By Jim Glennon
Last week I wrote a column titled, A College Degree Proves What? Police Agencies Should Rethink the Necessity of College Degrees for Applicants. I intended to spark some discussion, and, well, it certainly did. We received emails, comments, personal stories and opinions. Admittedly, I was shocked that virtually all of the comments and emails agreed with my premise.
A couple of emails did point out that an academic study noted officers with college degrees, in general, had higher evaluations and less citizen complaints, a study I do remember. Another, from a psychologist, wrote, “I have found those with the motivation and drive to attend college or the military are more mature and have a wider range of life experiences.”
I don’t necessarily disagree with either of those opinions, as I would have agreed with them, in general, 25 years ago. But, as I tried to point out in my article, what about those graduating college now?
Many who reached out had the opinion that colleges and universities over the past several decades have become “indoctrination academies” that quash dissent and critical thinking. Listen to some of those screaming at pro-Hamas rallies. Their lack of understanding truth and reality is alarming.
Still, others who work at academies or in training divisions advised that the dropout rate over the past ten years has skyrocketed. Recruit officers quitting for a variety of reasons that included but are not limited to; refusal to understand the need to show up on time, working night shift and weekends, receiving any type of discipline, arguing about personal time being impacted by the job and angst over mandatory overtime and/or not being allowed to possess their cell phones in academy classes or in their squad cars.
Finally, we heard from many who had Criminal Justice degrees and others who taught in Criminal Justice Programs at colleges and universities across the country. An alarming number of them lamented about the vile perspective and hate many who run these CJ Divisions have for the law enforcement community and the profession in general. And, not surprisingly, most of those denigrating the profession were never cops.
As a timely sidenote: Fox business just published an article about the Freedom Economy Index (FEI), surveying opinions from 70,000 small businesses asking about the “return on investment” of higher education reference their own employees. Incredibly, 67% of those surveyed responded with a “strongly no” when asked if they believed institutions of higher education were “graduating students with relevant skills that today’s business community needs.” An additional 24.4% responded “somewhat no” with the remaining 8.7% responding either “somewhat yes,” “strongly yes,” or “other.”
So, let’s take a look at some of those who have their own opinions about the need for college degrees in order to apply for a job in law enforcement.
Deputy Chief Terry McCord with the Danville (IL) PD responds:
Supporting your point from a different angle, backward. I’m 53 years old and currently enrolled in online classes to obtain my Criminal Justice BAS. Why at 53? So I can retire from my current position as a Deputy Chief that I obtained with only an associate degree and be able to pursue a chief of police position somewhere in a much warmer climate. Almost all police chief positions require a bachelor’s degree and prefer a master’s.
I’ve had good and bad professors. Some teach and instruct what’s needed in law enforcement, some could care less. My classes aren’t difficult mainly because I use my experience of almost 30 years of law enforcement. When I took classes for three semesters as an 18- and 19-year-old out of high school I struggled. Now maturity may have much to do with it, but in my opinion you just can’t beat experience. The officers we hire in today’s world need experience. Life experience. Not mom and dad paying for college while they simply attend classes for a few hours a few days and play video games or view TikTok and Snapchat videos the rest of the time.
Colonel Jim Smith Public Safety Director Cottonwood (AL) Police Department comments:
If nothing else, a degree teaches one to research, read, study, and produce reports. I believe another major benefit is the socialization process that exposes one to many other lifestyles and backgrounds. To me interacting with people in the neutral setting of higher education is important. I see so many officers today who cannot produce a well written report, have grammar issues, and cannot use presentation programs when needed. This is frustrating as the high schools seem to have failed to educate and train students to perform these tasks. In small and medium sized agencies, one finds it common for officers to have to perform these roles presenting a visual presentation of a crime scene to a jury, using a program to reconstruct a motor vehicle crash scene, or presenting a program to a civic club or command staff.
What should be occurring is higher education should be tailoring its programs to the technical resources and skills needed by LEOs and spending less time on exotic classes. I teach CJ classes and for the four universities I have taught for, we shaped the classes to fit the needs of LEOs with useful knowledge and technical expertise. One has to carefully consider the program and its content before spending the money to attend the classes.
