Police Involvement Essay
Introduction
Throughout the history of the United States, there has been racism, concerns over immigration policies, and corruption that led to people fearing the police, and ultimately led to a negative connotation toward the police. However, like all stereotypes, there is a smidge of truth. Over the years, a small percentage of the police have abused their power, leading people to believe that all police are tainted. It is through sources such as media, to cause naïve people to believe that the police are “out to get” one group of people, or that police are corrupt individuals who cover up for each other. However, through techniques such as community involvement, the police can ease theses stereotypes placed on them and eventually get people …show more content…
to see that police are human too.
Use of Force
Righteous Use of Force: Every day the police are faced with adverse situations in which they may have to use some kind of physical force for the safety of themselves or others. While someone in custody may say otherwise, physical force is not excessive force. Physical force is used to overtake an aggressive assailant that is willing to harm others, while excessive force is the over use of physical force, normally used after the assailant has been subdued. An embellished example of excessive force would be an officer using deadly force on someone for fighting him or her. Instead an officer is trained to use different levels of force for different levels of aggressiveness (United States Department of Justice, 2014). Types of training can include, empty hand tactics such as, takedowns, and blocking (United States Department of Justice, 2014). More useful types of training can be tactics such as, calming down an aggressive offender down prior to reaching hostility (USDOJ, 2014). While this method carries a less assertive aspect, it is the most resourceful method, as there will be fewer complaints of excessive force and backlash form incidents that may arise from the use of physical force.
Unrighteous Use of Force: While the majority of police officers work hard to maintain their honor among the community, there are a small few who place stigmas on police, through the use of excessive force. To better illustrate how police brutality is over represented, the Bureau of Justice compiled statistics during the years of 2002, 2005, and 2008. Surprisingly, over the years in which the statistics were captured, of all the people who had come in contact with the police, only 1.5% of the people taken into custody reported that the police had used excessive for on them (Bureau of Justice, 2014). Therefore, these statistics illustrate how potent a small number of officers can cause a whole agency or police in general to look bad.
Weapons and other tactics of force: In addition to physical (hand to hand) force, police agencies have also has issues in regard to the use of lethal and non-lethal weapons. There has been recent coverage in the media about the use of non-lethal force, stating that some tactics are too militaristic or do more harm than good. Tear gas, riot shields, and beanbag shotguns are tools normally used during violent riots or protest. Although these tools are to avoid using deadly force, these methods can often have negative consequences. For example, the recent uproar in Ferguson, Missouri, consequently caused police to respond with riot gear. During these riots, police have attempted to regain order by firing beanbag rounds, causing a pregnant woman to loose her eye (NBC, 2014). Shortly after, the police stated that the diver was driving at the police rather than toward them; therefore the police saw a threat and fired a beanbag round into the vehicle, striking the passenger in the left eye (NBC, 2014). It can be concluded that incidents such as this happen not because of abusive police, but because of poorly trained police. Therefore, to avoid situations like so, police agencies use these incidents as examples and training tools.
Virtually every officer’s goal at the end of his or her career is to retire without having to take another person’s life. Therefore, prior drawing a firearm during a confrontation, an officer may use devices such as OC spray, the Taser and batons. To understand how these tactics may feel on the offender, during police training, police are sprayed with OC spray and shot with a Taser. The idea behind this training process is so the officer will be less likely to abuse his or her devices, as he or she knows how it affects the human body. Any weapon compiled with unsupervised discretion can lead to abuse; therefore, it is the agency’s job to sift out potentially abusive officers and continue to use intense scenario based training, while teaching officers alternative methods to subdue violent offenders.
Media (News) Involvement Whether talking about social media or news channels, the use of media greatly impacts the police. Everyday people in the United States wake up to some source of media. Phones flash the latest news trends, the daily newspaper has the most popular headline, and on every television news station, the same incident is being looped for several hours. Depending on what source someone follows, depicts how he or she will interpret controversial events such as the Michael Brown shooting. Because the media focuses on viewers rather than quality news, many news stations can often produce bias news reports, or information that is incomplete. Consequently, this can cause viewers to get a bias view on an incident leading to things such as riots, and “copycat” crimes. However, while the media can make controversial situations worse, the media can also help solve crimes.
