By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
The Taylor Mill Police Department has recently hired a young man named Logan Herzog who is no stranger to the police department, having spent a few years in the Explorer program in the city as a teenager.
Logan joined the Army after graduation from high school, and now, five years later, is ready to get out of the Army and rejoin civilian life. Of course, since he would like to join a police force, he naturally thought about Taylor Mill, his hometown.
Taylor Mill took advantage of a relatively new program in Kentucky designed to help police departments all over the state acquire new recruits.
Taylor Mill Police Chief James Mills was at a graduation of the police academy when they announced that a graduate had the distinction of being the first one to graduate through the M-2-LE program. Mills immediately made a note to find out more about the program, and how it could affect the city of Taylor Mill.
“The program is called Military to Law Enforcement, or M-2-LE,” said Mills. “The program has been around a little while. I think the first graduates from the program were early last year. It is a great program, because it allows people in any branch of the service to have a method of transitioning to a job in the community. It also gives police departments the chance to hire competent people.”
The program started as federal — the Skillbridge program under the Department of Defense. The state of Kentucky is the only state to use a state agency to act as a facilitator of marketing, support staff, and accountability, and offer the program to all law enforcement agencies in the state.
The Kentucky Law Enforcement Council partnered with the Kentucky Commission on Military Affairs, and the Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs to ease the transition of military personnel into civilian life. In addition, each service member who gets hired by a law enforcement agency will continue to receive their pay and benefits for a specific amount of time while they undergo law enforcement training through the Department of Criminal Justice. Each candidate has to be hired by a police department to qualify for the program.
“The service member goes through the normal process in the city to become a police officer,” explained Mills. “The difference comes when they apply for the state program as a service member. The process right now is difficult, although they are trying to make it easier, but even though the program is great, and it has been around a couple of years, not many people have take advantage of it yet.”
Logan Herog graduates from the Police Academy at the end of July. One of the other perks of the program, in addition to maintaining their military pay and benefits for a specific amount of time, is that if they are part of the M-2-LE program, they will be fast tracked to the police academy.
For a number of years the academy has developed a backlog of applicants who want to attend the academy in Richmond and the COVID years exacerbated the delays. This is a bonus to the cities who hire new police officers, because they will be out on the streets as officers sooner.
“During this time where every police department is looking for good officers, this program started with the requirement that the new officer has to be employed in the city that hired them for three years, but the legislature changed that this year, and the new officers will now have to stay at the city for five years,” said Mills. “Most of the police departments in the area are pretty much equal as to pay and benefits. We aren’t at the top or at the bottom. We are definitely competitive, so while Logan will be a part of our department for three years as a start, all others who sign up will be required to stay for five years in their initial department.”
Mills said they have been working on this project since last August, overcoming the struggles and hurdles involved with the growing pains of the fledgling program. However, he feels that with the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council working to smooth out the problems that are scaring candidates away from the program, it will get easier and easier.
“I know this will be a great tool in this state,” he said. “It is a win/win program and will become a tremendous resource for law enforcement.”