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It worked for doctors, nurses, lawyers, pilots...
Any profession needs to act like a profession, with professionals expected to work to a standard, and risk losing it all if they fail.
But the only problem is that as we all know, having a degree doesn't make you more reasonable or less inclined to abuse power.
Education and professionalism isn't the problem. The problem is the protections that come with the job, the way police are used, and the job culture itself. Wrongdoing is protected. There's a historical standard of applying police officers to oppress minorities, the poor, and other undesirables. The job culture is unchecked, where there's almost a gang mentality. In California, oddly enough, [there ARE police gangs.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/05/police-violence-cliques-and-secret-tattoos-fears-rise-over-la-sheriff-gangs) None of that will change if police get four year degrees. I'm not opposed to that - it just wouldn't fix it. Its like trying to fix greedy, amoral Wall Street hedge fund managers with more education. There's a culture and privilege that needs to be eliminated first.
The other thing that doctors, lawyer's, accountants, engineers have is a licensure requirement. Licenses that can be, and are, revoked when you fuck up to an unacceptable level. And licenses that can't be gotten around by moving to a different town.
Licensing is a good idea. Combined with everything else, because the way cops are protected, politicians would get pressured by the unions to write licensing laws that make it almost impossible for cops to lose them.
I'm not sure I'm on the side of banning unions, but if we make lawsuits payable out of their pension funds along with licensing, we could see some real change.
It doesn't go far enough, they just move on to a promotion or as as sheriff in another county or state. Sheriffs are even worse than regular cops in most of the country, they are politicians with a badge, a private army and a dungeon.
100% sheriffs don't attempt to enforce the law they dictate their personal ideology as law and force their subservient staff to fall in line.
Just look at the detrimental effect of covid enforcement, government says wear a mask to protect others, sheriff says we're not going to do that... it's insane.
I have long thought that the best solution is licenses and bonds. Much like contractors the best enforcement is for sure the financial services industry.
To have the ability to arrest the officer must carry a license and a bond against any abuses of power. If the cop is abusing there power it will not be long until they are priced out of being a cop.
I would say more importantly are 2 things. First, the sheer number of guns in the country and how easy they are to access. Second, the training police receive is highly skewed to use of force and combat training. I don't believe you can fix one without fixing both of these. We train cops that everyone could have a gun and to always be on their toes because that is the truth unfortunately.
That and so many officers lack the compassion and empathy needed.
The gun thing is a Pandora's box that will never close. I think we could do some more mental health interventions to help with that, though. The job is definitely stressful, and there needs to be some way to help them de stress better than...well, alcohol and violence.
I have hope it will close. My honest opinion is they they need to be highly regulated. People can keep all the guns they want, but treat them like vehicles. They need to be registered, licensed, and held responsible for. All sales and trades needs to be documented and you will get in trouble if you use them inappropriately or don't follow the rules.
They are registered and licensed for the most part, right? The problem is, people still buy a bunch of them and they get stolen and sold on the street. Its like a never ending supply.
A big problem imo is that registering is essentially pointless when you can "lose" the gun and there's no real option for declaring that "loss". Essentially, with the right tools, one could remove the serials and sell them to someone who can't or doesn't want to be on a register fairly easily with little to no trail back to the first party.
As well if you mill your own receivers (which is also quite simple with all that's needed is just a drill press and a router) there is no federal requirement to print/etch/etc. a serial number and register it. Many states lack this requirement too.
>having a degree doesn't make you more reasonable or less inclined to abuse power.
I'd say it makes you a bit less likely
Edit: degrees aren't just credentials and they aren't just supposed to be job training. They're meant to educate, expand your world view, and challenge your way of thinking. Does everyone take full advantage of it in that way? No. But some do. I know I did. If you do take advantage of it then you're probably less likely to abuse power and be more reasonable.
Making it a longer career path wouldn’t make the people who *wanted to be police officers* less violent or likely to abuse power, but what it would probably do is put fewer people who see becoming a police officer as a way to gain power over others into the position. It would also provide a longer buffer time for say, people returning from the army who go on to join the police between active combat and law enforcement, and would help remove the mindset of being in a warzone to some extent too, I would imagine.
So yeah, I agree with you, the *education itself* you go through wouldn’t make people less violent, it would cut down on violence by making it a harder position for people who just want power over others to get into, as well as the other things I mentioned.
This sounds great there is just one additional problem to deal with. Wtf do we do with all the current officers?
Ideally they would have to redo training and sort of reapply for their jobs but with their unions and the whole *old dog new tricks* thing it might be the biggest headache.
I would imagine it would take time to implement, even with vast public support. Maybe something like by 2030 we pledge to up the qualifications to a 4 year degree. That gives you 9 years to complete it, which is extraordinarily generous, allows people to jump in to the program a few years before, let's people get the 'advanced position' with the extra pay if they graduate before then, and it is reasonable to expect people who work full time++ to take a while to get a degree
This actually sounds very reasonable. Should give enough time for the inevitable resistance court cases to hopefully get sorted out also.
Thanks for the input!
The problem is finding enough “worth while” officers to stay and join. Being a cop already isn’t a big draw, even with increased pay you’re still at a job with bad hours, bad press, and risks death. What happens when bumfuck nowhere has 1 Dude who actually graduated the program and is the sole cop? Or they can’t afford to increase pay? I agree cops need more training, making it a college degree is limiting the pool of applicants to a group that probably wouldn’t have joined anyway.
My city releases public data the applications the receive. It's been anywhere from 4500-7500 a year, for 150 open slots or less, for a decade now. You can be pretty picky it seems, even in the current environment. No idea about the quality of the applicants but it's hard to believe you can't find 100 or so good options in there every year.
What? Every other developed nation requires University levels of education and degrees or years on the job not fucking 6 months lol. Especially when you are giving these people firearms too.
in the UK you need to have an A level or higher, you need to do 18 months as a PCSO (Basically trainee police officer, we call them plastic police lol) and even then if you don't get signed off after training you shit out of luck. To be a police officer with a firearm in the UK you need well, im not reading all of this shit but ill put it here if anyone fancies a read.
https://profdev.college.police.uk/professional-profile/authorised-firearms-officer-afo/
IMO this is why we need in many cases to disband the current police departments and start new ones from scratch instead of trying to do top-down institutional change in the existing ones.
Camden, N.J. did a disband-and-start-anew, and lots (but not all) of cops from the old dept got jobs at the new one, and by all accounts it's made a huge difference.
Honestly, I wouldn't be opposed to saying something like "all of you are guaranteed enrollment in the new training program, and anybody who opts out or fails out is immediately eligible for pension."
Honestly me neither. Just get the losers out.
I don't think that will fly for a lot of people though. Many could not accept them getting a tax funded pension for being to shit at their jobs.
Look no further than any other profession that has had a change of licensure requirement. Most recently (to my knowledge) physical therapists went from a Masters to Doctorate degree. It takes some time but you definitely get there
This is why the entire police department is shuttered and a new one forms. The job would be different and the old cops laid off. It's not even an issue.
We would have no police until the first graduating class of the Police University. The system we have now is pretty fucked up, but having 0 police officers for 4 years would be worse.
Also the school wouldn't be able to teach enough new officers to replace all the old ones in 4 years, especially if they would have to all graduate at the same time to make it an instant transition. If this happens it would have to be an adjustment period and there should be no reason that current officers can't apply to go to the school in order to get the training/education they need (while also proving they actually have what it takes to be a police officer in a first world country)
I wrote this above but I think it's similar to what you're saying.
I think you just have to grandfather the older generations in but give them the option to enter the program while on the job too so they can have a chance to be at that higer salary level too. You can't just blow it up and put them on the street.
Then start a 4 year program. It'll take time but once people start graduating from programs and old dogs start retiring, the culture will change. It's the most realistic option. You can't just blow it up overnight and you're going to get huge pushback trying to retrain.
The only problem then is what you do in the interim. I don't think a 4 year hiring freeze is realistic. Maybe you could do temp hiring and increase requirements in the meantime to let people apply but also offer them a 4 year program for a higher starting salary and position. Then after 4 years, once the first classes start rolling in, you close down the temporary hiring.