Positive Media Coverage: One of the must successful media outlets that helped police catch wanted criminals was America’s Most Wanted. According to New York Times, America’s Most Wanted led to approximately one capture a week (1,149 total) since the show has been on the air (Stelter, 2011). Often news stations such as Fox, or ABC have been known to sometime compromise a police investigation; however the news, similar to America’s Most Wanted, help the police by releasing information such as Amber alerts, descriptions and pictures of persons of interest or people wanted by the police. Other than the news, social media outlets such as, Facebook, and Twitter have also been great investigation tools. Because Facebook and Twitter are considered to be public knowledge, if the profile is set to public access, police can easily search a profile for evidence without obtaining a warrant.
Negative Media Coverage: When the media negatively portrays all police as being one way, this in essence separates the police from the community. Often the media puts a stigma on law enforcement, making them out to be the “bad guy.” Generally speaking, mass media coverage ultimately makes people fear the police. An article released by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, titled, “The Public Image of the Police” gives great example of how the media targets the police. Although this article was written in 2001, it still provides a good example of how the media usually fails to tell the full truth. They describe how during police shooting, the media talks only about the shooting, making police seem “trigger happy,” rather than explaining to the views that despite the recent breaking news, police shooting are actually on the decline (Gallagher, 2001). As a result, mass media viewers see the police as being dangerous, and any chance the get they will take a shot. However, if the media were to include the rest of the facts, its viewers would see the police as people who are trying to do the right thing and make their community safer, resulting in a better police and community interaction.
Community Involvement
Types of Community Involvement:
There are several types of police and community involvement programs.
Many of the programs were established to create a positive relationship between the community and police. Often, the only time people interact with the police is through traffic violations (Gallagher, 2001). Therefore the police have created programs such as citizen’s police academy, DARE, and interaction through crime prevention techniques.
Citizen’s Police Academy: The Citizen’s Police Academy gives citizens of a community the right to know how the police operate and is designed to build trust between the police and the community. By understand how the police operate, people of the community can understand and respect policing in the community. In addition, people who attend the police academy can relay learned information to other people in the community, resulting in an increased acceptance of the police. According to an article released by the United States Department of Justice, after graduation of the Citizen’s Police Academy, civilians are more likely to become advocated of police policy, spreading it amongst the community (U.S. Department of Justice, 2006). In addition to the Citizen’s Police Academy, several police agencies also have internal affairs citizen review boards, in which the citizens are responsible for handling complaints regarding police. This is another beneficial program because it will allow citizens to immensely trust police …show more content…
because other police is not investigating police, but instead, people in the community. D.A.R.E.: The D.A.R.E.
program, although not as successful at preventing drug use, has been beneficial for both the youth and the officers involved in the program. According to an annual report released by Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement, DARE has successfully taught youth refusal skills and different life skills that can help prevent them from using drugs (Bailey, 2013). While learning these skills, children in the community become more comfortable with the police, which could also help in the reducing the juvenile crime rate. In addition to helping children, according to FDLE, the D.A.R.E. program has also helped officers communicate more efficiently with the community and led to better people skills (Bailey, 2013). Consequently, a program such as D.A.R.E. would help officers deal with juvenile delinquents, and give officers better ways to relate to a
community.
Crime Prevention Within the Community: One of the best ways for law enforcement to interact with a community is through the means of crime prevention. Despite what others may think, majority of the citizens within a community do not want crime. Therefore, programs such as neighborhood watch, and project safe neighborhoods focuses on getting the community on one accord in trying to combat crime in their neighborhood. However, in order for these to be a successful program, members of the community must maintain a healthy relationship with the police. Neighborhood watch is a program that works by getting law enforcement and a neighborhood together to deter criminal activity. While reducing the opportunity for a crime, people within the neighborhood watch program can be the “eyes and ears” for the police. To encourage more members of the community to join program, at least 51% of participants must be present at meetings for a neighborhood to be eligible for a neighborhood watch sign (National Crime Prevention Council, 2014). By having this interaction with a community, police can rely on a group of citizens for information regarding crime in the local area. Similar to neighborhood watch, project safe neighborhoods is a program that works closely with the law enforcement agencies and the community in order to combat things such as gun violence and gang violence. Project Safe Neighborhood was established to crack down on gang and gun violence by giving arrestees a tougher punishment to the use of a firearm, or gang activity (McGarrell, 2010). Initially implemented in Boston, project safe neighborhoods successfully reduced youth violence and gun violence by 60% (McGarrell, 2010). The program had seen so much success because so many people supported it. In order to fight against the gang and gun violence, project safe neighborhood consisted of a task force that included federal law enforcement, local, and state police, community leaders, and other policing agencies (McGarrell, 2010). It can be concluded that, in order for community efforts to work it takes a great amount of people who what to change their environment rather than destroy it.
