My Experience As A Police Officer In The 80's

In the article, “St. Louis police chief defends fatal shooting by officers”, Jim Suhr and Jim Salter argue that although police brutality has been a common theme since Michael Brown’s death, the police must be given the opportunity to do their jobs without the constant accusations and racist conclusions. Police officers have been under rapid fire and can no longer make a move without the harsh criticism of citizens nationwide. Salter and Suhr use a quote from the St. Louis Police Chief, Sam Dotson, to explain that people need to let the facts speak for themselves rather than filling up with biased opinions through social media. The fact is that the towns that refuse the help of police, are conventionally the ones that need them the most.

Kelling and Wilson’s article “Broken Windows” focuses on the importance of disorder in generating and sustaining crime that is more severe. The writers explain that disorder is not directly related to serious crime, but instead leads to increased fear as well as withdrawal from residents, which allows more serious crime to move in because of decreased levels of informal societal control. Kelling and Wilson believe that police can play a key role in disrupting this process. If they put their focus on disorder and minor crimes in neighborhoods that have not yet been overtaken by serious crime, they can help reduce fear and resident withdrawal. The promotion of advanced levels of informal social control can help people take control of their neighborhood

At one point, crime in America grew 13 times faster than population. Between 1965 and 1980s, crimes in every category rose to a record high in New York. Burglary related crimes rose from 183,443 to 360,925. Larceny-theft rose from 253,353 to 535. Vehicle theft rose from 58,452 to 171,007. Assault rose from 27,464 to 91,571. Murder rose from 836 to 2,228. However, during the 1990s, crime in New York crime tipped. Crime fell to a record low. Murder rates, burglary, larceny-theft, vehicle theft, assault, and rape all fell suddenly. Homicide rates plunged 43 percent reaching the lowest levels in 35 years. The crack epidemic along with the election of a new governor both contributed to the drop in crime not the “broken window theory”. Many

This research paper aims to answer the question: Does legal cynicism truly have an impact on crime rates? While legal cynicism is not a term that is often discussed in the media or the news, it is a concept that is quite relevant to the lives of many Americans. This is quite relevant in society today, as there is a great deal of conflict between police officers and the public in many communities across the country. This is essentially what legal cynicism is about. It is defined as the “widespread view that law enforcement is unresponsive, illegitimate, and ill equipped to ensure public safety” (King 2016). Unfortunately, there are many, many stories about conflicts between police officers and the general public seen on the news daily. While this is not a new concept to the people in the United States, legal cynicism is an important concept to be understood. Legal cynicism is an important facet of community violence. Because cynicism greatly affects an individual’s views towards law enforcement and authority, it is likely that legal cynicism will contribute to deviant and possibly unlawful behavior in communities throughout the country.

The decline of crime that has been the subject of a touchy debate is the order and the care policing and the broken windows theory. The central policing tactic in New York since the 1990s has been the violent prohibition of citizens through street encounters in the search for weapons or drugs. Research showed that minority citizens in the 1990s were unreasonably stopped, frisked and searched at rates significantly higher than would be predicted by their race-specific crime rates, and that this excess enforcement was explained by the social structure of mainly smaller neighborhoods rather than by either their disorder or their crime rates. In the decade since the first study, stop rates have increased by 500 percent while

Crime is an issue that is frequently connected to cities with urban centers. For years, officials and residents in Baltimore City worried about rising crime rates and the danger to public safety. From 1970 to present, violent crime has been a long term pattern in Baltimore and other urban areas in the United States. Beneath these patterns lies a significant volatility. During the 1970s, crime rates dropped before suddenly spiking in 1981. Amid the 1980s, crime rates fell again until an emotional reversal in 1988 which sent crime surging to obscene amounts before cresting around 1995 and falling again. This surge in savage crime in the late 1980s and mid 1990s has been connected with the introduction and rise of crime, a perspective that was reinforced by ER surveys. Prior to the crime wave of the late 80s, Baltimore's crime rates had been declined nominally and in contrast to cities of similar size in the region. The crack epidemic dramatically reversed these patterns, creating panic among city leaders not just in Baltimore but in other major

The subject of this book dealt with the idea of how this discrepancy between the reality of crime, the public’s perception, and government expenditures has come to pass. Also what are its consequences for the quality of life in the United States? The misperception between what the public believes and what politicians tell us was created because politicians search for publicly approved issues, local law enforcement agencies support the uniform crime report (UCR) findings, the media is always looking for sensational news. “ the police and the FBI are joined by the media in the never-ending search for sensational topics that will titillate and exacerbate the fears and anxieties of the viewing public and, not coincidentally, increase the number

