In late 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) announced a partnership between the COPS Training Portal and the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board (ILETSB), approving much of the Portal’s training and many of its resources for mandated and specialized training requirements while streamlining the record-keeping process for officers, agencies, and the state.

All 30,000 public safety officers in Illinois can now receive ILETSB credits toward fulfilling their annual training requirements through more than two dozen certificate-awarding courses on the COPS Training Portal. Additional courses are expected to be reviewed and approved by ILETSB in the future.

Illinois is the second state to use the Portal to help meet state-wide training needs. In 2022, the Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training (AZPOST) approved all Portal courses for certification for the state’s public safety officers. Additional states are currently considering launching this type of partnership in 2025.

Portal Partnership Streamlines the Process for the State

According to Sean Smoot, ILETSB’s chairman, “The decision to partner with the COPS [Training] Portal was a no-brainer for us. It not only saves a lot of money but valuable time too, for the training administrators as well as officers.”

Law enforcement personnel can see what is approved for their training requirements on the Portal’s State Approved Courses page. After completing courses, they can download their certificates. But instead of officers’ having to send them through their agency to ILETSB for credit, the Portal team transfers their completion records directly to the POST. This not only saves the officers and the agencies time and hassle but also lets them get back to the critical business of policing. Agency leaders and training managers also benefit, as they do not have to identify, approve, track, or manage course completions and certifications themselves.

Said Jeremy Kommel-Bernstein, a COPS Office Policy Analyst who serves as the Program Manager for the Portal, “What makes the Portal even more helpful to ILETSB is that their Mobile Training Units (MTU), which are used for most training in the state, have fewer courses to deliver. It lets the MTUs focus their time and funding on providing the training that must be done in person as well as on topics not covered by the Portal.

“And even when the MTUs don’t deliver a course themselves, certificate reporting is usually done through them. But since certification for courses taken on the Portal are reported directly to ILETSB, the MTUs are also relieved of the obligation to report them.”

Smoot added another time-saving benefit: “Because some MTU courses are available on the Portal 24/7, the agencies don’t have to pull people off the street or send them traveling hours to an MTU training location for every course. We have 16 MTUs that do a great job across the state, but they aren’t 24/7 operations.”

A Wide Selection of High-Quality Training Courses

Launched in 2017, the Portal was developed and implemented by the National Center for Policing Innovation (NCPI) in collaboration with the COPS Office.

In addition to keeping the Portal’s infrastructure running smoothly, NCPI is a major COPS Office Learning Partner, contributing substantially to the Portal’s content and resources. NCPI works to continually improve and expand its offerings to support the ever-evolving needs of public safety across the country.

In the past seven years, the Portal has grown into a powerful web-based learning platform offering no-cost courses and resources used by more than 62,000 individuals. Among them are public safety practitioners from every state representing more than 10,000 police departments, sheriffs’ offices, and probation and parole agencies—as well as universities, civil service organizations, law offices, and even private companies.

The Portal currently offers a catalog of more than 50 courses and resources developed by COPS Office Learning Partners, with a half-dozen more currently in development. A variety of multimedia community policing resources are also available free of charge, and new content is continuously released. The catalogue includes case studies, scenarios, interactive publications, training videos, visuals, and simulation-based activities that can be used to supplement training or as standalone resources. Among their topics are traffic safety, crisis response, community policing, crime prevention, officer safety and wellness, leadership, policing technology, professional skills and competencies, and much more.

Said NCPI’s Executive Director, Lynda Schwartz, “One of the greatest benefits of the Portal is that it serves as a one-stop shop for a wide variety of high-quality training that meets the needs of public safety nationwide. All Portal content is developed under very rigorous standards, reviewed by subject matter experts (SME) and public safety practitioners, and vetted extensively by DOJ. Agencies and officers can be confident that Portal courses are useful, relevant, and effective.

“Another thing that sets the Portal apart is the quality of the instruction, which was developed by experts in public training safety according to the highest instructional standards. A SME can create good course content, but if it’s not easy to learn from, it’s not effective as training.”

Saving Valuable Time as Well as Money

Added Sheila Gunderman, NCPI Director of Programs, “In conversations with chiefs, sheriffs, or others in charge of training, they say they feel like they’ve hit the jackpot when they realize they can access all this quality training free of charge through the Portal.”

Said George Simpson, chief of the Polson (Montana) Police Department—an agency of 15 officers and one civilian on the Flathead Indian Reservation—“We’ve been using the COPS [Training] Portal for around three years as a department resource, and some of our officers used it on their own before that.

“I’ve recommended it to other first responders and the sheriff’s office. This is one of most significant advances in law enforcement training, especially beneficial for smaller agencies like ours, with fewer resources. It’s been super valuable for us.”

Asked how an agency, state, or organization can partner with the Portal to gain access to data and reporting features, enroll, register, and track certification results, Schwartz said, “The best way to start the process is to complete the form on the Contact Us page of the Portal site. We can then begin working directly with that organization to ensure that their specific needs are met.”

Faye C. Elkins
Sr. Technical Writer
COPS Office

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