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omm.docxRunning Head: LAW ENFORCEMENT
LAW ENFORCEMENT 6
Law Enforcement
Omar Nejadat
Traditional Policy hierarchy structure and reforms made to achieve modern police agency
Police Agency hierarchy involves the organizational structure of the agency. Policy agency hierarchy structure shows how the flow of commands within the agency. Traditional police agency embraced a quasi-military model (Hampton, 2011). Traditional police agency had similar organization structure to that of the military. Traditional hierarchy of police Agency focused on other less important factors for purpose of promoting junior police officers to higher ranks. Factor considered by then were things like trust one had to his seniors and compliance to given instructions. The situation denied lower ranking with urge to serve their communities chance to contribute to issues affecting them. All had to wait for their masters to issue directions as well ideas on how deal with different situations.
The traditional organization structure failed to stir innovative among the police officers since the flow of command was in one direction from seniors to juniors. Although the strict conformity helped duties be done well it failed to involve police officers being involved in some of security incidents help in developing the needed solutions. Traditional police agency organization and hierarchy can be said to be rigid and without opportunities to include community views and concerns (Jones, 2010). The rigid nature of the traditional police structure formed the basis of criticism from different stakeholders.
The traditional method of policing which had embraced military way of performing their duties began to attract criticism from different stakeholders since it failed to provide better solutions to common security challenges facing the communities. Early in 1970 the critics led to first round of revolution within the police agency. Police agency started to make some reforms. First team policing was introduced. Team policing demanded change of the management style so as to incorporate the team work aspect. Police managers and administrators started to allow lower ranking police officers to be actively involved in the process of developing solutions to security problems experienced by communities.
One decade after the first reform police agency had appreciated the need to fully reform the organization so as to enhance its operations. More complex reforms such community policing were introduced in the policing. The agency started to allows police officers to actively engage the communities in reporting and coming up with the much needed solutions to their problems. Since the introduction of community policing approach, everything within the policy agency must always be community focused (Jones, 2010). As technology continues other sectors of human existence security sector have not been left out. Police are now using scientifically proven approaches and technologies to solve security problems facing the communities.
Traditionally police department never allows close monitoring by community watchdogs such as media but now that situation is long gone. Communities are actively involved in the process of condemning changes within the policing agency so as to get better services provided to them. Although the current policy agency contains clear hierarchical structure for the police personnel the chain of command have been devolved into smaller units so as to operations efficient and efficient (Hampton, 2011). Devolving police functions have further created between the police and communities. Once the rigid chains of old structures were loosed, police officers are now enjoying the right of being in front line to provide solutions to security concerns of the communities. Community involvement has seen the policy agency change even the ways police officers are hired. The move continues to boost good relations between the communities and the police force.
Special population that may pose communication challenge to law enforcement officers
Communication involves the process of sharing information with different stakeholders within the society regarding emerging security issues and concerns. To achieve the desired level of cooperation with all the stakeholders, law enforcement officers must be able to effectively communicate with diverse communities that form the American population. Communication strategies embraced must always establish effective communication within the law enforcement agencies (Christopher, et al., 2006). Lack of effective communication between the organization and different stakeholders can be the source of crisis and conflict between law enforcement agencies and the communities.
Effective communication can be used by law enforcement officers and other professionals within the security sector to create transparency build trust and promote a favorable environment that fosters respect among mutual respect for all. By doing that law enforcement officers would find easy while working in streets, offices, and courtrooms. Law enforcement officers seeking to achieve career success must relate well with others so as to achieve the objective. The United States has and continues to experience diversified communities (Underwood & Frey, 2007). Each of the community forming the American society has its own preferred language that at time pose huge communication challenge to law enforcement officers while performing their duties.
Today U.S is position two in proving home to more Spanish speakers after Mexico. The common and native communication language for the American people is English. As result, it would be difficult for law enforcement officers to communicate with Spanish speaking population. Over a long period of time, the Spanish population has had bad communication links with law enforcement officers. The million dollar question asked was how law enforcement officers could establish good relations with a population that you cannot communicate with. To solve the dilemma law enforcement agencies are currently seeking candidates who possess Spanish speaking skills.
Americans from China and Korea must further give law enforcement with yet another community's challenge. So as to create good relations with the two group's law enforcement officers rely on individual's ability to speak English as the only means of communication. In the event, individuals do not understand English law enforcement officers are forced to seek language interpreters (Christopher, et al., 2006). Such situation ends up delaying the investigation process. Even though one fully comprehends English being involved in criminal activity might influence one to communicate in the native language to avoid being interrogated by law enforcement officers.
Communication challenges will never be eliminated as long as both legal and illegal migration of people will continue to experience. The only solution towards the challenge is establishing approaches to establish communication with the diverse groups. Universities and colleges should also increase the number of language courses so as to cover as more languages as possible.
