Cape police chief defends doctoral dissertation

Cape police chief explores correlation with police officers' college education for doctoral dissertation

City of Cape Girardeau's police chief Wes Blair defended his doctoral dissertation concerning the perception of college education relating to police officers' job skills "two weeks ago".

Blair is pursuing his doctoral degree in criminal justice leadership and is currently waiting for his degree to be conferred after he defended his dissertation. Blair said he chose this research partly because of his personal experience with continuing his education.

"I found just in my own personal life that college has enhanced my critical world, my broader worldview. Obviously, you have to think more critically in a college class when you're dissecting research and looking at papers," Blair said.

He said part of his research was made up of anonymous surveys and interviews to find a variety of viewpoints on the correlation between police officers' skills and education. Blair interviewed police chiefs and then gave anonymous surveys to officers in those departments.

Blair said he looked at departments of all differing sizes and regions. He was also able to use his association with the International Association of Chiefs of Police to conduct part of his study.

"I had seven chiefs that participated and they solicited at least 10 officers in their department to participate in the research," Blair said. "I set up a survey for them (police chiefs) to pass on to their officers so they could go in and anonymously do it."

Blair said he set up interviews with the police chiefs to get their opinions on how college education would affect their skills.

He said he found differing perspectives between officers and police chiefs on what skills could be enhanced by a college degree.

"A lot of officers didn't really feel like that critical decision-making was necessarily enhanced by a college degree and the same thing with communication skills," Blair said. "Police chiefs generally tended to skew towards, 'Yeah, no, absolutely, those things are very helpful.'"

Blair said while a lot of police departments require officers to have some college studies, one statistic he found shocking was that only 1% of the police departments in the U.S. require a bachelor's degree.

He said something he took away from his study is to encourage officers, "especially newer officers", to possibly go to college for an associate's or bachelor's degree. Blair said he wouldn't just encourage criminal justice, but also business administration or management.

"I think it makes you a better critical decision-maker. I think it opens up opportunities that you may not have had before," Blair said. "I strongly encourage folks to go back and do that."