Police training in the 21st century.

As the countdown to the new millennium begins, the policing profession finds itself in the midst of an exciting, yet complex, change. The community-oriented policing philosophy adopted by agencies nationwide continues to drive a fundamental change in policing. Some police scholars have asserted that as job descriptions move from reactive to proactive policing styles, issues that relate to community policing, training, and performance become more important.(1) As departments evolve into community policing organizations, administrators must address a myriad of issues, such as decentralization, empowerment, leadership, recruitment and selection, organizational restructuring, problem solving, and training.

Administrators can address many important steps that are symbiotic with the change to the community policing philosophy. However, they must focus on two salient features: the academy curriculum and the nature of instructional methods.

THE ACADEMY CURRICULUM

What new officers learn from the police academy curriculum serves as the foundation and building blocks for effective change in policing. Police work entails a vast amount of contact between the community and the officers. Furthermore, it involves problem solving and the ability of the police to work coactively with a wide variety of resources to eliminate the root causes of crime-related problems. In this sense, training should refocus on more pertinent and relevant issues (e.g., conflict resolution, quality-of-life issues) than the traditional curriculum, which has largely centered on the mechanical and technical aspects of policing.

A Review of the Existing Curriculum

Research into the on-duty activities of American police conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics indicates that officers spend 10 percent of patrol activity on criminal-related matters and the remaining 90 percent on a variety of service-related calls (e.g., neighborhood disturbances, conflict resolution, etc.).(2) Other studies have found that police officers spend only 20 percent of their time dealing with actual crimes or violations and that they devote the majority of their remaining time to service-oriented aspects.(3) Many police scholars have drawn similar conclusions that law enforcement tasks occupy a small portion of officers' on-duty time.(4)

The paradox in the current state of police training is that the majority of training curricula are designed almost exclusively to teach officers what they will be doing a small percentage of their on-duty time. Police instructors usually center their curricula around such standard topics as criminal law, defensive tactics, firearms training, crowd control, investigative procedures, mechanics of arrest, proper use of force, traffic enforcement, and accident investigation. These important hands-on topics should remain in the police academy training curriculum; however, the majority of these subjects involve instruction in the mechanical aspects of police work. As policing evolves into community-oriented strategies, academies should include more than the mechanical aspects of policing in their curriculums.

The evolving police role includes working in concert with the community in order to solve the root causes of crime problems. The concept of police as problem solvers has major implications for the content and form of training programs, which may not foster the skills the police need to solve problems. Law enforcement training programs teach the law, department regulations, and skills without much attention to how these might apply to specific problems police often handle and the methods for dealing with them (e.g., interpersonal communication skills, problem-solving skills, etc.).(5) In this sense, the curriculum taught in the police training academy should evolve into a more problem- and student-centered curriculum. Officers should understand how various subjects taught at the academy or follow-up in-service courses relate to problem solving.

The Evolving Curriculum

Police officers frequently must engage in proactive problem-solving and crime prevention activities within the neighborhoods they patrol. If police agencies require officers to become proactive problem solvers, resource catalysts, and communicators, they must foster and support this philosophy at the recruit and in-service training level.

Because of the increased contact that the police have with citizens, officers must receive training in such areas as interpersonal interaction, ethnic diversity, drug and alcohol awareness, and domestic violence.(6) Historically, the police training curriculum has devoted minimal attention to communication skills. Academy instructors should train officers in de-escalation skills and "verbal judo" techniques. Moreover, this training should continue after graduation. For example, most agencies require that police officers qualify one or more times a year with their firearms. This remains important from the standpoint of proficiency, safety, and liability. Administrators should schedule similar training intervals for communication skills because research has shown that the way officers communicate with citizens often affects the outcome of a particular situation.

Cultural diversity represents another important area that police trainers must include in their curricula. Because of changing demographics, officers today make contact with people from different ethnic cultures and backgrounds more often than they did in the past. Police must receive training on the demographics of the communities they serve, as well as the different cultures and customs. Although it may prove difficult to change individual officers' attitudes in this sense, this type of training will change behaviors, and administrators must include it in the curricula.

THE INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS

Most police academies conduct training using a lecture format. This structured approach, which emphasizes mastery and obedience, puts undue stress on students and does not encourage effective learning or support the community policing mission. Some experts argue that police trainers have overrelied on these methods including the use of lectures and films as an instructional technique.(7) Some experts argue that community policing departments should shift training from mastery and obedience to a focus on empowering.(8) Various emerging approaches exist that may foster a more effective learning experience for the individual police recruit.

