As chief of the police department for the large diverse city of Bananafanna, I’m committed to providing the courteous, respectful and responsive police services that the citizens have not only come to expect, but also deserve. Within the last two years, the city has seen a significant increase in violent crimes, while also suffering a decrease in patrol officers. It can be argued that the largeness and diversity of the area contributes to its increase in crime, especially issues of increasing poverty, unemployment, continuing racism, and, the collapse of families” (Moore, 1992, p. 111). It can also be argued that there is no correlation between rising crime rates and strength of police force. That said my need is to add 20 additional officers to the force to increase coverage and enhance visibility, but my current budget allotment lacks any additional funds with which to hire new staff. My challenge is to provide a sense of safety and security to a large, diverse population residents have expressed concern that the police force has not met its mandate for public safety. The public’s questions and pressure applies to the mayor and the City Council are in turn levied on me (Rai, 2015). My best course of action is to find new ways of protection the residents employing existing personnel. I must find new methods for decreasing violent crimes and procedures that provide the public with the feeling of safety, all while utilizing current resources. To do this I will experiment
The article also discusses the challenges of attracting and recruiting police officers. Many police departments pay higher than the state police department, which tends to draw the police officers’ attention. Currently state police departments have to decide how to attract police
The justice department today is spending millions of dollars to better train the police department against bias and examine law enforcement procedures, known as community policing. Community policing has been slowing evolving over the years. The civil rights movement exposed how weak the system was in the 1960’s. The development of the model has been inspired by
Working as the budget director for the mayor of the city of Kelsey, we have recently been getting numerous complaints from the citizens about an increase in crime and also an issue of the public demanding for more police officers. With the population of the city growing daily, the increase of crime is continuing to progress as well. The mayor has informed us that this past year is the highest increase in crime in the city’s history, that the federal government has reduced the federal pass-through money for the state and that the budgeting group needs to revamp the budget for the coming year. Within this document as the
In the Bronx, there are countless of unsolved crime at the police department precinct, just waiting to be solved. However, due to the shortage of policeman power in the precincts located in the Bronx, and with many detectives with a caseload of about 300 to 400 cases per year, it’s impossible for the detectives to keep-up. According to the deployment analysis obtained by The New York Times most of the detective have a caseload of twice as the recommended for precincts with such high violence rate with the department. “The Times's deployment analysis grew out of a series of articles about murder in the 40th Precinct, a two-square-mile section of the South Bronx, where three detectives last year carried more than 400 cases and many others had loads in the high 300's, markedly more than the 150 cases per year the department recommends for precincts with high rates of violent crime.”
There is recent controversy over police use of force, especially in minority communities such as in African American communities, Hispanic communities, and other publics with large populations of minorities. Increased levels of force among these communities have created challenges for police departments. These challenges include a lack of trust from the community towards law enforcement officers and an absence of respect creating situations that lead to police use of force. There are already various programs in place that attempt to decrease this challenge by educating the public, respecting one another, and giving those who were on the wrong track second chances. A combination of these solutions and the implementation of more of them would decrease the number of contacts between police and minorities that lead to the use of force (Roberg & Novak, 2014).
The International Association of Chiefs of Police Research Center Board of executives, Smaller Law Enforcement Agencies Technical Assistance Program developed a New Police Chief Mentoring Project (IACP, 2013). Supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice, the focus is to make available official support to newer law enforcement leaders in the first three years of appointment, who are serving in smaller populations less than 50,000 citizens. As cities expand geographically and demographically, police departments face additional challenges determining efficient and effective ways to make use of officers and resources (Roberts, 2000).
