While widely accepted and employed in research and commentary, some conceptual and empirical issues arise concerning police
While widely accepted and employed in research and commentary, some conceptual and empirical issues arise concerning police
When people think of police officers, they should think of someone with integrity, fairness and civility. When one is given power and authority over others, it is possible to assume that one will be ethical and just with their decisions. On the other hand is it possible that instead one might show their true colors? While much of society and the media blame strange behavior from police officers on race I believe that there’s another explanation.…
The literature I will be focusing on in my analysis is Seth Stoughton’s “Law Enforcement’s ‘Warrior’ Problem”, published in the Harvard Law Review journal on 10 April 2015. Stoughton explains how he believes policing is currently done. Which is with a “warrior” mentality that officers are trained to have and how that mentality negativity shapes how the police view, and interact with, civilians by making the officer view everyone as a threat and ensuring the officer requires unchallenged dominance and respect in every interaction. Stoughton says this has created a divide between police and civilians, which is detrimental to the safety of both police officers and civilians. Stoughton explains how he believes policing should be done, with a “guardian”…
To Guard or Fight … Warrior vs. Guardian police mentality, which is best for officers? Each video had some great points, we see a collection of officers who truly desire for policing to be a responsible institution. Instead of seeing police as a force of law each held a position that seemed to nurture the philosophy to “serve and protect.” Each speaker presented themselves as a vessel for change. Brian Willis presented the very real truth of how many citizens view the police – as a dishonest group.…
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 police are encompassed by numerous myths and stereotypes. According to society the police are “crime fighters”. Police devote countless hours enforcing criminal law, patrolling, arresting criminals and investigating crimes. I’m not going to lie, before this class I was under the same impression, but this is what education is for. However, the crime fighting image is not precise the usual patrolmen rarely makes a felony arrest and almost never fires a weapon in their career.…
Methodology and Research Strategy The qualitative research project concerning racial profiling will be explained in detail to give a better understanding of how it occurred. The study involves analyzing data from two separate groups of people from Los Angeles. One group of people was from a suburban area and another group from an inner city housing area. Both groups of individuals totaled to fifty individuals each.…
Police Subculture The police subculture is much the same throughout all the law enforcement careers throughout the world. The police subculture is a distinctive set of beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors that are shared amongst the majority of officers working in law enforcement organizations (Malmin, 2012). The subculture is taught to new recruits from the first day they arrive at the academy to the last day. This subculture follows them from that point on throughout their career in law enforcement.…
Policing in Canada has progressed since the Code of Hammurabi in 1200 BC. The first police force was founded, and organized by Sir Robert Peel, where he came up with nine principles that police officers should follow (Griffiths, 2015). One of these principles were that “police [should] maintain public favour by constantly demonstrating absolute impartial service, not by catering to public opinion” (Griffiths, 2015, p. 29). As a result, police officers should not be affected by the opinions of the power groups or the government. However, this is not the case.…
Police officers are continuously under a large amount of scrutiny due to the amount of power individuals in this career possess (Taslitz, 2010). Law enforcement officers, while they are highly trained, have their individual decision making altered by external factors. These factors in particular causes a major discrepancy in the criminal justice system on how to avoid and neutralize bias influences (Kang, Bennett, Carbado, Casey, Dasgupta, Faigman &Mnookin, 2012). These biases can be both implicit and explicit which can each alter a person’s actions differently.…
Liqun Cao brings to attention two models for controlling police misconduct created by James Q. Wilson, the Professional and the Bureaucratic Model. The Professional Model advocates for the hiring of only the most highly qualified candidates as officers, and ensuring that they are well trained and prepared. The Bureaucratic Model relies on heavy supervision and observation of police activities, and issuing and enforcing rules and regulations based on those observations. In addition, Cao proposes four hypotheses about possible solutions in his paper “Curbing Police Brutality: What Works?” Hypothesis 1: “Psychological exams taken before admitting to police academy, field training officer programs, and the length of probationary period tend to reduce citizen complaint rate against police use of physical force and abuse of power.”…
There is a riff. This riff exists between police officers and African Americans. They know that they are more likely to be stopped and have a difficult encounter with police, whether during a traffic stop or just simply walking down the street. I learned more about this through this course and I realized that this is not just an idea in a book it is a real life scenario and it is only getting worse. As police brutality gets more attention in the media the fear of police officers is rising.…
The readings of this week mainly argue that working personality and subculture of police force have an effect on not only police behavior but also occupational perspective of individual officers. Not only that, they imply that this unique working personality and subculture of police force even affect shaping their view of the outside world. The details of the main point of the readings can be summarized as follows: • Police force has a very different working personality and subculture with other governmental organizations (Skolnick, Herbert). • Because of the dangerous characteristics of the work of police officers, they tend to dislike unpredictable situation that might be potential threaten to their life and they tend to like maintaining…
A large amount of controversy can be found in the world of law enforcement and their actions in diverse communities. Many people assume police officers act differently depending on who they are working with. Over the past few years especially, numerous cases have been brought to the public’s attention and this is now more of an issue than ever before. It will continue to be a problem as more minorities live in the United States and as law enforcement will always uphold a large societal role. The question here becomes “Are police community relations different between minorities and non-minorities?”…
What Are the Issues in Policing? Policing has been around for a very long time in society. Policing is simply the duties and tasks that police officers have to perform to maintain law and order in communities. Polices perform such duties as traffic control, criminal investigation, keeping peace, and other helpful services to citizens. Over time, policing has changed tremendously and has had a great effect on today’s society.…
Such values are what allow police officers to endure what is, without a doubt, one of the more trying and emotionally draining profession (McCartney and Parent). Nevertheless, in this instance the bad seems to outweigh the good, bearing in mind the fact that distrust is steadily increasing between the police and the public. Perhaps, to begin to understand the deep-seated subculture that pervades law enforcement, there needs to be comprehension of police officers at their core, the environment of their workplace, and the training that they…