The Relationships Among Law Enforcement Education Standards, Training, and Social Media Use
John P. McIntyre · OhioLink ETD Center (Ohio Library and Information Network) · 2017
Criminal justice professionals and policy makers are continually looking at ways to improve the quality of police officers in the U.S. The purpose of this thesis is to identify and compare several managerial decisions law enforcement face such as education standards, annual community policing training, and social media use by police departments.Moreover, this thesis examined the influence these standards of practice have on each other with the hope of encouraging police department agencies to revisit their departmental policies with respect to community policing.This thesis involved a secondary analysis of a 2013 data set from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) program.A total of 2,822 agencies were examined (N= 2,822).Results from the study revealed a strong, positive relationship between departments maintaining a higher education standard and utilizing forms of social media.Other relationships were tested; however results tended not supportive of the respective hypotheses.These findings are important and may be helpful in discussing the future for law enforcement standards, as well as allow agency administrators to use the results as a benchmark for comparison.Future research should involve examining other variables such as police performance, age, gender, race, and department region.These findings may provide insight on how departments compare to one another, as well as strengthen the argument for higher standards in police education and training.