Should Licensing Commissions Put Police on Trial?

• NCJ Number: 90190
• Journal: Police Magazine Volume: 6 Issue: 4 Dated: (July 1983) Pages: 23-31
• Author(s): M R Levinson
• Date Published: 1983
• Length: 9 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

By making training requirements and educational standards harder to evade, licensing boards in such States as Texas, Florida, and Minnesota are contributing to higher quality police personnel, but efforts to evaluate officer behavior under licensing standards are often too strict, inequitable, and without due process.

Abstract

Opinion on police licensing among police executives and union leaders is not unanimous. While many believe licensing is necessary to enforce professional training and behavioral standards, others consider it unworkable to impose statewide standards for hiring on every department, large and small, urban and rural. Even among supporters of licensing, there is concern that the certification process will not be applied equitably, because standards are often vague, a necessity in those States where there are wide variations in the requirements for hiring and training new police and sheriff's officers. Texas is such a State; in a State with 254 counties ranging in population from 91 to 2,409,000, establishing a uniform set of standards is not an easy task. While the law requires officers to be of 'good moral character,' in practice, nothing short of criminal conviction is grounds for revocation. In Florida, on the other hand, the revocation of an officer's license can be based on 'gross misconduct,' which may not involve a criminal conviction. Determining what is gross misconduct is under the discretion of the licensing commission. In Minnesota, citizen complaints to the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board are encouraged. Disciplinary action is limited to cases involving criminal convictions and violations of training requirements. Overall, while the enforcement of standards for police officers offer the promise of upgrading performance, determining what the standards should be and applying them equitably and sensitively under discretionary decisionmaking are the major problems.