Lowering Hiring Standards: Necessary Move or Dangerous Compromise?

In light of continued recruitment challenges and a shallow candidate pool, some agencies across the country are lowering the requirements that qualify someone to become a police officer, including educational achievements, physical fitness abilities, and criminal and drug use history.

Some think this is a necessary move to ensure that communities have a sufficient number of officers to keep them safe. Others fear these lowered standards will make communities less safe and open police departments with already anemic budgets to costly liability stemming from the actions of less qualified officers.

In this FREE WEBINAR, a Calibre Press team of senior law enforcement leaders—Lt. Jim Glennon, Chief Steve Johnson and Chief Liam Duggan—will explore the numerous angles related to this lowered standard trend. They will address complicated questions such as:

What skills, talents and abilities prove most valuable as indicators of a future outstanding officer?

Is a college degree really necessary to be a police officer? Why…or why not? If so, what type of degrees would be considered applicable to the job of a police officer?

Military experience: Should it carry the same weight as a college degree?

Private sector experience: Should several years of experience in the private sector have as much consideration as college?

Arrest record/criminal past: How do you define the parameters of what past criminal activity is “acceptable” for a police officer to have in their background and what isn’t?

Physical fitness: What standards are fair and applicable to the job? What are the dangers of allowing less physically fit new officers to hit the street? How low should the fitness bar go?

Gender disparity: Should men and women be expected to pass the same physical tests? Are there concerns with the “30 by 30” initiative, practically as well as legally?

Liability concerns: Does lowering hiring standards legitimately expose agencies to costly claims that they knowingly armed and empowered someone who was not intellectually and/or physically qualified to manage the responsibilities of a police officer?

Is this a transient trend? Once hiring standards are lowered, can they ever be raised?