By Ben Haiman, Executive Director, Center for Public Safety and Justice
Volunteer law enforcement is easy to describe in broad terms and much harder to define in practice. Depending on the jurisdiction, a volunteer officer may supplement patrol operations, support special events, participate in emergency response, assist with investigations, perform community policing duties or serve in highly specialized assignments. Some volunteers are retired career officers. Others are using the experience as a pathway into full-time law enforcement. Still others have established careers outside policing and serve because they want to contribute to something larger than themselves.
That diversity was on full display at the 2026 Volunteer Law Enforcement Officer Alliance International Training Conference, held September 30 through October 2 across Northern Virginia and Washington, D.C. The conference brought together reserve, auxiliary and volunteer officers, program leaders and public safety professionals for three days that blended operational training, leadership development and candid conversations about the future of volunteer policing. Participants joined from Asia, Europe, and across North America.
The conference was hosted across three locations by the Fairfax County Police Department, the University of Virginia Center for Public Safety and Justice, and the Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C. The program reflected the extraordinary range of volunteer policing itself and included an international panel on the state of volunteer policing, real-time crime center instruction, practical instruction and recertification, discussions about organizational culture and retention, and numerous presentations.
The final day included visits to the U.S. Capitol and practical training at MPD’s training facility, with attendees rotating through tactical training, simulation and physical-skills sessions.
That combination was intentional. Volunteer officers need many of the same tactical, leadership and wellness competencies as their full-time counterparts. But volunteer programs also face organizational challenges that are distinctly their own.
Those challenges became especially clear during a facilitated member roundtable.
The stories behind the uniform
The roundtable began not with policy, but with stories.
One participant recalled working alongside full-time officers who did not realize they were working with a volunteer officer. Another talked about the lasting impact of participating in a death notification and the broader issue of post-traumatic stress among volunteers. Someone else had served as part of a presidential detail. Another remembered working on 9/11 and being assigned to drive a police cruiser for the first time.
The individual experiences were remarkably different, yet they illustrated something fundamental: The label “volunteer” says very little about the seriousness of the work.
When participants were asked to describe their roles and duties, the range was so broad that virtually no two answers were the same. That should matter to police executives. Volunteer policing is not a single operating model. Programs reflect their agencies, communities, legal authorities and histories.
Three VLEOA leaders who participated in UVA & Rutgers’ 2026 Operationalizing Never Again program also shared reflections on how the experience affected their leadership and service. Drawing on their time in Germany and Poland, they discussed how confronting the consequences of institutional failure, dehumanization and unchecked authority prompted deeper thinking about ethical leadership, personal responsibility and the obligation to act when systems begin to fail. Their remarks connected the lessons of history directly to contemporary public safety, emphasizing that leadership is not only about policy and procedure, but about the daily choices that shape organizational culture, protect human dignity and reinforce public trust. After all Battalion 101 was a reserve police battalion in Nazi Germany.
The international nature of the conference reinforced that reality. VLEOA’s broader network includes agencies from the United States, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Singapore, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and other countries, providing opportunities to compare very different models of reserve and auxiliary service.
Despite those differences, several common themes emerged.
Recruiting is difficult. Retaining people may be harder.
Recruitment challenges will sound familiar to almost every police executive today. Volunteer programs face many of the same difficulties as career agencies, sometimes with an additional hurdle: They are asking people to give away their time.
Participants emphasized the importance of managing expectations from the beginning. Applicants may imagine patrol work and emergency calls, while the agency’s immediate need may involve community events, traffic assignments or administrative support. Neither expectation is inherently wrong, but a mismatch can quickly become a retention problem.
Participants highlighted social media as a relatively inexpensive recruitment tool, particularly when agencies use it to show what volunteers actually do. “Day in the life” content can help potential applicants understand both the opportunities and the realities of service.
High schools and colleges also represent an important recruiting pipeline. Volunteer programs can introduce younger participants to public safety careers and serve as steppingstones into full-time law enforcement.
