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In the wake of current events the U.S. police have once again come under immense public scrutiny, putting the focus on various aspects such as police brutality, racial discrimination, qualified immunity, police unions and others.
There is however one aspect that I would consider to be a HUGE elephant in the room, which is the amount of training that police officers in the United States receive:

I am from Germany. Over here we have significantly less crime than the U.S., less gun violence, less organized crime, less gang violence, or, to get to the point: The job of a police officer in Germany is significantly easier than the job of a police officer in the U.S., who has to deal with far more dangerous and complex situations and issues on an average basis.
Yet over here we consider the bare minimum amount of training a police officer requires to be two years (in my home state even three years), which seems to be the norm in developed countries, whereas in the U.S. the average seems to be between 20 and 30 weeks, or roughly 600 hours.

I cannot emphasize enough how insane this fact alone appears from my perspective let alone the fact that this isn't the primary issue of the current debate.
It seems perfectly obvious to me that this state of affairs is a recipe for disaster, considering that it means that U.S. police officers are sent into complex situations while having only between one quarter or one eighth of the training that other developed countries are providing their respective officers.

My primary question therefore is: Why is the amount of police training so much lower in the U.S. than in other developed countries?

Furthermore, if you want to go into detail, I would also be interested in why this doesn't seem to be even closely as big of an issue in public discourse as one would expect it to be.

Edit:

A comprehensive comparison between a great amount of countries is surprisingly hard to find, or rather was impossible to find for me. Therefore I looked at the specific information with regard to various north-western european countries (U.K., Germany, Scandinavia...), because they are the most comparable to the U.S. in terms of national development level. Examples for this would be Germany, Sweden and U.K..
Overall in the north-western European region the predominant model seems to be at least 2 years of training, more likely 3 and usually modeled after a bachelor-master-system.

AuronTLG
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    The question is interesting but do you have data regarding training in various countries? I am not convinced police officers all over Europe necessarily get as much training as in Germany. Also, it's a small detail but there is actually quite a bit of organized crime in Germany. – Relaxed Jun 26 '20 at 17:30
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    Historically, a lot of police departments, especially smaller ones, target people who are not interested in four-year college. So a three-year training program would put them off. – Azor Ahai -him- Jun 26 '20 at 19:45
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    An error you made where the correction may be helpful: "the US police has" should be "US police have." There is no "US police" organization besides the FBI that's relevant to the protests: standards for training vary based on jurisdiction and the situation on the whole isn't exactly like it is in Germany or many other countries. – gormadoc Jun 26 '20 at 20:33
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    Issues with USA's Police are much broader than just length of training (or Police carrying guns, another often quoted reason). Police training in Poland is mere 22 weeks (according to official site), yet on rankings of police-induced deaths per capita, Poland (where every Police(wo)man is always carrying a handgun) has pretty much same results as UK (where regular Police isn't carrying weapons) and is one of the world's safest countries, when it comes to Police brutality. Now Police in Poland has it's own issues, but those are mostly related to current political landscape and ruling party. – M i ech Jun 26 '20 at 22:27
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    you can't compare police brutality in Poland which is like 99% ethnic poles vs Germany or USA with a much more diverse ethnic population – adjan Jun 26 '20 at 23:04
  • @M i ech: Isn't it the *exception* that the police do not carry guns? Most notably the UK. The US is not the exception in this case. – Peter Mortensen Jun 27 '20 at 11:41
  • @PeterMortensen yes: police carrying guns is, generally, not a good predictor for how much violence happens, or even an especially good predictor for how deadly that violence is. (As a side note, police in the US experience a lot more violence directed at them than those in the U.K (37x more I recall). I very definitely wouldn’t want to be a policeman in the US without a gun). – Tim Jun 27 '20 at 15:33
  • @PeterMortensen I think so, yes. What I meant is that some corners of internet seem to believe that disarming US Police would solve the problem, usually giving UK as example. I merely meant to indicate that Police being armed or not does not appear to be relevant to number of People killed by police. All in all, I meant that problems with US Police run much, much deeper than just excessive access to weaponry or short training, and are also related to general issues with US society itself. – M i ech Jun 28 '20 at 14:30
  • In the U.S., many combat veterans become policemen after leaving the Army or Marines. In a sense, these policemen have a lot more training in dealing with violence than the German policemen. Of course, that has advantages and disadvantages. – Rodrigo de Azevedo Jun 30 '20 at 13:52
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    @RodrigodeAzevedo I would argue that there is or at least should be a big difference between how soldiers are trained to deal with violence and how police officers are trained. The relevant skill for police officers is deescalation, which is getting more important for soldiers as well, but still isn't really their primary focus. In fact, one of the hot topics of the current discourse is the claim that the american police are TOO militarized. – AuronTLG Jun 30 '20 at 14:39

