The bluegrass state has a blue job problem. People just don’t want to be Kentucky State Troopers.
They’ve got some strict rules in Kentucky. There was that 60 college credit thing. And then, there’s the summer tat problem, which totally sucks after the permanent remembrance of that drunken night with the white sheep. What to do?
After struggling with low recruitment in recent years, the Kentucky State Police are opening doors for a larger pool of potential recruits.
Hopeful troopers, who were once required to have 60 hours of college credit and two years of active duty experience as soldiers or police officers, now need just a high school diploma or GED and three years of work experience. Additional education and previous police or military service are now considered bonuses, according to KSP’s website.
When you don’t get enough applicants for a job, you have two choices. Make the job more attractive by increasing pay and benefits, or make the pool of applicants larger by decreasing requirements. Guess which one is less expensive?
Not to denigrate a GED, but it doesn’t take a huge amount of tenacity to tough it out to high school graduation, especially for a pool of applicants for whom college credit is desired. Adding in three years of work experience, because “do you want to Supersize!” is always helpful when you have to decide whether to raise your weapon from low ready to kill, isn’t much of a bar either.
This doesn’t represent a lowering of standards. New recruits will still undergo the same rigorous 24-week training regime, take the same tests and be subject to the same background check as they always have been. The difference now is that a wider variety of people can join the force.
“All we’re doing is widening the opportunity for people who maybe didn’t have the chance to go to college,” he said. “We’re really opening a door for them to be able to fulfill their dream of coming on.”
Who doesn’t want the kid who “maybe didn’t have the chance to go to college” pointing a gun at them, processing the situation and making that split-second decision that ends in the word, “oops”?
This is happening everywhere, as “law enforcement officer” has declined below “Navy diver” on people’s career aspiration lists. Yes, we’re going to end up with a lot of barely employable people, and there will be problems.
But of course, it has always been a problem to some degree that police forces cannot conscript recruits, and so, have to take people who want to be police. Then, out of that pool, the officers of superior judgment will be moved up the command structure, leaving the others in regular contact with citizens.
A perpetual problem has been the people who seek authority are the ones we least want to exercise it. But that’s true of all cops, not to mention politicians. But does education/intelligence temper the exercise of power? If so, then this is different, even within the universe of people who aspire to carry guns and wear a shield.
It’s funny that you mention intelligence and education. Several of my friends who are officers have told me that their departments don’t want to hire people who are too intelligent. The theory is that if you are too smart you won’t stick around because you will get bored.
Moderation in all things. While the job has its moments, it is hugely boring most of the time. Then again, most jobs are.
Finally! I’m free to ditch my high paying tech profession in Venice Beach, California and move to Kentucky to don the campaign hat. Oops…Darn it. No, I’m not. I didn’t waste my time getting a GED when I dropped out of high school.
Some people are too smart for high school and college. Some people believe they are. If only I could do Venn diagrams.
You may be happy to know I have enough intellectual honesty to make the following statements:
– I dropped out of high school because I was an asshole when I was a teenager (not wasting my time to get a GED had more to do with the value I put on using my precious time to trip on LSD and watch ‘The Wall’ on VHS)
– I joined the workforce at a time of unparalleled demand for people who understand technology.
– One of the things my crippled mother taught me (by example) is you get your ass out of bed and do your job no matter what. I followed this example.
In other words, I am very, very lucky.
And very, very adorable. But you know that.
As someone who both graduated HS and took the GED at 16 on a bet, I have to say the GED was tougher, and I went to a Catholic college prep HS. Still wouldn’t want that to be the minimum qualification for employment where you can carry a gun and change people’s lives forever.
This is how you go down the rabbit hole and evoke my ire. You two want to discuss the virtues of your GED, get a room.
Wonder if Kentucky considered tabulating the potential long term cost of accepting candidates with lesser qualifications? Do data exist to enable analyzing this option? They might find that increasing salaries slightly to attract candidates is a better solution than lowering entry standards.
Make a thoughtful decision after weighing the costs/benefits? This is Kentucky we’re talking about.
“– I joined the workforce at a time of unparalleled demand for people who understand technology.”
This never went away and is still in effect.
Then it is paralleled and neither of you is very good a geometry.
At the time, it was unparalleled, but I appreciate the wordplay.
Weren’t you looking for a “change of pace”?
I don’t have the physique for a Sam Brown.
Unfortunately, there are those perfectly comfortable with granting these new recruits the authority to carry a weapon and exercise deadly force. Police recruiting and training standards are too low in this country to begin.
The impression I take from regularly visiting these pages is that American college students are increasingly excitable, passionate, self-righteous, narrow-minded prigs who cope badly with being challenged and who readily adopt and endorse the use of violence against people they dislike. These are not the qualities of a fine police officer.
The impression is understandable, but not all college students, nor all Millennials, are excitable, passionate, self-righteous, narrow-minded prigs. The primary reason the impression is created is that we write about them and not the good, hard-working, open-minded kids. They exist too, even if they’re not the subject of discussion.