The USA has long been called “The Land of Opportunity” but there are many people these
days that will tell you the American Dream has for a long time been less of a reality.
Canada on the other is often depicted as an easier place to have an existence.
It’s a country with far less of a divide between the rich and poor, and you’ll still
find it on best Quality of Life lists somewhere in the top ten.
At the same time the USA makes headlines for such things as having worryingly high crimes
rates for a developed nation, incredibly high incarceration rates and a healthcare system
that might bankrupt its own citizens.
We might be being harsh here, and we certainly aren’t saying Canada is utopia.
Alright.
So, you want to be a cop in the USA.
You’ve done your research, meaning you’ve seen The Wire, watched all episodes of NYPD
Blue and even stayed up late to watch reruns of Columbo and Cagney and Lacey.
You are basically ready to hit the streets.
Right?
Well, we should tell you a few things about what you need to do to become a police officer
in America.
The good news is that you don’t have to be a genius to land the job.
It’s open to most people, so long as you have some brain power and didn’t spend your
teens doing hits for the Mexican Mafia.
You can get a law enforcement degree and this should land you the better jobs, but you can
also apply to be a cop after high school.
So, to get in you will need a high school diploma or a GED, which is considered equal
to that diploma.
After that you will be interviewed and have background checks.
If you have a minor offense you still may get in.
You may not have to be super fit, but you will likely have to be relatively fit.
Once you get into the academy you have to pass some kind of entrance exam, such as the
Law Enforcement Examination.
You’ll then start your training.
You’ll also have to pass a fitness test, or the Police Physical Abilities Test.
These tests can change depending on where you are training, but you’ll mostly have
to show you can sprint reasonably fast and be able to run 1.5 miles (2.4 km) in anywhere
from 16 to 20 minutes.
But you’ll have to show your strength by doing a fairly tricky obstacle course, and
on top of that you’ll have to do around 20 pushups in one minute and 30 sit-ups in
a minute.
As we said, this can change depending on the academy.
Let’s just say, you’ll have to be fairly fit to pass but by no means have to be an
exceptional athlete.
Training will last round 30 weeks and even after you’ve passed you’ll be put on probation
for up to 18 months at the department where you’ll be working.
Over in Canada, you can also start training at age 18, but you cannot hit the streets
until you are nineteen.
You’ll also need a high school diploma or the equivalent, and during the interview process
will have to show good health, both mental and physical.
On its website, the RCMP says turning up to the interview looking like you’ve done nothing
but eat donuts and played Grand Theft Auto throughout high school will put you at a distinct
disadvantage.
You’ll also have background checks and again a very small infraction in life might not
mean you cannot get in.
Pass the interview and off you’ll go to training school for 26 weeks.
Yes, again there will be written tests that should not challenge most who have done ok
in high school.
As for the fitness test, you need to do the Physical Abilities Requirement Evaluation
that will consist of doing an obstacle course, push ups and pulls ups, and a weight carry,
all under a time of 5 minutes and 30 seconds or less.
That’s at the start of training.
At the end you’ll have to be able to do that same test in less than four minutes.’
So, now you are in the force.
What’s it like?
Well, first of all how much are you being paid?
The amount fluctuates across the USA, but PayScale in 2017 said the average was $44,000
a year for the first zero to five years as a rookie cop.
Other sites tell us the starting salary for most cops is closer to $30,000 and it will
increase by the year.
That might go up to $50,000 between your fifth and tenth year but it depends on how well
you do.
Where you are matters a lot, with sources telling us the average wage for cops in California
is considerably more than double the average for cops in Mississippi.
As for Canada, you can check out the job site Indeed and see police officer positions with
a yearly wage of around $60,000 – after we converted from Canadian dollars.
Again, it depends on where you work, but PayScale tells us the average salary when you just
join the force is around $37,000.
Just like in the US, that can easily go up to $50,000 after a few years.
It seems the wages for US cops and Canadian cops are not dramatically different, but which
country would be better to work in?
We are told that a big difference in policing is the fact that Canada has a federal criminal
code, while in the US things change from state to state.
