Quote:
Originally Posted by markksman
The problem is we are not attracting the right people to the job at all right now. In fact we are attracting all the wrong people.
The first thing that needs to be done is to redefine the responsibilities of the police by creating a much more narrowed focus set of parameters for the job. Secondly we need to redefine who we want for those jobs. Right now they recruit dumb, mindless drones whose primary skill is following instructions. (This makes the police murder cult that much more insidious).
It depends on the municipality, but I would disagree with Rococo re: the pay not being great. In general it is still a very good paying career for someone with no college degree or other valuable trade skill.
I agree that they seem to attract mainly the authoritative macho types and it seems to be a common landing spot for people coming out of the armed forces. If you require a college degree of some kind, you probably filter out a lot of the 'too dumb to get through college so I'll just become a cop/join the army' crowd. I don't think that's the unreasonable hurdle these days that it has been historically.
Another issue is the nature of civil service exams. As it stands, as long as someone can pass an exam or two, and the requisite background checks, they are pretty much
entitled to the job once their number comes up. Unlike the FBI or CIA who are exempt from this type of system and can pick and choose from the best candidates, Police Departments just hire everyone going down a list.
When you combine low education requirements and a hiring policy that just takes on anyone and everyone with an incredibly complex job you are sort of setting people up to fail. This is especially true when you consider many departments only train officers for a bare few weeks.
The last, and probably biggest, problem is that police are such a hodge podge of state/county/city/township departments, with wildly varying degrees of training/pay/standards, that it is an unbelievably disorganized mess. There are no national standards, and I don't foresee there being any any time soon.