As I tackle the ever-changing topic of policing in this forum, I continue to be educated on some of the ways police continue to be such a volatile subject in America. Coupled with race, it creates a toxic mix that continues to be a dangerous destabilizing force unless remedied post haste.
As I go through some of the data, I form opinions that may or may not be 100% correct but cannot be ignored without data pointing in the opposite direction.
For example, when the average total cost of training and retaining a young recruit for a year is considered, around $149,362, including supervision, according to (ward43.org), we may have a slight window outside the default thin blue line explanation, why departments continue to keep wayward, aggressive officers instead of cutting them loose. Simply put, the calculus may be, it’s cheaper to keep them.
Why are you surprised by these results?
The unintended consequence of those unwritten considerations is that allowing young officers to get away with issue after issue that is antithetical to good conduct out of financial or emotional considerations develops in them a sense of impunity.
Cost is increasingly prohibitive, and it may explain why the regimen is jam-packed into such a short period of Academy time.
For example, a 2013 survey by the Department of Justice found that the average police academy in the United States is about 840 hours or 21 weeks. However, this can vary widely by state and even within a state, depending on the organization delivering the training.
Police academy training in the United States is delivered by a variety of institutions that includes four-year universities, two-year colleges, technical colleges, and POST academies. Some law enforcement agencies have their own police academies. (police1 reports).
After Police murdered Breonna Taylor, the consensus was that no-knock warrants would be a thing of the past; however, nothing changed, and judges continue to give these instruments of death to police to continue to violate the rights of poor defenseless Black and Brown citizens.
The Institute for Criminal Justice Training Reform analyzed police training in 80 countries. Only Iraq and Afghanistan had lower training requirements to become a police officer than the United States. The number of training hours required to become a certified police officer becomes shocking when you look at the number of hours required to be certified or licensed for other professions. Wait,.….….….….….….….what? Oh well, that explains a lot.
I recently watched a snippet of an interview with one police chief; he was asked, “how does an officer qualify for a special squad-say SWAT, for example”? He responded that seniority was one of the criteria used in determining who does.
I wondered whether that was a good formula considering that older cops are generally set in their ways-ways that doesn’t always serve the public interest.
Georgia requires 408 hours of academy training to become a police officer but requires 1,500 hours of training to become a licensed barber. It takes 3½ times more training before Georgia says you can cut and style a person’s hair than arrest the same person and accuse them of a crime that can result in long-term incarceration, or worse, make the decision to take his life.
The sad reality of the latest case of Amir Locke murdered without even having fully awakened from his sleep; (a) was not wanted by police,(b) had a permit for his gun, © had no criminal record, even if he had no weapon on him he probably would have been murdered anyway.
A young black male in a room full of heavily armed, poorly trained, bigoted white cops would most likely have gotten him murdered regardless, gun or not.
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Mike Beckles is a former Police Detective, businessman, freelance writer, black achiever honoree, and creator of the blog mikebeckles.com.