Yesterday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the bipartisan amendment backed by myself and Senators Chambliss (R-Ga.), Isakson (R-Ga.), and Pryor (D-Ark.) to create a Rural Policing Institute within the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC).

I often refer to our rural communities as “the forgotten America.�  I am proud of my roots in rural southern Colorado.  Communities like mine are the heart of our nation – and the men and women who protect them deserve the best possible training.  Indeed, rural America is the backbone of our country – but is too often neglected by policy-makers and politicians who have lost touch with people in the heartland.

Nowhere is this neglect felt more acutely than in small-town law enforcement agencies. Many people fail to realize the substantial role they play: of the nearly 17,000 police agencies in the United States, 90 percent serve a population of under 25,000 and operate with fewer than 50 sworn officers.  As Colorado’s Attorney General, I had the honor of working with some of America’s finest law enforcement officials – many of them from rural Colorado.  But the pressure they face is great.

The growing demands on rural law enforcement, and shrinking budgets, have hit training programs particularly hard.  Many rural law enforcement agencies simply do not have the budget to provide officers with adequate training.  Furthermore, even those agencies that can come up with the money simply can’t afford to take their police officers off the beat long enough to get additional training.

That is where this amendment comes in.  By working with FLETC to create a special, rural-focused law enforcement training institute to assist rural agencies in receiving cutting-edge training without sacrificing public safety, we can help make sure that Americans who live in our small towns and rural communities benefit from the very latest in homeland security training.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Politics .