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.

Welcome back to my civic issues posts! This week’s topic is going to be something pretty interesting that I thought of a few weeks ago when I was reading for my Crim100 class. In addition, the deliberation on police reform that we had in our class last week got me thinking about possible solutions to policing issues, and I thought of a suggestion that wasn’t mentioned in one of the approaches. So this week I’m going to address police college degrees (or a lack thereof). Much of the information mentioned in this post will be from Chapter 6 of the textbook Introduction to Criminal Justice, by Kenneth J. Peak and Tamara D. Madensen-Herold.

If you think about it, policing is such a community-involved, complex job that it would make sense for police officers to be required to have college degrees. A college education would be ideal for all their complicated responsibilities. As the textbook states, these responsibilities can include “To interact with an educated public, enforce the rule of law, investigate crimes, testify in court, write cogent and accurate reports, and perform the myriad other duties for which we call upon the police.” Contrary to that expectation of police education though, only 15% of all police agencies in the United States have some college degree requirement. Furthermore, only 1% require a 4-year (bachelor’s) degree, and 23% require a 2-year (associate’s) degree.

In addition, since there is no requirement of higher education in most police agencies, many police decide not to be educated beyond high school. A lot of times, policing seems to be one of those “last resort” types of jobs, where people go when they don’t really want to get a degree. In the article “How educated should police be?” the author Christine Gardiner recounts the results of research she did with the president of the Police Foundation: “About one third (30.2 percent) of police officers in the United States have a four-year college degree. A little more than half (51.8 percent) have a two-year degree, while 5.4 percent have a graduate degree”. This information was published in 2016.

The notion that a college education could help police do their jobs better has been backed by every national commission that studied crime, violence, and police in America, such as the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals (1973). A great deal of empirical evidence suggests that college-educated police officers are better and more well-rounded. The textbook expresses, “compared to non-college-educated officers, college-educated officers have significantly fewer founded citizen complaints; have better peer relationships; are likelier to take a leadership role in the organization; tend to be more flexible; are less dogmatic and less authoritarian; take fewer leave days, receive fewer injuries, have less injury time, have lower rates of absenteeism, use fewer sick days, and are involved in fewer traffic accidents; have greater ability to analyze situations and make judicious decisions; and have a more desirable system of personal values.”

With all of this evidence and support in favor of higher education for police, why have most agencies still not implemented rules to require it? In addition, why has the government not made overarching policies for all police, which require at least two years of college education? One reason for this is likely that less people would be qualified for the job, so there would be less police officers. This would not be ideal, because police need all the officers that they can get. Also, policymakers and police agencies are probably reluctant to change their ways since the original system “works”. Unless they can be convinced of solid and undeniable evidence that there needs to be a change, things will remain the same.

Ultimately though, we can probably all agree that educating police beyond high school and specialized police training would be beneficial to police themselves and also the community members they interact with. It would provide more competent and considerate officers, who are experts in multiple fields and have knowledge beyond just the basics of policing.

Hi everyone! So I was thinking about this Civic Issues post and contemplating what I wanted to talk about for this week. I feel like there is so much ground to cover on this topic, and I was struggling to decide what I wanted this week’s subject matter to be. I decided I will actually be going over a topic that Sandra mentioned in the comments of my first Civic Issues blog post. She basically suggested that I should explore the relationship between impoverished communities and police presence in those communities. She proposed that I go over how this relationship can translate to more police brutality in low income areas. Therefore, I will outline the basics of criminal activity in lower-income neighborhoods, comment on police attention in these neighborhoods, and then bring it all together by addressing black individuals’ opinions on police in their neighborhoods.

The first thing I want to touch on is the tendency of socially disorganized neighborhoods to have higher crime rates. Chapter 3 of the textbook Introduction to Criminal Justice, by Kenneth J. Peak and Tamara D. Madensen-Herold, focuses on different theories for why people commit crimes. The Social Disorganization Theory suggests that neighborhood characteristics—such as poverty, racial variety, and frequent population turnover—result in a breakdown of social controls and lead to criminal behavior. This means that oftentimes, low income neighborhoods with high minority populations have higher crime rates.

