PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
The largely rural nature of most Indiana law enforcement agencies creates a challenge to providing adequate officer training in traffic safety programs. In the past, there has been no strategy for organizing scarce traffic safety training resources throughout the state or for providing an efficient delivery system to local law enforcement officers.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
The Law Enforcement Officer Training initiative was introduced in 1994 through the combined efforts of the Governor's Council on Impaired and Dangerous Driving and law enforcement agencies statewide. Its goal was to increase the level of traffic safety training provided to Indiana law enforcement officers. Objectives for reaching this goal include:

• Developing a central tracking system for traffic safety training programs provided throughout the state
• Developing a strategy for providing traffic safety training regionally
• Standardizing and professionalizing the training available
• Reducing or eliminating the cost of traffic safety training

STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES
At project initiation, a training coordinator responsible for the central management of the Law Enforcement Officer Training program was designated. A database of training courses, instructors, and trained officers was then developed for use in planning courses. A training request form was developed and distributed to over 200 local law enforcement agencies. This form became an essential tool used at the state level to develop and deliver targeted training courses in regions with essential needs. The training request form was also used by local law enforcement agencies to either host a training course or to request that students be enrolled in a particular course. Courses comprising the traffic safety training curricula included:

• Standardized Field Sobriety Test (SFST) Basic
• Standardized Field Sobriety Test Instructor
• Occupant Restraint Usage and Enforcement (ORUE) Basic
• Child Auto Restraint Educator Seminar
• Crash Report Training

In addition to offering these five basic training courses, one Drug Recognition Expert (DRE) training course was provided each year, to train 25 new officers in implementation of this state-designed program.

Instruction, training manuals, and certificates were provided free-of-charge to officers, who attended training courses on their own time; and, as added incentive to enroll in the SFSTBasic training, the first 1,000 officers to enroll received a free Alco-Sensor III (a sobriety testing device).

A total of 50 officers were selected for SFSTInstructor training, in order to provide the most complete coverage of trained instructors throughout the state.