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Police Career Requirements
If you've already graduated high school or earned your General Equivalency Diploma (GED), you may already meet a key police career requirement. Increasingly, however, many police departments will require prospective police officers to attend one to two years of college or university prior to enrolling in the academy. If you decide to attend college in preparation for a police career, you'll most likely want to study police science, law enforcement, administration of justice, or criminal justice. You can also help make yourself a competitive candidate for a police career by studying one or more foreign languages, since conversing with non-English speakers is a common part of police work--especially in large metropolitan jurisdictions.
Since police work often includes strenuous physical activity, physical strength, stamina, and agility are sometimes included as police career requirements. If you're currently attending high school or considering attending college, a course load heavy in physical education and extra-curricular activities in competitive sports may help you prepare to tackle the obstacle course at the academy.
Whether or not you attend college beforehand, you can learn many of the practical police career requirements through on-the-job training--typically administered by police departments through academies. Once you enroll in the academy, your training will typically last somewhere between twelve and fourteen weeks. Although the exact curriculum differs depending on the academy, your classroom instruction will most likely include instruction in civil rights, constitutional law, and the laws of your jurisdiction (county, state, or municipality). Hands on skills include self-defense, firearms, accident investigation, first-aid, and emergency response.
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