DB #5 Student Post Reply

Douglas Brady

Discussion Thread: Bringing it all Together

 

            The topic chosen for this discussion thread occurred on August 9, 2014, involving Michael Brown, an unarmed African American teenager fatally shot during an altercation with a Ferguson, MO police officer.  The incident invoked months of protests, civil unrest, and racial injustice cries not only in Ferguson but across the whole United States as a whole.  The incident sparked a Department of Justice investigation into allegations of police brutality, unjust practices, and arrest procedures across the country.  The incident receiving enormous coverage in the news on social networks, and even political coverage.  Similar events erupted in other cities across the United States in the following months, including Baton Rouge, Baltimore, North Charleston, and Cleveland. Some incidents were captured with cell phone video and quickly spreading across the nation via media outlets and the Internet.

            As a result, in December 2014, anger regarding Michael Brown's death turned deadly when two New York City police officers were fatally ambushed in broad daylight while sitting in their squad car. Just moments before the incident, the assassin posted on social media: “I'm putting wings on pigs today. They take 1 of ours…let's take 2 of theirs” (Mueller & Baker, 2016).  Consequently, just 19 months later, in Dallas, Texas, five police officers were fatally ambushed by a shooter who was outraged about police killings of African American men in Baton Rouge, LA and Falcon Heights, MN. Ten days following the Dallas shooting, three officers were shot and killed in Louisiana.

            Therefore, the precise research idea that would implicate all four areas of the topic mentioned above is the multimethod design, which incorporates qualitative and quantitative methods.  The multimethod plan addresses the criminal justice policies concerns, individual behavior, perceptions of crime problems, and communication issues between the police and citizen.  The multimethod research idea depicted in this study: Third-person perceptions, adverse media effects, and policing: Developing a theoretical framework for assessing the Ferguson effect (Nix & Pickett, 2017).

Perception of Crime

            Henceforth, data for the study were collected from a survey of a major police agency in a large city in the southeastern United States conducted in the fall of 2016 (Nix & Pickett, 2017).  Thus, regarding the perceptions of crime problems or the perceived media influence on crime, Ferguson police officers were asked: “How do you think negative media coverage of the police impacts crime rates?” they noted.   The response options ranged from 1 =greatly decreases crime to 5= greatly increases crime. The authors stated, this information “would provide precedent for proceeding to test whether, when separately measured, officers' views about the favorability of media coverage of policing are associated with their perceptions both of civilians' attitudes and behaviors, and recent changes in the crime rate” (p. 27).

Communication and Behaviors

            Furthermore, the communication from hostile media perceptions revealed that the relationship between officers' perceptions of crime and hostile media is primarily mediated by judgments of changes in civilians' behaviors and attitudes toward law enforcement and, to a lesser extent, by concerns of false charges (Rosenfeld, 2016; Wolfe & Nix, 2016a). One approach the authors recommended to rectify the problem was for police departments to leverage different forms of media outlets to increase the quality and frequency of communications about policing readily available to the public.

Criminal Justice Policy

            Moreover, according to Nix & Pickett (2017), our findings have several implications from a criminal justice policy standpoint. First, the findings suggest a need to take further steps to improve police officers' and civilians' attitudes toward each other.  Second, prior research suggests that organizational justice—that is, respectful and fair treatment of officers by their supervisors—may reduce the impact of officers' hostile media perceptions (Nix & Wolfe,

2016; Wolfe & Nix, 2016c). Third, the authors suggested that agencies might consider training programs aimed at reducing officers' reactions to media reports. Fourth, the evidence suggests that it is important for police departments to take steps to counter the negative publicity in the media and ensure a more accurate depiction of policing, they noted.

Christian Worldview

             According to the Holy Bible, God is responsible for establishing the world's governments for its citizen to adhere to. However, many of these laws, policies, and procedures contain systemic racism overtones, prejudices, discrimination, or antagonism primarily directed towards men of African American descent.  However, until criminal justice reform occurs, obedience to the Word of God through compliance with law enforcement will reduce deadly encounters with police.  The Bible proclaims in (Romans 13:1-5) that:

 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore, you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience’ sake. (NKJV)