PHOTO AP/BLOOMSBURG PRESS ENTERPRISE, JIMMY MAY
A suspect approaches a Florida Department of Agriculture Law Enforcement officer during a reality-based field-training scenario. The officer then tackles the suspect. The department’s Law Enforcement Office can easily and quickly document such training with Crown Pointe Technologies’ Field Training Officer System software, which allows FTOs to instantly check the status of new recruits’ progress with training requirements any time. PHOTOS COURTESY FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE OFFICE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT
These Daily Observation Reports show the officer in training’s performance in their daily activities, and, in the bar graph, the administrator’s scoring of the recruit in each of the activities. The multi-colored matrix graph shows the administrator’s comments at the bottom. These comments change as the software’s user clicks on a different activity. Also, the software’s user can set what scoring levels will require comments to be entered.
SCREENSHOTS COURTESY CROWNE POINTE
These Daily Observation Reports show the officer in training’s performance in their daily activities, and, in the bar graph, the administrator’s scoring of the recruit in each of the activities. The multi-colored matrix graph shows the administrator’s comments at the bottom. These comments change as the software’s user clicks on a different activity. Also, the software’s user can set what scoring levels will require comments to be entered.
SCREENSHOTS COURTESY CROWNE POINTE
According to Keith Rex of the Kissimmee (Fla.) Police Department, the ADORE’s Daily Performance Chart allows trainers to quickly identify areas in which you have a pattern.
SCREENSHOT COURTESY MDE, INC.FEATURED IN TRAINING
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Many agencies worry about under-trained recruits coming from academies to law enforcement departments for full-time employment. Charles Knoll, executive director of the National Association of Field Training Officers, agrees with this concern. “The quality of the candidate has changed in the last six to eight years with regards to getting naïve students out of the academy who don’t have real-world experience,” Knoll says. “There’s an inability to communicate with people and a lack of common sense.”
Knoll believes 15 weeks of training is not long enough to train a person into a police officer, and almost every agency does indeed require weeks of additional training before a new recruit sets foot in the field. Post-academy training programs are typically offered through a field training officer (FTO) management program or a police training officer (PTO) management program.
Regardless of which program an agency uses, the training’s effectiveness hinges on comprehensive documentation and program review, and it’s essential for training records to be electronically available on a computer system. Many agencies are required to provide field-training documentation as part of an officer’s records when reporting to their state training standards organizations. More importantly, a department trained through an FTO or PTO program coupled with documentation offered through an effective electronic FTO or PTO training system will help shield a law enforcement agency from civil suits.
“If you’ve got a good FTO program that’s doing the job, then you’re going to save the department money by not hiring the wrong people or working with them for nine months and then firing them because they should not have been hired in the first place,” Knoll says. “Automating the FTO program is only going to help the department develop recruits into successful officers.”
Automating an FTO or PTO program yields additional advantages. An automated program covers a range of content, phases and evaluation processes. Officers can quickly access records, standardize forms, generate reports, easily share documentation and review trends. In many instances, officers can load FTO or PTO systems on laptops or mobile data terminals to complete reports in the field.
Available PTO or FTO software has some common components. For FTO programs, these include daily observation reports, dated checklists, weekly evaluations, remedial training worksheets, phase evaluation reports, final evaluation report and end-of-program critique forms. PTO software components include daily journaling, problem-based learning exercises, training reports, neighborhood portfolio exercises, weekly evaluation reports and mid-term and final evaluation reports.
There’s no shortage of training software available. I’ll discuss some of the newest offerings below.
Crown Pointe Technologies, Inc.
www.crownpointetech.com
The weekly coaching and training report is at the heart of Crown Pointe’s PTO program, which six PTOs in the CPD use to review new officers’ self evaluations. “When the CTR is on the computer, I can see what the recruit wrote, what the PTO wrote and pull up their CTR even before they’re done with it,” says Lieutenant Todd Bailey, who initiated and oversees the PTO program. “What I like about the software program is that I can pull up the journal or CTR anytime and know where a recruit is on any shift, any time. By having this accessibility, I can get better feedback to and from the PTOs.”
Officer Philip Howrey, another CPD PTO, explains that it’s crucial for PTOs to wait to post their observations before getting a recruit’s initial comments. “We want to evaluate where the recruits really see themselves,” Howrey says.
CPD Officer Greg Kantola wholeheartedly agrees. “The portion of the PTO program that helps with training is the feedback you get about recruits’ emotion intelligence—where they are perceiving that they’re lacking,” Kantola emphasizes. “That’s where you have an opportunity to kind of build on what you’ve done in the patrol car because [the officer in training] may be way off base.”
