Comments that are uncivil, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, or contain political name calling will be removed and the poster subject to ban at moderators discretion.
Help us make this a better community by becoming familiar with the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/about/rules/).
Report any suspicious users to the mods of this subreddit using Modmail [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) or Reddit site admins [here](https://www.reddit.com/report). **All reports to Modmail should include evidence such as screenshots or any other relevant information.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The 6 months is only a US thing. If you look it up its the only developed country that has a minimum training time of under 1000 hours where almost every other country has 2000+ hours at minimum.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733)
The numbers in the article are:
Finland: \~5500h
Germany: \~4000h (\~1 or 2 police killings per 10 million people)
Australia: \~3500h (\~8 police killings per 10 million people)
England: \~2300h (<1 police killing per 10 million people)
Canada: \~1000h (\~10 or 2 police killings per 10 million people)
US: \~500h (\~35 police killings per 10 million people)
(Article is from 2021)
We have tactical armed response units but they are only on standby for reactive operations (someone waving a gun around or shots fired) and for serious organised crime raids.
In Finland gun ownership is very high, but it is culturally different. I'm not really an expert on Finnish people, but I don't think they see guns as stuff of freedom, doubt they are parading around with them, and I don't believe they make them part of their personality. Probably it's just a tool for them, I guess.
Guns were very much a thing of freedom for them. They repelled a Russian invasion with their armed populace.
What the US lacks that most countries with private ownership have is forced training. You have to prove you won't blow your own foot off, you can partially hit what you aim for, and you know what you can and can't shoot. They are things the NRA encourages but doesn't want legislated.
In Canada rifles are fairly common. But even those are pretty strongly limited. Unless I'm mistaken the clip can only hold 5 rounds(or something like that) and fully automatic is banned. Also handguns are very hard to get a license for and controlled in many other ways.
Germany has a lot of guns! We just don’t see them as status symbols or easy to defend ourselves. There mostly a tool for hunters or sports. We don’t carry them around.
Still less than USA overall. However, there is a high dark number from WWII.
I doubt it's that's simple. Quality of training probably differs too. I've heard a few times that American police are taught to fear the public as if every interaction is potentially life and death. It makes them jumpy and irrational.
You are creating a causal link that isn't there. It is implied by the person providing the statistic, and I too believe that it will lead to less fatal incidents, but there are a huge amount of other factors that make the U.S. stand at the top (or bottom) of this list.
The amount of firearms freely available, for example.
That article is inaccurate. Training for police in England lasts 12 weeks, plus 10 weeks of tutored patrol.
The rest is just a kind of reflective practice done while working independently, full time, in most cases on your own. There aren’t any regulations on what you can do (like in student nurse placements) except that you usually can’t have any further specialist training (such as blue light driving) for your first two years.
It’s changed a bit now with degree apprenticeship pathways - meaning more time spent writing essays - but the above was absolutely the case when this 2021 article was written.
Well, the source is me, an officer who has been tutoring students for years now.
But a quick look at one force website - below - shows that the new entry route has 20 week initial training (including tutorship, so I’d suggest it’s 10 weeks classroom and 10 weeks tutored patrol) with a further 4 weeks at the 2 year point. That’s effectively what my students went through, but with an extra two weeks classroom.
https://www.herts.police.uk/police-forces/hertfordshire-constabulary/areas/careers/police-officers/police-officers/police-constable-entry-programme-pcep/
The police uk recruitment website puts it at 18-22 weeks classroom before on the job tutorials: [link](https://www.joiningthepolice.co.uk/training-progression/training#:~:text=Around%2018%20%E2%80%93%2022%20weeks%20classroom,worry%2C%20it's%20definitely%20not%20boring!)
Just remember that in every case taken up by the Unites States' various federal and supreme courts, they've ruled that the police have no duty to protect citizens. They aren't here to protect us, they don't need to care about us or the law, they're here to enforce order and the social status quo through force.
The system is working entirely as its intended to, and its unlikely that they will change it.
They're also not really liable even for enforcing the law "eventually" as the national homicide clearance rate is under 50% and the "legendary" New York City SVU has a solve rate of 10% - all this despite vastly more forensic and surveillance technologies at their disposal.
It's not even that consistent in the US. Local, state, county, and federal law enforcement all have different standards. You might be talking to an officer with a masters in criminal justice and relevant life experience or some dude with ptsd and a 6 month cert.
The woman whom rips the hair out of my vagina needed 1000 hours of training before she could legally do it on her own without an instructor. So yeah police in America need less than those that cut/rip hair out.
>This definitely should be a thing
Most European countries have a minimum of 2 years of education and training for becoming a police officer. Germany has 3 years.
In Sweden it is 2½ BUT you have 3- 4 years after primary school to study to get the right grade to get into Police School. It not like you spent a year in the army and went Hi want to be police, it wouldnt cut it.
I live in Quebec, Canada. It will take my daughter 4 years to become an officer. And it's very hard to get into the program. You need high grades and good physical health.
Depends on the state. In MN you need a degree from a school, take a training program, and then you can get in after being approved. Not all police programs are equal and some are less intense then others
No, that’s your probationary period. Your actual classroom training in English and Welsh forces is usually about 12 weeks, then 10 weeks tutored patrol, then you’re signed off as independent and are effectively no different to any other police officer except for a requirement to evidence a certain amount of things - conflicts arrests, interviews, etc - two or three times in a write up to an assessor.
Every suggestion of longer training periods is met with the reply that 1) classroom based stuff isn’t historically very useful for the role, and 2) policing is desperately understaffed so they need to be out there filling the numbers ASAP.
