The Three Eras Of Policing

Policing is a very difficult, complex and dynamic field of endeavor that is always evolves as hard lessons teach us what we need to know about what works and what don’t work. There are three different Era’s in America’s policing: The Political Era, The Reform Era, and The Community Problem Solving Era. A lot has changed in the way that policing works over the years in the United States.

Many people know of the police officers of today’s world and that it is their job to enforce the laws set by their government, but not many people know the history of your typical everyday United States police officer or how they came about. The idea for neither your everyday police officer nor his or her department they work for or how a police department operates, originated in the United States. Over the years though America has made changes and adapted its system over the years to make it more suitable for its countries beliefs and practices.

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

Policing dates back thousands of years to even before the Roman times. The origins of American policing are closely related the Anglo-Saxon model which gave a more communal responsibility. The four Eras’ of American policing that will be focused on are The Political, Professional, Community Policing, and Homeland Security.

The role of police officers is very significant to American history. Police work toward protecting citizens’ rights and helping America become the land of the free. The United States of America is built from the U.S. Constitution Bill of Rights and police play a major role in making sure American rights are met. Evolution has changed many of American history for the better; policing is part of those changes. As new issues in society arise, police must change and adapt to protect and serve the public.

After the civil war, local politicians rewarded their supporters with jobs as police officers. The officer were not trained and there was not a standard to become an officer. The are were event when entire departments were involved in misconduct and corruption. There was not much hope in this era because there was a lack of supervision that allowed officers to behave the way that they pleased. (Walker, Samuel, and Richards, M. 1996)

First, between 1890 and 1930, the management of the police force was centralized. Virtually every decision had to go to the top for approval, with the goal of limiting the low-level officer’s exposure to temptation. To reinforce the hierarchy, specialized units were created to deal with such problems as drugs, youth, guns, and gangs. As Bratton described it, [The department] was divided into little fiefdoms, and some bureau chiefs didn’t even talk to each other…. Each bureau was like a silo: Information entered at the bottom and had to be delivered up the chain of command from one level to another until it reached the chief’s office.

Formal policing model began to arise in the late 1800’s and leaders at the time

The Frontline documentary, Policing the police, makes the argument that there are many problems with police departments across the United States and uses his correspondence with the Newark, New Jersey Police Department to make that point.

The four eras of policing are political era, reform era, community era, and homeland security era. The political era was between 1840s and 1919 where police agencies were underdeveloped, decentralized, and disorganized in their mission, role, and function. Police organizations nationwide were exposed for their inability to maintain order, to control crime, or to fairly provide appropriate services. The reform era occurred between 1920s and 1970s where police was removed from the political arena and established them more as members of a centralized, professional organization formed for the public good. The primary role of police in this era had contributed to the problems crating negative police-community relations. The community era was between

     Law enforcement is divided into three major eras throughout history. These eras are the political era, the reform era and the community era. The political era that took place between 1840-1930 was characterized by five points, which was the authority was coming from politicians and the law, a broad social service function, decentralized organization, an intimate relationship with the

While the Reform Era worked to professionalize police, as society became more complex, so did the role of the police officer. The Community Policing Era was developed as a result of the need to develop cooperation and positive relationships between the police and public. What developed out of this era was an essential element of community policing – public accountability. Police officers became accountable to their supervisors who in turn became accountable to the community. Accountability can be seen as an honest evaluation of achievement based on clearly defined objectives. Many of these objectives are defined by complex community and social problems; as such police officers require the capacity and flexibility to work on them in a variety of styles and employing a variety of strategies.

Once new technology stepped in it changed policing dramatically, police officers were removed from foot patrol and placed in patrol cars and given two-way radios and citizens were told to call police anytime they had a problem, according to Police: History-Policing Twentieth Century America^ C” the Reform Era, (n.d.) This new wave also isolated police officers from the citizens on the street and brought police officers into their homes to handle more personal problems. These changes would have a huge impact on how citizens looked at police officers who patrolled their neighborhood, police officers were no longer considered visitors but outsiders within their community. This was the beginning of a new era of policing which gave direction and is similar on how policing is today within the communities.

The dictionary definition of the police is “the organized civil force of a state, concerned with maintenance of law and order, the detection and prevention of crime, etc,” (Collins English Dictionary, 2002). This definition states the minimum of what the police actually do. Providing support for families, protecting society from criminals and responding to calls 24 hours a day 7 days a week are just some of the other roles that police have to deal with. In this essay the evolution of the police will be discussed as well as how the police are facing challenges.

Approaches of both community policing and traditional policing models differ in a variety of ways. The characteristics of the policing models are quite different from each other, and community based policing was considered laughable when suggested for the new approach in the early 1970s. Due to community policing’s new operating beliefs, new and unfamiliar expected officer behaviors, and that officers were being held legally responsible for their actions and inactions; the idea and implementation wasn’t widely accepted until 1980’s. Traditional policing was primarily dominated by rampant corruption and lawlessness that affected all levels of the police administration; therefore citizens had little trust if any, in the police officers of the time.