Conclusion
Throughout the history of the United States, there has been racism, concerns over immigration policies, and corruption that led to people fearing the police, and ultimately led to a negative connotation toward the police. However, like all stereotypes, there is a smidge of truth. Over the years, a small percentage of the police have abused their power, leading people to believe that all police are tainted. It is through sources such as media, to cause naïve people to believe that the police are “out to get” one group of people, or that police are corrupt individuals who cover up for each other. However, through techniques such as community involvement, the police can ease theses stereotypes placed on them and eventually get people …show more content…
to see that police are human too.
Use of Force
Righteous Use of Force: Every day the police are faced with adverse situations in which they may have to use some kind of physical force for the safety of themselves or others. While someone in custody may say otherwise, physical force is not excessive force. Physical force is used to overtake an aggressive assailant that is willing to harm others, while excessive force is the over use of physical force, normally used after the assailant has been subdued. An embellished example of excessive force would be an officer using deadly force on someone for fighting him or her. Instead an officer is trained to use different levels of force for different levels of aggressiveness (United States Department of Justice, 2014). Types of training can include, empty hand tactics such as, takedowns, and blocking (United States Department of Justice, 2014). More useful types of training can be tactics such as, calming down an aggressive offender down prior to reaching hostility (USDOJ, 2014). While this method carries a less assertive aspect, it is the most resourceful method, as there will be fewer complaints of excessive force and backlash form incidents that may arise from the use of physical force.
Unrighteous Use of Force: While the majority of police officers work hard to maintain their honor among the community, there are a small few who place stigmas on police, through the use of excessive force. To better illustrate how police brutality is over represented, the Bureau of Justice compiled statistics during the years of 2002, 2005, and 2008. Surprisingly, over the years in which the statistics were captured, of all the people who had come in contact with the police, only 1.5% of the people taken into custody reported that the police had used excessive for on them (Bureau of Justice, 2014). Therefore, these statistics illustrate how potent a small number of officers can cause a whole agency or police in general to look bad.
Weapons and other tactics of force: In addition to physical (hand to hand) force, police agencies have also has issues in regard to the use of lethal and non-lethal weapons. There has been recent coverage in the media about the use of non-lethal force, stating that some tactics are too militaristic or do more harm than good. Tear gas, riot shields, and beanbag shotguns are tools normally used during violent riots or protest. Although these tools are to avoid using deadly force, these methods can often have negative consequences. For example, the recent uproar in Ferguson, Missouri, consequently caused police to respond with riot gear. During these riots, police have attempted to regain order by firing beanbag rounds, causing a pregnant woman to loose her eye (NBC, 2014). Shortly after, the police stated that the diver was driving at the police rather than toward them; therefore the police saw a threat and fired a beanbag round into the vehicle, striking the passenger in the left eye (NBC, 2014). It can be concluded that incidents such as this happen not because of abusive police, but because of poorly trained police. Therefore, to avoid situations like so, police agencies use these incidents as examples and training tools.
Virtually every officer’s goal at the end of his or her career is to retire without having to take another person’s life. Therefore, prior drawing a firearm during a confrontation, an officer may use devices such as OC spray, the Taser and batons. To understand how these tactics may feel on the offender, during police training, police are sprayed with OC spray and shot with a Taser. The idea behind this training process is so the officer will be less likely to abuse his or her devices, as he or she knows how it affects the human body. Any weapon compiled with unsupervised discretion can lead to abuse; therefore, it is the agency’s job to sift out potentially abusive officers and continue to use intense scenario based training, while teaching officers alternative methods to subdue violent offenders.
Media (News) Involvement Whether talking about social media or news channels, the use of media greatly impacts the police. Everyday people in the United States wake up to some source of media. Phones flash the latest news trends, the daily newspaper has the most popular headline, and on every television news station, the same incident is being looped for several hours. Depending on what source someone follows, depicts how he or she will interpret controversial events such as the Michael Brown shooting. Because the media focuses on viewers rather than quality news, many news stations can often produce bias news reports, or information that is incomplete. Consequently, this can cause viewers to get a bias view on an incident leading to things such as riots, and “copycat” crimes. However, while the media can make controversial situations worse, the media can also help solve crimes.
