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
