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Police Reform Achieved Through Higher Education Essay

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Police Reform Achieved Through Higher Education Police reform achieved through higher education will decrease violence and death, increase safety for officers, increase salary, and increase resources and outcomes for the community. The increase in police brutality has been a hot news topic since COVID-19. A call for police reform has been made to defund the police, and higher expectations of police conduct. The state of North Carolina police officers are required to complete 640 course hours mandated by the Commission. This takes approximately 16 weeks, and is followed with a comprehensive written exam and skills testing. “ (Basic Law, 2022) Police officers are being asked to cover several different professions while in the field such as; …show more content…

“Officers who have graduated from college are almost 40% less likely to use force.” (Bouffard,2022) College classes in de-escalation techniques will help officers’ calm volatile people and increase their ability to build rapport. “A study of officer-involved shootings from 1990 to 2004 found that college-educated police officers were almost 30% less likely to fire their weapons in the line of duty.” (Bouffard, 2022) Violence is defined as both verbal and physical interactions with the community. Police officers trained properly in current de-escalating techniques can prevent the need for reaching for physical weapons provided to the officers such as tasers, pepper spray, batons, and guns. Tasers and pepper spray are often considered less dangerous weapons for police officers to use. These weapons have caused death due to age, addiction, and health conditions of civilians. Deescalating the situation to the point where no physical violence occurs is the goal of all officers. Higher education can increase the police officers ability to obtain that goal more often.. “Most officers receive nearly 60 hours of firearm training, but less than 10 hours of de-escalation training. Roughly, 90% of calls for service do not involve violence or someone with a deadly weapon. Yet, law enforcement trains to the exact opposite. So an increase in de-escalation training is urgent.” (Ray, …show more content…

“Police departments that require at least a two-year degree for officers had a lower rate of officers assaulted by civilians compared to departments that did not require college degrees.(Bouffard, 2022) This displays that an associate degree provides important higher education classes that decrease assaults on police officers in their daily duties. Police officer safety is a priority to all officers, departments, and families. “The majority of 911 calls are for nonviolent encounters. This might suggest that these calls would be better addressed by mental health or behavioral counselors than by peace officers trained to address violence. But as all police know, domestic incidents and minor disturbances will often turn violent quickly. That’s when an officer’s training to diffuse or neutralize a dangerous actor or situation is necessary.”(Njfop, et al News,

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Several scholars have highlighted the importance of training police officers in de-escalation techniques to minimize the use of force. Mohler-Kuo et al. (2015) found that de-escalation training is associated with a reduction in the use of force by police officers, and use of non-lethal force. Similarly, Kraska and Kappeler (1997) argued that police departments should adopt less-lethal force options, such as pepper spray or Tasers, which can reduce the need for lethal force in many

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Further research has shown that police officers ages typically correlates to the years of experience and officers who are younger or has a young mindset receives more excessive force complaints than the ones who are older and with experience (Hassell & Archbold, 2010). The issue can result in different reasoning. For example, research concluded by Alpert and Dunham The Force Factor: Measuring Police Use of Force Relative to Suspect Resistance, has shown that police officers needs to do a better job on training new comers on policies and procedures in order to avoid incidents such as unnecessary use of force. Alpert finds that additional training will help serve the officers by reducing the number of incidents using excessive force, which includes, “training officers on how to gain control without using a gun, training officers on the correct amount of force to use based on the given situations, training officers on using pepper spray as a way to reduce any physical harm or the use of weapons, training officers to use the baton to restrain rather than shoot, training officers on conflict resolutions technique that can keep the situation under control rather than escalating (which female officers are found to be good at)” (Alpert et al., 1997).

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