Analysis Of Police Myths Of The Police

1066 Words3 Pages

Myths are defined as stories that are made up by society that symbolizes values, ideologies and beliefs (Phillips, 2016). Myths are used by all cultures; myths are stories that are told to support social customs in societies. Crime myths are also created by telling stories (Victor Kappeler & Gary Potter, 2005). Myths about police officers have created false imageries of officers and their day-to-day jobs. Myths about the police have played an important role for decades now (Phillips, 2016). Majority of police myths are created by both the media and the police themselves. This paper will review Victor Kappeler and Gary Potters summary of police myths and outside sources will be used to support the myths listed by the authors. Chapter Summary …show more content…

It is a myth to believe that an officers job is spend fighting dangerous crimes, in reality officers spend more time handing smaller cases. For example, police officers spend a lot of time doing daily tasks such as giving speeding tickets and being mediators in disputes (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Handing out speeding tickers and handling minor disputes are far from fighting crime. Police officers spend more time doing preventive measures (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Preventive measures involve officers intervening to prevent further altercations. Victor Kappeler and Gary Potter discussed the myth of crime fighting as invalid and misleading notions of an officer’s employment. The authors also explain that there are no real statistics to help explain how many times an officer has used a firearm. The text explains that there is no significant data to help explain police shootings and how many occur each year (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Most of the data that can be found does not clearly state the numbers of times a firearm was used. Majority of data is found through data bases such as Vital Statistics (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Even data bases such as Vital Statistics do not provide clear information on police …show more content…

Police stress is viewed as a structural problem that is amongst the police culture (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). The argument made is that the working environment causes the stress. Even though a police officers job is not as dangerous officers still determine the danger as a source of stress. Police stress can be split up in to three sources: occupation, job-related and external stress (Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Just the thought of the job gives officers stress. Job-related circumstances such as responding to calls can also create stress. Finally, external sources such as personal stress can all lead to an officer being highly

Show More
Related

  • Police Use Of Force Essay

    1013 Words  | 3 Pages

    Yet, there has been an alarming disconnect between how the police, the public, and the courts view the use of force (Atherley & Hickman, 2014). Previous research on the issue of abusive or excessive force has not established a clear baseline for evaluating the use of excessive force. There has been a struggle in quantifying the use of excessive force by police and academic practitioners. This creates an issue considering the federal government is required by congress to establish a report on this issue. This holds law enforcement agencies to a certain standard that has not been thoroughly established (Atherley & Hickman,

    Read More

  • The Causes And Effects Of Stress In Police Officers

    1418 Words  | 3 Pages

    Some of the world’s most-loved and well-known superheroes include Superman, Batman, and Spiderman. However great these superheroes may appear, their fictional stories also include stressors that they face everyday, such as the villains that they encounter and the pressure of being a hero and an everyday citizen. In this way, stress often negatively impacts the lives of the ones who watch over every neighborhood, every street, and every house. Such is the job of a police officer. Because stress has become an important topic in the community of law enforcement, things that are commonly discussed are the causes of stress, the effects of stress, and the handling of stress in the lives of police officers.

    Read More

  • Use Of Force Essay

    1524 Words  | 4 Pages

    Everyday law enforcement personal have the possibility to face dangerous events in their daily duties. In performing such duties a police officer could come by a seemingly ordinary task, and in a blink of an eye the event can turn threatening and possible deadly. When or if this happens to an officer they won’t have

    Read More

  • Litigation of R. v. Buhay

    1197 Words  | 3 Pages

    As taught in the lectures, it is impossible for police officers to win the war against crime without bending the rules, however when the rules are bent so much that it starts to violate t...

    Read More

  • Analysis: The Police Subculture

    350 Words  | 1 Pages

    Police officer work can be a difficult task to handle. Police constantly work under stress and is a dangerous field to work in job especially if the majority of the public have a negative subculture against them. According to Steve McCartney, there is a strong subculture that permeates most agencies. While a common theme in academic discourse is that police culture is negative, entrenched in cynicism, masochism, loyalty above all else, and an “us versus them” mentality. The Police subculture have specific set of belief, attitudes, and behavior manifested by the law enforcement because they spend the majority of their time dealing with crime and tend to view members of the public as untrustworthy and potentially hostile. Therefore, police officer

    Read More

  • Eras of American Policing and Their Origin

    1541 Words  | 4 Pages

    American policing originated from early English law and is profoundly influenced by its history. Early law enforcement in England took on two forms of policing, one of which heavily influenced modern policing and it is known as the watch (Potter, 2013). The watch consisted, at first, of volunteers which had to patrol the streets for any kind of disorder including crime and fire. After men attempted to get out of volunteering by paying others, it became a paid professional position (Walker & Katz, 2012). The three eras of policing in America are shaped by these early ideas and practices of law enforcement. Throughout time, sufficient improvements and advancements have been made from the political era to the professional era and finally the community era which attempts to eliminate corruption, hire qualified officers and create an overall effective law enforcement system.

