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and “where untrained persons are permitted to function as policemen, no person's life or liberty is safe” (Vollmer, 1936, cited in Bailey, 1989, p. 231).
Yet despite Vollmer's call for increased training, there appeared a lack of momentum, perhaps in part due to a preoccupation with the approach of World War II. Later, however, in 1957 a renewed call for training was advanced by Vollmer's protégé, O. W. Wilson, who argued that “cadet training school should extend for a minimum period of 13 weeks, and only then if the recruit had an educational equivalent of two years of college” (Wilson, 1957, cited in Peak, 2006, p. 28). Despite his recommendations, however, a 1965 survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police found that only 15% of all police agencies provided recruits any formal training before releasing them on the streets (Kuykendall & Unsinger, 1975, cited in Peak, 2006).
Bailey (1989) explained that “the impetus for police reform” came not only from society at-large but also from within the ranks of the police themselves. “The coalition of civic, religious, and commercial groups that led the reforms of the late nineteenth century gave way to leaders from the police field after the turn of the century” (p. 562). These leaders concluded, inter alia, that “the police function was spread too thin and that the organization was a catch-all agency that absorbed too many social service responsibilities.” They argued that “these responsibilities detracted from what they saw as the primary goal of the police, crime control.” Relying on a professional model, “police leaders pushed for more centralization in the administration of the departments by lengthening the chief's tenure, developed a model that organized the departments along the functional rather than geographic lines,” and aimed at lessening political influences, thus insulating the police from politics (Bailey, 1989, p. 562). Paradoxically, while these changes succeeded in distancing the police from adverse political influences and orienting them toward a more bureaucratic, legalistic, and professional model of policing, subscription to this model stifled their ability to recognize and respond to social changes during the 1960s and 1970s, which once again led to calls for reform.