Committee backs ordinance to shift police training to field training officer model

On Jan. 14, 2025, the Public Safety Committee voted to send Ordinance 2025-01 to Beaumont with a positive recommendation. The ordinance would reposition the Hendersonville Police Department’s field training responsibilities from the existing Master Patrol Officer (MPO) structure to a Field Training Officer (FTO) model.

Committee members said the change is intended to reduce costs and increase flexibility in training new officers. “We identify people who are interested in performing the training instruction, and then making sure that they have proper, training to do that and are positioned to be able to do that, and then what we do is utilize them as training officers for our new officers. They only get paid while they're training,” Hendersonville Police Chief Jones said.

Chief Jones told the committee the MPO role is a promotion that some officers keep even after they stop regularly training, and the proposed FTO model would compensate officers for training time through overtime or comp time instead of maintaining a promoted salary year-round. “One of the things that we noticed other agencies were doing and I feel like again that that's beneficial for the city is as opposed to an increase in pay we just provide them for every day or every shift that they have a trainee they get an hour of overtime,” Jones said. He added many officers prefer comp time to a permanent pay increase.

Jones said the MPO program would not be stripped from officers currently holding the promotion; rather, it would be phased out through promotion, voluntary demotion, retirement or attrition. “So through promotion or attrition, that program will eventually go away,” he said. He also gave staffing numbers: the department is authorized for 11 MPOs and currently has eight.

Committee members asked how payroll and overtime budgets would be affected; Jones said the department has existing overtime budget capacity and that current savings from unfilled MPO slots and one deployed MPO would cover early overtime costs for training cycles. He described the plan as both a staffing and a financial adjustment rather than an immediate demotion of current MPOs.

After discussion, a committee member moved to send Ordinance 2025-01 to Beaumont with a positive recommendation and the motion was approved.

The ordinance will now go to Beaumont for formal consideration; the committee did not set a final implementation date and said details such as pay rules and the transition schedule will be handled in subsequent administrative steps.