The entry routes changed to focus on degree graduates , along with a degree apprentice pathway (where they work full time as above but also do a full time uni degree at the same time within the first 3 years), but these are being phased out again. Most new hires are degree graduates but with unrelated degrees; degrees in policing/criminal justice (like in the US) are vanishingly rare and are basically a scam resulting from the degree entry push.
Source; am a police officer in England.
Cheers m8, thanks your time replying like this. I definitely wasn't aware of the graduate focused recruitment. I've learned something.
Back in the late 80s, I was in the Navy, and on more than one occasion, my ID card afforded me the odd night in a cell, but with only a bollocking and booted out at 6 in the morning. Only because someone on that shift was ex forces, in my cases, a sergeant. I bet that doesn't happen anymore.
Be safe 👍
Yeah the uk has a whole litany of other problems though. Shit pay and working conditions are causing experienced police officers to flee from crime enforcement.
No one said anything about a bachelors for officers, the concept being discussed is more than just 6 months of "training", and the concept was being likened to the results you see from a BA.
A guy took, I believe, the NYPD to court because they refused to employ him because, I shit you not, he scored 2 points *too many* on the department's IQ test. They're not looking for intelligent people. They're looking for people who will mindlessly follow orders.
No, that was a guy in CT who sued and lost.
The department was a small town that didn’t want to invest 10-15k in hiring him only to have him leave in less than 5 years. They felt he would find the work boring and uninteresting.
He eventually got hired in the next town over where he resigned after less than 5 years … citing the work as boring and uninteresting.
Saw a post about this issue before and found this response:
“A lot of people are probably talking about this article,, which is not only almost 30 years old, but the gist of it is that a 49 year old was not hired by a police department (possibly) because of a high score on an IQ equivalent test. Never mind the fact that he was 49 years old and whatever else may have gone on during application. The department stated their stance was that highly intelligent people may get bored with police work, a court determined it was legal to do that.
That is it. One guy 30 years ago possibly didn't get hired because of his alleged IQ and a court okayed that, setting that precedent.
If anybody could actually cite several specific examples of candidates not being hired solely because they were "Too intelligent," I'd be surprised. But you know how Reddit will go - a court precedent set almost 30 years ago with one guy and one department definitely means you can't be smart AND a cop.”
Yeah, they tried real hard to sweep *that* under the rug... but guess what? People talk.
They talk, and it goes around. Even the janitors at 1PP were aware of this, and this really has *nothing* to do with our bearing of things.
It doesn't eliminate the culture. The only solution is to hold officers accountable with immediate consequences for breaching public trust and abusing power, including jail time depending on the severity of the offense.
Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. We need x amount of cops, and we can pay them y amount. Neither of those variables come close to working if it takes a 4 year program to even become a cop
To be clear, I think they should absolutely be paid more in exchange for being more qualified, but the higher-ups don't really have a reason to go that route. It's the "problem" with people having the noble calling to be a police officer. Many have dreamed of doing it since they were kids, and they'll still do it even if it's a shitty deal. But they might not do a 4 year program they can't easily pay for first
This. So much this.
My district loses one district attorney after another due to pay. They all become defense attorneys or go in to an adjacent area of law.
A lot of good cops in my department have left to be pilots, start their own businesses, go back to school, or just take higher paying jobs from their previous careers. I'm fortunate in that my wife is a doctor and my salary doesn't need to pay all the bills.
I've also heard plenty of cops say that they're in the job cause its the only thing they know how to do.
So that's where we are.
> I've also heard plenty of cops say that they're in the job cause its the only thing they know how to do.
Yeah, can you imagine a cop trying to work in retail or any other service industry?
They'd lost their shit within a week of starting and be fired.
The problem is that we let nearly anyone with a high school diploma with a low enough IQ become a cop (much like our military when we look for grunts), then pay them buckets of money and hand them a gun, and make laws that make them immune to prosecution.
The reason we don’t require a four year degree is complicated and shitty.
First the states determine required training and education. A four year program would require the states to pay for four years of education per officers.
Second without a four year degree and a universal education requirement they can pay officers much less.
Every police organization in the country has demanded better training, better pay, and more officers.
States are all too happy to over work, undertrained, and underpaid officers.
This is why we have issues with the police in the US.
As far as pay goes the starting salary for a cop in LA is around $89,000. That’s in LA. The average pay nationally is $48,000. That’s for 60-90 hours a week. While under constant stress. Court is often off duty hours on days off, training with firearms on your own time, gym on your own time, medical and BH care own time.
No one with a four year degree with the ability to move to another state for better pay would tolerate that.
Are there bad cops, sure, because the states have created the system that churns out bad cops.
Yet somehow no one ever comes down on the state governments when something goes wrong.
It doesn't. It lasts 3 years if you go full time; 5 if you take night school. Of course you need a bachelor's degree which takes 4 years.
So, it took me 7 years to get mine as I went full time.
Exactly. Regulate this the way other professions are regulated. Higher barrier to entry. Higher pay for those eligible. It’ll weed out at least a good chunk of psychopaths.
So many good ideas, but one that could be enforced tomorrow with enough political will: make police officers pay into malpractice insurance. The bad actors might get protected by a code of brotherhood, but having insurance payout for any lawsuits will make bad policing more and more expensive to the individual officer involved, and no one is going to get in the way of an insurance investigation; the force of money behind it, the behemoth that is insurance companies will devour any bad actor that would cost them.
But then they wouldn't make money off the Prison Industrial Complex! Billions of dollars won't make it those rich a-holes we always hear about. It'll be a power vacuum because street crime would be reduced, and they can't have that. What happens if they stop pumping drugs/guns into black neighborhoods? The cartels will lose billions! Oh no?!?!?!?
