Police Association for College Education (PACE)

Now lets join us live for the The International Association of Chiefs of Police presents the 110^th Annual Convention, being held October 21-25 at Philadelphia, PA. This presentation is a panel on Education and Discipline in Law Enforcement..

Hello, I'm John Furman, Director for Research for the IACP. I want to welcome you to this panel. If you are here for education, discipline and law enforcement. You are in the right place, anything else you are in the wrong place. Keeping a record of your attendance as you know our card readers are in the back room so as you check in and check out you swipe your card so you can document your participation. This session is being recorded, so you can pick up as always from National Audio Video Sales Booth 200 level, you can get a copy if you wish to do so. We think this is a really important topic. You guys already passed the first test on discipline because you managed to get up and get here this morning. We think it is a really important topic, seriously. I am going to introduce at this point, IACP third Vice President, Mary Ann Viverette, Chief of the Gaithersburg Maryland Police Department to moderate our panel, .and hope our questions will be answered. This panel will begin with Ph.D. Scott Cunningham, who is the Deputy Chief in Tampa. He initiated a five-page white paper which was handed out to you. If you havent had a chance to read it yet please make sure you do. Its got some great information from a study that was conducted in Florida. For the researchers in this room and for those of you who know researchers, we are certainly looking for researchers to expand this research effort that was conducted in Florida on a smaller scale with the Police Administration Committee. So if you know anyone that might want to take on this effort, I would love to see it on a more of a national level.

Mary Ann Viverette

Good morning everyone, it really is good to see everyone here so early this morning. As a member of the board of officers, Id like to welcome you to this conference and we hope you are having a good time so far and glad you could be with us this morning for this early panel discussion on Education, Discipline and Law Enforcement. Id have the pleasure as serving as the oversight Vice President for the Police Administration Committtee. And last year, if you would recall when President Bill Burger was President, he had quite a few initiatives. One of the initiatives that he started was discussion about education, discipline and law enforcement and how they were related. We were very pleased that we were able to put together four panelist today. Experts in the field, all Ph.Ds. They have both academic and law enforcement experience in this area. And I think you will find this very interesting and enjoyable. Hopefully you will have some good questions to talk about. As a Chief of Police in Gaithersburg for 17 yrs, I have also struggled with this issue on what level to set for entry level? How it impacts our recruiting effort? And I see quite a few Chiefs in the audience and I know all of you are struggling with attempting to get additional recruits in and not wanting to lower your standards. So we are going to talk about that today and hopefully some of our questions

It is my pleasure to introduce the panel this morning and our first speaker is Scott Cunningham. Scott is the Deputy Chief of Operations at the Tampa Florida Police Department. He has over 24 yrs experience and a wide range of assignments. He spent several years assigned to the regional police academy and has managed the training and personnel functions including recruitments, hiring and training. He holds a Bachelor degree, a Masters in Public Administration and a Ph.D. in Adult Education and Management. Hes active in several professional and academic organizations. He Chairs the Police Administration Committee for the International Association of the Chiefs of Police and he was the lead author on the research that was initiating this panel. Thats the paper that I just spoke about. Please welcome, Scott Cunningham

Scott Cunningham

Good morning, it is a very nice pleasure to see so many people here this morning to talk about a topic like this. The reality is that for decades we have been talking about education in policing and what it can bring, what it might bring, what also problems it does bring to the table. Myself and some of the other panelists will be able to bring you today some of the practical experiences but also some of the research that shows that there are some definitive benefits to higher level of education for the practical side of policing. The reality is that policing in all respects is the most visible and most intrusive governmental action that there is. When you look at Philadelphia and the cradle of democracy and you look at the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, all of our Four Fathers. The documents that they wrote that guide our actions today on the national level and on each state level with state constitutions, .really talk about limiting government power, controlling police power and also the abuse - possible abuse of police powers. The police are the most visible, like I said, of governmental actions. So anything that they is going to be wide spread, as far as impact, as far as discussion. Today in the media, in the news, and all forums you see a lot of focus on police activities. Whether this is police tactics, whether it is the use of force, biased based policing. All these types of issues have a direct impact on what we do today in policing.

The reality is though that everyday our police officers have millions of citizen contact in the public. Everyday, millions of contacts. Out of those contacts, we actually have a very minute percentage of people that actually file complaints against police departments.. Even smaller number are sustained. The problem is however, that all it takes is one incident of a certain type or magnitude in it that it draws national attention to policing. Why I bring that up is that anything that can help us police our communities and serve our communities better and still maintain those key items of trust and integrity that the Constitution was formed on is going to help us to be able to do our job better. And what we have been looking at is that educational levels can have an impact in maintaining that integrity and lowering the amount of discipline that there is out there.

How policing deals with discipline and problems and incidents is essential to maintaining the trust of the populist that we protect. Those issues that we talked about briefly, the use of force, biased base policing all key back to integrity and trust. As long as the population can trust us, their grant of power to the police will be maintained. The minute that they lose faith in us, then they begin to pull back on the amount of power and abuse that does happen. It is not only our duty as a profession to discipline ourselves but it is essential to our going forward. Inappropriate actions do have wide-ranging impact on your police agency. Your police department may not have been the one that had some type of incident, but across the country on the other side country an incident can stir problems in your community. Anything that we can do to reduce those incidents must be looked at. Thats why we are focusing on education in the current study. Like I said, it has been discussed for decades. National commissions have recommended that education levels be increased. There has been a lot of debate about it. Can we hire people to balance our agency so that it serves the community well? Can we keep those people once we have them? Some of the other panelists will get into more detail about that. But if any part of the educational process, educational level, anything that we can do to reduce discipline problems, anything we can to reduce the incidents where the public may lose trust and confidence in us should be examined. That is one of the reasons we began this study. As you know all most every state has some kind of certification body. Whether you call it police officers standards and training, standards and training commission whatever. Almost every state has some authority like that to oversee policing in their entire jurisdiction. Some of those POSTs have powers that really only include minimal standards and the actual training that is offered to the officers and required of the officers. Other states go up to the full range of oversight of certification, indicating that they can or cannot stop someone from practicing the profession in the state. The reality is that about 47states do at this point have the ability to revoke an officers certification. So the ability for a regulation on a statewide basis is almost universal in the United States. However, historically, discipline has almost always been a purview of the employing agency. Rarely will discipline rise to where an occasion where state authority will step in and say, No that is not enough discipline or an inappropriate level of discipline. However, in the last two decades, State Commissions have become more active and more pro-active in dealing with disciplinary levels. What we tried to look at is. Do levels of education have an impact on the amount of discipline issued out? We looked across the country, we also did it partly by ease, Florida has a very detailed and length system where we can track and amount of education that an officer has and we can also track the discipline. The reality is that part of it is the Florida pays dollars out to the officers based on educational levels. So it makes it easy for one authority to post their criminal justice standards training commission. They have all that information, so it is easy to track and identify. Other states have a lot of this information, but it is in different formats and a lot harder to get. California, Texas and some other states have some very good systems. But it is trying to line up to get that data out of their systems.