I did some research on the opinions that Black people in low-income communities have on law enforcement in their communities, and I actually found some surprising information. A report called “The State of Opportunity in America 2020 Report” (done by the Center for Advancing Opportunity), gives information about opinions about opportunity held by approximately 7,000 respondents from poor, crime-ridden communities. The article “Many Blacks want more police presence…” uses statistics from this report to describe the results in a simplified manner. The author, Gerard Robinson states that “large majorities of residents in low-income “fragile communities” — including in both urban and rural areas — want more police presence, not less. In the more than a dozen low-income urban areas surveyed, 53% of residents want more police presence while 41% want the same — only 6% want less”.

This evidence contradicted what I had previously thought about police presence in poor neighborhoods. I assumed that police officers would be overbearing in such communities and that people would want less police presence. However, this displays to me that minority individuals have not lost all faith in law enforcement and that they believe police still do play an important role in regulating crime in society.

On the other hand, though, the article notes, “But because these communities want the police does not mean they are satisfied with law enforcement’s treatment of them or their community. Sixty percent of Blacks know some or a lot of people treated unfairly by the police, a rate much higher than for both Hispanics (39%) and whites (11%) — a wide racial disparity.” This indicates that, although black individuals recognize the necessity of police, they also are calling for reforms in the ways police conduct themselves.

Overall, the general consensus I got from this report is that Black people in low-income communities do not feel that the police presence is too high, but they do believe that the police present in their communities should be more tailored and accustomed to dealing with the community properly and fairly. This translates to needs for reforms in policing. Here are some suggestions I have thought of for making police responses more appropriate to the communities they deal with: advocating for more racially diverse police officers in any given police department, increasing ethical training in police academies, and getting feedback from communities on what they specifically want from the police in their area. These actions could help to bridge the gap and make amends between the police and the community, specifically minority individuals.

Hi everyone! As I mentioned briefly in the last post, this week I will be addressing the history of policing in the U.S., the connection of that to modern policing, and issues with the systems that are currently in place. Most of this information will be from Chapter 5 of the textbook Introduction to Criminal Justice, by Kenneth J. Peak and Tamara D. Madensen-Herold. I provided a link to the online textbook, but it can only be accessed if you have bought the textbook (I included the link purely for credit/informational purposes; don’t go buying the textbook or anything).

As for the history of policing, the earlier eras of this occupation were characterized by immense corruption and disorganization. First, the Political Era of policing stretched from the 1840s to the 1930s. In 1844, New York state legislature established a full-time preventive police force for New York City as a result of all the crime happening there. However, at this time, politics was a heavy factor in determining which people could become part of the police force. Politicians had the freedom to back whatever potential applicants they wanted to, and knowing or being associated with a politician put applicants in a higher position on the list of recruits.

Secondly, there was the reform era, which lasted from the 1930s to the 1980s. This era was an attempt to reject political involvement in the police, and it was also characterized by an increase in the “crime fighter” image of policing. A greater emphasis was placed on numbers and statistics (such as arrests, citations, and response times) for tracking police progress. Formal police schools were developed, and improvements were made to the overall police organization. This era was the start to reducing police corruption, but there were still many issues.

Finally came the community era, which has lasted from the 1980s to the present day. In this era, more emphasis is being placed on practicing community policing and problem solving. Officers have been retrained to work with the community to solve problems, by looking at underlying causes and developing tailored responses to them. Currently in policing, the problem is no longer really related to organization; it is about implicit bias that comes with the nature of police work.

As we can see based on the history and organization of police, the roles of policing in society have changed over time with the development of different strategies and approaches. As a result, the current state of policing is actually an improvement from what it was before. There is obviously a lot more work to be done, with corruption and bias being ever present, but today’s community era in policing has seen major improvements in overall organization, minimization of corruption, and approaches and responses to fighting crime.