Evolving Strategies

Training conducted in the police academy should highlight self-directed learning, which goes hand in hand with community policing. For community policing to succeed, police officers must be self-directed; when they discover a problem, they must solve it. The training environment proves an ideal place to help police officers achieve this objective. For example, when teaching problem-oriented policing, instructors should allow officers to meet in small groups where they can work through problems inherent in the community. This would require officers to seek resources to solve the problem in a self-directed manner. The students would learn to solve the problems within the framework of a small work group, and the trainer would become a facilitator of learning.

This training approach may enhance and foster the community policing culture by allowing students to work with others to solve problems and become more self-directed in this process. Furthermore, instructors should encourage students to bring both their lives and past career experiences into the problem-solving process, as opposed to merely following a policy and procedure manual in order to solve a problem.

A symbiosis exists between fostering self-direction in training and encouraging officers to work in the field under the axiom of community policing. Police training has long been mechanistic and behavioral in nature. This philosophy must change in order to bring officers up-to-date with the community-oriented policing approach and different methods of training.

Andragogy and Police Training

Andragogy, the process of teaching adults, differs from pedagogy, the process of teaching children. Andragogy theorists believe that adults learn differently than children, and they advocate both the self-directed learning concept and the teacher as the facilitator of learning.(9)

Many similarities exist between the andragogy theory and the community policing philosophy. Community policing requires that officers become self-directed and empowered to solve problems within the community. Incorporating andragogy theory into academy training can help officers develop these important abilities. Bringing these two theories together into the training curriculum will help officers to apply various subjects to the problem-solving process and also teach them how to immediately apply these subjects within the context of the community.

Some police scholars have argued that because law enforcement trainers use andragogy, and not pedagogy, in order to facilitate learning, the instruction should remain learner-centered rather than teacher-centered.(10) In reality, however, many police academies teach new officers using methods similar to those employed in teaching children. These police academies foster an environment, where the focus becomes the chain of command, rules, regulations, and policy and procedures. While instructors still should impart these values to new police officers, they should begin to limit their concentration on these elements as community policing philosophies evolve.

Instructors can enhance topics within the academy curriculum through self-directed group discussions and active debate within the classroom. Although, historically, this type of environment has not existed in police training facilities, police personnel need to explore differences and develop personal understandings in the academy classroom environment.

Officers may benefit from an andragogical approach when learning many of the skills of policing, such as public speaking, interpersonal communication skills, problem-solving skills, and cultural diversity. For example, because today's society is growing more diverse, instructors should encourage students in small groups to discuss issues pertaining to race and diversity. Allowing recruits to share their life experiences during the process of diversity training will permit them to resolve issues pertaining to race, sex, or the whole spectrum of diversity.

CONCLUSION

In order for the police to evolve successfully into a true community policing culture, training must become more effective in both form and substance. Some police scholars have asserted that traditional police training, course titles, and content were designed to reflect the peculiarities of the police subcultures in which they were administered,(11) Training remains an effective and necessary tool that administrators can use to help officers make the change to a more community-minded and crime prevention culture.

In order to achieve effective learning and cultural integration, academy curriculum and instructional methodologies must evolve with police strategies. In many ways, police training has not kept pace with the demands required of police in an ever-changing society. Police trainers should emphasize self-directed and problem-centered learning in order to help bring adequately prepared recruits into the 21 st century of policing.

Endnotes

1 R.S. Gutierrez and Q.C. Thurman, "Selecting, Training, and Retraining Officers to Do Community Policing," in Community Policing in a Rural Setting, ed. Q.C. Thurman and E.F. McGarrell (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co., 1997).

2 Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice (Washington, DC, 1983).

3 H. Goldstein, P. Monti, T. Sardino, and D. Green, Police Crisis Intervention (Kalamazoo, MI: Behaviordelia Inc., 1977).

4 P.D. Mayhill, T. Barker and R.D. Hunter, Police Community Relations and the Administration of Justice (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Inc., 1995).

5 H. Goldstein, Problem-oriented Policing (New York: McGraw-Hill Inc., 1990).

6 Supra note 1, 80.

7 L.K. Gaines, M.D. Southerland, and J.E. Angell, Police Administration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991).

8 R. Trojanowicz and Bonnie Bucqueroux, Community Policing: A Contemporary Perspective (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co., 1990), 5.

9 M. Knowles, The Adult Learner: A Neglected Species (Houston, TX: Golf Publishing Co., 1990), 57.

10 S.M. Ramirez, "The Need for a New Learning Culture in Law Enforcement," The Police Chief, November 1996, 24-26.

11 V. McLaughlin and M.E Donahue, "Training for Community-Oriented Policing," in Issues in Community Policing, ed. P.C. Kratcoski and D. Dukes (Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co., 1995), 138.