Author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men, Paul Butler is a former federal prosecutor, a current law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and author. He works mostly in the field of race and jury nullification and is a leading scholar in those areas. Born in Chicago on January 15, 1961, Butler knew from a young age he wanted to work in the criminal law field. He graduated from both Yale and Harvard University. He has won the Harry Chapin Media Award, and his writing has been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Boston Globe.…
On the 12th of September in 2002, one of the most eye opening incidents of police brutality occurred. In 1977, Steve Biko, an active leader in the anti-apartheid movements that took South Africa by storm, died in police custody. Steve Biko was arrested due to a police roadblock due to the Terrorism Act in 1967, whose purpose was to control terrorists by prosecuting organizations and individuals who strayed from state control. Although, the police force was tortured and beaten for a horrific 22 hours, which eventually put him into a coma. Reports suggest that Biko was chained to a window grill which led to his demise.…
Bonnie Schmidt’s The Greatest Man-Catcher of All : The First Female Mounties, the Media, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (2011) gives her readers an insight of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) program during the 1970s. She highlights the struggles that women face to get enrolled into the police force. The RCMP in the 1970s was consisted of mostly male and the images that RCMP promoted was masculinized. Meaning, emphasis was placed on what an the valued and traits a male police officer should possess. However, the RCMP training program instilled values of manhood in the Canadian society.…
Police culture, within criminology, is comprised of the overarching occupational philosophy and the individual officer personality type. Throughout the decades, the occupational philosophy of police culture has been molded by ‘core characteristic’ labels such as mission-oriented, suspicious, pessimistic, masculine, isolated and conservative. These labels have created an ‘ideal-type’ of culture that has lasted through time. What has risen through these molding characteristics is an occupational philosophy which includes concepts such as the thin blue line, an ‘us versus them’ mentality and the cop code of silence (Reiner, 1985). Recently there has been a shift outside of criminology, realizing that the idea of police culture has shifted from being “an internalized set of values which motivates people’s decisions and actions” to being a “resourceful tool on which people rely to make sense of situations they navigate in everyday life” (Campeau,…
The participants were asked concerning their recent experiences with the police force as well. Analysis and the findings revealed that there were correlations between race…
3. What does this report say regarding racial and gender diversity in police departments in the United States? Law enforcement agencies have successfully become more diverse in the United States. Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS) research has revealed that the national department demographics of employees including the number of reported female, African American, Latino, Asian American and white full time sworn officers. This method was a variety of six department represented states from the Western, Eastern, Northern, and Southern regions of the United States that had success in employing sworn employees reflecting the demographics…
When the discussion of law enforcement comes across many would have an image of a group of masculine men in collared uniform. For decades this image has imprinted on our society of law enforcement’s identity, which has caused a hardship for women in this field. Although women are able to have a career in law enforcement today, they are still discriminated against due to their gender. Throughout time women were viewed as powerless and emotionally unstable for this field but as time progressed it has been found they have the same intelligence, communication, and compassion as male officers.…
In America today, there are some very different views on the police and how effective they are in protecting and serving. Many citizens believe police officers do their best to protect and serve the public. Though, some segments of the population see law enforcement in a negative light. The major differences in how people view law enforcement have traditionally been most clearly seen along demographic lines. One statistic showed, “68% of Whites and only 18% of Blacks expressed confidence in law enforcement,” (Casandra & Ray, 2013).…
In this paper you will learn how the public perception of police impacts the officers’ ability to do their job. Each day a police officer puts his life on the line to protect civilians. According to Jeffrey M. Jones from Gallup News Service, confidence in our police has declined since 1996,…
Michael Brown was an eighteen year old who lost his life after an encounter with the police. On August 9, 2014 a call was made to report a robbery that had took place at Ferguson Market & Liquor. Around midday, an African American male had been reported of stealing boxes of cigarillos and pushing the store clerk on his way out of the store. The police dispatcher described the suspect as wearing a red St. Louis Cardinals hat, khaki shorts, yellow socks, a white T-shirt, while being accompanied by another African American male (Buchannan, Fessenden, Lai, Park, Parlapiano, Tse, Wallace, Watkins, & Yourish, 2014). A few minutes after the robbery report, Officer Wilson approached an individual that matched the suspect’s descriptions, which the police officers were looking for.…
Only 12% of the police force in the United States are women. Law enforcement is today's slowest increase of gender employment equality. Women all over the world should be able to have a successful career in law enforcement. There should be more women law enforcers because they are less likely to use aggression & policewoman see law enforcement as a public services. Also, women can be more helpful when it comes to victims.…
Police work could be very broad with respect to the duties that are performed each day. One minute, an officer may handle a noise complaint and the next, he or she may become involved in a shoot-out. An important ability for an officer to maintain is a healthy physical and mental state in order to operate properly on a day to day basis. Agencies screen potential aspiring officers to ensure overall health before entering the field. Upon analyzing police agencies around America, it is evident that police departments are scarce of female officers.…
The police force in the United States today is facing a problem retaining female police officers. With the passage of The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (EEOA) it gave women the opportunity to join the police force (Garland, McCarty, & Zhao, 2007), accepting 4.6% female officers by 1980. In 1999, female officers comprised 14.3% of officers (Archbold, He, & Zhao, 2002) but in 2001, The National Center for Women and Policing reported a drop resulting in only 12.7% female officers (Paynich & Seklecki, 2007). Throughout the years that followed the representation of female officers continued decreasing, bringing it to 11.8% in 2011 (Schuck, 2014). Thus far the reasons for the poor retention have yet to be thoroughly researched.…
Gender Policing sometimes defines our society and this needs to change. “Gender policing is a normative approach to gender that involves coercion and socialization of individuals into conforming to the gender binary” …(MediaWiki, 2014.) Gender Policing also goes hand in hand with gender norms. Normative approaches to gender such as clothing categories for either females or males, what sports each the average male or female should play, if a baby is female or male at birth. The fact that at birth we are forced to give babies a gender when just coming out of the mother’s womb just shows how strong the influence of gender policing is in our society.…
Research from Wilson (2014) indicate that the “two important influences on the decision to apply for police positions are department reputation and exposure to the varied tasks that police perform; these can be solidified with employee referrals and community activism” (p. 82). Similarly, Stone and Travis (2011) stated that the success of new policing strategies depends on the ability of a police agency…