Clearly, the senses are important to all people but they play a critical skills role with soldiers, law enforcement officers and fire-fighters – for obvious reasons.
Is there a way for your agency to detect the decline of these critical skills in aging officers? The Retirement & Health Care Factor About 77 million baby boomers begin to enter retirement age in 2011.
The combination of these influences will create an environment where officers may be forced to work past the current traditional retirement age because they cannot afford not to.
Given these demographics, it would be prudent for law enforcement agencies to begin to prepare for an aging officer workforce.
The aging officer’s skill sets and talent should be matched with a real need within their agency or department – where their primary talents and “Highways” can be utilized effectively.
The Problem with Qualifications Theoretically, the decline in an officer’s skills would first be noticed during department or agency annual qualifications.
As some of the agencies I had initially trained asked me to come back and conduct refresher training I began to notice that during refresher training, some aging officers were struggling and it was clear that their motor skills were deteriorating.
Herein lays another example of deteriorating motor skills but enduring “Highways” of knowledge and experience in aging officers.
If there are no universal national or state standards for agencies to adopt, how do they choose what needs qualification? How often should an officer be required to qualify? Which skills require qualification? What are the standards for those qualifications? Officer Training Almost every state has some type of board that governs law enforcement training by statute.
In order to maintain a licensed peace officer status, the required hours of continuing education are: *16 hours for a peace officer or a part-time peace officer who has been licensed for at least six months but less than 18 months.
32 hours for a peace officer or a part-time peace officer who has been licensed for at least 18 months but less than 30 months.
48 hours for a peace officer or a part-time peace officer who has been licensed for at least 30 months.
Qualifications are typically used to assess an officer’s abilities.
Shooting qualifications are almost universally used within agencies to determine if an officer can still shoot straight.
So What? The universal shooting qualification is based on the enormous liability associated with an officer using their firearm.
The qualification is supposed to reduce agency and officer liability in the event of a shooting incident.
The average officer within months of leaving an academy will be able only to describe how a given suspect-control technique should be used but will have “Little ability” to actually apply it effectively in “a dynamic encounter with a defiantly resistant subject.” *At the rate academy and in-service training is typically delivered, it could take the average street cop up to 45 years to receive the number of hours of training and practice in arrest-and-control and officer-safety techniques that a student athlete gets in competitive sports during the usual high school career.
Aging officers will have to work longer to a greater retirement age.
As these officers age there will be a decline in their critical skills, yet they will retain valuable knowledge and wisdom that are required for success in the profession.
Smart employers will develop qualification standards that effectively evaluate an officer’s skills and capitalize upon the aging officer’s talents.
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