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Citizen Oversight Research Paper

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Citizen Oversight The growing attention on police officers involved in shootings, police corruption and racial biased police practices has lead most cities and departments to seek out methods to change the way the public view them. One way in doing so is creating oversight organizations like citizen review boards. The creation of citizen boards increases citizens’ roles in the investigation of citizen complaints on police officers. The implementation of citizen oversight boards has created an effective mechanism on improving the quality of police affairs and restoring the public overall views of police departments. Even though more attention is being directed to citizen oversight boards and what they have the capacity to do, little attention is being devoted to how the police officer him/herself feel about them. There is no accurate number as to how many police oversight agencies there are in the United States. Although, by 2001 almost 80 percent of large departments had some form of citizen oversight boards (De Angelis, 2007). This number shows that many agencies are moving to find a way to hold police officers accountable for their actions. Since most …show more content…

On the other hand, research has found that many police unions are against citizen oversight boards. With the growing resistance against oversight boards, manuals are being made on how police administration can overcome setbacks when it comes to implementing an external oversight agency. Other research suggest that police are losing in the debate of implementing external agencies. A report published by the International Association of Chiefs has indicated that the number of agencies that use some form of citizen oversight have grown from one in 1970 to 98 in 1997, while other estimates are around 100 oversight agencies in the United States (Wilson,

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