A major point of tension between the police and the community today is how policing involves protecting the community while also keeping themselves safe, but methods of doing this are often biased by nature. What I mean by this is that police have a responsibility to protect citizens first and themselves second, and they protect citizens and themselves by staying vigilant and keeping an eye out for suspicious characters or behavior **this is where I get into tricky/controversial territory, so bear with me**. This sometimes means that police utilize racial profiling. Statistically, African Americans are disproportionately represented in committing violent crimes, compared to their percentage of the population. This means that generally, African Americans commit a higher percentage of violent crime compared to their percentage in the population. According to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2018, African Americans represented 12.5% of the population, but they were responsible for 33% of the nonfatal violent crimes. On the other hand, white people were underrepresented in the percentage of nonfatal violent crimes compared to their population (45.9% compared to 60.4%). You would expect the percentage of population to be proportionate to the amount of violent crime committed, but that is not the case here.

Therefore, it may be relatively understandable why police search, seize, and arrest black people at higher rates (compared to their populations) than white people. It is merely because statistics show higher proportions of violence for black people, and therefore, police have a responsibility to be vigilant and proactive to protect everyone. I am not saying that it is necessarily right to racially profile people, because in instances where there is no clear sign of danger or threat, there obviously is no reason to do so. However, if there is a perceived threat or an appearance of suspicious behavior, police may be warranted in looking into that out of necessity. (Please feel free to disagree by the way. The nature of this is that it’s an issue, and it’s an issue because it’s controversial. Therefore, I’m open to disagreement)

Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a successful week and that those who moved on campus were able to do so smoothly. So I want to touch on something briefly right now, which I forgot to mention in my Civic Issues #1 post: I am interested in looking at policing as a civic issue because I am a criminology major. A lot of the material I learn in Crim is related to the criminal justice system, the make-up of that system, and reasons that people commit crime, so it’s closely aligned with the policework-related stuff that I will be talking about on here. Therefore, when I’m talking about things I’ve learned in my crim class, that information will be relatively unbiased unless I state otherwise. Disclaimer: today’s post might be a little biased due to the nature of the topic.

In this post, I feel that it is very important for me to talk about a discussion I observed during my Crim100 course on Thursday. I will be giving my take on the issue that was discussed, as well as giving a take from a couple other sources. For the next Civic Issues post (this is sort of a note to myself as well as to you guys), I will get more into the structure of police organization, from local all the way up to federal, and discuss the things that should maybe be changed about these systems.

Yesterday during my Introduction to Criminal Justice course (Crim100), we were talking about ethics in the criminal justice system, specifically in policing, and also about how police have a great deal of discretion in their actions [I learned about police discretion through my textbook, but here is a link to another site about police discretion]. Since police have so much discretion in the things they do, such as search and seizures, traffic stops, and arrests, their possible internal biases can lead to instances of perceived racism.

Naturally then, this led to a discussion on the current state of policework and the social movements that oppose it. An argument erupted in the chat because somebody (a student who happened to be in the Military Police branch of the Army) stated that police are essential to society, and there would be chaos without some sort of organized policing system. He also stated that police brutality against minorities is not actually a problem; it’s just a political tactic. This caused many counterarguments to surface, stating that the black community is actually disproportionately represented in matters of police violence and deadly force compared to the white community. According to the website Mapping Police Violence, Black people represented 13% of the U.S. population in 2020, but represented 28% of those killed by police. In addition, they were about 3 times more likely to be killed by police than white people were. These statistics suggest that police brutality against the black community is, in fact, an actual problem that needs to be addressed.

Now, I generally have a very moderate point of view on most political issues, and that stands true for this topic also. To a certain extent, I am agreeable towards both sides of this controversy, but there are also some undeniable faults on both sides. On one hand, those who support police in this ordeal must admit that SOME police are wrong in their actions. An important part of reaching some sort of compromise or agreement on this issue is for people on that side to accept that systemic racism is present in the criminal justice system, and that it’s a huge factor in the unethical and questionable actions of some police. They also must admit that, although police are still essential to the progression and continuation of society, so is the elimination/reduction of that racism.

On the other hand, those who oppose police and support minority communities must accept that police ARE essential to society. In my opinion, we cannot get rid of them or defund them, because we need them for society to be successful.

Ultimately, this discussion from my crim class brought light to the continued disagreeable nature of the U.S.’s political climate, but it opened up an opportunity for an interesting and relevant post about the differing opinions on the role of police in society.