Does police academy training include content on street gangs?
When police are first hired, most are required to attend an academy to learn about the job of police officer. While some departments – particularly those in chronic gang communities – have substantial training on this subject, my experience suggests this is not the norm. The following is an outline of topics covered in the Springfield (MO) Police Department’s Police Academy. It takes more than 1,300 hours to teach this curriculum, one of the longest and most thorough police training programs in the United States. Not all police academies have the same content. I’ve highlighted and italicized the word “Gangs” where it appears in the curriculum. Police Academy Course Topics and Tests I have taken the liberty of categorizing the academy content. Although the topics are correct, their order of presentation has been altered from the original document.