What we did is looked at Florida because of the ease and also the number. In 2002, there were approximately 43,000 officers, law enforcement only, in the state of Florida. Now the commission there oversees everything. Law enforcement, corrections, probation, parole, the whole ball of wax. But what we did here was only look at law enforcement. So in the State of Florida in August 2002, they had approximately 43,000 certified law enforcement officers. We took a five-year period; we looked at all the discipline from 1997 to 2002 that was issued at the state level. If we looked at it from the department level, there would be too much variety, to much difference. What one agency might issue some type of written disciplinary format, another might suspend for. There was no similarities across the line. So what we did was look at the state level. At the state level they are going to be consistent because it is one body of government that oversees all the disciplinary and certification matters. What we found out was that, and this is in part of your documents that you have, in Table 1 it shows that 58% of the officers in Florida had only a high school degree. Each level moves up a little bit and those officers, 16% of all officers have an associates, while 24% of those have a bachelors degree.

If everything is normal, everything is equal and there is no relationship between education and discipline, you would tend to believe and the stats would tend to support that the amount of discipline would equal about the amount of officer population. In other words, 58% of the officers in Florida have a high school diploma, you would think about 58% of all the discipline issued by the State commission would be to officers with a high school education. If there is some type of relationship, you would expect that number to start to fluctuate, either higher or lower. In our case we are actually hoping, because we wanted to look at it and see if education had a positive impact on discipline. We would hope that as you get more education level your percentage of discipline would actually drop. When you look at Table 2 in the paper, you can look at all discipline issued at the state level. Now that would be letters of censure, probation, revocation, voluntary relinquishment. Obviously, a revocation or a voluntary relinquishment of certification is the ultimate in the profession. IF that happens to you then your license to practice is gone. You are done practicing in the state of Florida and with reciprocal agreements and the information exchange, you are most likely done anywhere in the country. That part of the system is like most other states. Thats not unique to Florida. If the POST removes your certification, you are done in your profession. So to do that, they take it very seriously, so it really has to be some pretty significant action for them to take that.

Table 2 shows that if you just look across the whole spectrum of discipline issued by the Florida Justice Standards Training Commission in a five year period, 75% of all the discipline they issued was to officers with a high school diploma. Even though only 58% of the officers in the state have high school as their ultimate level of education, 75% of all the discipline issued was to that group. As it rises up, an associates degree 16% of the population, but only 12% of the discipline. The same with a bachelors, 24% of the population of officers has a bachelor degree, but they only accounted for 12% of all the discipline issued by the state commission. So what we are already starting to see, is when you look at all discipline the lower education level, the base education level, a high school degree, high school diploma is accounting for significantly more discipline than what that officer population is. As a side note the state of Florida only requires a High School degree to be certified in the state. So it is not that the state has gone to an extraneous level or anything else, it is the basic level. One of the big key things here is in Table 3. Revocation and Voluntary Relinquishment, - the most massive professional penalty that exists. You lose your certification, youre out. What we found there, when you just look at the just those two categories, get rid of the probation, get rid of the censures, get rid of letters of admonishment, all that stuff. When you look at the most severe form of discipline that the state can issue, high school educational officers accounted for 77% of all certification losses. Even though once again they only represent 58% of the population. That means your officer is gone, they have done something so severe that the state has taken the certification away from them. The associates degree is pretty much about the same level as all discipline. Sixteen percent of the population, but they account for only 12% of certification losses. The bachelors is about the similar also, 24% of the population, but only 11% of the certification losses. What we are able to see here, is that for a variety of reasons, maybe none good maybe some good. The officers with the basic education level, the high school entry, which make up of only about 57% of the population of Florida account for 77% and 78% of all the discipline that the states issues at the state level. We have all been in the business you know that when the state steps in, does disciplinary action it is usually a pretty severe time,.especially when you are talking about a certification loss. Now does this mean that there is a direct cause and effect relationship that if you hire someone with a masters degree or something else that they will not get in trouble? No it does not. But what it does indicate is that for some reasons, high-educated officers are less likely, they account for less discipline in the state level than their population. So in other words, if you have 100 officers, and they are all high school educated. You are going to lose more of them to certification loses than if you have that same number of officers that are all bachelor educated.

Is there other things that play into it, the position, the amount of time, yes there are? Thats why we need to take it a step further. This is not meant to be a definitive study, but rather one more piece of evidence in the whole collection to say, How can we maintain public trust, how can we maintain a police force that is going to serve the community well. When you add this to other things, the professional training. Longevity, on and on, education seems to be a viable part that can help police agency reduce the amount of discipline, reduce the amount of severe discipline that is issued which will in effect come back to haunt you if you do have a lot of disciplinary problems if the public loses trust. What we will do is move on and if you have specific questions well take them later and let the other people add on to this. Thank you very much.

