Editor's Blog: The College Requirement

Just yesterday (as I type this) Officer.com posted a news article about how the new Police Commissioner in Philadelphia is considering dropping the college degree requirement for new hires.  His statement was that while he believes having the degree is a good thing for new hires, the department is experiencing a shortage of manpower and a reduced number of qualified applicants because of the degree requirement.  The story, after posting on our website, was also sent out through our Twitter account @OfficerCom. One of our followers on twitter retweeted the story with this comment: “Great move, why don’t they just hire crooks!”

And with that… my aggravation alarm went off; red lights started spinning around my head and red alert klaxons started sounding between my ears.  That ONE comment just pissed me off to no end.  I fail, in any way, to see a connection between lacking a college degree and being a criminal.  To even remotely suggest that implies a prejudicial belief that anyone and everyone who doesn’t have a college degree is a lesser being.  Who the hell do you think you are?

Some years back, Montgomery County, Maryland faced the same kind of challenge.  In that county the suggestion was made that they KEEP the college requirement but do away with the CITIZENSHIP requirement.  Um, excuse me?  Have NON-American citizens policing AMERICAN citizens?  No thanks. That’s just begging to have a foreign power send people over for the express purpose of getting them trained and armed at our own expense only to have them turn against us on command.  I suppose this Twitter follower would rather have non-citizens with a degree than citizens without?

That same county wouldn’t even accept YEARS of honorable military service in replacement of the college degree.  That irked me no end but I suppose it appeals to our Twitter follower who thinks those without degrees are criminals.  So, let me get this straight: You’d rather have a NON-citizen with a degree as a police officer rather than an American honorably discharged veteran who has already proven his (or her) capability for discipline, sacrifice, cool under pressure, etc?

What is wrong with society today?  Where do people like this come from? Who in the world thinks that anyone without a college degree is a criminal?  I guess that means that until I was 36, I was a criminal too.  You see, I didn’t get my first degree until then.  Never mind that by then I was an honorably discharged Army veteran with over 15 years of service on the police department.  Never mind that by then I’d received 19 commendations just on the police force.  Never mind that by then I’d reenlisted to serve in the Army National Guard and received a SECOND honorable discharge.  Never mind proof of performance, right?  If I didn’t have a college degree then I MUST be a criminal?

Folks, what we are looking for and NEED in our new police officers today has become so imbalanced by societal pressure and expectation that we’re putting officers on the street who are incapable of doing the job.  Sure, they may be great at giving your cat a hug and they may excel at protecting rioters while they burn down buildings, but they don’t make good law enforcement officers.  Now, don’t twist my words.  I’m NOT saying that today’s police officers aren’t good officers.  99.9% of them are GREAT officers and ROCK the job. What I’m saying is that SOCIETY has an expectation that is hurting us, our hiring process and thereby, in the long run, how well we can do our job.

And what is that job?  To Protect & Serve.  But society has somehow evolved so that we’re expected to be pure servant and IF we protect then we’d BETTER do it without EVER using physical force or violence in any way and it had BETTER be in defense of some career criminal – lest his family come along and accuse us of prejudice, excessive force or some other garbage complaint.  After all, that overly large career criminal thug was really a nice kid who had just started to turn his life around, right?  Isn’t that the usual line of BS?

I will never forget the speech given by a municipal Chief of Police a few years back at a tactical conference I was attending.  He explained that we seek the wrong applicants for police work today.  We seek young adults who have never been in trouble at school; never been in a fight; never bucked the system; never raised a hand to anyone; never broke the rules, played hooky or anything else that might indicate a lack of conformity.  We focus on people who have degrees (in ANYTHING) over those who have worn a uniform for three, four or more years and have proven the understand what sacrifice is. Those same people have operated in a Chain of Command and understand the balanced value of professional appearance compared to absolute performance as circumstances dictate.  We seek candidates who are so utterly civil that they have no concept of how to be otherwise.  While it’s true that a barbarian can’t act like a civilized man, a civilized man can’t embrace, as necessary and on demand, acting in a barbaric fashion.  A man who has never known conflict can’t readily overcome every conflict he encounters.

Police work is NOT all peaches and cream.  It is NOT saving cats out of trees, hugging special needs children and cutting the elderly woman’s grass.  While it MAY be those things it’s also fighting for your life, arresting violent career criminals, enforcing the law and providing a professional presence that deters crime.  It is responding to those dangerous calls and risking your life when everyone around you is running away from the threat.  It’s having the balls to arm yourself and go into battle and, afterward, to be able to articulate and justify every action you took from the moment you arrived until the battle was over.

Yes, a higher level of education means we can (usually) write better and document our justification for action better.  Absolutely there’s a connection between liability control and higher education.  Does that mean everyone with a college degree is a better candidate?  Not hardly.  Does it mean that everyone WITHOUT a college degree is no good as a candidate?  Not hardly.

How about if we go back to the days where the head of a given agency or his designee(s) review each applicant on his/her own merits and decides whether or not to accept the application?  Sure, a few minimum standards should be maintained but the more specific we get in what we’re looking for, the narrower our field of potential applicants. What’s worse, if we specify all of the restrictions that so much of society seems to want, the only people we’ll hire are drug-free-otherwise-hippy-botanists-who-know-how-to-see-Kumayah-and-hold-hands-with-people-trying-to-kill-them.  I guess that’s a little too long for a #hashtag, right?

C’mon, folks… help me out here.  A college degree is definitely a benefit to an aspiring law enforcement professional, but so is military service.  Considering anyone without a degree a criminal is just narrow-minded bigotry beyond measure.

End of rant…  Thanks for reading!