Better police training needed

That's what's being said by some experts in the field and was one conclusion of a 2016 study by the Department of Justice. And this from a police-science professor at John Jay College, “We have one of the worst police-training academies in comparison to other democratic countries.” This is probably due to the fact that police in the United States receive less initial training than their counterparts in other rich countries—about five months in a classroom and another three or so months in the field, on average. 

Many European nations, meanwhile, have something more akin to police universities, which can take three or four years to complete. Plus, European countries also have national standards for various elements of a police officer’s job—such as how to search a car and when to use a baton. The U.S. does not; the 18,000 police departments in the U.S. each have their own rules and requirements.

Questions are also raised about what functions are given importance. The median police recruit receives eight hours of de-escalation training, compared with 58 hours of training in firearms, according to the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank for police executives. American police academies are also light on training in “soft skills,” such as how to communicate or use emotional intelligence to see a situation clearly. And they are poorly prepared for trauma on the job, too: They get just six hours of training in stress management, compared with 25 hours in report-writing, 

Then, there is how cops with charges of aggressive behavior are treated. Many become trainers. One study found that officers whose trainers had a history of citizen complaints were more likely to draw complaints themselves in their first two years on the job.