DRAFT REPORT OF THE CITY OF SPOKANE USE ... - Samuel Walker

Mr. Earl F. Martin
RE: REPORT TO USE OF FORCE COMMISSION
December 3, 2012
Page 27
FTOs receive a 3% salary increase. However, SPD officers can only receive one 3% increase
for specialty assignments at any one time. As a result, highly qualified members of the agency who
also serve in other specialties such as SWAT receive no benefit or incentive for taking on the duties
of serving as an FTO. It was suggested that perhaps a 5% total incentive for taking on multiple
specialty assignments would encourage such individuals to take on added responsibilities. This
could be a strong incentive for individuals who are likely to be good role models for probationary
officers to take on the additional workload required of FTOs.
Another concern of the FTOs has to do with the loss of the FTO meetings that previously had
occurred once a month, were subsequently reduced to once a quarter and now do not take place at
all. These meetings were viewed by the FTOs as valuable to provide training updates and a forum
for exchange of information between the FTOs and to facilitate communication with regard to how
training was progressing with the various trainees. These meetings were eliminated as a result of
budget concerns. A suggestion was made by the FTOs that a one hour meeting could be held once
a month on the Friday shift overlap days which would result in a smaller group of FTOs incurring
overtime and allow for training updates and communication issues to be addressed. Given that there
are several new FTOs with little to no experience with regard to the challenges that come up during
the course of training new officers, the benefits of such meetings could be significant. Having the
opportunity for the FTOs to share concerns and discuss such issues is a valuable exercise and the
cost of this networking is perceived to be greater than the fiscal cost savings. Additionally,
according to all the various versions of the SPD policies that were provided for my review, SPD
Policy 436.2.2 requires training of at least 2 hours per month for FTOs and FTOs must attend a
minimum of 80% of these trainings per year. Thus, the current policy is not being complied with
as a result of the practice described above.
Logistically, the field training process appears to be hampered by the fact that there currently
are no extra laptops available for the FTOs to be able to write FTO daily reports while their trainees
are preparing incident reports on shift using the one laptop assigned to each patrol vehicle.
Documentation of performance issues and feedback to probationers is a significant aspect of the
FTO process. The SPD FTO program includes Daily Observation Reports (DOR's) which are
required to be completed every shift covering 30 rated areas under 5 categories: 1) appearance; 2)
attitude; 3) knowledge; 4) performance; and 5) relationships. The FTO must document specific
tasks covered during the shift, and provided positive and negative assessment of performance. The
FTO and the probationer must go over the DOR at the end of the shift. Additionally, the FTO must
prepare a Bi-Weekly FTO Report at the end of each 2 week period of training. Because of the
amount of documentation required for the FTO Program the lack of additional laptops for FTOs is
problematic. As a side note, there appears to be a question about the access to report writing rooms
and computers for SPD at City of Spokane fire stations. Reportedly, SPD is supposed to be able to
access computers in report writing rooms at some fire stations. It appears that the availability of this