A professional law enforcement officer is one who recognizes that citizens are their greatest allies in the war on crime and that a police officer is merely a private citizen who is paid to do a job that is the responsibility of all citizens. As would be expected, my instructional philosophy is directly related to my law enforcement philosophy. I believe that I have the responsibility of educating prospective criminal justice professionals as to the realities of working in the current criminal justice system. I believe that significant change is needed to bring about a reduction of crime in society while making sure that persons have all of their constitutional rights protected. No longer is there room in a complex society for criminal justice personnel to deal with problems simply by being tough on crime.
Crime is more complex than that simple solution.
The criminal justice system must be as innovative as necessary to solve the complex crime problem facing our society. I believe that students must learn to solve problems rather than react to a problem after it has happened. If a doctors main solution for a disease was to wait until the patient died to determine what happened, the public would be outraged, yet the criminal justice system spends its resources on crime after it has occurred and does little to prevent it from happening in the first place.