Verbalization In Policing

Police officers have a lot of work to do, and with all that work, there are a lot of responsibility. Police officers are trained to use anything against threatening and harm, but some officers are known to take advantage of that power. It is a police misconduct, it also include false arrest, intimidation, racial profiling, political repression, surveillance abuse, sexual abuse, and police corruption. Policing puts both men and women in a dangerous and stressful situation when dealing with suspects in every level of criminal offenses. In situations, an incident will occur that must be dealt with decisively. Policing agencies have strict guidelines, categorizing aggressive situation into separate levels of severity. It is when an officer uses …show more content…
No actual physical force is used on an individual; the simple attendance of a police officer helps prevent criminal activity in a situation. An officer’s presence can be very intimidating, and help deter people from doing anything suspicious. This could be one of the best method to resolve a situation because it does not involve violence or physical contact, and most of the time it’s very safe. The police officer in this situation is not threatening and is not provoking anybody. However, once the situation escalates, a level of force becomes necessary to keep people safe. Verbalization is a level of force, where there is still no physical contact, but the officer instead issues composed and unruffled commands. The officer is not supposed to provoke the individual or cause him to do anything rash, but is instead supposed to use verbalization to calm the situation and keep it under control (Garner, Schade, Hepburn, & Buchanan, 1995). Even though there is no physical force, the officer may enhance the volume of his voice or abbreviate the command to help increase obedience. An example of a shorter command could be “Stop!” or “Do not …show more content…
An officer can simply be present to maintain a situation, or he can be verbal towards a suspect. If that does not work, he can use bodily force to cease the individual to prevent the situation from getting worse. If nothing else works at the situation appears to be life threatening, the officer is allowed to use lethal weapons. However, this has been up for debate as to what a life threatening situation is, since so many individuals were killed in 2014 as a result of police