ChrisL
Diamond Member
Well, I never claimed to be an expert, but IMO 6 weeks is certainly not a very long time, and perhaps police academy training time should be extended. At one time, 6 week course may have been sufficient, but not in today's day and age. There is ALWAYS room for improvement.
Police Chief Magazine - View Article
asic police recruit training has been an unsettled topic for many years in the United States. Historically, in many states, the issue has been to provide more training for recruits. Yet, in recent times, special interest groups have made their ways into academy curricula, due to the timeliness of their advocacies. Racial profiling, cultural diversity, mental health, and domestic violence are several of these areas. As a result of these training topics and other task-oriented subjects, some recruit training programs exceed 1,000 hours. That would mean that recruits are in a classroom for about half of their first year. This extended training commitment certainly is at odds with the desire of many agencies to deploy new officers expediently. Many agencies are wondering if there is a more efficient way to get their recruits the training they need.
20th-Century Police Training Model
Ever since the U.S. Congress passed the Safe Streets Act of 1968, which provided substantial federal assistance to local law enforcement agencies for training, basic recruit peace officer training has been a significant and ongoing issue across the country. Even before the passage of that act, John Sullivan, in his book Introduction to Police Science, published in 1966, observed,
While a physician may change his diagnosis or prescription, a lawyer may amend his pleadings, and a judge may take days or weeks to render a decision, when a peace officer makes a decision, it frequently must be instantaneous. Therefore, in order to cope with the many complex emergency duties and responsibilities that confront a peace officer in his/her role, the officer cannot depend entirely upon native ability. Instead he or she must be expertly trained to function effectively as an integral part of today’s modern mechanized police force.1
Almost a decade later, former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark also commented on the need for increased police competence by noting, “To be truly professional, police must have high standards of education and personal competence in a wide range of subjects with continuous development and training.”2
In 1973, the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals strongly recommended that every state should require all sworn police employees to complete a minimum of 400 hours of basic training to enable all peace officers to perform their roles effectively.
Even a study prepared by the IACP in 1977 demonstrated that in the mid-1960s, the average police officer in the United States received less than 200 hours of formal training—whereas the 1973 National Advisory Commission reported that physicians received more than 11,000 hours; lawyers, more than 9,000 hours; teachers, more than 7,000 hours; embalmers, more than 5,000 hours; and barbers, more than 4,000 hours.
Yet, ironically, records and research clearly show that as late as 1967, police recruit basic training practices did not even exist for up to 32 percent of the law enforcement agencies within municipalities and counties with populations of greater than 10,000.3 For many agencies, recruit training was almost an afterthought.
For example, in 1975, with a degree in criminal justice administration, Gary Maddox became a police officer. Maddox, now director of the Law Enforcement Training Institute for the University of Missouri–Extension, says it never occurred to him at the time he was hired that it would be a year before he would receive any formal training for the job; then, when he did go to a training academy, it was only 320 hours—eight weeks’ worth. Yet from the time Maddox took his oath, he was expected to make informed, split-second decisions regarding such issues as use of force and constitutional law without a speck of training on which to rely.
By the early 1980s, basic training for peace officers in the United States had finally become mandated in every state. However, this training ranged from as little as 120 hours to as much as 1,000 hours or more, depending on each state’s respective statutes, police agencies, and academy directors. And much of that recruit training was seen as inadequate, because in many instances, the instruction bore little relationship to what was actually expected of peace officers. In the absence of any guidelines that truly related to an analysis of police experiences, instructors and trainers were left with only the formal definition of police authority and other vague, nebulous, and abstract concepts to communicate to peace officer trainees.4
These observations are not meant to discredit or belittle the usually well-intentioned and sincere efforts of police trainers and training administrators to provide job-relevant training at the time. It should be remembered that the role of police in contemporary society has never been clearly defined or universally adopted.
So you say they need better training....but have absolutely no clue what it should be. Got it.
She goes with a 20th century model in a 21st century world. This isn't 1967 or 1975. We're living in a completely different world now than we did back then.
So, what argument do you have against more police training?
Good luck with that.