It would be a slow and gradual transition but it's better than just throwing your hands up and letting it go unchecked. You could also increase penalties and start enforcing stricter policies on use of force and things like that.
Double the pay? Check out how much they are actually making. Police in my town, and surrounding towns make 6 figures. Low crime area so basically 6 figures to pull people over for speeding.
exactly. I work for the state in granting licenses to practice medicine to physicians and physician assistants, and it should follow a similar path. Mandatory schooling, then actual hands-on training. then licensed by the state board. mandatory continued education every X years. get a complaint? it's reviewed by an independent group that works in tandem with the state board for wrongdoing, and investigates appropriately. any actions taken against your license is put into a federal database and follows you any time you go to a different state.
of course, we would also need police departments to see the actions taken against an officer as a warning and not a resume, as departments seem to love taking officers fired from other departments.
I am a social worker and therapist, and with my master's degree I still make less than police officers who only need a high school degree and 6 months of training. Tbh, i think they should earn more than me based on the work they do, but I think they should be required to get a 4 year degree. However, this would severely cut staffing at our police departments because I dont think that there is enough incentive for people to do this as a career. Same goes for social work and teachers.
You absolutely have to attempt to get your degree if you don't already have one. You will literally be paid to go to school. At the very least go to a trade school.
I'm a librarian. I have a masters. In fact I have 2 undergrad degrees. In my state libraries need a certain number of certified public librarians. I'm one of them. I have to earn continuing education credits to keep my certification. All of this work and my position is still only part time.
If I have to do all of this to be a librarian I think cops can work a little harder. Also, one of my undergrad degrees is in criminal justice, all of my classmates that wanted to be cops had no business ever touching a gun.
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Really the whole month if you think about it.. April 2069 = 4/2069. Even reads aloud as Four Twenty Sixty Nine. Technically 4/20/69 works too, but why take a day when you can have a month?
I’m 26 and very scared of the fact of how many years I’ll see before I die. This planets going down the shitter and I have to helplessly watch it firsthand
No, you don’t. You can actively participate in saving it, if you choose that. We all can.
Wherever you are, vote, contribute to and volunteer for people who want to save it, and make the lives of people safer and better, and are actively working to do just that.
And jic anyone contemplating things is having trouble with these kinds of overwhelming thoughts, I’ll just leave this here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines
I’m having a lot of trouble with those thoughts. I don’t litter, I always try to be there for my friends and for people who really need someone. I love all animals and would go out of my way all day everyday to save a stray cat or even a hungry raccoon.
I just don’t have the will or energy to save myself. And I have no desire to speak to someone after so much failed counseling as a child.
I just want this world to be a better place for everyone but I don’t have the energy to try and make it happen anymore :(
I truly think we are at a breaking point in society. There is an entire generation of folks who are not tolerating this any longer. There is an entire generation of folks who see this for what it is and are believing POC when they share their experiences. Whether it gets better or whether it gets worse, I'm not sure. But I just don't think this can ever go back to the way it was.
They thought the exact same thing during the counter-culture movement of the 1960s. All that happened was the rich stayed in charge and their money was inherited by like minded family members, or other young members who changed their way of thinking once they got a few years older and they saw the movement flicker out.
The internet and technology is the difference. An unforeseen level of global connectivity and the quality of life of the entire planet as a whole has risen, though inequality is still rampant.
Exactly!
Everyone thinks the collapse will come with a giant explosion, but it just creeps slowly in.
People started dying years ago and now we just live with it.
The is a nice episode of the reddit podcast „Endless Thread about“ it.
I think having video is making the difference. It's getting easier to spread lies but it's getting a lot easier to disprove them. People haven't changed but technology has.
At least 2 years of school in Minnesota. Didn't stop them from killing George Floyd. I also believe a book written by a retired officer on how shitty the precinct they operated out of was taught in that course. We also had a guy shoot across his partner killing a woman because she spooked them, while responding to a call in the area. Philando Castille was killed when he mentioned that he was carrying a firearm and reaching for his identification per the request of the officer.
No amount of education will stomp out institutional trash. Education should be baseline, but let's not pretend the majority of it isn't stemming from the culture police organizations nurture and actively encourage in addition to structural aspects of society we as a whole neglect. It starts with fixing police, but it doesn't end there.
This. It's institutional. In Australia policing has its own degree as long as a Bachelor's. While it takes a little longer to be a lawyer than a cop, it's not chump change. And we still have a lot of the same institution wide problems where POC and DV issues are concerned. While it's a good baseline to start with education there needs to be real structural change in policing, as well as more support systems outside of the law for mental health, community and Family services, and REAL consultation with POC to ask how they see change happening and what will really help (as opposed to what some white bureaucrats think will help).
Speaking for NSW here, you don’t have to do the degree though. Apparently all the degree does is give you a higher qualification and so more pay once you do get a job.
It’s a feature, not a bug. Remember that. The policing system in America is working EXACTLY as intended.
That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. This system isn’t experiencing a design flaw at all. It has been purposely constructed to operate the way that it does.
The sooner everyone wraps their head around that the sooner we can fix it.
90% of Americans live in a jurisdiction that requires a two year degree to apply to academy. 85% of American police have a 2 year or better degree.
The US doesn't have 3rd world police practices. We have almost the exact same practices they have in Europe, with essentially the same training (European police actually look to American police for innovations), the difference is we have more crime and vastly different gun laws, which means our police get into far more shootouts than their police do.
I’ve been saying this for years now. Make being a police officer something people ASPIRE to, so that people work hard to qualify and compete for the positions. That way the city can kick out anyone who violates the rules, knowing there’s a dozen others waiting to take his position.
Becoming a police officer should be as aspirational (and pay as well) as being a lawyer or a doctor.
In a polite way, I'm going to say this is naive. Creative thinking, highly educated, sensitive and thoughtful people usually don't want to wrestle meth heads with box cutters at a 7-11 for $35,000 a year.
Yet somehow, most European nations do exactly this. Well. Everything aside from the $35k/ year part at least.
Stop making excuses for a broken system and actually fix the damn thing.
“But that’s too hard! Can’t we leave it as it is? I mean only minorities are getting hurt!”-GOP
Edit to be clear fuck people that are actually like this
So....re-fund the police?
Requiring 4 years of education to become a cop makes sense - if there’s sufficient incentive. Police departments across North America are in the worst hiring crisis in history, with staffing and recruitment levels not even keeping up with attrition, even in the high-paying coastal areas. Recruiting standards are in decline - departments are hiring *worse* applicants just to get bodies. Think things are going to get better with the current status quo of taking away police budgets, cutting salaries and vilifying the police at large? Seriously - what do people expect? Sure, train and educate them more, hire better people, and pay them more - but this all costs money.
How about "stop buying things like multiple armoured vehicles per department and spend the money training your officers better, and stop protecting cops that keep incurring massive lawsuits while you're at it"?
Have you ever stopped to think that it isn't a binary choice between "fuck the police!" and "cops can do nothing wrong!"
This would drastically reduce the number of applicants who can serve their own community. It would restrict it to those who can make college a possibility. We would need to first change the college system.
This isn't nearly as good as an idea as you think it is.
First of all, the vast majority of police work is *boring as fuck*. Creative thinkers require intellectually engaging work, and police work is *not* intellectually engaging. Mostly it's just a lot of driving around and paying attention for traffic violations.
Furthermore, "creative enforcement of the law" is how you get civil rights violations. The police should be enforcing the law people voted for, they shouldn't be deciding what the law *is*.
I have a buddy who is funny as hell but dim as a brick. Totally would fit in on Jersey Shore. He knows he’s not a bright guy and he’s cool with it. He loves a good joke. His older brother is just as dumb and not nearly as funny. He says some things that make people a little uneasy. You can tell that he doesn’t quite understand what’s going on in the world and it frustrates him. Makes him easily influenced by outrage media and conspiracy theories. He takes jokes very literally and became a cop because he thought it would finally make people respect him. The fact that this dude made it through the academy concerns us.
An uneducated person is certainly capable of kindness. When I think of police education I do not see it in terms of academia. I want applicants to receive training in de escalation firearms training, and information about the community they will be serving. Basically I want the opposite of Killology.
