Police Officer Exam Introduction Welcome to Police Officer Exam Cram! This book is designed to prepare you for the police officer selection exam. But before it goes into the details of the exam, the book talks about the job of a police officer. A detailed job description is given in Chapter 1. Take a good look at the job description. You are getting ready to commit to a noble profession. The book discusses the training and requirements of becoming a police officer, including a description of the testing environment and a discussion of test-taking strategies. Chapters 2 through 6 are designed to introduce different sections you will be tested on during the written portion of the police exam. Chapter 7 covers the oral interview section of the police exam. The oral interview is one of the most important phases of the whole selection process. Chapter 8 provides you information on the physical agility test. This test is demanding and you will need plenty of preparation time. Chapters 9 and 10 cover topics such as time management and test-taking strategies during the written and oral portion of the exam. The three practice tests at the end of the book should give you a reasonably accurate assessment of your knowledge on the topics covered in the test. You have been provided the answers and explanations to the tests. Be sure to review any weak spots you found you had on the practice exams as well. Revisit the chapters that cover your weak spots and also visit the "Need to Know More?" appendix at the end of the book to find other resources you can visit for extra practice and review in your weak areas. In all, if you read the book and understand the material, you'll stand a very good chance of scoring high on all portions of the police officer selection process. Exam Cram books help you understand and appreciate the subjects and materials you need to score high on the police officer selection exam. Exam Cram books are aimed strictly at test preparation and review. They do not teach you everything you need to know about a topic. Instead, you will be presented questions and problems that you're likely to encounter on a test. I have worked to bring together as much information as possible about the police officer selection exam. Nevertheless, to completely prepare yourself for the police test, I recommend that you begin by taking the self-assessment immediately following this introduction in this book. The self-assessment tool will help you evaluate your readiness to become a police officer. Based on what you learn from the self-assessment, you might decide to make some adjustments in your lifestyle that will be conducive to performing well on the police exam. All police officer selection exams are completely closed book. In fact, you are not permitted to take anything with you into the testing area, but you will be given a blank sheet of paper and a pen. I suggest that you immediately write down on that sheet of paper as much test information you've memorized as possible. What This Book Will Not Do This book will not teach you everything you need to know about becoming a police officer. However, this book will teach basic concepts that will help you score high on your police officer selection exam. This book uses a variety of teaching and memorization techniques to analyze the exam-related topics and to provide you guidance and techniques that have been proven successful to obtain high scores in police officer exams. Once again: This book will not make you a police officer or teach you everything there is to know about being a police officer. What This Book Is Designed to Do This book is designed to teach you basic concepts and techniques that will, if followed, help you obtain high scores on the police officer selection exam. Chapter Formats Each Exam Cram chapter follows a regular structure, and provides graphical cues about especially important or useful material. The structure of a typical chapter is as follows: Opening hotlists --Each chapter begins with lists of the terms you'll need to understand and the concepts you'll need to master before you can be fully conversant with the chapter's subject matter. I follow the hotlists with a few introductory paragraphs, setting the stage for the rest of the chapter. Topical coverage --After the opening hotlists, each chapter covers the topics related to the chapter's subject. Exam Alerts --Throughout the topical coverage section, I highlight material most likely to appear on the exam by using a special Exam Alert layout that looks like this: Caution - This is what an Exam Alert looks like. An Exam Alert stresses concepts, terms, or activities that will most likely appear in one or more police exam questions. For that reason, I think any information found offset in Exam Alert format is worthy of unusual attentiveness on your part. Even if material isn't flagged as an Exam Alert, all the content in this book is associated in some way with test-related material. What appears in the chapter content is critical knowledge. Notes --Also, in this book you will find note elements that expand on topics being discussed. See below for an example: Note - A note is an aside piece of information that is related to the regular content flow, but is not really suitable to be in the regular flow of content. These are good for giving you extra information about police work and life that doesn't necessarily have much to do with the exam, but is good to know nonetheless. Tips --I provide tips that will help you to build a better foundation of knowledge or to focus your attention on an important concept that will reappear later in the book. Tips provide a helpful way to remind you of the context surrounding a particular area of a topic under discussion. Practice questions --This section presents a short list of test questions related to the specific chapter topic. Each question has a following explanation of both correct and incorrect answers. The practice questions highlight the areas we found to be most important on the exam. Need to Know More? --Every chapter ends with a section that is represented in an appendix titled "Need to Know More?" This section provides pointers to resources that we found to be helpful in offering further details on the chapter's subject matter. If you find a resource you like in this collection, use it, but don't feel compelled to use all these resources. I use this section to recommend resources that I have used on a regular basis, so none of the recommendations will be a waste of your time or money. These resources might go out of print or be taken down (in the case of Web sites), so I've tried to reference widely accepted resources. The bulk of the book follows this chapter structure, but there are a few other elements that I would like to point out: Practice tests --The practice tests, which appear in Chapters 11, 13, and 15 (with answer keys in Chapters 12, 14, and 16), are very close approximations of the types of questions you are likely to see on police officer selection exam. Answer keys --These provide the answers to the practice tests, complete with explanations of both the correct responses and the incorrect responses. Glossary --This is an extensive glossary of important terms used in this book. Cram sheet --This appears as a tear-away sheet inside the front cover of this Exam Cram book. It is a valuable tool that represents a collection of the most difficult-to-remember facts and numbers I think you should memorize before taking the test. Remember, you can dump this information out of your head onto a piece of paper as soon as you enter the testing room. These are usually facts that I've found require brute-force memorization. You need to remember this information only long enough to write it down when you walk into the test room. Be advised that you will be asked to surrender all personal belongings before you enter the exam room itself. You might want to look at the cram sheet in your car or in the lobby of the testing center just before you walk into the testing center. The cram sheet is divided under headings, so you can review the appropriate parts just before each test. Contacting the Author I've tried to create a real-world tool that you can use to prepare for and obtain high scores on your police officer selection exam. All the tips and techniques and information I have presented in the book, I have used myself. In 17 years of law enforcement experience, I have taken the police officer selection exam three times. Each time I scored high on the exam and was interviewed by the agency and offered employment. Just like anything else, some of the information might or might not work for you. But I assure you that after you've read this book, you will develop your own plan of tackling the police officer selection exam. I'm interested in any feedback you would care to share about the book, especially if you have ideas about how I can improve it for future brothers and sisters to be in law enforcement. I'll consider what you say carefully and will respond to all reasonable suggestions and comments. You can reach me via email at rizwanskhan@hotmail.com . Let me know if you found this book to be helpful in your preparation efforts. I'd also like to know how you felt about your chances of passing the exam before you read the book and then after you read the book. Of course, I'd be glad to hear from you when you succeed in your endeavor to become a police officer. Thanks for choosing me as your guide in becoming a police officer. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it. I wish you luck on the selection exam. I'm sure that if you read through all the chapters and work with the exam questions and the concepts presented, you will score high and pass with flying colors. (c) Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved. Excerpted from Police Officer Exam Cram by Rizwan Khan, Pamela Rice Hahn All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.