In 2020, as protests, riots and various forms of activism swept the nation, politicians across the map scrambled to propose policies aimed at satisfying calls for reform. While some efforts focused on implementing research-based police practices such as community policing, others centered on blaming the cops themselves. The City of Seattle, for example, slashed its police department’s budget — only to eventually increase it when cops began leaving in droves. A more measured approach passed in California, where the state Legislature considered a bill requiring most applicants to earn a bachelor’s degree before entering the law enforcement profession. The bill passed, but only in a watered-down version that basically raised the minimum age of a police officer to 21.

This year, Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin is proposing a new bill, AB 992, that would implement some of the education requirements left out of the original legislation. If passed, the bill would require new police officers to obtain an associate or bachelor’s degree within three years of graduating from the police academy. It would also create a task force to recruit potential law enforcement officers throughout the state.

The bill would require new police officers to obtain an associate or bachelor’s degree within three years of graduating from the police academy.

The legislator who proposed the original bill in 2020, Reggie Jones-Sawyer, is no longer a state assemblymember, but he’s not enthusiastic about the new bill. His main concern is that it contains too many loopholes. While he wanted officers to be required to have a bachelor’s degree, the new bill allows for other alternatives: an associate degree, prior military experience or prior law enforcement experience from another state. It also permits a “law enforcement certificate,” which would presumably be based on college-level training but wouldn’t meet the standards of a two-year associate degree. These options are in addition to any training officers must complete through POST.

Jones-Sawyer isn’t the only one questioning the wisdom of the bill. Police unions and many in law enforcement share concerns. For instance, Dustin Smith of the Sacramento Police Officers Association told CalMatters that the bill would be “catastrophic to staffing statewide.” One doesn’t need a college degree (or even a certificate) to understand what he means. Law enforcement agencies across the country are already facing severe staffing shortages. Raising the requirements to become a police officer (and the associated costs of meeting those requirements) will only exacerbate the problem. In a letter to the chair of the state’s Senate Public Safety Committee, L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna explained that his department saw a drastic drop in applications when they started requiring a bachelor’s degree. They have since rescinded the requirement.

The admittedly complicated issue of worsening the recruiting crisis has a simple solution, according to Georgetown University law professor Christy Lopez. She argues that the police recruiting crisis isn’t a problem — because, in her view, it doesn’t exist. “The idea that there’s a crisis in recruiting presupposes that we know what the right number of police officers is and that we’re not there,” she explained. “And we don’t know that.”

While professionals disagree on how to best calculate the appropriate number of officers for a community, there does seem to be a consensus that the force should be large enough to respond effectively to calls for service and prevent crime from skyrocketing. By these standards, many law enforcement officers might question Lopez’s criteria. For now, however, the difficult decisions about education requirements rest in the hands of California’s elected representatives. If the bill passes, the new education requirements will take effect in 2031.