You Hsieh Chen

Michael Cupello

CJ 1010

11/19/2017

Do police officers need a college education?

Do police officers need a college education? In my country, police officer is a good

career, many children will dream them can be a police officer in the future, and that does not

matter if they are boys or girls. Police officer can protect our family, police officer just like a

hero in our childhood. So, police officer is not an easy job that everyone can join, we have

our own police university, and it is hard to get in. And there is another institution in Taiwans

police system, that is, as long as you get higher degree, and your salary will increase with

your degree level. So, because of my country background information, and I will say that

police officers have to have college degree.

The first journal that I read is call College cops: a study of education and policing in

California. The first question come to my mine was, why California? Why it cannot be

somewhere else? Then I found the answer in the paper. California has the highest number of

law enforcement officers in USA. So, it makes a lot sense that they choose California to make

this research. This is an experiment result paper, and it is reliable because they used

electronic survey that has 32 questions about police education and training, they let 162 local
enforcement agencies take this survey, and get the result. Although in California they only

require high school diploma for police officer, but there are 35% of swore officers have

college degree, cause the agency encourages swore officers to having higher education with

incentives. And most of those officers get into the middle or large agency in urban area, with

above-average salary. In this paper, the author also interviewed some managers in police

officer, and those managers claimed that they do want to have more college degrees police

officer, they said that is instructive. The papers value is, after they have this paper, that they

can have some study in the future, cause in the beginning of this paper the author said that

this kind of papers are limited, they did not have much previous study has addressed this

topic.

In this article, I think I have the same thought with the author and managers, having

college degree is not get rid of those people who did not have college degree, I think it is

more like protect people from dangerous, I can understand that the experiences are important,

too, but before you do not have any experience, the only way that you can prove yourself is

knowledge. Having education is the obvious proof that you get the enough knowledge. In

college, people can learn about the previous historic events, by learning that students are able

to know what can they solve those problems if they have to face that by themselves one day,

at that moment, they do not have any reference to refer, they do not have any partner can
cover with. So, I think in those cases, having college degree is really helpful for the whole

society.

The second paper that I read is The Impact of Higher Education on Police Officer

Attitudes toward Abuse of Authority. In this paper, the author examines that if police officers

have different attitude with authority because they have four-year college degree. In this

paper, author also explore that is that matter about how long they spent for getting college

degree. After they examined, they got the result that, those people who has college degree is

less supportive of abuse of authority, although the effect is small. So the paper prove that

having college degree has beneficial impact related to police officer abuse of authority

attitudes.

In this point, I have different idea with author, although I still encourage people get the

college degree, but I think that did not having straight relate with abuse of authority, maybe

the viewpoint of how they take abuse of authority will change by having college degree. the

thing that I want to say is, having college degree cannot avoid police officer abuse of

authority, go back to read those news, who was the person abuse of authority most? The

police officers whose in charge, and those people whose in charge are the people that we

think they have lots of knowledge, are the people that we think they got high education.

After reading those paper, I think that is a good thing that set a requirement of college

degree for those people who want to be police officer. Like what I said in the beginning,
police officer is a model to all people, and it also present the society, their behavior is

important. So I do support that police officers have college degree.

 References

Douglass, J. N. (2010, November 15). Study in America: Where international students come

from. Christian Science Monitor. p. N.PAG.

Gardiner, C. (2015). College cops: a study of education and policing in California. Policing:

An International Journal, 38(4), 648-663. doi:10.1108/PIJPSM-02-2015-0015

Manis, J., Archbold, C. A., & Hassell, K. D. (2008). Exploring the impact of police officer

education level on allegations of police misconduct. International Journal of Police

Science & Management, 10(4), 509-523. doi:10.1350/ijps.2008.10.4.102

Hilal, S., Densley, J., & Zhao, R. (2013). Cops in College: Police Officers Perceptions on

Formal Education. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 24(4), 461-477.

doi:10.1080/10511253.2013.791332

Telep, C. W. (2011). The Impact of Higher Education on Police Officer Attitudes toward

Abuse of Authority. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 22(3), 392-419.

doi:10.1080/10511253.2010.519893