Because I’m the only one of Backwoods Home’s writers with a law enforcement background, I sort of wound up by default being the resident writer on criminal justice issues. Forty-plus years sworn, part-time but for most of those years in a supervisory capacity over full- and part-time municipal officers alike. Nineteen years as chair of the firearms/deadly force training committee for the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers, and a like period of time up through 2023 on the advisory board of the International Law Enforcement Educators and Trainers Association, and teaching for the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors – plus the research that led me to write countless articles in law enforcement professional journals and writing the Cop Talk column for American Handgunner magazine from 1977 to date, and teaching cops on four continents – have all given me lots of input into the evolution of American police work up to the present situation.
When they first pinned a badge on me in the early 1970s, it was a time when the watchword was “We’re a profession, not just a job.” Over the years, more and more police departments demanded a college degree – Associates usually acceptable, Bachelors degree preferred and sometimes demanded – as a baseline requirement.
And rarely, if ever, did they specify a degree in Police Science or Criminal Justice! When I was hired by my first department as a Patrolman, or at my second as a Sergeant or my third as a Captain, neither of my two degrees ever came up. No one cared about the one diploma in Accounting or the other in Business Management (which, really, weren’t all that relevant to the tasks at hand). They cared if the candidate wanted to do the job and seemed competent to do it.
That was then. This is now. The wave of anti-police sentiment in the United States that became a tsunami in 2020 has led to a mass exodus of often-premature retirements and a dearth of qualified applicants, because it’s human nature not to want a job in which you feel hated by those you serve.
Should a college degree be required in the mid-2020s for police officers? My decades on The Job taught me that people skills and common sense were way more important than “book learning,” and I say that as someone who had his share of the latter. The late Col. Paul Doyon, then the superintendent of the New Hampshire State Police, told me something in the 1970s that I’ve never forgotten: “The Job is not guns and badges. The Job is people!”
I’d rather the 21-year-old who responds to my need for police service have four years in the military understanding discipline and following rules, or have spent four years working with the public, than one who spent the same amount of time earning a degree in liberal arts or, Heaven help us, “Social Justice.”
In the excellent Calibre Press e-journal respected police trainer Jim Glennon recently asked the question “Do cops need a college degree?” You can read it here.
Cops from all over responded. You can read their comments here.
I invite you readers to share YOUR opinions on the topic. You, after all, are the “consumers” of the public service in question.
I would like to think that a college education would benefit someone but it has been so long since I graduated that I don’t know if that is still true. The current “safe-spaces/victimhood” mentality is definitely not helping children and young adults interact and deal with people of different backgrounds and opinions. I think that candidates with military experience (combat arms) and who played contact sports (football, wrestling) would have a leg up. Some of the current videos displaying officers screaming obscenities, dangerous weapon handling, and inability to control/handcuff suspects are truly frightening. It may be that police work, like politics is becoming untenable to those that would truly be the best at it.
“The wave of anti-police sentiment in the United States that became a tsunami in 2020 has led to a mass exodus of often-premature retirements and a dearth of qualified applicants, because it’s human nature not to want a job in which you feel hated by those you serve.”
Many member of the public, brainwashed by the Anti-American Media, assume that this hatred of the police is organic. That it is a “grass-roots” response to racism and heavy-handed police tactics. This is a TOTALLY FALSE perspective.
This hatred of the police has been carefully cultivated by the left-wing forces that are working, tirelessly, to tear down the established American Republic and replace it with a centrally-planned Marxist form of Government. There is nothing organic about the anti-police movement.
Here is a suggestion. The famous Col. Rex Applegate wrote his best known work, “Kill or Get Killed”, almost 50 years ago. The current version, available from Amazon, is copyrighted 1976. Col. Applegate covers a broad range of topics in his book but one chapter that I found particularly interesting was Chapter 15: Communist Tactics and Strategy in Directing Mob Violence.
This chapter is pure gold. It provides many insights concerning the listed subject. For example, Col. Applegate lists this nugget as one guiding communist principle:
(4) Undermine police authority and prestige, weaken police efficiency, created the impression that the police are basically a repressive force, that the officers are incompetent and in the pay of a foreign power, and that the police are not the true representatives of the people.
Now ask yourself, hasn’t this been done by the American Left? They have used their media propagandists to create the impression that the police are a racist and repressive force. They spare no effort to paint the police as incompetent. They weaken police efficiency by laying down rules to “handcuff” the police and by their efforts to “de-fund” the police to starve them of resources.
