Posted: 3/29/2007 9:11:21 AM EDT
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this a hot topic always of arfcom pretend you are in charge of the training for officers this will vary widely by size and region but here goes: In my opinion every officer should have the following skills training in addition to the standard fare : 1. Constitutional law and the BOR 2. Patrol fundamentals 3. Active shooter basic room clearing (Evey patrol officer operating in a area should be able to respond and form a stack and go) 4. Rifle/Subgun (And every patrol has one) 5. Pistol/Rifle Qualifications bi monthly 6. Force on Force Quarterly 7 Basic EMT 8 Public Relations |
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Sure, very nice. But people would bitch about the price of that shopping list. Frankly, EMT is overkill. I say that as an EMT-I. First responder with AHA Defib/CPR is enough. Don't need the packaging skills or the drugs. Got everything else except individual carbines & bi-monthly training. At $>40/hour, training is going to be the most expensive thing on the list. LOTS of money. |
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Some of the areas I have had issues with is various state laws are skipped in training. When I went through the academy there was no discussion of CCW laws. And again no training when I went through the refresher academy. ie open carry is not against the law in this state, and an AG opinion from 1986 concerning this issue is not covered. I have met officers who say they would arrest a person for open carry. But we HAD to spend X amount of time covering DV laws because it is mandated. Now as far as supplemental training I think officers should be given advanced training every quarter. ie, officer down, active shooter, interview/interrogation, DT, etc. |
My dept is only a little over 400 sworn employees. We use a 20 round qualificiation for pistol and rifle (still not including shotgun and back up weapons), but most in our state have a 50 round qualification. Sticking with my dept, the numbers would be 32,000 rounds per month for pistol and rifle. Per year that would be 384,000 rounds. If you can get ammo at a low price of $100 per K, then you are looking at about $40K in ammo. If you have people perform the qualification during their regular schedule, you may have staffing issues, so you will probably have to pay overtime to complete the qualification. Being extremely frugal once again, you will be lucky to have each person complete a pistol and rifle qualification in 1 hour. With a 400 person dept, that is 800 hours a month minimum (I don't think it is possible to do in that short or time), then at an average OT rate of $40 hour, that is $384,000 a year, for a total of over $400,000 a year in weapons qualifications. Also, you would have to have a full time training staff devoted to just weapons qualifications. I am not trying to disagree with you. I think it would be ideal to have each officer pass a qualification before each shift, but I also don't think it is reasonable. Part of the problem I see is lack of officers desire to better themselves on their own time. There is nothing preventing each individual officer from studying the law, BoR, training with weapons, etc. on their own time, but the majority never even pick up a weapon other than to strap on their belt. |
Dayum. Nail, meet hammer! If I had any say in it, I'd definately vote for better training - not because I think cops do a bad job the majority of the time, but I believe in lenient officer discretion and, quite frankly, that'll never fly as long as the academy is only 640 hours and out of that, you have PT and weapon quals and history. Personally, I see it as an investment: Better trained cops in local laws means less cost in the long run from suits stemming from things such as improper procedure and settlements occuring when decisions made out of ignorance anger citizens under their jurisdiction. The academy should be twice as long for POST certification, and they should be paid better for attending. There should be NO personal cost for attending the academy, and the selection process should be scrutinized and made better where possible. There is a reason some police are well respected in their area, while other officers in other areas are just detested by the very communities they serve. |
On the surface, I'm guilty of the above. Scratch it at all however, I bitch about taxes being wasted. I don't ever bitch about departments budgets and expenditures, unless they are frivilously wasting big bucks on something that has little to no practicle value, yet whine that they don't have a budget for fundamentals. Case in Point: The Boulder, Co police department spent god knows how much on an armored vehicle, using the excuse of the hill riots (that they are in no way guiltless in the start of), when the money would have been much better spent on damned near anything else - including training on how not to help start a riot. If they requested money for new/better vests, both a lighter day-to-day wear one and a heavy class IV for each officer, I'd support it. If they requested money to increase mandatory range time and qualifications, I'd support it. If the requested more money for more officers so each one could spend 1 day a month getting continuing training on everything from current case law to active shooter ot whatever other usefull skills, I'd support it. When the city spends god knows how much on a new homeless shelter that rivals many hotels, and is certainly nicer than many apartments I've rented here, damned straight I'm pissed. That's a waste of money. |
