Tension Between Policing And Democracy Research Paper

I do think that there are some inherent tensions between policing and democracy. I say this because policing is running in a way so that they are in power of the situation. People in today’s society view police both are support, but also as a threat because of all of the power they have over citizens. In a democratic society policing is subject to the rule of law by respecting human dignity, rather than putting their power first. Police must only intervene in citizens lives only in limited circumstances and must be publicly accountable. I believe that the tension occurs when police think that they are above the law. Citizens get upset when they know that police officers have more power than them and use it in a way to target individuals. For
example, the shooting of innocent black men by white police officers has caused people to protest because even after videos are posted that the black man was innocent and then killed the police still get off a lot easier than a citizen would. In Wood’s “Crisis of Control”, she brings up the protests against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999. Protesters were pepper sprayed and mass arrests were made so that the police could try to control the large crowd of protesters. In police report on the police’s behavior it said it, “did not meet an acceptable and expected standard of competence and professionalism and proficiency (Wood, 25).” Since the police had never dealt with a situation like the WTO protest they were overwhelmed by the disruption that the protesters had caused and decided to take extreme measures to stop them. This is a reason that policing and democracy have tensions because the 1st amendment says that the people have freedom of speech and the rights to protest, but the police did not allow that to happen. As for Gillham’s article on “Strategic Incapacitation” he says, “The police are often viewed paradoxically by those seeking to preserve civil liberties central to democratic societies as well as by those pursuing social changes unpopular with powerful constituencies or the general public. Both the absence of policing and excessive policing poses fundamental threats to civil rights and liberties central to democratic societies (P. 636).” Meaning that police are inconsistent from the views of the people because they are using their power to control situations in the wrong way. Police are either not doing enough or too much that causes citizens to feel a threat from them. It may be difficult to find a middle ground with police in a democratic society, but they must do everything they can to do just that. If that is never to happen then there will be multiple unintended consequences that will occur, especially at mass protests. Some unintended consequences of policing and protesting at mass demonstrations like the WTO protests are the different repertoires that police wear when attending these events. Police are dressed in what I see as body armor when citizens come together for a protest. This makes the protesters uneasy because they think that they will already be beat by police. This causes tensions between both groups because the police look like they are going to war when all the people are trying to do is stand up for their beliefs under the 1st amendment. Another unintended consequence that may happen at these protests that may occur is when the police try to make it so that groups are separated from each other. They can do this by cutting off certain areas or not letting people get through areas. This causes the opposite effect of what the police want. They want the groups to be separate so that they do not disrupt traffic or businesses, but all it does is upset the protesters. When the protesters get upset, the protest turns violent because their 1st amendment rights are being pushed aside. Although there may be some unintended consequences that police have during these protest, I believe that there are ways that can avoid this. I believe that police could have avoided these consequences by going out on the day of the protest knowing that things are going to be disruptive, but that the protest will most likely only last one day. They must understand that citizens have the right to protest and that they should try what they can by being. I am a firm believer in democratic policing because it holds both the police and the citizens to a standard of respect. Both parties strive for equal law enforcement. In one of the lectures according to Weber policing with in a democracy the “government seeks balance between individual rights and collective needs.” Meaning that police protect the rights of individuals to endure social order for the collective. Also, there is an expectation of rule of law. I saw an example of this during the Women’s march. Police officers did not wear repertoire that would make the protesters fear them, but they were walking around actually talking to people and being friendly. That was one of the biggest marches in the world and there were no arrests made or pepper spray sprayed at protestors because the police and citizens came together and wanted there to be no violence.
This quarter I have learned so much new information about law enforcement that has made me feel confident in trying to understand why police do what they do.
Starting with the three systems of policing which are citizen policing, private policing, and public policing. I was aware that there were different cops, but I did not know that they were broken into three systems that have distinctive orders. Citizen policing was the one system that I was interested in because I did not realize how involved some citizens are in policing. Next, we learned about democratic policing. This is that the police strive for equal law enforcement by following the rule of law. If there was not democratic policing, then people would abuse their power. For example, after 9/11 happened in the United States the airports were a lot stricter, but especially those who are of Middle Eastern descent. Those who law enforcement believes are of middle Eastern descent are still discriminated against because of this event and it was not the entire group who committed the crime, but they still get treated as though they are terrorists. Then, I learned about the “broken window thesis”. Based on findings from Wilson and Keller, the “broken window thesis” is an experiment that crime results from neglect. In class the experiment was of a car with a broken antenna being left in an area that was considered to have high crime. The car was left and happened to get more and more damage to it because of the broken antenna. The idea of this experiment is to notice the small things. What Wilson and Kelling realized is that disorder creates fear, disorderly behavior signals that community does not care (which leads to worse disorder and crime), and to reduce disorder, fear, and crime you must rely on citizens for assistance and zero tolerance for disorder. Lastly, I learned about Lewis’s four changes that occurred in “surveillance society”. First, the individual’s body has become a site of struggle because it is
used for evidence, recording anything out of the norm, and serves as a way to collect information to decentralize daily activities in public and private functions. The second theme is micro-techniques of disciplinary power that come from the idea of the panopticon in prisons that made inmates feel as though they were always being watched. The inmates never knew whether they were being watched, so they were always on their best behavior just in case. The third theme is social sorting and classification into social hierarchies where they believe that the experiences that individuals and groups have depends on their race, ethnicity, class and gender. Lastly, the fourth theme is leaky containers and assemblages. Leaky containers basically gather all of the missing pieces of information and argues that surveillance societies are to move information more freely. All in all, I could have written my entire paper on all the new things that I have learned, but these were the things that stood out to me this quarter.