They have painted the white population as racist and make them feel like they are foreigners in their own country. Then, by painting the police as in the pay of the “White Establishment”, they tell the people (particularly, the non-white population) that the police do not represent them. Rather, they say that the police are in the pay of a foreign (to them) power: The White Patriarchy.
The police represent the order of society. If you wish to destroy an existing society, you must undermine the forces of order. Therefore, communist (Marxist) Groups have always been an enemy to the police. That is, whenever they are trying to establish their control. Once they have control of a society, then (of course) their “Secret Police” become their Right Hand.
It is most interesting to read Col. Applegate’s “Chapter 15” and then compare it to recent events. Especially, to compare his listed communist tactics to the events of the “2020 Summer Riots (George Floyd, etc.)” and to the event of the so-called “January 6th Insurrection”.
I recommend buying and reading his book. Especially, Chapter 15. It was written decades ago but the communist tactics are still the same. They are being used, right now, in America.
Please note that “Black Lives Matter” is a Marxist organization. The leadership of this group is openly Marxist. Just another piece of the puzzle to note.
My point in all of the above is that we should not consider the problems that the police currently have as being “organic”. The solution will not be found in re-organizing the police or in the establishment of new educational guidelines or new educational requirements. Our police are being attacked and undermined EXTERNALLY. The solution is to counter-attack and destroy the forces that are attempting to shatter public order.
When someone is, repeatedly, punching you in the face, the solution is not to collapse into internal introspection and try to modify your own behavior so as to appease the aggressor so that, maybe, he will stop beating you. No, the solution is to punch back hard and fast and put him down or put him to flight!
Our entire mindset is too soft in this country. We seek to appease rather than to fight. Is this where we are as a Nation? We beg for mercy rather than stand up for ourselves? No doubt, BLM and the America Left would love for the police to “take a knee”, beg for mercy, and bow to their might.
If that is the best we can do, then we might as well all become Communists right now.
It’s sad that few people have read history, and fail to see the striking similarities between communist takeovers in China, Russia, Cambodia, and Venezuela to what is going on here.
One danger of Communists that must not be underestimated is their historically arrogant ruthlessness in pursuit of their version of a Utopian “worker’s paradise.” They are nuts, and they are here, now.
All kinds of jobs got the insane push for a Bachelor’s degree regardless of utility to said job. I could only figure it was more HR insanity thus proving the uselessness of Bachelor degrees for certain work (they had them). Somebody’s racket for selling more college tuition. Follow the money eh?
s cawlidge edjumicyted numbskulls worked their way into the marketplace then, as does scum, rose to the top in leadership, they began to push for a degree of some sort as a pre-requisite for new hires. Lether rinse repeat fr a few decades ahd whaddya got but an universal (ungrounded) mandate for a degree in something as a precondition to getting a job at any level much above dog catcher. And this leads to the (false) comorehension that i order to “be” anything a degree is required.
I have known for many years individuals who are VERY successful in business who have no formal education beyond high school. Some are multimillionaires, but you’d never guess by the cars they drive, houses they own. or how they are raising their many children. These children are the upciming movers and shakers that will be forming the next generations here. Their wealthy parentts refuse to coddle them, give them what they want, pamperthem. No they are being taught how to WORK, the velue of time and money, how to learn things, and what kinds if things are profitable to learn. One if these young men was VERY determined ti go intto police work. That was just about the time Portland Oregiin erupted in advanced madness. He had been working in a volunteer programme with the Bureau, and was guaranteed a place in the Academy. (funny thing, when he was sixteen his volunetter group happened to be working at the bureau’s training facility learning sme things, some officers had come to d their annual firearms requals, and the boys got to watch. When the officers had done, the captain offered to any of the boys to try the qualification test. My friend picked up a handgun he had never fired before, and outshot every one of the in-service officers. The coppers were rather, well, uhm, a little bit embarrased…… my friend was disappointed he had not scored better. )
As he observed the “changes” cimng i t themanagement and ethos of the PPB he decided he would NOT persue that career as an option.
No college degree, no interest in getting one. He’d be a far better officer than the vast majority in service in that area today. But he was observant, and wise, enough to realise he would be denied the option of serving the PEOPLE and foced to build the government desire to control.
Bottom line: a degree in anything is not a qualification for any position involving working with PEOPLE.
I am a big proponent of college, but I’m not sure you can justify it at current tuition charges. My alma mater charges nearly $80,000 a year.
