Police And Media Analysis

It is no secret that the media is able to influence the general public’s opinion on most anything. Whether the subject is fiction or non, movies, documentaries, and the news especially, are capable of swaying the public’s opinions and perceptions one way or the other. Not even the world of law enforcement is safe from the media’s purview (Barlow, M. H. and Barlow, D. E. and Chiricos T. G., 1995), as media portrayals often romanticize law enforcement as a well oiled machine that always gets the bad guy, and has a perfect relationship with the public. On top of this, the media has displayed a poor habit of portraying crime as predominantly violent and racial, rather than showing the whole picture(Gilliam, F. D. and Iyengar, S. and Simon, A. and Wright, O., 1996). In this paper, the motives driving these depictions, as well as the scope and effect of the media’s influence on public perception of law enforcement, will be explored and discussed.

Media bias affects just about anything in a society. It can portray certain people from different ethnic, culture, and religious backgrounds as second class citizens and deteriorates their images as a peaceful law abiding citizen. However, media bias also affects law enforcement. In the last few years, the media has painted police officers as a negative image. With the unfortunate events of Travon Martin, Mike Brown and others, the media has depicted law enforcement as a whole to be the bad guys. The story of Travon Martin is what brought attention to certain unnecessary forces that a few police officers had choose to use. On the night of February 26, 2012, Martin was shot by a police officer, George Zimmerman, whom was not charged for murder.

The police and the media have been very closely related to one another for a very long time and they will always have to have a relationship with them. They are so closely related because crime itself is considered news that is valuable to the people of a community. Without the media and law enforcement working together, many people would not know what was going on and/or how to act about certain crimes if there are any within their communities. With that in mind, law enforcement must keep up with all the advancing technologies that involve any kind of media. This includes social media, print, internet, television, and cell phones as well. Keeping up with all these different media platforms, working together with the media, and staying on

It is my opinion that police training is very specific focusing on situational containment which involves quickly and forcefully apprehending criminal suspects. Although police training does include aspects of communication, the general intent is to establish authority over the person in question. This is done by communicating the impression of overwhelming force and aggression. I would contend that these two factors are the main principles of police training, whether it be verbal or physical interaction with the suspect. This approach is understandable for the law enforcement profession is fraught with danger and the

We’ve all heard it hundreds of times from people that the news and media is overdramatic. That is one of the biggest complaints about the media, but is it true? Scholarly articles have found that the news is in fact over dramatic about crime which induces public fear and may produce many myths about how much crime is actually happening in our society. As a broadcasting major, it is easy for me to see why the news would cover stories in such a dramatic way. These types of stories capture the users attention which means more people will watch your station resulting in advertising spots being worth more which in the end benefits the stations because they will make more money. Popular examples such as the “knockout game” and the Central Park jogger case both show just how much the media has an effect on society, copycat criminals and other crimes. Is the media overdramatic? Does the media cause higher public fear? What myths does the media create?

Policing in America underwent a major paradigm shift in the way that law enforcement was carried out – this shift was known as a shift from the Political Era to the Professional (Reform) Era (Roberg, Novak, Cordner, & Smith, 2015). This switch in eras happened in the United States during a period branded as the Progressive Era, when many “types of problems … began to be addressed not only in the public sector but also in private enterprise” (Roberg et al., 2015, p. 41). This movement affected the United States and the American life since it functioned on the ideas that there should be “(1) honest and efficiency in government, (2) more authority for public officials (and less for politicians), and (3) the use of experts to respond to specific

What do most people think of the topic of police brutality? More than once, images and stories of minorities ' civil rights being taken away become the topic of conversation. It is heart wrenching to see these videos and hear these stories of police brutality in today’s media. Every day there seems to be another headlining case on the topic of police brutality. Police brutality isn’t just law enforcement officers abusing the power granted to them; however, it is a much larger issue than we originally thought. Police brutality is innocent lives lost, suffering and mourning families, civilian riots and unjust court systems. Police brutality is victims left beaten, shot, strangled and even burned to death on the streets. What was thought to be just a problem of the past is now a part of our horrifying present.

