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Arguments about police qualifications and evaluation
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This page tracks arguments about police qualifications and evaluation. Information about this topic areas in relation to police CBAs in the 50 states and 100 largest U.S. cities by population can be found on Ballotpedia's Police CBA Dashboard.
This page tracks the following arguments about police qualifications and evaluation:
- Three arguments supporting calls to increase or amend qualifications and evaluations for police officers
- One argument opposing calls to increase or amend qualifications and evaluations for police officers
Arguments supporting calls to increase or amend qualifications and evaluations for police officers
Argument: Standards for police hiring should be stricter
This argument states that police departments should implement higher standards and requirements for law enforcement applicants. Higher standards for police hiring would lead to a more qualified pool of applicants to recruit officers from.
Claim: Higher police education should be a requirement for all police officers
This claim states that all police officers should be required to have higher police education in order to respond to a demand for police officers to have greater knowledge and expertise related to policing. Proponents of this claim also argue that a requirement for higher police education might allow police departments to offer higher compensation to police officers.
- Scholars Jan Terpstra and Dorian Schaap gave the following four reasons to require higher education for new police officers:[1]
- “[T]he main argument was that the increasing complexity of the social, legal, and technological environment in which the police operate has made police work much more complex as well. This demands more expertise and knowledge from police officers, but also more analytical capabilities, reflexivity, flexibility, and communicative skills.”
- “Secondly, higher education was also seen as a way to make police work more attractive, in terms of pay, image, and career opportunities… In NRW, the improvement of the salary and status of police officers was a main factor for the police unions to support this reform."
- “Thirdly, each of these countries has had rising levels of education among the general population over the past few decades. It was felt that the police could not stay behind in this development.”
- “Fourth, higher levels of police education were deemed necessary to promote a more open and responsive style of policing and to reduce detrimental police practices.”
- The Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform wrote, “We propose increasing the required level of education, which can justify wage increases. This can help to reduce the likelihood of police officers working a lot of hours and making poor decisions because of lack of sleep or stress. We also propose requiring that officers live within or near the municipalities where they work. Living locally can increase police-community relations and improve trust. Officers should receive rent subsidies or down payment assistance to enhance this process.”[2]
- The editorial team for policeofficer.org, an online career resource for law enforcement officers and individuals planning to become law enforcement officers, argued in a 2022 article about the benefits of higher education for police officers. The team argued that higher education can broaden officers’ perspectives and provide them with what they referred to as “a leg up against the competition” regarding promotions and recruitment: "Police work is a detailed and complex field of employment. Pursuing advanced studies in an applicable field can improve your overall awareness and understanding of the job. It can lead to a more advanced understanding of laws, procedures, theories, and concepts that will improve your ability to perform as a law enforcement officer. The more you know about concepts such as the law at federal, state, and local levels, civil rights, hate crimes, and current issues faced by public servants and law enforcement professionals, the better able you will be to relate to the public and function in your job."[3]
Claim: Police officer entrance exams do not adequately reflect police officer responsibilities
This claim states that police officer entrance exams are ineffective at predicting an officer’s success during training or on the job. Proponents state that the entrance exam highlights a potential recruit's test-taking ability more than the skills necessary to be a police officer, which makes it an inadequate prediction of which applicants would be good police officers.
- In a dissertation, Amani R. Edwards wrote, “[T]he examination does not wholly reflect police officer responsibilities, because it is not designed to do so. Even if the intent is to design an exam to reflect current officer responsibilities, communication between the DCS, municipal civil service agencies, and police departments does not allow for the sharing of knowledge and information to inform exam redesign.”[4]
- Edwards continued, “The fact that the police officer entrance examination is designed to measure an individual’s potential to learn how to be a police officer presents an issue for police hiring practices, as the first step to becoming a police officer is focused less on policing competencies, and more on test taking abilities. High stakes examinations are not always the best method to determine an individual’s merit and fit for a position. For police officers in particular, an examination - at least in its current design - is an inadequate way to determine merit and fit. Policing competencies point to skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKA’s) that are not easily testable and are not identified in the current exam design. This means that while the civil service is doing its duty to ensure a fair and partisan hiring process, it is also not measuring the fit of its future civil servants - in this case, police officers.”[4]
Argument: Current hiring practices and selection models for police recruits are ineffective
This argument states that the current strategies used by police departments to select and hire recruits are ineffective. Proponents of this argument posit that new models and strategies should be implemented to aid police departments in hiring the most qualified recruits, such as streamlining the hiring and onboarding processes and clearly establishing departmental needs and desired qualifications.
