When you decided becoming a police officer was your calling, you probably didn’t imagine how difficult and long the selection process was going to be. I know the feeling because I was there. The process maybe long, but if you are one of the few to get hired, you won’t care how long the wait was because you will be filled with joy.
One of the things that prevent candidates from experiencing this feeling is poor performance on the police civil service exam. The police entrance exam is basically a measuring stick that law enforcement agencies use to evaluate a potential applicant. The objective is to determine, through the test, if a recruit can handle the various duties and task of a police officer. Contrary to popular belief, cops are very intelligent individuals.
The media portrays cops as jock-like individuals that kick butt and take names with reckless abandonment. That image of police officers is not even close. The majority of the police officers I’ve been around are intellectual individuals. The alpha male portrait is completely false and untrue. Police work is more neck up then anything else.
The truth is cops are not dumb jocks who aren’t capable of being successful in other fields because they absolutely can. They are individuals who would rather go out in the community and investigate crimes instead of sitting in a cubicle crunching numbers all day.
Do not take the police civil service entrance exam lightly because of what you’ve seen on television. The idea that all you need is brute strength to become a police officer is totally false. If that was the case, passing the pre-employment written exam wouldn’t be necessary. You must be a sharp individual who can dissect information relatively fast and relay that information to colleagues in a timely manner. There are other examples of the various duties of a police officer that require quick thinking and not brute strength.
The media won’t tell you the majority of police officers are college educated individuals with superior knowledge of law enforcement. Why? Because kicking butt and taking names are good for ratings. However, simply giving a one-sided view of police work has created this idea that cops aren’t very smart people and it is not true.
