About Mark Wittenberg
Biography
Mark J. Wittenberg has been assisting public safety with organizational and personal development for over three decades. With a background of 30 years as a police professional, he is known as an innovative trainer, developer, auditor and communicator. Mark’s expertise covers the core elements of organizational and personal development.
Organizational Development
While the public’s perception of policing may focus on the action of the one officer or officers, in reality the quality of an organization’s team work can mean the difference between poor performance and consistently high performance. Mark is a California Commission on Peace Officer Training (P.O.S.T.) certified Team Building Workshop coordinator with significant experience facilitating leadership development workshops throughout a state where the challenges facing policing often set the tone nationwide. He has successfully engaged departments throughout California in their efforts to meets the needs of 21st. policing by developing secure environment in which participants can share their perceptions of the current organizational environment and their vision of the future. High performing teams get better results.
Leadership Development
It is far better to establish your reputation by intent rather than by accident. That reputation rests on the quality of the people the organization hires and promotes. In order to get the type of leadership any organization needs and the communities they serve demands, people have to receive the development necessary to serve the profession. As one of the original facilitators for the California Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST), “Supervisory Leadership Institute”, Mark has worked with hundreds of supervisors developing the foundations for effective leadership. Mark has facilitated long term leadership development programs for other agencies, including the Santa Clara and Ventura County Sheriff’s Department. There is no DNA strand for leadership. It can and must be taught by someone who is a skilled facilitator and aware of the emerging issues facing policing. Let us help you bring the best out of your people as they engage the public.
Ethics Training
Effective policing is a combination of two domains that all police personnel must master to serve the public: technical knowledge and ethical decision making. To be effective, every officer must be fluent in the technical elements of his or her position. As the assignments change, new technical knowledge is added to enable the officer to work effectively. While important, it cannot exist outside a without a strong ethical framework and orientation. As the former National Ethics Trainer for the Josephson Institute of Ethics, Mark has and conducted leadership and ethics training across the country. These include the United States Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the California Board of Medical Examiners, the State of Rhode Island Police and numerous other police and government agencies.
Auditor and Audit Trainer
Mark has audited the performance of many police departments and, in partnership with California University at Long Beach, presents a three day class entitled “Auditing Police Performance”. He has presented at executive training conferences on risk assessment and has presented to the Command Conference of the California Highway Patrol, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the San Francisco Police Department, the City of Chicago Office of the Inspector General, the City of Bakersfield Police Department and several Chief’s and Sheriffs’ Training conferences. In 2015, he was a featured presenter at the California Chiefs of Police Training Conference. Mark has trained police executives from all over California in the P.O.S.T. Executive Development Course, where he was the presenter on auditing police performance and risk assessment.
Field Training Officer Program Management
Perhaps no other part of the young officer’s career has as much long term impact as who trains them and how they are initially trained. Mark just completed 18 years as the consultant of the POST Field Training Officer Management Program and has served as a subject matter expert on the committee for integrating leadership, ethics and community-oriented policing into the P.O.S.T. Basic Course. In his capacity of teaching training managers, Mark has impacted many field training programs throughout California. In keeping with his involvement with ethics training, Mark is also a facilitator at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, where he teaches two impactful classes: Cultural Diversity in Policing and Building Trust and Respect in the Community.
Education
Mark has a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the California State University at Long Beach Center for Public Policy and a Bachelor’s Degree in History from the California State University at Long Beach. He is a graduate of the POST California Command College Class #30, where he was elected co-class speaker by his classmates.