Policing and Community Relations in America

Policing in America fall under the protected services of the United States of America. The role and function of the police department is to safe guard the laws of the country, while protecting and serving the citizens of the nation. The department holds an open-door policy that allows citizens access to free emergency calls, they can walk into a police station and holds the right to stop an officer for their personal assistance. Over the years policing methods have changed with relations to new laws being implemented to reduce crime, which created a negative impact across ethnic groups in society.

There has been a drastic use of aggressive tactics such as Stop and Frisk, Police Brutality, Discrimination and counter- terrorism has now altered serious change between police and citizens of this nation. Which has been classified as institutional discrimination police practices.

Going back (1966) the position of President Commission on law Enforcement and Administration of Justice marks as a remarkable change in the police community. But also, with this implementation the department continued to struggle with “Drug Abuse Resistance Education, Crime Prevention programs and Beat cops” (David H. Bayley). The department community policing and relationships has lost respect and hope within the justice system. Consequently, the outcome of this negatively impacted our nation as crime was increased, high rates of mass violence, criminal violence, terrorism and organized crime. Effort to rebuild the connection was strongly emphasized by New York Police Commissioner Patrick Murphy as he saw the importance of police and community reform. To “break away from reactive tactics and address the underlying cause of social disorders” (Ben Brown).

The impact of September 11th played no hero in the change of Police aggression. Laws were highly enforced as this attack was listed as terrorism. The aftermath of this attack as police tried to contain the situation the federal government turned no cheek to implement new security measure, which targeted Muslim and immigrant society. Police were granted “counterterrorism tactics by USA Patriot Act” (Brown) which allowed aggressive formation to be deployed against citizens with or without reasonable cause. This act violated the rights of anyone they deemed to be in violation of anti- terrorist act. Among the tactics used to fight against terrorism were “tapping phones, monitoring internet activity, surreptitiously searching homes, and for extended periods of time without charges or granting citizens the right to legal counsel” (Brown). This aggressive contribution continuously developed a void in the community and law enforcement relationships as citizens felt their constitutional rights were being taken away. Citizens saw the USA Patriot act as bias as it only labeled non – citizens and Muslim immigrants. The increase of federal immigration law generated a negative president as immigrants were fearful of any encounter with an officer of the law, even if it was in relation to reporting a crime. Due to this fear of injustice and victimization caused a lack of community police relation and allowed crime to increase rapidly in immigrated communities.

Police transparency with community relationships continue to decline, especially after the videotape release beating of Rodney King (1991). The graphic release of this poured community outrage which called for documentation of excessive force used by the nations NYPD. Incentives were put in place to protect officers as well as citizens and African Americans community that have been in the spot light of police brutality. The use of “video- graphic, smartphones and body cams” (Donald R. Morton) were implemented but was of no avail. Which have bought awareness to the negative use of excessive force by police officers. This out cry peeked the involvement of President Obama administration to effectively have police accountability and transparency via the compile data. As the administration saw that the documentation of unlawful incidents of excessive force would increase trust and confidence back into the system.

The department of justice followed three steps which investigated the proceedings of “stop and frisk activities, veil secrecy around violent police encounters with African American and prosecutors and grand juries’ function” (Morton), that negatively affect the police system and resist systematic change. The fight for injustice and equality under the Stop and Frisk law enforcement which temporarily allows a police officer to detain questions and search civilians without reasonable cause of an unlawful action being committed. The stop and Frisk negative force by police officers has racial discrimination labeling towards the African American community and gender bias relations as males were more targeted. In the case of Trayvon Martin who was killed under the stop and frisk the nation has taken stand against how unlawful police tactics have been with such law enforcement, that gives police the power over citizens constitutional rights. The Guardian data base which systematically collects data of police killings by race/ ethnicity, age, gender and geographic location has played a vital role in identifying how far racial discrimination and public profiling have reached within the police system.
Social media has played no advocate in such incidents, as the public saw it as there means of defense and public awareness to these aggressive forces used. Police and community relationship decline as norms, ethnic minorities were violated. Stop and Frisk has increased more so in urban areas where gang violence is more predominant. Community police forgot their role where as they were officer of the piece in the community and became more commercial and militant, thus creating war in urban communities. The culture of law enforcement officer change as it became paramilitary. The military concept taken up by the officer increased community violence in the urban or the underclass communities and street codes were utilized in gangs of those neighborhoods.

Research was done on how to improve community relations, how “Police strategies to improve accountability for social equity affect citizens perceptions” (Sean McCandless). The study looked to find evidence to police relationship, programs, social equity, performance and ethics training and when used affects the general public perception of the police department. The need for police transparency is consistently the cry of the public. (Brunet 2011) states “police community relations in the minorities often experience inequitable experience with police whether being stopped, searched and arrested in greater proportions or being killed while unarmed (Epp, Maynard-Mood, & Haider- Markel,2017). A case study was done with “72 citizens groups leaders, police and councilors from 12 purposively selected U.S locales to investigate the effects of citizens perception” (McCandless). This investigation was done in three steps one being Community policing programs and the effectiveness within the communities pertaining to decrease in crime, community and law enforcement relationship and identifying the problems while developing solutions for community development.

Second Social equity performance measurement was used measure the progress through “(SEPM) Social equity and powerful groups socially construct measures” (Kroll, 2017). This pin points how the police department justify fairness and equality within the system and how many departments use the (sepm). This was record via survey over a period of twelve months with questions related to the fear of crime , crime and the quality of work being done in the public, result of the survey was “128 indicators, 14 were related to social equity and the use of force which were asserted with different demo graph” (McCandless). Third proceedings investigated the ethics training of the officers to identify corrupt behaviors as it went against the fundamental duties “serving in communities, respecting constitutional right not allowing prejudices to influence” (international Association of Chief’s of Police ,2017) laid the ground work for police and community reform. The result of this showed that the more citizens fear or continue to lack trust in the legal system, its harder for them to comply and cooperate to reduce crime.

The reform of policing in America emphasized on “police officers’ obligation to treat people with dignity and respect, behave in a neutral nonbiased way, exhibit an intention to help largely in the context of police stops” (Monica C. Bell). The implementation of structural exclusion was one of the focus as to rebuild an organization on morals and values, to remove the division and have class- neutral distribution from the upper- and lower-class society scale. Not only did they seek to find structural exclusion but also address the racism, poverty problem of inequality. The reform sort to disband the Stop and Fisk or Terry Stops as it is clearly set to antagonize urban and communities of color, as “the department of justice recognize the racial biases that creep into illegal stops. They also acknowledged the need to raise police standards in the field of investigations and interrogations. Enforce the law punishable that video cams most be worn and turned all at all time to fully have accountability and transparency. The introduction of independent police officer auditors to remove all bias inquiries from departments when officers are investigated for misconduct in public office and use of aggressive force are some steps that the police department should take to regain citizen trust in America. This is based on implementing the various strategies geared towards achieving an effective community policing. Taking a closer look at crime, it is widely evident that crime cases in any given society cannot be solved by any single individual alone

Did you like this example?

558

23