Police Academy Training Program Must Go Beyond Arrest...

Police academy training programs must go beyond arrest procedures and usual tactics it must include COP skills (Anyatt, 1993). Academy training is infamously imperfect in instruction that emphasizes the discretionary application of a range of skills that relate to real world circumstances (Kelling, Wasserman, Williams, 1988). Much police academy training is undermined in the field. For this reason, a change to community policing philosophy and its subsequent organizational changes must be trained to senior members of the department. The Field Training Officer (FTO) program needs to be modified to put an emphasis on COP philosophy including ethical problem solving and decision-making (Overman, 1994). Research has illustrated that properly†¦show more content†¦Most research studies discuss how important it is to be measured but do not address how to implement the measurement. â€Å"Before a COP program is implemented for a long duration, it is vitally important that new meas ures capture the progress and successes so baseline data can be collected (Brown, 1992).† â€Å"There is no cookie0cutter evaluation process that can be applied to every agency (Clark, 1994).† An evaluation process should incorporate a lot of input from the employee. The police officer should be evaluated on how quickly the call was answered and his/her problem-solving skills used to effectively handle the situation. The results should be evaluated and shared amongst the department and with the community to see if there are room for improvements or changes in which the situation was handled. Residents of the community should be given the opportunity to complete surveys based on the strengths and weaknesses of community policing. There should also be ongoing community forums and meetings to give citizens direct access to be heard. With this in place, it gives police staff opportunities to evaluate program effectiveness. Most evaluations of community policing have paid careful attention to describing a program and its impression on crime or a quality of life concern but have failed to present an understanding of