Police Training and Evaluation

Recruit, Field, and In-Service Training

Agency-affiliated, regional, and college-sponsored police academies provide recruit (or basic) training. Large municipal and state police agencies usually establish agency-affiliated (or individual) academies. Regional (or statewide) academies typically provide basic training for local city and town police recruits. In some states such as California, some individuals interested in becoming police officers attend college-sponsored police-training academies, where they take part in basic police training and earn college credit. Among academies, the length of training time varies. Some recruits receive as little as 8 weeks of training, whereas others receive as much as 32 weeks. State Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) commissions set the minimum length of recruit training time. Police academies may add training time to the minimum required by state POST commissions. Generally, agency-affiliated training academies require more hours of training than do regional or college-sponsored ones.

When police recruits graduate from basic training, most of them enter Field Training Officer (FTO) programs implemented by their agencies. FTO programs have recruits—now field trainees—ride along with incumbent officers who have formal training in teaching established program curricula and evaluating trainee performance in actual work conditions. Police trainees learn agency-specific policies and practices and work-area-relevant information. The duration of their field training and evaluation period may be as little as 10 weeks or as much as 24 weeks.

Once police trainees complete their FTO programs, they receive periodic in-service (or refresher) training during which they relearn, practice, and correct acquired job-related knowledge and skills. In-service training aims to reduce forgetting and performance deterioration, which naturally result from the passage of time. It sometimes involves acquiring new knowledge or specialized skills. Some police agencies require officers from all organizational levels to participate in in-service training. Some agencies excuse [Page 591]their executive officers (e.g., chiefs) from having to participate in some types of in-service training, such as self-defense tactics, because executive officers rarely respond to calls for service that have a potential for violence. The length of in-service training varies among police agencies. It sometimes depends on the minimum standards set by state POST commissions. Often, training time is a function of departmental fiscal budgets, legislative mandates, and union contracts. The content of in-service training curricula also varies among police agencies: Some include only subject matter that is legislatively mandated (e.g., firearms training); some include a variety of topics, such as domestic violence, use of force, and diversity training; and others include curricula established by state POST commissions.

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