Page 64 - EducationWorld October 2020

International News

UNITED STATES eral Bureau of Justice statistics.
Police education initiatives “We train students like we train soldiers, and therein lies

a fatal flaw in the training police officers,” says John De-
Carlo, director of the Masters degree in criminal justice at
the University of New Haven, speaking about police educa-
tion in general. “Because soldiers have enemies and police
officers have communities.”
The Minnesota State University system, which educates
86 percent of that state’s police, is forming a task force that
includes civilian advocacy groups to review the quality of
its programmes and improve the diversity of faculty. The
chancellor of California’s community colleges has also rec-
ommended an assessment of that system’s law enforcement
training programmes, which produce 80 percent of police
of the state. And a commission in Virginia has been named
to ensure the police training programmes at its commu-
nity colleges teach the skills required to deal with diverse
populations.
Police-protestors standoff: education quality questions Northeastern University started a police academy last
year that requires each trainee to introduce him or herself to
AS THE US CONTINUES TO RECKON WITH A a stranger every week and report back with the story of that
string of deaths of black Americans at the hands of person, and to practise peacefully resolving violent conflicts
law enforcement officers, attention is turning to a staged by actors.
new focus: institutions that train police, including universi- As it stands, police “have very little training in how you
ties. Three states have announced reviews to consider how speak to another human being”, says Bianca Harris, a for-
they can improve police education and training, including mer prison warden who is launching a new online Masters
Minnesota, where the killing of George Floyd when he was in criminal justice at North Carolina’s Meredith College this
stopped by four police officers ignited worldwide protests. autumn that will teach graduates to treat civilians they en-
Questions are mounting about the quality of education counter “like real people with real needs”.
being provided by universities that train large numbers The challenge is compounded by the fact that there are
of police, considering that the Floyd case is only one in a few national standards for police education, which is run by
litany of fatal encounters between police and black civil- states. Minnesota is among the few states that require a uni-
ians. “There’s some soul-searching going on because what versity degree to become a police officer. About half of of-
people have begun to realise is how we as educators have ficers nationwide have at least a two-year degree, 30 percent
become complicit,” says Jason Williams, assistant professor have a bachelor’s degree and 5 percent have postgraduate
of justice studies at New Jersey’s Montclair State University. degrees, according to a survey conducted at California State
Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who University, Fullerton. While higher education is generally
pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes required for promotion, and most departments pay more
and has been charged with second-degree murder, received to their personnel who have a degree, 82 percent of police
a bachelor’s degree in law enforcement from a public uni- departments don’t require any university degree at all for
versity. officers just starting out.
Given the job security of careers in law enforcement, One thing is certain, says Mona Danner, who chairs the
nearly 300 US universities have police training pro- department of sociology and criminal justice at Virginia’s
grammes; they account for 45 percent of police academies Old Dominion University: “There’s an increasing recogni-
(the rest are run by law enforcement agencies) and two-year tion that the current situation is untenable and change must
community colleges collectively graduate the largest num- occur.”
ber of recruits. But critics complain that students in these
programmes are predominantly taught by serving or former Google short-cut
law enforcement officials, making them unlikely to change
long-held practices, and that they focus more on firearms NIVERSITY LEADERS ARE WATCHING closely
instruction than cultural diversity or bias. The 45,000 po- after Internet behemoth Google jumped deeper
lice recruits per year nationwide, spend an average of 168 Uinto post-secondary education, offering six-month
hours apiece learning about defensive tactics, weapons and certificate programmes in technical fields that it promises
use of force, and 25 on reports writing, versus 12 on cultural to treat in its hiring as the equivalent of a four-year univer-
diversity and nine on conflict resolution, according to Fed- sity degree.

64 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2020