From Philip Semple, a retired Training Constable with the Toronto Police Service:
I don’t see an issue with setting the minimum requirement at high school level. While it serves as a baseline, it doesn’t necessarily dictate hiring exclusively at that level. There are many reasons why some people do not go on to post-secondary education, and it should not be a barrier to entry into the profession of policing.
Having said that, I do not believe education is ever wasted. Education should enhance an individual’s ability to communicate and comprehend large quantities of written material which, as you progress in the field of policing, certainly exists. After retiring from policing, I got into education and completed my PhD from the University of Toronto. (I wonder if that makes a difference in how you the reader accept what I’ve said so far). Interestingly, enough, I also have a wife who is much smarter than I am, and who assisted me on my academic journey without herself ever attaining any formal credential beyond a college diploma. Continued education does not give you street smarts or common sense, but it does give you other abilities that can be of assistance, depending on where your career takes you.
CO I Alice Kernan, with the Centennial (CO) Correctional Facility responds:
I wanted to say THANK YOU SO MUCH for publishing this article. I am one of those who is old and suffering professionally because I don’t have a degree. My common sense, old school work ethic and my level of integrity isn’t deemed worthy enough to advance to higher paying, mid-level professional jobs because I don’t have an educational institution vouching for my intelligence on a piece of pretty paper.
I am so glad that someone said it and someone believes it because they actually see it. It means especially more from you because you have multiple degrees, yet you are recognizing that your education didn’t set you up to apply HOW to think independently, as opposed to WHAT a professor told you to think.
You hit so many points and I appreciate it so much knowing that someone understands what I’m going through, and probably many others. The only question now is, how do you break the cycle?
An officer with a Canadian law enforcement agency writes:
In my younger days, I was an Air Cadet, Naval Reservist and Auxiliary Police Constable. I have held full time jobs since I was 17 years old. I worked 5 jobs while attending college. I left college after 1 year to go directly into a successful career in Air Traffic.
The range of jobs I’ve held has given me more life experience, more ability to deal with the public, more skills at problem solving and de-escalating conflict than 4 years of university ever would. I should mention that one of those full-time jobs was as a security officer at a university. At times, the “intelligence” displayed by the student body would make any prospective hiring manager cringe. Many of the folk coming out of University are in fields that have absolutely nothing to do with their degree.
As a lifelong learner, I have since completed a diploma program at University, and have many certificates for job-related courses, but I do not qualify as having a degree. As such, even with 25 years experience, I am screened out of job postings. However, I’d put my resume and my experience up against anyone with a degree. I’m just not given that chance. That’s not only a loss to me, but it’s a huge loss to the places that won’t get the benefit of my experience.
From Deputy Chief (ret.) Lou Arcangeli from the Atlanta PD:
Thank you for a thoughtful analysis of a sacred cow that has outlived its contribution to policing.
In looking back, I remember the 1967 “Crime in a Free Society” report as the first major push for the national initiative of college requirements for police. (The link in the title is a PDF file and is searchable by key words.)
Out of this and other research came the push for college recruitment, pay incentives for college, and the LEAA grants and funding of tuition for police candidates that could be repaid by work in law enforcement.
Add to this the devaluation of college diplomas through online diploma mills, and the general decline of critical thinking in all higher education, and it is clear that the requirement must be changed.
I vividly recall the disparity and the resentment in the Atlanta Police Department when college grads salaries were higher than Vietnam veterans. I know this as a college grad who worked a foot beat with a partner who was a Vietnam helicopter pilot. We agreed it was unfair.
Why would a candidate with an online degree be prioritized over a military vet who had learned discipline, skills, competence with weapons, and had real world experience? Why would a police recruit candidate from a party college be a better hire than an inner-city candidate who had demonstrated competence in high school academics and athletics and worked in a job with progressively increased responsibilities for two years? In making hiring decisions late in my career I always sought out the latter.
