The more things change, the more they stay the same: A multi‐wave national assessment of police academy training curricula

Research SummaryUsing secondary data from a census of 421 police academies nationwide continuously operating between 2002 and 2018, we assessed continuity and change in core areas of basic law enforcement training (BLET) of new police hires. Despite decades of concerns expressed by national‐level commissions, scholars, and practitioners about the substance of police academy basic training, ours is the first study since the 1980s that examines the content of basic training at multiple police academies during an extended period that included two eras of policing: community oriented and evidence based. Results showed continuity throughout time in total required hours of BLET, including required hours of core curriculum training, and a disproportionate distribution of total training hours allotted to areas central to the crime fighter persona of the early 20th century professional era.Policy ImplicationsThis assessment revealed strong empirical evidence of long‐term resistance to change in police basic training based on continuing overemphasis of traditional aspects of basic training (e.g., use of lethal weapons) over other parts (e.g., community‐oriented policing). Our results, combined with recent qualitative analyses of police basic training revealing a primary “danger imperative” message broadcast to trainees by instructors along with more subtle racist and sexist messages about “bad guys” wanting to kill cops, reveal that decades of efforts to get the occupation to change what new police officers learn during basic training is apparently the equivalent of what Dorothy Guyot once termed “bending granite”—an effort doomed to fail. To weaken the granite, police practitioners and leaders involved with training must take steps toward a complete and comprehensive reorientation of police recruitment and basic training that stresses the importance of new hires acquiring a toolkit that has a guardian‐based foundation and emphasis but allows for the rare instances when officers need to use warrior tools.