I’m a big proponent of college … IF (and only if) you’re going into a field for which the “general” education required for a high school diploma does not and cannot adequately inform or prepare you, and which requires learning that cannot be had from a trade school or apprenticeship.
Case in point: My daughter wants to be a psychiatrist, so she’s going to need to go to a good college. A close family friend, his oldest wants to be an electrician; a college degree in electrical engineering might be helpful, but a hands-on apprenticeship with someone who knows the trade is just as good, if not better (theory vs. practice, and all that).
You don’t need a degree in mechanical engineering to fix cars or engines, and requiring one for a garage job would disqualify many-if-not-most skilled (not just “competent”) mechanics. Ditto for guns, gun shops, and gunsmiths. Other examples abound.
On top of that, as you mention, tuition rates these days … if someone doesn’t need college, I’d strongly encourage them to find another way. That includes my own kids.
That message is starting to get out, too. I’ve seen ads for STARs initiatives (Skilled Through Alternative Routes), which encourage employers to look at the whole of an applicant’s knowledge, experience, and history, rather than simply whether or not they have a Bachelor’s degree.
Story time, because this hits home for me: I’ve been in the position where a (former) employer won’t give a worker the time of day if they don’t have a degree. I found a software bug that nobody could identify, but was causing huge problems for customers, by going through the source code and log files (I’d taken programming classes in high school, so I knew my way around code and logs). I could have fixed it myself if I’d had the permissions to make changes. But I didn’t have any degree yet, let alone one in software development, so the managers wouldn’t listen to little ol’ “unqualified” me. I had to find a sympathetic ear among the “real” developers — with “real” degrees — willing to check my findings and make the fix. (And yes, come performance review time, I was sure to mention it, and the sympathetic developer — good and honest man that he is — confirmed my claim.)
I’d always thought the requirement for a degree to even be considered for hiring was stupid and short-sighted, but when the solution for an active problem right now is presented but ignored because it didn’t come from the “right” source…. Madness.
Thanks for excellent comments. My grandfather was a lawyer and a judge, yet he never went to college. In those days, people went from high school straight to law school. Think of how much money they saved. He graduated from New Jersey Law School in 1928. Today it is called Rutgers Law School. I saw his yearbook online. I didn’t expect to see Jews, blacks and females in law school in the 1920s, but there were plenty of them.
Some time back on another website, a gent who was a professor at a private college started a thread about how the first two years were spent teaching things the students should have learned in high school. Like basic literacy and being able to write coherent sentences. He also wondered how much worse things might have be in state schools.
Considering that many large entities are dropping the requirement for a college degree, this may be the wave of the future. Allegedly, the trend is driven by the current crop of grads having majored in politics with a minor in whatever professional studies they did. I did a stretch as our equivalent of an FTO and there were a couple of persons I really wondered if they’d had a “hook” to get the job. A couple had epiphanies during our force on force drills and either quit or got with the program. Others fell by the wayside in other ways.
Military (or similar) service teaches not only discipline, but how to deal with others. More to the point, how to work with others you might not particularly like. It also can destroy stereotypes quite effectively. It’ll never fly politically, but there’s a lot of merit in the idea of universal service. If one chooses to do so in the military, you get extra credit.
Maybe what’s really needed is a much more focused test for prospective job applicants. People skills and (un)common sense are, as noted, far more important. Somewhat related: I wonder what the ratio of admin positions to active LE peronnel are now compared to the past? OK, someone has to write grant applications and budgets, but do those positions need to be able bodied, sworn personnel? Might be a place for qualified persons with LOD physical issues.
I applied at police department of a major city in my state back in the early 80’s. I was scolded by an officer verifying diplomas for providing my college bachelor diploma rather than my high school diploma. Fast forward to 2020 and the same department swears-in a new officer who came to her graduation ceremony visibly under the in fluence. Recently, this city graduated a class of 17 new recruits – not nearly what is needed to fill the openings available.
I guess it depends on what it is. It’s quite obvious that police Street training in officer safety has disappeared for the most part. When I look around, I can no longer find the trainers that were out and about 20 years ago. If you look at the stats, that’s an injuries are cyclical and this is unfortunately a bad time. I hope the training does improve so we can knock those numbers down again. Even most of your organizations have disappeared. After being a trainer for many many years, I believe the very worst thing nowadays for officer and suspect is a one-on-one encounter.
My career is not in law enforcement, so perhaps my comments are a bit out of place. However, for whatever a civilian’s opinion is worth in regards to this question, I have found college degrees to be more relevant to someone beginning a career, but less relevant with each year of actual experience on the job. To the point that when I interview experienced candidates in my field, I don’t even look for a college degree… even though not-so-many years ago, a college degree was considered mandatory for any candidate.