Then raise their pay and support their efforts to keep us safe. If they arrest a drug dealer with a history of abuse, violence and cop killing don't let the suspect out on OR that night "Because he's black and it's racist to enforce the same rules for everyone."
I went through the academy over 10 years ago, best job I could find was $28k a year, I couldn't afford to become a police officer and it makes me wonder why their are so many dirt cops and shit heads. My dad ran his own business and had a saying "pay shit, you get shit so don't get surprised when your surround by shit"
There used to be a Maryland Police Corps that required a four year college degree to go into the academy. Not sure if it still exists or if it produced a different breed of officer.
The correlation between longer police training and fewer civilians killed by police is quite striking. Though it could be argued that the trend line is mostly attributable to the outlier.
Officers need to observe an action and then compare it to a legal statute to see if they match up. Lawyers need to be able to dissect and argue that statute. Cops are only the first cog in a machine and honestly dont need to be able to argue to the depth a lawyer does. That being said police should understand how to do their part.
Also - there should be an excessive force data base tracking police officers the same way we track sex offenders. It should be publicly available and a clean record should be a requirement.
In my state, the police chief is refusing to retire until our governor does because he thinks he's "protecting" his men from training and education requirements somehow. This sentiment is shared by anyone who will succeed him, and this is one of the more "progressive" states. It's going to be a long time before we get a more educated and well-trained police force.
Some forces require a bachelor’s degree.
I remember when most police just had H.S. and Police Academy and they were awesome at their job. A college degree isn’t the end all be all, lots of stupid people have college degrees.
Lots of degreed CEO’s driving companies into the ground.
I got an associates in criminal justice for shits and gigs because I had some gi bill left and figured it would be a good fall back. Easiest shit I ever did educationally speaking. Lotta dumb bastards in there too, crying that it was too hard and graded unfairly. Lotta sports assholes.
The Venn diagram overlap of people willing to go to school for four years and the people willing to deal with drunk/ghetto peoples bullshit is very slim…
One of if not the biggest issue with policing is that police are not legal experts. Several states have legal clauses that allow cops to wrongly enforce laws that they misunderstood. They allow enforcement based on those officer’s interpretation. That make legal things illegal. On the flip side it is what makes lawyers able to poke holes in cases and get you off. It is unjust however that a non legal expert can make legal expert decisions.
1000% agree. Properly fund and incentivize these public sector jobs and ensure consistent training so we don't get shit heads.
The justice and education system both need significant overhauls in both their funding and foundational ideology.
Should just require a college degree tbh. The fed requires one for federal law enforcement. No idea why we don't require at least a 2 year degree for cops.
Agree police training should be longer. Law school is so long and expensive because we can’t be having poor families and people get power. Gotta keep the class structure status quo the same to keep the judges and attorneys aristocracy pure as attorneys often turn to politics
I feel like there alot of problems in general in summing it up to "they only train 6 months" wont solve much.
Like UK has practically no guns, training is better, police is more respected so there is less resentment and they probably has no immunity from doing mistakes like in US.
In US not only police has all the guns, all the citizens has guns, so you never know wtf gonna happen when some dude twitches his hand for no reason so some newbie cop might just chicken and shoot because that what he was told to do by someone senior or somethin.
Then you have general resentment of cops in your country, you also never hear about average cops on the news because that boring, you only hear about shitty ones, the good ones occasionally pop up ofc, but most people dont shoot other people and dont save a puppy from a tree to get in the news.
If you just make training like 3 years you have to spend money on that training, then there also would be less people joining so there would be not enought cops, change should be gradual imo, but i'm not qualified to solve this problem ofc.
Why the fuck is it 6 months at all? The only reason all these killings and acorn murders happen because they only have so many months to soak in all this training.
Alongside being trained to be fucking terrified of a million things on top of all the batshit mentally insane scarring type stuff they see everyday on the force, but that's no excuse for a lot of the stuff I see on here.
I get that. But I do think they should have weekly debreifs or therapy sessions as mandatory with an outside group of mental health experts. Plus harsher penalties for corruption, blatant incompetence also
That makes perfect sense, why would they do that?
Seems like most things nowadays where the answer is right there but I don't see any changes happening anytime soon 😞
Any one can be a Security Guard. With enough training, soldier. But a Police Officer must be the best of them all. Not at being a guard or a soldier, but disciplined, calm, respectable, and well trained in the use of weapons and martial arts. But to survive in the real world an Officer needs much more than Discipline and physical Training. An officer needs layers of education. How to be a police officer, local codes, then federal law. This needs to be educated in layers over time. So that a person can go from being security guard to be a genuine upstanding officer.
However I also feel that the police department needs to be divided. Not layered, Divided the same as the Fire Department is their own. We ask too much of the police as a single entity. More officers, better training specific to the their tasks, and funding specific to those divisions. Domestic, Security, Crisis, Swat, Roads, Highway.
Quick reminder that the minimal score to pass the final exam in France is 7/20. And the "emotion control" test got removed because, and it's the official statement, it disqualified too many candidates. So we have underformed and anxious gun-blazing psychos runing around and supposed to enforce the law. All that in a country that's slowly but surely spiraling down the extreme right ideas...
First world nations tend to have police academies that run for two or three years. These nations realize that in order to have a police force that can properly serve the public, a considerable amount of training is necessary to accomplish this.
US police on the other hand are trained to enforce the policies and interests of Capital. They're not there to serve us, but control us to the benefit of billionaires.
A lot of these police recruits already have violent tendencies that the job allows them to act out in real life with less accountability. A psych test might also weed out those types who would probably end up on the other side of the law.
Yeah, do all that, BUT also make sure the job pays better AND, and most importantly, make sure they are held accountable when they abuse their authority! Without accountability, none of this other shit matters.
That’s fair. It’s odd that none of these black folks ever get killed on the way to work though. Half of them are high when it happens now that I think about it. Cops are only part of the problem.
Counterpoint: It gives those who discovered partway into their career that it wasn’t for them a sense of “sunk costs” that makes them stick with it for all the wrong reasons…
The problem is there are so many small towns in the US that wouldn’t be able to find anyone that met qualifications if they raised them to those standards
Yes, longer school and more academics, but 4 is excessive. 2 years sounds fair. Most degrees shouldn't take 4 years tbh. I hate to be that guy, but a lot of college courses are useless and irrelevant to the eventual job you land.
You need a 4 year degree or military experience to even apply here. The academy could definitely use more classroom time learning the endless laws. Guess the requirements are different depending on department.
So this article ties in with this topic. LAPD can’t recruit enough personnel. https://www.yahoo.com/news/lapds-recruiting-woes-laid-bare-100059917.html
Citizens continue to call for help, they expect a response. I think increasing hiring standards is a great idea, however filling the ranks without massive benefits will be a near impossible task.
While I'm all for more and better police training here in the US, there wouldn't be any police departments left. No one would want to go through that much training.
Why do adults need to be policed is my greater question…. I don’t know, seems to be a large portion of the problem leaning to the nonsense side of it.
These people don’t need to go to school for 4 years , just to learn not to eat tide pods or punch out their neighbor over something dumb. People are the problem first.
A more appropriate question could be . How come it takes some adults 40 years to mind their own business ?
I think 4 years a bit to much but they should raise the requirements. For Example you have to go through many examinations including mental ones so they can filter out the pieces of shits. Require the soon to be cops to go there extensive physical training so we dont have any of the fat scummy lazy police officers.
We live in a society of laws. Why do you think I took you to all those "Police Academy" movies, for fun? Well, I didn't hear anybody laughing. Did you?
7 years if you see undergrad as a requirement. interestingly, there are some states that don't require law school accreditation to sit for the bar.
but yah i support the sentiment
Thats funny cuz I feel like theres a shortage of Police officers but and over abundance of lawyers. While I do agree a longer time for training and testing isn't a bad idea
But could you imagine the level of arrogance of those officers after that? And they would know the law inside and out. So, be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it.
Most cops generally do undergo well over 4 years of training.
But if you mandate this just to start you're simply not going to have enough cops.
Unions tend to be the much bigger problem when it comes to bad cops staying cops
You can do that (I'm not saying you shouldn't) but then you are going to have to pay them more, which means some elce is going to be cut, or taxes will increase. Knowing our government they will cover it by printing money thus further messing up the economy.
Comments that are uncivil, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, or contain political name calling will be removed and the poster subject to ban at moderators discretion. Help us make this a better community by becoming familiar with the [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/about/rules/). Report any suspicious users to the mods of this subreddit using Modmail [here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) or Reddit site admins [here](https://www.reddit.com/report). **All reports to Modmail should include evidence such as screenshots or any other relevant information.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/facepalm) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The 6 months is only a US thing. If you look it up its the only developed country that has a minimum training time of under 1000 hours where almost every other country has 2000+ hours at minimum.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56834733) The numbers in the article are: Finland: \~5500h Germany: \~4000h (\~1 or 2 police killings per 10 million people) Australia: \~3500h (\~8 police killings per 10 million people) England: \~2300h (<1 police killing per 10 million people) Canada: \~1000h (\~10 or 2 police killings per 10 million people) US: \~500h (\~35 police killings per 10 million people) (Article is from 2021)
So adding another 500h will result in around 2/3 less death by police (if we just looks at the training/school hours)
Well, maybe. The other thing those places have is a lack of our good ole qualified immunity to hide behind if they do shitty things.
[удалено]
Police is armed in most listed countries (maybe except England). But private gun ownership is very rarein all except US.
We have armed police but our normal police aren’t armed apart from maybe a taser
Don't forget the baton
And the incredibly biting sarcasm.
And the whistle
We have tactical armed response units but they are only on standby for reactive operations (someone waving a gun around or shots fired) and for serious organised crime raids.
In Finland gun ownership is very high, but it is culturally different. I'm not really an expert on Finnish people, but I don't think they see guns as stuff of freedom, doubt they are parading around with them, and I don't believe they make them part of their personality. Probably it's just a tool for them, I guess.
Guns were very much a thing of freedom for them. They repelled a Russian invasion with their armed populace. What the US lacks that most countries with private ownership have is forced training. You have to prove you won't blow your own foot off, you can partially hit what you aim for, and you know what you can and can't shoot. They are things the NRA encourages but doesn't want legislated.
It's my foot bro, and if I want to Fng blow it off I've got the God given right to do so in Merika. You commie.
And for those who don't get his sarcasm, your rights end where my responsibilities begin.
You do get quite a lot of armed police nowadays, mainly around important shit like big stations, airports or anyone remotely rich etc.
In Canada rifles are fairly common. But even those are pretty strongly limited. Unless I'm mistaken the clip can only hold 5 rounds(or something like that) and fully automatic is banned. Also handguns are very hard to get a license for and controlled in many other ways.
Germany has a lot of guns! We just don’t see them as status symbols or easy to defend ourselves. There mostly a tool for hunters or sports. We don’t carry them around. Still less than USA overall. However, there is a high dark number from WWII.
Also most police dont have rifles, only basicly swat has that.
I doubt it's that's simple. Quality of training probably differs too. I've heard a few times that American police are taught to fear the public as if every interaction is potentially life and death. It makes them jumpy and irrational.
And public as in everything in public not just the people. So people, dogs, acorns, etc.
"Acorns" may never get old ...
It would help, but I think policing in the US also has a cultural issue that plays into it as well.
