The Californian state legislature is evaluating a new bill that will mean police-officers will be required to have a 4 year college degree, and be at least 25-years-old, before they are allowed to join the force. The bill has been introduced in an attempt to reduce misconduct and violent actions by officers.
Democratic Assemblyman Reggie Jones-Sawyer, who introduced the bill, gave his reasoning behind doing so to Vice News. He said:
"This data-driven bill relies on years of study and new understandings of brain development to ensure that only those officers capable of high-level decision-making and judgment in tense situations are entrusted with working in our communities and correctional facilities."
An extensive study undertaken in 2007 showed that officers who had a college degree were far less likely than officers with only a high-school diploma to become involved in violence. It also showed that the younger an officer was the more likely they were to use unnecessary force.
It has been alleged in the past that police departments intentionally recruit low-IQ individuals as officers because they are far more likely to follow orders and less likely to stand up when confronted with wrongdoing in their departments. A federal court even agreed in the year 2000 that police departments were allowed to reject would-be officers on the basis that they were 'too-smart'. The ruling came after an individual who tried to become an officer was rejected because he scored too highly on an IQ test during his application process.
Many countries in the world already require their police officers to have college or university degrees before being accepted, these including Norway, Finland and Japan.
Debate surrounding police actions have been prominent in the United States following the killing of George Floyd earlier in the year, the killing sparked the largest and longest-running civil-disturbances in the United States since at least the 1960s.
The bill passing through the California state legislature is just one of the changes activists say is required to properly reform the police. Campaigners have also pointed out that in many US states, individuals can become officers after just a few weeks training and want this to be changed also. In many countries, it requires months or even years of training before becoming a police officer.
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