Law enforcement in the United States is a unique profession, encompassing a wide variety of hiring processes and requirements across all agencies. In other words, there is no one standard process. In particular, application and testing processes vary depending on location. Naturally, this state of affairs is very challenging for the applicants.
Consider this example:
Carlo is 23 years old and was recently honorably discharged from the Marine Corps after serving for 4 years. He plans to pursue a career in law enforcement. To this end, Carlo moves back to his hometown of Riverside, California, and begins to look at agencies. His uncle, Tomas, who has been a police officer for the Los Angeles Police Department for 30 years, advised Carlo to apply to multiple agencies to increase his chances of getting hired.
As Carlo researches different police departments, he is surprised to learn that they all have different hiring processes—even those that are only a few miles apart. Carlo expresses his frustration to his uncle. “There’s a lot of information to organize. Why isn’t there one standard hiring process for all police officers nationwide?”
While concerns like Carlo’s are understandable, there is an explanation for the lack of standardization in law enforcement hiring.