Chief Constable: Determinant Of The Difference?

The reform from the political era transitioned into the professional era. This era is focused on crime control and was a centralized organization. The main focus was to stay professional, including with the community, therefore the relationship with the community was very distant. Police were to follow the “3 R’s”. The first R is the rapid response to service calls, police must respond to calls quickly. The second R is random patrol, which helped keep crime rates down from a police officer being around at random times. The last R is reactive investigation, investigators must investigate crimes with the intent to solve them. The pitfalls of the professional era were the attitudes of the police were extremely unfriendly and cold toward the citizens. They were basically an enemy to anyone who were not one of them or their family. This attitude did not go well with the people of the

More police means a larger chance of getting caught for a criminal offence and which lead to more arrests. Another aspect which must not be overlooked is that those

Policing today consists of three eras. These three eras have adapted and built off one another through history (Parr, 2014). The first era started around 1840 to 1930, and is known as the Political Era. The second Era is known as the Reform Era and lasted from 1930 to 1970. The last era is called the Community-Problem Solving Era and is still being adapted and used today. The Political Era emphasizes on meeting the needs of politicians. The police were given power through the local government and the community had very little say in what happened. The police and politicians worked together to control the city and neighborhoods (Palmiotto, 2000). This was often referred to as a ward. The ward politician controlled all the police in their neighborhood. The police officers tasks included not only crime prevention and order but a lot of social service activities that involved their neighborhoods. The officers resembled the ethnic backgrounds of the neighborhoods they lived and worked in and performed their patrols gaining trust from their community (Palmiotto, 2000). This allowed positive integration of police officers leading to more public service, and the trust of the officers to stop crime when is starts.

When it comes to police officer disciplinary actions, the lines becomes thin and more difficult to read between. It is not such a black and white situation and when it comes to properly disciplining a police officer it can become difficult to do so especially when that officer has either been on the force a long time so there is an established relationship, or the inappropriate act they committed happened just once and they claim it will never happen again. These types of things make it much harder to decide what the right discipline may be for that officer.

Policemen not only have to follow a set of rules and legislation, but they also must behave in a decent manner while on duty as well as off duty. Unfortunately, nobody is perfect, and police officers also make wrong decisions that could jeopardize the integrity of their police department. Often people do something that they know is wrong. However, they still do it because they feel no harm will come to them or they think nobody would ever find out. For instance, cheating on a test is wrong, but people do it because they think they can get away without the professor finding out.

Police corruption contributes to the misuse of police powers because it involves the use of favoritism, bribery, shakedown, and perjury. Police corruption can be caused from discretion, low managerial visibility, low public visibility, and politics. Police officers are given a wide range of discretion on how to handle situations and that often leads to the abuse of power. Also, managers are not always watching over the officer’s shoulder to ensure that the right thing is being done, and the public does not often see the actions of the police. Which means they can get away with a lot of wrongful actions. Politics can create corruption in policing because politics can affect hiring standards, promotions, discipline, and adequate budget. There have been instances where a political leader would tell management who they want to be promoted. That is wrong because promotions should be dependent on your work ability, not because of political influence. There is also external corruption that will convince the officer to engage in payoffs and gratuities. For example: drug dealers would give police officers a percentage of their profit so that they can continue to sell and not go to jail. (Locke, 1996)

The rank structure of the department is as follows: Chief of Police, Deputy Chief of Police, Commander, Deputy Commander, Captain, Lieutenant, Sergeant, Police Officer, Civilian Employee, Reserve Police Officer and a volunteer program known as VIP (volunteers in policing).

From the end of the political era to the 1970s policing went through these changes. The professional era of policing led to the police forgetting the bond with the communities and an attitude of “us vs. them” The strengths of this era are mostly still used today. First would be the technology change. In the era police started using automobiles and radios and it allowed for faster responses and better communication. The police officers also became professional and had to take a standardized tests which established civil service which helped in the hiring and securities of the jobs of the police officers. They also received adequate training for the job. The biggest difference and strength from the political era to the professional era was the separation of the politics out of the police. The biggest weakness of this era was the separation of the police with the community along with the police ‘code of silence’ which kept everything within the department hush-hush. The type of policing that was done during this time was all reactive while doing random patrol and catching all the “bad guys” (Miller &

I imagine the small town Rixton of 16,000 citizens experience with law enforcement is probably inconvenience and inconsistent. For example, one month the citizen might experience an officer being friendly and respectful versus the next month the citizen feels as though they been victimized or violated. Conversely, I think most police departments experience the inconsistency in their police department because a few percentages officers have their own way of policing. However, in the town of Rixton, a population of 16,000, that inconsistency may seem greater because 6 out of 36 officers are doing their own thing, which makes the percentage 17%, close to 20%. Nonetheless, Rixton population is similar to Ferguson MO, where the protest

1. A single catastrophic event, often followed by civil liability litigation, leads to the chief of police being replaced (Swanson, 2012, pg. 650). This forces changes because it addresses a single incident and forces change. A good example of this would be the failure to adequately respond to an incident. This can be seen when an incident unarmed person is killed by the police. This can be a result of inadequate training or a trigger happy force. None the less the reason, the

The movement from the former systems of policing to community policing system calls for major changes. These changes may be in terms of goals, aims, policies and activities of police units, as well as the general image portrayed by police force. Consequently, this movement bears an eminent amount of disagreements as well as resistance within the police force. The police officers and their managers are the major parties involved in the matter of resistance. The managers fear loss of power and authority to control their officers when they become community police, on the other hand the police officer do not welcome the new role of solving community problems (Rohe, Adams and Arcury, 2001). This is because they are used to the normal role of enforcing laws. The implementation process therefore demands training of police officers on their new roles.

The traditional style of policing required officers to focus on responding to call of service and solving crime in a reactive way. This meant citizen were giving zero input or cooperation when dealing with law enforcement. The traditional style of policing during the social unrest of the 1960 caused unwanted tension between citizens and police departments. This lead to the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of justice in 1967. This commission challenged police departments across the country to be more responsive toward its citizens. Many department in the late 60’s and in the 70’s started to experiment with policing styles other than the traditional model. Departments moved on from the traditional model because

more with less. Many police departments have had to lay off officers, and some have eliminated

The police are continuously developing and have been ever since the beginning of informal policing which saw that everyone who lived in a society had to be responsible for

The earlier development of the law enforcement was developed by a man named Sir Robert Peel also known as the “Father of Modern Policing” (Bennett & Hess, 2007). He was born February 5, 1788 in Chamber Hall near Bury in Lancashire (Bloy, n.d.). He was the one who greatly influenced and set forth the fundamental principles of the police force. He developed an organized force called the London Metropolitan Police in 1829 that protected the people who were victimized due to high unemployment, poverty, and crime. An organization is “an artificial structure created to coordinate either people or groups and resources to achieve a mission or goal” (Bennett & Hess, 2007). The police’s goal is to protect and serve their community. Although the term of a police officer is mixed up with a peace officer “all police officers are peace officers, but all peace officers are not police officers” (Walker & Katz, 2011). The principles that Sir Robert Peel set for the police include: