NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that on August 12, 2010, the Criminal Justice Standards and Training Commission has issued an order.
A Petition for Waiver of Rule 11B-20.0014, F.A.C., was received from Northwest Florida State College and Tony Simpson, on June 29, 2010. Notice of the Petition was published in the Florida Administrative Weekly, Vol. 36, No. 7, July 9, 2010. The rule requires law topics instructors who are practicing attorneys and who wish to be exempted from other instructor requirements to complete an internship and have student evaluations on file prior to being hired as law topics instructors. Northwest Florida State College hired practicing attorney Tony Simpson and assigned him to teach law topics to a basic recruit class without having him first complete the internship and evaluations. As soon as the school became aware of the deficiency, it had Tony Simpson complete the internship and student evaluations. The Petitioner college stated that Mr. Simpson met all the requirements for correctly teaching the law topics courses at issue, but failed to complete all administrative aspects of exemption as outlined in the rule. Mr. Simpson was at all times qualified to instruct the course, he had only failed to complete the internship and student evaluations.
The Commission found that the Petitioner’s situation is unique. The Petitioner demonstrated that the strict application of the Commission’s rules in this case would violate the principles of fairness resulting in the need to re-qualify many working officers who suffered no disability in training as a result of the failure to complete the administrative aspects of the rule. The Commission found that the purposes of the underlying statute, to ensure that criminal justice training is carried out uniformly throughout all Commission-certified training schools, would be served by permitting a waiver of a clerical, as opposed to tactical training, requirement. Accordingly, the Commission granted Petitioner’s request for a waiver of Rule 11B-20.0014, F.A.C., on August 12, 2010, at its regularly scheduled Business Agenda meeting in Tampa, Florida.
A copy of the Order may be obtained by contacting: Grace A. Jaye, Assistant General Counsel, Florida Department of Law Enforcement, P. O. Box 1489, Tallahassee, FL 32327, (850)410-7676.