Mary Ann Viverette

Thanks Scott, the panelist have agreed if anyone has any burning questions, please throw your hand up, but if you have questions that you want to hold till after, we will be happy to answer them. Our second speaker today is T. Bowman, who is currently the Police Chief in Arlington Texas. T has served as a Chief since March 1999, in Arlington. He has 20 yrs, over 20 yrs of police experience. Chief Bowman has a Ph.D. in Urban and Police Administration from the University of Texas. He is a graduate of the FBI/NA and FBI National Executive Institute and the Senior Management Institute for Police. His department requires officers to have a bachelors degree to enter the department and T also is a member of the Executive Committee which is a governing body of the International Association of the Chiefs of Police. T welcome

Theron Bowman

Thank you, let me say good morning to you and its really an honor for me to have the opportunity to speak to you this morning. Ill speak briefly and then honor any questions that you have immediately after I speak or preferably after the last speaker has spoken this morning. Anyway, I am very much an advocate of higher educational standards in policing. My department, as Chief Viverette articulated does require police officers to have a bachelors degree. Now up until 1986, our department, only required our officers to have high school degrees or high school diploma, then in 1986, the then Police Chief David Compel changed the requirement to either a Bachelors degree or an Associates degree with at least two years prior police experience. And so now we are 17 yrs into some high education requirement. In 1999, when I took over as Police Chief, we erased the associate degree alternative and required every officer entering the department to have a bachelors degree. Chief Compel also required that after 1996, anybody promoted to any supervisory rank within the department would be required to have a bachelors degree. In 1999, I added to that, that anyone promoted to an Assistant Chiefs position would be required to have a masters degree. And so my department has some years of experience in recruiting and retaining officers with bachelor degrees. In fact today, 85% of our police department now hasa bachelors degree. Arlington, Texas - it sits right in the middle of North Texas between Dallas and Ft Worth. The city has a population of some 352,000 people. We are racially and ethnically a diverse city. According to the 2000 census,. the population is 18% Hispanic, 12% African American and approximately 60% Anglo, 6% Asian and a mix of others. We know that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Federal law requires that our department be approximately reflective of the community, approximately refletive of the available workforce in the area. I can tell you that our department does a better job of being reflective of the community than just about any other department in Texas, and we do a better job than any other department in the North Texas area. Now, I am a firm believer that higher education requirement adds tremendous benefits to my administration as police chief, but also to the citizens in their police officers, and police department. Many chiefs today and many departments when we consider increasing our educational requirement, we tend to be overcome by the myths that are out there. One, we ask the question, What does it benefit or what would it benefit me to increase educational requirement in my department? Well the first myth I typically hear is That you can not recruit minority officers if you raise your educational standards. My response to that is thats not true. We have in fact more successful recruiting minority officers and protected class officers with a bachelors degree requirement than ever before. And we are more successful that other departments with no degree requirement in recruiting minority officers. Let me tell you why, partially why that is the case. Minority potential officers who are college students tend to be first generation college students, some attend college by virtual of a grant program, work study some, or are able to pay for college. But virtually mostly minority is first generation college students. When as a community, you have the history with law enforcement that most minority communities have in this country,. parents and relatives who work hard to put their children through college to obtain a bachelor degree want their children to go to work at a place that value that education. The fact is, that today with the diversification of population in this country and population all over the world are increasing in diversity, those few applicants with those degrees are going to go to work in places where that degree, that time, that investment of time is honored are going to go somewhere that requires that degree. Now there is a law of economics that is called Gresham Law. Lord Gresham from the UK actually authored this law that says that the A bill of lower intrinsic value will chase a bill of higher intrinsic value out of circulation. Put in laymans terms, what that says to us is that we dont have more educated people in policing because we dont have high education requirements. Now, I buy into Scott Cunninghams paper wholeheartedly. Because it is our experience, that not only are we better able to attract minority applicants but we have lower incidents of discipline among our officers. We have high retention rates for police officers, we dont have officers getting frustrated or getting stressed out because they cannot move, we challenge our officers. And as a result we are rewarded. We are rewarded in terms with lower crime, higher job satisfaction, higher citizen satisfaction than our city. Our city for its size, has one of the lowest crime rates in the country. We were named last years as one of the 30 safest cities in the country. And it is largely attributable to our work force. So I can go on and on about the benefits of officers having higher education. I teach graduate courses in policing and in every class I ask my students which of them attended high school that were at least 90% one ethnicity or another. Most students have. But when they go to college and they sit in a college classroom and attend college classes suddenly they are exposed to ethnicity, racism and nationalities that heretofore they have not been exposed to. The dynamics that are played out in the classroom, in a classroom discussion, in a classroom debate, help our young people to understand how to disagree and how to agree to disagree. It helps them to understand how to perhaps not agree with others who are different from themselves, but yet respect the differences and opinions. It teaches them to communicate with people from all walks of life, to accept their viewpoints, and although they may not agree that they can accept and communicate without going to the last resort, thats shooting, force or violence. So all in all our degreed officers, typically have developed critical thinking skills, they have developed the ability to communicate with people from all walks of life. They have been exposed to life experiences, that perhaps might have taken an additional 5-10 years of just street experience for them to get there. But when we hire them, they are already there. And then the benefits to my administration actually are obviated in lower crime and higher citizen satisfaction and higher job satisfaction numbers among the employees that we have. I am an advocate and I will be glad to answer any question later on today that you might have.

Mary Ann Viverette

Thank you Chief. One of the reasons why I really enjoy being involved in the IACP is to be around people like Chief Bowman whose enthusiasm and the initiative and optimism that he has is overwhelming to me and it helps to motivate me and I think all of you would love to talk about your agencies as you can about yours. So congratulations. I know it has a lot to do with your leadership and the leadership that went before you, but certainly I think it does have a correlation to the education and we are glad you could be with us today.

