On the Job 

Earlier this year, Tom Quinlan joined the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy as the assistant executive director, the No. 2 to Executive Director Dwight Holcomb.

Quinlan’s career in law enforcement began in 1987, when he was hired by Madison Township Police. Then in 1989, he was hired by the Columbus Division of Police, where he worked his way through the ranks, serving as chief beginning in December 2019 and six years as a deputy chief before that.

His new role at OPOTA, he said, provides him an opportunity to apply all that he learned — especially the lessons gleaned as police chief in a major city — to a different environment.

“Coming here, I get to see a broader view of policing,” he said. “I get to see it from the perspective of suburban and rural agencies, agencies that might have only one person — not just from the viewpoint of big-city departments.

A key element of Quinlan’s portfolio is envisioning how law enforcement training should continue to evolve, and how to adapt training to make best use of emerging technology.

For example, he would like to see training classes at OPOTA that simultaneously involve participants from a broad range of roles and career paths — not just everyday officers but supervisors and investigators and, if applicable, even forensic experts.

The point is that for any given situation involving law enforcement, there are unique details to consider depending on an officer’s particular role.

“Let’s say we did a training on pursuit driving,” Quinlan said. “There would be a base-level training for operators, but maybe we also include a breakout session for supervisors, who, after all, necessarily look at pursuits through a different lens. They’re the ones managing the pursuit and ultimately the ones deciding whether to terminate or continue it — and who have to justify the call and explain it to the media. And there could be a session for investigators. Maybe a crash occurred, or maybe officers stopped someone and recovered a concealed weapon. Investigators have to process that.”

The objective, Quinlan said, is to apply more context to training — context that considers not just the necessary physical demands involved and the situational circumstances that arise, but factors such as emotional intelligence and legal, ethical and safety ramifications.

Quinlan, a big believer in training immersion, learned from his brother, an airline pilot, a famous quote that pilots recite:  “Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I’ll remember. Involve me, and I’ll understand.”
That’s why he sees virtual reality playing a big role in training.

“One failure of training is we do a lot of scenario training up front, then we go into the classroom and ask what everybody learned. But we never go back and make them do it the right way, the way it was intended to come out. 

“Instead, we want to front-load that lesson: Teach them in the classroom first, put them through virtual reality training next, then have them do the scenario. That way, they leave on a win instead of a failure.”

Online training, which became the standard during COVID, is useful in some cases, Quinlan said, “but there are some things that you have to feel, you have to smell, you have to touch in order for it to sink in as training.”

The five regional centers that make up OPOTA’s Close to Home training sites are essential for providing such hands-on experience, Quinlan said, and he’s expecting a sixth site, in northwest Ohio, to be available soon.

Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that officers respond in predictable ways to ensure the best outcomes for all involved.

“As officers, we never know what we’re going to walk into,” he said. “But if our training results in medically safe, tactically safe and legally safe responses, the colossal police failures that we’ve seen nationally will diminish.”

To that end, Quinlan appreciates that the best training is informed by the men and women who put their lives on the line every day.