Police Legitimacy and Accountability Essay

Police has the power to put anyone in Prison especially if they are not committing anything seriously. One of the reason is because Colored citizens don’t have higher class, meaning on poverty, no wealthy jobs etc. meaning that they would do crime. War on drugs is a significant factor in the High incarceration rates for African-American.

The Associations of Chiefs of Police created this website as a police informational site. It is an educational site that explains the hiring process, basic requirements, training and academy life, and skills candidates should process. The site also offer a virtual ride along. I can use this site to explain the training and academy life of a cadet.

Police forces or Law enforcers have been used for centuries all around the world but America took particular interest in the English’s policing system. America’s policing ideas and process began

If you grew up in an average middle-class town in the United States you were probably raised on the premise that the police were there to protect and fight crime, however, in many of today’s urban centers throughout the country, the tension between the police and the citizens has a very different relationship. The term ‘police’ brings many images to mind, while the objective of the police is to prevent and detect crime, this is far from the way so many Americans feel. Far from the original purpose of the police, the use of brutal and sometimes lethal force has evoked questions regarding the skewed system and the relationship between both in the communities. Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the issue in the article, The Paranoid Style of American Policing, often bringing up complex issues, and effectively brings the issues to life through anecdotes. Coates presents a logical, thought out and well-executed argument surrounding the cracked police system in America. Due to the well-supported thesis, the structure of the argument, and lack of fallacies, Coates position is adequately supported through the use

Within the article, “The Myth of Police Reform,” the author points out how police respond to a lot of problems in our society that should not require police intervention. This is clearly an explicit argument because the author states that, “Fear and compliance have their place, but it can’t be every place.” This editorial is meant for everyone because it brings up numerous examples of people being shot, chased, or arrested over issues that shouldn’t involve violence. It also gives examples including different ages, races, and gender. Most of these narrations end up with someone getting shot over a silly reason whether it is someone running around naked or some kid tripping on mushrooms. These examples help us infer that every problem cannot be handled by force. Some may disagree with this, but the police can make mistakes just like the rest of us. Honestly, this paper seems very one sided. As soon as he says something noble about the police, he has something just as bad to counter it.

Police corruption and misconduct come apparent in many different forms. A basic definition for police corruption is, when an officer gets involved in offenses where the officer uses his or her position, by act or omission, to obtain improper financial benefit. The main reason for such corruption is typically for personal gain, such as bribery. Police abuse of authority occurs in three different general areas such as physical abuse, psychological abuse, and legal abuse. Physical abuse is such abuse where one uses excessive force or physical harassment. The psychological abuse occurs through disrespect, harassment, ridicule, excessive stops, or intimidation. Finally, legal abuse is abuse that occurs during unlawful search and seizure

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.

Through history it has been shown countless time, the results of poor preparation is the ultimate demise of the people. In 1999, four non-uniformed, New York City Police officers approached a suspect whom they believed was the suspect of a reported rapist. The man was no other than Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant. The confrontation occurred in low visibility conditions, meaning at night, as Diallo “retreated into the vestibule and reached for an object in his pocket. Believing that Diallo was pulling out a weapon, one officer shouted, ‘Gun!’ and the four officers began to shoot into the vestibule. One officer tripped, and believing their fellow officer had been shot, the other officers emptied 41 bullets into the vestibule, nineteen of which hit Diallo, killing him” (Gerdes, 2004). The direct result of poorly trained police was the death of a foreign national. In this encounter, the officers made poor decisions. The first mistake was approaching a suspect without proper identification. Since it was stated that they were not in uniforms, it can be assumed these officers were either off duty, or did not properly wear their identification tags. In such situations, being a foreign immigrant, even if Diallo reached for a weapon it would have been justified

Police legitimacy is composed of two elements: trust and acceptance of authority. The public needs to know they can trust the police officers. We have to know if they are honest and are really concerned with our well-being, which would lead to respect and accepting their directives knowing it is for our own well-being or the neighborhood’s. I personally experience both sides of this concept, due to my residential situation, as I live both in El Paso and Juarez. In El Paso I truly trust the police officers that I have encountered, but I cannot say the same about the Juarez police officers. In Juarez many police officers are corrupt and do not care about our well-being. I’m not saying that in El Paso they all do, but their authority is more accepted by its community.

increasing gang and gun violence, and reluctance by officers to act on the scene. Guns are becoming more available across the country recently, and many people are getting access to weapons. In many cases, this isn’t a problem and people should protect themselves, but some abuse this and use guns for personal uses such as revenge for other deeds or for other crimes such as robberies.Many gangs are also trying to protect territory and they use guns to do so, and in cases as ones with Hadiya, innocent citizens are getting caught in the conflict. But, perhaps the most stunning problem, is the police’s reluctance to be proactive on the scene. Many officers are reluctant to act in gun violence scenes because of previous uproars across the country because of viral videos of officers doing things that some people think are controversial, such as shooting a man possessing a gun. This can get officers fired from their jobs and they may even get tried for illegal

Police Departments are continuing to evolve to try to stay ahead if the criminal. Police technology is most influential changes relative to modern policing. Police agencies are using modern technology such as internet to convey information to the public, smart phones with the capacity to communicate with others from the field, and mobile computers to retrieve information, (Grant & Terry, 2012). Because police officers have mobile computers while in the field,

Misinformed public opinion of police militarization is due to the fact of false facts brought to us in the forms of opinion pieces in newspapers, blogs, and forums. Some of these sources are claiming that there is a “war on terror” that has come home and it’s wreaking havoc on innocent American lives. The culprit is the militarization of the police.”(Kane, 2014) These claims of military weapons that are being used in wars over seas and are now being used for our local police departments are true, but the way that they are being portrayed is unrealistic. The reason the weapons are coming from the military is not to try and escalate police force; they are being used to be on the same level as the criminals. Criminal all around the world are accessing military weapons and if police officers, who

And before I get bombarded with a wave of ambiguous questions and angry protests saying “How many times do we hear of policemen being killed, surely guns could stop all this?” No. They couldn’t. Even more people would have needlessly died if the policemen were to have pulled out a gun as youths get even more scared at this and it can lead to reckless actions from both the policemen and the guilty party. There would also be mistakes, and with armed policemen, this could lead to innocent people being shot. This can happen either by mistake because the armed officers are acting on inaccurate information, or because they are bystanders caught in the cross-fire of a shoot-out. If we arm everybody, it would also mean that there would be less training in gun control, so mistakes would rise there. The world saw this in cases such as the Amadou Diallo shooting in New York in 1999, or the shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes at Stockwell underground station in 2005. Would we like more of these to happen? All those that would vote for

In recent years, society has heard cases of police brutality at an increasingly shocking rate, thus creating a sense of distrust among communities towards police officers and other authority figures. As the first line of defense against crimes such as home invasions or crimes against persons, police officers are expected to be an ally towards victims; however, it seems that society is now viewing officers as the perpetrators of crimes as opposed to the protectors. This has already posed an issue because community members are choosing not to seek police help when needed, and when they do decide to seek help, forgoing police assistance results in being uncertain of where else to go.

The armament of police officers has been a debatable topic for quite some time. Armed counterparts have doubted the effectiveness of unarmed forces in reducing crime rates. This essay will compare and contrast between the effectiveness of unarmed and armed forces in England and Scandinavia- particularly Norway and Sweden-.