Training Officers for Life, Not Just Work

All officers have to go through extensive training. At a minimum, every state requires that officers go through a police academy in order to receive education in things that will be applicable to the job. Of course, there is the old saying that resembles something along the lines of “Forget everything they taught you in the academy, it’s all BS.”

But for the most part, the academy trains new recruits in what it means to be a police officer. There are lessons on ethics, firearms, and legal precedent that grants authority and restricts certain actions. For a few months, the education and development of new officers is the supreme focus of the agency.

However, when officers finally make it to their shifts, there is often a decline in the application of professional development initiatives. Sure, the officers enter the Field Training Officer Program to learn how things work for your department and in real-world scenarios, but the FTO program is only as good as your FTOs. I’ve seen departments where the FTOs don’t even care about training anyone, they just want the pay incentive that comes with the position.

For this reason, I do not recommend paying your FTOs more money. It encourages the wrong people to apply. Instead, craft that position as a solidified leadership position within the hierarchy of your department. Ensure senior and knowledgeable officers are selected for the program and trust their discretion. Patrol supervisors are very busy in many jurisdictions. Having another layer of the command staff can be very beneficial. Your FTOs should be your mentors on your shift. They should be the people who are approached first for questions or issues during the shift. Then, the FTO should be the voice of the shift to the sergeants and above. The FTO should be an advocate for patrol officers which will help them develop as a leader.

You also need to provide the FTOs with the resources to do the job well. If you don’t trust their discretion or allow them the autonomy to set shift meetings, presentations, or talking points at muster, then you are doing a disservice to your program. If your FTOs are your go-to officers, they should have time at roll call or muster to discuss any items of importance or things that need to be done better. They should have a seat at the table to check reports and make corrections.

The FTO program should have FTOs that want to train new officers. The best FTOs I had did role-playing scenarios in the middle of the night in an empty parking lot of a business or behind the police department. We would simulate traffic stops. The FTO would recruit another officer to be an actor for the scenarios. We would stage a traffic stop, and the FTO would give the other officer the scene. For example, he would say, “This time, just act completely normal. Compliant. Easy stop. No cause for concern. Do what you’re asked to do and be courteous”.

I’d make the “stop” the same as I would on the street. I’d call it into dispatch, make my approach, and interview the driver. I’d determine any actions that needed to be taken and then proceed as I would through the whole stop. After we completed the scenario, we would debrief. The senior officer along with my FTO would critique my performance. It was a valuable experience and helped me to hone my skills.

After my own experiences through FTO and after becoming a senior officer, I was asked to be the actor for new recruits going through the FTO process. The FTO would set the scene with me and then turn it over to the rookie to get behind me. I’d be driving through the parking lot, stopping at the intersections, and signaling my turns. The rookie would wait for a violation. I’d not come to a complete stop or I’d fail to signal a turn. Sometimes, I’d turn off my lights to ensure an easy violation was observed depending on the rookie’s experience. When the violation was observed, the rookie would initiate the stop by activating the blue lights. I’d pull over, and the rookie, with the FTO in the passenger seat, would have to pretend to call in the stop to dispatch.

The rookie officer would exit the vehicle and approach my vehicle to conduct the roadside interview. Sometimes I was quite pleasant and compliant. Other times I was downright aggressive. I’d blast the music so he couldn’t hear himself think. I’d call him a racist and a pig and say that I could tell he was brand new and had no idea what he was doing. Sometimes, I was a friendly “drunk” who had a few too many at the bar and gave the officer a credit card instead of my ID. When I wanted to up the ante, I drove as fast as I could through the parking lot, pulled up to the rear door of the PD, and bailed out of the vehicle. I’d sprint away from the car, leave the door ajar, music blaring, and disappear into the building.

Sometimes it was designed to be a forced loss on the recruit. You don’t always get to win, but you should give yourself the best shot. You should know how to communicate on the radio throughout. And you should know what an adrenaline dump feels like before it’s real suspects and real danger.

