Police Career Paths with Emergency Management Degrees

Key Infor­ma­tion:

• An emer­gency man­age­ment degree equips police offi­cers with essen­tial skills to han­dle nat­ur­al and man­made dis­as­ters, mak­ing them bet­ter pre­pared for var­i­ous crises. 
• Emer­gency man­age­ment edu­ca­tion pro­vides both hard and soft skills, such as first aid, cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion, risk assess­ment, and lead­er­ship.
• Police offi­cers with emer­gency man­age­ment train­ing can pur­sue var­i­ous career paths, includ­ing roles as patrol offi­cers, SWAT team mem­bers, admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions, and fed­er­al law enforce­ment. This train­ing opens up numer­ous advance­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties with­in the polic­ing field.
• The demand for offi­cers with emer­gency man­age­ment skills is like­ly to grow as crises become more com­plex. This trend sug­gests an increas­ing need for spe­cial­ized units and task forces led by police offi­cers with com­pre­hen­sive emer­gency man­age­ment training.

A career in polic­ing isn’t just about catch­ing bad guys. It’s also about pro­tect­ing and serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty. That’s why, in emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, you find police offi­cers on the front lines.

As such, an emer­gency man­age­ment degree can be extreme­ly help­ful in car­ry­ing out duties as a police offi­cer. If you have an emer­gency man­age­ment degree or plan to get one, the sub­jects you’ll study will be rel­e­vant to each day you’re on the job as a law enforce­ment officer.

This guide will help you under­stand how emer­gency man­age­ment and polic­ing are inte­grat­ed, the com­pe­ten­cies you’ll acquire in an emer­gency man­age­ment degree pro­gram, the qual­i­fi­ca­tions and train­ing you need to start a career in this field, and much more.

Relat­ed:

• Emer­gency Man­age­ment vs. Crim­i­nal Jus­tice Degrees for Polic­ing Careers
• What Can I Do with a Bachelor’s in Emer­gency Management?
• Best Bachelor’s in Emer­gency Management
• Most Afford­able Bachelor’s in Emer­gency Management
• Fastest Online Bachelor’s in Emer­gency Management

Understanding Emergency Management Degrees

An emer­gency man­age­ment degree focus­es on help­ing you build the nec­es­sary skills to address nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and man­made crises. From earth­quakes to acts of ter­ror to gas leaks or downed elec­tri­cal wires, you’ll learn the prop­er pro­to­cols to pro­tect the pub­lic at large.

Cri­sis man­age­ment train­ing is avail­able at all col­le­giate lev­els, from associate’s degrees to doc­tor­al pro­grams. You can also com­plete any num­ber of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grams in emer­gency pre­pared­ness, such as a Cer­ti­fied Emer­gency Man­ag­er or Cer­ti­fied Emer­gency and Dis­as­ter Professional.

While the spe­cif­ic top­ics you study depend on the pro­gram you’re enrolled in, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, cer­tifi­cates and degrees in this field focus on essen­tial emer­gency man­age­ment skills, such as:

• Haz­ard sci­ence and management
• Cri­sis response protocols
• Dis­as­ter plan­ning and threat assessment
• Project man­age­ment and leadership
• Dis­as­ter recov­ery techniques

Typ­i­cal­ly, niche sub­jects are also explored, like coun­tert­er­ror­ism tac­tics, haz­ard mit­i­ga­tion, and cyberterrorism.

Core Competencies Developed

Dis­as­ter response police train­ing focus­es on a vari­ety of hard and soft skills:

Like­wise, a thor­ough under­stand­ing of devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing an inci­dent com­mand sys­tem (ICS) is crit­i­cal for address­ing emer­gency sit­u­a­tions. An ICS not only enables you to coor­di­nate emer­gency respons­es from vary­ing agen­cies, but also ensures effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion among responders.

Pub­lic safe­ty careers in polic­ing have always revolved around soft skills like those list­ed above. But increas­ing­ly, hard emer­gency man­age­ment skills are need­ed to pre­pare offi­cers to respond effec­tive­ly to crises rang­ing from active shoot­ers to weath­er-relat­ed disasters.

Career Paths in Policing with an Emergency Management Degree

The police career paths avail­able to you as a grad­u­ate of an emer­gency man­age­ment degree pro­gram are vir­tu­al­ly end­less. Here are a few com­mon options to explore:

• Patrol Offi­cer — Pair your emer­gency man­age­ment train­ing with a career as a patrol offi­cer with a focus on com­mu­ni­ty emer­gency preparedness.
• SWAT Team Mem­ber — Spe­cial Weapons and Tac­tics offi­cers are on the front lines of crim­i­nal­ly-relat­ed cri­sis sit­u­a­tions and can ben­e­fit from train­ing in CPR, cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion, risk assess­ment, and oth­er crit­i­cal emer­gency man­age­ment skills.
• Admin­is­tra­tive Police Roles - Use an edu­ca­tion in emer­gency man­age­ment to advance your career as a mem­ber of a dis­as­ter response team with­in your depart­ment or unit.
• Fed­er­al Polic­ing - Train­ing in dis­as­ter man­age­ment and response is help­ful for Home­land Secu­ri­ty careers, FEMA law enforce­ment jobs, and oth­er fed­er­al agen­cies, includ­ing the FBI.

Oth­er law enforce­ment careers you might con­sid­er include Trans­porta­tion Secu­ri­ty Offi­cer, Cor­rec­tions Offi­cer, Tran­sit and Rail­road Police, or Bor­der Patrol Agent, to name a few.