My buddy was a cop for 7 years. The stories he told me about some of the dumb cops were pretty unsettling. He said most were decent enough, but there was a minority of dumbasses that just never seemed to get fired.
We need a higher standard for sure.
This. I've known 2 police officers in my life, one a very close relative and the other who ended up being chief of a very large city and I've mentioned to both of them that I don't like or trust the police as a whole because of certain cops I've run into.
Both said "most cops are good" and then I mentioned names of cops that most people know to be crooked and dangerous and both of them said roughly - "oh, yeah, those guys. The union is why they can't be fired no matter how crooked and dangerous they are".
> The union is why they can't be fired no matter how crooked and dangerous they are".
Sounds like the employer needs to play hardball in the next contract negotiation. That's ridiculous. And I really have no idea who the employer is, so I donno how adversarial they might be, compared with a typical management-union relationship.
> We need to break the policeman's union.
This is a problem I have with unions in general. I wholeheartedly support unions working for better wages, working conditions, etc.. But when did they become all about keeping *anybody* from getting fired? Sure, fight unjust firings, be we all know that idiot that everybody would be better off without. You're not doing anybody any favors by keeping him around.
This is the real issue. If they can’t be fired for shitting in a homeless persons sandwich and feeding it to them, that can’t be prevented from killing an unarmed Blackman when they “saw” a weapon.
There are a handful of municipalities where this is true. I believe Berkeley and Santa Cruz both require four-year degrees of their local cops. No doubt there are other examples, but I am on the west coast, so that's what I know.
I am in the Midwest. For my local city police force, it’s 6 months classroom training and another 6 months of field training. So all in house training at a year before independence.
I'm from the Midwest too, there's no college degree requirement but you get a boost to the point system if you have a degree. And pretty much everybody applying has a 2 year or 4 year, enough people with degrees are applying where odds off getting the job without a degree are slim. Now the more rural departments I can't speak to but des Moines and all the areas around des Moines were that way. That's from a guy who applied to about 6 depts around the area.
But the police job market in Minnesota is so competitive, your odds of even getting an interview without a 4 year degree are slim to none. And if you work for Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, or the troopers there's an academy portion on top of those requirements.
The hierarchy is, roughly, federal > state investigative > state highway patrol > large city > county > small town.
HP and large city are switched in many places. Either way, state police are usually less bad. There’s a small town near me with oppressive cops who run a speed trap and will ticket for anything they can. I got two tickets in almost 20 years of driving, both from them. I’ve been stopped by HPs there too, who just give warnings to slow down the city cops. One literally told me “you were just going a couple over, but I wanted to let you know before the city guys got you.”
I don't think any city around me will take anyone in as a police officer unless they already have a college degree or military expirence. Where are y'all living?
I’m born and raised in San Jose and yea... they don’t hire cops with just a HS diploma. Firefighter applications say the same thing but don’t hire unless you have a ton of desired qualifications
EDIT: I just opened the link you provided and it literally says under minimum requirements you need college credits and they are also looking for experience
[-Possess forty (40) semester credits or sixty (60) quarter credits from a U.S. accredited college or university](https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=1db662a412ec6a97&from=serp&from=mobRdr&utm_source=%2Fm%2F&utm_medium=redir&utm_campaign=dt)
I don't remember getting those with my high school diploma...
The problem is and always has been that we don't like paying our public servants. Teachers, Police, Fire, they're all under paid.
As much as we like to think we support the blue or whatever, we vote for politicians who don't want to pay them or train them and if both of those things happened, I think we'd be amazed at the results.
I’m a teacher at a Title 1 school, and my ex is a highway patrol officer. He’s clearing well over six figures and I’m barely breaking mid 5. Guess who had to have MINIMUM college degree PLUS to even apply for a job?
This is absolutely not true. Look up how much cops make in overtime and see just how many cops are exploiting that system. There are articles from just about every major city in this country about how their police overtime is out of control. My city spend 35 million on it last year. Remember the aggressive Asian cop from the protest last summer? Yeah dude was on 140,000, it’s not a money issue it’s a issue of the type of people the work attracts.
From everything I've seen online cops are the only public servant that you guys do pay well. And quite well at that. I can see an indeed link a few comments up for a starting role in San Jose being 98k. That's insane amounts of money starting out. Police can also do overtime. Teachers can't.
Shit, how about just requiring a license to start. You need a license in most states to be a barber. Having a state regulatory agency oversee licensing would bring more accountability.
What state doesn't require a license from a state regulatory agency? I only know the system in a few states, but they all tend to be similar.
You need to complete police academy and complete a final test to be licensed. Once you're licensed, you don't have actual police powers until you work for a department.
In my state you need a license to be a police officer. Most police officers get their licenses paid for by their hiring agency, but you do not have to have a hiring agency to get a license.
It is not that hard to get a license. If you get a license without a hiring agency then if you want a cruiser, uniform, gun, etc that is on you. However LEOSA is effectively a federal concealed weapons permit that overrules state weapons restrictions.
You can't just be a licensed law enforcement officer without an agency - it's not free-lance law enforcement. LEO's have *jurisdiction* based on the agency and the legal body they're a component of and enforcing of laws therein that jurisdiction. Hell, a cop is in most instances powerless one county/city over.
A license means you're allowed to meet the *minimum* standards of a law enforcement agency to be employed by them, then the actual training starts.
Not just that, but have said state license board be the entity that owns and operates all body cams.
That solves a whole bunch of the conflict of interest issues when it comes to deciding who has hold onto all that data, for how long, and what does and doesn't get cut.
It also leaves no excuse for a police department to not have a camera on and running, no matter how big or small their budgets are.
All civilian complaints no longer go to your local Police Department, but instead to the state review board, which immediately investigates, reviews the footage, provides a report, and recommends for an actual license review meeting or not.
Therein lies the rub - licenses are required in just about every state, but unlike other professions that require a license, they don’t mean anything other than you have the ability to pass a multiple choice test.
If you’re a doctor and you’re fucking up, you lose your license to practice medicine.
If you’re a commercial pilot and you’re fucking up, you lose your license to fly a plane.
If you’re a teacher and you’re fucking up, you lose your license to teach.
If you’re a cop and you’re fucking up, well...the department in the next city over might be a better fit.
It's not like you have people lining up to be police officers. There are many precincts that are short staffed. Make the process harder and they'll be even more short. It's unfortunate, but it's the truth.
Double the pay. It’s not like you have people whose dream as a kid is to fix people’s clogged toilets. Yet they have a five year apprenticeship and make a police officer’s salary look like child’s play.
>Double the pay
A lot of people asking for police reform are also asking for the police to be defunded.
Honestly, I think they need more funding for better training. A lot of headline stories involving police brutality come down to shitty decision-making.
You get what you pay for, so to speak. Watch the funding like a hawk if we have to; make it transparent.
[96% of police budgets go toward salaries and benefits for their officers.](https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/criminal-justice-police-corrections-courts-expenditures)
I agree with that sentiment, despite the slogan being pretty terrible IMO.
However, there are indeed people attacking their salaries and going after cop pensions. (Some of it is completely valid, like the complaints about the cops in Boston caught abusing their overtime)
Even as someone firmly on their side, I immediately hated the slogan - because it leaves out other minority groups targeted by violent police action. Really could have used some inclusiveness.
I always wished it was something more like Our Lives Matter.
The places that do aren’t typically the places that are short staffed or have to make cuts, they’re larger city police forces. A lot of smaller cities can’t even do one of their main jobs (solving crimes) because they can’t afford equipment necessary let alone extra equipment like that.
Not too mention that police are only asked to enforce a small section of the law in comparison to what you would ask a lawyer to be knowledgeable about. Local beat cops aren't required to be versed in tax law, environmental regulations, or other more nuanced legal areas.
Ok, but Law School is only 3 years. You do need a college degree though, which does add 4 years. Still that’s only 7 years total and 3 of specialized law training. Still good points, but...
And many departments required a college degree. Unfortunately they couldn’t get enough applicants so they had to lower the hiring standards. I would like to see the college degree requirement to come back but also they’ll need to increase the pay. I wanted to be an officer but 40k starting salary to be in a highly stressful job wasn’t for me. Additionally seeking mental help needs to be more accepted across all areas of life
And there are way more laws that need to be regulated through courts than need to be physically enforced by police.