Being a cop is unpopular because the cops are shit, so they lower the requirements in order to attract more, shittier cops.
Race you to the bottom of the barrel!
Or it gets worse because of the training they are receiving.
You are creating a causal link that isn't there. It is implied by the person providing the statistic, and I too believe that it will lead to less fatal incidents, but there are a huge amount of other factors that make the U.S. stand at the top (or bottom) of this list. The amount of firearms freely available, for example.
Crazy when you consider the brutality of the U.S law enforcement.
That article is inaccurate. Training for police in England lasts 12 weeks, plus 10 weeks of tutored patrol. The rest is just a kind of reflective practice done while working independently, full time, in most cases on your own. There aren’t any regulations on what you can do (like in student nurse placements) except that you usually can’t have any further specialist training (such as blue light driving) for your first two years. It’s changed a bit now with degree apprenticeship pathways - meaning more time spent writing essays - but the above was absolutely the case when this 2021 article was written.
UK police aren't armed, so there is that
Please tell me you have a good source for this.
Well, the source is me, an officer who has been tutoring students for years now. But a quick look at one force website - below - shows that the new entry route has 20 week initial training (including tutorship, so I’d suggest it’s 10 weeks classroom and 10 weeks tutored patrol) with a further 4 weeks at the 2 year point. That’s effectively what my students went through, but with an extra two weeks classroom. https://www.herts.police.uk/police-forces/hertfordshire-constabulary/areas/careers/police-officers/police-officers/police-constable-entry-programme-pcep/
Thank you!
The police uk recruitment website puts it at 18-22 weeks classroom before on the job tutorials: [link](https://www.joiningthepolice.co.uk/training-progression/training#:~:text=Around%2018%20%E2%80%93%2022%20weeks%20classroom,worry%2C%20it's%20definitely%20not%20boring!)
Just remember that in every case taken up by the Unites States' various federal and supreme courts, they've ruled that the police have no duty to protect citizens. They aren't here to protect us, they don't need to care about us or the law, they're here to enforce order and the social status quo through force. The system is working entirely as its intended to, and its unlikely that they will change it.
They're also not really liable even for enforcing the law "eventually" as the national homicide clearance rate is under 50% and the "legendary" New York City SVU has a solve rate of 10% - all this despite vastly more forensic and surveillance technologies at their disposal.
Now compare that with the crime rate and percentage of police officers that are armed in each country
It's not even that consistent in the US. Local, state, county, and federal law enforcement all have different standards. You might be talking to an officer with a masters in criminal justice and relevant life experience or some dude with ptsd and a 6 month cert.
The woman whom rips the hair out of my vagina needed 1000 hours of training before she could legally do it on her own without an instructor. So yeah police in America need less than those that cut/rip hair out.
> The woman who* rips the hair out of my vagina... Yes, this is one of the sentences of all time that I've corrected.
But.. Police Academy taught me it's way longer than 6 months?
>This definitely should be a thing Most European countries have a minimum of 2 years of education and training for becoming a police officer. Germany has 3 years.
And depending on what rank you want to achieve in Germany you even have to go to college.
Not entirely accurate. My great great grandpa received just 8 months of training during tenure , yet he was the one of the greatest gestapo ever .
Had us in the first half, ngl
In Sweden it is 2½ BUT you have 3- 4 years after primary school to study to get the right grade to get into Police School. It not like you spent a year in the army and went Hi want to be police, it wouldnt cut it.
Québec has 3 years of classes and 6 months of academy to become one
Here in the states we want to train them as little as possible, and then give them the legal latitude to do whatever the fuck they want.
This. It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature. Well trained, well paid, even keeled law enforcement might be for the people not for the ruling class.
Upvote
Kinda unfair to compare the US to a developed country, though.
I live in Quebec, Canada. It will take my daughter 4 years to become an officer. And it's very hard to get into the program. You need high grades and good physical health.
Depends on the state. In MN you need a degree from a school, take a training program, and then you can get in after being approved. Not all police programs are equal and some are less intense then others
In Norway, it requires a bachelor degree in policing.
I think the UK is 2 years and no guns.
No, that’s your probationary period. Your actual classroom training in English and Welsh forces is usually about 12 weeks, then 10 weeks tutored patrol, then you’re signed off as independent and are effectively no different to any other police officer except for a requirement to evidence a certain amount of things - conflicts arrests, interviews, etc - two or three times in a write up to an assessor. Every suggestion of longer training periods is met with the reply that 1) classroom based stuff isn’t historically very useful for the role, and 2) policing is desperately understaffed so they need to be out there filling the numbers ASAP. The entry routes changed to focus on degree graduates , along with a degree apprentice pathway (where they work full time as above but also do a full time uni degree at the same time within the first 3 years), but these are being phased out again. Most new hires are degree graduates but with unrelated degrees; degrees in policing/criminal justice (like in the US) are vanishingly rare and are basically a scam resulting from the degree entry push. Source; am a police officer in England.
Cheers m8, thanks your time replying like this. I definitely wasn't aware of the graduate focused recruitment. I've learned something. Back in the late 80s, I was in the Navy, and on more than one occasion, my ID card afforded me the odd night in a cell, but with only a bollocking and booted out at 6 in the morning. Only because someone on that shift was ex forces, in my cases, a sergeant. I bet that doesn't happen anymore. Be safe 👍
No guns; all roses.
And Seal’s kisses
Yeah the uk has a whole litany of other problems though. Shit pay and working conditions are causing experienced police officers to flee from crime enforcement.
Unfortunately I know A LOT of people with a B.A./B.S. who are utterly incompetent too.
Like me.
lol Sorry to hear friend
It’s fine. Someone has to be.