    Read More

  • Change In Police Shootings

    1431 Words  | 3 Pages

    Looking back at the most controversial police shooting incidents, sometimes finding that while the shooting may be legally justified, there were missed opportunities to ratchet down the encounter, to slow things down, to call in additional resources, in the minutes before the shooting occurred. (Wexler, 2015)” Our government initiative is to revamp police training once again. Many cases have influenced a change in police training such as Michael Brown Ferguson shooting case and the New York City death of Eric Garner. Our CEO and Chairman have sat down and came up with a blueprint to take police officers back to their essence of protecting and serving. This blueprint will teach officers to use force when it is necessary and to ask questions and make human decisions before jumping the gun. In certain states they are also raising the pay of police officers to spike recruitment. In different states their training consist on what they need to work on the most, For example, Missouri is getting more tactical training, Los Angeles is getting life preservation training, New York is going to use minimum force and more de-escalating by communication. In conclusion police force has gotten way out of control and if we are unable to contain it now then no one will have trust in our police officers. Revamping the training to use more communication and less force is a great idea. Many times conflicts gets resolved faster by understand a person instead of using force to create a bigger issue. The use of force in police training is insufficient because they are training the officer to use more force to subdue a suspect. Leaving room for a lot of civilians are ending up hurt or deceased in police custody. The plummet in police recruitment is due to the bad name they have been receiving because of unreasonable actions. Due to the rise of police

    Read More

  • Protecting Police Officers

    1345 Words  | 3 Pages

    Proponents argue that police officers are responsible for maintaining order and peace within a society, act as protectors of the weak and defenseless, and do so at the risk of injury to themselves or even the loss of their own life. In addition, proponents argue that in the execution of an officer’s job it is necessary to come into physical contact with subjects to effect an arrest of violators, which increases the odds of a physical confrontation and raises the chances of the officer’s being assaulted. More than likely, police officers choose their profession because of their desire to help others, to protect members of society who cannot protect themselves, and to stop those who violate the law. It is unlikely that police officers become police thinking that being assaulted is a requirement or criteria of their profession. Moreover, it is apparent that police officers realize and readily accept the fact that they may be put in harm’s way, and may risk serious injury or even death to protect people they do not even know.

    Read More

  • Racial Profiling By Police

    131 Words  | 1 Pages

    Police are an integral portion of society as protectors. Officers are on lookout for citizens and they attempt to ensure citizen safety whenever possible. Throughout these past years however, the public and scholars are questioning the use of force, the racism, and possible corruption along with other forms of misconduct by police officers. Some scholars have claimed that many of the problems are unfortunately misconstrued by the news media and blown out of proportion; these officers are simply doing their duty and they’re jobs. Others may argue that the incidents may be traced back to the poor training and policies of these officers. Still other persons maintain an opinion that the system must be changed and that with such a rise of crime,

    Read More

  • What Impact Does Media Have On Citizens's Perception Of The Police

    593 Words  | 2 Pages

    Variables that have an impact on the perception of the police include race, socioeconomic status, gender, age, past experiences and upbringing. The literature reviewed in this paper targets juvenile and college populations. As the population in America rises, as will the number of Police Officers needed to keep the law. With more citizens and more police officials interacting, the more confrontation will occur.

    Read More

  • How Dangerous A Police Officer's Day To Day Essay

    362 Words  | 1 Pages

    Last week, a police officer in Irwindale was threatened by a man wielding two makeshift knives. The officer claimed that he saw the man jaywalking and when he went to stop him, the man became hostile and started to attempt to flee the scene. The officer was able to apprehend him and call for back up and the suspect is now in custody and being charged with attempted murder of the officer, assault on the officer, carrying a weapon, and resisting an officer (Daily Bulletin). This incident is a great example of what we have learned regarding police activity in Chapters 5 and 6 of Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction. To begin, it shows just how dangerous a police officer’s day to day career can get (176). As we learned in Chapter 6, this officer was definitely in danger of

    Read More

  • Long-Term Effects Of Stress On Police Officers

    1110 Words  | 3 Pages

    Police officers encounter a huge level of stress on a daily basis. Police officers have to deal with criminals and put themselves in physical danger every day. The stress that officers deal with can leave long term effects on their body, as well as having a huge influence on their well-being. Many people do not understand the tasks and struggles that officers have to encounter each day and the long lasting effects that these daily tasks can leave on an officer.

    Read More

  • Police Force Hypothesis

    352 Words  | 1 Pages

    Stress is based on the demands on police officers constant exposure to people suffering distress and pain. There are varied causes of work related stress. Dependent variable of stress is connected with the dangers that some police officers face daily. Stress in the lives of officers is the result that comes from the involvement in the lives of those who have either broken the law or been the victim of crime. Stress

    Read More

  • Cop In The Hood Summary

    1309 Words  | 3 Pages

    So much is written about policing. Despite the resentments, the police, charged with the task of keeping us safe remains undeterred in their mission so we can live to see another day. Moskos' autobiography evokes graphic images that we often see, but fail to acknowledge. A

    Read More

  • Police Brutality Report

    1941 Words  | 4 Pages

    Most fatal outcomes caused by police officers have happened due to the suspect having possessions of a unregistered firearms. “At this time of writing this article, there have been 821 incidence of people have been shot and killed this year by police, and of those, 649 of those killed possessed a deadly weapon at the time, while 614 followed violent crimes i.e. shootout, stabbing, hostage situations ,assault Etc. “ says the Statistic America Firearms (2015) . Statistic show that the leading cause of murders and deaths in America are caused by firearms and guns. Roughly 14,249 murders were committed in the United States during 2014. Of these, about 9675 or 68% were committed with firearms, 22% are from police officers. This relates to my thesis because it shows that the increase in gun control has led to ongoing police brutality and police misconduct and police should face more serious crimes for handling situations unreasonably and

    Read More

More about Analysis Of Police Myths Of The Police

Open Document