The Mercury News and East Bay Times story published April 16 “What Can Be Done About Racist Cops?” puts forward several possible answers to its own question but never seems to land on what I consider to be the best one: We need to fix the problem where it starts.

The hiring process for the average police department is broken and all but incentivizes cops to embrace insular group think and cliques within cliques.

Applicants are required to have 60 units of college credit, most commonly achieved through an associate degree in criminal justice or related fields of study. This field of education is certainly relevant for policing; it makes the career choice a real all-or-nothing enterprise for the applicant. If they aren’t hired as an officer or decide they want to move into another field, their options may be limited to corrections, probations or parole — important occupations but maybe not their desired goal.

There’s nothing wrong with a lifetime career in policing, but currently it’s not only expected but strongly encouraged (if indirectly) at the time of hiring. When I was in the process of becoming an officer in 1972, I was asked where I saw myself in five years. I answered, “still here, as a sergeant,” not necessarily because I believed it but because I had been instructed by other hires that any other answer would land my application in the garbage bin.

These departments and the communities they serve would benefit greatly from a hiring process that secures a wider range of applicants who are less wedded to the career path, and the system should be made more flexible to encourage a wider and deeper hiring pool with diverse backgrounds and educations beyond traditional recognized diversity norms. Bolstering departments with a healthy roster of officers who might not necessarily consider their police work to be a lifelong enterprise would help prevent the formation and growth of racist, dehumanizing cliques that have rightly caused outrage in Antioch, Oakland and elsewhere in California and beyond in recent years.

That’s not to mention the other obvious benefits of departments with more well-rounded educational backgrounds that would bring a range of perspectives and problem-solving skills to the department that creates a more representative and effective police force. Psychology, social work or even liberal arts degrees could help shift the focus toward community engagement and de-escalation tactics and away from the insular “warrior” mentality that criminal justice degrees have been accused of perpetuating. Business and finance majors could apply their knowledge to help make their department’s overall operations more effective.

“A fine notion, but how are we going to achieve this diversification and lure seemingly unrelated majors from their chosen career paths?” you may be asking. And considering police departments are already struggling with a long-term hiring drought, it’s an especially fair question.

I believe a great solution would be to make department hiring more akin to military recruitment, where it’s not just common but encouraged for members to move into different careers after a few years of service. While many departments already offer higher education incentives for members, this is tied to the expectation that they remain in policing, that their newfound expertise will inform their departmental work, rather than the other way around.

For all the talk of the militarization of the police from both sides of the discourse, I’m surprised neither seems to strongly advocate for adopting this one aspect of military service that indisputably, incontrovertibly “works.” Financial and career incentives — similar to those provided by an ROTC type program — would bring better applicants into police departments that would in turn benefit the community.

Eugene M. Hyman is a retired Santa Clara County Superior Court judge.