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As much as the union and elected officials love to talk about putting more police on the street, training and deployment strategies typically have a far greater impact on law enforcement than a handful of extra cops. And Donahue says that when the field training program is working right, the training officers can show inexperienced police how to work with the community—a key to improving relations as well as reducing crime.
But in a year when murders are up, deadly clashes between police and civilians still happen regularly, and the department rank and file is suffering low morale, the department only had 149 field training officers on the payroll as of August, well under the 267 called for in this year’s budget.
“Apparently the aldermen grumbling about such things don’t see the hypocrisy of their grumblings,” Donahue says. “The average police officer coming out of the police academy onto the force is going to make an investment of $7,000 to $9,000 dollars—the department doesn’t buy the uniform, doesn’t buy the guns, doesn’t buy the shoes. What would the aldermen say if we proposed cutting the money for their staff and expenses?”