Our next speaker, you expected to be Dr. Shelly Greenberg from Hopkins, my home state of Maryland. He was unable to be with us today, but I was fortunate the other day last week to meet Dr. Freidman and asked him to join us. I am pleased that he could be with us and talk from the academic side. Dr. Robert Freidman is a professor of the Criminal Justice Georgia - State University in Atlanta, and served as a department chair from 1989 to 2002. He is the founding director of the Criminal Justice Statistical Analysts Bureau, the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program and the International Law Enforcement Enterprise at GSU. Dr. Freidman received his BS in Sociology and Anthropology and Philosophy from the University of Hifa Israel in 1974. His MA and Ph.D. is sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1978 and his MS in social work from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 1981. Prior to his appointment at GSU, he held teaching positions at the University of Hifa Israel and the University of Minnesota. His research interests and published works focus on community policing, comparative criminal justice and crime analyst. Dr. Freidman chaired the Georgia Commission to Assess State Crime Laboratory Needs into the 21st century. He is the chair of the advisory board of the Georgia Security Council and he is very proud to be a member of the Community Policing Committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.. Hes a recipient of many awards and we are very honored to have him today. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Freidman.

Dr. Freidman

Good morning, it is indeed an unexpected pleasure and I am honored to be here in front of you. I did want to specify that BS means Bachelor of Science. Just in case. Let me make a few comments that I think will augment and reinforce the points that were made earlier, and I was very pleased to hear that. Because often times, education is resisted, so let me make a few clarifying points -. my unbiased position about higher education and see what we can make out of it. Many years ago, a renounced sociologist by the name of C. Wright Mills was talking about private troubles and public issues. And in the concensus, that is, what we are talking about, and would like to specify on the outset that a single individual police officer who is educated is by no means any better than a single police officer who is uneducated. And by education, I am talking about having a formal degree obtained. I am not talking about life experience, I am not talking about street smart and I am not talking about the ability to perform out on the street. But moving away from private differences to public issues, education has the values that you heard are articulated here. And I wanted to specify that really the lack of formal degree has some detriments to the function of police in modern society. The challenge of moving police departments towards education or having higher education is not unlike university move from the status of teaching universities to research universities. Most of you probably have never had to care about this. I took over a department, that when I was hired, one of the people who interviewed me said If you want me to do research and publish if you put a million dollars on the table and light a match under my foot I would still not do it. So when you are talking about resistance to scholarship I had it at my interview. My second question was If you are going to do a research and one of these departments was going to hire would want you to fudge the data in a given way would you do it? And the decision that I had to make was I going to get the job or am I going to keep my integrity. And I said I am not going to do it. And I was hired and a year later I had this circumstance of correlation against pornography that wanted to show that child abuse is related to pornography. And we reviewed about 1,200 cases in one of the police departments near Atlanta and we could not find that relationship and they would not except that final report. And we said well, that is the best we could do. We never got another grant from them and thats fine too. What universities that want to have research capabilities have been doing in the past is infuse money. When I took this department over I had an opportunity to build one. And in the 13 yrs that I have chaired the department it became in fact January of last year, ranked 14 in the nation in terms of scholarship and publication. Thats not bad at all for a department that was not even on the map.

Im glad to see at least one graduate of this department in the audience. And he didnt even know that I was going to be here. So I did not pay him to show up. Yet moving from just teaching obligations to research obligations, takes more than money, it takes a commitment. It takes a commitment from the university to put their money where their mouth is, it takes networking, it takes support and it takes the need to offer an environment that is conducive of an is supported of the activities of those professors who are hired in order to do their job. I see no difference between that and the conducive and supportive environment in a police department for police officers with education. And I am saying this because some of the officers that have graduated from program with a masters degree came back to me and said as soon as I got my degree, I was placed on the grave yard shift because people were envious that I had my degree. In fact for some, it is seen as a threat. So we need to realize that in the transition period someplaces where you dont have 85% of higher education that could be a problem.

But let me move beyond the qualities of education for the individual officers and the department. We need to talk about higher education and the value that they bring to policing as a profession. And I am allowing myself to say we are lagging here far behind all the other helping professions. If you want to name a few look at nursing and health, look at teaching and education and look at social workers and psychologists to various degrees in social services. They not only have POST councils to certify their professional behavior but they have professional associations that dictate to the universities what kind of curriculum the universities have to offer in order for the professional association to accredit the professional degree. In law school of course it falls under that category as well. That by the way, the universities claim they have academic freedom right?. They do some to some extent. They do but not when it comes to professionalism. What is dictated in professionalism is what the professional association dictates. And I would almost raise a challenge to the IACP to take that tact and actually try and dictate to the universities, what kind of future police officers do they want to see out there. Because that is where you can make most of the difference in how policing is going to look in 50 or 100 yrs from now. The impact on the service is tremendous because we have in the hallway one of the mottos of what the police officers are expected to do and if you really are expected to do all of this. You really need degrees not only in just higher education, but you have to be psychologists, lawyer, physician and you all these things in the motto. That fact is that because we are lagging as professions -.because we are lagging behind general standardization policing is not seen as a prestigious occupation. In fact, ironically, that is why it is easier for you to hire those with higher education. Some of it is more difficult. Because what is it that we are basically asking, we are asking them to perform at a higher level and we are not giving them the skills to do that. And what are the skills? It is the ability to have critical thinking. And we talk a lot about it, but not everyone delivers in it. But I will tell you one thing I remembered from my father is that education is the one thing no one can take away from you. Think about that, because salaries change, positions change but the value of education means if you hire good police officers you will have to compete for them because they may be more mobile, they may be able to go to other positions and you may want to compete not just for the best police officers but for the best out there. Because the challenge of police officers is not only that they have to abide by the constitution and provide services, and not only because they are the front line of government services, but police officers are really a profession that does nothing else like it - because it is a generous profession. Most other professions are highly specific. And I am not going to go much more in to that. If we talk about police occupational prestige, anyone know on the rank of 0-100 where do police rank? No. 2 you wish. On 0-100 give me a number. Where does the Supreme Court Justice Rank? Right up to the top. Where do nurses and teachers rank? 70-78. Where do police officers rank? You are all sitting down -28. And if that is not a call for some alarm, I do not know what is. And you really need to take that to heart. Because if you do not have the professional out there that can compete with other professions, we are sort of putting ourselves at a disadvantage. Because when we sit, we sit with civic communities, civic committees, organziations, associations, volunteers,. Everyone in that room will probably out educated the police officers there. Of course, there are the examples, and exceptions that you have described that I am please to hear that and a really good rule model.

