Whtiney Downard / The Meridian StarWarrants Officer Lowell Shinn reviews the PoliceOne training platform information sent to him over his Meridian Police Department email. Shinn and other officers will be able to train online and take classes of their own choosing with the new platform. 

No matter how many years of experience an officer has, he or she must still complete a mandatory 24 hours of training annually.

Usually, this process involved going to Jackson for a day or taking a class from a visiting instructor at the Meridian Public Training Safety Facility. 

Now, officers with the Meridian Police Department can take up to eight hours of that training online whenever they have the time, thanks to the new PoliceOne training platform. 

According to Mike Vick, who oversees training with the Meridian Police Department, the training platform, available to every sworn officer, has more than 240 classes, ranging from cultural diversity to officer safety.

Some courses require a few hours, with active officer input, while others take only five minutes. For the training to count toward their required hours, officers must pass a test at the end of each training. 

“We can have national experts do a video training online for our officers,” Vick said. “Or we can assign officers to study, on their own, a topic of our choosing.” 

If officers struggle with a specific topic, supervisors can assign them to take additional training on the topic without having to take them away from the police station. 

“We can put all of our training on the platform,” Vick said. “If I have a PowerPoint on report writing, they can pull my curricula instead of reinventing the wheel.”

A report will be emailed monthly to training officers who can track which topics officers pick and how many hours of trainings each officer need to complete before the year’s end. The platform keeps records for up to 30 years and can be pulled in cases of possible police liability situations, Vick said.

Additionally, the platform will save the city and police department money. 

“It costs $50 per year per officer,” Vick said. “You can’t send someone somewhere for $50.”

Vick said money for the training came from a fund set aside for department training years ago and won’t come out of this year’s city or police department budget. 

Officers will still have to get the rest of their training elsewhere, whether at a class in Jackson or at the Meridian Public Safety Training Facility, but the platform will reduce the cost of training the 99 sworn officers in the Meridian Police Department. 

Vick also said the platform would allow officers to specialize in a field of their choosing with classes for different interests.

“If someone showed an interest in one particular topic it could help with hiring,” Vick said. “If we have an opening in the gang unit and one officer has taken 14 hours of classes specific to gangs, we might consider that officer because they’ve shown an interest.”

Vick said the department emailed invitations to all their officers and expect them to register by the 24th of this month.