I recall several college grads in 1973/1974 who felt that they were more highly qualified for advancement because of their degree, despite their cluelessness about the functioning of inner-city life, culture and traditions. A high school grad who had worked their way up to shift manager in a fast-food restaurant was far more suited to understand interpersonal dynamics, the reality of crime and crime victims, and the psychology of criminals and the needs of all citizens than almost all the college grads I worked with. Naturally the college kid recruits who had a chip on their shoulder were quickly humiliated by peers, and by the realities of police work, yet they were paid several pay increments more than the veterans they worked alongside.
Thank you for raising this question in a thoughtful and analytical manner.
Brian Burry, who formerly served with the Fresno and Santa Ana PDs in California writes:
Instead of a “show up and get a degree” type education, the military requires excellence, hard work and tremendous development of skills to achieve the Military Occupational Specialty objectives. Take a Special Forces (Green Beret) Medical Sergeant course. It includes every basic area the physician assistant or nurse practitioner would be trained in and after a year and a half of training, they go and fight for their country. Until very recently hardly any credit was given for all that technical training from surgical to pharmacy to veterinary dentistry to preventive medicine and more required of that highly skilled MOS. In comparison to a liberal arts degree, that would pale against that Medical Sgt! A degree gives me a nice thing to have but is not a necessity.
Ptlm. James O’Neill with the Royersfors Borough (PA) PD who previously served with the Pottstown Borough (PA) PD for 28 yrs. comments:
As I have reminded my son: Education gives you the “knowledge” but in exercising that knowledge, you gain wisdom. That professor who tested your theories is the way education should be. Particularly when dealing with LEs requirement of constantly interacting with other human beings.
I served several years with the Marine Corps and also worked on getting my associate degree in criminal justice. In the several months after the Marines and before getting a police career, I worked part time as security in a night club. Some think I did that to learn how to handle violent people, which was totally wrong. I had dealt with violent people numerous times. It was not so much a factor once I was conditioned to it. I worked that job to learn human behavior in an environment I knew police officers have to deal with. Where proper communication is very valuable. I employed as much tact and respect with disruptive people as I could afford to keep patrons secure, myself safe, as well as keeping the disruptive parties safe.
Those skills transitioned very well to police work. As for my college degree, with the exception of a couple classes actually taught by retired police officers who became professors, it really did not help with my overall career. Good departments will teach and invest in their officers.
For the potential officers who have participated in the civilian ride-along program with my former department, I suggested to them that if they decided to go to college, my recommendation was to pursue English degrees, due to the amount of writing and communicating we do, or political science/sociology, organizational management or history. I suggested finding service jobs or experience in the military to gain some life experience along with seeking out hard challenges. Stay physically sharp. This career is really not fit for people under the age of 25 due to all its complexities and omnipresent liabilities.
Retired Officer Franklin Marino, past Secretary of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association writes:
I’m a vo-tech high school graduate who became a Journeyman Machinist and worked in the trade for just under a decade when a Military deployment changed my career path. I personally believe a college education is overrated, especially with the trends we’ve seen over the past decade and the crap agendas currently being pushed by liberal professors. While I took several college courses using my GI Bill benefits prior to entering LE, I also received credits from the Academy, earned credits by taking instructor and investigator courses, and used my tuition reimbursement benefit for other courses. I never earned a degree because it wasn’t necessary for my career path. Nevertheless, I managed to work the streets for 20 years and successfully retired after a 26-year career.
As an FTO, I trained my share of officers with college degrees and some of them had issues with basic report writing, which in addition to interpersonal skills, is a core skill necessary to be successful as a patrol officer. Taking the words of an instructor from the US Army Military Police School, which I graduated from in 1984, I believe common sense and good judgement are two other vital components of being a successful street cop that need to be combined with command presence, interpersonal and observational skills, officer safety, investigative abilities, critical thinking, and the ability to apply agency policies to every situation you come across during your shift.
