CANTON - A Massillon police officer who admitted breaking into four churches while on duty and stealing from two of them was sentenced to five years probation Monday, the county prosecutor said.

Officer Michael J. Flara, 43, was also fined $10,000 by Stark County Common Pleas Judge Charles E. Brown Jr., said Prosecutor John D. Ferrero.

Flara had faced up to four years in prison.

Last month, Flara pleaded guilty to four felony counts of breaking and entering and two misdemeanor counts of petty theft for a crime spree Sept. 15-16 in Massillon in northeast Ohio.

Soon after his arrest, Flara met with representatives of the four churches to apologize.

Flara, an 11-year police veteran, was arrested Sept. 18 after a security tape caught him kicking in the door at Central Presbyterian.

UK begins building at research campus

LEXINGTON - Hoping to kick-start development at the University of Kentucky's Coldstream Research Campus, officials broke ground Monday on a new building for UK's College of Pharmacy.

Construction on the Center for Pharmaceutical Science and Technology is scheduled to finish in spring 2005. The 20,000-square-foot building will cost $12 million, with the university paying $8 million and the state $4 million, university president Lee Todd said. It will be the state's largest sterile pharmaceutical manufacturing facility.

It will be the first academic building by UK on the 735-acre Coldstream Research Campus, located in north Lexington.

Training of police backed up in Indiana

PLAINFIELD, Ind. - Newly hired officers must sometimes wait months to enter Indiana's police academy, a delay that can tempt police chiefs across the state to put rookie officers on the street before they have completed basic training.

Indiana could enlarge classes at the academy or create other training facilities elsewhere, but officials say both options would require more money.

The Indiana Law Enforcement Academy admits about 120 officers each time it begins a 15-week session. The academy's January class is already full. And at least a few officers will have to wait until August to enroll, even though they are already working for police departments.