What are the various psychological qualities required for a police officer? What are the steps involved in the selection of police officer candidates?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answers may vary.Among the psychological characteristics usually cited for police officers are the following:• Incorruptible: A police officer should be of high moral character. Reports of officers taking bribes or framing innocent suspects are especially disturbing, because the police officer must treat all citizens fairly within the rules of law.• Well adjusted: A police officer should be able to carry out the stressful duties of the job without becoming seriously and continuously affected by the stress. Officers are always in the public view. They need to be thick-skinned enough to operate without defensiveness, yet they must be attentive to the needs of others. They also need to cope with the dangers of their jobs, including the constant awareness that injury or death could occur at any time.• People-oriented: A police officer's major duty is service to others. An officer needs to have a genuine interest in people and compassion for them. At a commencement program of the New York City Police Academy, new officers were told, "There is one thing we cannot teach you and that is about people. The bottom line is to treat people as people and you'll get by" (quoted by Nix, 1987, p. 15).• Free of overly emotional reactions: Although a degree of caution and suspiciousness may be desirable for the job, the police officer should be free of impulsive, overly aggressive reactions and other responses in which emotions overcome the discipline imposed by training. Restraint is essential because officers are trained to take an active stance in crime detection and are even encouraged by their superiors to be wary of what is happening around them.• Dedicated: Officers should be committed to their jobs, and not be inclined toward frequent lateness or absenteeism or have personal problems that interfere with this commitment in an ongoing way.• Disciplined: Police officers should be team players, able to function effectively within a chain of command. This includes the ability to give orders to supervisees and accept orders from superior officers.• Logical: Police officers should be able to examine a crime scene and develop hypotheses about what happened and what characteristics might be present in the lawbreaker.The selection of police officer candidates can involve up to 10 steps: (1) application/prescreening, (2) entrance exam (focusing on reading, writing, problem-solving, judgment, and memory), (3) simulated scenario and verbal response, (4) physical fitness, (5) background investigation, (6) drug testing, (7) psychological testing, (8) polygraph, (9) oral interview, and (10) medical exam (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 2016). Consulting psychologists can provide parts of the entrance exam, simulated scenario, psychological testing, and oral interview.