One of the causes of the soaring traffic fatality rate in South Carolina is the lack of professionally trained traffic safety law enforcement officers with the knowledge and skills to aggressively address South Carolina’s growing traffic problem. Traffic-related fatalities and injuries will most likely decrease with improved knowledge, skills, and productivity of traffic law enforcement officers. Additionally, the South Carolina Department of Public Safety could not track training progress of its officers, which made it difficult to promote continued professional training.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The goals of the Traffic Safety Officer (TSO) Program are to:

• Provide a mechanism to collect, analyze, and evaluate data to assess the effectiveness of training provided by the South Carolina Department of Public Safety;
• Increase the number of certified Traffic Safety Officers in South Carolina by 100 percent (from 42 to 84);
• Increase the number of officers participating in the Traffic Safety Officer Program by 50 percent (from 550 to 850);
• Track Traffic Safety Officers from initial training through actual field performance;
• Assess and validate the traffic enforcement/investigative training of each participating law enforcement agency obtaining traffic grant funding; and
• Efficiently monitor and maintain a professional traffic safety training track designed to enhance knowledge, skills, and performance for both grant-funded officers and other law enforcement officers whose primary responsibility is traffic enforcement.

STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES

The TSO Program is designed to expand and enhance the professionalism of traffic law enforcement officers throughout South Carolina. It also provides a professional traffic safety training track to enhance knowledge, skills, and performance for all law enforcement officers whose primary responsibility is traffic enforcement. The TSO liaison tracks the progress of traffic safety officers from the initial training through actual field performance. A new database contains the names of officers whose primary responsibility is traffic law enforcement. The TSO liaison continually updates the database after traffic courses are completed.

RESULTS

During the third year of the TSO program, all TSO records were transferred to a Microsoft® Access® database so that reports could be generated. Report elements include the number of officers involved in the program, number of participating agencies, and number of courses needed for completion, among other data elements.

Since the inception of the program, 123 officers have completed the TSO program, and an additional 80 officers finished the program by Spring 2002. Four of these officers completed the TSO Instructor level program. Six hundred sixty-five officers, representing 128 law enforcement agencies, are currently being tracked through the TSO program.

The South Carolina Highway Patrol has agreed to work toward certifying 50 troopers per year in the TSO program. Additionally, the Criminal Justice Academy is working toward providing priority slotting for officers involved in the TSO program.

Every student in the Basic Law Enforcement training class receives the TSO brochure and is informed about the program. Students in advanced traffic enforcement/investigative classes are introduced to the program.