A recent job posting for the Dover police chief has gotten Rep. Sean Lynn to ask the Dover City Council to investigate. From what I can gather from the Delaware State News article is that Lynn is upset on three points:
- The job posting on Monster went out before being approved by the police chief selection committee
- The job posting was changed to require a bachelor’s degree
- The job posting would make sure that Deputy Chief Marvin Mailey would not be qualified
I agree with Lynn that the job posting should have never gone out until the police selection committee discussed and approved it. And that’s where I stop in agreement with Lynn.
A bachelor’s degree should be a requirement for all police officer positions within throughout Delaware. In Shuan King’s 25-part series exploring solutions for police brutality in America (link), King proposes that police officers should be required to have a 4-year college degree considering teachers, physical therapists, and many other professions require such a degree.
Somehow though, not a single state in the country requires police to have a four-year degree. While a few larger cities now require officers to have either two years of college or a mix of police and military experience, many police departments have set the bar so low that all you need to become an officer is a pretty clean criminal history, a high school diploma or GED, and a willingness to attend police academy for eight to 10 weeks. That’s just not good enough. No other profession in America with has so much on the line, so much risk involved, requires so little of its workforce.
Though Mailey might be extremely qualified to become Dover’s police chief, Lynn’s seems more upset that the job requirements might disqualify Mailey. Lynn should be embracing the idea a four-year college degree be a requirement for all police officers rather than trying to continue the Delaware Way in Dover’s police department.
Photograph by TimK MSI