1. Budget, the higher the education, the higher the salaries. When the city manager and mayor and accounting manager come to you and say, Guess what, we are going to cut you 5%. What are you going to do? You are going to hire people with lower education, because thats part the possibility of cutting budgets.

Thats why, higher education in policing is not an issue between a police chief and a city manager. It is an issue between policing as a profession and all other professions. You have to compete for survival. And that is what IACP can do best. So I see challenges, it is not a smooth road ahead. It is not easy to do and there are some exceptions and in some places you have a good layer of educated people. But I think what I would like to see in the next 20-25 yrs. We would see the proportions that the chief has described much more prevalent around the country.

Mary Ann Viverette

Thank you Dr. Freidman,We are really happy you could be with us on such short notice, Thank you. If there are no burning questions, we will move on to our last speaker. And hopefully you will all have questions for the panel. Our next speaker is Dr. Mayo, Lou Mayo, who has over 50 yrs of operations research studying and consulting in policing. He was the staff co-founder of the National Institute of Justice,. after being with a group associated with the presidents crime commission. For 20 yrs at NIJ, he developed and directed training and demonstration programs in the new concepts for improving local policing including executive training for 20,000 police officials =.such as the original designs for community policing and domestic violence intervention. He founded PACE - devoted to hastening the day when all police will meet the college degree standards recommended by the national commissions and the federal courts. He holds a BA, MA and PH.D. degrees in the policing field. Please join me in welcoming Lou Mayo.

Louis Mayo

Chief Viverette, members of the panel, distinguished policing officials assembled here. The Police Association for College Education welcomes this opportunity to discuss with you the common essential ingredient for improving the police as recommended by many national commissions, the Federal Courts and other leading authorities - college degreed police officers. I will try to be

brief in order to allow questions within the limited time available. Although I will discuss the views of many authorities, they are all consistent with my experiences of over 50 years in policing with the last 35 years devoted to working at the national level on efforts to improve local policing, beginning with my association with the OLEA group associated with the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice in 1967.

I do not agree with the statement of then Senator Hruska of Nebraska (over 30 years ago), in defense of a U.S. Supreme Court nominee widely regarded to be "mediocre". He said that "the mediocre people are entitled to like-kind of representation on the Court". Only the best professionally qualified should have the ultimate awesome powers of summarily depriving a person of liberty or even

life, as well as dealing with multitude of personal and community problems. This must be a constant consideration in police qualifications.

In a recent publication by the Police Executive Research Forum reporting on a survey of police chiefs on needed changes, including dealing with racially based policing, they emphasize:.

We must insist that the protection of human rights is a fundamental responsibility

It continues. "Leaders' ability to support, encourage and build the internal culture's positive aspects is critical to progressive policies." They had referenced that changes in procedures were not successful because they do not change the basic police organization CULTURE..

I would comment that fundamental to changing the CULTURE of a police organization is to require college degrees which instill and produce an understanding of basic democratic values in a discretion-based professional environment, to replace the procedural and militaristic organization so traditional and so destructive of quality policing. I have observed dramatically different cultures in lice departments which require college degrees for all officers.

. Complexities inherent in policing further dictate that officers possess a high

degree OF intellect, education, tact, sound judgement, physical courage, emotional

stability, impartiality and honesty.. Mistakes in judgment could cause irreparable

It is nonsense to state or assume that the enforcement of law is so simple that it

department should certainly be conversant with the structure of government and its

relations in order to understand the ramifications of the problems which confront

This is further supported by the American Bar Association in their Standards for the Urban Police Function.

education seeks to foster; intellectual curiosity, analytical ability, articulateness,

and a capacity to relate the events of the day to the social, political and historical

Since a principal function of the police is the safeguarding of democracy, if the

democratic process and frustrate the achievement of a principal police function.

Thus, police officers are left with their more essential task which includes social

control in a period of increasing social turmoil, preservation of our Constitutional

guarantees, and exercise of the broadest discretion - sometimes involving life and

death decisions - of any government service. The need for police officers who are

decisions is apparent. ... (A) college education develops and imparts the requisite

level of knowledge. (Emphasis added.) Davis v. Dallas, 777 F.2d 205, 6th Cir. 1985,

All of these finding and recommendations have a common theme of changing the CULTURE of policing to a college degree based professional level being essential for achieving quality policing. I would note that all of these recommendations preceded community policing with its significantly increased intellectual requirements for officers to deal with a wider range of complex problems.

To this we add the over 30 years of research studies that consistently show that college educated officers have much fewer complaints of failure to conform to the requirements of the law and other abuses of authority. The latest is the research by Dr. Cunningham using Florida data which he discussed earlier. This alone is clear justification for college degree standards to avoid multi-million dollar malpractice

lawsuits, as well as the resulting destruction of police reputation resulting from such abuse of authority.

Many chiefs have expressed concern to me that if they institute college degree requirements they will not have sufficient applicants. Let me emphasize that another myth of policing is that college degree standards result in a shortage of officers in general and minorities nn particular. Numerous police chiefs with college standards report they are finding am adequate supply of well qualified officer applicants, including minority and female officers, with long waiting lists - frequently including officers from other departments desiring to work in a more professional environment.

Historically, both minority and women officers average higher education than white males.

