The Issue Of Police Officers

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.

CALEA (yr) reviews procedures and policies of agencies and has a specific Law Enforcement Accreditation Program to enhance law enforcement as a profession to internationally accepted standards of other law enforcement agencies.Almost as far as a century ago, The Wickersham Commission and the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice indicated the need of higher educational training within the officer selection process (Rydberg & Taylor, 2010). Within a variety of different police officer ranks and positions; research conducted by Rydberg & Taylor (2010) confirmed that possessing a college degree influenced officers’: use of discretion, force, the inclination to arrest while on daily duty, and lastly a reduction of authoritarian characteristics. For the very same reason, Gustafson & McClellan (2012) also agree and add that officer education: lowered numbers of citizen complaints, provided higher levels of critical thinking skills, and empathically embraced diversity more; as part of the respect to provide to the community as public servants. Furthermore they believed the perceived professionalism of officers would be elevated, impressing upon surrounding communities as a superior, efficiently retained increase in standards; enabling additional benefits to: officers, social discourse, and the law enforcement industry as a whole (Gustafson & McClellan, 2012). Also, with the bureaucratic system of operations within law enforcement, police officers start at the very bottom of the hierarchical chain are able to work their way up to higher positions in ranks through promotions; higher education of individual officers’ aids in receiving promotions

The contest of strength between the Crime Control Model and the Due Process Model is similar to attempting to satisfy every person, each and every second and no one some of the time. Debates are good for both models, but for all growth on one side, there must be one on the opposing side as well. The Crime Control Model, prosecutor or the police, is not in favor for the Due Process Model, a person, to have more rights than they do. Each and every individual who is a United States citizen should know what his or her rights are.

Each year citizens die in encounters with law enforcement officers. It is reported that “Americans are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist” (Rucke, 2013). Although there is no official data base tracking these occurrences it is estimated that between 500 and a 1,000 people are killed by police officers each year. To put this in greater perspective this number equals approximately 5,000 since the 9/11 terror attack which is roughly the same number as U.S. soldiers who have been killed in the line of duty in Iraq (Rucke, 2013). This statistic is justifiably concerning. The cause of police related killings are multifold and cannot be attributed to only one factor. Many deaths may be unavoidable and perhaps, dependent on the situation, necessary. I contend, however, that many of these deaths may very well be preventable.

Due process considers patrolling inside the criminal justice structure is critical to preserving integrity inside the social order. Being that it is currently in effect in the United States because this model places an emphasis and priority upon the arrest, prosecution, and conviction of criminals. The crime control model validates an attack on unlawful doings. The expression, “War on Crime” is debated by political figures plus officers on purposes to classify, track, separate, and eventually eradicate unlawful components in the general

In the past several years there has been a negative outlook on how the police force are completing the tasks they are given. In some cases police are using excessive brute force to subdue their “perpetrator.” Glover stated “The targeting of people of color by law and law enforcement is an American tradition.” (P.11). With everything going around today with police officers and how they treat the people of color in our society I can see how that can be said. That statement can be applied to cases such as like the one with Eric Garner, an African American male, who was put in a chokehold to be subdued but ultimately ended with his untimely death all “on the suspicion of selling a loose cigarette”(Thompson,2015). Another case where this can

Furthermore, “officers without a four-year degree are more likely to generate a greater number of formal complaints” (Krimmel, 1996, p.516). Also, Eterno (2008) concluded from a study of 258 police officers that high school educated only officers generated the most civilian complaints compared to officers with college experience. In contrast, Krimmel (1996) found that there were no statistically significant difference between level of officer education and informal complaints.

Soros knowing he is free from any major legal entanglements understands the very simple fact that, like 9/11 has shown, the more you make average citizens believe they are losing control of their lives and country, the more freedoms they will gladly hand over, in the false belief that it will make them and our country more safe.

According to this perspective, disproportionate searches of racial minorities are justified if hit rates are equal across races or if some other measure of “efficient policing” is achieved. Although proponents of these two approaches disagree with one another as to whether racial disparities in search rates are morally or legally acceptable, their analyses suffer from similar shortcomings. In particular, both the civil libertarian and the economics approaches assume intentional or purposeful discrimination by police offers. Although data from around the country suggest that racial minorities are often searched at a disproportionately higher rate than Whites, there is little empirical evidence that those disparities are the result of malice or purposeful profiling. We instead begin with the assumption—based on considerable empirical evidence—that the factors influencing police officers’ decisions are complex (Black 1980; Goldstein 1977; Reiss 1984; Wilson 1973). In the present research context, therefore, it is implausible that race is the sole factor that causes police officers to search motorists. To be sure, the recognition of the “multivariate” nature of police officers’ decisions to search has yet to be met by concurrent multivariate empirical models of such behavior. Indeed, incidents of searches are complex events that cannot be understood through simple univariate frequency statistics and/or bivariate relationships. The Supreme Court itself often adopts a

With the overwhelming recent media coverage of unarmed individuals being killed by police officers, it has now brought national attention to the seriousness of these events that should be addressed. One of the most notable event that caught the attention of the media and the public was the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. He was an unarmored black male that was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. This was not the first or the last time an unarmed person was killed by a law enforcement officer, it was an event that appeared to have caused citizens to start scrutinizing police department’s use of deadly force policy more in depth; especially the black community. According to “The Counted”, a database created by the Guardian that count the number of people killed by police and other law enforcement agencies in the United States; 190 unarmed individual were killed by law enforcement officer as of October 2015; 178 were male, 62 were Black, 28 were Hispanic, 76 were White, and 9 classified as other or unknown (guardian.com, 2015). Although the fact that the majority of the unarmed killing by police officers involved the death of White individuals, we have to keep in mind that Whites make up the majority of the U.S. population and that the number of minorities killed by police officers outnumbered their White counterparts, with the majority being Black individuals. While individuals should comply with the police, there is a need for better police and

The United States of America relies on due process of law to ensure equal protection of life, liberty and property to all citizens. Police officers work tirelessly to accommodate regulations adopted to ensure only criminals are convicted. These restrictions have been part of the United States since the Bill of Rights was generated in 1791, but in the 1960s, as “Law and Order,” the view that crime must be dealt with harshly to deter citizens from breaking the law, the Supreme Court was forced to decide the constitutionality of the rules of interrogation. In the Sixties, crime was escalating and public safety was becoming a growing concern; police began to treat suspects harsher in an effort to raise

An important equation in the Criminal Justice System is the delicate balance of due process and crime control. The due process model is the “perspective that emphasizes individual rights at all stages of justice system processing” (Schmalleger, 2015, p. 22). It is founded in the Bill of Rights and the recognition that each case and defendant is treated fairly Some feel that this places limits on the power of the police to do their jobs effectively.

As a police officer, behaving ethically will play a major role in an individual daily activities both on and off duty. One of the reasons individuals are selected to become police officers is based upon their abilities to empathize and act morally under all circumstances. Because one of the main responsibilities of a cop will be to ensure that others are upholding the law, he or she may be faced with situations in which certain rules aren’t being followed when he or she isn’t on duty. One such ethical dilemma a police officer may encounter off duty is the use of illicit drugs at a party he or she has been invited to. A friend of a police officer may invite him to attend a party at his house.

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.

The psychologist serves a great purpose in the law enforcement as well. The police psychologists provide services that are used to counter police use of excessive force. The psychologists are there to characterize the types of officers who are known to abuse force and to recommend psychology-based intervention that could help police managers reduce cases of excessive force. Some think that the police departments should rely mostly on pre employment screening to identify violence-prone candidates.