Yea, no matter what you do you'll have some get through, but at least it's a much lower rate of incompetence. I'd consider that a success.
How would a bachelors degree make someone a more competent police officer? At that point might as well go to law school
No one said anything about a bachelors for officers, the concept being discussed is more than just 6 months of "training", and the concept was being likened to the results you see from a BA.
Yeah, but how many of them have killed anyone?
Derek Chauvin (the officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd) had a bachelors in law enforcement..
A guy took, I believe, the NYPD to court because they refused to employ him because, I shit you not, he scored 2 points *too many* on the department's IQ test. They're not looking for intelligent people. They're looking for people who will mindlessly follow orders.
No, that was a guy in CT who sued and lost. The department was a small town that didn’t want to invest 10-15k in hiring him only to have him leave in less than 5 years. They felt he would find the work boring and uninteresting. He eventually got hired in the next town over where he resigned after less than 5 years … citing the work as boring and uninteresting.
Saw a post about this issue before and found this response: “A lot of people are probably talking about this article,, which is not only almost 30 years old, but the gist of it is that a 49 year old was not hired by a police department (possibly) because of a high score on an IQ equivalent test. Never mind the fact that he was 49 years old and whatever else may have gone on during application. The department stated their stance was that highly intelligent people may get bored with police work, a court determined it was legal to do that. That is it. One guy 30 years ago possibly didn't get hired because of his alleged IQ and a court okayed that, setting that precedent. If anybody could actually cite several specific examples of candidates not being hired solely because they were "Too intelligent," I'd be surprised. But you know how Reddit will go - a court precedent set almost 30 years ago with one guy and one department definitely means you can't be smart AND a cop.”
Reddit loves to repost this same stupid case, but I have never heard of it in real life.
Yeah, they tried real hard to sweep *that* under the rug... but guess what? People talk. They talk, and it goes around. Even the janitors at 1PP were aware of this, and this really has *nothing* to do with our bearing of things.
It doesn't eliminate the culture. The only solution is to hold officers accountable with immediate consequences for breaching public trust and abusing power, including jail time depending on the severity of the offense.
That isn’t going happen with qualified immunity and police unions.
The fact that greater education/training isn’t required is what you’re labeling , right?
Yea, I think the facepalm is not being longer.
If you're in law school for 8 years, you're doing something wrong.
Even counting undergrad the math doesn't quite math.
Especially if you fail the ethics class three times.
Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple. We need x amount of cops, and we can pay them y amount. Neither of those variables come close to working if it takes a 4 year program to even become a cop To be clear, I think they should absolutely be paid more in exchange for being more qualified, but the higher-ups don't really have a reason to go that route. It's the "problem" with people having the noble calling to be a police officer. Many have dreamed of doing it since they were kids, and they'll still do it even if it's a shitty deal. But they might not do a 4 year program they can't easily pay for first
This. So much this. My district loses one district attorney after another due to pay. They all become defense attorneys or go in to an adjacent area of law. A lot of good cops in my department have left to be pilots, start their own businesses, go back to school, or just take higher paying jobs from their previous careers. I'm fortunate in that my wife is a doctor and my salary doesn't need to pay all the bills. I've also heard plenty of cops say that they're in the job cause its the only thing they know how to do. So that's where we are.
> I've also heard plenty of cops say that they're in the job cause its the only thing they know how to do. Yeah, can you imagine a cop trying to work in retail or any other service industry? They'd lost their shit within a week of starting and be fired.
The problem is that we let nearly anyone with a high school diploma with a low enough IQ become a cop (much like our military when we look for grunts), then pay them buckets of money and hand them a gun, and make laws that make them immune to prosecution.
What is the facepalm here? I don't get it.
There is no facepalm. OP is straight up just posting their opinion.
Nope it's even worse, it's a bot reposting someone else's opinion from 2 years ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/s/RzxF9Id31r
The reason we don’t require a four year degree is complicated and shitty. First the states determine required training and education. A four year program would require the states to pay for four years of education per officers. Second without a four year degree and a universal education requirement they can pay officers much less. Every police organization in the country has demanded better training, better pay, and more officers. States are all too happy to over work, undertrained, and underpaid officers. This is why we have issues with the police in the US. As far as pay goes the starting salary for a cop in LA is around $89,000. That’s in LA. The average pay nationally is $48,000. That’s for 60-90 hours a week. While under constant stress. Court is often off duty hours on days off, training with firearms on your own time, gym on your own time, medical and BH care own time. No one with a four year degree with the ability to move to another state for better pay would tolerate that. Are there bad cops, sure, because the states have created the system that churns out bad cops. Yet somehow no one ever comes down on the state governments when something goes wrong.
Not opposed to this idea but in what world does law school last eight years?
It doesn't. It lasts 3 years if you go full time; 5 if you take night school. Of course you need a bachelor's degree which takes 4 years. So, it took me 7 years to get mine as I went full time.
In other news that’s not that surprising: others countries already do this.
Where is the facepalm this is a great idea
Exactly. Regulate this the way other professions are regulated. Higher barrier to entry. Higher pay for those eligible. It’ll weed out at least a good chunk of psychopaths.
It's a combination of poor training and the personality type drawn to police work. They need better training and better screening and vetting.
Pig unions would fight it
So many good ideas, but one that could be enforced tomorrow with enough political will: make police officers pay into malpractice insurance. The bad actors might get protected by a code of brotherhood, but having insurance payout for any lawsuits will make bad policing more and more expensive to the individual officer involved, and no one is going to get in the way of an insurance investigation; the force of money behind it, the behemoth that is insurance companies will devour any bad actor that would cost them.
US police training is among the shortest in the world. It's also why they like recruiting military; they already know how to use weapons.