At the other end of the career spectrum are retired officers. Their experience can be invaluable, but participants noted that agencies still have to manage expectations. A former full-time officer entering a volunteer role may need to adjust to different responsibilities, authority or organizational relationships. Experience alone does not automatically make someone the right fit for every volunteer program.
Retention often comes down to things agencies can control
One of the strongest themes of the conversation was that volunteers frequently leave because of seemingly small issues.
That should be encouraging to leaders, because many of those issues are within an agency’s control.
Volunteer officers repeatedly described wanting to feel that they belong to the organization rather than operating alongside it. Career officers spend enormous amounts of time together through shifts, training and informal interaction. Volunteers may see one another only occasionally and may have even fewer opportunities to interact socially with the broader department.
Simple practices can make a difference, including inviting volunteers to agency activities. Invite them to informal gatherings. Recognize good work. Say thank you.
Participants stressed that recognition does not have to be elaborate. Immediate praise matters, but following through matters even more. If a volunteer does exceptional work, supervisors can document it and make sure the recognition reaches the shift commander or agency leadership. Service awards and milestone recognition similarly communicate that the organization notices the contribution.
Training sends another powerful cultural signal. Even if volunteers cannot attend every course, providing equitable access to training demonstrates that they are considered members of the agency’s professional workforce rather than an afterthought.
Flexibility is equally important. Volunteer service is, by definition, not the individual’s primary employment. Jobs change. Families change. Health and personal responsibilities change. A program that allows a good volunteer to step away temporarily and return may retain an experienced member who otherwise would leave permanently.
As one theme from the discussion suggested, six more productive months from a valued volunteer may be better than losing that person altogether.
Retention also means recognizing that success looks different depending on the volunteer. Someone using a reserve program as a pathway into a law enforcement career may remain only a year or two. That departure is not necessarily a failure. It may be evidence that the program accomplished part of its mission.
Agencies should nevertheless take advantage of departures by conducting meaningful exit conversations. Volunteer officers may identify organizational problems that supervisors have never seen.
Training, wellness and culture cannot be secondary
The conference also highlighted the complexity of training volunteer personnel.
Participants discussed everything from individualized, “a la carte” training to requirements for members. Field training consistency was another concern. Volunteers may work less frequently and with different trainers, making standardization difficult. Online instruction can help address scheduling challenges, but participants cautioned against allowing convenience to replace hands-on learning where practical competency matters.
Emotional wellness also emerged as a growing concern. Canadian participants described increasing attention to psychological health and wellbeing within volunteer programs.
That discussion connected directly back to the stories shared earlier. A death notification does not become less traumatic because the person delivering it is unpaid. A critical incident does not distinguish between a full-time and volunteer badge.
Agencies should not either.
A “salad bowl,” not a melting pot
Perhaps the most memorable analogy of the roundtable came during the discussion about culture.
One participant challenged the traditional description of organizations as a “melting pot.” A melting pot suggests that everyone eventually becomes the same. A better analogy, the participant suggested, is a salad bowl: “You can be the lettuce, carrots, anything.”
The point was simple: strong organizations do not require people to surrender the experiences and identities they bring with them. They create a community in which those differences remain visible while contributing to something larger. That may be an especially useful concept for volunteer law enforcement.
Volunteer programs bring together retirees and aspiring officers, professionals from other careers, people serving a few hours each month and others contributing hundreds of hours each year. They may never look exactly like the career workforce. They shouldn’t have to.
The leadership challenge is creating an organization in which they nonetheless feel trained, trusted, appreciated and connected.
The 2026 VLEOA conference demonstrated that volunteer policing takes many forms around the world, but its most persistent challenges are surprisingly consistent. Recruitment matters. Training matters. Wellness matters. Leadership matters. And perhaps most importantly, belonging matters.
For police executives overseeing volunteer, reserve or auxiliary programs, that may be the most actionable lesson of all. Volunteers may not depend on the agency for their paycheck, but that does not mean they expect less from its leadership. In many ways, they expect more.
About the author
Ben Haiman is the Executive Director for UVA Center for Public Safety and Justice & President of the Volunteer Law Enforcement Officer Alliance (VLEOA).