Chapter 5

Policing: Contemporary Issues and Challenges

Everyday Action of the Police

Police need the confidence of the public because they rely on the public to notify them about crimes and help with investigations.

Encounters between police and citizens

• People’s contacts with the police may shape their perceptions of the police and affect their willingness to cooperate

• Fear and self interest can keep people from cooperating with the police

• Developing and maintaining good communication with the community is essential

• Officers possess discretion for when and how to do certain actions. Some of these actions can violate policy or ignore individual rights.

• In defining constitutional rights of individuals, court decisions define boundaries for police action.

Discretion

Making wise choices in how and when to apply the law

• Calls about crimes make 5 factors important:

  • Nature of the crime

    • Less serious to the public = more freedom officers have to ignore it

  • The relationship between the alleged criminal and the victim

    • Closer personal relationship = more variable use of discretion. Family squabbles may not be as grave as they appear and there can be a hesitation to arrest a spouse because they may later decide not to press charges

  • The relationship between the police and the criminal or victim

    • Polite complaint taken more seriously than a hostile one. Suspects who show officers respect are less likely to be arrested.

  • race/ethnicity, age, gender, class

    • More strict to young, male, and POC and more lenient to elderly, white, and affluent women

  • Departmental policy

    • Policies of police chiefs and city officials affect the amount of discretion officers are allowed to use

Officers’ discretion determine what actions will be taken

• Police officers have so much discretion because they deal with citizens, often in private, and are charged with maintaining order and enforcing laws. Many of these laws are ambiguous and deal with situations in which the participants’ conduct is in dispute

• Police in the past have failed to make arrests in domestic violence situations because Prior to the development of formal arrest policies for such situations, officers often considered family conflicts to be private matters and were often insensitive to the victimization of women.

Police Abuse of Power

• Police officers can break the law and disobey departmental policies through corruption, favorititsm, discrimination, and the failure to properly carry out duties

• Excessive use of force

• Officers are seldom disciplined for their roles in events that produce injuries or questionable arrests

Use of Force

• officers must at times use force to make arrests, control disturbances, and deal with those who lack control from intoxicants or rage.

• Examinations of police use of force reveal that:

  • Police use force infrequently

  • Police use of force typically occurs in the lower end of the force spectrum and involves grabbing, pushing, or shoving.

  • Use of force typically occurs when police are trying to make an arrest and the suspect is resisting.

• There is evidence of racial disparities in the use of force by police

• Training, internal review of incidents, and disciplining or firing quick-trigger officers may help reduce use of unnecessary force

• De-escalation

Corruption

Police corruption has pretty much always been around.

• “Grass eaters”  are officers who accept payoffs that the routines of police work bring their way. These officers may accept gifts from businesses or take a $20 bribe instead of writing a traffic ticket

• “Meat eaters” officers who actively use their power for personal gain. I.e. stealing money and drugs

• Socialization teaching that corruption is normal and part of the ‘code’ those who snitch are traitors

Civil Accountability

Efforts to control the police ( accountability to citizens = following the law and departmental guidelines without restricting ability to carry out everyday functions)

1. Internal affairs unit

   1. Community must be confident that their police department will protect the rights of citizens

   2. The internal affairs unit receives and investigates complaints against officers

      1. Anything from department policy violatoin to murder

   3. Ostracized from other officers coz their job is to snitch on misconduct

2. Civilian review boards

   1. Complaints channeled through people who are not sworn officers

   2. Oversee and review how police departments handle citizen complaints. May be able to recommend remedial action for misconduct

   3. Most members of civilian review boards are elected by mayors who want good relationships with the police, so they have ties to law enforcement

   4. Public wants civilian review boards to be elected by voters so the board has independent decisions

   5. Criticized by law enforcement b/c officers fear citizens don’t understand nature of law enforcement work and will make inaccurate decisions of what is improper behavior by officers

3. Standards and accreditation

   1. Increase police accountability by making sure police actions meet nationally recognized standards

   2. Meeting standards:  This process involves self-evaluation by departmental executives, the development of policies that meet the standards, and the training of officers.

   3. Accreditation can also show the public a department’s commitment to making sure officers carry out their duties in an ethical, professional manner.