I am far more concerned with a candidate’s ability to think critically and, unfortunately, universities often stifle critical thinking rather than develop it.
Regarding college degrees in law enforcement. As a civilian, my concern is universities indoctrinating rather than preparing young, prospective law enforcement candidates… which we do not need.
Ultimately, it’s up to us, We the People. We vote for the councilmen in our municipalities who authorize the hiring policies of the agencies.
When the various other standards are set high enough, the pool of applicants is reduced. We can decide that we will further reduce the pool by adding yet another standard: The Bachelor’s degree. Set it still higher with the Master’s degree. Why stop there? The PhD. And then, make it a requirement for a double major in Humanities and Psychology.
And we can pay for that.
We need to decide on what qualities we want in our cops, then be repaired to pay for that. To put on prerequisite that are useful but not core to the job is to reduce the quantity of police we will have at the price we are willing to pay.
Except for some very specific STEM fields, college is a sham. I have both bachelor’s and master’s degrees. I am under no illusion that they signify an educated person. They are credentials required for specific employment opportunities. Nothing more. I learned more useful lessons growing up working minimum wage jobs and serving in the military.
I’m not anywhere near as legally astute as many appear to be. My own curiosity has driven me to research legalities of police training and behavior many times. Anyone can go and search authentic, current videos of abhorrent police behavior where citizens rights are casually cast aside for “officer safety”, “investigations”, “lawful commands”, the relentless “need” to ID everybody for any reason, and the like. Most of it obviously illegal and egregious and down right pitiful. It’s very hard to put trust into cops anymore who are drunk on usurpation of authority. I’m not casting aspersions toward you, Mas, or any cops in specific. I am equally sure there are plenty of good cops out there doing the job effectively and in a legal manner, respecting the rule of law tgey swore to uphold. It’s simply becoming impossible for me to deny that maybe the standard HAS dropped…and that the tyranny is baked into the training. Plainly, the precept of innocent until proven guilty has been flipped 180 degrees. The wisdom of age has led me to keeping my nose clean, not becoming defined as “prey”, and keep my mouth fucking shut. I don’t talk to cops. Period. Not even about the weather on the street corner. There are no good reasons to offer up your words to the endless push toward “investigation” and self incrimination.
Having a Bachelor’s upon being hired does one positive thing. It saves time you don’t have later on in your career when you apply for Chief.
If a recruit (cadet) can communicate effectively with all people, write effectively, possess common sense (pour pee out of a boot…as my grandma said), isn’t full of themselves, can listen and learn, has courage, is honest, works well with others and has a sense of humor… they might, just maybe make a good officer.
None of that comes from a college degree.
We can teach them the mechanics… they have to show up with character.
A college degree, particularly a master’s degree, helps people to learn how to think, not what to think. We realize there is never, or very rarely ever, a single point solution to a problem.
That was 20 years ago, Mas. Today, unless someone trains as an engineer, doctor, or a lawyer, a college diploma has become just another participation trophy. Sad really, since they cost much, much more than they are worth in lifetime earnings.
It might have been a good idea if University faculties and administration weren’t now dominated by Marxists.
I don’t think they need a college diploma, but I do believe the standard needs to be raised on testing for knowledge of the law. The constant flow of videos of cops that don’t know the basics wears me out. It’s hard enough these days for the cops to get the respect they deserve without those videos going viral. Just saying….
I was with the NYC Housing Authority PD first and then the NYPD after, the “hostile takeover”. I was assigned to one of the worst, highest crime PSA’s(Police Service Area, Housing Police for precinct) in Brooklyn and a moderate crime precinct after the takeover. I’ve never once seen any situation or street level crime where a college degree helped anyone as a matter of fact situations have been made worse by a college educated PO and in some scenarios that could be the difference between life and death. Maybe college educated POs could type better than the old one finger bandits, of which I am one! However nothing has or could ever beat a streetwise, slick old school type cop that can use his mental and verbal skills to deescalate a situation or get a perp to talk or slip up. The bosses love college educated POs because they never question any bad or potentially bad orders, like collering someone who shouldn’t be just because a boss said so…as bad as that may sound it isn’t and is not insubordination when an innocent citizens rights may have been violated and the CCRB didn’t get another complaint on the PO….which now in NYC there’s a publicly available database anyone can search to see the complaints made against any current or former PO, every PO gets citizen complaints against them and mine are available for the public to see going back to 1993! Every good cop can “read” almost any situation and respond appropriately…the college guys seem to have a complete lack of that skill that they either never learn or takes years to lean and that can be extremely dangerous to them and their partners. Should college be mandatory to be a PO? Never is the appropriate answer…in NYC I want neighborhood guys they grew up in the city not a bunch a college educated idiots from the suburbs that will get me hurt or killed.
