Expand higher education opportunities for police

A centralized police university and college university programs are a great start

Police reform is a topic rife with politically charged landmines and hyper-polarized debate. That’s why it’s important to consider solutions that have the potential to appeal to a broad and reasonable swath of the electorate.

Today’s reform proposal is rooted in two truths:

1. Society’s confidence in policing has fallen to an all-time low. This, in part, has eroded the willingness of new recruits to enter the profession, and consequentially, caused chronic staffing issues in our metro area police departments.

2. In comparison to peer countries, our police officers receive significantly less training before they are placed on the beat. Cops in the United States are required to have an average of about 500 hours of training. In comparison, England requires nearly 2,500 hours of training, and Germany tops out at over 4,000 hours.

With more than 18,000 police departments across the country, it’s wrong to assume that we can design a single policy that will wholly solve each of these problems for each department. However, establishing police training programs within our universities is a worthwhile starting point.

Proposals can range from an elite police university in the style of West Point to an ROTC-style training program offered at select colleges across the country. But these proposals all reflect the same basic philosophy: By offering a free college degree, along with extensive police training, we can deepen the recruiting base and, hopefully, bolster societal respect for one of our most important public institutions.

Higher education for police officers

Last year, Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle opined that “America needs a West Point for police officers.” She says:

A West Point for cops could serve as a research center for learning what works in policing, and as a place to transmit that information to new generations of officers, who can be attracted to the profession through a combination of free, high-quality education and opportunities for elite public service.

Conceptually, this is a fascinating idea. Elite military academies have their fair share of critics, but a law enforcement university could increase the recruiting pool for people who choose policing as a profession. Centralizing policing research at a single institution could provide valuable resources for departments across the country.

But the value of more training along with a college degree should not be limited to a singular elite university. Similar to how the military offers training programs at select colleges, police training programs should exist at universities across the country. These programs would be free of charge, with officers pledging to fulfill a multi-year service commitment at an understaffed police department upon graduation. And depending on their career goals, the future officers could study a range of majors — forensic science and criminology, if they want to pursue professions in that field, or philosophy and anthropology, if they prefer a more classic liberal arts education.

Regardless of the major, a rigorous standard college education would be provided, along with a core curriculum of standard police training courses. Which is, in my opinion, the most important part of this reform agenda. Because across each of my conversations on the topic, I found a broad consensus that our police training programs need deeper substance.

Georgetown Professor Rosa Brooks wrote a book called “Tangled up in Blue: Policing the American City,” in which she describes her experience becoming a police officer after spending a career in journalism and academia. In our conversation, she told me that the academy training she took was “incredibly tactically oriented and very, very basic.” And that shocked her a bit. She said questions like, “What’s policing really for?” or, “How do we know if it’s working?” were generally just not discussed.

That’s not to say that someone can’t become a competent cop without tackling existential questions around police reform.

But a curriculum that sparks discussion about both the means and the ends of policing could be important. Additionally, classes on deescalation and community engagement, topics that are generally given short shrift in normal training, could be emphasized more with these extended training programs.

I spoke with Marvin “Ben” Haiman, the former Chief of Staff for the DC Metropolitan Police about the idea. And he was receptive to building university programs for police officers, especially if the degrees were focused around things officers needed to know such as communications and sociology.

It’s important to note that a police university system would not be intended to completely restructure the way in which we recruit and train police officers in our country. But university police programs would give some future officers extensive skills, a deeper knowledge base, and subsequently, the potential to rise through the ranks and drive cultural changes in the departments that need it most.

An educated police force is generally a better police force

Roughly 80% of police departments and law enforcement agencies do not require a college degree.¹ In the face of massive staffing crises within many police departments, this makes sense. We don’t want to reduce the supply of police officers by exclusively recruiting from a pool of college graduates. Nor should we — that would discriminate against non-college educated candidates who have the potential to become great police officers.

But it’s still true that a more educated police force is generally a better police force.

Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 “Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice” recommended raising the educational standards for police officers and placing a greater emphasis on recruiting college-educated officers. The commission did not cite any rigorous academic study to substantiate their claims since college graduates only made up a fraction of the police forces at that time. But rates of police officers with college degrees have increased in the decades since, and some recent studies has since proven the commission’s thesis correct.

In this study of over 1,100 Baltimore area police officer, officers with a college degree were 8-10% less likely to be involved with a shooting on the job. A study in Police Quarterly found that college educated police officers are generally 40% less likely to use all manner of force on the job. And this survey of New York police officers from 1975 to 1996 found that police with at least a two year degree were 40% less likely to lose their jobs due to misconduct on duty.

But are college educated police officers different because of their background rather than because of their college education? Perhaps.

Georgetown Professor Christy Lopez spent 20 plus years leading investigations into police departments at the Department of Justice. She told me that the existing research on the relationship between college education and policing is not strong and notably does not control for age. This is especially important, since younger officers are more likely to be involved in shootings than older officers. In police departments where new recruits can be as young as 18, it could be merely the fact that a college education is just a proxy for an older police officer.

Still, one of the main benefits of these university programs is that the promise of a free education will just expand the pool of police officers, a critical benefit given the staffing shortages across departments. Moreover, the virtues of higher education and more training are still important and play a foundational role in the shaping of a high quality police officer.

Professor Brooks says it’s not that our police officers “need to be able to talk about Kantian philosophy,” but rather “inculcate habits of mind” that will ensure that police departments are actively considering new technologies and approaches that will improve their policing.

In our conversation, Haiman agreed, saying that, “having a strong educational background gives a lot of tools in a toolbox that are potentially useful for an officer.”

Beyond a bachelor’s

The police we watch on television — Jimmy McNulty in the Wire, Carl Winslow in Family Matters — typically embody more of blue collar ethos. Which is, for the most part, true among police officers in real life. Policing is a hands-on job and also one of the most unionized professions in the country.

That’s why it’s impossible to ignore the consequences of tossing a bunch of recent college graduates into police departments. New non-college educated recruits and older vets might resent the career advancement opportunities the college educated officers would receive. They might be deemed ill-equipped for the rigors of the job.

And they’d be somewhat correct.

Police university graduates assigned to departments in various regions of the country wouldn’t necessarily have as much practical knowledge or understanding of the community as veteran officers or local new recruits.

Because he has experience managing a police department, I wanted to know what Haiman thought about assimilating these new officers. He acknowledged the potential difficulties that might arise, adding, “30-year veterans experience is only acquired by 30 years of experience.” But he also emphasized that a police force with a diverse set of educational backgrounds is still important.

Ultimately, I think that means expanded education for police shouldn’t just be limited to bachelors programs. Universities could still serve as the breeding ground for reform, including for non-degree students.

Georgetown University offers a “Police for Tomorrow” fellowship program for select police officers that includes a variety of workshops with policing experts. The University of South Carolina has the “Excellence in Policing and Public Safety,” an 18-month program that seeks to give police leaders more exposure to “data-driven” police reforms.

It’s important to continue to offer expanded training programs for police officers that don’t necessarily involve a bachelor’s degree. Just as lawyers take continued certification courses after passing the bar, police departments could require officers to participate in fellowships to stay updated on the latest technologies and policing approaches.

This would require substantial funding for both the cost of the program and officer PTO. But Professor Lopez, one of the founders of the “Police for Tomorrow” program, told me that it’d be incredibly worthwhile since training is even more effective once officers have experience in the field. Additionally, she said that existing continued training programs vary by state, but are mainly “refresher tactics on shooting and using force.”

Expanding police education means offering a range of options, from an expanded university education system to enhanced fellowships and training programs for current officers. I think many officers, policing experts, and communities would agree: law enforcement would work better for everyone if we expanded educational and training opportunities for police.

1. Notably, the DC police department requires at least 60 college credits or two years of military experience