Andragogical Instruction for Effective Police Training By Robert ...

America's Community Policing Era (1980–Present)

Not unlike the state of affairs that prompted reforms by England's Peel in 1829 and those by America's Vollmer a century later, the social climate in America during the 1960s and 1970s once again called for much-needed change due to an increase in social unrest and violence. Events such as the civil rights movement, Vietnam War protests, the “hippie, peace, and free love” movement, experimentation with hallucinogenic and other illicit drugs, a rise in the crime rate, along with a host of other tumultuous social changes, prompted unparalleled reactions on the part of the police (Schmalleger, 2007, p. 194). Their conditioned response to the social unrest of the time was based on the mentality of the reform era, which placed primacy on the need to reestablish the law and order, one in which society not only empowered the police with the requisite authority as crime fighters but also looked to them as recognized and respected authority figures within the community. While such an overt response was perhaps what society needed and wanted as a consequence of the corruption, social disorder, and lawlessness associated with the political era, this same type of a response was met with contempt during the 1960s and 1970s. Images of police in riot gear employing batons, tear gas, canines, and water cannons to quell crowds evoked not only complaints of police brutality but also an outcry that the police were unsympathetically out of touch with society. Once again, this gave rise to a call for much-needed reforms on the part of the police to reconnect with society, which, among many things, underscored the importance for more training and was articulated in the 1967 Task Force on Police as part of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. The task force found that “most training programs were disjointed, run by unmotivated part-timers who had little time to prepare their presentations, and inadequate for preparing a recruit to police within a democratic political context.” Among the task force's many recommendations was a call for a minimum 4-year college degree and an academy curriculum that emphasized due process, sensitivity toward the public, and “an appreciation for enforcing the law and maintaining peace in a democratic society” (Bailey, 1995, p. 528). Six years