Field Training Length

[McCrackhd]

Our academy is 5 mo.'s long and FTO is 3 mo's. I personally feel our FTO period should be at least 6 months-if not 12 like LA.

I was wondering what the length of FTO is for other agencies?

[creolecop]

Our Academy is 11 or 12 weeks can't recall, and our FTO is a very structured 6mo program and can only recylcle one phase once and two phases for the entire program, though if you are recommended for recycle of two seperate phases you likely will be let go or given the option of returning to the jail.

[BigDawg]

Our Academy is 11 or 12 weeks can't recall, and our FTO is a very structured 6mo program and can only recylcle one phase once and two phases for the entire program, though if you are recommended for recycle of two seperate phases you likely will be let go or given the option of returning to the jail.

Returning to the jail to finish your sentence?? That seems harsh!

[lewisipso]

8 to 12 week academy and get them released as fast as possible. Keep in mind though we generally FTO before the officer ever reaches the academy. I have been responsible for the training of several of our newest hires. A particular admin and myself have had several discussions at how it is impossible to make a cop out of a newbie in 2 months. A month of days and a month of nights and let em go. I say specifically that this is nothing but asking for trouble.

[Five-0]

12 week academy 16 week FTO.

[Jks9199]

Wow... We have a 6 month academy. It could be trimmed; I think it's about 4 months to meet the bare minimum requirements.

FTO is 8 to 12 weeks, sometimes longer if necessary and there's hope. Or the brass just doesn't want to accept that there is no hope... There are a list of training objectives from the state; we've also got our own that do go beyond and cover agency specific things. If a rookie has their act together, most of the mandated stuff can be done in about 6 to 8 weeks, and the FTO should have a good read on the rook. At that point, the rook can be cut loose in "shadow" mode where the FTO just automatically responds and backs them up on everything. You may ride with them all 12 if they need it. We have extended a few, as well, for as long as necessary. If they're still not able to be cut loose after about 16 to 24 weeks... they're often encouraged to reassess their career plans, if you know what I mean.

Rooks are then on probation for either 6 or 12 months. There's some conflict in the regs, or their used to be... It wasn't clear if probation lasted 12 months from academy graduation, or hire... and it was handled in different ways for different people because or HR people are so fucking great... (Yeah, I got some issues with them.)

[jmur5074]

Min. 2 yr degree in Law Enforcement in MN, no academies.


Our FTO period is about 3 mos. For some probationary officers who have previous FT experience, a week or two sometimes gets shaved off of FTO.

[pc830cop]

In my previous department, a Calif agency, this was 13 years ago! 6 month academy, 4 month fto. month 1 and 4 with original to, months 2 and 3 are with different to's.

now that I am federal, 2 week academy, 8 week fto! the new guys are going 8 weeks in academy and 8 weeks fto.

[kjlaw]

We have a 16-26 week academy followed by a min. 8 week FTO with up to two extensions.

[Second Chance]

We have I.P.T., Initial Phase Training, approx. 10 weeks, that's after a three month academy, then FTO is a very structured three months, with two recycles, then go get your old job back........;-)

I was wondering if any other agencies use a last night (Hogan's Alley), which is all the recruits, after I.P.T., and the academy and prior to the start of FTO. It starts at dark thirty and lasts through out the night, well depending on the class size, many many real life scenarios, very stressful when you go through it, trust me.

[McCrackhd]

We have I.P.T., Initial Phase Training, approx. 10 weeks, that's after a three month academy, then FTO is a very structured three months, with two recycles, then go get your old job back........;-)

I was wondering if any other agencies use a last night (Hogan's Alley), which is all the recruits, after I.P.T., and the academy and prior to the start of FTO. It starts at dark thirty and lasts through out the night, well depending on the class size, many many real life scenarios, very stressful when you go through it, trust me.

We do something similar in officer survival, I guess. Can you be more specific? Like what kind of scenarios?

[McCrackhd]

Our Academy is 11 or 12 weeks can't recall, and our FTO is a very structured 6mo program and can only recylcle one phase once and two phases for the entire program, though if you are recommended for recycle of two seperate phases you likely will be let go or given the option of returning to the jail.

