Law enforcement leadership faces a dramatically increased burden to introduce new capabilities and to upgrade force skill levels to confront the rising threat of terrorism while continuing to address persistent conventional criminal activity. Among the critical needs of law enforcement today is the need for practical and economical knowledge tools that enable law enforcement professionals to train for and maintain new capabilities to stay at the leading edge of know-how in critical skills.

The phases of PortBlue's Law Enforcement training are:

• Before training: preparing students with basic knowledge of domain to minimize up-front orientation
• During training: monitoring compliance with the training regime and benchmarking performance versus members of a peer group
• After training: routinizing training into work process tools and providing regular refreshers and updates

Training / Testing Tools

Working with the faculty or recognized experts in a given field, PortBlue develops a highly scalable and economical means to provide continuing professional training (CPT) for peace officers. Specifically, PortBlue modules:

• Provide peace officers with access to training 24/7 from their normal work location or home, reducing or eliminating the need for travel to instructional sites, substantially reducing the cost of training in both dollars and time
• Provide officers with a training tool that (1) they can use to develop "real life" scenario-based know-how and (2) can be updated very quickly and economically to incorporate new developments and insights
• Capture the expertise of senior peace officers and other experts who are the best at what they do, without regard to whether they are formally instructors and with much less time spent away from the field than if they taught in a conventional classroom setting
• Enable the State to capture and retain the experts' know-how permanently (this is particularly relevant where the expert may be close to retirement or might seek employment in the private sector)
• Develop a means for monitoring officer compliance with the training regime and for conducting peer group and benchmarking assessments

Work Process Tools

Using know-how from leading U.S. special operations, intelligence and law enforcement experts, PortBlue tools quickly guide the user through the expert's framework and thought process to an assessment and action plan adapted to the user's specific fact pattern. The tools are updated in real time on the Web as new developments and insights emerge.