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A Critical Issue That Law Enforcement

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A critical issue that law enforcement faces from the time it was created to present day, is a lack of police training. The most recent data research done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics about police training across the United States was done in 2009. It reported that in the year 2009 basic training programs averaged 761 hours of classroom training (about 19 weeks). A third of academies also had additional mandatory field training with an average length of 453 hours. The topics with the average most instruction time in these training programs consisted of firearm training (60 hours), self-defense (51 hours), health and fitness (46 hours), patrol procedures (40 hours), investigations (40 hours), emergency vehicle operations (40 hours), criminal law (36 hours), and basic first aid (24 hours). In Texas, only 618 hours of basic training are required by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. In 1977 there was a study done by the IACP (International Association of Chiefs of Police). It showed that the average police officer received less than 200 hours of formal training, whereas The National Advisory Commission reported that physicians received more than 11,000 hours; lawyers more than 9,000; teachers more than 7,000; embalmers more than 5,000; and barbers more than 4,000. While I do understand that that this study was done roughly 40 years ago, the total amount of average basic formal training police officers receive (based upon BJS

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