Introduction
This paper aims at critically reviewing the article on identification of good cops early in their delivery of police duties. The study will identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article through describing how the police department could identify the talents of its officers.
The study will evaluate the research methods that were employed in this article in identifying how the police department can evaluate the performance of its officers and thus take charge of developing their career pursuits. Lastly, this study will evaluate the consistency of the summary made by the author with the results that were obtained from the research.
Review
It is evident in the article that in evaluating the performance of the police officers, the police department has traditionally used crime-related methods in which the cop who had made the highest number of arrests got the promotion. The author notes that this criterion of evaluating police officers’ performance is inconclusive because it cannot predict outstanding performance by police officers in identifying the causes of crime in the society and the most effective methods of mitigating those causes as well as eradicating the crimes.
For this to be achievable, the article has proposed that good cops can be identified as early as when they are still in police academies. The author holds that while the police officers are in these academies, it is easier to evaluate and measure their performance and consequently, identify police officers who promise to be exceptionally good (White 27).
Limitations of the Article
The article holds that it is possible to identify good cops in the early stages of their careers, but it has fostered a number of limitations. First, it is evident that the article used one class of 2003 to obtain data. The limitations arising from the choice of data obtained could raise problems for external validity of the information contained in the article.
Secondly, this article has used information obtained only from the classrooms to evaluate the overall performance of the police officers and this disregards other aspects of police training such as self-defense, use of firearms among other aspects of police training. Lastly, the author was unable to obtain the personal files of each of the recruits and therefore, the study was limited in the amount of information that could be accessed (White 35).
Review of the Research Methodology Employed
The study was carried out in 2003 police training academy of a large metropolitan police department with a class of 1556 recruits. This large number of observable variables under investigation necessitated the employment of a research method that would yield the required results. The research used bi-variate and multivariate analyses which incorporated multiple regression and CHAID (White 34).
Justification of the Results in the Conclusion
It is evident from the analysis of the data collected that it is possible to evaluate the performance of a police officer in the early stages of his or her career and be in a position to quantify whether he or she is a good officer. This is because the article has laid out clearly that high performing police officers in the academy translate into high performers in the streets. Therefore, this performance measurement criterion should substitute the traditional methods that employ “games number” in rewarding police officers (White 41).
Work Cited
White, D. Michael. Identifying Good Cops in the Early Stage. Predicting the Recruit Performance in the Academy. Police Quarterly. 11(1). Pp 27-49. 2008. Web.