With few exceptions, new law enforcement officers in North Carolina are required to complete a course called Basic Law Enforcement Training, or BLET. The curriculum for the course is established by the North Carolina Justice Academy, but the training is typically delivered at dozens of community colleges and through recruit academies run by some of the larger law enforcement agencies in the state. The curriculum has been significantly revised over the past few years, and I thought readers might be interested in a summary of the major changes.
The previous version of BLET. The general structure of the old, or legacy, BLET currently appears in the North Carolina Administrative Code at 12 NCAC 09B .0205. The rule calls for 640 hours of instruction. That’s slightly below the national average, which the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in 2018 was 833 hours. (I’ve seen other attempts to compile and calculate averages that yield somewhat different results, but in general, North Carolina appears to have been slightly below the mean.)
The legacy curriculum organized the course content into six major units: legal; patrol duties; law enforcement communication; investigation; practical application; and “sheriff-specific,” which covers service of civil process and detention and court services. The sheriff-specific unit must be completed by all trainees regardless of whether they intend to work in a sheriff’s office, with the idea being that an officer who starts off with a police department but later moves to a sheriff’s office will have all the necessary training already in place.
Some community colleges and academies add additional topics and hours. Trainees must pass each unit of a final exam with a score of at least 70% to become certified officers. 12 NCAC 09B .0406.
The revision process. The new BLET has been more than five years in the making. The process began in earnest in 2018, when the North Carolina Department of Justice oversaw the completion of a job task analysis designed to reveal the key tasks officers perform and therefore the skills needed to succeed in the profession. That work informed the BLET revision, which was originally scheduled to be complete by 2023. The results of the job task analysis have been supplemented to a limited extent based on the input of experts and organizations within law enforcement and in adjacent professions.
The new curriculum is being rolled out in stages. A single-site pilot has been completed and apparently was generally successful. However, only six students completed the single-site pilot delivery, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions about how the new curriculum will work for trainees generally. Thirteen additional pilot deliveries are ongoing or planned during the remainer of the year. After January 1, 2025, the new curriculum – with any needed refinements – is expected to become the norm and the legacy curriculum will be retired.
The new BLET. If there are no further changes as a result of the pilot process, the new BLET will be 868 hours long. It is organized into four numbered modules. They don’t correspond directly to the units in the legacy curriculum, so it is hard to make direct comparisons. But in general, the new curriculum is intended to emphasize communication skills, officer wellness, and practical exercises to a greater extent than the legacy version. For example:
- The new curriculum calls for 54 hours of training on officer health and wellness. Perhaps the most analogous portion of the legacy curriculum would be 8 hours of classroom instruction on physical fitness.
- The new curriculum includes 24 hours of communication and de-escalation, while the legacy curriculum included just 8 hours of communication skills.
- The new curriculum requires 64 hours of training on what is now called compliance and control tactics. The previous curriculum mandated 40 hours of what was then known as subject control and arrest techniques.
Other blocks have also grown, including hours spent learning the elements of various crimes. Firearms training has doubled from 48 hours to 96 hours.
A few blocks appear to be shorter in the new curriculum than in the old. For example, the block on arrest, search, seizure, and constitutional law has decreased from 28 hours to 24 hours. However, those involved in the new curriculum say that the reduction is more apparent than real because more legal content has been interwoven into new practical exercise and simulations.
The written materials used in BLET have also been revised and expanded. The Carolina Journal reports here that the page count has risen “from 2,840 pages to 4,492 pages,” though when I inquired directly I learned that ongoing adjustments to the materials mean that the specific number is a moving target and may be greater once supplementary materials are included. For the first time, the course materials are also available in a robust digital format with active hyperlinks and embedded videos.
Concerns. Although most stakeholders appear comfortable with the changes to BLET, not everyone is happy with all aspects of the new curriculum. Some are concerned that the longer course will deter some potential officers from signing on. Others have objected that at least one reference cited in the materials suggests language related to gender identity that some see as too “politically correct.” The new BLET includes new end-of-block tests that are standardized across the state and are seen by some as overly difficult such that they disqualify trainees who could pass the final exam and become successful officers. Ultimately, oversight of the new curriculum belongs to the North Carolina Criminal Justice Education and Training Standards Commission. So far, the Commission has been satisfied with the new curriculum.