Police Training Officer (PTO) Program

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

Summary of the program

The Police Training Officer program is a new model for post-academy field training in law enforcement. In this model recruits use problem-based learning to address neighborhood problems in partnership with the communities they serve. Problem-based learning is a recent development in police education and this program is the first time it has been used in such a fashion.

When was the program developed?

Research and development for the Police Training Officer (PTO) project was sponsored and funded by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the U.S. Department of Justice (COPS Office) from 1999 to 2002.

The PTO program was initiated and implemented by Chief Jerry Hoover and Deputy Chief Ron Glensor of the Reno Police, Dr. Ellen Scrivner at the COPS Office, and the Police Executive Research Forum. The program was created and developed by police consultant and educational specialist Gerry Cleveland and Gregory Saville a research professor at the University of New Haven.

Why was the program developed?

Police agencies have adopted a philosophy widely known as community oriented policing and problem solving (COPPS). Statistics indicate community policing has grown to more than half of the law enforcement agencies in the United States. As a philosophy, COPPS operates at the very basic foundation of our culture: our values.

The value-driven approach is difficult to acquire in policing because it functions at the neighborhood level and will not succeed unless the traditional police organizational culture changes. If police agencies are serious about reform, then they must determine the local community values and use them as the basis for creating their COPPS philosophy. Typically this begins at the level of the patrol officer and it is during field training where values are first taught.

New officers enter their organization with various views of policing. During the first several months these officers develop a manner of behaving that allows them to operate in their new environment. If field training does not inculcate them into the principles of COPPS and value-driven policing, police reform will be impossible to sustain into the future. The PTO program was developed to address some of these concerns.

New education research

Education research has improved greatly in the last few decades. We now know a great deal about how adults learn in the most effective way. Problem-based learning was developed by Dr. Howard Barrows at McMaster University in Ontario for medial school students in the 1970s. The developers of the PTO program selected problem-based learning as the central component of the program. We also know that recruits do not all learn the same way, they have a multitude of learning styles. In spite of this many academies and field training programs use only a few methods to teach recruits: lectures, scenario's or hand-on training. In actual fact, learning styles are based "multiple intelligences", an idea developed by Harvard's Howard Gardiner. We know learners transfer their skills to real-life when they are emotionally engaged in the material, what Daniel Goleman calls "emotional intelligence".

Problem-based learning capitalizes on all that research. It is integral to the Police Training Officer program. It helps recruits learn COPPS and value-driven policing from the first day on the street. The PTO program developers ensured that problem-based learning, emotional intelligence, and multiple-intelligence ideas were carefully crafted into each part of this new training model for law enforcement.

When was the program developed?

Research and development for the Police Training Officer (PTO) project was sponsored and funded by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the U.S. Department of Justice (COPS Office) from 1999 to 2002.

The PTO program was initiated and implemented by Chief Jerry Hoover and Deputy Chief Ron Glensor of the Reno Police, Dr. Ellen Scrivner at the COPS Office, and the Police Executive Research Forum. The program was created and developed by police consultant and educational specialist Gerry Cleveland and Gregory Saville a research professor at the University of New Haven.

How does the PTO program differ from other police training?

Police agencies across the country use a recruit field training method developed in the 1970s. It was created for evaluating, not training, recruits. This is done through the use of daily checklists on individual tasks. Checklists and task-based training that emphasize "passing and failing" scores have not helped recruits learn. These methods provide little time to teach new officers the complex duties of neighborhood problem solving and ethical policing that are the mainstay of contemporary law enforcement.

Today police need to think on their feet, work in partnership with neighborhoods to solve problems, and be sensitive to the ethnic and cultural difference in communities. They need to be able to use new technologies such as the Internet and computerized crime mapping to diagnose crime patterns. Field trainers and police executives repeatedly told us that traditional training methods did not work to help recruits learn those skills. The Police Training Officer program was created in response to this dilemma.

Solving problems in partnership with neighbors resides at the center of problem-based learning. In the PTO program the regular duties of policing are incorporated, but they are put into the context of specific neighborhood problems. Recruits are challenged to think creatively, and use community resources, to deal with disorder and crime. They are allowed to learn through their mistakes by "failing forward" without failing the program, and consequently gain confidence to use collaborative, ethical and creative approaches to policing.

Mechanics of the PTO program

A full description of the PTO program is beyond the capacity of this website. For complete instruction, a 5 day course of formal instruction in the PTO method has been developed as part of the program.

The COPS office released the PTO training manual in the summer of 2002. A PBL train-the-trainer course to teach instructors how to deliver this unique method was created and has been presented throughout North America with astounding success since 2003. It is important to remember that PBL is a new instructional approach in law enforcement. It does NOT align with traditional police instruction and will ultimately require proper certification in order to teach it. That is why the PSPBL society was created.

The PTO program has four 3 week phases of training, including two one week independent evaluation periods. Each phase of training corresponds to a style of policing and these include patrol, non-emergency, emergency, and criminal investigation. All throughout the process trainees are expected to practice 15 core competencies. These include problem-solving skills, ethics, officer safety, civil rights, and report writing skills.

Within each phase of training the recruit will be tasked with an ill-structured problem, called the Problem-Based Learning Exercise. They will use a PBL methodology to tackle this problem. Recruits will also be asked to write up a weekly self-evaluation using a learning matrix which the training officer will supervise and comment. There are no daily observation reports used in this model. The recruit will use regular calls for service to provide real-life examples of resources, local problems, and places where he or she can solve their assigned training tasks.

The recruit must also compile an area beat profile, called the Neighborhood Portfolio Exercise, and this will be evaluated at the end of the training period.