Law Enforcement Use Case
Police are considered to be the representatives of civil authority of the government (Banton, 2015). Their primary goal is to ensure safety among the citizens and maintain public order. They are also burdened with law enforcement, and they are tasked to prevent, detect and even investigate criminal activities. Police are subsequently conferred with regulatory functions and such functions are known, according to Banton (2015), as policing. However, scholars have criticized the word police for two reasons: (i) first, it defines police through their purpose and not by the means they use in order to be efficient in their functions; and (ii) the situations where police are required to interfere in order to enforce the law and maintain society’s
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Police Brutality and the Reason behind the Lack of Control among the Police
America is an example where police brutality is evident (Lazare, 2015). The Guardians tells us that U.S police kill more people during ordinary days compared to the police in England and Wales. The police in Stockton, California, killed only three people in the first five months of 2015. The Police in Iceland, with roughly the same population of Stockton and California, have just killed one person since it was founded in 1944. According to Lazare (2015), the United States saw 97 police shootings in March 2015 alone. On the other hand, Australia saw 94 police shootings over two decades of its founding—that is from 1992 to 2011. Where police in Finland fired a total of six bullets in 2013, police in Pasco, Washington, fired roughly three times as many last February. According to The Guardian, police have killed more than 400 people in
With reference to the orthodox and revisionist perspectives, assess the statement that ‘the establishment of the Metropolitan Police in 1829 was a rational solution to changes in society and the associated challenges of crime and disorder’. Use a contemporary example to demonstrate how these perspectives can be useful in interpreting modern policing activities.
Crank & Caldero (2004) discuss the notion of the noble cause that is widely used by police officers to justify their actions. Police officers feel that there are many obstacles that prevent them to do their job efficiently. They claim that courts only hinder the process of putting criminals behind bars. They also believe that they are true patriots with a noble cause of getting rid of bad guys. To further prove their point Crank & Caldero (2004) use works of many authors, who wrote about police ethics and corruption and about how the noble cause is interpreted by police officers. Each of the authors discusses a dilemma with which polices officers have to deal when deciding what action they need to take in order to deal with criminals. Cumulatively, it seems that police conduct themselves towards criminals and citizens with hostility and with actions that maybe constituted as unlawful and corruptive in nature. But to the police officers, who are seeking justice and are driven by a noble cause, all means are good to get the bad guys. There is also a philosophical twist that puts a poli...
Crime is a part of society encompases the news and the public. A variety of studies of media content have estimated that as much as 25 percent of the daily news is devoted to crime (Surette 1992) and that crime is the largest major category of stories in the print and electronic media (Chermak 1994, 103). (Lawrence 18). With crime at an all time high, police are constantly having to deal with more and more issues. This can lead to stressed out and fed up officers, which can lead to poor decisions by an officer. The use of force by police is a highly controversial topic as it raises questions about a government’s ability to use force against its citizens (Lawrence 19). Today’s society is caught up on the ideals of civility and equality before the law, making police use of force a touchy
There are at least 6 to 8 complaints made by every 100 officers each year. At least 30 percent of the complaints are for excessive use of force and that doesn’t include all the undocumented complaints civilians make that are failing to be reported. In the past year, police officers have killed more than 776 people. This information has only recently been brought to light. For once the media is not exaggerating on the crimes police are committing; this is happening right here, right now in our own country.
The main purpose of the police is to protection, and force should only be use to promote the safety of the community. The police have been charged with the one of the greatest responsibility in the world, and that is with safeguarding the domestic well being of the public. My father was a New York police officer for 20 years, and I know firsthand that this job is not an easy one. The polic...
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
However, after reading the article the author noted that police are mandated to enforce civilian law and order, investigate crimes, and strictly follow legal procedures even when in pursuit of chronic and dangerous criminals (Kagoro, 2014). Ideally, it has been argued, there should be strict dividing lines between the police and the military; the former for domestic purposes with the latter protecting citizens from external threats (Kagoro, 2014). In his article on the anti-militarization of the police in the United States, Kurt Andrew Schlichter aptly put it that the military is designed, organized, and equipped to execute rapid, violent and efficient obliteration of the “enemy”-whoever the enemy may be ( Kagoro, 2014). However, the law enforcement is usually modeled after the military and in fact there a large number of police officers who are former military personnel. This was a new criticism of police that was unfamiliar to me in the study of criminal justice but, I found it to be a valid point. The idea of changing the focus of policing to be less of a battlefield and more of a community may be a compelling approach to make interaction with citizens less
The United State is one of the worst of the countries that experience police brutality. 90% of complaints for police misconducts were not investigated. Over 10,000 police brutality complaints against the US police departments only 19 of them were inflicted by police brutality. Most police departments say “we don’t need a few bad apples or a few rogue cops damaging the good police name that was once there for the police to help the needed people and to keep the communities safe. Police brutality us a nation problem and it is
Police shootings occur all over the world but are a huge problem within the United States. We continue to hear more and more about them. These shootings are making headlines. Front page news it seems almost weekly. All the shootings go one of two ways.
Police play a vital role in maintaining safety and welfare at all levels of government and across the country. Policing can also be described as an aspect of overseeing others to ensure that they keep to law and order. Policing is about helping people and maintaining community quality of life as it is about enforcing laws and apprehending criminals. The most important work of the police is to enforce public orders and enforce the law. While crime fighting is an essential role of law enforcement, it is not the most prevalent, and in the view of many, not the most important. Officers spend far more time engaged in the provision of far ranging non-law enforcement services. In enforcing the law, the police force also helps to maintain public order. Diversity in the police force is one of the most important aspects that should be looked at. This is due to the effect that it's likely to have on the overall perception and the effectiveness of the police force.
A Critical Assessment In defining police ethics, ethical policing and police ethics are not synonymous or interchangeable connotations to or for one another. Aside from establishing a police role independently from establishing any definition of ethics or police ethics, the semantics tend to complicate the defining process. Some of these complications include, but are not limited to, sociological aspects, psychological conditions, or philosophical reasoning. Examples of sociological complications include historical, political, cultural, or economic aspects. Some psychological examples include one’s ability to discern sociological implications from other implications; namely, the condition of post-traumatic stress disorder, hydrophobia, or even weary dreams. Lastly,
Cordner, G. W. (2016). Police Administration, 9th Edition. Waltham, MA: Routledge Publishing. P. 391. Retrieved July 21, 2017, from https://www.betheluniversityonline.net/cps/default.aspx?SectionID=5753&tabid=154#1
Skogan, W., Meares, T. (2004) ‘Lawful Policing’ The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 66 (18)
Thus, the purpose of this essay is to examine the debate of the two surrounding arguments where some have contended that an efficient and practical criminal justice system relies on police discretion as it allows the police to be flexible during times of scarce resources. Whereas, many scholars have explored the encompassing limits to this discretion such as issues of accountability, the ability to abuse such powers and perhaps the most precarious consequence of police discretion;
The focus is on the issues of police accountability in modern society, and in particular why their accountability is more important than other professions. This is not surprising considering the amount of power and discretion police officers have, and the level of trust that the public holds with these civil servants. Police officers accountability is the biggest thing in their profession which has been an issue of concern they have to be accountable to the police department who want the officer to be an effective and responsible person, to people in the community who have best expectation from an officer and being accountable to themselves for their acts. An ordinary citizen of a country cannot obtain the powers that police officer’s have.