Here, they put you in remedial training until you can somewhat handle a call by yourself. They won't fire you until you do something to get the city sued. Serious, no joke.

[K9brando]

We have a 17 week academy that is put on by a local community college. Then our FTO program is 12 weeks for newbies. They do 6 with one FTO then change to another one for the last 6. The last two weeks the FTO is in plain clothes and observes ONLY. They cannot become involved at all unless it becomes a matter of life or death. If they are good then they are released. If they need more time then they are given to another FTO until deemed ready or to be seperated from the department.

Officers with experience go shorter. We just released one that had ten+ years of experience in this area with the sheriff's office and he only had a 3 week FTO. The department he came from uses the same reporting programs so all he really had to learn was our streets.

We had one horrible recruit that went 20 weeks before he was asked to resign or be fired.

[krauty]

Like Jmur said, you need a 2 year college degree here in MN. My dept is lacking when it comes to FTO...right now it would probably be a month, maybe two if they really need it.

[Second Chance]

We do something similar in officer survival, I guess. Can you be more specific? Like what kind of scenarios?

Training unit, gets all the boots loaded up in the swat van......drive around the city, stopping at several locations. At which point one officer is removed from the vehicle, advised of the scenario, i.e., domestic, just walking into a mom and pop for some coffee, alarm call, traffic stop and so forth. After each scenario the boots that have gone are placed in an area as to not let the other boots know what could happen. So it could take awhile depending on the number of officers, if I recall correctly the only one there was a cover officer was the alarm call.

Oh and in between the scenarios, the boots get P.T'ed like nobody's business..........in full uniform, oh what fun that was. Mine started at 17:30 and ended at 04:30........;-), wow that was seven years ago!!!!!

[Xiphos]

We have 75 daily observation reports. There are 3 separate FTO's with your primary doing a 2 week follow up at the end of the entire cycle. There are also training days and non-observed days built in between each phase.

[McCrackhd]

Training unit, gets all the boots loaded up in the swat van......drive around the city, stopping at several locations. At which point one officer is removed from the vehicle, advised of the scenario, i.e., domestic, just walking into a mom and pop for some coffee, alarm call, traffic stop and so forth. After each scenario the boots that have gone are placed in an area as to not let the other boots know what could happen. So it could take awhile depending on the number of officers, if I recall correctly the only one there was a cover officer was the alarm call.

Oh and in between the scenarios, the boots get P.T'ed like nobody's business..........in full uniform, oh what fun that was. Mine started at 17:30 and ended at 04:30........;-), wow that was seven years ago!!!!!

Ok, our's is like that, except you don't go out into the field. We did all of ours at the baseball stadium. Traffic stops, domestics, bar fights, foot chases, etc. We were "killed" so many times on traffic stops, that I thought everybody I stopped my first month of FTO was going to try to kill me! I was so paranoid, I would sometimes forget even why we stopped the person cause all I could concentrate on was thier hands. Not necessarily a bad thing, just made for some awkward moments on stops. My FTO got a kick out of it, though.

And yes, we did lots and lots and lots of PT.

[Jenna]

We were "killed" so many times on traffic stops, that I thought everybody I stopped my first month of FTO was going to try to kill me! I was so paranoid, I would sometimes forget even why we stopped the person cause all I could concentrate on was thier hands. Not necessarily a bad thing, just made for some awkward moments on stops..

[Ace]

We had 16 weeks at the Trooper academy in Sitka, 11 weeks of Fire academy, then about 17 or 18 weeks of FTO, though some of those weeks were fire specific...

[Jks9199]

When I went through the academy, we did "hell night" which was a chance to put us into a bunch of situations, with less emphasis on "perform the tasks to meet the Training Objectives" and more on "you'll be doing this for real soon; what are you gonna do?" The scenarios were corrected more than evaluated, if that makes sense.

Now, they're doing a "Patrol Ready" program at the end of the academy for several days. I believe it includes the hell night stuff, but also adds training that wasn't covered in the regular academy, as well as being a refresher on stuff like driving and shooting that they haven't really done since the first month and a half of the academy.