{"id":3114,"date":"2012-11-05T09:45:26","date_gmt":"2012-11-05T14:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=3114"},"modified":"2012-11-05T09:45:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-05T14:45:26","slug":"police-field-training-and-natural-selection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/?p=3114","title":{"rendered":"Police Field Training and Natural Selection"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am no longer an active Field Training\"\"<\/a> Officer, but I am now in charge of them on my shift.\u00a0 As an FTO supervisor, I had the duty this week of accepting the resignation of one of our recruit officers.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of our natural selection.<\/p>\n

For the last twenty-plus years, I have been involved in this drill in one capacity or another.\u00a0 We hire a nice kid, see him\/her through the Academy, mold them further during department familiarization, then introduce them to the real job in a field training car.\u00a0 Percentages vary class by class, but generally anywhere from 10-50% of our recruits do not make it to being solo police officers.<\/p>\n

This recruit\u2019s job performance was clearly substandard in many areas.\u00a0 In a conference room, we talked to him at length about Daily Observation Reports, Standard Evaluation Guidelines, Officer Safety, Investigative Techniques, Report Writing, and even Punctuality.\u00a0 Along with me, a lieutenant and captain were present in the room.\u00a0 Long ago, I had been one of the LT\u2019s training officers and he had, in turn, trained the Cap.<\/p>\n

Like many rookies, this one had problems multitasking under “stress.”\u00a0 It would lead him to \u201cblanking out\u201d on calls and being unable to think about what to do next.\u00a0 Bad during normal service delivery, deadly in a critical situation.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for him (or maybe fortunately), this recruit had not even been under serious stress on the street to this point in his training.\u00a0 Vapor locking during a routine traffic stop and freezing up at the question of \u201cwhy did you pull me over, officer?\u201d is a sure sign that this type of public interaction is not in your future.<\/p>\n

Confronted with his documented performance thus far, the recruit came to the conclusion that it would be better to \u201cexcuse himself\u201d from the training program.\u00a0 We concurred.\u00a0 Foremost in our minds was safety: \u00a0for the recruit, for his fellow officers, and for the citizens.\u00a0 It was an emotional moment for the young man.<\/p>\n

I was reminded of something one of our old chiefs used to say about the field training program.\u00a0 He said that FTO\u2019s were the gatekeepers to the profession, allowing in those worthy and denying access to ones not up to the challenge.\u00a0 While that may be an embellished way to describe an FTO program, in a profession where you have the authority to take a person’s freedom or even his life, there must be a viable screening process.<\/p>\n

The kid came in yesterday to turn in the rest of his gear.\u00a0 Of course, it was awkward as he had been with us for several months.\u00a0 When he was ready to leave, I shook his hand and sincerely wished him well.\u00a0 I will probably never see him again.\u00a0 Walking back into the police building, I felt like our field training program had ended his dream, but potentially saved his life.<\/p>\n

Randall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am no longer an active Field Training Officer, but I am now in charge of them on my shift.\u00a0 As an FTO supervisor, I had the duty this week of accepting the resignation of one of our recruit officers.\u00a0 It\u2019s part of our natural selection. For the last twenty-plus years, I have been involved in this drill in one capacity or another.\u00a0 We hire a nice kid, see him\/her through the Academy, mold them further during department familiarization, then introduce them to the real job in a field training car.\u00a0 Percentages vary class by class, but generally anywhere from 10-50% of our recruits do not make it to being … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,4,10],"tags":[837,563,292],"class_list":["post-3114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc","category-officer-safety","category-street","tag-fto","tag-police-field-training-officer","tag-rookie-cop"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28xkp-Oe","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3114"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5136,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3114\/revisions\/5136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thinblueflorida.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}