Dozens of State Police trainees have dropped out of the Massachusetts State Police Training Academy just weeks into training. It’s a historic rate when law enforcement is already facing challenges with recruitment.
This is happening at a time when state police staffing levels are already low. According to the academy leaders, trainees normally quit if they’re not prepared or if they’re injured but this time they’re seeing something new.
The NBC10 Investigators were invited inside the academy walls to get a firsthand look at what it takes to become a state trooper and the extremely demanding training involved after we began asking questions about the high attrition rate of this class. We watched as the 89th recruit training troop worked on fitness, drilled down on how to handle their guns and much more.
Department data we obtained showed overall 46% of the men and women who signed up because they wanted to protect and serve have dropped out. Half of the female recruits and 45% of the males resigned.
Full story: Mass. State Police recruits dropping out at record rate. Here’s a look inside the academy
Major Provost claims that their military-style, stress-based training methods are “scientific based.” I’d love to see the science he’s citing, because I’m not aware of any scientific consensus that military-style training beats out college-style academies on any measure that departments and communities care about.
Hi Dr. Marier, I would also be interested to see the research cited by a man who can’t properly employ adverbs.
One thing that came to mind while watching this is the fact that law enforcement and their training face a great deal of scrutiny from the general public, seemingly no matter what they do. So, if training facilities were to shift away from the hyper-stressful training environment, do you think the new methods would be blamed for officer incidents or injuries in the field? Would the rhetoric flip to “the training doesn’t prepare law enforcement well enough for stressful situations”?