I understand why it might have started out this way when police forces were first becoming established, but why does it continue to be this way?
These seem like entirely different skill sets, and surely it’s easier to teach them basic police skills as part of their training rather than having them stay as beat cops for several years first.
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I think that more people would want to be detectives, than would want to be beat cops.
If you held the selection process before entry, people who don’t make it in to the detective program might opt out of policing all together, starving the rank and file cops of otherwise great applicants.
If you make being a beat cop part of the training process of becoming a detective, you enrich the lower levels and who knows, maybe after being a beat cop for a few years, failing to get into a detective position might not be enough for the person to leave the force entirely.
Most departments require you to do X number of years in patrol before you can apply for a specialized unit to gather necessary skill sets.
They aren’t completely different skill sets. A patrol officer will gather evidence, speak with witnesses and victims and suspects, etc. A patrol officer is going to be the first one on the scene of any crime, and they’re not just going to sit there with their thumb up their ass waiting for a detective. You say that it wouldn’t be hard to teach them basic police skills, but my rebuttal is that it’s just as easy if not easier to instead build off of the fundamentals they learned on the beat.
A beat cop is the first line of a police agency. They investigate and prosecute mainly misdemeanors and begin the process of investigation when a felony has occurred. The patrol officer will usually take the initial report and call a detective.
The detective is an experienced police officer who has been trained in criminal investigation and who takes over felony cases from patrol officers and continues the case until resolution.
In bigger cities, detective units are usually broken up into specialized units, such as vice, homicide, family crimes, and sex crimes.
Why wouldn’t they? Detectives and “beat cops” are not very different jobs. Really the only difference is the level of crime being investigated.
Just like any job, you start at the bottom and work your way up. Nobody starts their cooking career as a head chef. You start out on the line and work your way up. Same thing in your situation.
It takes a year or two before you really “get” being a cop while you gain experience and learn the ropes. You’re first year is basically one long training and evaluation period.
In smaller agencies the patrol officers do it all, including processing crime scenes, interviews, applying for warrants, and serving warrants. If they do happen to have an investigator they are taking cases that require a ton of followup or time… and only if their case load allows it.
It’s easier to build onto that experience and time than it is to invest time and money into someone off the street that might say “I’m done” the first time they actually get into something bad or be a total lame duck. If they go through the ranks they can pull the people that show the interest that have the needed qualities.
All that being said, there are over 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the US and some DO hire investigators off the street.
You can train someone but you cannot simulate real life experience. Without having a solid grasp of the job and what the situation is on the streets, detectives cannot hope to be able to do their job well enough if they only have theoretical training.
If you’ve ever encountered a boss dictating his employees how to do their job without ever having done it himself, you can realise why that’s a good system.
Ranking? You rank up just like many professions.
Patrol cops and detectives actually have a huge skill overlap. In the US agencies hire patrol officers or beat cops and they prove themselves as worthy of being detectives by performing well and demonstrating effort to solve cases.
This is because there are essential things you need to know about police work and successful prosecution to be a Detective. Being a cop also forces you to interact with a huge amount of people from different walks of life and you see them in every conceivable state of emotion. That means that when it comes time to choose the new detective, if you pull from cops with sufficient patrol experience then you have a pool of applicants that already know how to interview and interrogate people, are sufficiently hardened to traumatic experiences (dead children, violently murdered bodies, rape victims and other tragedies), aren’t naive, and have proven their ability as investigators and hopefully as “people persons.”
There is basically not a better way to ensure you will have a qualified detective (as long as the process is free from favoritism or other corruption), because many applicants may interview well, may be academically smart, and might even have good training but end up falling short in some way.
Not to mention experienced cops get used to being in court, and detectives testify in court quite a lot. You can’t be a good detective if you fall apart on the stand. Experience testifying in court is an essential part of your qualification, but I rarely hear it spoken about. The general stress inoculation of being a road cop may also help with this, but not necessarily.
If you want to be a detective without being a cop, you can get licensed as a private investigator. I’ll warn you though that the Pinkertons make you start out as a security officer of some kind and probably want experience and demonstrated competency before they’ll hire you as a private investigator– other firms are probably the same. Private investigators in business for themselves tend to not make very much money unless they’re really, really good at some niche (which comes with time) and I think you may find the things they investigate are often… underwhelming. Infidelity, insurance scams, and unlicensed broadcasts of boxing matches and things are their bread and butter.
These are good replies, but also – I knew a guy who owned a really high-end hair salon, think $2-300 cuts. He was talking about new hires starting their careers, said “even if she’s the Picasso/Michelangelo of hair, she’s sweeping the floor for 6 weeks”.
I imagine many professions have a sort of “you’re gonna earn your place at the table” thing, they’re going to see your attitude and how you deal with people, bosses, the works. (I’m not discounting the good reasons people have posted, but a sense you’ve paid your dues probably helps with acceptance in a work culture).
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