4. Civil liability lawsuits

   1. Allow citizens to sue state and local officers for violations of their civil rights

   2. Civil liability rulings by the courts tend to be simple and severe: officials and municipalities are ordered to pay a sum of money, and the courts can enforce that judgment.

   3. Qualified immunity: if officers can prove they didn’t know they were violating civil rights at the time they can escape punishment for an act.

      1. Divide between officers and the public because they can shoot first and think later

Delivery of Police Services

Amid budget cuts and with limited resources police need to effectively spread their resources to the public; evidence based policing helps with this.

• Police strategies and deployment of resources developed through examination of research on crime, social problems, and previously used strategies.

Police Response

• Police are mainly reactive (responding to citizen calls for service) rather than proactive (initiating actions in the absence of citizen requests)

• Citizens expect police to quickly respond to calls which gives way to incident led policing: calls for service are the primary instigators of action

• Differential response: assign priority to calls so more urgent matters get dealt with first. Policy that gives priority to calls according to whether an immediate or delayed response is warranted.

• Proactive strategies used with some crimes - surveillance and undercover work

Productivity

• CompStat: precinct commanders held responsible for success of crime control efforts in their precincts as indicated by crime statistics. Relies on timely, accurate information

• Clearance rate

• Quantifying police data is difficult and is most often done with crime data.

  • Also done with traffic citations, illegal parking tickets, and suspects stopped for questioning.

  • Long, hard work, but no arrests to show for officer efforts. Ticket quota to public relationship

• Community relations are still important. Community connections aren’t counted towards police productivity but it results in less complaints about an officer and their conduct

Patrol Functions

The patrol function has 3 parts

• Answering calls for help

  • Usually near scene and can move quickly to provide help or catch a suspect

• Maintaining a police presence

  • Preventive patrol

• Probing suspicious circumstances

  • Watching for suspicious figures and behaviors

Patrol officers have the most direct contact with the public and largely determine police image in the community. Investigation and prosecution depend on patrol officers who question witnesses and gather evidence after a crime.

Investigation

• Detectives make up 15% of police personnel

• Detectives mainly talk to people to find out what happened. They theorize who committed the crime and find evidence to back their theory.

• Process of catching a suspect has three stages (Apprehension of a subject)

  • Detection of a crime

  • Preliminary investigation

  • Follow-up investigation

  • Possible fourth: clearance and arrest

Special operations

Three kinds of special operations units police departments often employ: traffic, vice, narcotics

• Traffic

  • regulate the flow of vehicles, investigate accidents, and enforce traffic laws.

  • Mostly proactive

  • Often finds stolen property and suspects linked to other criminal acts

• Vice

  • Often uses undercover agents and informers

  • Degrading and dangerous activities such as posing as prostitutes or drug dealers

  • Well trained in legal procedures to make an arrest and get a conviction

• Juveniles,  SWAT

• SROs are a special assignment

• Drug Law Enforcement

  • Organized crime or drug dealing gangs

  • Sometimes reflects goal of aggressive patrol

Issues in Patrolling

• Preventive patrol

  • Patrolling throughout an area as a way to prevent crime with police presence

  • The beat

• Hot spots

  • Places where crimes are likely to occur

  • Directed patrol: direct resources to known high-crime areas

• Foot v. motorized patrol

  • In cars gives police access to a large information database and quick transportation to areas as needed. Large areas covered.

  • On foot stays close to the daily lives of communities. Can be effective in reducing criminal activity in hot spots.

• Aggressive patrol

  • Maximize police activity in the community

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

• Community policing

  • Involve residents in making their community safer

  • Emphasizes order maintenance and service

  • Four components

    • Focusing on community-based crime prevention

    • Changing the focus of patrol activities to nonemergency services

    • Making the police more accountable to the public

    • Decentralizing decision making to include residents

  • Problem oriented policing

    • Identify, analyze, and respond to the conditions underlying the events that prompt people to call the police

Police and the Community

• Interactions with disabled and mentally ill people often end, tragically, with uses of lethal force against perceived threatening actions

• Close contact with ill individuals can result in an officer contracting an illness or disease

• Officers’ attitude towards citizens and citizens’ attitudes toward officers can result in mistrust and uncooperativeness, no bueno

• Good relationship between law enforcement and the community encourages people who see suspicious activity to share information with the police

• Community crime prevention: community watch groups, etc. that help the police solve crimes and give information about criminal activity.