For the past 25 years in Chicago, an average of one child has been killed per week (Ansari, 1), but the violence does not stop with children. In 2016 alone, there were, “762 murders, 3,550 shooting incidents, and 4,331 shooting victims” (Caputo, 2). While the murder rate has remained exceedingly high over the decades, and spiked in recent years, the willingness of witnesses to provide police with information remains at an all-time low, and approximately 80% of all cases have no workable leads (Shaper, 2). Which begs the question, “Why will no one help put away the perpetrators?” Theorists, and especially the police, explain that witnesses of crimes pretend they see nothing because of the culture of “do not snitch” (Simon, Exploring).

One may argue that police are untrustworthy and play a large role in Chicago’s crime rates. This anti police rhetoric is arguably increasing crime. This may be because of the Ferguson effect which is when lowering respect for police officers leads to increased crime. In reality the men and women who wear the badge are doing the right thing the large majority of the time. (WASHINGTON POST)

Detroit has been classified as one of America’s most violent cities with a high crime rate. Most of the residential neighborhoods are full of dilapidated buildings, mediocre shopping centers, burned down or vacant houses. Compared to the adjacent city, Dearborn where the crime rate is lower, there is no dilapidated building, there are no burnt down houses in any of the residential neighborhoods. Many Detroit residents often move to suburban cities like Dearborn to escape the decay of their neighborhoods. Moving to these well-kept neighborhoods insinuate the better the neighborhood the lessor of crime. This week articles closely examine the social and economic disparities in urban residential neighborhoods and correlate these disparities to crime and criminal activity. The articles for this week takes a look at Wilson and Keller’s Broken Windows research which argues that neighborhood with physical and

As Nils Christie argued, crime is a property of the state (2004). As such, it can be defined by the same systems of ideals which influence the state. Crime statistics, which refer to a category of human acts that society view as deviant, can consequently be argued to be without objectivity (Dorling and Simpson, 1999). The statistics they provide are thus arguably not exact. To a certain extent one could infer they are reflections of society, of those who present the data and most importantly of those who accumulate it. The facts themselves become a socially constructed foundation for social knowledge, which inevitably become subjective. This essay aims to discuss how ideological biases within the Police and to a certain extent the

Kelling and Sousa (2001) try to answer with their research the question of whether police mattered in New York City during the intense crime-drop of the 1990s, particularly analyzing if the “broken windows” theory of policing played a major role. Firstly formulated by Wilson and Kelling in 1982, this idea suggests that disorder leads to destabilized neighborhoods by generating a sense of absence of effective social control, and thus leaving room for serious crime to arise. For them, maintaining the order would reduce neighborhood fear and eventually crime would decrease.

The news media as most other print, radio, and television media are in a constant competition for ratings. A direct result of this rating competition is the sensationalizing of the media reports received by the general public. One of the most significant problems resulting from the news media’s misrepresentation of crime is the mistrust it creates between the general public and the criminal justice system. If the public were only to believe what is reported by the various news media, then the assumption would have to be that all the crime in this country is at the felonious level in which someone is usually killed with a gun. According to Bohm and Haley (2011), the distribution of police calls indicates that the majority of crime is anything

Neighborhoods where poverty and crime runs concurrent one thing is certain, policing is much needed but it must be done properly. (TCA Regional News Retrieved from 2015, May 31) Instead of money as an incentive for crime reduction more interactions with police officers in the community should be looked at. To improve any relationship a bond of communication and trust must be established. Crime enforcement must be exercised in all aspects we can't deny that it has particularly surged over the last millennium (Pendleton2000). Recognizing there is a problem is the first

Policing relies on the public trust, police legitimacy and accountability, which can be destroyed by unjustifiable police shootings (Squires and Kennninson, 2010). Within this country, there is a recognition that the police do not always adhere to the rule of law (Newburn and Reiner, 2012: 809), which has led to consistent public outrage at the lack of effectiveness and legitimacy the police has maintained. Therefore the deliberate decision to enforce police to attend to the streets unarmed was employed to reassure the public that the police were not to be feared (Waddington and Wright, 2010). Ultimately, concerns derive from the belief that the police are completely ineffective when dealing with gun crimes (Farrell, 1992: 20). However,