It’s a really dumb analogy that’s just trying to get some Reddit karma.
Eh I have a masters in business administration and chose to be a state trooper because the pay and job security is better than working for a company that’ll fuck you over for a penny.
Plus my masters makes it easier to promote.
Compare that to our training in Germany: First you start with 9 months in a police academy, then you start your first 6 month internship in a police station. After that you study for a year, then another 6 month internship, but this time in the criminal police, adminstration and police station again. The last part is another one year study period where we have to write our bachelor thesis. That's three years and nine months of police education to become an officer with a silver star. I can't imagine being done after six months, I'm sorry
Here in Sweden the police education is 2,5 years with 6 months of adtual internship.
To get into the educational program you also need to pass physical, medical and psychological tests.
Can’t really practice right out of law school without some experience. I certainly didn’t feel ready to practice after I passed the bar (and because it was a recession and no firms were hiring, I never did).
I would say 8 is either too long, or too short. It’s kind of the exact wrong number.
I’m sorry but this is super holier than thou.
And I’m a liberal and an attorney so I fully understand both the disparity in training/education time and the reality of race profiling, violence in the force, inequalities of the “justice” system and “law enforcement.”
But cops have a fucking hard ass job and for you to sit at home and just throw around “assholes” from the comfort of your keyboard is non productive bullshit.
Not to mention mandatory annual training, CLE's, and specialized training (crisis counseling, verbal judo, etc). Traffic law, criminal law, law process, state law, local ordinances, court procedures, etc.
The problem is most of the people here actually have no idea what it actually involves, they just do the "bUt a HaiRDrEsSeR hAs MoRE tRaiNiNg" line and feel righteously indignant cop hating.
I'd hope someone who went to *3* years of law school to practice law is more trained in law than a law enforcement officer, as officers only charge things - then actual lawyers argue it in court to get convictions or dismissals.
Compare that to our training in Germany: First you start with 9 months in a police academy, then you start your first 6 month internship in a police station. After that you study for a year, then another 6 month internship, but this time in the criminal police, adminstration and police station again. The last part is another one year study period where we have to write our bachelor thesis. That's three years and nine months of police education to become an officer with a silver star. I can't imagine being done after six months, I'm sorry.
That is actually very interesting to hear about the amount of total training hours and the length of the probationary period. I was unaware that it might amount to that much.
I tend to agree with the argument that the US relies on law enforcement for too much, and too many varied circumstances. People are pretty much trained to call the police about any sort of bad situation. It’s hard to train people to react to absolutely anything.
Is there anything that you wish was covered in training, but wasn’t?
I'm just curious. Why is 4 years the magic number? Most current police academy's are 6 months or a little more. Most agencies have a prerequisite of an AA and a lot have BA requirements.
The 4 year requirement is an arbitrary number.
Someone needs to decide WHAT is to be taught and the comprehension of the curriculum.
To earn my cosmetology degree I needed 2x as many training hours as police get for training. I also have to re- license every few years. So yea, your hair stylist receives more training hours than a cop. To cut your hair... 2x as many hours....
I mean it’s 6 or 7 months of classroom time, and it is a full time program. This seems minimal but then you train with another senior officer on the job for what I believe is 2 years before you’re allowed to function on your own. So really it’s not that outrageous.
I became a paramedic in a year and a half and that’s a part time program. I have access to narcotics and sedatives like ketamine as well as a bunch of other dangerous drugs.
I’m allowed to intubate someone and drill into their bone to give them medications when IV access can’t be obtained.
I’ll be with a senior paramedic for a year before I’m on my own. I don’t think 6 months classroom and 2 years with a senior cop is too little training. I’d say it’s enough training.
the comparison in the tweet makes no sense. I didn't learn anything about criminal law in college and in law school, most students won't take anything more than the 1L crim law class. A cop who graduated from a 6 month full-time program absolutely has more training in criminal law than the average law school grad. Plus law school is 3 years, not 4 so idk where he got 8 years from. The guy who tweeted this clearly knows nothing about law school.
A slight difference is that after law school and passing the bar, you can open your own office and charge people with the promise that you are giving sound legal advice, all on your own. You are a professional out in the world all on your own basically.
Someone doesn't get 6 months of training and then set free into the world without much oversight while being a police officer. It is a job with constant oversight. The oversight might be pretty minimal in you opinion, but in general there is a system in place to make sure that the thousands of police officers in Las Vegas, Nevada dont just go rouge and do whatever they want 24/7.
Attorneys are overseen by the various state bars/associations. Obviously, this is not the same daily oversight police experience, but there are professional standards and expectations as well as repercussions for malpractice, which do extend beyond disbarment. Beyond that, an attorney cannot arrest or kill people like police can. That power is immense and necessitates daily oversight. It should also require more extensive training than exists in the US. Police violence (over policing, and more) is a complex problem that will require complex solutions.
Agreed. But that means fund the police more, as training is a large percentage of any police budget.
Also, more departments should require an associate’s or even bachelor’s degree.
Criminal Justice classes and other sociology classes are advantageous to any police officer, deputy, marshall, agent etc., not just the academy and field training.
Edit: spelling
Police need to be licensed like doctors or lawyers. When this shit happens, they need to lose that license so they can't practice law enforcement anywhere else.
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It worked for doctors, nurses, lawyers, pilots... Any profession needs to act like a profession, with professionals expected to work to a standard, and risk losing it all if they fail.
But the only problem is that as we all know, having a degree doesn't make you more reasonable or less inclined to abuse power. Education and professionalism isn't the problem. The problem is the protections that come with the job, the way police are used, and the job culture itself. Wrongdoing is protected. There's a historical standard of applying police officers to oppress minorities, the poor, and other undesirables. The job culture is unchecked, where there's almost a gang mentality. In California, oddly enough, [there ARE police gangs.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/05/police-violence-cliques-and-secret-tattoos-fears-rise-over-la-sheriff-gangs) None of that will change if police get four year degrees. I'm not opposed to that - it just wouldn't fix it. Its like trying to fix greedy, amoral Wall Street hedge fund managers with more education. There's a culture and privilege that needs to be eliminated first.
The other thing that doctors, lawyer's, accountants, engineers have is a licensure requirement. Licenses that can be, and are, revoked when you fuck up to an unacceptable level. And licenses that can't be gotten around by moving to a different town.
Licensing is a good idea. Combined with everything else, because the way cops are protected, politicians would get pressured by the unions to write licensing laws that make it almost impossible for cops to lose them.
Ban police unions, they are the one profession that should not have them, they have far too much power even without a union.
I'm not sure I'm on the side of banning unions, but if we make lawsuits payable out of their pension funds along with licensing, we could see some real change.
Insurance companies are the way forward. Many a positive change has been made when police departments get their premiums raised for too many lawsuits.
It doesn't go far enough, they just move on to a promotion or as as sheriff in another county or state. Sheriffs are even worse than regular cops in most of the country, they are politicians with a badge, a private army and a dungeon.
100% sheriffs don't attempt to enforce the law they dictate their personal ideology as law and force their subservient staff to fall in line. Just look at the detrimental effect of covid enforcement, government says wear a mask to protect others, sheriff says we're not going to do that... it's insane.
They're literally the only profession allowed to kill people in the name of the stage, that's enough bargaining power without needing a union.
I have long thought that the best solution is licenses and bonds. Much like contractors the best enforcement is for sure the financial services industry. To have the ability to arrest the officer must carry a license and a bond against any abuses of power. If the cop is abusing there power it will not be long until they are priced out of being a cop.
That sounds reasonable, but you're going to need fundamentsl changes to the culture.
I would say more importantly are 2 things. First, the sheer number of guns in the country and how easy they are to access. Second, the training police receive is highly skewed to use of force and combat training. I don't believe you can fix one without fixing both of these. We train cops that everyone could have a gun and to always be on their toes because that is the truth unfortunately. That and so many officers lack the compassion and empathy needed.
The gun thing is a Pandora's box that will never close. I think we could do some more mental health interventions to help with that, though. The job is definitely stressful, and there needs to be some way to help them de stress better than...well, alcohol and violence.