Biker Bob,
Thanks for sharing. Your experience, in hostile country (Gotham City), speaks volumes.
Law enforcement is only one-half of the legal system. The other half involves judges, lawyers, prosecutors, sherriffs and prison guards. I’m sure there are other jobs I don’t know about.
Law enforcement has reached a stage of near-perfection, and it does not need reforming. The other half of the legal system is badly in need of reform. What good does it do to deport illegal aliens? They just come back! We send criminals to prison so they can learn how to be more expert in crime. We need to execute criminals. Most do not reform, they get out and commit more crimes. All life is not precious. Only innocent life is precious. There are 8 billion persons on this planet. We don’t need criminals. Kill them.
What do I think about college? I pray that God will cause the buildings at Harvard University to burn down at three of the clock, ante meridiem, when no one is in them.
Oops! Should be “sheriffs.”
Education is ongoing in just about any career in order to stay relevant. Rather than a college degree followed by the police academy in tandem, consider a simultaneous option. Why not masters degrees for leadership roles too?
My father had a knock at the door one evening, circa mid 1950s. A newly minted small city western NY police officer presented himself with an embarasing problem, requesting dad’s help. Known casually to my father, he was invited in for a coffee to discuss his dilemma. It seems he was a bit of an anomaly for the times. He had never fired a gun, not even the .38 revolver on his hip. He approached dad given his background that included newspaper articles about his marksmanship & involvement with gun safety & training. He was a true anomaly for the area and time (post WWII, Korean War, small city in a rural western NY area where most had relatives who farmed, hunted, grew up shooting rats at the dump and even the cirmty dwellers were at best a generation out of the country with family still there. Many 15 or 20 years,ago said dad was a liar. That could have never happened.
Flash forward to about 5 years ago at Laconia Muni Airport, NH. I am on the tarmac with a pilot friend. He introduces me to a new friend, a recently retired Dallas (or was it Houston?), TX officer recently moved to the area. Being the character I am, I chatted him up on numerous topics including politics of policing, society, training (obviously including firearms; can you say Ayoob?). We were having a great chat and I told him dad’s story.
He laughed. Yes. He beleived it. And then he told his own story out of PA circa 1980. He said he worked dispatch/911 for a small community while he worked on his undergrad psychology degree. As graduation approached the Chief approached him and asked his plans. Replying to the tune of ‘nothing yet’, the chief hired him to start on the small local force. On a Friday before his first shift, he was issued gear, including firearm. He showed up the first day to work alone having no firearm training, qualification or experience beyond what he received growing up in a rural community (NRA,,family, hunting, etc). Though I didn’t press or clarify the issue, I got the impression he didn’t have any other formal officer training before his first shift on duty alone. He indicated the chief had knowledge of his gun experience growing up, knew his character, knew he was competent with the communications lingo and that was enough for him.
Yes, no and maybe. In my limited experience, I find that some hunters don’t know much about self-defense. During archery season, they use bows or crossbows to take game. During muzzleloader and shotgun season, they use those long guns. Some hunters don’t own any handguns.
I’m not saying hunters are ignorant about self-defense, just that some are.
It is not just LE that is questioning the requirement for a college degree. That is becoming a trend in a number of large corporations and governments. The requirement originally came about via a Supreme Court decision (Griggs v Duke Power) that outlawed a variety of employer based qualification tests because of alleged discriminatory impact. While employers could still do that there were a bunch of expensive hoops that had to be jumped through. So employers simply outsourced the screening functions to higher education.
Fast forward to today where confidence in higher education has deservedly collapsed and employers are deciding to do their own screening and training and to pay the costs for it rather than hire dysfunctional employees. Unfortunately, high schools have collapsed worse and for longer than higher education and even the military which was long the gold standard for competency based training is increasingly in question.
Law enforcement, like other employers, is just going to have to suck it up and screen and train for themselves. The expense will of course dilute the resources applied to the street.
