We send our doctors, lawyers and professors down an extraordinary educational path, before we can trust them to help us with our problems. No one would feel comfortable seeking care from a doctor who has been in training for less than year. So why do we then entrust the most important job in our community to people with little training and education. To become a police officer, you require no more than a high school diploma and good physical and mental health.
This lack of education murdered 258 people in 2009 in the United States; all reported deaths involved police misconduct. All of these deaths were avoidable had the police officers involved known how to react to the situation at the time. Ignorance and poor training leaves these officers with the inability to properly assess situations, and handle confrontation. Unfortunately, the victims of this broken system will always be our loved ones.
There is only one way to fix this problem, we need to educate our police forces. It should be mandatory for all those interested in law enforcement to take a rigorous post-secondary course. This course should delve into psychology, philosophy and mathematics. We need to build a police force that is interested in making the necessary moves to better our communities, instead of an alternate profession for those seeking excitement, power and benefits. Just think of the values such a police force would add to your community.
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I appreciate the comment and you are absolutely right, a post secondary education alone will not solve anything. I believe what we need to develop is a 3 or 4 year program that is a prereq to joining the police force. The program should be much more extensive than the current police programs available today and these cadets should be educated in culture, psychology, politics, etc… a renaissance police force if you will. We can no longer afford to have ignorance be a part of an overseeing force that has a license to detain and/or kill.
The requirement of post-secondary education at first glance seems to make sense. However, if true, then neither Minneapolis or St Paul,MN. would be in the top tier of cities with reported police abuse. Minnesota requires at least a two year college degreee for POST certifcation. Something else must be driving reporting rates.