For many with college degrees, particularly minorities, applying for a job not requiring their degree is considered to be beneath them and a waste of efforts to earn the degree. College degree applications should increase with publicity of this requirement for being a police officer. Costs of examination/selection will be greatly reduced as a large number of of otherwise unqualified applicants will be excluded because they do not possess college degrees.

However, as was emphasized in a recent article entitled, "Police Recruitment in a Booming Economy", by Dr. Larry T. Hoover, major impediments to police recruiting include "low occupational prestige and poor working conditions, in addition to a cumbersome application process which is both demeaning and frustrating". He also states, "We need to find ways to make the occupation attractive to today's youth. But in this respect we are our own worst enemies." His recommendations include "improved recruiting and making potential applicants feel more welcome from the first point of inquiry". Dr. Hoover's observations are even more relevant to a department requiring college degrees for officer applicants.

To attract and RETAIN professional/degreed police officers the police department needs to project the image of a professional organization, which fortunately is consistent with creating an organization with improved police services to the people of the city and reducing stress factors, including professionally challenging effective field operations with community-based fixed assignments replacing rotating shifts, in place of costly, wasteful, boring and ineffective aimlessly riding around in patrol cars. This is a model I developed and successfully demonstrated in the early 70's.

The end result is to change the police organization CULTURE fundamentally from acting on a centralized impersonal, isolated, aggressive, authoritarian, militaristic mode of an occupying army to a decentralized, friendly, cooperative, collegiate, professional, public service, with modern participative management mode which has also been shown to be the most effective way to prevent and control crime and disorder and which fits perfectly with the college degreed officer.

As previously stated from the President's Crime Commission, it is inconceivable that a person without a college degree could perform all these complex social and legal tasks of police and many college graduates also cannot. It takes a superior student. For the unqualified, high stress results. I would quote from an editorial from the Atlantic City Press, "Towns that put new police officers without college degrees on the street are shortchanging their citizens."

For those who state that although desirable, it can't be done, I point to the over 35 cities and counties which have accomplished this successfully, including cities the size of Arlington, Texas as has been described to you.. Community policing provides the

optimal working environment for maximum utilization of the abilities of the college educated officer - so the issues are complimentary. This professional working environment will also assist in recruiting and retaining the college educated officer. In the near future PACE will publish a booklet on "Successful Recruitment of College Degreed Officers".

In conclusion, I would like to cite the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals:

I hope you can make the best political decisions for the people of your city. In my opinion such decisions are critical to your success as a chief. If you decide to require college degrees for officers, PACE stands ready to assist you in successful achievement.

I invite all of you to join in this important national movement to improve policing. At your chairs there is information about PACE and our December national meeting on a Caribbean cruise ship. Also please complete the short survey form and deposit it at Booth 136 - ASLET - to win a 19" color TV.

Mary Ann Viverette

Thank you Dr. Mayo, you certainly have a wealth of experience and history in this area.

Okay, we have heard from the four panelist and hopeful that you all have some questions that may not only help you but other Chiefs here in the audience this morning.

Q. What specific behaviors were manifested in those types of offenses that resulted in discipline issued by the state differ in the educational levels.

What we found is that when you are talking about loss of certification. It is more likely that officers with the lower educational levels would get themselves into a position more readily than other ones. A masters educated officer, there were officers with master degrees that had their certification lost. The same with the High School. There really wasnt much difference in the type of offenses, that the people were involved across the educational degree. A lot of it was untruthfulness, sex offenses, integrity issues. There were a handful that was a use of force. Use of force really was the only one that we could gather from the information we had was a little bit more prevalent in the high school educated officers than the higher level educated officer. The other types of transgression that resulted in certification loss was pretty uniformed across the educational level. The only one that we saw that there was more of at the high school level was use of force. Now that is still relatively devastating offense, but any of them that result in certification loss were also devastating, particularly to the individual, to the department, and the community, because each case did result in media attention locally and throughout the state in some cases.

Q. Chief Cunningham, if you controlled for things like variables age gender, years of service. Would your Table 2 and 3 look much different?

Not a lot, but there would be some difference in there. One of things that we didnt have and this is a problem with the data that is available when you look at it. - especially when you want to do it nation wide and have a little bit more meaning than one states experiences. Being able to go into the databases and pull all that information out. Florida because it is the same commission that deals with educational incentives, certifications and discipline. All that information is relatively available. To do the actual in depth studies, we would had to have gone and pull in each officers discipline files, then actually do an analysis on that . One of the areas that we do have a question on is, It is entirely possible that higher educated officers maybe higher up in the organizational structure. That may lead to less exposure to the situations that would allow for revocation of certification loss. So there certainly is a lot more information that needs to be explored and asked of . Also going across the state. California has a massive population but they also right now dont have an easy way to link the educational level with the discipline process. And you also get into certain areas of privacy and that type of thing. The records that are available in Florida are massively different than any other states. Everything in the state of Florida is open. You could come in and do any type of analysis on Florida public records that you want. Where as other states, the discipline process is very guarded and confidential. The only thing in Florida that is restricted is basically my address and where my children go to school. My complete disciplinary history of every officer of the education level, every personnel jacket, everything in the state of Florida is open. Which makes it an easy avenue to do research.

The amount that you take it though, your question is entirely on point. There are other issues that need to be explored here. The study isnt meant to be a definitive answer. It is really meant, like much research. Okay it starts us down road, now where do we need to go from here. Now it seems to indicate with especially 77% of all disciplined being attributed to a body that is only 58% of the population. That there is some relationship there. Thats where we need to go from there. At this point we need more, but we think that this study at least adds a little bit more evidence that education does have a benefit.

Id like to add one all of the studies for the past 30 yrs are single departments, that is going back to study back to RAND Study New York City of 1970 with the exception of Scott Cunninghams study and one in California. The first multi department study was done in California two years ago involving a series of different departments. It was published in the California Police Officers Journal. And with the same findings consistent with these numbers. .