- Dayton Police Department Lieutenant Shane Burleigh argued that bureaucratic application processes harm recruitment efforts. Burleigh wrote, “The [hiring] process was and is onerous, time-consuming, and a burden on not just the applicant but also on agency staff. Hiring managers often find themselves extending a job offer after this lengthy process only to find the applicant is no longer interested or has accepted another job.”[5]
- Burleigh also argued that police officers leave departments because of disorganized onboarding or training. Burleigh wrote, “After speaking to officers in exit interviews and officers in employment interviews about why they left their last agency so quickly, the author found that dissatisfaction with the onboarding process was a common theme. The officers interviewed indicated that the processes they had experienced were unorganized, unprofessional, and unjustified: often, one department did not know what the other was doing or supposed to do.”[5]
- In a best practices guide for Recruitment, Retention, and Turnover of Law Enforcement Personnel, law enforcement official W. Dwayne Orrick wrote, “Before a department begins to recruit officers, the number of officers and the needs of the department should be identified through a staffing analysis and a review of the average turnover rates. Once the number of employees that are needed is identified, the core values of the organization and the unique aspects, or ‘employer brand’, should be clarified. This information is critical for establishing the caliber of officers needed and what the department has to offer employees.”[6]
- Orrick continued, “If departments continue to use the same recruiting processes they have always used, they will continue recruiting the same types of employees, with the same results. In order to recruit diverse, high-quality candidates, departments must upgrade their recruitment programs and employ a variety of recruitment techniques to reach this new group of candidates.”[6]
- Orrick continued, “Successful retention begins before the officer is selected. The selection process should be considered a two-part process. In the first stage, processes are designed to identify individuals who pass minimum qualifications. Standard selection devices to eliminate individuals who do not meet minimum established standards typically include: preliminary interviews, basic skills exams, physical ability tests, and background investigations. In the second phase, qualified personnel are evaluated to identify those candidates who fit with the agency. While most agencies perform very similar activities, every department has its own personality or organizational culture. Too often it is assumed the person who scores the highest on selection exams are the best persons for employment. This pursuit of a fair system limits the agency’s ability to attract those persons who are more likely to stay with the agency.”[6]
- Jeremy M. Wilson, Erin Dalton, Charles Scheer, and Clifford A. Grammich, from the RAND Center on Quality Policing, wrote, “What is apparent is that traditional methods of selection might be losing reliability in the absence of more-current data analysis on new generations of applicants and their changed career expectations, conflicting notions of privacy, and sustained cynicism about invasive and lengthy application processes. Placing these new recruits in uniform based on selection techniques that might not only be obsolete but also be seen as invasive and irrelevant could be counterproductive. Recent research demonstrating that personal demographic and background information (such as age, gender, and race) can predict police academy performance (White, 2008) appears not only to be contradicted by empiricists’ inability to link academy performance to patrol behaviors but also to be in widespread disagreement about what qualities might best befit ‘good police officers’ (Sanders, 2003). A more-proactive approach for selection would use department-specific benchmarks and performance measurements for determining what specific selection processes are a good fit for the department and keeping departmental needs assessments current for staffing.”[7]
Argument: Early warning systems alone are insufficient for improving policing quality
This argument states that early warning systems can be used as a tool to improve the quality of policing, however, they are insufficient when used on their own. Proponents of this argument posit that early warning systems will be most effective when paired with other strategies for improving the quality of policing.
