Law Enforcement Officers


Law, Public Safety, Corrections, and Security > Law Enforcement Officers > Skills and Abilities
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Law Enforcement Officers

Law Enforcement Officers - Skills and Abilities

Police officers and sheriffs need to:

Communicate

  • Understand spoken information.
  • Speak clearly so listeners can understand.
  • Understand written information.
  • Listen to others and ask questions.
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  • Read and understand work-related materials.
  • Write clearly so other people can understand.

Reason and Problem Solve

  • Notice when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong.
  • Use reasoning to discover answers to problems.
  • Combine several pieces of information and draw conclusions.
  • Analyze ideas and use logic to determine their strengths and weaknesses.
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  • Follow guidelines to arrange objects or actions in a certain order.
  • Understand new information or materials by studying and working with them.
  • Judge the costs and benefits of a possible action.
  • Develop rules that group items in various ways.
  • Make sense of information that seems without meaning or organization.
  • Concentrate and not be distracted while performing a task.
  • Recognize the nature of a problem.
  • Think of original, unusual, or creative ways to solve problems.
  • Think of new ideas about a topic.
  • Remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.

Manage Oneself, People, Time, and Things

  • Check how well one is learning or doing something.
  • Manage the time of self and others.
  • Go back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information without becoming confused.

Work with People

  • Be aware of others’ reactions and understand the possible causes.
  • Persuade others to approach things differently.
  • Change behavior in relation to others’ actions.
  • Look for ways to help people.
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  • Solve problems by bringing others together to discuss differences.
  • Teach others how to do something.

Perceive and Visualize

  • Identify a pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in distracting material.
  • Quickly and accurately compare letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns.
Source: Illinois Career Information System (CIS) brought to you by Illinois Department of Employment Security.