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A while back, a non-American asked, in the comments of yet another story of US police incompetence, how much training law enforcement gets around here.
And the answer is, "You wouldn't believe how much it varies."
Most police departments require a high school diploma (that's the basic level of education in the US, going until about 18 years old), followed by an entrance test, to apply for a police academy. You have to demonstrate no significant criminal record (sometimes you can be allowed a couple minor offenses, like perhaps getting into a couple fights as a kid, as long as you can demonstrate that you're not like that anymore), and "good character" -- if you can't get at least a couple people to vouch that you're a decent person, you're probably not.
Then you have to pass a five or six month course of study, which is intense enough to be the approximate equivalent of an associates' degree (normally a two-year professional certification). Then you are a rookie officer, working under the supervision of a more advanced officer, for some period of time.
The training period is shorter than that of, for instance, the UK (which tends to require a course of study which takes closer to a year, plus a longer probationary period), but it seems pretty reasonable to me.
The FBI requires a four-year college degree, plus several years of relevant work experience to be considered for application; the application is highly competitive, and then they have their own FBI police academy which, although it's not that much longer than most police academies, is highly rigorous. And, of course, because they need relevant work experience, many of them have already been through that previous police training. That is, as far as I can tell, about the top end of training.
On the other end, however...
In some places, the requirement to be a sworn officer is that the sheriff says that you can be. "Hi, wanna be a deputy? Okay, here you go."
Which might be survivable if a sheriff needed qualifications. But "sheriff" is usually an elected position: a sheriff is a politician, not necessarily a policeman. There are exceptions, places where deputies need as much training as any other officer, but the bottom end is that you can have a sheriff with absolutely no training or relevant experience handing out badges to other folks with even less than no training or experience.
And where do you think the majority of those stories of horrible incompetence come from? Yeah, turns out that if you don't require any degree of competence, you tend to get more incompetence.
And the answer is, "You wouldn't believe how much it varies."
Most police departments require a high school diploma (that's the basic level of education in the US, going until about 18 years old), followed by an entrance test, to apply for a police academy. You have to demonstrate no significant criminal record (sometimes you can be allowed a couple minor offenses, like perhaps getting into a couple fights as a kid, as long as you can demonstrate that you're not like that anymore), and "good character" -- if you can't get at least a couple people to vouch that you're a decent person, you're probably not.
Then you have to pass a five or six month course of study, which is intense enough to be the approximate equivalent of an associates' degree (normally a two-year professional certification). Then you are a rookie officer, working under the supervision of a more advanced officer, for some period of time.
The training period is shorter than that of, for instance, the UK (which tends to require a course of study which takes closer to a year, plus a longer probationary period), but it seems pretty reasonable to me.
The FBI requires a four-year college degree, plus several years of relevant work experience to be considered for application; the application is highly competitive, and then they have their own FBI police academy which, although it's not that much longer than most police academies, is highly rigorous. And, of course, because they need relevant work experience, many of them have already been through that previous police training. That is, as far as I can tell, about the top end of training.
On the other end, however...
In some places, the requirement to be a sworn officer is that the sheriff says that you can be. "Hi, wanna be a deputy? Okay, here you go."
Which might be survivable if a sheriff needed qualifications. But "sheriff" is usually an elected position: a sheriff is a politician, not necessarily a policeman. There are exceptions, places where deputies need as much training as any other officer, but the bottom end is that you can have a sheriff with absolutely no training or relevant experience handing out badges to other folks with even less than no training or experience.
And where do you think the majority of those stories of horrible incompetence come from? Yeah, turns out that if you don't require any degree of competence, you tend to get more incompetence.