Analysis Of The Militarization Of Today 's Police Departments Essay

The militarization of the police is becoming more and more prevalent issue in our society. There are positives and negatives to this issue, but in my opinion it is a negative occurrence. Excessive use of force further divides police and community, which eventually may lead to severe consequences that may be irreparable.

In the film, Do Not Resist, Craig Atkinson illustrates the use of military weapons being issued to police; in addition, the differences of “Warrior” and “Guardian” mentalities in law enforcement. A warrior mentality, as described in Atkinson’s film, is referred to the mental tendencies of soldiers, focusing more on protection. Warrior mentality in officers is used to combat extreme situations, like terrorists attacks or hostage situations. On the other hand, guardian mentalities are focused more on serving the community more than protecting. Law enforcement officers have both the warrior and guardian concepts, some officers have more warrior than guardian while others have guardian more than warrior. It is important to understand the difference between the mentalities. To understand we see which communities have higher crime rates than others and see the kind of funds spent on weaponizing police. With those factors one can deduce what law enforcement stations have the ‘warrior’ persona. At what point do we say “enough is enough”, and take away big brother’s toys? As a nation, we’re only strong united. As the great JFK so powerfully said during the Civil War, “United we stand, divided we fall.” Our division of law enforcers, people of color, political affiliation, and other factors will be this society's inevitable downfall. Today’s society’s annihilation is inevitable because we do not have the proper leaders to guide this nation into prosperity.

In the article, “Police Academy Socialization: Understanding the Lessons Learned in a Paramilitary Bureaucratic Organization”, Chappell and Lanza-Kaduce discuss the positive and negative effects that occur with type of recruit training, as well as, the outcomes of transitioning towards community policing training. The paramilitary structure entails hard physical training, performing under stress, defense tactics, the use of force, and mastering weapons skills. This paramilitary form of training focuses on being “able to mold them to accept the organizational culture”, drilling recruits on the basics, while preparing them for the demandingness of the job (Chappell, 189). There are numerous pros, which include a prominent chain of command, understanding

The militarization of the police force would mean supplying them with military grade equipment and having them use military tactics ("Police Militarization"). The United States should not militarize the police force because it is not a necessary expense for a country with a lot of debt, it increases the chance of police violence, a topic that has been in the media a lot recently, and it would lessen citizen's trust in the police.

Police officers are individuals who enforce the law upon their community to ensure that their citizens remain safe. In the past couple of years, officers of the law have been involved in acts of brutality that seem to go beyond the proper measurements of protection for their citizens. Policemen are supposed to protect their citizens from danger and from harm, not impose a threat on them. The fact that officers have a history of abusing their power indicates that their trust amongst the community has been corrupted. Those who have been affected of police brutality feel as though they have been deceived. They no longer feel that police officers will protect them, but rather abuse them, and that is a problem. We have began to live in a community in which an individual feels frightened when seeing a cop, rather than feeling protected. Some individuals may argue that police brutality is not a problem due to the fact that it is not consistent enough to catch the attention of needing a solution. However, that idea means little when the level of brutality has led to the death of several innocent victims in some cases. We must not wait for there to be a pattern of death at the hands of police officials to consider this a problem. One death indicates that preventive measures must be taken to ensure that these officers are no longer put in the position to abuse their power to begin with.

Rise of the Warrior Cop, by Radley Balko, centers around police in the United States and how it has gone through militarization throughout the years. Militarization is a process in which the police departments take on tactics that are similar to the tactics used by the military. Police forces were initially made to make our environment a safer place to live in. In this book, Balko explains how that has changed. Practices of policing first began when people would get hired, unofficially, to keep slaves under control and catch them if they try to run away. These people were sometimes known as slave catchers. Soon it evolved into formal policing, allowing police to catch criminals and make the neighborhood safe. However, today it is not so much about catching criminals; it involves a lot of violence and Balko questions whether this is even constitutional. In his writing, Balko brings awareness to the horrible tactics police are using in today’s society and how we could fix it.

Police Academy and policing are some of the most controversial things in today 's world. This particularly pertains to our society, in which it seems that there is a different incident involving the police every week. It is extremely controversial, the media uses its power of manipulation to “expose” the police often abusing their power. This is leading to a division of our nation. There is a large clash of who 's to blame in this situation, we can even see this in class based on the various opinions of my fellow students.Some of my classmates and many others blame things like police academy, methods of policing, and the cultural separation between police and the community. I interviewed somebody who lived through both. He was in the police force for 21 years and continued on to teach and direct police academy for 25 years.

