Idea/Proposal

[papacheese]

I've been mulling this over for some time and could use some interactive discussion to decide if the idea has any merit.

I'd like to find out if there's any interest in forming a county-wide training officers group...nothing formal, but a casual forum to get the people together who are responsible for formulating and delivering training to their respective departments. I can't help but think there's a wealth of information and expertise "out there" which could be shared and in the end, improve our training programs. Over the years I've gleaned (nice way of saying "stolen") some really great stuff from a lot of you and believe that a group of dedicated "instructors" could assist every department by coming up with new, fresh material or training techniques. There's a wealth of material and media out there as well that some of might have but other's don't....which could be easily shared and used to build up our training inventory.

Knowing how precious everyone's time is these days, it could probably be done in a quarterly fashion..depending, of course, on the response we get. A few of us tried this idea about three years ago, but the concept never really took off.

Any thoughts?

[Reverend]

Why not make it more formal as a arm of the County Chiefs Assoc.? This could serve as an actual first step to minimum training for the county and the implementation of things like riding positions and standing orders. Also if more departments were formally working together we could be more successful with achieving grants to standardize things like SCBA. I know its far fetched but you asked for thoughts Chief.

[papacheese]

Feb 16, 2009 10:26:10 GMT -5 Reverend said:

Why not make it more formal as a arm of the County Chiefs Assoc.? This could serve as an actual first step to minimum training for the county and the implementation of things like riding positions and standing orders. Also if more departments were formally working together we could be more successful with achieving grants to standardize things like SCBA. I know its far fetched but you asked for thoughts Chief.

Actually Rev, I think that's the best thing to do, provided of course there's support for it. I didn't throw out the formal idea because I figured it would get everyone running in the opposite direction. I've spoken to the County Coordinator in the past about the Association possibly sponsoring space on their website for shared training resources, such as Power Points and videos but it never progressed anywhere.

Another aspect I think that will need to be conquered is the ole sandbox syndrome, ie: "You can't tell me what I have to train on/with/when/why...etc, you know the drill. Perhaps starting informal might be less....how can I word this...."threatening"

[Reverend]

Agreed it may be less threating however I believe it would prove to be more succesful if we start it off right

[papacheese]

Agreed...let me start beating the bushes to see what flies out....LOL