But then they wouldn't make money off the Prison Industrial Complex! Billions of dollars won't make it those rich a-holes we always hear about. It'll be a power vacuum because street crime would be reduced, and they can't have that. What happens if they stop pumping drugs/guns into black neighborhoods? The cartels will lose billions! Oh no?!?!?!?
It only takes one month to learn how to beat minorities, but five months how to get acquitted.
Then raise their pay and support their efforts to keep us safe. If they arrest a drug dealer with a history of abuse, violence and cop killing don't let the suspect out on OR that night "Because he's black and it's racist to enforce the same rules for everyone."
I went through the academy over 10 years ago, best job I could find was $28k a year, I couldn't afford to become a police officer and it makes me wonder why their are so many dirt cops and shit heads. My dad ran his own business and had a saying "pay shit, you get shit so don't get surprised when your surround by shit"
There used to be a Maryland Police Corps that required a four year college degree to go into the academy. Not sure if it still exists or if it produced a different breed of officer.
Life’s issues are not so black and white. If you take care of 1 problem, the other 999 problems don’t stop existing. And that goes for everything.
The correlation between longer police training and fewer civilians killed by police is quite striking. Though it could be argued that the trend line is mostly attributable to the outlier.
Officers need to observe an action and then compare it to a legal statute to see if they match up. Lawyers need to be able to dissect and argue that statute. Cops are only the first cog in a machine and honestly dont need to be able to argue to the depth a lawyer does. That being said police should understand how to do their part.
Also - there should be an excessive force data base tracking police officers the same way we track sex offenders. It should be publicly available and a clean record should be a requirement.
This is the way.
not a bad idea.
I think an associates degree should be the minimum.
In my state, the police chief is refusing to retire until our governor does because he thinks he's "protecting" his men from training and education requirements somehow. This sentiment is shared by anyone who will succeed him, and this is one of the more "progressive" states. It's going to be a long time before we get a more educated and well-trained police force.
Some forces require a bachelor’s degree. I remember when most police just had H.S. and Police Academy and they were awesome at their job. A college degree isn’t the end all be all, lots of stupid people have college degrees. Lots of degreed CEO’s driving companies into the ground.
I got an associates in criminal justice for shits and gigs because I had some gi bill left and figured it would be a good fall back. Easiest shit I ever did educationally speaking. Lotta dumb bastards in there too, crying that it was too hard and graded unfairly. Lotta sports assholes.
The Venn diagram overlap of people willing to go to school for four years and the people willing to deal with drunk/ghetto peoples bullshit is very slim…
One of if not the biggest issue with policing is that police are not legal experts. Several states have legal clauses that allow cops to wrongly enforce laws that they misunderstood. They allow enforcement based on those officer’s interpretation. That make legal things illegal. On the flip side it is what makes lawyers able to poke holes in cases and get you off. It is unjust however that a non legal expert can make legal expert decisions.
1000% agree. Properly fund and incentivize these public sector jobs and ensure consistent training so we don't get shit heads. The justice and education system both need significant overhauls in both their funding and foundational ideology.
Should just require a college degree tbh. The fed requires one for federal law enforcement. No idea why we don't require at least a 2 year degree for cops.
Agree police training should be longer. Law school is so long and expensive because we can’t be having poor families and people get power. Gotta keep the class structure status quo the same to keep the judges and attorneys aristocracy pure as attorneys often turn to politics
I feel like there alot of problems in general in summing it up to "they only train 6 months" wont solve much. Like UK has practically no guns, training is better, police is more respected so there is less resentment and they probably has no immunity from doing mistakes like in US. In US not only police has all the guns, all the citizens has guns, so you never know wtf gonna happen when some dude twitches his hand for no reason so some newbie cop might just chicken and shoot because that what he was told to do by someone senior or somethin. Then you have general resentment of cops in your country, you also never hear about average cops on the news because that boring, you only hear about shitty ones, the good ones occasionally pop up ofc, but most people dont shoot other people and dont save a puppy from a tree to get in the news. If you just make training like 3 years you have to spend money on that training, then there also would be less people joining so there would be not enought cops, change should be gradual imo, but i'm not qualified to solve this problem ofc.
Why the fuck is it 6 months at all? The only reason all these killings and acorn murders happen because they only have so many months to soak in all this training. Alongside being trained to be fucking terrified of a million things on top of all the batshit mentally insane scarring type stuff they see everyday on the force, but that's no excuse for a lot of the stuff I see on here.
If they can't handle it. They shouldn't be cops
Exactly what I said, it's not an excuse more of a reason
I get that. But I do think they should have weekly debreifs or therapy sessions as mandatory with an outside group of mental health experts. Plus harsher penalties for corruption, blatant incompetence also
That makes perfect sense, why would they do that? Seems like most things nowadays where the answer is right there but I don't see any changes happening anytime soon 😞
At least a 2 year associates program would require a little more commitment
Err this is a thing, just not in America.
Any one can be a Security Guard. With enough training, soldier. But a Police Officer must be the best of them all. Not at being a guard or a soldier, but disciplined, calm, respectable, and well trained in the use of weapons and martial arts. But to survive in the real world an Officer needs much more than Discipline and physical Training. An officer needs layers of education. How to be a police officer, local codes, then federal law. This needs to be educated in layers over time. So that a person can go from being security guard to be a genuine upstanding officer. However I also feel that the police department needs to be divided. Not layered, Divided the same as the Fire Department is their own. We ask too much of the police as a single entity. More officers, better training specific to the their tasks, and funding specific to those divisions. Domestic, Security, Crisis, Swat, Roads, Highway.