2 Answers2

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A large part of the reason that training in the US is so short compared to other developed countries appears to be that the training in the US seems to focus more on the practical aspects of the job, rather than the social or ethical aspects. This Axios article contains comments from a Professor of Sociology:

Rashawn Ray of the Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland, who leads implicit bias training for police departments and the military, notes that "police departments do a lot of tactical training. They don’t do a lot of training that is focused on social interaction. ... But nine out of 10 times, or even more, their job is simply having a conversation."

In other developed countries, this seems to be the focus of a large proportion of training. If we look, for example, at the Norwegian police academy, Politihøgskolen, there is a breakdown of the three-year basic training course. If we look just at the first year of study, we see modules including "Preventive police work", "Police, society and ethics", "Criminal law and criminal procedure". This training, however, does not neglect practical skills - a large proportion of the training is "Operational police work", but in the first year, this is limited to first aid, arrest technique, and the use of pepper spray & batons. It is not until the final year of study that this includes the use of one-handed and two-handed weapons.

One explanation for this is the lack of federal standards on police training - according to the Department of Justice, there are 'more than 18,000 local police departments in the U.S." but there's no "universal standard for the structure, size, or governance of police departments".

A second explanation is that although the classroom training in the US is relatively short, a large proportion of police training is carried out 'on the job'. This is not true across the board, for the reason stated in the previous paragraph, but if we take the example of California, police officers first have to undergo a Regular Basic Course with a minimum requirement of 664 hours.

The next stage is then a Field Training Program, where new officers are assigned to an experienced officer on the job, the aim being to introduce the new officer to "personnel, procedures, policies, and purposes of the individual law enforcement department" and to provide "the initial formal and informal training specific to the department and the day-to-day duties of its officers". This lasts a minimum of 10 weeks, but usually 12-16 weeks.

The final stage is then a probationary period of 12-24 months before being considered a fully qualified police officer. In total, then, the stages of training sum to a level which is roughly similar to the training criteria undertaken in comparable countries.

The main reasons for the disparity, then, seem to be a focus on in-field training, compared to classroom learning, which skews the figures, as well as a lack of national regulatory standards, allowing individual states and departments to lower standards when faced with recruitment pressures.