Crown Pointe Technologies is one of few vendors offering PTO software. The company also offers an FTO software module. Crown Pointe gives customers a choice of a local area network or Web-enabled version of its FTO system and will soon offer its PTO system available in a Web-enabled version.
For many law enforcement agencies, customizing the software is the only way it can meet their needs. This is certainly the case for the Florida Department of Agriculture’s Office of Law Enforcement (FDAOLE) given the specific nature of its police work. “We only hire people who are already law enforcement certified,” explains Captain Mark Haddock, who oversees this agency and its 250 officers and hires at least 50 new officers a year, all of whom go through an FTO training program. “We have such a wide-ranging area of expertise in agricultural crimes, interdiction crimes, arson and wildland fire.”
Haddock replaced a cumbersome FTO application with Crown Pointe’s Field Training Officer System. “An FTO system changes daily, it’s very fluid,” explains Haddock. “Your curriculum is evolving daily. So, we wanted to take our skill sets, our FTO manual, our information and customize that software to reflect what we’re teaching.”
The system’s fields for the FDAOLE’s FTO forms are easily defined, requiring no technical support. ”Without a high level of computer expertise, you can customize the program to make it look like what you do,” Haddock says.
Another reason why field training software is so attractive to law enforcement agencies is the built-in safeguards and justification for specific evaluations or ratings. And this is where built in customizations that can be made by the user is essential. Example: The FDAOLE has customized Crown Pointe’s software to offer a combined numerical and descriptive rating system using a 1–3 scale for the daily observation report, with 1 indicating unsatisfactory, 2 representing satisfactory and 3 indicating outstanding. The terms unsatisfactory, satisfactory and outstanding are used along with a 1–7 point rating scale.
“There’s a place for comments in our FTO software. If you rate (a trainee) under or above a 2 rating, you have to provide a comment,” Haddock says. “The FTO can’t leave that screen until they explain that rating.”
Adds Chuck Lowry, president of Crown Pointe Technologies: “Many agencies have based their field training program on the San Jose FTO model, yet have found they are continually customizing their program to accommodate needs and requirements unique to their organization. As a result, the software must be highly configurable by the user so it can adapt accordingly.”
MdE, Inc.
www.mde-inc.com/adore
In addition to the daily observation report, ADORE provides a bi-weekly supervisor’s report, end-of-phase report and unlimited narrative reports. There are optional features for automating the task/check list, list of calls, report, etc. ADORE also allows each department to customize the evaluation categories and track training time. The company sells both standard PC and Web versions of ADORE.
S & S Software
www.sammonsoftware.com
The software, called Field Training Officer Software Program, is similar to other programs. Sammon, who designed the software himself, says his goal is to help police agencies weed out trainees who may not be suitable for law enforcement careers to help prevent liability issues.
The S & S Software package may be a good fit if your agency isn’t planning on a lot of customizing because it contains mostly standardized formatting, such as the national standard 31-question daily observation report and a seven-point numerical rating system based on the San Jose FTO Model. The company sells a standard version, a second version that includes minor changes embedded in phases within the FTO program, and a Web-based version.
The Ardmore (Okla.) Police Department recently acquired S & S Software’s Field Training Officer Program to ease the transition to post-academy training. Similar to field training of most agencies, Ardmore’s newly hired recruits go directly into a 17-week FTO training program comprising three phases that are five weeks apiece.
“We like the daily observation reports because they can be exported to the FTO supervisor and to the director of the FTO program,” says department Captain Edwin Harwood.
Hardwood chose the S & S Software product primarily because it’s easy to use and offers standardized FTO forms. Like his peers, Harwood especially likes the software’s seven-point rating system. “I believe it’s held up in court every time,” Harwood says. “It’s important to have this.” So far, the captain plans on little, if any, customization to his electronic FTO training software.
Mushroom Software
www.mushroomsoftwareonline.com
FROGS is a bare-bones approach to FTO training program documentation and tracking. Like most other FTO software offerings, FROGS standardizes the forms produced by the FTO, allows the FTP to handle evaluations quickly and easily, and is inexpensively priced so the smallest law enforcement agency can afford it.
FROGS does not allow an extensive amount of customization, and only one standard PC version is available.
There’s little question that automating your field training program, whether it’s an FTO or PTO model, can only strengthen the overall content and results of the training and quality of officers. By having specialized software to operate your field-training program, you can save time, eliminate paperwork, build efficiency and avoid costly mistakes.
Haddock sums up automation’s value best: “Your original goal is to have good documentation efficiently. And the efficiency is as important as the documentation.”