Captain Joe Filice responds:
Excellent article! Years ago, an opinion was floating around that the bachelor’s degree was the new high school diploma. At the time, college graduates seemed comparable to high school graduates from a generation earlier in terms of knowledge and skills. With few exceptions, education seems to have degraded at all levels. Critical thinking skills are no longer a requirement to graduate and, at some institutions, could be an impediment. I have interviewed Computer Science graduates who couldn’t hook up a printer. I’m sure that they understood arcane details about printer driver programming but were completely unprepared for a role in IT Support. I have seen too many reports submitted by college graduates that might as well be written in Urdu. Yes, some people graduate with good communication skills and a good work ethic, but college is no longer a guarantee of those skills. The college degree requirement is disqualifying many who may have exactly the skills needed to be great officers.
Finally, Retired DEA Special Agent Ed Wezain shares:
It all depends on the degree; what it prepares you for; and the degree of effort you put into it. College should (but might not) prepare you to think critically and be able to articulate what you see in a coherent written form. A Law Enforcement or Criminal Justice degree should give you some basic insights into where policing fits into the criminal justice system; investigative techniques; criminal and constitutional law; policing at different levels and what duties this entails; report writing and a host of other “practical” law enforcement skills. For better and sometimes worse, people who go into law enforcement have no idea what they are getting into. A degree in Law Enforcement or Criminal Justice should prepare them for this. This is not to say other degrees might not apply. For investigative purposes a degree in accounting or computer sciences could also be very useful.
Although I doubt any US law enforcement agencies would adopt this model, there are countries that have a one- to two-year apprenticeship program to become a police office after you graduate the equivalent of high school here in the states. l think most police agencies would find the cost and length of this program prohibitive.
[To read more comments, visit the original article HERE on the Calibre Press Web site.]
I have a BS in Criminal Justice but do not think it is necessary to do well in this career. Some of the brightest cops I have worked with do not have degrees. By having this requirement, a department is eliminating some fine applicants. There are many examples of successful people without degrees including Bill Gates, Harry Truman and Frank Lloyd Wright.
Oh so right Bob.
I worked in the law enforcement career field for 32 years total between my military career and civilian career. I don’t totally disagree with having a college degree but not everyone is wanting to continue an education. I have seen some outstanding officers with no college and some really bad ones with college degrees. I read the side where those with degrees have less civilian complaints but again there are those that do. There is black and white in this article. When I got out of the military I took my resume to over 25 civilian agencies just trying to get a job. Every last one told me the same thing, you are over qualified. I tried to hire in as a Department of Defense Security Officer/Sergeant but was again told the same thing, over qualified. Yes, I have college behind me but it doesn’t make me any smarter on the street then someone who has worked the streets for several years. I did get promoted quicker though because of my schooling.
Just cause you get a degree doesn’t mean you can do the job nor does it give you the common sense or street smarts required to detect crime. Let’s face it, most I’ve seen come out of these woke institutions (college) less intelligent then before they went in.
College degrees aren’t what they use to be. Core curriculum has been dropped or radically changed and many of those who graduate after 4 years are deficient in reading, writing, and spelling. Basic testing for those who want to be a cop, and a personal interview, should be sufficient.
This question has been asked for decades and I do not believe the question is whether a college degree should be required, it’s the wrong question. I had the privilege to launch a CJ degree completion program at Judson University outside of Chicago back in 2000. It was a program catered to adult practitioners who never had the chance to finish their degree before going to work and raising a family or going into the military. All of my students who were sworn were unbelievably talented people, many became police leaders, including several who became fellow presidents of our state chiefs association, something I’m very proud of. I finished my BA and eventual MS before the CJ program was launched so mine was in business management. The program did help me immensely with public speaking, and written communication, expanded my outlook, and I believe made a difference in decision-making. It also was the sole reason I was able to progress in my career and become a chief for 19 of my 42 years in LE. Could I have been successful as a police officer without going to college? Probably, but also there was a high probability I would have topped out at sergeant, which upon reflection was the best job in the building. The college experience no doubt was a game changer for assessment centers. Now, for the on-street officer, all I can say is my street experience coupled with my education that allowed for my advancement helped me be in a position to hopefully make a difference in the lives of the tremendous people I was entrusted with and the communities I served. Now for those who did go to school, we know that this issue goes as far back as the Wickersham Commission and then years later the LBJ administration. All of the data suggested that a degree helped and they went a step further that it should be a pre-requisite. I would say that for those students who go to school traditionally, at least they’d be a little older when they start their LE career with some life experience. A degree will never make a bad cop good, but I do believe it will make a good cop better. When I started in 1979 I still remember young officers with a degree being made fun of by the older guys, there was a term they were called that I cant say online. I will agree with Jim that there may be a conversation worth having about the recruits that graduate today, but unfortunately, that may be more of a discussion on the state of higher education and politics.
