Police training differs from city to city, but there are certain standards that all forces should adhere to according to Jackie Lisnek, a Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia studying causes and consequences of inequality to reduce prejudice, especially in the criminal justice system.

“We’re still trying to figure out what makes good training and what’s the best training,” Lisnek said.

She said that evidence-based training is a good way to see if police training is making a difference. Thinking about the outcomes we want to train and test to see if the training is targeting those outcomes.

“We need to be more effective in terms of pushing more concretely what officers should do on the job,” Lisnek said. “Not just raising awareness of bias but actually giving officers concrete strategies.”

Most diversity training lasts a few hours or a day and then is not reinforced until the next year.

“We really need to have bias training and diversity training implemented in the hiring process, in every stage,” Lisnek said. “Focusing on that diversity training as not just another box to check off and integrating it into other initiatives and all levels of the organization.”

Lieutenant Mike Lewis has been with the Kent City Police Department for 19 years and is in charge of hiring, recruiting and background checks for new officers. He is also the department training coordinator.

After officers graduate from the police academy, which is around 800 hours and approximately the same length as a college semester, they take their certification exam and have one year to be hired.

Kent’s hiring process begins with a written exam, a mandatory physical fitness test, a panel interview and the first integrity test which is a computerized voice stress analysis test (CVSA).

After those steps, a full background investigation is done, checking in with all past references.

“We spend a whole lot of time investigating people’s quality and character, that’s very very important to us,” Lewis said.

After the background check, officers go through a chief’s interview and then get a conditional offer of employment. They have to pass a polygraph examination, a psychological exam and a medical exam to actually get the job.

“Then you start working here, and then it gets really challenging,” Lewis said.

Most of the learning is done during field training which is at least four months long at this department.

“You will be riding along with a field training officer side by side in a cruiser, working all three shifts,” Lewis said.

Every officer hired no matter their prior experience by Kent Police goes through the same amount of structured training.

“We never stop learning, we never stop training, we never stop educating our police officers,” Lewis said.

Officers also are required to complete mandatory continued education of at least 40 hours every year.

“We have hired officers that worked for other agencies who thought they knew what they were doing,” Lewis said. “They thought they knew what it took to become a police officer and then they came here and said ‘Wow I never realized how much I did not know about the job.’”

Especially over the past few years, there have been a lot of calls for police reform.

“There’s been much made of the lack of training and education in police officers across the country, especially since 2020,” Lewis said. “That brought a whole lot of issues to light.”

When state and federal mandates came out in 2022 requiring all departments to complete the necessary training, Kent officers already had been certified for those specific trainings.

“One reform came out I think that had 28 different points that they were stressing and we’d already satisfied 25 of them,” Lewis said.

Kent City Police often work as a team with the Kent State University Police and back each other up if something happens in the city or at the university.

“The diversity that they bring to the city, it’s something that definitely makes the city a better place,” Lewis said.

Sergeant Tricia Knoles is the administrative sergeant that oversees training at the Kent State University Police Department and has been with the department for almost 18 years.

The hiring process is similar to the city’s and starts with officers needing academy training beforehand.

Then they go through six months of field training and six months with a mentor. The mentor is less intense than the field training officer but is there for any questions.

After that year of training they technically have four more years of training. Officers have a list of mandatory training they need to complete and by the end of the five years they will be sent to their specialized area to go to school.

Aside from the five years of training, officers have to complete monthly training as well. Some include requalification training for firearms and pepper spray, bias base training and ethics, diversity training, CPR, civil disorder training and crowd control.

The department also trains active threats four to five times a year.

Last summer the department staged a full-scale scenario of shutting down the Student Center and library, roping it all off, having actors come in and other departments like Kent Fire Department and Kent City Police Department to run through an active shooter scenario.

Officers are typically assigned six to nine academic buildings and three to four residence halls that they are supposed to do weekly walkthroughs of and touch base with students and faculty.

“The more they see us in uniform when not there for a call or a traumatic experience, the more comfortable people feel, the more safe they feel,” Knoles said.

According to Lisnek, officers should take training seriously and departments should ensure all levels of the organization enforce it so it can’t be looked over as a required training.

She said training also should be tailored to each specific area and department, adding university police and city police will likely have different equity issues that need to be addressed in different ways.

“There may not be a one size fits all approach,” Lisnek said. “We have the same goal and that goal is better policing.”

Savana Capp is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].