Police Applicants: Questions YOU Need to Ask

David Couper

Police Applicants: The Questions YOU Need to Ask in an Interview!

  1. Is this an agency where I will experience personal growth? How will that happen?
  2. How do you reward performance and initiative?
  3. What is your agency’s driving values and vision?
  4. What kinds of networking goes on here?
  5. What incentives will I have to maintain a healthy lifestyle?
  6. What are your policies on maternity and paternity leave? Do you provide employee daycare?
  7. How successful have women and people of color been in your agency? Please give me some examples.
  8. Is this agency connected with a university? What are those connections?
  9. What sort of in-service programs do you have available for my continuous improvement and lifelong learning?
  10. Is this an organization that is having fun? Please provide some examples.

[Adapted from Reinventing the Corporation by Naisbitt and Auberdene, 1985]

For more see: The Quality Leadership Workbook, Couper and Lobitz (2017).

 

 

Published by David Couper

I served over 20 years as the chief of police in Madison (WI), four years as chief of the Burnsville (MN) Police Department, and before that as a police officer in Edina (MN) and the City of Minneapolis. I hold graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota and Edgewood College in Madison. I have written many articles over my years as a police leader. After retiring from the police department, I answered a call to ministry, attended seminary, and was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. After almost 30 years serving in and leading two Episcopal Churches in the Diocese of Milwaukee, I am "sort-of" in the process of retirement. Life is good.

6 Comments

  1. Asks how successful have women and people who have liberal, socialist, and progressive viewpoints been in your agency?

    Asks about their viewpoints on the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

    See about finding out what is their record of violating people’s rights.

    What is their record on disciplining officers who step out of line

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  2. Pingback: Police Applicants: Questions YOU Need to Ask — Improving Police | Shediac1981; A Blue Wall of Silence

  4. Asks what their record is on white collar corporate crime?

    Asks what is their record on hiring people with high IQs and how successful they are?

    Asks them what have they done to keep the people with high IQs to stay with the department and not leave since many cops stated that police work is boring and repetitive which is one of their arguments why people with high IQs quit.

    Asks how they deal with pressure from wealthy people, the business community, and the politicians to drop white collar, corporate crime cases or face the consequences for not doing so?

    What do they do when the district attorneys won’t take white collar, corporate crime cases and refuse to fight for tougher white crime, corporate crime laws.

    Are there any opportunities to deal with white collar, corporate crime?

    Do they provide training to deal with white collar, corporate crime?

    What are their views on white collar, corporate crime?

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  5. Pingback: Job Interview: Some Essential Questions to Ask – Improving Police

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