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A Response to a Rant
On April 18th, 2021 Mr. Wayne Perry wrote and posted on Facebook in his words a “rant” on the subject of executive protection training and accreditation. It was yet another reminder of the BS training providers peddle to fill seats and add to their profit margins.
Mr. Perry says “use your head” “A little common sense goes a long way. If a company advertises as or advertises their training course as, or an instructor claims, that the commercial /private sector training course is certified or accredited by a federal law enforcement accreditation agency or board or a military accreditation agency or board, run because they’re lying and only want your money. Turn your bullshit detector on.”
Reading that passage of his post I must admit had me smiling because I wrote an article about accreditation 2 years ago, March 6, 2019, and updated that article for re-release 2 months ago March 1, 2021, https://www.eptraining.us/why-is-accreditation-important-facts-vs-opinion/
In the article, I speak on the value of accredited programs to the student and the industry and point out ISA voluntarily adheres to the training standards of the federal law enforcement training centers and the regulations found in Department of Defense Manual 3115.11, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Accreditation Agencies (FLETA) Accreditation Board Procedures and Standards Manual Edition 2021.
Having received a torrent of feedback in the last few years with comments like “who cares”, “that’s useless”, “what a waste of time” “why bother” etc. it was good to see Mr. Perry address the topic of accreditation at all.
Mr. Perry then addresses training providers directly by saying “ Neither your private sector/commercial school nor your private sector/commercial training course is DSS/DoD/FLETC/etc approved or certified”.
Having seen the ads and marketing for WPPS /DSS training by non-approved training providers I knew exactly whom Wayne was referring to. But I have to ask myself why aren’t the State Department and FLETC dealing with these fakes.
He goes on to point out “It may be college accredited or possibly (extremely rare) be certified by a state law enforcement training accreditation board (POST, TCOLE, etc), but it is not nationally certified or certified by the military, any federal law enforcement agency, or any federal law enforcement accreditation agency or board”
Now considering our program is approved or accredited by POST and other state law enforcement training accreditation boards and regulatory agencies, and endorsed by the International Foundation of Protection Officers as well as accepted for college credit I can tell you why very few others seek that kind of accreditation.
It’s expensive, time-consuming, the boards often say no, insist on revisions and updates, inspectors audit your classes, review your lesson plans, inspect training aids, and you’re given strict standards of training and instructor certification.
You can’t use ranges and driving as time fillers; you can’t go over 12 hours a day or less than 50 minutes per class. You have to keep student records for 7 years, financial records for 5 years, issue IRS forms, update your curriculum with every new state law or regulation that applies, and you answer to someone other than yourself.
Oh yes, they hate that. As an accredited program a student can file complaints to a state agency for investigation and action. You can be fined, lose a license, be de-certified and each instructor could lose their ability to legally work as an instructor.
Better to just claim you’re certified or have standards than actually go through the process and great cost of really becoming accredited by a regulatory agency. That way a student who is unhappy with their training will have nowhere to go with complaints.
Wayne’s rant really struck a nerve with us because after three years of the anti-national standards and accreditation crowd yelling about the government takeover of security training that standards and accreditation will lead to, here is a post about training providers pretending (lying) to have national standards and accreditations.
Better yet as Mr. Perry pointed out to me in a conversation later, some of these trainers target veterans. Well here is some advice for our fellow veterans,
1) “Veterans, use your G.I. Bill for a higher education or trade school. Don’t blow it on some E.P./PSD course because the investment vs reward trade-off is not equal”.
2) “Non-veterans, for every one dollar you invest in some E.P. course, invest two in a higher education or trade school”. Wayne points out “This is a dog-eat-dog, back stabbing, clicky, type on industry” So have an “education and training in something you can do simultaneously (for those long lulls between contracts) and for when the doors aren’t opening like you’d hoped that E.P. course would magically make happen”.
The end state, here at ISA, we will continue to adhere to the training standards and accreditation requirements of the boards and agencies mentioned, and will actively encourage our veterans and others to seek higher education. Now that accreditation is apparently no longer disparaged we will continue to work with those regulatory agencies and regardless the time or cost, we will seek every opportunity to improve.
And we thank Mr. Wayne Perry for the rant.
#executiveprotectiontraining