What Makes a Good Officer Essays - Education, Prevention, Safety

What Makes a "Good" Officer? Taylor R. Harrod Grantham University Author Note Please address all correspondence regarding this essay to [emailprotected] Abstract Many people have different opinions of what makes a good police officer. Some people say that a police officer must have a specific skill set to be good, others say they need to be compassionate and seasoned. However, what makes a really good police officer is a basic skill set, a love and passion for their job, and critical thinking skills. A Basic Skill Set Every police officer must be equipped with a basic skill set in order to be successful. They need to be able to work as a team, attention to detail, physical fitness, creativity, and the ability to communicate verbally and non-verbally effectively. These skills utilized together create the foundation of a successful and "good" police officer. A Love for The Job Along with a basic skill set, police officers must have a passion for their job that burns through stress, long shifts, and the general outlook that they are an evil person by many members of their communities. They must have a love for serving and protecting their friends, neighbors, and often times strangers from criminals, natural disasters, and any other dangers that might arise. One of the most important traits a good officer must possess is compassion. They must be able to be empathetic towards citizens and understand their situations and be able to put themselves in that person's shoes. Compassion is what keeps police officers down to earth, helps them relate with members of their communities, and what keeps them human in the eyes onlookers. Critical Thinking Being able to take facts, assertions, assumptions, and word of mouth and make decisions based on those things is called critical thinking. Police officers must be able to think quickly and make life altering decisions in the blink of an eye. In order to do this efficiently and effectively, police officers must be able to use a system similar to the scientific method in order to come to an educated decision. This process includes making an educated guess, gathering facts and evidence, testing out your guess, and then forming a conclusion. However, unlike most people and scientists, police officers must be able to do this quickly and with minimal mistakes. The safety and wellbeing of people's lives depends upon critical thinking done by officers everyday. A Texas Trooper Sara Gentry is a Texas State Trooper and has been for over 20 years. She helps patrol the United States/Mexico border in Texas, aids in investigations and crime scenes, and most recently helped save many people's lives in hurricane Harvey that devastated Southeast Texas citizens in the summer of 2017. In her own words, "[police officers] must be able to feel what the people feel. We [have to] be willing to love our job enough to be right there in the middle of the action and not lose our heads or our sanity. Even when I was a rookie [my job] has never been harder than it is right now with the border and everyone in America hating us. Right now is when we need to stick together and remember why we joined." There are many attributes that can make a police officer successful: pride in the quality of his/her work, drive for excellence, intelligence. But the most important qualities of a "good" police officer are the basic skill set that sets the foundation for becoming great, compassion, a love of the job, and critical thinking skills. These qualities combined make a very good police officer, one that has earned respect from the community and gives it in return. References Texas State Trooper [Telephone interview]. (2017, December 2). Xu, E. ( n.d. ). Rasmussen College. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/justice-studies/blog/what-makes-good-police-officer/ Percival, N. (2016, March 11). Critical Thinking And The Scientific Method. Retrieved December 05, 2017, from http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/site/blog/critical-thinking-and-the-scientific-method/