The standards for police vary widely within and without each state. Some can be commissioned before attending the police academy, some places require you to have 1400 hours of training before you even sit in a car.
It sounds like an IMMENSE liability for the department.
Seems like giving a youngster who’s really an unknown quantity a uniform, weapon and a cruiser and letting him drive around representing the department and the city or county where he can blunder into a situation that he’s unprepared for is asking for trouble.
I’ll ask a friend of mine who was a cop in VA for a while, what the rules are here.. I remember that he had his badge before he attended the academy.
I don’t know, maybe it works somehow.
I checked with my VA cop friend.
He was hired first and badged, and allowed to ride along in uniform with an empty holster on certain activities. He was never permitted to carry a weapon or drive a cruiser before the academy, and agreed that arming and allowing the driving of a department vehicle especially unsupervised, made no sense at all.
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