Thats the answer right there. You get what you pay for and when it comes time to make cuts...cut the guys on the road or the guys in training...training loses every time. Then we wonder why there are mistakes and accidents... |
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I should add that most if not all of my extra training was done with my time being donated and only sometimes the county picking up the fees. Just like any job you are going to have guys that want to excel and slackers. I have heard of officers wanting to go on their own but being denied time off or even told not to go 
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My agency has been known to forbid agents from going to training in their off time that was paid for by personal funds... The line was that if we paid for training out of pocket and went in our own time, that training might conflict with what we teach in house and therefore might train us to do something against policy. You can forget about my agency paying for you to go to any external training...never gonna happen.  You can however get training funds to go to college, meetings, seminars, etc... Just no tactical training. |
All of my training, academy, refresher academy, firearms instructor, swat, sniper, blah, blah, all paid for by me and on my time. The only thing my department pays for is the 12 hours of MANDATED annual training, which is really just a waste of time. The only person in my department who gets paid training is the cheif because it's madated. |
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I kinda like that idea...half as many and paid twice as much. But then the Unions gotta go, and even command structure would have to be re-theorized. How's this for outside the box? What if LE was not viewed as a "lifelong career", but more as a stepping stone on your way into evolving into something else, as encouraged by "term limits". Very much like an enlistment, however the "term of exposure" would be limited. Turn Us vs. Them into Them is Us. Craziness... 
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Interesting but not practical IMO given the current climate. There are a lot of cops that don't know anything but LE - they got a criminal justice/admin of justice degree and then went to a dept. They learned some good skills but a lot of them do not translate into the private sector - similar to an infantryman after a 4 year hitch. IMO a step that could be enacted almost immediately would be to raise the minimum age for being hired from 21 y/o to 30 y/o with a 4 year degree. Get folks with time under their belt but you may have a serious applicant shortage. Brian |
Very good analysis. As with most everything, once you put numbers to it you see why things are the way they are. |
Term limits would kill professional policing. It takes years before an officer is really good at his job. I know that I missed some arrests when I was new and I still learn from the older guys. The pay issue is valid though. Unions will never leave because of the politics...as in cops getting charged because they arrested someone who is the cousin of the mayor, etc. Cops need the union to protect them from their own city as crazy ats it sounds. The real issue is that we as LEOs need to professionalize and make standards universal...but to do that, we need more officers and a LOT more money. The fundamental problem with getting those is that nobody wants to spend money on Police until after they get robbed and need the cops to help them...then it is too late. |
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Half the cops but double the pay? Nice thought, but police are seriously understaffed as it is. We had 30 officer on the screen today and still had calls holding all day long. The pressure of officers trying to keep up with the call volume will greatly decrease the quality of service, for starters. |
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Hey VRWC, here at Ft. Jackson, Combatives Level 1 is available to LE as well as military. It is a one week instruction on how to close the distance to striking range, gain dominant body position, and finish the fight. I have been beat up all week...best vacation I ever had! seriously, I highly recommend it for LEOs. edit: just re reading what I wrote, I didn't make a very good point, but it is basically ground grappling. Many fights a day in a rotating circle, 5 days long. New opponent every few minutes to get experience fighting diff. body types. Every time I hear of a LEO killed while on duty, I wonder if we had just spent more $ on training, maybe that would have saved the man's life. |
The basic school in NYS , if you don't take one of the abreviated schools, currently runs 6 1/2 months. Most of the stuff you mention was covered in MY basic school years ago. No rifles being issued back then to patrol officers of course. |
I like it |
New York allocates about 1% of the state budget for the SP's |