How Higher Education Can Lead The Way For Improved Police-Community Relationships

Johnny Nhan, Ph.D., is an associate dean of graduate studies and professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Texas Christian University (TCU), where he teaches about the history, structure and culture of law enforcement. He also is a recent police academy graduate and reserve police officer in the Fort Worth Police Department. These roles give him unique perspectives on policing and perceptions—how citizens view police officers and their roles, and how officers view themselves.

These views are often radically different and seemingly irreconcilable, and campuses have not been immune to the fallout. In 2020, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, students at dozens of universities—in some cases, supported by faculty—demanded that their institutions sever ties with local police departments. Some even called for the disbanding of campus police. These calls did not abate in 2021.

Bridging the divides between police and communities that may not trust them won’t be easy. Nhan believes it’s going to take reform from within law enforcement, and that higher education has an important role to play in that process.

One way to do that, he contends, is to diversify police forces, not just racially and gender-wise, but with the diversity of thought that comes from a college education. One challenge is to encourage more college students to consider careers in law enforcement, and not just those who have chosen majors in criminal justice programs.

“There’s a tendency in higher education to look down on criminal justice and criminology as more practical, less philosophical disciplines,” Nhan says. “But our students can change the culture of those organizations from within. We should want our students who are well educated, critical thinkers to be in those types of organizations. We should want them to become policing leaders in the future.”

The idea of filling the ranks of police departments with college graduates is not new, but it has been largely forgotten. That was the vision of August Vollmer, an early 20^th century police chief in Berkeley, Calif., who is now widely considered the father of modern policing. Prior to the era of professionalization ushered in by Vollmer and a few others, policing was typically handled by loosely organized groups of volunteers similar to modern neighborhood watches.

“Vollmer wanted officers who were not only physically fit, but mentally fit and highly educated,” Nhan explains. “He wanted officers to be treated like white-collar professionals, like physicians and attorneys.”

The unintended consequence, however, was that “citizens were no longer generally considered friends and neighbors but potential liars and criminals who are often out to get the police in trouble,” Nhan writes. “An ‘us versus them’ mentality began to develop, where police saw themselves as the moral order that is under constant attack by politicians, criminals and ungrateful citizens.”

And over time, police departments attracted and recruited more aspiring officers with that insular, law-and-order mindset, perpetuating a cycle that continues today. Meanwhile, Nhan says, research shows that officers who do have a college education tend to be better at verbal communication and are less likely to use force.

Nhan often asks students if they’d consider working in local law enforcement after graduation, and overwhelmingly, the answer is no. When he asks why, their most common objections are the profession’s reputational problems, assumptions about low pay, and aversion to the entry-level street patrol work.

These attitudes are captured in a research paper he is currently working on after surveying more than 300 students from across all majors at TCU. He found that 78% of students had little to no interest in police work, with nearly half of respondents perceiving local law enforcement as slightly to very negatively. Nearly 74% cited patrol work as a major deterrent. Only 30% said their parents would approve of a career in local law enforcement.

Conversely, 78% of students had a positive view of federal agents, and 65% said their parents would approve of that career. Movies and TV shows probably have something to do with that, but Nhan points out that the FBI does not require new agents to patrol. This suggests an opportunity, one Nhan has been discussing with the law enforcement leaders who participate in his graduate courses.

“What if you created two tracks for policing?” he asks. The patrol track would be similar to the current entry-level policing position, patrolling, writing citations and responding to radio calls. But with a degree from the investigations track, a graduate would skip that phase and work with veteran detectives, as new FBI agents do.

Nhan says he originally conceived of this as something akin to the U.S. Army’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), a program within existing universities that students participate in separate from their course of studies, which might be in natural sciences, psychology, computer science, almost anything that overlaps with police work. In discussions, Nhan says, another model emerged, more like a military academy, where students again would have a range of options for majors, while also participating in traditional police training.

Either approach would require buy-in from enough police departments to ensure that graduates can find jobs. But Nhan believes the time is right for those discussions.

“In my experience, especially in large cities, police leaders are all about community policing,” he explains.

“They want more women and people of color in the force, they want more educated officers, they’re very forward-looking. But very few people like that are applying, and so the department doesn’t change. But there are a lot of young people who would buy into that vision of change, and many of them are sitting in college classes right now, preparing for other careers. If we can build bridges between those students and the chiefs who could really use them, we can make the necessary changes.”

These, of course, are long-term solutions. In the near future, universities can do more to facilitate communication between students, nearby campus communities and the law enforcement agencies that serve them.

Criminal justice faculty often invite law enforcement officials to speak to students, but such efforts should not be limited to those classes, Nhan suggests. Many classes delve into issues that could benefit from introducing a police perspective. As long as everyone agrees to remain respectful, even when they vehemently disagree, the conversation can be productive for all.

Institutions also should find ways to make their campus police more visible—not only as a presence on campus, but as a department with a unique role—that’s aligned with the university’s mission just like every other. Campus police should host their own community meetings and make themselves available as guest speakers.

Institutions should also look for more opportunities to share information about the work that campus police do, not just in response to incidents but to prevent them. Opening up can be balanced, Nhan says, with legitimate concerns about privacy and reputation. Departments like communications and student affairs should be involved in this effort—not to propagandize, but to counter perceptions that campus police are “just security guards” or “the same as all cops.”

“It’s a delicate balance,” Nhan concedes. “But it’s important. Everyone needs to step out of their comfort zones. That’s the only way anything is going to change.”