PoliceLink

Through all of the law-enforcement hiring articles, emails, and discussions I've been involved with, one thing has become clear: a person’s ability to be hired is not in the stars. It's in the patterns you can read in their lives, and police chiefs, sheriffs, and the recruiters and background investigators that work with them, are looking for those patterns. The best ...

I had been a field training sergeant for several years when we hired a new recruit who sat down with my boss and told him that she really didn’t have the time or the inclination to go through all that silly police academy and patrol officer stuff. She asked to be immediately assigned to our Investigations Division as a detective, and ...

A polygraph exam is often a “make or break” part of the police testing process, but it’s often difficult to prepare for and even understand. As Richard Nixon said “I don’t know anything about lie detectors other than they scare the hell out of people!” Polygraph testing is used far more in government pre-employment processes than in the private sector. In ...

When I finally got hired by the police department, where I would eventually spend the majority of my law enforcement career, I was so thrilled to receive that letter of appointment that I didn’t bother to find out how much money I’d be taking home each week. I’d been involved in the testing process for months, I was 21, single, still ...

Wouldn't it be great if there was one and _only one_ police entrance exam for every department in the nation? However, as many of you know, that's just not the case. Every police agency has different requirements and different attributes they are looking for in an employee, which means you could take a dozen police entrance exams and none of them ...

It seems like all we hear in the media is economic doom and gloom. Granted, unemployment is high, layoffs are common, and it’s easy to get discouraged. But it really is possible to get hired, even in this economy. The Reality of a Lousy Economy A bad economy tends to mean a higher crime rate; more crime means more cops. It’s ...

My mom was a school teacher and both my parents were college-educated so I spent most of my childhood enduring frequent lectures about the importance of academics. Grades were not a problem for me until I entered middle school; then there were just too many other interesting things to do besides study and my grades slipped a bit. This did not ...

When I became a cop in 1980 many of the veteran officers made fun of the new recruits who had college degrees. We heard things like “What are you going to do in that bar fight, Rookie, hit ‘em with your diploma?!” And to be honest, at the time I really didn’t see how my four year degree in “Law Enforcement ...

In the general orders or in the personnel manual of virtually every police organization there is language about "ethics" and "integrity." But what exactly does than mean? Ethics is an easy word to throw around and yet very hard to define. Police officers are held to a higher standard than the general public, both on and off duty, but do we ...

Once you’ve passed the written test, the oral interview, the physical agility test, and you’ve successfully jumped through a few other hoops, you’re probably ready for the background investigation. How ironic that part of the process to become a crime fighter is to be investigated by one! In this competitive job market, the background investigation is becoming even more important to ...

One of the most popular workshops we teach is titled “What Did You Just Say?!” We call it that because if we called it “Organizational Communication for Professional Police Agencies” no one would hire us. Attending classes on how to communicate with each other is right up there with sexual harassment prevention, cultural diversity training, and learning CPR; its stuff we ...

Most of us start the academy with a servant’s heart. Remember the old LAPD motto “To Serve and Protect?” That’s all of us, that’s supposed to be what cops are all about, but pretty quickly into your law enforcement career, it becomes less about “them” and more about “us.” We separate ourselves from the rest of society, even from our family ...

The very last thing on my mind the day I was hired by my police department was getting promoted. Oh sure, I had a fleeting fantasy that “some day” I’d be the agency’s first female chief. But I was mostly concerned with getting through the academy and then on to field training; in other words, I desperately wanted to be a ...

People always ask me, “Why did you become a cop?” I’d love to have a great philosophical answer like, “I wanted to have the opportunity to give back to my community” or a really cool answer like “I wanted to drive fast cars, shoot big guns and put evil men behind bars” or even the standard oral board interview answer everyone ...

Teenagers get a bad rap. Many adults think that teens today are nothing but a lazy, drug-crazed, sexually obsessed, over-privileged, video-game-addicted drain on society…all the same things that adults thought about my generation, except for the video game part. In reality, this current generation of teens may be the next “Greatest Generation;” many have an excellent work ethic, a deep sense ...

You don’t really want to be a cop, do you? Fighting crime, saving lives, big guns, fast cars, a cool uniform, hot calls; that stuff’s not for you. The hours are long, the gratitude is short-lived, and there may occasionally be people trying to kill you when you’re just trying to make a living and do a little good. Take some ...

You’re out of the academy, done with field training and out on your own. You may be just off probation, ten years into the job, a detective, a supervisor, a manager; you may even be the chief, but chances are, you’re hoping to _never_ have to sit in a classroom again. After all, isn’t most of what we learn in law ...

I’ve been a cop at the same police department for 28 years. That’s more than half my life, longer than any of my romantic relationships and four years more than my oldest kid was on his last birthday. That’s quite a commitment. You’d think that I must have chosen carefully back in 1980 when I took my agency’s police entrance exam. ...

These days, a career in law enforcement doesn’t mean you have to patrol the mean streets of an urban jungle or walk the cell block of the state prison. One of the most popular areas of police work today is forensics. But the term “forensic science” means so much more than what you see on Wednesday’s episode of “CSI.” Simply put, ...

Do you love the idea of being involved in crimefighting but are not sure you’re ready, willing or able to strap on a gun, a badge, and a TASER? Fortunately for you, there are literally hundreds of opportunities to work in law enforcement without being a sworn officer. In fact, your most difficult decision may be which position to go after, ...