Police academies and training programs are under increasing scrutiny with every new report of an officer-involved civilian killing in the United States.  As calls for reform and reallocations of funding grow louder, the American police force may be approaching a reckoning around the use of deadly force and the professional and psychological preparedness of the sworn-officers on patrol.

How are U.S. police officers trained?

For an aspiring police officer in the U.S., the paths to employment can vary depending on the department the applicant hopes to work for.  There are close to 18,000 federal, state, county and local police agencies in the U.S., and the training requirements for new officers differ between them all.

 All applicants who apply to a  job within a police department must be at least 18, but the age restriction is 21 for some departments.  Other qualifications that are common for entrance are a high school diploma or GED, a criminal record clear of felonies - certain minor offenses may be overlooked by some departments - and the passing of an entrance exam.

Some U.S. states require police academy training prior to application for a job, while others offer training after a person is accepted as a candidate.

To enroll in a U.S. police academy costs around $5,000, a portion of which may be reimbursed by a police department upon employment. 

Once an applicant is selected by a police department, background checks, ride-alongs, drug-screenings, medical and psychological evaluations may also become requirements for hire.  

At least 24 U.S. states permit new police officers to begin working without having attended a basic police training program, according to Trainingreform.org  These states permit rookie officers to begin working with a department, which could include chasing, detaining, incarcerating, arresting and potentially even killing a suspect without having yet completed any accredited instruction.

What do police officers learn during training?

The duration of training varies between different agencies, but on average lasts between 13 and 19 weeks, with many programs as long as six months.  The length of training is short when compared to other wealthy countries, with police training standards of the United States ranking it near the bottom of a list of 100 countries.  Only Iraq, Afghanistan and Papua New Guinea have police training standards that fall lower than those of the U.S..   

Generally, U.S. police academy trainees learn in classroom settings about state laws, patrol procedures (52 hours), investigations (42 hours), emergency vehicle operations (38 hours), and report writing (25 hours), according to the website ApexOfficer, a police-officer created guide for prospective and existing officers.

Stress-based training models based on military procedures are used to teach about 48 percent of new recruits in American police academies, ApexOfficer says, with 18 percent trained in a non-stress environment focusing more on academic and physical achievement, while 34 percent of recruits are trained in facilities that use a combination of the two approaches.  

Nine out of 10 calls to 911 are for non-violent incidents, and an officer’s expertise in firearms use at the expense of learned crisis management skills or mental health response techniques often leave newer officers underprepared for real-life encounters with citizens in crisis.   

Advocates of police reform argue that more time should be spent learning de-escalation and communication techniques to at least equal the time spent on firearms and ballistics.

Why are there so many officer-involved shootings?

U.S. law enforcement killed 1,192 people in 2022 according to data from mappingpoliceviolence.us, despite pushes for reform following a spate of killings of unarmed and disproportionately Black civilians around the country in the last decade.   

Half of the people killed by police every year in the U.S. are white, yet Black Americans, who make up only 14 percent of the population, are killed at twice the rate of whites in these encounters.  

Massive protests and civic backlash attempting to address police brutality, training reform and reallocation of funding for police departments erupt after almost every high profile officer-involved killing of an unarmed person in the U.S., yet 2022 still saw the highest documented number ever of people killed by police.

U.S. laws make it possible for almost anyone in any state to be carrying or concealing a firearm.

While there are sometimes severe punishments for police officers who use unnecessarily excessive force that resulted in death, as in the cases of unarmed individuals like Mike Brown (2014), Tamir Rice (2014) Breonna Taylor (2020), George Floyd (2020) Daunte Wright (2021) and Tyre Nichols (2022), to name but a few, police academies on a national level have yet to modify or extend their training procedures in response.

Finland, where civilian gun-ownership rates are among the highest in Europe, requires 5,500 hours of police training, compared to the roughly 500 hours required in the U.S.  Officer-involved shootings in Finland are rare, despite 32 out of 100 citizens owning a gun.    

Around 40 percent of Americans say they or someone in their household owns a gun, data from the Pew Research Center and Harvard University  show.  

What is being done to prevent unnecessary police use of deadly force?

Overworked, overstressed and under-trained police officers patrolling American streets, where anyone could be carrying or concealing a firearm, is already a dangerous combination of factors that those seeking police reform insist American lawmakers address.

The U.S. Department of Justice says it is their policy to value and preserve human life, and that officers may use deadly force “only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.

Leaving the use of force and deadly force at the discretion of the officer may be one factor that has led to so many deaths of unarmed people, and to police officers being charged and incarcerated for murder or manslaughter.

Most developed countries have stringent rules for use of deadly force.  Finland allows for it “only when it is necessary to stop the actions of a person posing an immediate and serious danger to the life or health of another person and no more moderate means to do this are available.” 

The U.S. ranks 33rd among countries with the highest rates of police killings according to the World Population Review, causing proponents of the status quo to argue that U.S. policing needs are nowhere near the reforms necessary in countries like Venezuela, the Philippines, El Salvador, or Syria.

Yet a police officer’s adherence to the deadly force policy set out by the United States Department of Justice requires dedicated and revisited training and proven comprehension of de-escalation techniques.  

Extensive and continuous training in de-escalation and assessment techniques is essential, advocates say, if the practices are to become second-nature to officers when in high-stress incidents.  Experience and proper nonviolent training can help officers as much as citizens survive an escalating encounter.

The U.S. Justice Department policy on deadly force says it cannot be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect.  Verbal warnings must be issued prior to use, a firearm cannot be discharged solely to disable a moving vehicle unless the vehicle is threatening an officer or other, and alternative methods must be employed for resisting subjects if there is not an immediate threat as outlined in the policy.  

Deadly force should never be used against a person who is only a threat to themselves or property, the policy states.  

Identifying the factors that drive officer-involved shootings of unarmed citizens appears as the first step to decreasing the number of unjustified killings and subsequent prosecutions of police officers.  

Better preparing new police officers to adhere to the U.S. Department of Justice's Use of Deadly Force policy, and revisiting the training of more experienced officers with updated de-escalation and crisis management skills, may be the second step.

Consolidating the task of reform among the hundreds of law enforcement training academies around the U.S,. and maintaining consistent resources for officers employed among the various federal, state and local agencies to improve their response skills may be the third step needed for change, and one that has not yet happened. 

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021, put forth by U.S. Democratic lawmakers, sought to address policies and issues around policing practices and accountability, but failed to pass in the Senate Chamber in Congress.

As the number of officer-involved killings of unarmed people in the U.S. keeps ramping up along with the persistent outcry for police reform from a large portion of the population, significant change on a national level is not taking place, an oversight that some say is failing both police officers and citizens at the same time.

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