KVIG Informative

Nevada built a five-member commission in 1965 to raise the training bar for local police. Six decades later, state law now hands that same commission a different job: checking whether an applicant already has a documented history of misconduct before it ever hands over a badge.

Nevada’s 53rd Legislature passed Assembly Bill 390 in 1965, creating a five-member commission charged with raising the competence of the state’s local and state law enforcement officers by setting minimum training standards, according to a Nevada Legislature interim committee report on the commission’s history. That body is codified today as the Peace Officers’ Standards and Training Commission under NRS 289.500, commonly known by its acronym, POST.

The commission changed hands repeatedly in the decades that followed. It became the POST Committee under the Nevada Crime Commission in 1969, then moved to the Department of Motor Vehicles and Public Safety in 1981, according to the same legislative report. It became an independent agency reporting directly to the Governor’s Office in 1999, the report states.

Donate

Donate

The commission adopted its current three-tier system for classifying peace officers — Category I, II and III — in 1987, and the Nevada Legislature expanded its membership from five commissioners to nine in 2005, according to the interim committee report and POST’s own fiscal year 2020 annual report. State law today assigns those nine seats by geography and agency type: two members from Clark County, with one drawn from a metropolitan police department where one exists, one from Washoe County, three from other Nevada counties, one from a state agency employing Category I officers, and one each from the Category II and Category III officer ranks, under NRS 289.500. The governor appoints all nine from names submitted by county governments and peace officer organizations, the statute states. POST’s own commission directory currently lists Douglas County Sheriff Daniel Coverley as the panel’s chairman.

For most of the commission’s history, its authority centered on training curricula rather than officer accountability. That changed with legislation the Nevada Legislature passed during its 2023 session. NRS 289.555, first added to Nevada law in 2003, was amended that year to bar a person from serving as a peace officer if that person has been reported to the National Decertification Index of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training or an equivalent database, decertified by Nevada or another state’s certifying authority, or convicted of a felony or a qualifying domestic violence offense, according to the statute’s text.

Donate

Donate

Senate Bill 225 of that 2023 session added two more requirements. NRS 289.557 now requires every peace officer certification applicant to submit an affidavit confirming the person has not been discharged or disciplined by a law enforcement agency for conduct that would disqualify the person under commission regulations, and has not resigned from a law enforcement job while a misconduct investigation was pending, according to the statute. The commission must summarily deny any application missing that affidavit, and it must search the National Decertification Index before certifying anyone, the statute states.

A companion provision, NRS 289.585, requires Nevada law enforcement agencies to immediately notify the commission when an officer is charged with a crime that commission regulations authorize as grounds for revoking or suspending a certificate, or when an officer resigns or otherwise separates from a job while a misconduct investigation is pending. Agencies must also send the commission a written summary of that investigation’s outcome once it is complete, according to the statute.

The five-member commission that Assembly Bill 390 created in 1965 to raise training standards has become, six decades and three reorganizations later, the checkpoint state law now relies on to stop an officer with a documented history of misconduct from simply changing departments and starting over.