I know this if going to vary. Maybe it will be interesting.

A few of you started off with a six month long academy followed by about 10 hours per week mandatory good training since Day One, mandatory Physical Training and unlimited practice ammo.

Others were handed a 60 year old never fired .38 Police Positive, a worn out gun belt they had to poke holes in because the last guy to be issued it was Fatty McGilicuddy, a set of keys to a 15 year old clunker and simply told to get to work.

How much of your training has been mandatory?

How much have YOU had to cough up for?

Speak!

As a non-LEO, I attend 2-3 training courses per year from the best known trainers in the country. I've been doing this for the last 15 years or so.

Got to keep the tip of the spear sharp.

Most of my LEO friends no longer train after their academy and rarely shoot on their own. The vast majority, shoot the annual qualification and that's pretty much all they do as far as firearms training goes.

Academy was 26 weeks long. Field training was 14 wekeks. Annual inservice training is 4-5 days. I take several classes per year ran by the state on various topics when I can or the brass allows time off. Shoot once or twice a month when I can afford to. Hesitant to take a lot of non-state approved classes due to potential liability with the department or state not having your back if you use a technique or tactic that isn't "approved"...which is stupid, I know. My agency is good generally good about encouraging officers to go to schools but drastically falls short on providing ammo or range time outside of qualification. They literally bean count bullets for training. Say 150rds per officer x 700 officers = 105,000rds.... They will order roughly that number......sooooo stupid

6 month academy.  3 month FTO.  Usually 5-10 days a year mandatory training plus 4-6 range days at least.  I am also a FI instructor for SG, HG, patrol rifle, subgun, select fire and precision rifle also I'm a less lethal and chemical munitions instructor along with other instructor certs so that adds more recert time.  Usually attend a few firearms courses from outside vendors a year that are a couple days to a week long each.  I also attend the yearly IALEFI conference.  It was hot as hell in Florida this year  





I am on the range one way or the other at least 1-3 times a week.  I think I average around 150-200 POST hours a year.  Some years more, some years less.



ETA:  I have been fortunate to receive some top notch training provided for by my department including paying for airfare, hotel and training fees.  I have also gone to a lot of training provided by DEA and other federal entities.  This included clan lab related training in Quantico and bomb training in New Mexico.  



I have also ponied up for classes I wanted to take including training at Rifles Only, Magpul classes, Costa Ludus, Progressive FORCE Concepts etc. etc.

Actual training? Pretty much none after the academy.

Did that last fall.

 

We have our mandatory in-service stuff, which is basically like "Don't be dumb."

A SWAT sergeant and I were sent to MRAP driver instructor school at a US Marshal facility.


I went with the rest of SWAT to an awesome Emergency Narcotics Ops class at RCTA in Meridian, MS. It was done by Investigative Techniques Unlimited (bunch of Germantown, TN SWAT guys). Really great training. That's the only training our current team has had as a unit, unfortunately. I tried unsuccessfully to get that changed.


They sent me with a jail transport deputy to a class on dealing with mentally-ill people. I didn't learn anything until actual (former?) mentally-ill people shared their experiences. That was interesting. Apparently I was already dealing with things the right way.


I haven't been to any shooting training outside of range days. I go every range day whether it's my "turn" or not. Chief always lets me shoot, but I don't get unlimited ammo. I'd love to go to something high-speed like Paul Howe's CSAT or something, but I'm not paying for it with my money. $11.25/hour just isn't enough to fund such things. I buy my own ammo to practice off-duty, and occasionally I meet some friends and we do practicals on private land. Start in the vehicle and get out, shooting on the move, transitions, utilizing available cover, night fire, that sort of stuff.


As the armorer, I get to test carbines when I reconfigure one from a M16A1. Sometimes that turns into practice/play time, but it's not training. Mostly I've had to figure things out the hard way. I lean on my state police SWAT neighbor. He's high-speed and taught me some cool stuff.

I have maybe 3000 hours over 8+ years.  A good portion of that was the academy and my degrees.  We are just afforded the minimum each year unless we either pay our own way to training or something that is beneficial to the department.

Road Officer?


1000 hr academy


48 hrs every three years mandated by state


Average for an officer with our agency, including range, defensive tactics, information systems, etc is 72.1 hrs per officer in 2014.




Me?




I'm an instructor on lots of things so I have to go for re-certs.  In 2014 I attended 312 hrs of registered, POST approved training.




I know these because I maintain the records for training.