I have an advanced degree and have passed National Boards and a State Board examination. I work with many people who have Masters Degrees. I have worked with people with GEDs to Ph.Ds. Some of the most educated people I’ve met can’t author a comprehensible report.
Michael Crichton graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College, received his MD from Harvard Medical School authored several great books. In an interview several years ago he was asked by an aspiring writer, “What should I do to become a good writer?”
Dr. Crichton answered, “Write. Write a lot!”
We can say the same answer about most professions. In law enforcement, what would it take to be an outstanding police officer? The answer is to do a great deal of policing. AND work for excellence and a mastery in your pursuit of perfection every single day!
We all know officers who may have 20 years of experience, but they have repeated 6 months of that experience 40 times over. Why is that acceptable? Because in too many police departments, being a “good police officer” also means that you don’t get any complaints. The office soon finds out there is no penalty for don’t little more than answering your dispatched calls. Proactive can get complaints. Chiefs don’t like complaints.
Higher Education today is more about making money than educating people. One only has to critically examine college graduates in an oral board to find that while they may have a “college degree” they spent most of the time on wasted pursuits.
As I watch recent protests on college campuses, there is a great lack of knowledge of current events and world history. (This may be media bias in the reporting.)
The average federal student loan debt is $37,338 per borrower. Private student loan debt averages $54,921 per borrower. The average student borrows over $30,000 to pursue a bachelor’s degree. Was the degree chosen a good “Return on Investment?” According to the New York Fed researchers, the lowest lifetime returns for bachelor’s degrees are found among liberal arts (12 percent), leisure and hospitality (11 percent), agriculture (11 percent) and education majors (9 percent).
Does your applicant have one of those degrees? We should question their decision-making capability.
In 1952, President Jimmy Carter secured the opportunity of a lifetime: an interview with Admiral Hyman Rickover for a chance to join the nuclear submarine program.
Admiral Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, was not just one of history’s most brilliant minds, he was also one of history’s most hands-on leaders. He interviewed every single candidate for the submarine service himself, including the future president. These were long interviews. For two to three hours, Rickover asked Carter about strategy, tactics, physics, literature, and history. Carter had prepared for days, weeks even, and the interview seemed to be going well when Rickover asked, “Where were you ranked in your class at the Naval Academy?” Now, it’s only going to get better, Carter must have thought as he swelled up with pride, “I was ranked 59th in a class of 840 sir.” Carter would recall the surprise of not receiving congratulations, but instead another question:
“Did you always do your best?”
Carter began to instinctively answer that of course he always did his best, but something inside of him caused him to pause. “I recalled several of the many times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy, and so forth,” Carter would say. So he was honest, “No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.” Rickover didn’t say anything and just looked at Carter for a long time before asking one final question “Why not?” Then he stood up and walked out of the room.
Should an applicant’s background be based on their meritocratic performance in other professions? Is the applicant able to take criticism, admit their mistakes and learn from them? Are they just going to be that “20-year officer” with a solid 6-month experience repeated forty times, or is your applicant always going to do their best?
“Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.”