Case Studies and Real-Life Examples

As not­ed above, today, polic­ing and emer­gency man­age­ment go hand in hand. Accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Chiefs of Police, this is a much more com­mon occur­rence now than even a few years ago.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, emer­gency man­age­ment was han­dled by oth­er first respon­ders — fire­fight­ers, EMS work­ers, and so forth. But as ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties have increased in the U.S. over the last 25 years, it’s become much more com­mon for peo­ple with emer­gency man­age­ment expe­ri­ence to also work in policing.

In fact, the com­bi­na­tion of skills need­ed to effec­tive­ly respond to emer­gen­cies while also mit­i­gat­ing poten­tial crim­i­nal threats is high on the list of many law enforce­ment agen­cies look­ing for recruits. Local police depart­ments, in par­tic­u­lar, may pri­or­i­tize hir­ing offi­cers with emer­gency man­age­ment skills because local depart­ments are often the ones respond­ing to cri­sis sit­u­a­tions, like active shoot­ers in schools.

Nat­ur­al dis­as­ters are fur­ther case stud­ies of the impor­tance of emer­gency man­age­ment skills being inte­grat­ed into police offi­cer train­ing. For exam­ple, dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na in 2005, many offi­cers found them­selves com­plete­ly cut off from their depart­ments with no way to com­mu­ni­cate. Rely­ing on dis­as­ter pre­pared­ness skills obtained in an emer­gency man­age­ment pro­gram enables offi­cers in these sit­u­a­tions to make more effec­tive and time­ly decisions.

There’s anoth­er ele­ment to this as well — career advance­ment. As in any pro­fes­sion, the more edu­ca­tion and train­ing you have, the more like­ly you are to be pro­mot­ed. With a back­ground in emer­gency man­age­ment, you can expand your dai­ly respon­si­bil­i­ties and per­haps even move into a new role in law enforce­ment admin­is­tra­tion or management.

Additional Qualifications and Training

It’s impor­tant to con­sid­er a degree in emer­gency man­age­ment as the foun­da­tion of your emer­gency pre­pared­ness police train­ing. Often, fur­ther train­ing or cer­ti­fi­ca­tions are nec­es­sary to address the spe­cif­ic roles asso­ci­at­ed with dis­as­ter plan­ning law enforce­ment careers.

For exam­ple, let’s assume you want to become a SWAT offi­cer. In addi­tion to an emer­gency man­age­ment degree and a few years of law enforce­ment expe­ri­ence, you must under­go spe­cial­ized SWAT train­ing. This train­ing includes class­room work and field expe­ri­ences, such as advanced weapons train­ing, com­bat meth­ods, and self-defense.

As anoth­er exam­ple, to become a Cer­ti­fied Emer­gency Man­ag­er (CEM), you must com­plete numer­ous require­ments after fin­ish­ing an emer­gency man­age­ment degree:

• Com­plete 100 or more hours of emer­gency man­age­ment train­ing and anoth­er 100 hours of gen­er­al man­age­ment training.
• Pass a 100-ques­tion exam.
• Make six or more con­tri­bu­tions to the field through activ­i­ties such as pub­lish­ing arti­cles or speak­ing engagements.
• Write an essay expound­ing on your knowl­edge of emer­gency management.
• Acquire three or more years of emer­gency man­age­ment experience.

These are just two exam­ples, of course. Many oth­er options for sup­ple­ment­ing a degree in emer­gency man­age­ment are avail­able. Like­wise, you can take part in con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment to stay on the cut­ting edge of the­o­ry and prac­tice in this field. In fact, many polic­ing orga­ni­za­tions require offi­cers to com­plete pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment on an annu­al basis.

Future Trends and Opportunities

If recent his­to­ry is any indi­ca­tion, polic­ing and emer­gency man­age­ment will con­tin­ue to evolve and become more and more inter­twined. As the nature of crises in the U.S. con­tin­ues to change, hav­ing well-informed and high­ly trained emer­gency man­agers with police expe­ri­ence will help local, state, and nation­al author­i­ties respond to inci­dents with greater effectiveness.

Emer­gency man­age­ment train­ing also has impli­ca­tions for day-to-day polic­ing oper­a­tions. Offi­cers with cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tion train­ing, for exam­ple, can more effec­tive­ly address sit­u­a­tions like domes­tic vio­lence inci­dents and respond to calls involv­ing peo­ple with men­tal ill­ness­es. Like­wise, high-stress sit­u­a­tions like motor vehi­cle acci­dents and miss­ing per­sons can be man­aged more effec­tive­ly if law enforce­ment offi­cers can rely on skills like emer­gency pre­pared­ness, risk analy­sis, and oper­a­tions management.

As these fields con­tin­ue to inte­grate, it’s rea­son­able to assume that demand for admin­is­tra­tive posi­tions with­in polic­ing will increase. For exam­ple, we might see more and more agen­cies cre­ate emer­gency response units. We might also see the cre­ation of more emer­gency-relat­ed task forces that bring mul­ti­ple agen­cies togeth­er led by law enforce­ment offi­cials with exten­sive emer­gency man­age­ment experience.

That being said, there is tremen­dous poten­tial upside to pur­su­ing a polic­ing career after com­plet­ing an emer­gency man­age­ment degree. A sol­id back­ground in cri­sis man­age­ment com­bined with police train­ing will make you a trust­ed mem­ber of the depart­ment when dis­as­ter strikes. As with any major life deci­sion, though, it’s impor­tant to reflect on your goals and con­sid­er how this path­way might — or might not — help you advance toward those goals.