Police use of force has been manipulated into police brutality by news broadcasts and social media sites causing many citizens to despise the police. The spread of videos featuring unnecessary force by police officers arresting criminals has given all officers a bad name, however, not all officers make bad decisions when it comes to the proper use of force. According to a 2008 study that was done on 40 million police cases only 1.4% of the cases were threatened with or involved with the use of force (Dempsey & Frost, 2014, p.136). Yet, society still associates the police with brutality. The public does not understand the factors that go into force, such as, the training of the officer, knowledge of rules regarding use of force, the situation the police encounters, social threat, attitude displayed towards officers, and resistance (Lee, Jang, Yun, Lim, & Tushaus, 2010). The public does not know the many factors that influence an officer’s use of force. So when they see or hear about force, they assume it is unnecessary. However, there are certain situations were force is necessary to stop an immediate threat. Very few officers are actually involved in police brutality, but the media would show otherwise.

An officers’ job is not all guns and glory like it is perceived in movies and high crime television shows. What typically happens in a life of an officer is not as action packed as people tend to believe it to be. There are plenty of roles that come into being an officer. In my senior year of high school, I took criminal justice and during the semester, my teacher asked officers to come in and tell their jobs description and what a typical day is like for them. One officer came in with a bunch of tech gear worth thousand of dollars. She explained to us that she spent most of her time in front of a computer catching criminals online. Even though the roles of an officer can be different it does not mean that being an officer is not a

Excessive force is becoming more of an issue as society grows and crimes evolve. Some of the problem stems from the illegal exercises of police power due to lack of funds for adequate training, short staffing and resources. Law enforcement officers work is a very dangerous environment. Law enforcement officers need to be equipped with the necessary tools to fight the war on crime, especially when excessive force is needed. While on the other hand, there have been circumstances where law enforcement officers used extreme measures that led to question if it was excessive force, brutality, unauthorized force, wrongful force, unjustified force, misuse of force, and unnecessary force. Law enforcement job is to serve and protect their communities, but without the proper tools in their tool box, it will cause them more harm than good. Furthermore, there are known practices such as basic defensive tactics training and de-escalation of force strategies that could be utilized.

As someone who absolutely loves to watch any sort of crime show CSI: NY and Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders and 48 Hours; it makes sense that the realities of law enforcement officials can be distorted. It would be highly boring to watch law enforcement officials just sitting at their desks doing paperwork. These shows are designed to engage the viewers and keep them wanting to watch the shows. Truth be told, it is part of the reason I became interested in adding the criminal justice minor to my educational background. There’s an actual term for this called the “CSI Effect, in which any of several ways in which the exaggerated portrayal of forensic science on crime television shows”.

There are certain steps police officers have to take for use of force, they call it the use of force continuum. Not every state has the same continuum but they are usually very similar. The officers are supposed to respond to the level of force appropriate to the situation. The (National Institute of Justice, August 4, 2009) gives us a good example of what the use of force continuum might look like. The first step is officer presence, no force is used at this time because the presence of the officer is enough to deescalate the situation. The next step is verbalization, this is when the officer gives the suspect commands to

Borrowing a leaf from Randolph, so long as this development does not violate the safety and reasonable rights of others, the following steps or approaches could be adopted and applied to stop or at least reduce the prevalence of racial discrimination and police brutality to the barest minimum.

We live in a place where we are masked with blindfolds given by the creators of our corrupt home we call America. The land of the free, but then again are we really ? Or are we just victims of a homicide that not only takes the life of a person, but their mind. Fed empty thoughts and brainwashed by the media in effort to distract the mind from the  realities and importance of a given situation, and into meaningless topics and conversations. A world ran off of media that is quick to publicize and dramatize the divorce of a famous couple but downplays police brutality and the mass killings of predominately black individuals. But don't you dare speak out upon it and state things such as “black lives matter” because with that comes the outrush

Very good thoughts over this week’s discussion this week, I tend to agree, I am a member of the IACP, International Association of Chiefs of Police and our department is certified in the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement (CALEA). Both of those organizations do provide best practices for our agency as to what is acceptable training across the country.