CDJB
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    This is not a bad answer in terms of its description of where the focus of US police training lies, but it almost begs the question. Why is US police training so narrowly focused on "tactics" (or repressive techniques) when that is such an inadequate tool for the tasks the police is expected to solve? – henning Jun 27 '20 at 07:40
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    I suppose if you live in a country where you are likely to get shot at, then tactical oriented training is going to be rather important. What's the training for Jamaican or Colombia police officers like, compared to US. Comparing them to Norwegian ones is somewhat apples to oranges. – gbjbaanb Jun 27 '20 at 20:28
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    To give a comparison, NSW Police are one of the world's largest forces. Prior to entry they need to swim, hold a first aid certificate, pass an urban obstacle course. They have 8 weeks online, 22 weeks in class, 2 weeks practical. Followed by 1.5 years of close supervision of their work as Probationary Constable; noting that this work is reviewed by the Academy not just by local police. This appears to be about a third longer in all components than the California example in the Q. – vk5tu Jun 28 '20 at 02:47
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    @gbjbaanb Unless they're working near the Mexican border or in certain inner-city areas, police in the U.S. aren't especially likely to be shot at. More than in much of Europe, but it's not like it's something any given officer is likely to ever encounter (especially if they don't barge in unannounced to people's homes in the middle of the night...) Most U.S. police training is far too militarized for what they actually need to do 99.9% of the time. Which leads to the unfortunate problem of, "When your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." – reirab Jun 28 '20 at 17:27
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    @reirab I think it’s 37x that of the U.K. which, while both small numbers, isn’t comfort inducing – Tim Jun 28 '20 at 18:22
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    @Tim But that figure is presumably overall and heavily skewed by the areas that are dealing with cross-border drug cartels, inner-city gang violence, and that sort of thing. While drugs - and the violence associated with their trafficking - are a problem to some degree across the entire U.S., that degree is far from even across the U.S. – reirab Jun 28 '20 at 21:48
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    @reirab yes, very much so (although I imagine police brutality is also unevenly distributed, likely in line with the violence police receive). The U.K. is no different - police in rural Cambridgeshire experience a lot less violence than those in east London! – Tim Jun 28 '20 at 21:50
  • @Tim I wouldn't say that the UK is no different. Great Britain has no land borders with anyone. The U.S. has a 1,500-mile-long porous border with a country large regions of which are literally controlled (at least de facto) by drug cartels. The U.K. doesn't really have any equivalent of that, nor does any country in Europe, for that matter. – reirab Jun 28 '20 at 21:52
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    @reirab sure, there's a difference between the sheriff in rural montana and the cops in downtown LA. But I think you'd be surprised at even the Montata guy coming up against armed criminals, seeing as its so easy to get a gun in the USA, and the guys the cops are going up against are more likely than not to be armed. That matters, if every call could easily be your last. – gbjbaanb Jun 28 '20 at 21:53
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    @reirab true, we don’t have cross country border drug lines. We do, unfortunately have county lines - where police jurisdiction changes - which are a hugely common cause of gangs recruiting people (especially children, unfortunately). Until recently it’s been poorly tackled due to poor interdepartmental collaboration. Equally, while the U.K. doesn’t have so much violence, gangs are still known for carrying knives. – Tim Jun 28 '20 at 21:56
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Citizens of the United States pay some of the lowest tax rates in the world, for top-tier (economically) nations. And yet they/we are constantly complaining about being "taxed to death."

So we chose to focus on a simple measure of tax burden: national-level income taxes plus mandatory social-insurance contributions as a percentage of gross income. We calculated this for four different families: a single employed person with no children; two types of married couples with two children, one with both parents working and the other with one worker; and a single working parent with two children. In all cases, the U.S. was below the 39-nation average – in some cases, well below.

Pew Research: Among developed nations, Americans’ tax bills are below average

Total Tax Revenue as a Share of GDP

Tax Policy Center: How do US taxes compare internationally?

Training police costs money. More training is going to cost more. More highly qualified officers, before training, would also demand a higher salary. Once having received a higher level of training, officers would also probably command a higher salary than the current status quo.

All of that costs tax money. Americans are notoriously cheap and short-term focused.

PoloHoleSet
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    This answer is overly simplistic and contains information that is simply false. While there are many countries with highly developed economies that have higher tax rates than the the United States (particularly in Europe), there are also many that have lower tax rates. For example, Singapore's highest marginal income tax rate is 22%, while the United States highest federal marginal income tax rate is 37%. However with state income taxes, that can go as high as 51.8% in California. Singapore has a large and highly trained police force for it's size. – tstew Jun 29 '20 at 13:48
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    @tstew - Singapore is one of the very few. Finding one single example of a lower tax rate does not, in any way, refute "some of the lowest rates." But excellent straw man. And, no, no one ever pays 51.8% since that is a MARGINAL rate that only kicks in after paying lower rates on all income before that point. "Total US tax revenue equaled 24 percent of gross domestic product, well below the 34 percent weighted average for other OECD countries" US ranks 33rd out of 36 OECD nations. It may be a simple answer, but, simply, there are political consequences to spending tax revenue. – PoloHoleSet Jun 29 '20 at 15:47
  • I don't think my argument is a strawman. There are countries besides Singapore that have lower tax rates than the US. Canada's highest federal marginal income tax rates is 33%. Mexico's is 35%. New Zealand, Poland, Qatar, and UAE are among others with a lower rate that the US. Many have rates just slightly higher than the United States. – tstew Jun 29 '20 at 20:58
  • It is hard to compare tax rates because of nuances in how they work in different places. I think that highest marginal tax bracket is a fair way to compare because it's usually representative of the lower brackets and the majority tax the government receives comes from people in the upper brackets. – tstew Jun 29 '20 at 20:58
  • I don't deny that there are many countries that have higher rates, but it is not fair to say United States has "some of the lowest rates." The OECD is not representative of top-tier (economically) nations. It is missing countries with high GDP per capita and includes some with relatively low GDP per capita. – tstew Jun 29 '20 at 20:58
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    @tstew - median income is the better measure for economic prosperity than per capita anything. You get a country like Saudi Arabia that has a pretty high per captia GDP, but it's all in the hands of a very few mega-wealthy people.

