The Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) today announced a partnership between the COPS Training Portal and the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board (ILETSB) to promote free online training.

ILETSB has agreed to award credit towards its annual training requirements for 28 current certificate-awarding courses on the COPS Training Portal, with plans to approve future courses that address state-level training mandates as they launch. To ensure that Illinois’ 30,000 law enforcement officers receive credit for these trainings, the COPS Training Portal will provide data directly to ILETSB, removing any reporting burden on individual officers, agencies, and the Mobile Training Units that form the backbone of ILETSB’s training system. Illinois becomes the second state to partner with the COPS Office to broadly provide credit for COPS Training Portal courses, following the 2022 partnership with Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training (AZPOST).

“The COPS Office is proud to provide Illinois, and the entire nation, high-quality, timely, and accessible training through the COPS Training Portal,” said Hugh T. Clements, Jr., Director of the COPS Office. “The Portal is a cornerstone of our training program, offering individuals, agencies, and even entire states the opportunity to learn and engage with important topics such as crisis response, traffic safety, and of course, community policing. By sending training completion data directly to ILETSB, we are able to save agencies time, effort, and funds that would otherwise need to be spent gathering and submitting that same information, letting everyone get back to the critical business of policing. I appreciate and applaud the commitment to serving the law enforcement community in Illinois that ILETSB leadership and staff have shown as we worked on this partnership, and I am excited to see the benefits that will accrue to Illinois’ 30,000 police officers, sheriff’s deputies, and troopers. The COPS Office is eager to continue to partner with POSTs and agencies across the country to bring our dozens of courses to the dedicated men and women who protect our communities every day. Online training does not replace in-person training, but using the COPS Training Portal allows agencies to focus their limited funding on the topics that must be learned in person.”

The COPS Training Portal (copstrainingportal.org) was launched in 2017, and now boasts 40 training courses and more than a dozen resources on a wide variety of law enforcement topics, with more trainings constantly in development. The COPS Office is dedicated to providing high-quality training to the field as part of its mission to advance the practice of community policing in the United States. Illinois law enforcement officers who wish to receive credit for COPS Training Portal courses should enter their PTB ID upon registering, or update their profile to add the PTB ID. Individuals who completed courses after their approval, but prior to this announcement, can still receive credit for those trainings. A full list of courses and their corresponding approvals can be found at https://copstrainingportal.org/project/state-approved-courses/.