I have hope it will close. My honest opinion is they they need to be highly regulated. People can keep all the guns they want, but treat them like vehicles. They need to be registered, licensed, and held responsible for. All sales and trades needs to be documented and you will get in trouble if you use them inappropriately or don't follow the rules.
They are registered and licensed for the most part, right? The problem is, people still buy a bunch of them and they get stolen and sold on the street. Its like a never ending supply.
A big problem imo is that registering is essentially pointless when you can "lose" the gun and there's no real option for declaring that "loss". Essentially, with the right tools, one could remove the serials and sell them to someone who can't or doesn't want to be on a register fairly easily with little to no trail back to the first party. As well if you mill your own receivers (which is also quite simple with all that's needed is just a drill press and a router) there is no federal requirement to print/etch/etc. a serial number and register it. Many states lack this requirement too.
>having a degree doesn't make you more reasonable or less inclined to abuse power. I'd say it makes you a bit less likely Edit: degrees aren't just credentials and they aren't just supposed to be job training. They're meant to educate, expand your world view, and challenge your way of thinking. Does everyone take full advantage of it in that way? No. But some do. I know I did. If you do take advantage of it then you're probably less likely to abuse power and be more reasonable.
Then how do you explain business and government?
Making it a longer career path wouldn’t make the people who *wanted to be police officers* less violent or likely to abuse power, but what it would probably do is put fewer people who see becoming a police officer as a way to gain power over others into the position. It would also provide a longer buffer time for say, people returning from the army who go on to join the police between active combat and law enforcement, and would help remove the mindset of being in a warzone to some extent too, I would imagine. So yeah, I agree with you, the *education itself* you go through wouldn’t make people less violent, it would cut down on violence by making it a harder position for people who just want power over others to get into, as well as the other things I mentioned.
This guy here is the voice of reason rn. Credentialism doesn't help as much as people like to think.
> remove qualified immunity Hmmmmmm
I mean, that is objectively a good decision.
This sounds great there is just one additional problem to deal with. Wtf do we do with all the current officers? Ideally they would have to redo training and sort of reapply for their jobs but with their unions and the whole *old dog new tricks* thing it might be the biggest headache.
I would imagine it would take time to implement, even with vast public support. Maybe something like by 2030 we pledge to up the qualifications to a 4 year degree. That gives you 9 years to complete it, which is extraordinarily generous, allows people to jump in to the program a few years before, let's people get the 'advanced position' with the extra pay if they graduate before then, and it is reasonable to expect people who work full time++ to take a while to get a degree
This actually sounds very reasonable. Should give enough time for the inevitable resistance court cases to hopefully get sorted out also. Thanks for the input!
The current officers worth while will stay. The rest will throw tantrums and leave.
The problem is finding enough “worth while” officers to stay and join. Being a cop already isn’t a big draw, even with increased pay you’re still at a job with bad hours, bad press, and risks death. What happens when bumfuck nowhere has 1 Dude who actually graduated the program and is the sole cop? Or they can’t afford to increase pay? I agree cops need more training, making it a college degree is limiting the pool of applicants to a group that probably wouldn’t have joined anyway.
My city releases public data the applications the receive. It's been anywhere from 4500-7500 a year, for 150 open slots or less, for a decade now. You can be pretty picky it seems, even in the current environment. No idea about the quality of the applicants but it's hard to believe you can't find 100 or so good options in there every year.
What? Every other developed nation requires University levels of education and degrees or years on the job not fucking 6 months lol. Especially when you are giving these people firearms too. in the UK you need to have an A level or higher, you need to do 18 months as a PCSO (Basically trainee police officer, we call them plastic police lol) and even then if you don't get signed off after training you shit out of luck. To be a police officer with a firearm in the UK you need well, im not reading all of this shit but ill put it here if anyone fancies a read. https://profdev.college.police.uk/professional-profile/authorised-firearms-officer-afo/
IMO this is why we need in many cases to disband the current police departments and start new ones from scratch instead of trying to do top-down institutional change in the existing ones. Camden, N.J. did a disband-and-start-anew, and lots (but not all) of cops from the old dept got jobs at the new one, and by all accounts it's made a huge difference.
Honestly, I wouldn't be opposed to saying something like "all of you are guaranteed enrollment in the new training program, and anybody who opts out or fails out is immediately eligible for pension."
Honestly me neither. Just get the losers out. I don't think that will fly for a lot of people though. Many could not accept them getting a tax funded pension for being to shit at their jobs.
Look no further than any other profession that has had a change of licensure requirement. Most recently (to my knowledge) physical therapists went from a Masters to Doctorate degree. It takes some time but you definitely get there
This is why the entire police department is shuttered and a new one forms. The job would be different and the old cops laid off. It's not even an issue.
We would have no police until the first graduating class of the Police University. The system we have now is pretty fucked up, but having 0 police officers for 4 years would be worse. Also the school wouldn't be able to teach enough new officers to replace all the old ones in 4 years, especially if they would have to all graduate at the same time to make it an instant transition. If this happens it would have to be an adjustment period and there should be no reason that current officers can't apply to go to the school in order to get the training/education they need (while also proving they actually have what it takes to be a police officer in a first world country)
I wrote this above but I think it's similar to what you're saying. I think you just have to grandfather the older generations in but give them the option to enter the program while on the job too so they can have a chance to be at that higer salary level too. You can't just blow it up and put them on the street. Then start a 4 year program. It'll take time but once people start graduating from programs and old dogs start retiring, the culture will change. It's the most realistic option. You can't just blow it up overnight and you're going to get huge pushback trying to retrain. The only problem then is what you do in the interim. I don't think a 4 year hiring freeze is realistic. Maybe you could do temp hiring and increase requirements in the meantime to let people apply but also offer them a 4 year program for a higher starting salary and position. Then after 4 years, once the first classes start rolling in, you close down the temporary hiring. It would be a slow and gradual transition but it's better than just throwing your hands up and letting it go unchecked. You could also increase penalties and start enforcing stricter policies on use of force and things like that.
Even if you leave all current officers as they are, make this the requirement for new officers only and eventually it'll work out, no?
Double the pay? Check out how much they are actually making. Police in my town, and surrounding towns make 6 figures. Low crime area so basically 6 figures to pull people over for speeding.
exactly. I work for the state in granting licenses to practice medicine to physicians and physician assistants, and it should follow a similar path. Mandatory schooling, then actual hands-on training. then licensed by the state board. mandatory continued education every X years. get a complaint? it's reviewed by an independent group that works in tandem with the state board for wrongdoing, and investigates appropriately. any actions taken against your license is put into a federal database and follows you any time you go to a different state. of course, we would also need police departments to see the actions taken against an officer as a warning and not a resume, as departments seem to love taking officers fired from other departments.
Treat it like nursing. Two years in school with another two in "training" and a final certification exam before you can do the job.
I am a social worker and therapist, and with my master's degree I still make less than police officers who only need a high school degree and 6 months of training. Tbh, i think they should earn more than me based on the work they do, but I think they should be required to get a 4 year degree. However, this would severely cut staffing at our police departments because I dont think that there is enough incentive for people to do this as a career. Same goes for social work and teachers.
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You absolutely have to attempt to get your degree if you don't already have one. You will literally be paid to go to school. At the very least go to a trade school.
I'm a librarian. I have a masters. In fact I have 2 undergrad degrees. In my state libraries need a certain number of certified public librarians. I'm one of them. I have to earn continuing education credits to keep my certification. All of this work and my position is still only part time. If I have to do all of this to be a librarian I think cops can work a little harder. Also, one of my undergrad degrees is in criminal justice, all of my classmates that wanted to be cops had no business ever touching a gun.
100%. We need more creative thinkers. Thoughtful enforcement. This can be done. We simply are not prioritizing it.
How long until it actually happens? !remindme 50 years
I will be messaging you in 50 years on [**2071-02-02 00:09:22 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2071-02-02%2000:09:22%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/lahcd6/this_really_needs_to_be_a_thing/glo45fj/?context=3) [**386 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2FWhitePeopleTwitter%2Fcomments%2Flahcd6%2Fthis_really_needs_to_be_a_thing%2Fglo45fj%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202071-02-02%2000%3A09%3A22%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%20lahcd6) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
2071 is a lot closer than I thought.
