Police Training in Practice: Organization and Delivery According to European Law Enforcement Agencies 2 23 INTRODUCTION Police training plays a crucial role in the development of police officers. Compared to other occupations, police officers spend the entire beginning of their policing career training and preparing for the job (Wilson et al., 2010). Police cadets may spend up to three years in basic training before they are considered police officers and encounter any job-specific situations independently. This comparatively long period of initial training makes sense when considering that police officers respond to diverse and complex on-duty demands on a daily basis (Anderson et al., 2002; Gershon et al., 2009; Paton, 2009). Police officers are tasked with enforcing laws, protecting civilian life and property, responding to (emergency) calls, and apprehending and arresting criminals, to name only a few. Consequently, it is likely for police officers to encounter complex, high-risk situations (Marenin, 2004; Waddington et al., 2012). Dealing with these highrisk situations adequately requires expansive knowledge and skills, which police officers ought to acquire in training. Police academies and law enforcement agencies are responsible for equipping officers with the relevant skills to successfully resolve any on-duty demands placed upon them (Chappell, 2008). The common objective of police training has hardly changed over time – to help police officers perform their job (Ness, 1991; Koedijk et al., 2019). However, what police training consists of has changed significantly over the years. Traditional policing required police officers to possess self-defense, arresting, shooting, and driving skills, which was reflected in training that focused primarily on teaching these physical activities (Chappell, 2008). Current policing places a focus on additional skills such as communication, problem-solving, and decision-making (Birzer & Tannehill, 2001; Blumberg et al., 2019). To facilitate these skills in the context of policing, police academies and law enforcement agencies needed to adjust the structure, content, and delivery of their formal training (Marenin, 2004). Traditionally, police instructors taught their students knowledge and skills using a uniform, linear training approach (Birzer & Tannehill, 2001; McCoy, 2006). For instance, teaching cadets self-defense skills would require instructors to explain the exact techniques and to illustrate a fixed set of movements for cadets to observe and apply in a static, low-pressure setting. Considering that police officers encounter complex and dynamic incidents, where decision-making, situational awareness, and communication skills might be decisive for the outcome, the traditional, uniform approach to training seems to have little to do with the realities of police work (Renden, Nieuwenhuys, et al., 2015). Recent literature in the field of police training investigated how to better facilitate skills and improve specific components of police training. For instance, Di Nota and Huhta (2019) have illustrated how realistic and immersive scenario-based training can improve police officers’
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