Photo: Photo file, job application; Flazingo Photos
Intense public scrutiny, low pay, and the risk of getting killed are some of the factors that have led to a significant decrease in the law enforcement profession—which has prompted many law enforcement agencies to lower their education standards and forgive past drug use, according to an Associated Press news report.
Combined with the challenges of attracting more minority applicants to the law enforcement, police recruiting is facing a crisis.
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“For the first time in my life, I would say I could never recommend the job,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and former NYPD officer.
O’Donnell also posed a question that many police recruiters likely grapple with: “Who’s going to put on a camera, go into urban America where people are going to critique every move you make? You’re going to be demonized.”
Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, echoed the notion, stating, “I’ve asked how many of you would like your son or daughter to be a police officer, and no one raises their hand.”
While there is no official national standard for becoming a police officer, there have certainly been some traditions and common-practice standards that state and local law enforcement agencies have embraced for decades—until now.
For years, past drug use, minor criminal offenses, a of college education, even credit report blemishes were standard measures to quickly rule out some candidates in preference for better-qualified candidates.
However, that appears to be changing…
For example, in Louisville, police have set aside the requirement for 60 college credit hours, as a result of their decline in applicants. Within a month, the department received more than 650 applications, and had to stop accepting new ones.
The Baltimore Police Department is taking a more relaxed approach to prior marijuana use—the No. 1 dis-qualifier of police applicants,” according to Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis.
In remarks to the Baltimore Sun newspaper, Davis remarked that, “I don’t want to hire altar boys to be police officers, necessarily.” And that he wants “…people of good character, of good moral character, but I want people who have lived a life just like everybody else — a life not unlike the lives of the people who they are going to be interacting with every day.”
Police Chief Gordon Ramsay of the Wichita Police Department in Kansas, stated that his department is also seeking to relax recruitment standards. Ramsay stated that “People who have struggled in life … can relate better to the people we deal with.”
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