Firing of school police chief prompts job description change

Monday, Oct. 18, 2004 | 9:38 a.m.

The responsibility for ensuring all Clark County School District police officers have the required state certification is being deleted from the job description of the chief of police.

Elliot Phelps, who worked four years as the school police chief without having acquired certification from the Nevada Commission on Peace Officers' Standards and Training, was fired Tuesday after district officials learned of the lapse.

Bill Hoffman, senior counsel for the School District, said Superintendent Carlos Garcia learned about Phelps' lack of certification on Sept. 15 and gave him two weeks to complete it. When Phelps missed that deadline, Garcia fired him.

Phil Gervasi, spokesman for the school police officers' union, said Phelps had passed the required written exam and physical agility test but the commission -- which must review and approve the results -- wasn't scheduled to meet again until December.

"They (the district) should have given him a chance to resolve this," Gervasi said.

Exactly how -- and why -- Phelps went four years without being certified remained under investigation, district officials said. Gervasi speculated that "someone with a grudge" against Phelps was responsible for an anonymous call to the superintendent's office.

Phelps has declined to comment. Garcia, who is out of town at a leadership conference, was unavailable.

In 1999 the district posted a job description for "chief of school police," with POST certification listed as one of the minimum requirements. "Failure to obtain and maintain Nevada POST certification will lead to removal of consideration for the position and/or termination of the current term of employment, if applicable," the announcement reads.

George Ann Rice, associate superintendent of human resources for the district, said her office will take over the task of reviewing POST certification from the School District police.

Human resource personnel already are responsible for checking teacher and administrator licenses on a daily basis using a database maintained by the Nevada Department of Education, Rice said.

It was the responsibility of the school police department -- which does its own hiring -- to ensure its employees were in good standing, Rice said. The chief of police is overseen by the superintendent, Rice said.

"In hindsight I would say that having the police chief responsible for checking his own certification was a flaw in the system," Rice said. "The good that will come out of this is that it won't happen again."

Rice said her office is in the process of writing up a new job description for chief of police that they hope to post online by today. An advertisement will also go out in law enforcement trade magazines and journals, as well as to metropolitan police agencies in other states, Rice said.

Tim Bunting, deputy director of POST, said Thursday that all 157 Clark County school police officers -- with the exception of about a dozen new recruits -- have completed their certification. New employees have 12 months from their hire date to finish the process, Bunting said.

Additionally Clark County Sheriff Bill Young, as well as the chiefs of police for Boulder City, Henderson and North Las Vegas, have all received their POST certification, Bunting said.

There is no penalty for failing to obtain certification, but certification is required to be authorized to make arrests, Bunting said.

For its first decade of operations the school police force was managed by an administrator, not a peace officer, Hoffman said. But members of the department and the police officers' union successfully petitioned the 1999 Legislature to change the requirement, Hoffman said.

In order to obtain certification individuals must be a high school graduate, complete training at an accredited police academy and pass state exams. For the physical agility test applicants must be able to: jump at least 14 inches high; do at least 15 sit-ups within a minute; complete at least 18 push-ups; run 300 meters in not more than 77 seconds; and walk or run 1.5 miles in 17 minutes, 17 seconds.