– Robert F. Kennedy
This article and the responses have been of great interest to me for several reasons. For the past three months I have been researching a topic related to this. Having a college degree helped me while working as a police officer in several ways. Communication skills were very useful in talking to the public and interrogating suspects. The greatest benefit was in report writing. The county attorney came and spoke one day at roll call. She kept going on about how we shouldn’t even bother making arrests, as she could not prosecute based on the lousy reports she received. Then she had a copy of a report and said, now if you need to know what a solid report looks like, here is one right here. Read it and get your %(*$&% together. She tacked it to the bulletin board and left. It was my report. I have been teaching criminal justice at the university level for the past 20 years since retiring from law enforcement. For the last 10, I have been at Emmanuel University, after teaching at two large state universities (in Indiana and Tennessee). I am a conservative and was targeted by some colleagues and administration because I would not go along with the liberal, woke agenda. For example, once the dean came to my office as a student (not in criminal justice) had walked by and was offended by the American flag I had on display. When he saw that I did have the flag displayed, he told me to remove it. Not all universities are equal. My program at Emmanuel stresses good writing skills and communication skills. Although we are not a tech school that has more emphasis on hands-on activities, most everything I do in the classroom is meant to help them in their career. Here are a few of the classroom expectations: no late work accepted, no hats worn in the classroom, when presenting, dress professionally, be on time or get locked out, holding students accountable for regular attendance, no cell phones in class, and a strict academic integrity policy. I incorporate assignments that include a critical assessment. Students can do internships with a police department or agency as well. Many of my graduates let me know how much everything I did helped prepare them and make them successful. The courses in our distance learning criminal justice and homeland security degrees were developed by practitioners (working in law enforcement or related criminal justice career) who hold a Ph.D. in criminal justice. Many textbooks are written from a liberal perspective, so there are assignments throughout from an alternate viewpoint, or students are asked to find the problem with that view. Finding the right school is what will make getting the college worth the effort and cost. I would suggest private schools and Christian universities as a much better fit for those seeking to further their education.
I have a BA and a Master of Public Admin. I have 49 years of LE experience at the Municipal, County and Federal levels. I really learned report writing at the Chicago Police Department and the Postal Inspection Service. I know CRJ professors with PHDs who haven’t a clue about law enforcement. and what goes on on the streets and in disruptive family situations. I have sat in classes and seminars where I felt I was really wasting my time. One time I was tasked by my boss with setting up a plan to deal with anticipated disruptions at the local court house. He had me interviewed by a college student who questioned everything I had planned, because as my boss put it, she was brilliant/simply brilliant. She had no useful suggestions, but I listened politely. As a postal inspector, I was a subject matter expert in undercover narcotics investigations. I remember two bosses at a meeting telling me we needed to record more of a discussion about quantity and price on the workroom floor. I explained that dishonest postal employees were the most paranoid, that every new face was an undercover inspector, and that drug dealing postal employees were the most paranoid. One of the newer bosses. a newly minted PHD, asked, “Can’t you just bust them for talking about it?” I knew right then and there the man had no street experience. Anyway, I digress. Education is great, if you learn to write a good well documented report, and experience is far more valuable. A Bachelor of Arts is fine; a Bachelor of Alleys may be better.
During my 50 years in Law Enforcement, Corrections and Government Security I obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Public Administration/Police Science and Master’s in Management. I think that the college experience allowed me to become a more thorough investigator and gave me the ability to use computer skills to enhance my career. What allowed me to successfully complete my career was common sense (logic). Common sense, I believe, is essential. If there is a system where we can measure common sense during the hiring process, great. Common sense is not learned and lack of it can certainly be fatal in our profession. College education is a plus BUT not necessary for an officer with good common sense (logic).
Yes, this has two purposes. You get a more qualified applicant with the ability to write a report and the interpersonal skills required for this position of Police Officer. Yes, a lot of people will drop out for a variety of reasons, but only recent college graduates find this field of work appealing today. You will have a difficult time finding a great recruit candidate in the twenty-first century without a college degree. I began working in law enforcement 1977 at the age of 21, without a college degree, and with a baby on the way. However, I knew that to progress in my career, I would need to get a degree, so I did, earning an MPA in public policy and a BA in criminal justice (homeland security).
Six in one hand and half-dozen in the other: how would you handle the volume of complaints from citizens about inexperienced officers or deal with attrition among recruit candidates today? I do not mean when I say attrition that senior officers quitting to retire. I’m talking about people who quit to go after other goals or those who simply realized this wasn’t for them. The days of men and women working 25 to 30yrs with the rank of Police Officer are pretty much gone today, that officer will leave for another department or a completely different career. Also, the days of going to another law enforcement agency after retirement are pretty much over too. As an example, I’m with my second law enforcement since retirement in 2010.
