Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy lays off all their LETO’s

[Lon]

Friday the Attorney General made an announcement to restructure OPOTA and go with a new training model. He announced that all the Law Enforcement Training Officers (Firearms, DT, driving and other topics) would be laid off. Apparently he’s going for a remote learning and guest/subcontracted instructor model. He cited funding issues and a drop in attendance as the reason. Not sure how that’s gonna work. Any of you guys from other states do something similar?

[KeeFus]

In NC, the community colleges run Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET). The State, through NC Criminal Justice Education Training & Standards (what some other States call POST) monitors/audits the classes. They define what needs to be taught and the minimum number of hours. The community colleges may structure their individual BLETs slightly different, like when a class like firearms is taught, but the hours are uniform across the State.

The only State run academy’s I can think of are NCSHP, Wildlife, and NC SBI/ALE. There are some local agencies (Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, Fayetteville, etc.) that are large enough to run their own academies but they have to adhere to the same standards the community colleges do.

[TGS]

Not a state, we're federal, but the only direct hire instructors are the instructor supervisors and units that use active-duty agents to teach the material (like the protection training unit). The team leads are 1099 Personal Services Contractors, and the rank & file instructors are all contractors through Ho-Chunk/All Native Group. The "guest instructor" part comes in the form of the subject-matter unit detailing an agent/analyst/contractor to go take the day at the training center and deliver the material if it's something that benefits from expertise but isn't something being taught everyday, such as counterintelligence, or database research where we had people from CLEAR come out themselves to teach how to use the CLEAR database.

Our instructor cadre was generally excellent, and tailored to what they taught. The only problem-children in the instructor cadre were direct-hires that decided to stop learning when they got the job, and in general were hired for their management skills as opposed to technical skills but have flare-ups of dunning-kruger and insert themselves when/where they shouldn't (remember the Sergeant Major, @JDD ?). The contracted instructors are generally relevant and stay up to date or get the boot. This allows us to get people who are "fresh" from the field, and theoretically (and sometimes do) rotate between working in a given field and coming back on an instructor stint on contract. Many of our LE tactics instructors were either former police instructors within their department or current police doing it in addition to their job if their schedule allowed. Our driving instructors were generally a combination of former LEOs and titled competitors with stacks of trophys. The med instructors were a mix of SOCM graduates and critical care paramedics/flight nurses, and "stayed in their lane" and tailored to teach what their skills/background reflected.

Writing the contract requirements is hugely important. If that happens, this will likely be a good thing in the long run for you guys, if I'm assuming you're going to the same model we use. I liked the quality of instructors much more than FLETC, which was inflexible and rigid with its direct hire model that forced instructors with no expertise to cross-"train" and teach things that were out of their lane.

It's also possible I'm misreading/misinterpreting what's going on at your academy.

[Stephanie B]

In NC, the community colleges run Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET). The State, through NC Criminal Justice Education Training & Standards (what some other States call POST) monitors/audits the classes. They define what needs to be taught and the minimum number of hours. The community colleges may structure their individual BLETs slightly different, like when a class like firearms is taught, but the hours are uniform across the State.

Same for Missouri. (It's a bit of a gamble for the kids.)

[Lon]

In NC, the community colleges run Basic Law Enforcement Training (BLET). The State, through NC Criminal Justice Education Training & Standards (what some other States call POST) monitors/audits the classes. They define what needs to be taught and the minimum number of hours. The community colleges may structure their individual BLETs slightly different, like when a class like firearms is taught, but the hours are uniform across the State.

The only State run academy’s I can think of are NCSHP, Wildlife, and NC SBI/ALE. There are some local agencies (Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, Fayetteville, etc.) that are large enough to run their own academies but they have to adhere to the same standards the community colleges do.

These instructors were all for the “advanced” (classes for certified officers, not basic academy kids). OPOTA hasn’t run a basic academy in years. There are 60+ academies (community colleges, career centers and bigger PDs,etc) around the state that run the basic academies. All of the support staff for the basic academies (compliance officers, etc) went untouched, I believe.

I knew they were having money issues for the last few years, but didn’t know it was this bad. I’ll be interested to see how it plays out.

[DDTSGM]

Same for Missouri. (It's a bit of a gamble for the kids.)

That is an understatement.

[Chuck Whitlock]

.... and the rank & file instructors are all contractors through Ho-Chunk/All Native Group..... I liked the quality of instructors much more than FLETC, which was inflexible and rigid with its direct hire model that forced instructors with no expertise to cross-"train" and teach things that were out of their lane.

I apologize for the tangent, but this struck me, as HCI/All Native is owned by the tribe I used to work for. I was aware that they did .gov contracting, but thought that it was only IT/networking services, etc. It looks like they've expanded quite a bit. I'm glad to hear that they are well thought of.

[TGS]

I apologize for the tangent, but this struck me, as HCI/All Native is owned by the tribe I used to work for. I was aware that they did .gov contracting, but thought that it was only IT/networking services, etc. It looks like they've expanded quite a bit. I'm glad to hear that they are well thought of.

Not to put a damper on that or try to impinge on ANG/Ho-Chunk as a business, but contractors working on a federal gig have almost nothing, zero, zilch to do with the company holding the contract. It's all about the contract requirements as they're written. Native Tribes have brownie points when competing for contracts, which is why tribe owned companies tend to do a lot of fedgov contract work. They just hire people to put in spots as advertised by the fedgov contract. The tribe and contracting company has literally nothing to do with the quality of the people in those spots, and virtually nothing to do with them at all beyond headhunting them and sending them a paycheck every two weeks. And, when someone else gets the contract (these things are designed to "share the wealth" among competitors over time), the people working on the contract will typically have a legal right to the same job on the company taking over the contract.

To put it in gun terms, you can buy both a shitty barrel from FN, and buy a high end barrel from FN. It just depends on what you spec the contract at.

[Chuck Whitlock]

Oh, I fully understand that the worker bees generally just change hats and t-shirts when a new contract is awarded, and how tribes can leverage certain things, which HCI is very good at. I just hadn't realized that All Native had broadened its scope.

Enough of the tangent.

[John Hearne]

Writing the contract requirements is hugely important. If that happens, this will likely be a good thing in the long run for you guys, if I'm assuming you're going to the same model we use. I liked the quality of instructors much more than FLETC, which was inflexible and rigid with its direct hire model that forced instructors with no expertise to cross-"train" and teach things that were out of their lane.

A retired IRS Agent ran our poaching/deer decoy operation practical exercise at FLETC. His views did not seem to be consistent with reality as I understood it. (How's that for diplomatic?)