Hi guys! We did it, this is the last Civic Issues Blog of the semester! There’s one more important topic that I want to talk about which I didn’t think should be left unsaid. I’m going to talk about police training, which is at the root of any biased or racist behavior displayed by police. I will be talking about some basics of recruiting and training, as well as some issues with these systems. As usual, much of this information will be from the textbook Introduction to Criminal Justice, by Kenneth J. Peak and Tamara D. Madensen-Herold, specifically Chapter 6.

*Admittedly, I probably should have done this as one of the first posts in the series, but I didn’t actually think to write about this topic until now*

To start off, the figure below (from the textbook) displays the screening and testing methods used for police recruits after they have passed the minimum qualifications.

The second figure displays a relative flow chart for the police hiring process. However, this can differ from agency to agency, with some elements in a different order or left out.

Evidently, some of the most essential parts of recruit screening are criminal record checks, background investigations, driving record checks, medical record checks, and personal interviews, among others. Since there is no set police hiring or screening process, one suggested solution for effective training is to implement all of the same screening and testing methods across all of the 18,000 federal, state, county, and municipal law enforcement agencies in America. Having a uniform system would ensure that all officers have had to endure the same treatment and process, and therefore, they are all similar in their moral, medical, physical, intellectual, and psychological standings.

Once recruits have passed all the screenings and other entrance requirements and been hired into an agency, they go into recruit training at a police academy. The following information is from the report “State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies, 2013” by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJC). In the police academies, recruits are trained in four different areas: operations, weapons/defensive tactics/use of force, self-improvement, and legal education.

In the operations area, recruits predominantly learn topics such as report writing, patrol procedures, investigations, traffic accident investigations, and basic first aid/CPR. In terms of weapons and defensive tactics, recruits specifically learn how to use weapons properly, when to use/not use force, and how to implement defense tactics. For self-improvement, recruits go over ethics and integrity, health and fitness, communications, and stress prevention/management. Finally, in the area of legal education, recruits are taught criminal and constitutional law, traffic law, and juvenile justice law and procedures. These are some of the major subject areas taught in most police academies. Again, they do often differ.

All of these aspects are obviously important to incorporate into training, but there are certain areas that should definitely receive more attention. For instance, academies should spend more time on use of force. The report by the BJC mentioned that each recruit receives about 60 hours of training on defensive tactics and 71 hours on firearms skills, but only 21 hours on use of force. With events that have happened in recent years regarding police deadly force, proper training for use of force should be emphasized more.

A couple other important components that should be taken seriously in police academies are ethics and integrity and stress prevention/management. Ethics and integrity training, which only takes up about 8 hours total of recruit training, is a huge guiding factor in everything that police officers do. They must be ethically sound and able to do the right thing always, especially since the nature of the job means that they are not always closely supervised on the streets. Stress prevention/management, which takes up only 6 hours of recruit training is probably just as important. The job of a police officer is stressful and demanding, and officers must be trained properly to deal with these emotions and struggles so they don’t hurt themselves or others.

The last thing about recruit training that I want to mention is that after they leave the academy, new police officers are instructed by Field Training Officers (FTOs) in FTO programs. This helps new police officers to get actual experience out in the field while also being supervised and assisted by an experienced officer.

I included this post to make sure that I covered all the bases on police training, requirements, and issues, because my intent for the policy paper is to talk about some specifics of police training and applicant requirements that should be remedied. I will likely focus heavily on the content from last week’s post (Civic Issues #5) about police education, but training will be another prominent topic in the paper.

That’s all I have for this post! I hope you guys enjoyed reading my blog posts in the preceding weeks. I love this topic but know it’s not for everyone, so I at least hope you all learned something along the way.