The American Police Officers Alliance (APOA) spent part of its time at National Police Week 2018 conducting a poll assessing various challenges facing law enforcement. The poll took place at Tent City, an event put on by the Washington, DC Fraternal Order of Police. A total of 238 responses were collected from individuals, many of whom were police officers or spouses of police officers.
Overall, the most shocking result from the poll was that 81.9% of respondents believe that elected officials are not doing enough to support police officers in terms of providing safety equipment. In our recent conversations with police officers, we have learned that many of them are required to purchase their own gear to remain sage.
Furthermore, many officers are having to purchase their own bulletproof vests since department provided vests are expired. In addition, K9 officers are having to purchase vests for the police dogs in order to keep them safe on the job as well.
An additional statistic from the poll was those survey respondents were split on whether or not police officers are receiving adequate training to respond appropriately to situations. The survey responses indicated that 49.6% believed that police officers were not receiving enough training, while 45% shared that they through police were receiving enough training.
This result indicates to us that there are likely many departments out there providing adequate and effective training; however, it also illustrates that many other departments could benefit from additional training.
We are thankful for the many men and women who took the time to respond to our survey. The valuable feedback we received will influence our direction for the upcoming election.
If you have some comments that you would like to share about whether you believe our elected officials are supporting our police officers, please feel free to send us an email at [email protected] and a member of our team will follow-up.
