Sovereign Nation Legal Issues On Law Enforcement

Every day, law enforcement officers encounter danger while carrying out their duties. The foremost duty of law enforcement officers are to serve and protect citizens. Most law enforcement agencies do this successfully. However, many people view law enforcement officers as the enemy. People need to be better informed about law enforcement and why officers take specific actions in certain circumstances. In our society, police are in a very dangerous position when it comes to the amount of force they can use when dealing with an individual. Officers use discretion when deciding the best course of action for the situation, whether it be physical force, persuasion, or coercion. They must take the correct course of action, because if they are too lenient or to forceful, even when dealing with petty things, they can be reprimanded by superiors and the public. Should police use force? Which circumstances warrant use force and what are the limits of force they can use? These questions are often asked when police are compelled to use force.

There are many factors that contribute to today’s American policing. Once such factor that contribute tremendously to today’s policing came in 1829 when Sir Robert Peel’s concept of policing came into effect. This would change the way policing would be performed in not only England, but the United States (U.S) and around the world. Another huge factor that impacts policing is the relationship the U.S. Government has with policing. These factors affect every policing organization in the U.S.

“Sovereign citizens are anti-government extremists who believe that even though they physically reside in the United States, they are separate or “sovereign” from the United States. As a result, they feel they do not have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments or law enforcement” (Dempsey & Forst, 2016, p.534). Sovereign Citizens are domestic terrorists who have committed crimes of violence against law enforcement officers.

There is a significant health issue facing the public as well as law enforcement every day, suicide. The numbers surrounding suicide are shocking effects people of all backgrounds. In the year 2010 more than 38,000 adults committed suicide. Then in 2011 around 1 million adults admitted to attempting suicide, while 8 million had serious suicidal thoughts. Law Enforcement officers are at an even higher risk then most due to experiencing such a large number of risk factors. These factors include but are not limited to poor physical health, access to fire arms, domestic abuse, substance abuse, exposure to violence and suicide; depression, anxiety and other mental diseases. These factors lead to an above average number of officer suicides every

Domestic terrorists are turning into such a bigger threat as there becomes more and more dangerous domestic terrorist groups. For instance, right-wing extremists are becoming more of a danger that we can’t ignore. As said by Kurt Eichenwald, “[Timothy] McVeigh, the infamous anti-government extremist, murdered 168 people in 1995 when he detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.”Like Timothy McVeigh, many U.S. citizens have had violent disagreements about rights and freedoms with government officials, which has caused many of these antigovernment extremist groups to form. According to Ron Nixon, “Mr. Ellison said, ‘Right-wing extremists have launched an average of 330 attacks a year and killed about 250 people between 2002 and 2011. These are dangerous people.’” Right-wing extremists are becoming a bigger threat to our country. They are attacking and killing more people every year and we need to find a

Rule: Homicide: The legal definition of homicide is the intentional, premeditated taking of the life of another human being.

A critical issue that law enforcement faces from the time it was created to present day, is a lack of police training. The most recent data research done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics about police training across the United States was done in 2009. It reported that in the year 2009 basic training programs averaged 761 hours of classroom training (about 19 weeks). A third of academies also had additional mandatory field training with an average length of 453 hours. The topics with the average most instruction time in these training programs consisted of firearm training (60 hours), self-defense (51 hours), health and fitness (46 hours), patrol procedures (40 hours), investigations (40 hours), emergency vehicle operations (40 hours), criminal law (36 hours), and basic first aid (24 hours). In Texas, only 618 hours of basic training are required by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education.

Al-Qaeda is a well-known global terrorist network that originated in Islam and is led by the man name Osama bin Laden. Ever since 9/11, security has been an issue for congress and the president himself. Homeland security is the first of its kind to be developed; it is the basis or motherboard of all security that protects us within our nation.

The hardened border paradox is the process of the US making it tougher for criminals to smuggle drugs, weapons and people into the country along with difficult procedures to get into the country legally. The result is violence among and along the border for and by immigrants and border patrol officers. Criminals are also using extreme measures to be successful, they are not far from using pay-offs, verbal and physical threats, torture and murder to remove obstacles that may hinder their illegal activity. As the laws tighten on preventing illegal entry more ways are being thought of to get contraband through. Bean quoted Stephen Flynn author of America the Vulnerable as writing “stepped-up enforcement along the Mexican border suggests that

Police discretion is an issue for American policing because how police use their discretion can greatly impact the public’s view on the police. First what police discretion is must be defined, “the leeway that officers enjoy in selecting from more than one choice in carrying out their work” (Mastrofski, 2004). This definition accurately sums up an ability the police use every single day that affects the public. The police can use discretion for almost any situation they encounter. There are many reason the police can exercise their own discretion the way they do, usually through personnel experience or departmental policy. While every person exercise discretion on a daily basis the reason police discretion is an issue is because they are agents of a government force that are allowed by the public to enforce the rules set down by members of the legislature that are elected by the public. Discretion for the police arises because of the individual subjectivity that each officers use when assessing an incident that requires police attention. An example is that Officer A does not arrest a teenage for underage drinking, he instead pour out the remaining alcohol and tells the youth to go home and that he better never catch him drinking again. In the same situation Officer B arrest the youth for underage drinking. The way these officers handle the situation different is police discretion. Officer B may have had a young relative that was involved in a drunk driving accident, either

They elucidate that terrorism is a “premeditated, politically motivated, violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups of clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience,” (National Institute of Justice).

Americans feel that after 911, the sense of patriotism and support for the government should have been at an all time high. However, strict government reforms and new laws that have tightened and, what some feel, interfere with some of our freedoms since 911 have drastically upset many of the extremist groups and militias. Militia members have intense hatred or fear toward the government and believe that there are federal conspiracies in which the government is planning to disarm its citizens. Hatred for the government grows out of these faucets as it faces these groups with opposition and attempts to expose them. Anti-government extremists are a large part of the radicals that cause a lot of the domestic terrorism. They are driven by their strong beliefs and goals and believe that they are correct in their thinking and the government is wrong. Domestic extremists are driven by internal factors and pursue a domestic agenda.

In this paper I would be identifying, compare, and contrast the policing function at the local, state, and federal organizational levels. I would be Analyzing how the organizational, management, administration, and operational functions at these three organizational levels are similar or different and why. Also I would be identifying the leadership characteristics and responsibilities pertaining to each organizational level.

"This scenario has been repeated so many times that the CIA actually teaches it in a special school, the notorious "School of the Americas." (It opened in Panama but later moved

In the United States of America, the work of law enforcement is hit hard with various polices and limitations that can be good for the accused criminal, but bad for the each of the citizens in the surrounding community that was affected by the accused perpetrator. Even though there are lot of limitations on how law enforcement does their work on a daily basis, there are two main limitations in criminal law that stand out amongst the rest. These two concepts of criminal law that affect the day to day operations of the law enforcement profession are known as statute of limitations and ex post facto laws. Each of the factors associated with these two concepts severely impact the work of law enforcement in some way shape or form.