Running Header: The Modern Millennial Police Recruit The Modern Millennial Police Recruit 6 The Modern Millennial Police Recruit Sheena Thiebaud SOC470- Research Methods Averett University January 15, 2016 Although recruitment of police officers greatly varies depending on economic, social and educational factors from one country to another, police departments often struggle to find the best recruits who can best meet the ever increasing technological and customer-service oriented expectations of a modern police officer (White, 2008). Security and public safety in the 21 century is highly changing and evolving. Due to technological advances, police officers are forced to do their jobs more professionally and change the way in which they relate and interact with members of the public whom they are supposed to protect. Today, almost all police departments exhibit higher levels of transparency than what was being observed a decade ago (Bradley, 2005). There is a great shift in terms of proper leadership, increased use of technology to improve safety and fight crime, policy, structure and culture. The five articles selected for this literature review majorly discuss similar themes and issues. The authors talk about how police recruitment has changed with time for the last few decades. Notably, most of these changes have been brought about technological advances. According the authors, technology has numerous benefits to police agencies but unfortunately, the come laced with immense challenges too which have to be addressed. More is expected from the modern police as compared to what the situation was some decades ago. The modern police are expected to juggle between solving neighborhood problems and also enforce the law (Wilson & Heinonen, 2012). While in the course of their duties, modern police officer are expected to make use of technology in order to recognize, analyze and solve crimes since majority of police departments have adopted an approach governed by community policing strategies (Woska, 2006). A community policing approach is one that encourages police officers to put in place measures aimed at preventing crimes from occurring as opposed to simply reacting when the crimes pop up. This implies that there is immense pressure on police officers to properly handle the complex diverse community problems that have to do with gangs, juvenile offenders, parole and people on probation (Woska, 2006). Therefore, there is a great need for those in charge of recruiting police officers to ensure that they get the best, intuitive and intelligent officers who have the capability to handle the above said complex issues. Some police departments actually have to carry the recruitment exercises two or three times in an effort to make sure that they get things right. Nowadays, modern police recruits are usually technically savvy, service oriented and enthusiastic. They mostly tend to join the police force with high expectations a.