A couple of weeks back, I penned a column about increasing law enforcement education requirements in Washington — officers can currently be hired at age 21 with a high school diploma — and how Lewis County was in a unique position with highly-developed resources to become the potential new model for law enforcement education and hiring practices.
In that column, I very briefly outlined the hiring process for law enforcement officers and proposed the idea that a two or four-year degree should be required to become a law enforcement officer. Upon being posted to The Chronicle’s Facebook page, this was the thoughtful response from Jeff Humphrey of the Lewis County Sheriff’s Office:
“Brittany, you outline the requirements for a police officer to get hired very well. However, you missed a few points. In order to get hired as a candidate, you have to pass a physical fitness test, in-depth background investigation, polygraph test, and psychological exam. This isn’t your fill out a two-page application and has an interview hiring process. If the candidate successfully passes those tests, he or she then goes to the academy and upon completion of the 720-hour basic law enforcement academy, the new officer goes into another training phase called ‘FTO.’ The trainee rides with a field training officer for at least 12 weeks or another 480 hours of on the job training. If the new officer passes all of this training the officer is then allowed to go out on their own and patrol. In most cases from the start of the hiring process to being out on their own is about one year. The training and education does not stop there. Once you are a full-time Officer, most if not all departments require their officers to attend on-going training of 4 to 8 hours a month. The Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission (WSCJTC) requires full-time officers to have at least 24 hrs of ongoing training a year. This includes firearms / use of force training, emergency vehicle operations, defensive tactics, crisis intervention, legal / law updates, and search and seizure law updates.
I’m all for cops being educated, but police departments are already pulling from such a small number of qualified candidates, I’m afraid this type of requirement would only diminish that hiring pool even more. I would be all for requiring a police officer to get their Associates degree within the first 5 years from their hire date.
I personally have been through Centralia College’s ‘Crosswalk’ program. I can tell you, it is a great program. With that being said I believe it made much more sense and I got a lot more out of it, already being an officer for several years. I’m also not naive enough to know we can always do better. I think opening up these conversations is good for everyone.
I can also tell you in my experience there is a big difference between being book smart and street smart. I have been training new officers since 2004. I would much rather have a new officer that is street smart than one that is book smart. If they are both, it is a huge bonus!”
I wanted to share this response here because — number one — I just really appreciated Humphrey’s multi-faceted perspective. Number two, it raised some additional valid points — some that I would counter — but more importantly, and number three, it ended up generating some very real, very promising conversation.
Since sharing this conversation, Steve Ward of Centralia College and Christine Fossett of the Centralia College Foundation have entered the conversation as well. And, as you know, I spoke with Sheriff Rob Snaza last week — Humphrey had mentioned the potential hybrid education model to Snaza already. And, Snaza even recognized the excellence of some of the very deputies that I graduated with from Centralia College Criminal Justice program.
John McCroskey, former Lewis County Sheriff and former Chronicle columnist, even commented on one of my Facebook posts to weigh in, too. The conversation has truly brought people across industries and generations of law enforcement together for an exciting opportunity.
I’ll continue to keep you posted if and when the conversation continues to progress.
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Brittany Voie is a columnist for The Chronicle. She lives south of Chehalis with her husband and two young sons. She welcomes correspondence from the community at voiedevelopment@comcast.net.