As a police officer, the major objectives are to maintain order, enforce the law, protect one’s property, and to save lives. In addition, police are divided into two roles based on how they perform their duties. The two roles of a police officer are a public servant and a crime fighter. A police officer whose role as a public servant is to serve all types of people, as well as criminals. Public servants regularly provide advice and make judgments as to the degree of risk they should take with the public. Many decisions involving risk are relatively easy to make, but others are complex and significant consequences (Kernaghan and Langford, 2016). These risks may involve using force and the consequences could be media backlash or a potential termination. Public servants abide by the oath and uphold the integrity and honor of the organization as an officer. Also, public servant officers like to play it safe because they like to be known as ordinary citizens who like to go home to their
Furthermore, there are many problems associated with militarizing our police that we need to recognize and address. Police militarization started with the intent of combating terrorism but has grown to unnecessary uses and applications. Instead, we see too much force and tension applied to minor operations and a lot of misuse of power while handling citizens, primarily people of color. It does not help that policemen’s
Law enforcement leaders must be continually vigilant to ensure that the actions of their officers do not violate civil rights and do not compromise public support. The individual officer is granted a tremendous amount of authority and discretion to enforce the law. Their ultimate duty is to protect individual rights from being infringed upon by others in the community. They must never consider themselves above the law while executing their responsibility to enforce the law. This commitment is what distinguishes police in constitutionally based, democratic societies like ours from police in nondemocratic countries, where they are perceived as oppressive agents of a government whose main purpose is to restrict, rather than protect, the rights of civilians (International Association of Chiefs of Police, 2006).
Rather than placing much trust and dependence upon police officers to help maintain a sense of order and safety within communities, many younger generations have correlated police officers with the term corrupt. In a nutshell, the flawed behavior of a minority of our nation’s officers has resulted in a perplex domino effect which has profoundly impacted their image to many individuals. Consequently what has emerged is a complex domino effect which has generally triggered irrational behavior in average individuals and subsequent reprimand from law enforcement officials which has unfortunately done little justice to their already notorious reputation.
When police use force against a subject, they are often belittled and reprimanded by the media and public. “Police Brutality” and “Excessive Force” seem to be a daily headline in the news these days. This paper shall present research conducted on how to improve police-community relations. The goal, is the show the lack of understanding that exists between police and the community on what the job of police officer can and cannot lawfully do. By presenting this lack of understanding between police and community, we can work on improving relationships by educating the public on what is constitutionally permitted. By better educating the public, we can hopefully prevent rioting in future incidents and better remove the tensions that are present in encounters with law enforcement and minority communities.
Police Agencies in modern society are a part of the American fabric to serve and protect the American public. The United States currently have more than 15,000 police agencies, (Walker & Katz, 2011). Police Departments across the United States face similar critical issues policing. All police officers face dangers in the job of policing the dangers can emanate from internal and external origins. Police officers have continued to evolve to serve communities by finding better less than lethal alternatives to weapons used. In addition, police departments have continued to keep up with
It has been consistently shown in research that minorities are more likely to be mistreated by the police compared to other people (Dunnaville, 2000). Recent incidents have seen the police use excessive force on people and mistreat minorities. As such, the legitimacy of the police has been put under scrutiny and questioned. Many communities in the United States have demonstrated in reaction to recent incidents of police misconduct and excessive use of force. The people have lost trust in the police because of these issues. The police force has been accused of mistreating people, sexual harassment, violent and careless arrests among people particularly the minorities. As demonstrated in the movie ‘Policing the Police’ police officers are seen mistreating people for instance the scene where the police sexually harassed a teenager by touching sensitive areas. Community members are not willing to trust or work with the police to fight crime. As such, it is critical for the police agencies and department to make improving police-community relationship a top police priority. Policies should be developed that will strengthen the mutual trust between the police and the community. This relationship is critical because the police depend on information from the community to fight crime in the society.
Over the last several years, most police departments have been facing numerous financial challenges. The main reason is law enforcement agencies are expected to do more with less and the stagnant economy. The combination of these factors has been placing pressure on many departments to begin imposing budget cuts. Evidence of this can be seen with a survey that was conducted by the University of North Carolina. They found that 67% of police departments made some kind of budget cuts for 2011. The most severe reductions were occurring in large police departments such as Los Angeles, Atlanta and Detroit. (Delfem, 2011, pp. 199 - 205) This is illustrating one of the most pressing issues affecting a wide variety of police departments across the country. To fully understand what is happening requires: examining the situation, how they are able to interact with other agencies (i.e. state / federal) and recommending the way this relationship can be improved. Together, these elements will offer specific insights about how police departments can effectively address this problem.
Police Reform should be one of the many issues handled in the first one-hundred days of our new President’s term. The unrest and corruption are actions that do not belong in our police force. The criminal justice system needs revised. Since 1791 Americans have lost 20,789 officers killed in the line of duty (Law Enforcement Facts 1). To modernize this statistic, from 2004-2013 an average of 151 officers have died in the line of duty (Deaths,