It was all a game. But the lessons were real. I remember one “stop” specifically that proved the value of the role-playing more significantly than others in my mind. I had done a few different interactions with the rookie as I played the driver in my assumed role. As a general rule, weapons were out of play during any and all role-playing. Guns, OC, and Tasers were not to leave holsters. Batons were to stay sheathed. It was, of course, a safety concern and it was understood that no weapons would be needed or deployed through the course of the role-playing.

That being said, this one particular recruit was not taking the scenarios seriously. They were going through the motions. One stop, I was polite but hid my hands in my jacket. The officer didn’t ask me to remove my hands or address the behavior. On the next stop, the officer made a passenger-side approach. I positioned my body in a way that hid my left hand. I placed my right hand on top of the steering wheel and made my shoulder big in front of my body. It obscured my left arm and allowed me to keep my hand between the door and the seat.

It is a common practice for police officers to want to see hands at all times. The fact that I was very clearly hiding my hands and not getting a response was irritating me. The officer was not looking in the vehicle for evidence or additional information. He was going through the bare bones of a stop, “License, insurance, blah blah blah”. The tactics were poor. The next stop, I escalated.

I was not polite, but I wasn’t quite belligerent. I was just aggravated. I stayed quiet and made him repeat questions. I grunted in response to his asks. He was seemingly getting irritated and started to escalate his tone to gain compliance. I did as I was told and gave him what he needed to identify me. He completed the stop and ended the scenario after giving me my “ticket”. The FTO and the officer walked back to their patrol car, and I exited for our debrief.

Not only did I change my behavior during this interaction, but I also added another element that I wanted to know if the officer identified. I asked how he thought the stop went. He said that he was frustrated I wouldn’t give him information, but he was glad that, eventually, he got what he needed. I told him that the situation could have gone another way. I could have continued to refuse the information and escalated it to a point where I needed to be removed from the car. In that circumstance, it would have been helpful to know if there were any potential threats involved.

I asked the officer what was on the front passenger seat. The officer made a passenger-side approach, he should have checked the vehicle in its entirety. He should have checked the back for any passengers or items of evidentiary value. He should have checked the passenger seat and the floorboard. In response to the question of what was on the passenger seat, he just looked at me bewildered.

I asked again, “What was the object in the front passenger seat?”

He again stared at me without a clue. He finally said he didn’t know, and I asked him to go have a look. He walked up and saw my Glock 17 service weapon sitting clear as day on the front passenger seat. He turned back and said, “Oh, I thought weapons were out of play.”

This was clearly a lie. Weapons were out of play. I didn’t draw down on him. I didn’t expect him to draw down on me. It was simply a test to see if he looked in the car like we had told him to. He didn’t and he got caught.

I explained to him that the gun was sitting there under his nose the whole time. That if I had wanted to, I could have easily grabbed that gun and hurt him. Had he asked me to step out of the car or gone around the car to remove me from the car, the proximity of that gun put him in a compromised position. He could have been killed that easily on the street because he didn’t look for the threat.

That was the last one for the night. The FTO told him there were tons of issues and he expected better if the rookie ever wanted to make it to a solo car.

That’s a good FTO. That is an officer who cares for those around him and demands excellence. Not for the pay. Not for the opportunity to boss someone around. But for the good of the job and the good of the shift. That FTO was hard on his recruits, but they also turned out to be some of the best officers in the department.

Why? Because they were pushed. They were held to a standard. They had someone who took the academy lessons and turned them into a 2:00 AM traffic stop with lights and sirens and someone running away. He put the recruits in a scenario that they had to think about and adapt to. And as a result, they learned.

Many cops won’t be cops their whole lives. They are going to leave the job and go into other professions. It is the responsibility of those around them to support their development as a professional, not just as a police officer.