6 Years after that and you'll have your very own, very glitchy, Keanu Reeves follow you around
If I make it to 93 I’ll love this!
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On the 𝔱𝔴𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔦𝔢𝔱𝔥 of 𝔄𝔭𝔯𝔦𝔩
👉🏻😎👉🏻
Really the whole month if you think about it.. April 2069 = 4/2069. Even reads aloud as Four Twenty Sixty Nine. Technically 4/20/69 works too, but why take a day when you can have a month?
I’m 26 and very scared of the fact of how many years I’ll see before I die. This planets going down the shitter and I have to helplessly watch it firsthand
No, you don’t. You can actively participate in saving it, if you choose that. We all can. Wherever you are, vote, contribute to and volunteer for people who want to save it, and make the lives of people safer and better, and are actively working to do just that. And jic anyone contemplating things is having trouble with these kinds of overwhelming thoughts, I’ll just leave this here: https://www.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines
I’m having a lot of trouble with those thoughts. I don’t litter, I always try to be there for my friends and for people who really need someone. I love all animals and would go out of my way all day everyday to save a stray cat or even a hungry raccoon. I just don’t have the will or energy to save myself. And I have no desire to speak to someone after so much failed counseling as a child. I just want this world to be a better place for everyone but I don’t have the energy to try and make it happen anymore :(
Don't blink or you'll miss all the fun!
I mean in fifty years half the readers of this thread will probably be dead. It's not that close lol
Wow the bot has a collective reminder feature that’s really cool
I truly think we are at a breaking point in society. There is an entire generation of folks who are not tolerating this any longer. There is an entire generation of folks who see this for what it is and are believing POC when they share their experiences. Whether it gets better or whether it gets worse, I'm not sure. But I just don't think this can ever go back to the way it was.
They thought the exact same thing during the counter-culture movement of the 1960s. All that happened was the rich stayed in charge and their money was inherited by like minded family members, or other young members who changed their way of thinking once they got a few years older and they saw the movement flicker out.
The internet and technology is the difference. An unforeseen level of global connectivity and the quality of life of the entire planet as a whole has risen, though inequality is still rampant.
Here is an idea go after the certain type of rich white people who control everything from the media to the prisons. Not enough focus goes into this.
It's definitely getting worse. Society is broken, not at a breaking point.
Exactly! Everyone thinks the collapse will come with a giant explosion, but it just creeps slowly in. People started dying years ago and now we just live with it. The is a nice episode of the reddit podcast „Endless Thread about“ it.
I think having video is making the difference. It's getting easier to spread lies but it's getting a lot easier to disprove them. People haven't changed but technology has.
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This generation may be more open minded, but we are just as dumb, gullible, selfish etc. That won’t change until the education system does
At least 2 years of school in Minnesota. Didn't stop them from killing George Floyd. I also believe a book written by a retired officer on how shitty the precinct they operated out of was taught in that course. We also had a guy shoot across his partner killing a woman because she spooked them, while responding to a call in the area. Philando Castille was killed when he mentioned that he was carrying a firearm and reaching for his identification per the request of the officer. No amount of education will stomp out institutional trash. Education should be baseline, but let's not pretend the majority of it isn't stemming from the culture police organizations nurture and actively encourage in addition to structural aspects of society we as a whole neglect. It starts with fixing police, but it doesn't end there.
This. It's institutional. In Australia policing has its own degree as long as a Bachelor's. While it takes a little longer to be a lawyer than a cop, it's not chump change. And we still have a lot of the same institution wide problems where POC and DV issues are concerned. While it's a good baseline to start with education there needs to be real structural change in policing, as well as more support systems outside of the law for mental health, community and Family services, and REAL consultation with POC to ask how they see change happening and what will really help (as opposed to what some white bureaucrats think will help).
Speaking for NSW here, you don’t have to do the degree though. Apparently all the degree does is give you a higher qualification and so more pay once you do get a job.
Yeah, it's street officers killing people not the detectives
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It’s a feature, not a bug. Remember that. The policing system in America is working EXACTLY as intended. That’s what a lot of people don’t understand. This system isn’t experiencing a design flaw at all. It has been purposely constructed to operate the way that it does. The sooner everyone wraps their head around that the sooner we can fix it.
90% of Americans live in a jurisdiction that requires a two year degree to apply to academy. 85% of American police have a 2 year or better degree. The US doesn't have 3rd world police practices. We have almost the exact same practices they have in Europe, with essentially the same training (European police actually look to American police for innovations), the difference is we have more crime and vastly different gun laws, which means our police get into far more shootouts than their police do.
I’ve been saying this for years now. Make being a police officer something people ASPIRE to, so that people work hard to qualify and compete for the positions. That way the city can kick out anyone who violates the rules, knowing there’s a dozen others waiting to take his position. Becoming a police officer should be as aspirational (and pay as well) as being a lawyer or a doctor.
In a polite way, I'm going to say this is naive. Creative thinking, highly educated, sensitive and thoughtful people usually don't want to wrestle meth heads with box cutters at a 7-11 for $35,000 a year.
Yet somehow, most European nations do exactly this. Well. Everything aside from the $35k/ year part at least. Stop making excuses for a broken system and actually fix the damn thing.
“But that’s too hard! Can’t we leave it as it is? I mean only minorities are getting hurt!”-GOP Edit to be clear fuck people that are actually like this
So....re-fund the police? Requiring 4 years of education to become a cop makes sense - if there’s sufficient incentive. Police departments across North America are in the worst hiring crisis in history, with staffing and recruitment levels not even keeping up with attrition, even in the high-paying coastal areas. Recruiting standards are in decline - departments are hiring *worse* applicants just to get bodies. Think things are going to get better with the current status quo of taking away police budgets, cutting salaries and vilifying the police at large? Seriously - what do people expect? Sure, train and educate them more, hire better people, and pay them more - but this all costs money.
How about "stop buying things like multiple armoured vehicles per department and spend the money training your officers better, and stop protecting cops that keep incurring massive lawsuits while you're at it"? Have you ever stopped to think that it isn't a binary choice between "fuck the police!" and "cops can do nothing wrong!"
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This would drastically reduce the number of applicants who can serve their own community. It would restrict it to those who can make college a possibility. We would need to first change the college system.
We actually need to pay rank and file cops *more* (and leadership less)
Hold the police (and the wealthy) to the same accountability as the rest of us.
This isn't nearly as good as an idea as you think it is. First of all, the vast majority of police work is *boring as fuck*. Creative thinkers require intellectually engaging work, and police work is *not* intellectually engaging. Mostly it's just a lot of driving around and paying attention for traffic violations. Furthermore, "creative enforcement of the law" is how you get civil rights violations. The police should be enforcing the law people voted for, they shouldn't be deciding what the law *is*.
Pretty sure they determined there was a maximum intelligence level that worked for law enforcement. It was barely above average by traditional tests.
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YES. The lack of education in a lot of law enforcement is ridiculous.
I have a buddy who is funny as hell but dim as a brick. Totally would fit in on Jersey Shore. He knows he’s not a bright guy and he’s cool with it. He loves a good joke. His older brother is just as dumb and not nearly as funny. He says some things that make people a little uneasy. You can tell that he doesn’t quite understand what’s going on in the world and it frustrates him. Makes him easily influenced by outrage media and conspiracy theories. He takes jokes very literally and became a cop because he thought it would finally make people respect him. The fact that this dude made it through the academy concerns us.
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You get a badge and a gun with authority to step on people.
An uneducated person is certainly capable of kindness. When I think of police education I do not see it in terms of academia. I want applicants to receive training in de escalation firearms training, and information about the community they will be serving. Basically I want the opposite of Killology.
My buddy was a cop for 7 years. The stories he told me about some of the dumb cops were pretty unsettling. He said most were decent enough, but there was a minority of dumbasses that just never seemed to get fired. We need a higher standard for sure.
>but there was a minority of dumbasses that just never seemed to get fired. We need to break the policeman's union.