- Scholars Samuel Walker, Geoffrey P. Alpert, and Dennis J. Kennedy argued, “An effective early warning system is a complex, high-maintenance operation that requires a significant investment of administrative resources. Some systems appear to be essentially symbolic gestures with little substantive content, and it is unlikely that an intervention program can be effective in a law enforcement agency that has no serious commitment to accountability. It can be an effective management tool, but it should be seen as only one of many tools needed to raise standards of performance and improve the quality of police services.”[8]
Arguments opposing calls to increase or amend qualifications and evaluations for police officers
Argument: Standards for police hiring do not need to be stricter
This argument states that police departments do not need to implement higher standards and requirements for law enforcement applicants. Proponents of this argument claim that higher standards for police hiring such as requiring a college degree would not significantly impact an officer's ability to do their job.
Claim: Higher police education does not significantly impact an officer’s ability to do their job
This claim states that police officers should not be required to have higher police education. Police officers’ success in their jobs is not impacted by the level of education that they have received.
- Professors Billy Henson, Bradford W. Reyns, Charles F. Klahm, IV, and James Frank wrote, “Higher education is often thought of as a desirable quality for incoming police recruits to possess. However, education did not prove to be related to any of the measures of academy or on the job success used in these analyses.”[9]
- Journalists Brett Rowland and Tom Gantert published a 2022 article in The Center Square discussing educational incentive pay plans for law enforcement officers. Rowland and Gantert wrote about Boston’s first iteration of the plan, titled the Quinn Bill, arguing that the program’s high costs and minimal academic requirements yielded little benefit: "Massachusetts lawmakers passed the Quinn Bill in 1970 three years after the Johnson Crime Commission released a report that recommended more education for police officers. But the state law soon came under fire from the Boston Globe's Spotlight Team in 1985 for its high costs and the low academic requirements for police officers. A 2003 report from the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a nonpartisan research organization, found little benefit to the program."[10]
Claim: Civil service exam scores predict the success of a recruit during academy training and on the job
This claim states that the score police recruits receive on their civil service exams is predictive of how well they will perform in training and on the job. According to proponents of this claim, civil service exam scores serve as effective criteria for police department hiring decisions and the process should not be changed.
- Billy Henson et al. argued, “The predictive power of the civil service exam variable makes intuitive sense because many of the same skills required for excelling on the civil service exam are similar to those necessary for performing well on academy testing.”[9]
- Henson et al. continued, “As discussed, civil service scores were a good predictor of academy success; they were also significantly related to officers’ second evaluation and 3-year evaluation average. This suggests that one of the best criteria for police departments to base hiring decisions on may be high civil service scores.”[9]
See also
- Police hiring, training, and disciplinary requirements by state and city
- Ballotpedia's Police Collective Bargaining Agreements Dashboard
Footnotes
- ↑ Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, "The Politics of Higher Police Education: An International Comparative Perspective," 2021
- ↑ Brookings-AEI Working Group on Criminal Justice Reform, "A Better Path Forward for Criminal Justice," 2021
- ↑ policeofficer.org, "The Benefits of Higher Education for Police Officers," September 15, 2022
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 State University of New York at Albany, ProQuest Dissertations, "19th Century Exam, 21st Century Policing: An Examination of the New York State Civil Service and Police Officer Recruitment," 2021
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Certified Public Manager Applied Research, "Reimagining the Recruitment and Hiring of Police Officers During Tumultuous Times," 2021
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 International Association of Chiefs of Police, "Recruitment, Retention, and Turnover of Law Enforcement Personnel," 2018
- ↑ RAND Corporation, "Police Recruitment and Retention for the New Millennium," 2014
- ↑ U.S. Department of Justice, "Early Warning Systems: Responding to the Problem Police Officer," 2001
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Police Quarterly, "Do Good Recruits Make Good Cops? Problems Predicting and Measuring Academy and Street-Level Success," 2010
- ↑ The Center Square, "Boston pays its cops millions for getting college degrees," October 7, 2022
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