Rookie Cops Face Tough Training Process

When rookies Patrick Mallaney, Adam Young and Tyler Rubio stood in front of the Morton Grove village board last month, it was only the start of a long journey to full-fledged police status, patrolling solo for the

Mallaney, Young and Rubio are going through the police academy, will work on all three shifts with a training officer and then be supervised and mentored by their commanders and colleagues once they begin working a squad car. They are finding police training is far more sophisticated than some of their new bosses experienced themselves decades ago.

Learning the law, firearms and more

The trio is attending SLEA (Suburban Law Enforcement Academy) at the College of DuPage, said Paul Yaras, commander of investigations and Morton Grove’s police spokesman. Their training time, 15 weeks, is the same as his own when he went through the Chicago Police Academy 1994. But they will learn a myriad of subjects and techniques that were not included in Yaras’ training.

Earlier:

“That’s your basic training, like in the military,” said Yaras, a veteran himself. “You’re getting in physical shape. You’re learning about your firearms and your equipment.  You’re learning about criminal law, Illinois code violations, and civil rights. We’re the most visible arm of government. Most of (citizens’ government) dealings will be with law enforcement, whether they see us driving around town, dealing with an incident or being pulled over in a traffic stop.

“Police officers have to be trained to understand different personalities. They do hit the psychological aspect of a criminal. When you’re arresting people, you have to understand certain cultural shifts that come into play. The academy, compared to when I went 18 years ago, they really hit a lot more into the constitutional aspect.

"They’re learning Spanish – emergency conversational Spanish, like what hurts. There’s over 80 languages spoken at our local high school.  We have an officer who speaks fluent Greek.”

Next up: field training

Once the rookie graduates from the academy, he will take the streets with a field training officer, working all shifts for a minimum of 13 weeks.

“That’s when you’re learning the street, and that’s when you’re learning the Morton Grove way of how we do things,” Yaras said. “You’re learning our community, learning our local ordinances and learning our people.”

Field training officers the key

Training officers are spread across each shift, helping the rookie handle the trends of each one: retail thefts on day shift, compared to drunken and disorderly incidents, domestic disturbances and car burglaries on midnights.

“We know where things are likely to happen,” Yaras said of field training officers. “That’s not something they can teach in the academy.”

The onus is on the field training officer to shape up the rookie. The eventual alternative would be shipping out.

“The most work comes from the field-training officer,” said Morton Grove Police Chief Mark Erickson. “He has the ability to put in all the input he needs. That’s his job – to shape and mold and take somebody who’s unsure of himself. He’s the mentor. He’s doing that on a daily basis.

“We have a very rigid 60-day field training. Every day, that officer is there with him for eight hours. He’s signing off on every aspect of training that day. If the new guy does not get whatever aspect of training, he will not pass to the next day.”

Evaluations go through many hands before chief is informed

The field  training officers’ input first goes to the shift commander. Then the report reaches Sgt. Eddie Panko, the field-training supervisor. Panko has weekly meetings with the officers to discuss the progress of the rookies.  In turn, a weekly report filters further up through the command structure through the deputy chief, and eventually Erickson is briefed.

“By the time I get it, problems have been corrected,” he said. “I will get a ‘Hey, he’s doing well, he’s excelling in this’ or ‘he might need a little work in that.’ By the time it comes to me, everything’s been kind of vetted.”

The rookies are rated on whether they are exceeding standards, reaching standards or not meeting standards. Panko has a list of tasks each training officer must go over with their rookie. Included are making an arrest, properly handcuffing a subject, learning the use-of-force policy, vehicle pursuits, proper operation of a vehicle.

Training continues, evaluations keep coming

For those who might fall below the standards, extra training is provided with some shifts between one training officer and another as a primary teacher.

“Sometimes one field training officer may be able to get that idea across to a trainee better than another one,” Yaras said. “If they’re still not meeting standards, we’ll do remedial training with them on top of that.  And if they’re not meeting standards, we’ll have to consider them not being a police officer.”

Officers are put on a two-year probationary period from the time they are hired. After he moves beyond the field-training  process, the officer is evaluated on at least a weekly basis via a “Step 5 report” by his supervisor.

But the evaluations keep on coming, even after the rookie becomes the proverbial “young veteran.”

“Every one of our officers, even me, is evaluated on a daily and monthly basis,” Yaras said. “You shouldn’t let anyone just sit there and rest on his laurels.”

“There’s discipline by training, there’s discipline by counseling. If I see an officer not doing something properly, I’ll see if it’s a training issue. If it’s not, then it becomes discipline.”

Like Niles Patch on Facebook for news and conversation.