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ON THE JOB NEWS EYE ON EDUCATION LEADERSHIP JUST HANDED DOWN MISSION CRITICAL SYSTEMS Risk Management and Training Safety Offcers A new strategy for reducing injuries By Robert Boe and Randy Means The TSO serves as additional eyes and ears and stays focused on specifc safety issues. The program emphasizes an identifed set of "control factors" that exist in training, and asks the training instructor Robert Boe is the Public Safety Projector Coordinator for the League of Minnesota and the TSO to work in partCities Insurance Trust. He served as a Prior Lake (MN) police officer and Scott County nership to maximize safety in (MN) Sheriff's Deputy for 29 years. He may be reached at RBoe@lmc.org. terms of both human factors and the unique training environment more broadly. www.thomasandmeans.com Early in the development of the program, LMCIT staff met with the Association of Training Offcers of Minnesota (ATOM) to better understand what was occurring in training and why. They also met with Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC) training division staff, who shared what they had learned as they changed the delivery of their use-of-force aw enforcement leaders breathe a sigh of retactical training and experienced reduced injuries. lief after certain training sessions and say, "I am glad we got One of their key lessons learned was the need to through that without injuries." City and county risk managfocus on "off-script behavior," which they defned ers express the same thought. There is good reason to be conas any behavior occurring that was not in the lesson cerned. Good training can improve offcer safety, but it can also plan. get people hurt. As training has become more realistic, handson and physical, training-related injuries have increased. TSO Test Sites For example, the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust Those meetings led to several police departments (LMCIT) statistics show that training injuries rose from 10 percent to volunteering to serve as test sites to experiment with 20 percent of its overall police workers' compensation cost in the last the TSO concept. The test site departments quickly four years. transformed the concept into proactive methods deIn addition to the injury, pain, medical treatments, recovery, and signed to get ahead of potential problems. The TSOs fear of re-injury for the offcer, a department also deals with the rest from the test departments focused on the relationof the iceberg of workers' comp injuries, including shifts that need ship between the instructor and TSO and their reto be covered, light duty assignments, administrative requirements, sponsibility of overseeing the safety of the training and sometimes higher insurance premiums. A new strategy of using session. They increased their focus by adding risk "Training Safety Offcers" aims to reverse these trends. assessment, a safety plan, a safety briefng, site inspections, and a safety critique. The Minnesota Experience TSOs tried to visualize what the off-script behavIn an important strategic initiative, the League of Minnesota Cities Inior might look like and predetermined what they surance Trust began a Training Safety Offcer (TSO) program, similar should watch for. The involved trainings sessions to that used by parts of the military, which involves the assignment included use of force (defensive tactics, frearms of a knowledgeable person to observe and oversee training activiqualifcations, "less-lethal" weapons training) and ties in order to stop actions that are unsafe or dangerous. Obviously, an active shooter training at a high school involving training instructors have always had this job but they are often preoccitizens as role players. cupied with their specifc training involvement(s) and may sometimes Beginning with the frst test site at Cannon Falls lose sight of certain aspects of the larger training picture. High School, it became apparent that instructors Randy Means is a partner in Thomas & Means, a law firm specializing entirely in police operations and administration. He has served the national law enforcement community full time for more than 30 years and is the author of "The Law of Policing," which is available at LRIS.com. He can be reached directly at rbmeans@aol.com. L 10 LAW and ORDER I January 2014