Before turning to the specifics, some perspective on the scope of the training task is in order. The New York City Police Department is composed of some 40,000 sworn officers. According to NYPD sources, if it were a standing army, it would be the sixth largest such army in the world. In the last four years, thousands of police recruits passed through the NYPD Police Academy.
Further training is conducted by supervisors in the field.
As noted at the outset, the OAG's investigation of NYPD training issues is ongoing. To place the issues in some context, however, a brief review of NYPD training is provided below. A. Training of Recruits at the Police Academy Prior to being assigned actual street duty, all NYPD recruits undergo an extensive seven-month training regimen at the NYPD Academy. To graduate from the Academy, recruits must pass multiple-choice tests in each discipline. The topic is presented in four 90-minute classroom lessons, as part of a larger discussion of Fourth Amendment and related legal concepts.