August Vollmer Essay

In addition to these interests and advances, August Vollmer firmly believed that educated and intelligent men would make better police officers. He was also well aware that because police officers were not trained that this situation helped to perpetuate the perception of police officers as the “dumb cop.” In many cities, police officers got their job not through any talent or skill, but through political patronage. Vollmer set out to change that. He himself, although not college educated, was a voracious reader, but as early as 1908 was advocating for hiring college-educated men and by 1917, through his relationship with the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, he created the Berkeley Police School, the first formal training for police officers in America.
But before the training, he wanted educated employees. So, in 1916 he placed an advertisement in the Daily Collegian, the student newspaper at the University of California. In this ad he urged young men to “Learn a new profession. Serve on the Berkeley Police Force while you go to college” (Leonard, 1964, p. 137). That generated 100 responses from college students. But how to weed out the best from the rest? That question led to the development of a comprehensive police entrance examination. With the assistance of Dr. Jau Don Ball, a psychiatrist, Vollmer put together a battery of psychological tests
Vollmer's "college cops" included Walter Gordon, the department's first black officer, John Larson, the future inventor of the polygraph, and V.A. Leonard who became a well-known writer and criminal justice educator. Hundreds of Vollmer's proteges became police administrators, like O.W. Wilson who became chief of the Chicago Police Department. Others became forensic scientists, lawyers, military leaders, and politicians. By the late 1940s, at least 25 police chiefs around the country had served under August