The Master & The Apprentice

Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com

A few years ago I created (because I was bored and thought it sounded like a really good idea) a new awards program for police officers. The program mandated highter-than-usual skill levels and, most importantly in my mind, set a requirement for mentoring. Mentor: a wise and trusted counselor or teacher. Sure, police officers and deputy sheriffs (in my experience) go through a Field Training Officer (FTO) program or something similar. After they've finished the police academy they get put on the street under the guidance of a veteran officer. That veteran officer has enough experience and has displayed enough common sense, to be trusted to continue molding the new officer. Hopefully this process has improved since I graduated from the academy a couple decades ago; I worked my first day out of the academy by myself. That FTO program is a time frame wherein the veteran officer can evaluate the knowledge and skills of the "fabulous new guy" (FNG - Thanks Althea!). If the skills or knowledge aren't up to par then it's the FTO's job to coach / correct / mentor the FNG until his skills are sufficient to let him work on his own. What strikes me as odd - or at least inefficient - is that we have assigned and certified FTOs but agencies seem to completely ignore all of the vast experience NON-FTOs have. Does that mean that our other veteran officers have nothing to offer of value? Absolutely not... but then why aren't the agencies taking advantage of what they DO have to offer? In the program I built, each member who achieved the proper level of skill and passed the knowledge test acceptably, received the award. Every three years the tests had to be repeated so that the awarded member was encouraged to maintain that higher level of skill. However, upon the second renewal (in other words, after the officer held the award six years) then the officer was required to take on an apprentice. The goal? To pass along that higher level of knowledge and encourage matching levels of skills; literally to lead by example and motivate the FNGs to strive for something higher than the minimum standards. Is that a dead idea? Hopefully NEVER. Hopefully, whether such a structured awards program exists or not, the veteran officers will mentor the FNGs simply because it's the right thing to do. Do you?