A Personal Note to My Colleagues:
I have been involved in police training since 1974 when, as a sergeant with the San Diego Police Department, I was selected to join the Field Training Officer Program cadre. We had just adopted the new program from the San Jose Police Department. We were very impressed with the structure and standardized features of the San Jose Model because, at that time, we were all obsessed with the inability of our department to justify termination of trainees. The program was fair, standardized, and gave direction to the field training officers, and it was a very powerful administrative tool. One of its strengths was that descriptions of how police officers behaved were finally included for trainers to use. These descriptions were called standardized evaluation guidelines. They were written in the early 1970s and were so effective, they became the mainstay of training programs throughout the United States. Although modified in 1981, they have remained virtually unchanged since.
I went on to work at the Boulder, Colorado, Police Department in 1979 where I was asked to implement the San Jose model as Boulder’s F.T.O. program. In 1981 one of the founders of the San Jose model, Glenn Kaminsky, came to work for Boulder. Over the next 13 years he and I collaborated on the program and wrote a manual that was adopted by thousands of police agencies across the nation. I became one of Glenn’s first training associates and taught more than 120 seminars nationally from Miami to Barrow, Alaska. During that time, I came to believe that the San Jose training model was one of the most important policing innovations ever created. I still hold that belief.
During the 1990s, as I traveled around the country teaching F.T.O. seminars, people increasingly asked how we could incorporate Community-Oriented Policing and Problem Solving (COPPS) into the San Jose model. Finally, in 1996, I was asked to write Standardized Evaluation Guidelines for community policing and problem solving. I wrote the guidelines for four categories that could be incorporated into the San Jose model. But they were not as effective as I would have liked. Training officers simply ignored them. Community policing was not accepted by many F.T.O.s, so they checked “not observed” and went on with life. I worked with several agencies trying to make the San Jose model viable for teaching C.O.P.P.S. We tried individual categories, group topics, and threading the concept through the original standardized evaluation guidelines. As before, the results were inadequate. I was also starting to hear complaints from agencies that had tried to modify the original training model for various reasons. Most complaints centered around the perception that the model was out-of-date and too evaluation-oriented.
Finally, after becoming police chief in Reno, Nevada, I attended a meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco. I mentioned the problems associated with the San Jose model to Dr. Ellen Scrivner from the C.O.P.S. office in Washington, D.C. She had long been considering problems with police training and the need for something that was focused on community policing. Dr. Scrivner secured a $300,000 grant and asked that the Reno Police Department, working with the C.O.P.S. Office and the Police Executive Research Forum (P.E.R.F.), study police training and design a new post-academy training model that could be an alternative to the San Jose model. We gathered experts from around the nation and began work in 1999. Over the course of two years, we designed what has become known as the Reno Model and presented our proposal to the C.O.P.S. office. We received an additional $200,000 to move to the next phase, that of implementation. The Reno Model was put into place in the Reno Police Department in 2001 as a beta site. Over the next several months five other sites were selected as test sites. The final product was submitted to the C.O.P.S. Office in April, 2002.
The Reno Model is the product of an exceptional team’s effort. When we answer questions regarding the Reno Model, we sometimes sound as though we are criticizing the San Jose model, but that is not our intent. We do, however, want to answer the questions that have arisen about the differences between the two training methods and why we prefer one over the other. I still believe there is a niche for the San Jose model. There are police agencies that need structure and strong documentation in their training programs. People in those agencies may not like the Reno Model. On the other hand, there are agencies that do not need the tremendous amount of documentation and would like to focus on training and problem solving. Normally these departments have already modified the San Jose model to the point where it has lost its original meaning. If these departments are focusing on community policing and problem solving, then they are the audience for the Reno Model.
I would like to express my appreciation to the entire design team. In particular, I would like to note the success of this program would never have occurred without the work and practitioner experience of Deputy Chief Ron Glensor, Commander Stephen Pitts, Officer David Ponte, Linda Anderson and the PTOs of the Reno Police Department.
Please feel free to contact me for information regarding the Reno Model. I would be happy to provide you with an Executive Summary or a full PTO Manual, or you may go to renomodelpto.com and download PTO materials.
Thank you,
Jerry Hoover
Telephone: 775-825-2219
E-Mail: hoovergroupofreno(at)sbcglobal(dot)net