COLUMBUS, Ohio — On Tuesday morning, Gov. Mike DeWine spoke at the Ohio School Safety Summit in Columbus, addressing the importance of protecting students throughout the state, and the resources available to schools through the School Safety Center.
“I think we at the state level have a moral obligation to make sure every school - public, private school - in the state of Ohio has the tools that they need to keep the kids safe,” DeWine said. “So part of it’s money, but part of it also is technical expertise.”
After speaking at the summit, DeWine answered reporters’ questions about the police incident in Circleville earlier this month, in which an officer released a K9 on a man who was surrendering to police, despite Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers calling for the dog to be held back. That officer has been placed on administrative leave.
“What happened in Circleville should give all of us the incentive to do everything in our power to make sure that police training in the state of Ohio is uniform, no matter how big or how small your department is,” DeWine said. “We have a ways to go in this. I will be presenting to the general assembly a plan in regard to police training. We frankly, need more facilities.”
In regards to training, DeWine said the best kind of police training is scenario-based training, acknowledging that smaller departments may not have the resources or training that larger departments may have access to.
“We’re going to build in this state, and one of the things I’m going to put in the capital budget proposal to the legislature is a scenario-based training facility that will be available to every single law enforcement agency in the state of Ohio no matter how big or how small,” the governor said. “Uniformity in training, so that when there’s a crisis and something’s happening very, very fast, that training is what kicks in, that training is what tells that officer what to do.”
DeWine said he does not blame anybody for Circleville, however, he said it’s on public officials to ensure that officers have enough training, regardless of the size or location of their department.
“You had a Circleville police officer making clearly a call that was not within any kind of normal protocol. You also had the Ohio State Highway Patrol that’s very, very well trained, telling that Circleville police officer no, don’t send the dog out. Basically, ‘we have this under control,’” he said. “So making sure that everybody follows the same protocol in the state of Ohio.”
As far as steps to make this a reality, DeWine said he will be working with fellow lawmakers.
“We had $40 million in this last budget, that was good, [it] buys us some training, but we have to take a holistic view of this,” he said. “So I'm going to be talking to the leadership of the general assembly, we may want to put together literally a task force to take a look at this, and come back with very tough recommendations."