Q. How many start off by requiring either a bachelors degree or masters degree versus prior police experience, who gradually require a four year degree. Do you think it is easier to from two year degree straight out to a four year degree and why not do that.

A. Dr. Freedman

That is a great question I believe that it is probably easier and probably better on the workforce to graduate your requirements. Going from no requirements to requiring everybody to come in with a degree.That certainly decreases the amount of sudden and rapid change within the organization and is going to decrease the stress levels as well. So I think the graduated requirements work well for the time. If I was to draw out a road map for other organizations, I would recommend they would look at a way of graduating the requirements. Perhaps starting with supervisor requirements and an associates etgree. Then over time giving the officers a certain amount of time for themselves go back obtain the bachelors degree so that they would qualify for promotion. But then graduating the requirements for entry level officers as well.

These are great questions and we still have 20 minutes so we will get to all of them.

To show the Quebec experience 1973, our government required all municipal and provincial state police officers to have a three-year college degree. There was a lot of backlash. The chiefs of police wanted it, but they couldnt get it individually. But united they put pressure on the department of security and the municipal of public security mandated that this was so. So for the last 30 years we have been training very specifically not generically criminal justice the police chiefs gave us input as to what competency they wanted the officers to have, and we have been doing that. Not to say that we do everything right in Quebec, but it is one thing we did do right. I agree with Dr. Mayo. It is not hard, we have approximately 5,000 applicants for about 1,000 positions every year. Thats over the ten colleges. These are bilingual, male, female, English and French. And so far so good.

Mary Ann Viverette

If you are just coming in and you didnt get a copy of the study on many of the chairs there are a five-page white paper that you might want to pick up. And there are extras, so if you want to take one to someone else that is not here. Any other questions?.

Q. I dont think this is a question. I wanted to make a statement, because Dr. Cunningham talked about the POST commission council or boards around the states. Im Don Hopkins, the Executive Director of Maryland Police Training Commission and Im a former president of IALST. And IALST is the International Association of Directors for the Law Enforcement and Training.

We have discussed this for years. We were approached many years ago by Dr. Mayo and we did a resolution supporting this but you wont see the POST commissions council in your state making this a requirement. However, the move that IALST have done is three-fold. First of all we have started a decertification database that now has 14 states listed through our post net which our webpage. Secondly, we have been encouraging congress to support the old leap funds or college tuition reimbursement. Because back in the 60s, I think , almost everybody my age that I talk to in the criminal justice system had gotten some use out of the old leap funds. And we think this would help to begin to move in this direction. And last but not least, we are encouraging ourselves in each of our states and collectively to get to the local colleges in your state and put pressure on them if you have to, to get college credit for your police academy.

We at Rio Salano College having been leap frog for years. But at Rio Salano College in Arizona has granted Maryland and come in and did a detailed study, 39 college credits for any of our 20 police academies and for any of our individuals that completes them. We have one community college in Maryland that I think is leading the way, is Frederick County Maryland. With a little extra, additional education in their police academy, they are walking across their police academy stage with a AA degree. So that is the things that I think we need to work on because I think that works on both ends. The decertification, plus they are trying to get more effort. I think its important to bring in discussion the current law enforcement/police officers in this country that need the opportunity to get the tuition reimbursement. With todays technology, you dont even have to change shifts. A lot of times they can get it through Internet.

Mary Ann Viverette

Q. Thomas Moore from Omaha Nebraska. Dr. Freedman mentioned the challenges we have as a profession attracting the best and the brightest. I am just curious as to what terms innovative strategies, techniques that utilize the best and brightest. Considering shrinking budgets and what type of resources your committing to the procurement process.

Okay, its not recruiting the best and brightest, doesnt require rocket science, it does require a commitment to recruiting and we use a lot of the same recruiting type strategies that many other department use. But we have an advantage over a lot of the other departments because we require a bachelors degree. Many of our officers have a master degree and a couple with phDs. They now are teaching criminal justice classes and teaching other classes in other colleges. Weve created a network with college professors and instructed who now refer their students to us. But we have to target the key populations that we are attempting to recruit. And we have to target our recruiting strategies, recruiting efforts, and recruiting dollars towards those populations. And so we are looking for college educated officers. We understand that recruiting minority and protective class officers are a challenge. We could put a newspaper ad in be overwhelmed with white male applicants. Recruiting white male applicants is not a problem. We do that easily. But the protected class applicants, the females, the minorities, we actually have to target them. Go to colleges with higher minority and female enrollment population. Talk to athletic directors of female athletic programs in colleges. We have to make sure that we have good relationships with minorities. We ask people in the communities to refer people to us. And when we go out on recruiting trips, we make sure that the people we are actually engaging in the recruiting efforts are reflected of the populations that we are targeting. So we have to invest our dollars in targeting those key populations that are non-traditional police type population. We are able to successfully do so.

Chief could I add just a comment. Recent study of historically black colleges student body show there is increasing percentage of student body majoring in criminal justice. And therefore the historically black colleges are offering a more fertile ground for this recruitment than they have in the past. And I would mention very quickly that Chief Bowman. But that in the August issue of LINKS, which is mailed by the cops office to the every police department in the nation, there is an excellent article describing the great works that Chief Bowman is doing.

Q. I am interested in the comments by the panel. Once you bring more educated officers into departments which I endorse in terms on community policing. What do you recommend, not only to retain them, but continue to develop them. I am not talking about executive level development as they move up the ranks, but of line officers with bachelors degrees. What do we need to do to continue beyond in service training to enrich that critical thinking.

