The 2012 mandatory MCOLES Annual Registration for all Michigan law enforcement agencies (LEA) begins January 9, 2012 through March 9, 2012.  Agencies must report training expenditures for the 2011 calendar year. This year's registration process incorporates the way the LEA operators report their officers' attendance and expenditures for training on the LED Expenditures Details page.

The Law Enforcement Distribution expenditure reporting mandate pre-populates the in-service training section of the expenditure details with courses attended by an agency's officers. Previously, agencies had to manually enter all information for a training course, look up a course category, enter dates, etc., all of which was time-consuming. Now the training events will be listed with the course name, training agency, and other relevant information. The only remaining item to be entered by the agency is the amount of LED funds expended for that course.

Although expenses are allowable only for training courses registered in the MCOLES Network, there was no cross-check that the courses entered manually by the agency were in fact registered.  By pre-populating the information, only registered courses will be available to enter expenditures for. Since the courses are drawn from reported attendance, training providers must remain current on entering course rosters. If the training does not appear on the agency's list, you will not be able to enter the course or the cost of the training and claim the expense on your LED. The agency should follow up directly with the training provider in order to have the course entered and/or the roster populated. Should you have difficulty with a training provider completing their reporting responsibilities we have a back-up process in place. Approval as an in-service training provider is contingent on entering courses/rosters in a timely fashion, so if an agency is having difficulties with a provider, the provider's status may be suspended or revoked for failure to do so. 

As you can see by the above description in the reporting of training expenditures by the LEAs for the 2011 calendar year, in-service training providers play a significant role in making it possible for the LEAs to report the expenditures of their Law Enforcement Distribution (LED) funds. 

Entering data for reporting Supplies and Operating Expenses and Equipment Purchases has not changed. Remember to click on the ADD button after each entry and SAVE after you click on the ADD button. 

ACTIVE DUTY FIREARMS STANDARD REPORTING REQUIREMENT 

The in-service firearms standard became effective January 1, 2009 and required all licensed officers to receive training that included an:

Educational Component and a Skills Component

Reporting compliance can be completed by: 

(PREFERRED METHOD) Entering the Active Duty training educational/skills component as an in-service training course and populating the MCOLES license (there is an automatic function to populate your officer's numbers) number on the in-service training course roster.  The flow chart   or quick reference guide  will walk you through putting an In-Service Training Course into MITN. Two other documents will assist you with training roster corrections  and the officer's agency corrections  after your course is accepted and you populate the training rosters.  

If you go to your agency roster page and click on the link Outstanding Mandatory In-Service Training List, a listing of your officers will be displayed indicating that they have not completed the Active Duty Firearms Standard. This list will shrink as officers complete the standard, the information is entered into the In-Service Training Course. Your agency or in-service training provider may have already performed this task.  If you have no officers on the list your training unit or another provider has completed the standard and populated the training rosters. 

At this time, the only way officers will be removed from the list is if the Active Duty Firearms Standard is input as an In-Service Training Course and the officer's MCOLES numbers are populated. For officers who have not completed the standard, the agency must report the name, MCOLES #, and reason for each officer that did not complete the standard (educational and skills component) using the form that will be available via a link on the Annual Registration page or on the MCOLES Web site. As soon as the officer(s) achieve(d) the standard, report their compliance using the same form in order to ensure that MCOLES' records will immediately reflect accurate information on the status of an individual. 

The second method of reporting compliance with the Active Duty Firearms standard is to check the box YES or NO on the Annual Registration page that indicates whether the officers have met the Active Duty Standard for the 2010 calendar year.  Checking YES will indicate that all officers have met the Active Duty Firearms Standard. This does suffice for the mandatory reporting. We will know that all your officers have met the standard by checking YES.

Checking the box YES on the Annual Registration page indicating that the officers met the standard is mandatory even though you may have created the In-Service training course. 

Please contact us at (517) 322-5615 (HELP DESK) for general MCOLES Network issues. There will be further instructions posted that will detail the submission of reporting forms and other reporting issues. 

If you have already registered training courses that include the mandate, or if you have questions on the reporting process, contact David Lee at (517) 322-5826 or leeda@michigan.gov. 

For questions on the firearms standard itself, contact Danny Rosa at (517) 322-6449 or rosad@michigan.gov. 

For questions on how to register a training course in MITN, contact Pat Hutting at (517) 322-3967 or huttinp@michigan.gov. 

Thank you for your attention to the detail of the Annual Registration/LED/Active Duty Firearms Standard reporting for 2012 (calendar year 2011).  We appreciate your patience as we move forward with streamlining the reporting process and hopefully making your job easier.