Chapter 4

Police

Sir Robert Peele

• Pushed to pass the Metropolitan Police Act - created London police force

• The first police force was under the control of democratically elected officials

• Four Basic Mandates:

  • Prevent crime without repressive force

  • Maintain public order by nonviolent means, use force as a last resort

  • Reduce conflict between the police and the public

  • Show efficiency through the absence of crime and disorder

Early American Law Enforcement

• Adopted English offices of contable, sheriff, and night watchman

• New:

  • Boston’s watch system

    • Male citizens were required to be members, but paid watchmen could be hired

    • Served to warn of danger from fires to crimes

  • Slave patrols

    • Organized force to prevent slave revolts and catch runaway slaves

    • Distinctly American form of law enforcement, first modern police force in US

    • Racial discrimination and segregation

Policing Eras

Political Era (1840-1920)

• Close ties between police and politicians

  • Politicians recruit and maintain police, police help politicians gain votes, police take payoffs to not enforce laws on prostitution, drinking, and gambling

• 1845 - NYC establishes first full-time police force

• After Civil War US gov’t appoints US marshals to enforce laws in western territories 🤠

Professional Model Era (1920-1970)

• Progressive movement advocated police as a professional force with 6 elements:

  • Force should stay out of politics

  • Police should be well-trained, organized, and disciplined

  • Laws should be enforced equally

  • Force should use new technology

  • Personnel procedures should be based on merit

  • Main task of police should be to fight crime

The Community Policing Era (1970-present)

• Began in the 1970s as a result of civil rights and anti-war movements, urban riots, and rising crime rates

• Greater emphasis on keeping order and providing services to the community

“Broken Windows” Policing

• Approach to order maintenance based on three assumptions

  • Neighborhood disorder creates fear

  • Untended disorderly behavior is a signal that the community doesn’t care and results in worse disorder crimes

  • To reduce fear, police must rely on citizens for assistance

  • “if not firmly suppressed, disorderly behavior in public will frighten citizens and attract preda-tory criminals, thus leading to more serious crime problems”

Problem-Oriented policing

• Community policing strategy

  • Police should identify underlying causes of problems

  • Closer contact between police and community will reduce disorder and fear of crime

9/11 and the Next era of Policing

• Terrorist attacks of 9/11 shifted federal government’s funding priorities for law enforcement and led to reorganization of federal agencies

• Led to development of intelligence-led policing with emphasis on analyzing, gathering, and sharing information among law enforcement agencies at all levels, and incorporating those elements into community policing plans

Agencies

Law Enforcement

The US has a federal system of government with separate national and state structures each with authority over certain functions

• Police agencies are responsible for four functions

  • Enforcing the law

  • Maintaining order

  • Preventing crime

  • Providing services to the community

Federal

Part of the Executive Branch. Investigate specific set of crimes defined by Congress. Recent efforts in areas of drug trafficking, organized crime, insider stock trading, and terrorism. Federal agencies employ around 120,000 full time officers authorized to make arrests.

FBIFederal Bureau of Investigation; investigative agency within U.S. Department of Justice

• Power to investigate all federal crimes not placed under jurisdiction of other agencies

• Significant responsibilities for fighting terrorism and espionage

• 13,000+ FBI special agents in 56 field offices and 381 satellite offices

• Provides valuable assistance to state and local law enforcement through crime lab, training programs, and databases of fingerprints, stolen vehicles, and missing persons

• Priorities:

  • Protect US from terrorist attack

  • Protect US against foreign intelligence operations and espionage

  • Protect US against cyber-based attacks

  • Combat public corruption

  • Protect civil rights

  • Combat trans/national criminal organizations

  • Combat white collar crimes

  • Combat significant violent crimes

  • Support federal, state, and local agencies

  • Update technology to successfully perform its mission

Other federal agencies

• Drug enforcement agency (DEA)

• Internal revenue services (IRS)

• Bureau of alcohol, tobacco, and firearms (ATF)

• U.S. marshals service

• National Parks Service (NPS)

• Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

  • Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

  • Secret Service

  • Transportation and Security Administration (TSA)

State Agencies

Each state has a police agency that patrols state highways, provides complete law enforcement services in rural areas, and conducts statewide drug investigations. In many states, crime lab is run by state police as a means of assisting local law enforcement.

County Agencies

Sheriffs are found in almost every U.S. county (excluding Alaska and Connecticut) and are responsible for policing rural areas.