Positive Media Coverage: One of the must successful media outlets that helped police catch wanted criminals was America’s Most Wanted. According to New York Times, America’s Most Wanted led to approximately one capture a week (1,149 total) since the show has been on the air (Stelter, 2011). Often news stations such as Fox, or ABC have been known to sometime compromise a police investigation; however the news, similar to America’s Most Wanted, help the police by releasing information such as Amber alerts, descriptions and pictures of persons of interest or people wanted by the police. Other than the news, social media outlets such as, Facebook, and Twitter have also been great investigation tools. Because Facebook and Twitter are considered to be public knowledge, if the profile is set to public access, police can easily search a profile for evidence without obtaining a warrant.
Negative Media Coverage: When the media negatively portrays all police as being one way, this in essence separates the police from the community. Often the media puts a stigma on law enforcement, making them out to be the “bad guy.” Generally speaking, mass media coverage ultimately makes people fear the police. An article released by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, titled, “The Public Image of the Police” gives great example of how the media targets the police. Although this article was written in 2001, it still provides a good example of how the media usually fails to tell the full truth. They describe how during police shooting, the media talks only about the shooting, making police seem “trigger happy,” rather than explaining to the views that despite the recent breaking news, police shooting are actually on the decline (Gallagher, 2001). As a result, mass media viewers see the police as being dangerous, and any chance the get they will take a shot. However, if the media were to include the rest of the facts, its viewers would see the police as people who are trying to do the right thing and make their community safer, resulting in a better police and community interaction.
Community Involvement
Types of Community Involvement:
There are several types of police and community involvement programs.
Many of the programs were established to create a positive relationship between the community and police. Often, the only time people interact with the police is through traffic violations (Gallagher, 2001). Therefore the police have created programs such as citizen’s police academy, DARE, and interaction through crime prevention techniques.
Citizen’s Police Academy: The Citizen’s Police Academy gives citizens of a community the right to know how the police operate and is designed to build trust between the police and the community. By understand how the police operate, people of the community can understand and respect policing in the community. In addition, people who attend the police academy can relay learned information to other people in the community, resulting in an increased acceptance of the police. According to an article released by the United States Department of Justice, after graduation of the Citizen’s Police Academy, civilians are more likely to become advocated of police policy, spreading it amongst the community (U.S. Department of Justice, 2006). In addition to the Citizen’s Police Academy, several police agencies also have internal affairs citizen review boards, in which the citizens are responsible for handling complaints regarding police. This is another beneficial program because it will allow citizens to immensely trust police …show more content…
because other police is not investigating police, but instead, people in the community. D.A.R.E.: The D.A.R.E.
program, although not as successful at preventing drug use, has been beneficial for both the youth and the officers involved in the program. According to an annual report released by Florida’s Department of Law Enforcement, DARE has successfully taught youth refusal skills and different life skills that can help prevent them from using drugs (Bailey, 2013). While learning these skills, children in the community become more comfortable with the police, which could also help in the reducing the juvenile crime rate. In addition to helping children, according to FDLE, the D.A.R.E. program has also helped officers communicate more efficiently with the community and led to better people skills (Bailey, 2013). Consequently, a program such as D.A.R.E. would help officers deal with juvenile delinquents, and give officers better ways to relate to a
community.
Crime Prevention Within the Community: One of the best ways for law enforcement to interact with a community is through the means of crime prevention. Despite what others may think, majority of the citizens within a community do not want crime. Therefore, programs such as neighborhood watch, and project safe neighborhoods focuses on getting the community on one accord in trying to combat crime in their neighborhood. However, in order for these to be a successful program, members of the community must maintain a healthy relationship with the police. Neighborhood watch is a program that works by getting law enforcement and a neighborhood together to deter criminal activity. While reducing the opportunity for a crime, people within the neighborhood watch program can be the “eyes and ears” for the police. To encourage more members of the community to join program, at least 51% of participants must be present at meetings for a neighborhood to be eligible for a neighborhood watch sign (National Crime Prevention Council, 2014). By having this interaction with a community, police can rely on a group of citizens for information regarding crime in the local area. Similar to neighborhood watch, project safe neighborhoods is a program that works closely with the law enforcement agencies and the community in order to combat things such as gun violence and gang violence. Project Safe Neighborhood was established to crack down on gang and gun violence by giving arrestees a tougher punishment to the use of a firearm, or gang activity (McGarrell, 2010). Initially implemented in Boston, project safe neighborhoods successfully reduced youth violence and gun violence by 60% (McGarrell, 2010). The program had seen so much success because so many people supported it. In order to fight against the gang and gun violence, project safe neighborhood consisted of a task force that included federal law enforcement, local, and state police, community leaders, and other policing agencies (McGarrell, 2010). It can be concluded that, in order for community efforts to work it takes a great amount of people who what to change their environment rather than destroy it.
Conclusion