This means in Canada training and procedures are the same all over, which can make life
easier.
One website tells us that in Canada the money for the police force comes from taxes, while
in the US part of the money comes from the tickets people have to pay.
That website tells us this has led to a stricter kind of policing in the US, as the force needs
to make money.
We are told in Canada they call it a police service, while in the US it’s called a police
force.
Canadians adopt a kind community policing, while in the US the cops are perhaps less
part of their communities.
Then there’s the matter of higher crime rates in the US.
We’ll let an expert explain:
“Canadians often point to a single major difference between our two cultures as a starting
point: Guns are far more easily available in the United States than in Canada.
This environment leads to a tense situation for any police officer, no matter how polite
he or she may wish to appear.”
And this means the US police are not only in more danger but tend to use a bit more
force.
We’ve all seen the videos of perhaps rather over-the-top policing.
We might also say that officers in some parts of the US are under tremendous stress, given
the number of guns on the streets.
We are told that US officers use lethal force about 6 times more than the average Canadian
cop.
The Washington Post told us that in 2015 US police shot and killed close to 1,000 people
while in Canada that number on average is about 15 people a year.
Unless you are mentally unhinged, killing people is something you certainly don’t
want to do, and in the US as a police officer it’s much more likely that you will.
We are told that in 2018, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, 149 deaths of
officers occurred in the line of duty.
Most were shootings, but cops also perish in car crashes while performing their duties
and other ways.
Some deaths might just have been accidents, but we are told firearms were involved in
most deaths.
In comparison, the Canadian Broadcasting Association looked at the Canadian police memorial statistics
and told us in 2018, “Since 1975, a total of 284 police officers have died on the job.
Of these, 101 were homicide victims, while 88 were killed in vehicle accidents — often
while rushing to respond to a call in poor road conditions.”
We can certainly say that officers in the US have the more dangerous job, by a long
way.
So, you are getting a similar wage, but have more chance of killing someone and more chance
of being killed.
You are also more likely to have to use force and adopt a more aggressive style of policing,
all of which would likely make your job more stressful in the US.
That stress is killing officers in the US, we are told.
One study cited by Men’s Health said the number of officers that took their own lives
in 2016 was way more than those who were shot.
“There is not enough conversation about mental health within police and fire departments,”
said the study.
It depends where you are of course.
A recent study by the Department of Justice for instance said that the suicide rate in
the Chicago Police Department was 60 percent higher than the US average.
One officer who worked for the Fresno Police Department said over his 35-year career he
counted 14 of his colleagues that took their own lives on the job.
Apparently, getting the number of officers who do that after retiring is not easy to
do.
USA Today also reported in 2018 that more officers took their own lives (148) than died
in the line of duty.
We can likely deduce that being a cop in the USA can be a very stressful job.
In Canada in 2018, nine officers took their own lives (this was high compared to recent
years).
We might also add here that there are many more cops in the US than there are in Canada.
Statistics tell us there are about 70,000 police officers in Canada and almost tens
times that amount in the USA.
Other stats tell us the USA has considerably more officers per capita than Canada, but
then Canada has a lot less crime.
We might also look at websites that list countries for the worst police brutality, and next to
less developed countries sometimes stands the USA.
We are not going to go into all the reasons why this happens, but we might say that any
chance of being part of such brutality might be said to have future negative consequences
not only for the victims but also for the perpetrators.
Even if they don’t get caught, one day it’s likely their actions will cause them some
amount of unhappiness.
Just reading various sites, it seems Canadians in general have more trust in their police.
This no doubt makes their job easier.
Psychology Today says this of US policing, “Recent polls suggest that the majority
of Americans do not feel that police are adequately held accountable for their actions, treat
racial groups equally or use the right amount of force.”
In conclusion, with Canadian police being liked more by those they serve, the fact they
have less chance of being killed, the fact they deal with less crime and likely suffer
less trauma, and the fact their wages are not too different than their counterparts
in the US, we would say being a cop in Canada is better.
Did you find this video interesting?
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