Police training officer

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The Police Training Officer program (PTO) is a post-academy training program created from the educational approach known as problem-based learning. It was developed by the United States Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services [1] to train police recruits once they graduate from the police academy. It was initially developed to replace the 30-year old Field Training Officer (FTO) program, which research surveys indicated had become incompatible with community based policing and problem solving. Research and implementation was funded by the COPS office of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The program runs over 16 weeks once recruits complete academy training. It is broken into four three week phases including non-emergency, emergency, patrol, and criminal investigation. Each phase of training is accompanied by a learning exercise which the recruit must resolve using daily calls for service and community partnerships. It also includes a neighborhood familiarization project to teach new recruits how to partner with community residents to effectively deal with crime and neighborhood problems. Independent evaluators assess the recruits progress throughout.

PTO was created by police specialists Gerry Cleveland and Gregory Saville and field tested for the first time in 2000 in the Reno Police Department, Reno, Nevada under the guidance of Chief Jerry Hoover, Deputy Ron Glensor, Commander Steve Pitts, and Officer Dave Ponte. It was later expanded into six other pilot police academies, through assistance of the Police Executive Research Forum and the COPS Office. Those agencies include Charlotte-Mecklenberg (North Carolina), Colorado Springs (Colorado), Richmond (California), Lowell (Massachusetts), and Savannah (Georgia). As of 2006 over 70 police agencies have now successfully adopted the PTO program using PBL as the basis of recruit training, and the State of California is now adopting it [2].

Due to success of the program, a subsequent certification process was developed for police instructors called Police Problem Based Learning (PBL) for Instructor Development. Also funded by the COPS Office, the program led to the creation of the non-profit, non-affiliated Police Society for Problem Based Learning, an international organization of police instuctors interested in improving all aspects of police education [3].

[edit] References

Hoover, Jerry, Gerard Cleveland and Greg Saville, “A New Generation of Field Training: The Reno PTO Model,” in Melissa Reuland, Corina Sole Brito and Lisa Carroll, eds., Solving Crime and Disorder Problems. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, 2001, pp. 175-189.