In recent years police actions, especially police abuse remains one of the most serious and estranged human rights violation in the United States. While citizens worry about protecting themselves from criminals, it has now been shown that they must also keep an eye on those who are supposed to protect us. Thousands of individuals that complained about police abuse are reported each year and local authorities pay out millions of dollars to victims in damages after all the lawsuits. Police have beaten, shot at unresisting suspects; they have misused their batons, and also their electroshock weapons. Over the past decade, police officers have acted out in ways that make people wonder, are these officers of the law really doing their job? Severe beatings, unjustified shootings, and rough treatment have all contributed to the problem of police brutality in America. Police officers continue to abuse their given authority by acting in a brutal manner in order to control a detained suspect. The job of a police officer is to maintain public order, prevent, and detect crime. They are engaged in a dangerous and stressful occupation that can absolutely involve violent situations that must be controlled. In many of these confrontations with the public, it may become necessary for the police to administer force to take control of the situation. Sometimes excessive force takes the form of hand-to-hand combat with a suspect who is resisting arrest. At least once every month or two the news

“Overall, reported homicides were up 16% in 2015, but a majority of cities (44 of 60) have not seen a statistically significant increase in homicides” (Congressional Research Service). Some believe the rate of violent crimes in the United States is increasing due to the Ferguson incident. The Ferguson incident is the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. The shooting aroused protests around the United States pertaining to reforming on how police use force. Experts have been pegging the general increase in violent crimes in the United States due to the Ferguson incident the “Ferguson effect.” The Ferguson effect tells that in wake of the incident, police have become more reluctant to engage in proactive policing.

Police War Reports by Glen Ford is a brief three page article that asserts “it is not [a] lack of training that breeds killer cops, but the training, itself”. Ford points out recent shootings by police of African American persons, most noticeably James Blake, Tamir Rice, and Michael Brown; as evidence that police behaviour is indicative of a military operation’s. Ford, illustrates this by claiming the police are taught to “bum rush [as a]... tactic...”. He also outlines a belief that the predominantly African American communities should be separated from the rest of society and be left, themselves to decide if they “want the police there at all, or would prefer to organize their own security…”. Ford, going on to claim police suplexing people

“To Protect and Serve” (Dorobek) is the official motto of the American Police Academy and to do that requires a balanced relationship of trust and support between police officers and the people they serve. In different ways, civilians and police officer’s both have a responsibility to uphold the law. It is a police officer’s responsibility to defend their community. A civilian’s civil duty is to support their police force to ensure they can carry out their job in the safest and most peaceful manner. However, a gap in communication has damaged the relationship between officer’s and the members of the communities they serve. In order to put an end to police brutality and repair the relationship between the American Police Force and the communities they serve, the enforcement of body cameras, new and better methods to train, and special prosecutors in police misconduct investigations are all essential.

In conclusion, the police militarization have to end as well return the police to it’s former self. Police are meant for civil order and bring peace. Ordinary police can potentially abuse militarization weapons. Police militarization is no longer needed civil society. These examples prove that police is needed to be separate from militarization. Each and everyone have a voice to speak, rally up, and fix this problem as a nation

The militarization of police, with shockingly clear threats to our God-given rights, is unconstitutional and needs to be stopped immediately. It is even acknowledged by our forefathers that “there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations, as warned by James Madison. That is what is happening, a slow and silent progression of the taking our freedom, via the militarization of the police. The founding fathers would be absolutely terrified of our current law enforcers. Before the Revolution, it was England’s use of soldiers for

Post 9/11 created a noticeable change from what we consider normal police, to what is considered militarized. The White House 's National Strategy for Combating Terrorism confidently announced that the United States had "broken old orthodoxies that once confined our counterterrorism efforts primarily to the criminal justice domain." (Rizer) This shift appears to be permanent in 2006. Since then, there has been mixed

The public impression of police use of force, as brutality, in modern day policing continues to be a sensitive issue for law enforcement agencies across the nation. Police agencies across the United States deal with accusations of misuse of force on