I believe it was Dr. Mayo who talked about the big picture. In recruiting and retaining applicants with bachelors degrees and retaining them successfully, require that we Police Chief and managers take a look at the big picture. Every employee wants to be challenged, they want to feel like theyre in on things. And so we have to make them a part of the decision-making apparatus for the department. We, at my department anyway, we readily create committees to conduct research, to make policy recommendations. Every year we ask employees what their interests are. And we try and design and develop their training and career development programs to address their specific career interests. We also recognized, especially for female employees that are young and mothers or young mothers that want to be parents, that providing some measure of flexibility is important. So we have created programs that, where both male and female employees can change their schedules can create some flex time and take care of children. Go to football games, whatever. And so they feel more valued as an employee. So we look at their individual needs as employees, we ask them about their career goals and we make sure they establish careers goals, we create training opportunities to address those career goals. But we also readily communicate with our employees and involve them in decision making process within the organization. And we try to make sure that they understand, they are critical pieces to the department apparatus and that it tends to work well for us.

Can I add one thing to that. You actually started at the university. Because if the value of the product of higher education is to recognized. If you look at the profile of higher education today, clearly any college degree will do. It doesnt matter what you graduated in. But if you look at the kind of people that are attracted to the profession, they tend to gravitate to criminal justice. Criminal justice is part of the LEA funds and only some of it is starting to go for the academicization. We only have 20 programs around the country that provide doctoral degrees. And within that I can tell you that if I look at 14 years ago, we have doubled that number of students, when we raise the standards of demands and expectations. One of the first things that I heard when we tried to do that is that you are going into department because students will not think this is an easy place to get a degree any more. Well it shouldnt be an easy place to get a degree. Because when they go out on the streets, life is much more difficult than just getting the grades. So if dont earn it, you will not get it. And I think we need to start not with just the police culture but if we are talking about education. Were responsible as educators to start it in the universities. So Im actually optimistic that if we come up with fairly more stringent standards, expectations demands, but with a helpful approach, not one that is restrictive to completing the degree. I think it can go along way to helping the process.

Q. John Furman (IACP). I had to leave the room for a minute, so if this has been talked about please wave me off. Theres 17,500 some police agencies, county, local. The vast majority are small. Of that 17,000, almost 15,000 have less than 24 sworn officers. I wanted to ask the panel if you havent already discussed this. What do you see as the future, because we know historically, the smaller agencies have said forget college education, I just need to get a recruit pool of any kind to fill up my spots. They have even had to fight standards being set by state associations on a minimum levels because they are afraid it will wipe out their recruit pool. What do you see for the future for those guys, for the smaller departments who want to get at this issue to but are struggling.

I would like to respond to that. If you would look at the PACE website, you will see that the majority of the departments which require four-year degrees are small departments. I was pleasantly shocked to see that data. But I do not have the list in front of me but you will see that the majority of the departments requiring four-year degrees are small police departments.

Q. Ricky Bennett, Colorado. Ive had the opportunity, Dallas being one and in Denver area to do a survey what they expected, what type of degree they expected their police officers to have. And predominantly what I have found was that is was in criminal justice. The main reasoning was they said was Well we expect you to be the professional in order to understand the system. And yet today, we talked a little bit about professionalizing, we talked about critical thinking, we talked about bodies of knowledge raising the academic standards. You look at engineering and engineers have a specific body of knowledge. Lawyers have a body of knowledge. I heard, I believe, Dr. Mayo mention that our officers needed to be trained in understanding sociology, psychology, individual psychology. So I guess the question comes down to it seems that a lot of people agree that education in this field is necessary. But what is our body of knowledge. Really where do we put our emphasis and maybe that where it seems we are struggling a little bit. As police officers we have to know a body of law, but yet we have to know something about society. So I guess, rather than criminal justice, the question would be to hear my thoughts, do we need to change.

I will try to address that and maybe I will be even provocative a bit . There is a lot of mention about universities and bodies of knowledge, and a lot of the helping professions teach things that really are not purview. They also do research that has nothing to do with the professional expertise. Since I am also a social worker by training, I will tell you that most of the research that is done in social work should have been done in psychologist, physciatry or human organizations. It has nothing to do with the assessment of the social worker as a profession. Yet, they developed into guilt and thats important politically. I think its important to do for police officers as well. So when you are talking about the content part of it is political. Political reality is in universities, political is out in the fields. Good universities today are accredited. Accreditation requires an assessment of outcome. What is it that we want and I know that as a chair I had to provide what kind of final product as a student do we want to produce out there. So we have to say, okay out of x number of hours we want to y number of courses in social sciences, humanities and so forth. The fact of the matter is, and I hate to say, the King wears no close. It is very difficult to suggest a direct linkage to an A specific course and the type of knowledge that an undergraduate will come out with. And I will say something even more harsh, high school education, when I went to high school is about what universities are now when they provide bachelor degrees. I know what I was required of then and I look at what students are required today at the bachelor level. I Dont want to say its a joke because I make a living at it. But to some extent its reality. The last fifty years, we have opened the gates for higher education. And I think we need to do more than that. Now in terms of the specific bodies of knowledge, there isnt really one. And I think that the myth of having a professional at the end of the tunnel of undergraduate education is that exactly that a myth. I think you can get to Rome from sociology and poly science, english. The FBI hires people with logic philosophy and english degrees, because they turn out to be the best degrees of the people who think. I dont know why, but thats the reality. So theres really not one single way of approaching it. And at this point, as an educator Id be happy if someone became a police officer even if they have never even visited my department. But for the long term, I think the surviorablity of higher education that is get towards the law enforcement profession needs to be influenced by what the universities see and what they seek depends on what kinds of demands is imposed on them. Which brings me back to the point I made earlier. Visit the universities. Not just as an individual, but as an association as a professional organization. And impose the request, impose the demand and higher standards and you will get more than one type of wine from the same barrel.

Chief Viverette. I know that there are a lot more questions, but we have run out of time. I am sure the panelist will happy to answer any questions personally. And you know where you can find all of them. Im sure they will take a call or e-mail.

I want to thank all of the panelist, not only for your preparation and participation. It was great, but also that your commitment to professionalism and law enforcement are really appreciated. I want to thank all of you for joining us and attending the conference.