Countries with innovative police training programs include West Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Characteristics of the training programs are emphasis on social science theory in relation to the reality of policing situations, as well as specialized curricula and continuing education courses for the various specific policing duties and command levels. Furthermore, these training systems have been centralized and coordinated to provide uniformity and enable professional mobility within a country's police forces. The programs aim for developing policing skills coupled with attitudes of independent decisionmaking and cooperative teamwork. To pursue these training goals, the police organization's operational and administrative practices must be uniformly structured and conducive to change, which is not the case in Belgium, where the branches of the police are diversified, fragmented, and without sufficiently centralized coordination. In the European training programs, the trend toward police professionalization remains to be balanced by instruction that places the police role in perspective, relating its apparatus to the structures of the State and the society they serve. A total of 29 footnotes are provided.