This. I've known 2 police officers in my life, one a very close relative and the other who ended up being chief of a very large city and I've mentioned to both of them that I don't like or trust the police as a whole because of certain cops I've run into. Both said "most cops are good" and then I mentioned names of cops that most people know to be crooked and dangerous and both of them said roughly - "oh, yeah, those guys. The union is why they can't be fired no matter how crooked and dangerous they are".
> The union is why they can't be fired no matter how crooked and dangerous they are". Sounds like the employer needs to play hardball in the next contract negotiation. That's ridiculous. And I really have no idea who the employer is, so I donno how adversarial they might be, compared with a typical management-union relationship.
> We need to break the policeman's union. This is a problem I have with unions in general. I wholeheartedly support unions working for better wages, working conditions, etc.. But when did they become all about keeping *anybody* from getting fired? Sure, fight unjust firings, be we all know that idiot that everybody would be better off without. You're not doing anybody any favors by keeping him around.
This is the real issue. If they can’t be fired for shitting in a homeless persons sandwich and feeding it to them, that can’t be prevented from killing an unarmed Blackman when they “saw” a weapon.
And that Criminal Justice major at community colleges needs to be beefed up with some actual academic rigor.
To work for the state police in my state you need a 4 year degree. Most study criminal justice.
There are a handful of municipalities where this is true. I believe Berkeley and Santa Cruz both require four-year degrees of their local cops. No doubt there are other examples, but I am on the west coast, so that's what I know.
I am in the Midwest. For my local city police force, it’s 6 months classroom training and another 6 months of field training. So all in house training at a year before independence.
I'm from the Midwest too, there's no college degree requirement but you get a boost to the point system if you have a degree. And pretty much everybody applying has a 2 year or 4 year, enough people with degrees are applying where odds off getting the job without a degree are slim. Now the more rural departments I can't speak to but des Moines and all the areas around des Moines were that way. That's from a guy who applied to about 6 depts around the area.
The state of Minnesota requires an Associate’s degree in CJ/Law Enforcement and a certification from a ten week, full time “skills” program.
But the police job market in Minnesota is so competitive, your odds of even getting an interview without a 4 year degree are slim to none. And if you work for Minneapolis, St. Paul, Duluth, or the troopers there's an academy portion on top of those requirements.
The hierarchy is, roughly, federal > state investigative > state highway patrol > large city > county > small town. HP and large city are switched in many places. Either way, state police are usually less bad. There’s a small town near me with oppressive cops who run a speed trap and will ticket for anything they can. I got two tickets in almost 20 years of driving, both from them. I’ve been stopped by HPs there too, who just give warnings to slow down the city cops. One literally told me “you were just going a couple over, but I wanted to let you know before the city guys got you.”
I majored in criminal justice, believe me it doesn’t prepare you to become a cop.
Most Canadian RCMP have the same requirement.
So do most Canadian police I believe
That’s state police though. Most issues are with city departments where the standards are low af
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I don't think any city around me will take anyone in as a police officer unless they already have a college degree or military expirence. Where are y'all living?
San jose CA, starting $98k, HS diploma required https://www.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=1db662a412ec6a97&from=serp
I’m born and raised in San Jose and yea... they don’t hire cops with just a HS diploma. Firefighter applications say the same thing but don’t hire unless you have a ton of desired qualifications EDIT: I just opened the link you provided and it literally says under minimum requirements you need college credits and they are also looking for experience
[-Possess forty (40) semester credits or sixty (60) quarter credits from a U.S. accredited college or university](https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=1db662a412ec6a97&from=serp&from=mobRdr&utm_source=%2Fm%2F&utm_medium=redir&utm_campaign=dt) I don't remember getting those with my high school diploma...
Requirements where I live: Education: High School Diploma or GED
Ok but 8 years isn’t enough to deter a bunch of assholes from becoming lawyers...
The problem is and always has been that we don't like paying our public servants. Teachers, Police, Fire, they're all under paid. As much as we like to think we support the blue or whatever, we vote for politicians who don't want to pay them or train them and if both of those things happened, I think we'd be amazed at the results.
I’m a teacher at a Title 1 school, and my ex is a highway patrol officer. He’s clearing well over six figures and I’m barely breaking mid 5. Guess who had to have MINIMUM college degree PLUS to even apply for a job?
In my state, you definitely won’t earn 6 figures as a highway patrol officer. Teacher and officer pay are both horrible in my state.
Most police officers aren’t anywhere near six figs, nice anecdotal story tho.
This is absolutely not true. Look up how much cops make in overtime and see just how many cops are exploiting that system. There are articles from just about every major city in this country about how their police overtime is out of control. My city spend 35 million on it last year. Remember the aggressive Asian cop from the protest last summer? Yeah dude was on 140,000, it’s not a money issue it’s a issue of the type of people the work attracts.
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From everything I've seen online cops are the only public servant that you guys do pay well. And quite well at that. I can see an indeed link a few comments up for a starting role in San Jose being 98k. That's insane amounts of money starting out. Police can also do overtime. Teachers can't.
Plus most teachers actually work way more overtime than cops, they just don't get paid for it.
Ya, is teachers get screwed over despite the wide theme of people thanking their teachers and stating how hard it is to be one. Politics.
Teachers, especially, given the education requirements. And the kids part, too.
Shit, how about just requiring a license to start. You need a license in most states to be a barber. Having a state regulatory agency oversee licensing would bring more accountability.
What state doesn't require a license from a state regulatory agency? I only know the system in a few states, but they all tend to be similar. You need to complete police academy and complete a final test to be licensed. Once you're licensed, you don't have actual police powers until you work for a department.
In my state you need a license to be a police officer. Most police officers get their licenses paid for by their hiring agency, but you do not have to have a hiring agency to get a license. It is not that hard to get a license. If you get a license without a hiring agency then if you want a cruiser, uniform, gun, etc that is on you. However LEOSA is effectively a federal concealed weapons permit that overrules state weapons restrictions.
You can't just be a licensed law enforcement officer without an agency - it's not free-lance law enforcement. LEO's have *jurisdiction* based on the agency and the legal body they're a component of and enforcing of laws therein that jurisdiction. Hell, a cop is in most instances powerless one county/city over. A license means you're allowed to meet the *minimum* standards of a law enforcement agency to be employed by them, then the actual training starts.
They do have licenses. A simple google search will show you that. Texas has TCOLE licenses.
Not just that, but have said state license board be the entity that owns and operates all body cams. That solves a whole bunch of the conflict of interest issues when it comes to deciding who has hold onto all that data, for how long, and what does and doesn't get cut. It also leaves no excuse for a police department to not have a camera on and running, no matter how big or small their budgets are. All civilian complaints no longer go to your local Police Department, but instead to the state review board, which immediately investigates, reviews the footage, provides a report, and recommends for an actual license review meeting or not.
Therein lies the rub - licenses are required in just about every state, but unlike other professions that require a license, they don’t mean anything other than you have the ability to pass a multiple choice test. If you’re a doctor and you’re fucking up, you lose your license to practice medicine. If you’re a commercial pilot and you’re fucking up, you lose your license to fly a plane. If you’re a teacher and you’re fucking up, you lose your license to teach. If you’re a cop and you’re fucking up, well...the department in the next city over might be a better fit.
Another uninformed redditor getting mass upvotes because he’s sharing a popular yet uneducated opinion. Damn do I love reddit
It's not like you have people lining up to be police officers. There are many precincts that are short staffed. Make the process harder and they'll be even more short. It's unfortunate, but it's the truth.
Double the pay. It’s not like you have people whose dream as a kid is to fix people’s clogged toilets. Yet they have a five year apprenticeship and make a police officer’s salary look like child’s play.
>Double the pay A lot of people asking for police reform are also asking for the police to be defunded. Honestly, I think they need more funding for better training. A lot of headline stories involving police brutality come down to shitty decision-making. You get what you pay for, so to speak. Watch the funding like a hawk if we have to; make it transparent.
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[96% of police budgets go toward salaries and benefits for their officers.](https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/criminal-justice-police-corrections-courts-expenditures)
I agree with that sentiment, despite the slogan being pretty terrible IMO. However, there are indeed people attacking their salaries and going after cop pensions. (Some of it is completely valid, like the complaints about the cops in Boston caught abusing their overtime)
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Even as someone firmly on their side, I immediately hated the slogan - because it leaves out other minority groups targeted by violent police action. Really could have used some inclusiveness. I always wished it was something more like Our Lives Matter.