In the long run, having a department full of college graduates is great, it’s a plus, but there will be draw backs as I mention in the above.
I completed my Bachelor degree and started on a Masters in my mid-50’s after attaining the rank of Lt., in order to “check the box” required to keep my resume out of the first cut for chief positions after retiring from my previous department. After working as a sworn, entry-level officer for the university PD I was attending with the intent of completing a Masters in Public Administration/Policy (they were paying for it), I realized that a more appropriate course of study to improve my chances of advancement may have been: “Cronyism, Nepotism, Covering For The Brand in Critical Incidents and Developing and Implementing Woke Policy In University Police Department Administration”. Somewhere, there’s a university administrator pitching a Masters program addressing this need.
I dropped out and took a chief’s job in a small but much more rational community.
In lieu of practical work experience particularly in either a security, military or other customer service-oriented field, giving the police candidate of today a “little more time in the incubator” will provide a chance for professional growth and potentially experience in writing of which is essential for investigative reports that they will be taking. Each day a Sergeant of Police and now as a Security Director, I have felt more like an English teacher with my red pen correcting reports and like a referee while talking down officers who relied more on the power of their badge rather than their words. In the NYPD, they made college a requirement at all levels that did not exist prior to my enlistment with them. Today, one needs 60 college credits to get on the department, an additional 4 (total 64) to be promoted to Sergeant, 96 for Lieutenant and a Bachelor’s (120 credits) for Captain. Our profession is not the same as it was 30-45 years ago where we were getting veterans exiting the military doing this job. We are largely getting candidates who this is their first real job since there paper route or being the fry guy from wherever. A college education is a good thing for consideration, but it needs to be backed post-employment with real life, and real time training. Investment in our officers will give them the tools for success and limit litigation against our respective departments and the officers involved.
My last stint in my 20+ year LE career was spent in Middle Management for Civil Litigation / Corrective Action for one of the largest Police Departments in the Nation. I have a number of college credits but no formal degree. In my experience based on hundreds of cases resulting in objectively justified department liability (among many more not deserving of that label), I would advise any Police Department today to do the following regarding the educational and professional background of potential candidates for hiring or promotion: 1. An applicant for the job should have five years work experience in a regular job (not government service or military), be a minimum of 26 years of age and have a minimum of 60 college credits. 2. Testing for applicants, aside from reading comprehension and an essay portion, should have a comprehensive section testing the ability to apply the IRAC principle; identifying an Issue, identifying the relevant Rule or rules, render an Application of the rule to the issue and formulating a Conclusion. 3. Any internal applicant for a first-line supervisory position or higher should have comprehensive personnel and risk management training of college equivalence, along with comprehensive position-specific training designed by the department and developed in cooperation with a partnering accredited educational institution. All academy curricula and advanced officer training should be certified and accredited through a state school and be transferable college credit. Unfortunately, these days even an Ivy-League college degree does not guarantee that an applicant can read, understand, and/or write at what used to be a 10th grade high school literacy level in my time (I am writing from experience here), so testing these abilities is key in determining their sufficiency for the position, both for initial applicants and advanced position applicants. In terms of background for both, initial applicant and promotional applicant, any substantiated history of objectively unnecessary, self-initiated violence (including animal abuse) or the objectively unnecessary, self-initiated, and willful demeaning of another (for example, psychological abuse, bullying as an adult, malicious hazing) should be exclusionary. I also highly recommend departments to observe a de-compression period for combat veterans. This can either be a period of non-hire post exiting the service, requiring certain VA-offered services, or, where significant applicant competition exists, a period of service in an administrative capacity either for the department or the associated city or county while availing themselves to veteran’s services, before being subjected to the “stressors of the streets.”
Nkn LEO: observations of a lifetime from vast and various experience.
“THE first requirement for either a cop, or college educated engineer is: ” A total lack of common sense”.