More officers in Columbia, Lexington County cheated on SC police training, audit says
An audit into cheating on required annual training among South Carolina police officers shows that four more Columbia officers than previously reported and at least one in Lexington County shirked their training.
The four Columbia Police Department officers cheated on training videos that updated them on laws in South Carolina, according to an audit by the state’s criminal justice academy. Without such training, officers would have to figure out on their own what new laws and updates to statutes had been added.
In total, seven Columbia Police Department officers were caught in the cheating scandal. Last week, The State reported on three other officers who had skipped through their training. One officer had skipped through domestic violence training and two others had skipped through the training on updated laws, the audit showed.
The department said that since learning of the cheating, all seven of the officers have watched the videos in their entirety.
“An internal investigation is underway and the officers will face disciplinary action that follows a progressive discipline model,” the department’s spokesperson Jennifer Timmons said.
Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook “takes the concern very seriously,” she said.
According to the audit, one Lexington County officer who cheated is at the Cayce Department of Public Safety. A second Lexington County officer mentioned in the report works at Lexington Medical Center. The officers cheated through training on how to respond to domestic violence, the audit said.
The City of Cayce said it was informed of the cheating charge against its officer by the justice academy.
“Cayce takes the report very seriously, as training is a major element of our profession,” city spokesperson Ashley Hunter said. “We will continue to investigate and take action as appropriate. “
Lexington Medical denied the allegation.
Lexington Medical said its officer didn’t cheat and simply made a mistake while watching the video. He accidentally sped up the video when he was interrupted by a phone call, the hospital’s spokesperson, Jennifer Wilson, said. The officer immediately reported it to his supervisor and watched the training video in its entirety two days later.
An investigator with the criminal justice academy said he was given the same explanation and that he relayed it to those putting together the audit. Investigator Chris Brumlow said he had no reason to doubt the hospital’s explanation.
But the explanation didn’t stop the hospital’s officer from going on the list of those caught up in the cheating scandal.
The State learned about all of the officers accused of cheating from documents obtained from the criminal justice academy under the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act. The academy administers the annual training and did the audit.
The local officers, along with 61 others across South Carolina, cheated on their required 2021 training by speeding up videos, the academy said. When viewed on a normal desktop or laptop computer, the training videos only play at regular speed. But if played on a mobile device, the videos could be sped up.
The academy learned about the cheating after an officer posted about the speed-up method on Facebook. After learning that officers had spread the word on how to get through the videos quicker, the academy reviewed the amount of time spent by officers on the videos. The 70 officers were found to have spent less time on the videos than it should have taken to get through on normal speed, the academy said.
In total, the academy accounted for 80 instances of cheating. Some South Carolina police officers cheated twice, once on the domestic violence training and once on the legal updates training.
At least seven police agencies in the Midlands had 15 officers cheat on the training, the audit showed. Those include police, public safety and sheriffs’ departments in Orangeburg, Chester and Winnsboro.
This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 11:45 AM.