I often joke about my training background and tell people that I am a recovering trainer. I always enjoyed training and still miss it. Here recently I have observed a training gap between officers of different generations or police eras. This is more than recent academy graduates and their Field Training Officers (FTO) but continues to manifest itself between staff and young officers. Let me explain what I am talking about.
Training Basics
If you have ever worked as a full-time trainer you will use the terms of knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) of your students. Without getting too in-depth on the matter it is relatively basic. Each student has a level of knowledge on a topic matter. They possess life and job skills necessary to function at the level required by the employer. Finally, they have abilities to perform the job and levels of expertise of these as well. Within your job description there are measures of each of the KSAs. These were documented when the agency adopted or performed a job task analysis for a law enforcement officer. Now from these job descriptions are written after a job task analysis (JTA) is completed. The police training specialists develop the training curriculum for the academy from these descriptions and JTAs. Does this begin to fall together for you? As difficult as academics try to make adult education, it is not that hard to grasp.
Training Gaps
I have always been the proponent that FTOs should have a FTO Refresher course that is produced by the academy. Of course, in most places this does not occur. One of the areas that needs to be addressed is new topics that have been injected into the academy's curriculum over the past year or so. The FTOs are training newly minted officers that have been presented new topics and new methodologies that the FTOs maybe unfamiliar with. This is a training gap that can be easily broached. I have also recommended to FTOs to visit their academy and inquire if there are new topics that they may need to get up to speed on. If so, sit in that class next time it is offered to gain understanding of the topic. I recently contacted a colleague of mine, Gary Taylor who is the Director of Training for the Savannah-Chatham Metro Police (GA). When inquiring what new topics he is presenting to his recruits, I was impressed to find out that ICS (Incident Command) was worked into exercises. Brilliant work, Gary!
Now, for the senior commanders; if you can find your old academy notebooks from a few decades ago take a close look at the curriculum. If you can compare it to today's academy curriculums you will be shocked to say the least. First of all, there are probably several weeks added due to the sheer numbers of new classes. What are these classes? From the 1980s, we probably added hazardous materials, community policing, and probably defensive tactics turned into subject control. From the 1990s, the topics were racial profiling, blood borne pathogens, ADA-HIPPA and Compstat. In the 21st Century we added terrorism, NIMS, ICS, response to school shootings and field force deployments. Not to forget all of the new laws that have been added throughout all the years. My point is now to the commanders: you have officers that have far more training in a litany of topics that you may only have a cursory understanding about; again we have training gaps.
Closing Advice
This does not mean that the younger ones are smarter than their commander or the FTO. It means that they have had formal training in a topic. The elder statesmen and stateswomen here have valuable life experiences with these topics and together you can combine their experiences and insight with your training to overcome whatever obstacle that presents itself. Granted in a perfect world, in-service training should have filled in the gaps through the years. If not, I strongly recommend that your training unit or academy performs an updated training, especially for the FTOs. I have always said that we can not solve tomorrow's problems with yesterday's thinking. We must train futuristically with providing the best training we can afford to our staff. No more gaps, no excuses, just performance.
