Police Education Is Not Police Training: Virtue Signaling Is Not the Road to Improvement

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | October 30, 2020 | Dorothy Schulz

[karpov]

In the wake of George Floyd’s death, a number of colleges have cut back their interactions with local police departments and are redesigning their law enforcement programs.

The University of Minnesota (UM) was one of the first to accede to faculty and student demands to cut ties with local police. The university scaled back its contract with the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) to provide officers at events and limited its reliance on MPD’s specialized services. The university’s Department of Public Safety was ordered to limit university police officers’ interactions with the city department.

UM is one of more than 90 percent of public colleges that employ their own police departments. Thus, it is unclear what such actions accomplish beyond complicating investigations of off-campus crimes against students or faculty and adding to the paychecks of campus officers who will be assigned to events without assistance from local police.

Focusing on education, colleges, particularly community colleges, are reacting to demands they change their law enforcement degree and certificate programs to include courses that focus on police history, race, social justice, and diversity. The goal is to change police culture by changing police training, but it’s predicated on the colleges’ misunderstanding of their role in police training.

[riverrunner]

I can’t believe the any criminal justice program did not already include those items mentioned.

How about teaching citizens not to commit crimes,

Having personnel responsibility for the own actions.

[Rudolphus]

I am retired from public safety, worked for a local Sherriff Department, 2 Fire Departments, and a short stint working for the Feds.
I will say this about Law Enforcement. They need to learn to be polite. Every interaction that I have had with LEO’s in the last ten years has not been positive because they came off as rude and arrogant.
One example, I was a witness to a crime, I stayed to give a description. The responding officer took info from the complainant then I approached to give my witness info. I reached out my hand said, Hi my name is _____ . The officer refused to shake my hand, had several moments of silence and did not politely respond back with a greeting and his own name. Little things like being civil make a big difference. I started giving a head to toe description of the suspect. The officer didn’t seem to care or have any interest in direction of travel much less following up. It was then I thought that LEO’s are their own worst enemy. The us against the world mentality has got to go.

[libertylover]

Excellent post, and thank you for your service.

My brother had a career being City Manager for several small towns and he said over and over what your last sentence says: that cops see things as “cops against the world”. I guess it’s somewhat understandable though given the people they deal with night after night. But, like you say, a little politeness could go a long way.

[ClaudGorn]

Nice post karpov,
Useful information for me.