I have a question if this is a thing at other departments. Our department has been struggling for officers for years. Sergeants now have been relegated from field supervisors to officers working a beat, unless the lieutenant is off, then a sergeant covers the shift. This has been done to cover mandatory officers in directed districts. Over the past few years, we quit getting officers willing to be FTO’s, so now that task has been assigned to the sergeants, and the last few officers willing to be FTO’s. Has this become a thing at other departments or is this unusual? No other jurisdictions I know of are doing this. Any insight is appreciated.

Do you offer the FTO any perks.

We had 2.00 per hour pay increase

1 per shift paperwork time

Ability to alter days off and Flex Time on daily schedule.

Preferential treatment for next duty assignment after 3 year FTO stint.

What does your union do?

18Z50…..FTO

I’ve never seen it. We give FTOs $2 an hour extra when training and they get extra vacation hours calculated as a percentage of hours training. They generally get some extra OT as well. We haven’t generally had issues filling FTO spots, usually shortages are from FTOs going to specialized units. When I was a Sgt I offered to work patrol officer time when there was an understaffed shift and was told I couldn’t. I wouldn’t have minded filling in as an FTO, it was one of my favorite jobs.

Sgts typically will do a two week ghost phase with a new recruit at the end of FTO, but we've hired so many recently that Sgts have had to cover regular training phases until an FTO is available.

Where I'm from, nobody wants to be an FTO. The Academy cranks out shitbag women & minorities and then tells the FTO it's his job to wash them out. When the FTO writes up terrible evals, the answer in many cases is, "They just need more time and experience." It's a shit show.

One extra day off per phase of training given to FTO.

Agency insinuation that being an FTO is a sign of leadership that is taken into consideration if the officer decides to apply for sergeant at some point.

No union.

A union? In American America, that’s rare.

As a night shift patrol sergeant, I wish I had the time to be an FTO. My duties would leave a trainee neglected.

My place takes FTO away when they promote you to Sgt.

FTO's get 1 hr of OT per day of training.

My agency did this since the beginning and still does.

Thanks for the input, guys.

Not a thing where I work but we have lots of people.

FTOs get a career development step in pay increase while they are certified and actively on the fto roster. I think 60 people just put in for the fto process this go around.

Our dep had a process for being an FTO.  There is a rank for spo-s, senior patrol officers, that are fto-s.  They have to go through a process to become an spo, then they have to go through training to become an fto.  I think it’s a 2 or 3 week school.  I’m pretty sure the state of ga has a post school for fto-s.  Spo-s get a 2 step pay increase that’s 8% of their salary.  That is the same as the increase that a detective gets. The fto also gets an hour of comp time, per day.  There are usually several spo-s on a watch and when an academy class is in field training, not every spo gets a recruit.  When I retired in 2009, the academy was 20 or 26 weeks, can’t remember.  The field training phase was 12 weeks.  2 weeks in every precinct.  The recruit could be fired for any reason.  Probation was for 1 year, after graduation from the academy.  We had some really good talent in our spo-s.  The fto-s I had would spend a half hour a day at the end of the watch coaching their recruits.  Spo-s sent a daily report to the academy for the recruit.  I think the 2 steps in pay and the spo rank gives the spo a different career path for an officer that wants to stay in uniform.  If an officer wants to just stay a regular beat cop, it in no ways affects his ability to get promoted to Sergeant.  I would say that our department did a pretty good job in getting, and motivating, officers to become spo-s.  There is no way I would have any of my sergeants acting as a training officer.  My department is the largest in Georgia, so we had that ability not to have them in that role.  If you are putting people in the role of an fto, I think they would need to be vetted by your academy staff, to ensure that they align with what the academy wants graded, observed, and correction.  And the police academy needs to know where they are failing, as an important component of the department.  You really don’t want disciplinary cases being fto-s.  My .02 centavos.
Edit:  poster above me used the term I was looking for.  Certified training officer.  It’s a state of Georgia certification.

Supervisors job is to supervise. Unless it's a recently promoted officer who put stripes on or there's a shortage of patrol level FTOs due to FTO schools having openings or a surge in recent hires, you wouldn't have seen our sergeants acting as FTOs



They took away FTO perks a year or two ago

I'm a sergeant.  I was an FTO before the promotion.  I'll take guys for a week here and there but I'm not a primary FTO.  I find it's a disservice to the new guy when I have to sit at my desk doing supervisor stuff for a chunk of time instead of training them.

"Union" is a dirty word where I used to work.

FTOs got a flat $100 stipend per month and all the overtime that comes with having a trainee.  There were only 3 "paid" FTOS per shift and usually several others that were being groomed for FTO status or were used to fill in in the absence of a regular FTO.  Corporals were considered entry-level supervisors and were training when not supervising a district.

During an FTO meeting with the administration, the majority agreed that the stipend wasn't enough and requested it be doubled as a starting point.  When the Captain countered with a vacation stipend we agreed that it was a good idea, assuming we could actually use the time we earned.  The next month the Captain came back and reported that they couldn't find the budget money to increase the stipend (I don't believe that) but offered us 8 hours of vacation time per year for being an FTO.  The response from the FTOs was a mixture of angry and confused...

Unofficially, FTOs get preferential treatment for specialty unit positions, which I believe is a result of their advanced investigation and report writing skills as opposed to a token of appreciation for being an FTO.  There are very few senior non-ranked Deputies in road patrol, which leads to far too many young Deputies becoming FTOs.

I don't know if any of this has changed, considering I've been gone for a few months.

Although we are a state of Maryland police agency, we are pretty small in the grand scheme of police agencies.  Unless it has changed after I retired, Cpls and senior officers were directed to be FTO's by our command staff.  Sgt's after the six or eight weeks of FTO did a check ride with the officer for an 8 hr period, both underway and patrolling on land.  The Lieutenant had the final say after reading the FTO's imput as well as the SGT's.  Rarely an officer got recycled thru FTO once he or she did their training, but hearing lately that some of the newer officers are having issues with boat operations and are simply assigned to a location that doesn't have any marine activity.  (I guess a body is a body)...

Never heard of Sgts being actual FTO’s, that job always was for a trusted Officer/Deputy only.  We paid FTO’s extra as well.

I spent plenty of time as an FTO, it is a lot of work and wears you down sometimes.  Had a recruit when I was promoted to SGT, found that being a full time Sgt was easier than having a recruit who needs a lot of work!  (Had been an acting Sgt prior).  Great recruit and worker in the end, he just had a lot of things that needed working on when he was in training and was one of the most challenging I had trained.

Can’t see a Sgt being an FTO for a new recruit at all, pointless if you have other people to supervise.

Way way back in the day, I spent 2 months riding around with others before going to the academy, then 2 weeks with an FTO after graduation…. Then someone left the agency, I was moved to fill the gap, training Sgt said “I will be your FTO!” since he worked that shift.  Talk about a sink or swim way of doing things, there was a lot of times I was damned close to sinking.  But I did learn a lot the hard way.  Don’t recommend it.  But he never was like an actual FTO at all either.  Don’t see how he could have been to be honest.

Since it isn’t the mid 90’s anymore, I can’t see how that would really work out in 2024.  It barely worked out back then, and many people would not have made it like I was able to.

Bitch about unions all you want, but LE work is one place where they do make a lot of sense.  Being an FTO should be a job given to people who are good cops themselves, and they need the compensation for all the extra work, headaches, and liability.

We give you an hour of overtime pay for each shift you FTO, so it’s about $300 a week.

We can't get anyone to want to do it for $5 an hour.