Law Enforcement & SocietyJoin now to read essay Law Enforcement & SocietyLaw Enforcement and SocietyIn order to understand contemporary law enforcement, we should recognize the conditions that impact our profession. It is agreed upon by many scholars that major changes in law enforcement occur every five years. Policing is sometimes characterize” like a sandbar in a river, subject to being changed continuously by the currents in which it is immersed” (Swanson, Territo and Taylor, p. 2). However, in recent years some major changes have occurred in a shorter time period.
Innovations in law enforcementDuring the past two decades, I have observed major changes in the viewpoint of society towards police officers as the symbol of trust and dignity, the technological advances of communication and information systems in law enforcement, and the revision of selection and hiring practices for police officers. Organizational change occurs both as a result of internal and external agents (Swanson, Territo and Taylor, p. 664). These changes have manifested both positive and negative reverberations in the way we perform our job.
Police officials have contemplated for years over the key to maintaining a positive image for their organization. Unfortunately, several incidents in the past years have altered societys perception of police in some communities. Police in America are no longer strangers to innovation born of scandal. Law enforcement agencies nationwide have repeatedly been shaken by controversy and forced to make undesirable concessions. Has law enforcement failed to maintain the high standards required by the profession? The cost of public trust is high. It increases each time faith must be regain.
Historically, law enforcement agencies throughout the nation have experienced periods of low confidence in communities preceding episodes deemed to be a breach of trust. Early pioneers in law enforcement history such as August Vollmer (1902 – 1932). Berkeley Police Department and J. Edgar Hoover (1924) the Federal Bureau of Investigation made numerous advancements towards improving the professionalism of law enforcement (Anderson and Newman, p. 119 – 120). Other attempts were made in 1956 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police adopted “The Law Enforcement Code Of Ethics” (Wilson and McClaren, p.8)
Examples of several historical events locally have attributed to societys decline in respect for police. For example, nine members of a Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department special narcotics squad were charged with misappropriating tens of thousands of dollars confiscated in drug raids (L. A. Times, p. 4, Sept. 9, 1989). Another local incident involved 80 Los Angeles police officers stormed and wrecked an apartment and allegedly beat several residents on “Dalton Street.” The city was forced to settled in a civil law suit by the resident with a settlement of $3 million dollars of taxpayers money (L. A. Times, p. 1-2, August 1, 1988). This incident generated major outcry from the minority community to overhaul the use of force policy and procedure within the department.
Nationally, five New York City police officers were charged with murder in the slaying of a suspect in Queens. All five officers were arraigned on murder charges in the death of Federico Pereira, 21 years of age, a car theft suspect who was punched, kicked, and strangled as he was being arrested. This is one in a string of accusations of brutality made against New York officers in recent years (The New York Times, March 21, 1991, p. A 1). In the south, the incident of Officer Donald Jeffries who was honored as Mississippis officer of the year in 1993. He alleged that mental stress was a factor in his robbery of a bank, however, a federal judge in Mobile ruled that he was competent to stand
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A number of witnesses at the events described police officers beating and choking their fellow officers, which was described to the media as “insane.” This is what one newspaper found, showing a disturbing scene. “Police Chief William Bratton, in telling CNN’s Christiane Amanpour his officers “beat up” and “begged” him on the street, said Bratton was trying to ‘fracture us and try to protect the police department,’ according to CBS News. Bratton also said that these confrontations ‘really hurt us,’ a quote of which was attributed to a New York Post piece that quoted Bratton. In response to CNN’s reports, Bratton referred to this “sinister incident” in an interview, CBS said: “At the end of the day, it hurt a lot of us and it made a lot of people uncomfortable in a lot of ways. There was a man in the street and he beat another one who was standing up, and then there is the fact that there were other officers outside, and a lot of people were actually asking him why he was doing this.” The New York Daily News reports:
Bratton, who was in charge of the Central Precinct and the City’s Police Protective Training Bureau, described the incident as a series of confrontations in which several officers were placed on death row while one, in control of the police vehicle, was restrained. The other four officers were also suspended pending an investigation that concludes if convicted, the case could open a human rights inquiry into any violations of the New York Civil Rights Act by the police department. The Department of Justice, in an email to The Huffington Post, declined comment on the case, despite the Justice Department’s insistence that it is not currently in process. … The city began investigating the incident in mid-September of 1999, according to police spokesman Patrick McGlashan. He said the department looked into the case, and concluded it was an isolated incident. Police said they arrested the other two officers and asked officers to leave the car when they saw both men with sticks. … Some of those officers ran outside and confronted Pereira. The two men ran through a police line of officers for about an hour, officials said.
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It is now well established that police brutality and racial profiling are far more common than racial disparity. See The Times, March 18, 1991, p. 2, and New York Daily News, March 5, 1991, p. 3. As a result, New York City has a disproportionate number of African-Americans to its cities’ police bodies, according to Census Bureau data and the Census Bureau’s