Police Officer Heroes

Police Officers: Heroes of the 21st Century
It is the bad things that the media highlights in the news when it comes to law enforcement and the bad things that people remember when it comes to police officers. The job of an officer changes daily and from one circumstance to another; they must use their best judgment to make the best decision in the most critical of times ensure the safety of everyone. With the advancement of technology and weapons of all sorts, law enforcement has come a long way from where it began to “ensure that justice prevails” (Grant & Terry, 2012, p. 4), but even those do not change that dangers the come with the job and the some of the unfortunate outcomes.
Police officers knowingly insert themselves into potentially
dangerous situations every day. “The potential for danger is omnipresent, even if actual danger occurs only rarely” (Walker & Katz, 2001, p. 156). They are trained to consider even bystanders as potential threats. Police officers have the innate ability to adjust to several possible results when advancing a perpetrator as many things can go wrong. Traffic stops are considered to be very dangerous for officers, along with covert operations. High-speed chases result in injuries and/or at worst fatalities at times and especially when weapons are used; many people are in danger including the officer, the suspect, and the bystanders on the same roads or sidewalks. Covert operations require an officer to change their identity for elongated periods of time to unveil high profile crimes like drug dealing and drug trafficking. If their true identity if revealed, deaths are oftentimes the unfavorable consequence. A less obvious danger to officers is fatigue; as working abnormal hours is common in the field. It affects the officers’ (Grant & Terry, 20120) health, their abilities to deal with stress, relationships with family and friends, and basic daily functions. Fatigue also impairs the mental capacity to be alert, comprehensive, communicative, and judgment which are important in the line of law enforcement.
Less than lethal weapons are tools used among officers to mediate the dangers if necessary, without using guns. These weapons include the baton, pepper spray, Taser, or nets (University of Phoenix, 2011). Threshold threats are when an officers has probable cause that a substantial amount of force will be used to subdue physical resistance of a perpetrator (Grant & Terry, 2012), without the necessity of using lethal force like guns or K-9s in some cases. Tasers are technologically advanced weapons that battery powered and produces at least 50,000 watts of power to the assailant. Its effects cause muscular pain and temporary immobilization (Walker & Katz, 2011), but eliminate the threat of harm or danger in a majority of cases.
Technologies other than Tasers have revolutionized many aspects of the police force.
Starting with police cars, 2-way radio communications, and the telephone; technology has helped increase the response rate within the department, with the public, and the report time to the scene of a crime. Contrary to police officers receiving calls, even newer communications and crime mapping technology allow officers to contact residents if there is important information in an area (Walker & Katz, 2011). In-car cameras operated via touchscreen inside of the police cars are very popular in policing, however, is only limited to the area of the vehicle. Movement toward cameras on officers uniforms are nearing, maximizing distance for recording capabilities for patrols away from the police car (Fiumara, 2012). A lot of information technology has replaced paperwork like personnel records and written reports. The Records Management System (RMS) was designed to “input and organize information from different types of reports in one easy-to-access format” (Walker & Katz, 2011, p. 502), allowing the capabilities to share information within a department efficiently. Sharing intelligence is not only important within a department but across agencies as well. To help mitigate linkage blindness, (Grant & Terry, 2012) the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) was created to enable adequate sharing of information between federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities to help fight the war on terrorism, connecting all law enforcement entities to Washington D.C. and major municipals. Relationship between local and state law enforcement agencies are most often result in competition instead of cooperation. If informal agreements are made between local, state, and federal agencies, then that can eliminate the barriers that divide them yet clearly define what the goals of each are (Walker & Katz, 2011). Cooperation and coordination would help all departments and agencies accomplish the
same goals: fighting crime and terrorism.
I believe that many people are ignorant to what many police officers deal with daily and cannot understand why certain decisions or actions are made. There are many unfortunate outcomes in the situation of a crime. People scrutinize and criticize how fast or slow an investigation is done or what could have been done better but they sometimes forget that police officers are human beings as well. There are the scandals of corruption, police misconduct, or even accidental deaths that overshadow the heroic things those police officers do. In community-police relations, people can be made aware and educated of some of the challenges that police officers face. It is important because you cannot understand what you do not know. Conceptions of less-than-lethal weapons, technology, new policies within a department or widespread to the federal level only make the job for police officers easier and more accurate; it does not make the dangers go away. People have to understand the training and worst case scenarios that law enforcement officers may have to deal with. It is not every day that the average person gets caught up in a shoot-out or high-pursuit car chase.

References
Fiumara, J. (2012, September). The Future Is Near: Getting Ahead of the Challenges of Body-Worn Video. The Police Chief The Professional Voice in Law Enforcement, LXXIX(9), . Retrieved from http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display&issue_id=92012&category_ID=4
Grant, H.B., & Terry, K.J. (2012). Law Enforcement in the 21st Century (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/ Prentice Hall.
University of Phoenix. (2011). CJi Interactive. Retrieved from University of Phoenix, CJA214 website.
Walker, S., & Katz, C. M. (2011). The Police in America: An Introduction (7th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.