Regulation 1009 provides that instructors in the Regular Basic Course (RBC) must complete the Academy Instructor Certificate Program (AICP) prior to providing instruction to students. Specifically, Regulation 1009 requires that RBC instructors who are utilized by an academy shall possess the Academy Instructor Certificate (AICC) or pass the AICC Equivalency Process prior to instructing any component of the RBC.
Regulation 1052 mandates the assignment criteria of specific administrative staff to oversee the presentation of the RBC in the following three subsections:
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Regulation 1052(c) (1) requires each academy shall designate an academy director whose qualifications, based upon education, experience, and training shall include a demonstrated ability to manage an academy, which includes “Managing instructional methods, testing, and remediation.”
- Regulations 1052(c)(2) and 1052(c)(3) require that each academy shall designate an academy coordinator whose qualifications, based upon knowledge, experience, and training, shall include a demonstrated ability to coordinate the instruction and management of the Regular Basic Course instructional system, which includes “Delivering course curriculum in accordance with the Training and Testing Specifications.”
- Regulation 1052(c)(7)(A) requires each academy shall designate recruit training officers (RTOs) whose qualifications, based upon knowledge, experience, and training, shall include a demonstrated ability to supervise trainees attending a Regular Basic Course – Standard Format, Module I or the Specialized Investigator’s Basic Course, which includes “Supporting, motivating, evaluating, and advising trainees.”
Directors, Coordinators, and Recruit Training Officers are selected within specific parameters based on their extensive subject matter expertise and capacity to train entry level law enforcement students. The purpose of their supervision an oversight is to provide guidance and mentoring to the students to serve as a catalyst to the formal curriculum and course presentation, and to be available to provide clarification and advice to students.
As a matter of technicality, the above-mentioned academy administrative staff are prohibited from providing such guidance and informal advice to students, unless they have completed the AICP. Consequently, academy presenters are apprehensive about allowing such staff to provide necessary counseling and answer clarification questions, which is counter-intuitive to the intent of the assignment of these administrative staff. In order to comply with Regulation, some presenters have expressly prohibited academy staff from providing such guidance to students, which requires formal instructors to be called back for clarification questions. This practice is often inefficient, operationally cumbersome, and deprives academy students from an opportunity to benefit from the knowledge base of the academy staff.
Compulsory attendance to the AICP, while at face value is a simple remedy, would impose a significant operational and financial impact on agencies and presenters due to the cost of sending academy staff to an additional course and the need to backfill behind staff who are in attendance. Further, the AICP is designed for instructors who present formal curriculum, not for the informal guidance regularly performed by Directors, Coordinators, and RTOs.
POST staff desire to codify regulatory language to reflect current practice with respect to interpretation of Regulation 1009, to give Directors, Coordinators, and RTOs the latitude to provide incidental instruction and guidance. By doing so, this modification to Regulation would allow presenters the ability to utilize the subject matter expertise of the academy staff to provide critical guidance to students by allowing academy staff to provide incidental instruction as needed to supplement and clarify content taught in the formalized setting.
This recommendation from POST staff shall exclude instructional content identified in Regulation 1070, which requires specialized instruction, and shall expressly preclude academy staff from utilizing this language as a mechanism to bypass the intent of the AICP as codified in Regulation 1009.
Although AICP requirements are not expressly mandated in regulation 1009 for the Specialized Investigator's Basic Course (SIBC), POST staff request that the modified language allowing for incidental instruction by academy staff apply to SIBC as well.
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