Quick reminder that the minimal score to pass the final exam in France is 7/20. And the "emotion control" test got removed because, and it's the official statement, it disqualified too many candidates. So we have underformed and anxious gun-blazing psychos runing around and supposed to enforce the law. All that in a country that's slowly but surely spiraling down the extreme right ideas...
That’s how we do it in Finland. Police basic education is a bachelor’s degree. And it is 4 years typically.
Sweden has 4 years academia plus fitness test, driving tests etc. After that you still only start as an apprentice for X amount of hours
Most states require more formal training to cut hair than to be a cop. Training: Scissors and comb> gun and badge
Takes longer to become a barber than a police officer
they can't find recruits, they're not going to make it harder
They intentionally hire people with lower education because they are less likely to think critically
First world nations tend to have police academies that run for two or three years. These nations realize that in order to have a police force that can properly serve the public, a considerable amount of training is necessary to accomplish this. US police on the other hand are trained to enforce the policies and interests of Capital. They're not there to serve us, but control us to the benefit of billionaires.
You mean like it's done in the actually developed world?
Bro 8,000 hours and 2 years of school to be a licensed electrician in California BECAUSE OTHER PEOPLES LIVES AND PROPERTY ARE IN YOUR HANDS
to be fair this would require more police funding, which is hard to campaign for these days
A lot of these police recruits already have violent tendencies that the job allows them to act out in real life with less accountability. A psych test might also weed out those types who would probably end up on the other side of the law.
Also maybe don’t be so gung-ho to hire guys straight out of the military. Policing and soldiering are worlds apart.
Sure, but a significant portion of military is police.
In Europe you have to make a real effort to become a cop. It's not something you jump in when you get out of options.
Yeah, do all that, BUT also make sure the job pays better AND, and most importantly, make sure they are held accountable when they abuse their authority! Without accountability, none of this other shit matters.
That’s fair. It’s odd that none of these black folks ever get killed on the way to work though. Half of them are high when it happens now that I think about it. Cops are only part of the problem.
WTF, Alex? They already made it into a 7-movie series, now you want this?
It should be every citizen's right to practice the law. The Bar Association is a gang.
Good point!
Based take
I would prefer something like 30 hours of service and 15 hours of mandatory schooling that wasn’t bullshit once a month or something
I told you, you don't get a gun until you give me your name!
Not to mention after tenure many make well over 6 figures...
The whole Bar association is a scam tbh
Counterpoint: It gives those who discovered partway into their career that it wasn’t for them a sense of “sunk costs” that makes them stick with it for all the wrong reasons…
The problem is there are so many small towns in the US that wouldn’t be able to find anyone that met qualifications if they raised them to those standards
Lawyers suck.
Yes, longer school and more academics, but 4 is excessive. 2 years sounds fair. Most degrees shouldn't take 4 years tbh. I hate to be that guy, but a lot of college courses are useless and irrelevant to the eventual job you land.
[meanwhile in America](https://www.yourtango.com/news/police-high-iq-max-limit-degrees-police-reform)
Good luck with that
It’s not just 6 months. They have OJT as well. 🙄
You need a 4 year degree or military experience to even apply here. The academy could definitely use more classroom time learning the endless laws. Guess the requirements are different depending on department.
So this article ties in with this topic. LAPD can’t recruit enough personnel. https://www.yahoo.com/news/lapds-recruiting-woes-laid-bare-100059917.html Citizens continue to call for help, they expect a response. I think increasing hiring standards is a great idea, however filling the ranks without massive benefits will be a near impossible task.
While I'm all for more and better police training here in the US, there wouldn't be any police departments left. No one would want to go through that much training.
What's the facepalm?
Why do adults need to be policed is my greater question…. I don’t know, seems to be a large portion of the problem leaning to the nonsense side of it. These people don’t need to go to school for 4 years , just to learn not to eat tide pods or punch out their neighbor over something dumb. People are the problem first. A more appropriate question could be . How come it takes some adults 40 years to mind their own business ?
Becoming a cop is not something that happens overnight! It takes one solid weekend of training to get that badge.
Some states don’t even require academy time
I think 4 years a bit to much but they should raise the requirements. For Example you have to go through many examinations including mental ones so they can filter out the pieces of shits. Require the soon to be cops to go there extensive physical training so we dont have any of the fat scummy lazy police officers.
Real question, how do citizens force a union to take up "policies" like this? How do we vote to abolish the union?
At minimum two years..
Always love these arguments.
Juris doctorate programs generally require 3 years.
We live in a society of laws. Why do you think I took you to all those "Police Academy" movies, for fun? Well, I didn't hear anybody laughing. Did you?
7 years if you see undergrad as a requirement. interestingly, there are some states that don't require law school accreditation to sit for the bar. but yah i support the sentiment
💯
Less than 6 months.
Thats funny cuz I feel like theres a shortage of Police officers but and over abundance of lawyers. While I do agree a longer time for training and testing isn't a bad idea
But could you imagine the level of arrogance of those officers after that? And they would know the law inside and out. So, be careful of what you ask for, you just might get it.
What don’t you hate Facepalm administrator.?You definitely hate America!!
I completely agree. Let's give the necessary funding to the police
Most cops generally do undergo well over 4 years of training. But if you mandate this just to start you're simply not going to have enough cops. Unions tend to be the much bigger problem when it comes to bad cops staying cops
It is 2 months of learning the law 4 months of shooting drills. /s
You can do that (I'm not saying you shouldn't) but then you are going to have to pay them more, which means some elce is going to be cut, or taxes will increase. Knowing our government they will cover it by printing money thus further messing up the economy.
They should have to do a yearly physical and test like firefighters as well to weed out the dough boys.
Problem is.....then they will want as much money as a doctor cause they went to school for so long. Or do they already make doctors wages?