 

ETA:  Next year I will be my 30th as an LEO.  Looooooootttttttssss of training over the years.  And I'm an adjunct instructor at our geographical region's largest academy so I get additional training there.

After 6 months academy, 3.5 months FTO, mandatory minimum of 24 hours of training per year, with half that that has to be "skills", i.e. firearms, driving, arrest control/fighting.  State mandated minimum.  I try to take at least a full day firearms class and a full day hands on class per year.  More, if I have time.  Training officers also arrange in-service days, about once/quarter to do building searches, active shooter response, felony stop training.  So, a bit, but not a lot.  We stay busy though, so practice on clearing buildings, felony stops and arrest control is not hard to come by.

Academy, FTO and 40hrs a year of refresher training. Plus any mandatory awareness, sensitivity, state lectures & videos.

Anything else is up to you, or your squad or your unit.

Back when I started in Corrections they were trying a new concept of home dept training
In other words, they handed you a book, you read the book and took quizzes
No academy at all.
I had a Sgt then who was an inept Road sgt who came right out and said that any training past the basic school was  a waste of time
I started putting myself through all sorts of classes and reading anything and everything I could.

Back then you bought all of your own gear; handgun, body armor etc.
There was no intermediate force options; you went from empty hand right to gun.
Theoretically there was an impact weapon option but the dept issued a straight stick that no one carried.
I was the first guy in the dept to buy an ASP.
The firearms training budget in the late 80s was $1000 for the entire agency and stayed that amount for many years.
of course back then we were still carrying revolvers, so you trained using Zero reloads and only qualified with the duty ammo you'd been carrying all year, and then they'd issue you new duty ammo.
One range day per year. You couldn't use the police range without an instructor present so I built my own 50 yard range to shoot on.
Shotguns were kept at the agency and the theory was that if you needed one you would respond back to the agency and stand by to be issued one.
No back up guns, no rifles.

Eventually got out on the road, which was a 6 month academy
Field training was a whopping 7 days
They said they needed bodies on the road for field training to be any longer than that.
They said they'd shadow me a while til I got my feet under me

I kept putting myself through many seminars and classes on my dime
For a while in the early 2000s the in-house dept-funded training got a little better, but there were odd examples of dumb thinking
-For instance, they spent a good chunk of change to put me through a two week commercial truck enforcement school...but then wouldn't let anyone from our dept participate in the commercial checkpoints.
If you don't do a certain number of inspections your certs lapse. The state offered the dept scales, a car and a deputies pay for a couple of years. The dept turned them down.
-Same thing with the NRA patrol rifle instructor class. I attended in the early 2000s. You lapse at that if you aren't teaching regularly. I lapsed for two reasons: deployments and the fact we didn't get rifles for patrol  til 2009. Before that the only rifles we had were Mini 14s that were only issued to Sgts, none of whom were supposed to be on the road patrolling. That administration considered Sgts to be non-call responding supervisors who warmed a chair in the office. So if we needed a rifle we'd call for the sgt, who would respond with his single 20 round magazine.
That stopped when they went up against a guy who was sitting in his house with a scoped  long gun of some type, and the incumbent who was running for office finally recognized that we were the only local agency not issuing rifles to patrol officers by that time.
-There was a domestic violence grant one year and they pushed us through about 4 DV seminars that year til we all asked for it to stop
Somehow the instructors they'd send our way would usually be man hating police hating gargantuan lesbians with a chip on their shoulders for anyone with a penis.

These days they at least fund armorers classes for the range guys, but other than that the training budget is shrinking again and I pretty much am back to putting myself through classes I want to attend.
I set enough aside for a class or two a year and sign up for the free NRA LE classes, of which I've attended a few.

Too much to easily  count really.  The dept has sent me as far as CT for training.  I earned my firearms instructor cert from the FBI and used the dept management courses as part of my masters.

State mandate is 80 hrs per every two years but most depts require much more than that.  At a guess your typical cop here probably averages around 150 hours a year with all methods combined.  The city pays for classes and gives you incentive pay on top of that.

 
That's outstanding, and glad to hear it.  I really feel for those agencies with little or no training.  It's also amazing how far some will come for training when they work in a vacuum.  


We were running a regional MACTAC course and had 4 officers come from waaaaaay up north.  They explained that they were paying for it on their own dime because there simply wasn't anything like it in their area.  

Mine was an eight week academy. The state required sixteen hours training plus two "mental health" hours per year in addition to that. When I could talk the chief into it, I tried to make it eight to sixteen hours per month.