    Who are our peer nations, since you are disputing it, but aren't backing it up with anything? I think OECD is used because they all use the same reporting standards in sharing that info with the organization that can compare apples to apples. If I have a high marginal income tax rate, but almost none of the top wealth is taxed at that rate, what does that tell us?

     – PoloHoleSet Jun 30 '20 at 13:28
  • @tstew - the richest and wealthiest Americans pay almost none of their income at the top marginal rate. They pay capital gains, 15%, in addition to using a slew of loopholes not available to regular wage earners to avoid those taxes. What do expert economists say about the US tax burden? Americans absolutely pay less in taxes than Canadians do. There is no dispute on this. And yet, you cite their lower top marginal rate. What does that say about the usefulness of using that as a metric? – PoloHoleSet Jun 30 '20 at 13:33
  • Your answer is well reasoned and well supported, but is that derogatory last line really necessary? That's going to rub a lot of people who otherwise agree with you the wrong way... – Jared Smith Jun 30 '20 at 13:47
  • @JaredSmith - Not seeing it as derogatory. I'm an American. That's how we are, overall. Yes, it is necessary. It is the core, the essence of why we don't have better trained, more professional, higher qualified police forces. We're unwilling to pay for it, which is both "penny-wise, pound foolish" and very short-sighted. – PoloHoleSet Jun 30 '20 at 13:50
  • @PoloHoleSet I'm not talking about what you're saying, I'm talking about how. If I want to suggest to someone that their health might be best served by not weighing 400 lbs, there's a whole gamut of ways to convey that. Lose some **ing weight, you ing fat * is probably not the most constructive one. – Jared Smith Jun 30 '20 at 14:05
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    You provide a source for saying Americans are not taxed as much, but then you draw the conclusion that American police officers receive less training because of "Americans being cheap and short-term focused" with ZERO evidence. – qwr Jun 30 '20 at 22:50
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    " Not seeing it as derogatory. I'm an American. That's how we are, overall. " Speak for yourself. You don't speak for me or other citizens. – qwr Jun 30 '20 at 22:51
  • @qwr - I did speak for myself. And I am speaking for myself. I never claimed to speak for you. Regardless of who I am speaking for, I was making an observation about how we are, overall. I could add "childishly thin-skinned" if you'd like. I still wouldn't claim to be speaking for you, if I did. If I observed that Americans are notoriously ignorant of world events, overall, as a whole, you may not like that, but that's a true statement, as well. You not *wanting* it to be true doesn't change the fundamental nature of the characteristic being observed. – PoloHoleSet Jul 01 '20 at 13:23
  • @qwr - I'm citing it as a huge factor that's being overlooked - the unwillingness to make that fiscal investment. Now, if you feel that's not true, and have better reasons, you're also free to offer your own answer. If we have the resources readily available for more comprehensive screening, training, and recruitment, *and, as you suggest, we are completely willing to make that investment*, then what does that suggest about us that isn't worse? That we don't want a more highly qualified, better trained law enforcement function? Maybe I should take offense at that, as an American. – PoloHoleSet Jul 01 '20 at 13:27
  • How do you automatically believe your observation is a true statement? It is purely anecdotal and based on personal experience - nothing more. It doesn't matter how many "appeals to reason" you make. Your answer's conclusion as it stands is not supported by evidence. – qwr Jul 01 '20 at 21:43
  • @qwr - So what would be considered "evidence" for you? The party that controls almost all of the levers of government's #1 platform policy plank is that Americans are taxed too much. "Too much" is a nebulous term, so the best we can do is evaluate the relative measure against other nations and societies. So we have these true observations - the party that runs things is premised upon the idea that we are taxed too much. All evidence shows that, compared to other nations, our tax burden is, on average, one of the lighter ones. Nothing anecdotal about that. What do you have to refute it? – PoloHoleSet Jul 01 '20 at 21:54
  • @qwr - I'd be happy to lay out "short-sighted" as well, and combinations of the two. I've at least offered SOMETHING. Which is more than you have. Feel free to contribute, other than "no it isn't." – PoloHoleSet Jul 01 '20 at 21:57