What does it take to become a homicide detective?

How do you become a homicide detective?

• Whenever I get to the age of 21, I want to become a police officer but the reason is because I want to become a detective and get into the homicide unit? Does anybody know what all I ...show more

• Answer:

  Degree or not depends on the department. Only larger departments have separate homicide units. Most larger departments do not require a bachelors degree they require 60 semester hours (2 years normally) from an accredited college. No one in any real department cares what your college hours are in or what your major was. Those who say stuff like criminal justice simply have no clue. All large department, no matter in what state, always want to hire you first and they send you to their own academy. Larger departments do not accept those fresh out of basic academies that the student payed for. So you pick a couple of departments around the US. You sign up to find out when they will be testing. You take the entrance tests, written and physical agility when offered. If you make it after doing well enough on the tests, passing background checks, sometimes polygraph tests, drug use tests and psychological tests and interviews. Then you get offered a final physical, pass that and you get to go to the academy. You attend the academy, usually for about 6 to 8 months, pass everything and pass the state peace officer certification test. Then you typically work with a field training officer for 6 to 8 weeks. Then you finish out your probation period, often a yer or 1.5 years. You then work in patrol as an officer for at least 2 years, many department 5 years. You then are eligible to take a detective's test when offered. You study hard and make top grades. When they offer a detectives test they offer you the opportunity to take the class you qualified for in test numerical order. You pass the one or tw month detective academy and you get assigned. If, as a patrol officer, you did very well and showed you have potential they may allow you to try to choose your unit. You may, but it is unusual, get to go directly to homicide. this is true if you also have lots of good court experience and have shown you can learn. Most go to other units and after gaining experience and when a new class of detectives is made you often get a chance to move to homicide, if the homicide bosses think you are good enough. Like I said most of the sites are selling mail order internet degrees. They have a reason to say you need a bachelors or a certain major. In my 10 years as a homicide detective for a very large department I never met another detective who had a criminology degree or criminal justice or police science degree. Most, if they had any degree(s), had some liberal arts degree. The majority in secondary education or English Lit.