NTN FrontLine Police study guide
NTN FrontLine Police · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
FrontLine National is an entry-level aptitude and screening exam used by a large network of local, county, and state law enforcement agencies in the United States and Canada to evaluate candidates for peace officer and deputy positions. Rather than testing police knowledge, it measures the underlying abilities that academy instructors and field training officers expect a recruit to bring on day one: sound judgment in tense human interactions, accurate reading of dense written material, clean and correct writing, and reliable basic arithmetic. The test blends multiple-choice items with video-based situational judgment questions, so candidates watch or read a scenario and choose the most and least effective response. Taking the exam does not guarantee consideration by any particular department; individual agencies set their own hiring standards, and candidates typically authorize score release to the agencies they apply to. The NTN FrontLine Police study guide has 4 sections and about 1,342 words.
01Video-Based Human Relations and Situational Judgment
Each clip shows a routine but tense contact - a traffic stop, a disturbance call, a person in crisis, a complaint at a front counter. You then choose the best response from four options.
335 words, about 2 min02Reading Comprehension
Passages are short and work-related: policy excerpts, memos, incident narratives, community notices. Questions ask for the main idea, a stated detail, an inference, a word's meaning in context, the author's purpose or tone, or a sequence/cause-effect relationship.
382 words, about 2 min03Writing Skills and Grammar
Usage and mechanics at the sentence level, plus the plain-style conventions of report writing. Know: sentence boundaries (fragments, run-ons, comma splices), subject-verb agreement, pronoun case and clear antecedents, tense consistency, parallel structure, modifier placement, punctuation (comma, semicolon, colon, apostrophe), capitalization, and commonly confused words (affect/effect, its/it's, their/there/they're, fewer/less, then/than).
301 words, about 2 min04Basic Mathematics
Arithmetic with fractions, decimals, and percents; ratios and proportions; averages; rate, time, and distance; unit conversions; perimeter and area; and multi-step word problems drawn from scheduling, patrol coverage, staffing, and budget. Assume no calculator - practice estimating so you can eliminate answers quickly.
324 words, about 2 min