebuild public trust and improve the department’s relationship with the community.

The department’s police training management system, the Acadis® Readiness Suite, has been a key part of redeveloping that trust by supporting the agency’s training efforts.

“We were one of those agencies that up until just a couple years ago, we had everything on paper,” Cordner said. “Which meant we had tons of folders, binders, boxes, filing cabinets…we were running out of space to keep everything.”

By implementing the training management system, the department has been able to increase efficiency around training and maintaining training records. Today, the department is utilizing the system for everything from developing curriculum, to scheduling training, managing registration, and administering testing.

One example shared by Cordner is improving the process of filling out and managing daily observation reports via the training management system.

“Up until last year, we were doing it on paper…and it was just a nightmare,” he said. “Now it’s electronic. We’re saving a lot of paper, and we don’t have to run around and find stuff because we know where it is and whether it’s completely filled out.”

When it comes to accountability, training records are a big piece, Cordner said.

“We’ve gotten used to the fact that we get sued pretty frequently, and oftentimes training records are a key piece of evidence,” he said. “The need to have documentation is not brand new, but I think the bar on accountability has risen.”

An additional area of improvement has been registration.

“[Before Acadis], we would never know who was coming until they showed up. It was total guesswork. Now we have a registration system…we know who is coming, we know who is supposed to be coming, and we can get an accurate headcount,” Cordner said. “It’s just a way better system for us than what we used to do.”

Whether an agency is large or small, a training management system can support training efforts in today’s rapidly evolving policing landscape.

“I think we’ve reformed our training a lot in recent years, but I think we have to be able to prove it. I can say we’ve been doing procedural justice training every year for five years, but can I prove that we have?” Cordner said. “And if somebody pushes me a little harder, can I actually show them that every single officer took that? If we don’t have good records, then we want people to just take our word for it. And in today’s climate, there’s not a lot of people that will take anybody’s word for anything.”