This applies to not only the FTOs in your department but also your supervisors. Frankly, many cops are lazy. They want to check the boxes to get admin off their back. As a result, performance reviews are a matter of formality rather than an opportunity for improvement.

Instead of understanding the strengths of their shift and documenting the accomplishments of certain officers throughout the year, they put it on the officer. In one of my departments, the performance review for an officer would come up and they would ask that officer for the things they have done well that year and where they can improve. They would then turn around, dump that into the performance review sheet, and give them a raise.

Most officers going in for those reviews didn’t even have a shred of aspirational outlook for the future. They went in knowing what would be told to them and, as long as they got their raise, they were happy.

This is a missed opportunity. What professional development are you giving that officer? I had other supervisors who did want to know where you wanted to go within the department. They wanted to help you map a course to get there. They wanted to give you assignments and send you to schools to strengthen your candidacy for those positions.

That is the supervisor I want to work for. Someone who has my back and helps manage me on my professional journey. They make my job feel like a career with a purpose and a destination instead of a rut where I’m stuck and waiting for my next 3% bump.

Giving people the opportunity to actually learn from their performance is key. Much in the same way that we debriefed with the rookie after the simulated traffic stops, supervisors need to offer guidance and direction. They need to be able to identify things that an officer is doing really well. They also need to be able to articulate skills that are still developing, but are showing improvement. Lastly, they need to have at least a few areas that the officer can improve.

These don’t have to be life changing points. It may be as simple as, “You’re doing really well with community engagement. I see you at all the community events and you seem to have a great way of interacting with the public and creating a positive image of the police department.

I’d like to see your report writing improve. Sometimes it seems like you are not including all relevant information from a case and that will help you when it comes time to go to court and need to remember those smaller details.

For improvement, I’d like to see you take more ownership at crime scenes. Sometimes, it seems you are leaning on more veteran officers for guidance and direction. Taking more initiative in those environments will help you grow as an employee and help you for investigative positions in the future.”

Cops can be quick to provide short responses and just check the box. But there’s so much value that can be gained from a supervisor taking the time to provide not only adequate feedback but valuable feedback. You get out of what you put into people. Invest your time in your officers and your officers will perform better.

These skills translate into so many various forms outside of policing. The officers will become better spouses and parents because they will understand the purpose behind what they’re doing. They will feel empowered in their careers with a team that has their back. Instead of flying under the radar, they will grow and develop. They will build more skills both as a professional and as a person.

If they decide to leave policing, they will have something to take with them. They will have a better perspective and leadership style. They will have a better understanding of where their strengths lie and where they need to spend more time. They will have a better knowledgebase for life and not just work as a result of the training they receive.

I have a lot of law enforcement professionals reach out to me and want to know how to break into the private sector. I like to ask them what they’re good at and where their strengths are. Many have some way of saying that they are good with communication or with critical thinking, but they sometimes struggle with the application to a different sector. By training your people in critical ways and ensuring they are both valued and developed, you create a better employee. If they want to leave, you aren’t going to stop them by giving them worse training and less valuable information about who they are as a cop and where they can improve. If they want to leave, they will find a way out.

But you can help them while you have them. Show them the worth you see in them. Guide them to ways to do the job better. Mold them like a teacher does a pupil. Show them how to climb the ladder and tips and tricks that will help them get better. Just care. That’s it.

Just show up for them. Have their back. And care. They will perform better. Their morale will be higher. The retention will likely be higher. And when they do decide to leave one day, you’re sending someone out into the world who will still represent your department in a positive light for the rest of their life. People will see them in their next career or chapter and say, “Wow, where did this person come from, and how did they learn so much?” Let the answer to that question be that they came from your department, and they learned so much because you and your department spent the time needed to train people in a way that improves them not just now but for the future. You didn’t just train them for the job, you trained them for life as a leader and a professional. By doing that, you are serving in a higher way and you will command even more respect for the rank on your sleeve or collar.