Police Training in Practice: Organization and Delivery According to European Law Enforcement Agencies 2 45 CONCLUSION An overview of the current state of European police practices, their differences and commonalities, and strengths and challenges, depicts the landscape in which law enforcement agencies organize and deliver training. The findings emphasize the complexity of police training, including the common underlying principles that guide development and delivery of training, the administrative influence on developing and adjusting training curricula, and the wishes and needs of police coordinators and instructors for their training across law enforcement agencies. European law enforcement agencies operate in diverse contexts and differ in the availability of resources to organize and deliver training. While the contexts and available resources differ, European law enforcement agencies face common challenges in training, such as having to undergo lengthy hierarchical, administrative processes to bring about changes to current training practices, achieving a limited level of realism in training, and having insufficient assessment standards. As each law enforcement agency has their distinct context in which they operate, a one-size-fits-all solution may not be helpful to overcome the challenges European law enforcement agencies share. To improve upon current training practices, generic recommendations, such as those provided in this paper (e.g., setting up a “input group” to influence administrative processes more concretely, providing additional training resources, alternative training systems, or trainer trainings to enhance the level of realism in training, and implementing common assessment standards and representative testing environments to enhance assessment practices), provide law enforcement agencies with initial directions for implementation of solutions. These generic recommendations can be adjusted by each law enforcement agency to encompass the wishes and needs, the distinct context of operation, and the available resources. Based on our findings on the strengths that European law enforcement agencies share, we are optimistic about improvements in police training. There is generally a solid structure by which training is organized and updated, law enforcement agencies possess self-critical and evaluative qualities at all levels involved with the daily practice of police training, and last, but certainly not least, police instructors are committed to optimizing the training environment for their trainees.
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