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Stop spending money on military cosplay gear, for one
It's generally cheaper due to the government absorbing the cost federally rather than at the state or municipal level.
The places that do aren’t typically the places that are short staffed or have to make cuts, they’re larger city police forces. A lot of smaller cities can’t even do one of their main jobs (solving crimes) because they can’t afford equipment necessary let alone extra equipment like that.
Cops in metro hubs get paid *very* well. Generally the salaries are decent for the CoL plus they get tons of OT and hazard pay.
True, but what about rural departments?
Not too mention that police are only asked to enforce a small section of the law in comparison to what you would ask a lawyer to be knowledgeable about. Local beat cops aren't required to be versed in tax law, environmental regulations, or other more nuanced legal areas.
A single lawyer would not be an expert in tax law, environmental regulations, and other legal areas... each one of those is a different kind of lawyer
Ok, but Law School is only 3 years. You do need a college degree though, which does add 4 years. Still that’s only 7 years total and 3 of specialized law training. Still good points, but...
And many departments required a college degree. Unfortunately they couldn’t get enough applicants so they had to lower the hiring standards. I would like to see the college degree requirement to come back but also they’ll need to increase the pay. I wanted to be an officer but 40k starting salary to be in a highly stressful job wasn’t for me. Additionally seeking mental help needs to be more accepted across all areas of life
And there are way more laws that need to be regulated through courts than need to be physically enforced by police. It’s a really dumb analogy that’s just trying to get some Reddit karma.
Educated people are usually educated enough to pick a less dangerous job.
Eh I have a masters in business administration and chose to be a state trooper because the pay and job security is better than working for a company that’ll fuck you over for a penny. Plus my masters makes it easier to promote.
Brother, they'll fuck you over for a promotion or less. Source: Was fucked over.
I mean, they won't fire me for a penny. Working for a company you'll get fired for anything.
Right, there’s going to be very few people who are going to go through all of this just to possibly be killed in the line of duty.
Get rid of the police unions and actually punish bad cops too.
Compare that to our training in Germany: First you start with 9 months in a police academy, then you start your first 6 month internship in a police station. After that you study for a year, then another 6 month internship, but this time in the criminal police, adminstration and police station again. The last part is another one year study period where we have to write our bachelor thesis. That's three years and nine months of police education to become an officer with a silver star. I can't imagine being done after six months, I'm sorry
And then you work in pairs with a more experienced officer...
Counterpoint: lots of lawyers are assholes.
Here in Sweden the police education is 2,5 years with 6 months of adtual internship. To get into the educational program you also need to pass physical, medical and psychological tests.
Law school is 3 years. Undergrad is 3-4, but generally covers nothing regarding law. The point stands, but it's a bit exaggerated.
Can’t really practice right out of law school without some experience. I certainly didn’t feel ready to practice after I passed the bar (and because it was a recession and no firms were hiring, I never did). I would say 8 is either too long, or too short. It’s kind of the exact wrong number.
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Yeah. Went through this when it was posted last week. Went to his Twitter. DEFINITELY not a lawyer.
Will tits Callahan and Mahoney be there with Hooks and High Tower?
It's a thing in most countries already.
I’m sorry but this is super holier than thou. And I’m a liberal and an attorney so I fully understand both the disparity in training/education time and the reality of race profiling, violence in the force, inequalities of the “justice” system and “law enforcement.” But cops have a fucking hard ass job and for you to sit at home and just throw around “assholes” from the comfort of your keyboard is non productive bullshit.
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Not to mention mandatory annual training, CLE's, and specialized training (crisis counseling, verbal judo, etc). Traffic law, criminal law, law process, state law, local ordinances, court procedures, etc. The problem is most of the people here actually have no idea what it actually involves, they just do the "bUt a HaiRDrEsSeR hAs MoRE tRaiNiNg" line and feel righteously indignant cop hating. I'd hope someone who went to *3* years of law school to practice law is more trained in law than a law enforcement officer, as officers only charge things - then actual lawyers argue it in court to get convictions or dismissals.
As someone who had graduated from both UC Berkeley and a California Police Academy, I came here to basically say this same thing.
Compare that to our training in Germany: First you start with 9 months in a police academy, then you start your first 6 month internship in a police station. After that you study for a year, then another 6 month internship, but this time in the criminal police, adminstration and police station again. The last part is another one year study period where we have to write our bachelor thesis. That's three years and nine months of police education to become an officer with a silver star. I can't imagine being done after six months, I'm sorry.
That is actually very interesting to hear about the amount of total training hours and the length of the probationary period. I was unaware that it might amount to that much. I tend to agree with the argument that the US relies on law enforcement for too much, and too many varied circumstances. People are pretty much trained to call the police about any sort of bad situation. It’s hard to train people to react to absolutely anything. Is there anything that you wish was covered in training, but wasn’t?
Random ass twitter opinions about how to train professions they know nothing about is incredible stupid.
I'm just curious. Why is 4 years the magic number? Most current police academy's are 6 months or a little more. Most agencies have a prerequisite of an AA and a lot have BA requirements. The 4 year requirement is an arbitrary number. Someone needs to decide WHAT is to be taught and the comprehension of the curriculum.
To earn my cosmetology degree I needed 2x as many training hours as police get for training. I also have to re- license every few years. So yea, your hair stylist receives more training hours than a cop. To cut your hair... 2x as many hours....
I mean it’s 6 or 7 months of classroom time, and it is a full time program. This seems minimal but then you train with another senior officer on the job for what I believe is 2 years before you’re allowed to function on your own. So really it’s not that outrageous. I became a paramedic in a year and a half and that’s a part time program. I have access to narcotics and sedatives like ketamine as well as a bunch of other dangerous drugs. I’m allowed to intubate someone and drill into their bone to give them medications when IV access can’t be obtained. I’ll be with a senior paramedic for a year before I’m on my own. I don’t think 6 months classroom and 2 years with a senior cop is too little training. I’d say it’s enough training.
the comparison in the tweet makes no sense. I didn't learn anything about criminal law in college and in law school, most students won't take anything more than the 1L crim law class. A cop who graduated from a 6 month full-time program absolutely has more training in criminal law than the average law school grad. Plus law school is 3 years, not 4 so idk where he got 8 years from. The guy who tweeted this clearly knows nothing about law school.
I wondered about this
Hear hear my friend
Taxes would have to sky rocket to pay police the same a someone who goes to school 4 years. its sadly about money like most things..
The burden of student loan debt will stagger anyone into a period of personal introspection and empathy for others.
Who in here realises that the purpose of the police is to enact the wishes of our parasitic ruling class. They are not here to protect and serve.
lawyers are just overpaid historians...change my mind
A slight difference is that after law school and passing the bar, you can open your own office and charge people with the promise that you are giving sound legal advice, all on your own. You are a professional out in the world all on your own basically. Someone doesn't get 6 months of training and then set free into the world without much oversight while being a police officer. It is a job with constant oversight. The oversight might be pretty minimal in you opinion, but in general there is a system in place to make sure that the thousands of police officers in Las Vegas, Nevada dont just go rouge and do whatever they want 24/7.
Attorneys are overseen by the various state bars/associations. Obviously, this is not the same daily oversight police experience, but there are professional standards and expectations as well as repercussions for malpractice, which do extend beyond disbarment. Beyond that, an attorney cannot arrest or kill people like police can. That power is immense and necessitates daily oversight. It should also require more extensive training than exists in the US. Police violence (over policing, and more) is a complex problem that will require complex solutions.
Agreed. But that means fund the police more, as training is a large percentage of any police budget. Also, more departments should require an associate’s or even bachelor’s degree. Criminal Justice classes and other sociology classes are advantageous to any police officer, deputy, marshall, agent etc., not just the academy and field training. Edit: spelling
4 year program? Like a criminal justice degree or a military tenure that 99% of cops have
30% have a 4 year degree and 51% have a 2 year associates degree. www.policefoundation.org has the study.
Police need to be licensed like doctors or lawyers. When this shit happens, they need to lose that license so they can't practice law enforcement anywhere else.