The Howard County Police Department?s tough education standards have made it harder to hire new officers, prompting officials to push for changes easing the minimum requirements.
“The current pool of qualified candidates does not allow us to fill vacancies with the best candidates entering our profession,” Police Chief Bill McMahon said in a letter to county officials.
The County Council is considering a measure that would amend the requirements to allow recruits with a high school diploma or equivalent to earn an associate degree during an 18-month probationary period.
If approved, a recruit could earn the degree in police science from Howard Community College through a program in which police academy courses and additional classes count toward the
degree.
Now, new officers must have an associate degree, a requirement put in place in 1999 as part of the department?s “overall effort to continually professionalize our policing services to an affluent and well educated citizenry,” McMahon wrote.
Most police departments around the country, including those in the Baltimore area, require a high school diploma, according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Thirteen percent of county police agencies require a two-year degree, and the trend is for applicants to have two years of
college credits, according to the IACP.
Montgomery County requires a minimum of 60 credit hours.
In Howard, the limitations contributed to the department falling short of hiring goals for three out of five of the last police academies, McMahon wrote.
The Howard County Police Officers? Association supports the change.
“We think it will open up more opportunities for more candidates to become police officers and … still maintain the high standards of [the department],” said union President Dan Besseck.
The union opposed the 1999 change because it “cut out potential good applicants,” he said.
The program wouldn?t mean a less educated force, since officers must still earn associate degrees, Besseck said.
However, the inability to recruit officers shouldn?t be traced back to education requirements, and instead departments should rethink recruitment programs, said Sheldon Greenberg, associate dean of the Division of Public Safety Leadership at Johns Hopkins
University?s School of Education and a former Howard police officer.
Further, associate degree programs for police recruits are often “watered down,” with loose credit requirements and minimal work, he said.
“Any department that minimizes higher education as a requirement in policing does little to advance the profession and takes us backward,” Greenberg said.