• Elected and hold position as chief law enforcement officer in county

• Patrol unincorporated parts of the county or small towns without a police force

• Operate jails

• Serve court orders

• Provide courtroom bailiffs

Native American Tribal Police

• By virtue of treaties Native American tribes are separate, sovereign nations with significant autonomy

• Reservation have been policed either by federal officers of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) or by their own tribal police

• ~178 tribal law enforcement agencies

Municipal Agencies

• Police in cities and towns have general law enforcement authorities

• Sworn personnel are officers with the power to arrest

• Nearly ¾ of municipal police departments employ fewer than 25 sworn officers

Special Jurisdiction Agencies

• Four-year college and university police forces

• Two-year college police departments

• Conservation officers and police in park and recreation settings

• Agencies that enforce the law at specific mass transit systems, airports, bridges, tunnels, and ports

Police

Recruitment

• Applicant requirements and initial training vary widely.

• Be a U.S. citizen

• Meet age requirements

• Have a high school diploma

• Possess a valid driver’s license

• Increasingly, agencies require:

• Psychological evaluations

• Certification from state’s law enforcement training agency

• State police typically run their own training academies.

• Quantico, Virginia, is the training academy for DEA and FBI.

• Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC): training academy for Secret Service, ATF, and others

• Salaries are higher in areas with high costs of living and federal agencies.

Demographics

• 1 in 8 officers is female

• 1 in 4 belongs to a racial or ethnic minority

• 23% of officers are hispanic, 18% African American, and 12% are women

• Studies indicate:

  • Male and female officers perform in similar ways

  • Positive feedback on female officers

  • Female have superior performance in avoiding the use of excessive force and in interviewing crime victims

Training

• Formal training provides an understanding of legal rules, weapons use, and other aspects of the job

• During probationary periods, new officers work with and learn from experienced ones

• Socialization is the process by which the rules, symbols, and values of a group or subculture are learned by members, or the informal ways of law enforcement

Subculture

• Def: symbols, beliefs, values, and attitudes, shared by members of a subgroup of the larger society

• Police have developed their own subculture based on four key issues:

  • Working Personality

    • Set of emotional and behavioral characteristics developed by members of an occupational group in response to the work situation and environmental influences

    • Two elements of police work define the working personality of police:

      • Threat of danger

        • Constantly pressured to recognize signs of crime and be alert to potential violence, officers may become suspicious of everyone, everywhere. Constantly on high alert.

      • Need to establish and maintain one’s authority

        • Trying to hard to establish authority can result in the use of excessive force

  • Role of police morality

    • Aspect of policing create dilemmas morality can overcome

      • Contradiction between goal of preventing crime and officer’s inability to do so

      • Officers feel they must use their discretion to handle situations in ways that do not strictly follow procedures

      • Fact that they invariably act against at least one citizen’s interest

    • Police morality crudely categorizes people and justifies treatment of some community members, contributing to tensions between police and the community

  • Isolation of the police

    • Police officer isolation from the public stems in part from:

      • Belief that public is hostile to them

      • Interactions with the public are in times of conflict and crisis

      • Pervasive mistrust of officers keeps citizens from reporting crimes and cooperating with investigations

  • Stress involved in police work

    • External stress

      • Produced by real threats and dangers

    • Organizational stress

      • Produced by nature of work in paramilitary structure

    • Personal stress

      • Caused by officer’s racial or gender status and adjusting to group-held values

    • Operational stress

      • Effects of dealing lower elements, being lied to, being required to face danger, knowledge of legal liability

Police Functions

Agencies divide their resources among the following functions based on community need, citizen request, departmental policy

• Order maintenance

  • Prevent behavior that either disturbs or threatens to disturb the peace or involves face-to-face conflict between two or more people

  • Police exercise discretion in whether law has been broken and what action to take

• Law enforcement

  • Controlling crime by intervening in situations in which the law has clearly been violated and the police need to identify and apprehend the guilty person

• Service

  • The police function of providing assistance to the public for many matters unrelated to crime as well as for crime prevention education

Organization and Bureaucracy

• Police must create a structure within which to operate

  • Departments are typically divided up by the type of policing they do

    • Vice, homicide, robbery, etc.

• A paramilitary command structure is placed over each division to control the organization

  • Typically a “top down” structure

• Organizational issues

  • Police are the gateway to entrance into criminal justice system

  • Administration is influenced by case outcome being in other hands

  • Police officers are expected to follow rules and orders while at the same time make discretionary judgements

  • Organization and operation of police are affected by economic conditions and budgetary pressures

Police Policy

• Factors that affect the style of policing expected and received by the community:

  • Preferences and values of police executives

  • Influenced by politics, public pressure , and social context

  • American cities differ in government, economic, and racial and ethnic characteristics as well as in their degree of urbanization

Policing Styles

• Watchman Style

  • Stresses order maintenance

  • Police exercise discretion and deal with infractions informally

• Legalistic Style

  • Marked by professionalism and emphasis on law enforcement

  • No discrimination in making arrests; strict enforcement of laws

• Service Style

  • Officers cater to citizens

  • Mostly found in suburban middle class communities