Massachusetts police academies have inadequate training, state audit finds
BOSTON - A recently released state audit of the academies responsible for training every police officer in Massachusetts found an "inadequate" training curriculum and shoddy record-keeping.
The Office of the State Auditor conducted the probe into the Municipal Police Training Committee (MPTC), looking at its practices between January 1, 2021, and December 31, 2022.
Inconsistent training
In an interview with WBZ-TV, State Auditor Diana DiZoglio said her team uncovered a training curriculum among the 46 police academies that was inconsistent.
"We found that in some cases they weren't receiving sexual assault training, missing persons training. Those are really important things," DiZoglio said.
The audit also found that some instructors at the academies lacked proper training and were not certified.
"A significant chunk were not trained during the time period they were delivering trainings to recruits and then some had not even received training by the time they finished instructing," DiZoglio said.
Earlier this year, a WBZ investigation found dozens of instructors at MPTC academies with serious complaints against them.
In November, WBZ reported that MPTC started investigating dozens of police officers for fast-forwarding through mandatory online training.
"We have discovered instances where trainings that should take hours to complete are finished in a matter of minutes," a letter from MPTC to Massachusetts police chiefs stated.
In December, the agency alerted 152 police departments that 487 officers "completed some portion of one or more online in-service trainings in less than the expected run time."
Record keeping issues
DiZoglio said her office also uncovered serious issues with the preservation of training records by MPTC.
"Found that files were left out on filing cabinets. That they were not actually filed in a consistent manner in a way that they could be tracked. That there was not a tracking system regarding who was accessing those records," DiZoglio told WBZ.
In 2023, former Methuen City Council president Sean Fountain was indicted, accused of providing a forged training record to MPTC and illegally acting as a police officer without the correct training.
"This is a very serious issue that the Municipal Police Training Committee needs to address because obviously, we can have police officers, like in the Methuen circumstance that you referenced, not even receiving training but being documented as though they had received training," DiZoglio said.
New MPTC director
MPTC just named Rick Rathbun as the new Executive Director of the MPTC.
He's described as a "former police chief and long-time academy instructor," in a state press release. DiZoglio says Rathbun is open to the changes in her report. Her office will also follow up in six months.
Former Executive Director Robert Ferullo retired from his position at the end of July after serving since 2019.
"The MPTC has made significant strides in establishing standard operating procedures (SOPs) for its training academies (referred to interchangeably as a "Police Academy" or "Recruit Officer Course" or "ROC") since the start of the audit period," the MPTC wrote in response to the audit.
"Over the past four years, have spent thousands of hours improving police training record-keeping. Today, every active law enforcement officer in the Commonwealth who is certified by the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission (POST) has an online training account in Acadis that reflects proof of their basic training (Police Academy or exemption) and the status of their annual in-service training."