My old dept. (Pa State Police) recently recinded the college degree requirement, due to lack of applicants. When I joined in ’72, college degrees weren’t even mentioned, although some of the academy courses at the time actually gave college credits for completion. After doing away with the requirement for a degree, applications more than doubled. To my way of thinking, “street smarts” will outweigh “book smarts” any day.
Since PA has been mentioned, in the 80s time period mentioned above, police new hires had to attend the state certification course within 1 year of hire*. While the major departments hired, trained and put to work, many smaller communities did it differently. There was one minor city outside Pittsburgh famous for firing cops just before they reached 1 year of service. Saved the taxpayers the expense of 480 hours of training per officer. Odds are, they weren’t the only ones. Lord only knows if that’s still the training requirement.
* I expect the original intent was so that people could be hired, and then trained as classes were scheduled/space available. I highly doubt OJT or freestyle “doing it like John Wayne” was what the pols had in mind. I definitely saw some Hollywood imitations in the 70s and this was by certified officers.
I’m not sure we need college degrees for university professors.
Given that these days, most non-STEM college programs are more about indoctrination than education, requiring college degrees to teach college courses just perpetuates and reinforces the cycle.
Non-STEM faculty, for the most part, is a bunch of current indoctrinaires whose job is to train future indoctrinaires. It creates a positive-feedback loop that spirals into oblivion.
Now, if we could get some STARs candidates in faculty teaching positions, that could help reduce the positive-feedback loop (it’s probably too much to hope that it would break the cycle entirely) and introduce broad, real-world experience from people who’ve worked in the field, instead of simple book knowledge from cloistered ideologues.
As the saying goes, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” How about we get some of the people who can to teach, too?
Wouldn’t it be nice if parents pulled their children out of public schools, and found good alternatives for educating them? Wouldn’t it be nice if no one enrolled in the woke colleges, and they went bankrupt? If that happened, these problems would be peacefully solved by Market forces. Doing this would require the majority of people to make wise choices, and that is probably not going to happen
Everyone is walking around with super computers in their pockets, and the citizens just keep getting dumber and dumberer (sic).
Everyone is walking around with super computers in their pockets, and the citizens just keep getting dumber and dumberer (sic).
That’s a conundrum, innit? People walk around with 24/7 access to the entirety of human knowledge in their pockets, and just keep getting dumber.
IMHO, that’s the product of the public schools no longer teaching critical thought. They don’t teach how to think, how to research, how to discern truth from falsity. Thus, nobody questions their beliefs anymore; they use that miraculous electronic pocket library not to ask questions or gain knowledge or understanding, but to build echo chambers of like-minded people who parrot the same lines, often verbatim. They keep to their own and congratulate themselves and each other for being so right, and never engage with their opponents in any meaningful discussion. Because they don’t face criticism, they don’t have to put any effort into researching or defending their assertions.
It’s often said, if you want to know who truly understands an issue, challenge them to argue from the position opposite their beliefs. Overwhelmingly (but not universally), the Right can present and defend the Left’s position as well as the Left (if not better), but the Left cannot effectively argue from the Right’s point of view — they simply do not understand it.
No.
It seems like the junior colleges and the trade schools are the last bastion of post high school institutions of higher learning that are still relatively free of woke ideology and can be attended for much lower costs and actually teach job skills that employers are looking for. I think a 2 year associates degree program in criminal justice for entry level law enforcement would be a good idea and should be part of the new officers on the job training and not necessarily a pre-requisite for hiring.
I have never been a law enforcement officer, but was a county investigator for a few years in the north before wisely moving to Florida over 20 years ago now. I have two AA degrees as well as my BA and BS bachelors degrees.
I have spent my time in college and have worked in the “helping humans” professions for a little under 30 years.
I really do not think police officers will benefit from having degrees. I suppose with the technical aspects of investigation classes, or degrees, in computer science, IT, chemistry and possible accounting would be a huge help when piecing together evidence to ascertain what actually was going on. However, this is investigation, and the street officer is dealing with citizens, and probably on their worst day, and if it isn’t the worst day of their lives, it will never be the best one.
People skills are the most important thing, I must agree with Mas, the police are there to serve us citizens and “people skills” are the most important.
“ I’d rather the 21-year-old who responds to my need for police service have four years in the military understanding discipline and following rules, or have spent four years working with the public, than one who spent the same amount of time earning a degree in liberal arts or, Heaven help us, “Social Justice.”
Sorry Mas but blind devotion to following orders and inability to see the unintended consequences of decisions is what has led us to our current state of government tyranny at all levels.
We the people are getting tired of tyranny and police officers are an instrument of that tyranny.
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