Circumstances under which legal arrests can be made
Circumstances under which legal arrests can be made
The fourth amendment done to United States Constitution allowed law enforcement officers especially the police to make arrests. The constitution terms any arrest made legal on the ground that the officer making the arrest had a probable course. The need to have in place a probable cause advocated by the constitution aims at protecting basic human rights from abuse by law enforcement officers (Cammack, 2012). Many nations across the world provide law enforcement agencies more powers that are easily abused when exercising the constitution mandate resulting in human rights violation.
Although the constitution fails to provide a clear guideline line on what is and not a probable course, the judiciary through the courts has played an important role in interpreting what a probable course means. A police officer may end up making arrests believing he or she has a probable course but the same decision be quashed by a judge having a contrary interpretation of the same situation. A legal arrest can be made when the police officer has factual evidence about the crime committed (Cammack, 2012). Factual evidence can be tined through different ways. One of many ways through which factual evidence is attained is through observations. Observation, in this case, can be made using sight or eyes, sound, and smell.
All the three senses may be used to create a valid suspicion based on familiar criminal activity committed. For instance, a police officer or a detective may enter into a suspect house and find the foul smell of decomposing body. Such observation can force such officer to make an arrest for a homicide. Legal arrests can also be made based the action on the information provided by witnesses who experienced the crime (Cammack, 2012). Such witnesses can be the victims themselves, or other informants. Identification of the crime perpetrators is a probable course that can be used to make a legal arrest.
Circumstantial evidence is also another probable course that law enforcement officers can use to make a legal arrest. The circumstantial evidence is used to confirm that certain crime happened in a particular place. For instance, a suspect may be found in possession of a property of crime victim. Such evidence is circumstantial and can be used to make a legal arrest. Finally, law enforcement officers are currently relying on their expertise as well as expertise brought about by technological advancement to make informed decisions on when to make arrests.
Forensic analysis has been of great help in identifying tools used by criminals to commit crimes. Use of DNA has also been used to solve certain crimes such as murder and rape. Other instances police officer relies on their trained skills to relate individual's behaviors and gestures to certain crimes (Cammack, 2012). Criminal gangs at times develop their own coded language for their communications. By studying such criminal gangs police officers are able to understand the communications of criminal groups and make a legal arrest.
Although constitution advocates for probable cause for making arrests, there is no set amount information that is used to define a probable cause. In other words, there is no law defining enough proof for a probable cause. Judges are left to gauge on the best level standards. The flexibility aims at allowing judges to balance the rights of the citizens as well as the rights of the police officers while carrying out investigations.
SARA Problem solving Model in law enforcement
Ensuring there are law and order within any given society demands that law enforcement officers embrace right techniques for establishing and solving the problems. Understanding the criminal patterns alone and pursuing criminals alone will never solve the problem for good unless the root and causes of problems are established and solution provided (Peak & Glensor, 2012). SARA is one of the policing strategies used by law enforcement. SARA is a problem-oriented strategy that breaks down the problem into four main steps. The problem-solving model has been embraced by law enforcement as best policing strategy over time. The model is popular policing approach since it offers police with simple to comprehend as well remember for purpose of implementation. SARA is short form representing Scanning, analysis, response, and assessment. This section will explore more about each of the SARA steps and how it is used in policing.
Scanning
The first stage of scanning advocates that police officer to scan and establish recurring issues and their outcomes within a given community. Once the issues and their outcomes are established police officers categorize each one of them from least serious ones to the most serious ones (Peak & Glensor, 2012). After categorizing issues at hand, the next move involves developing approaching and strategies that would help solve them. Solving the issues in this case demands setting goals that will be achieved as results of implementing the proposed solutions.
Analysis
The analysis stage requires police officers to fully determine and understand the causative factors that promote the occurrence of the established issues or problems in scanning stage. Understanding the causing factors involves carrying out a study on the issues established whereby relevant data on each of the problem is collected (Community policing defined [PowerPoint slides], 2012). At this stage, police officers are required to engage in research studies about the issues at hand. The research helps understand the scope of problems, resources needed and further understands the reasons promoting the occurrence of the problem.
Response
The stage requires police officers to use their research findings obtained at analysis stage to brainstorm ideas that would help solve the problems. The presented intervention ideas should present various interventions options that can be used (Peak & Glensor, 2012). Once the interventions are identified, goals and objectives are drawn. Planning concludes the phase by outlining how the proposed interventions would be implemented.
Assessment
The assessment stage focuses on establishing whether the gains made by implementing the proposed interventions above. In other words the stage focus on efforts made by methods used to solve the problem. In this case, police are required to evaluate the success of their implemented interventions plans. During the assessment, the data on the outcome of the interventions is collected and analyzed. In addition to analyzing the outcome results police officer determine whether their set goals and objectives for each of the proposed interventions were met.
The assessment helps make the necessary changes to the proposed interventions so as to achieve the desired results (Peak & Glensor, 2012). For instance, the data gathered from outcomes may show that more is needed to be done so as to solve the problem in full. Police officers are able to reflect back on an embraced intervention plan to establish gaps that hindered the realization of the set goals. The assessment may further portray the implemented intervention plan as wrong and misplaced. The realization would inform importance of starting the problem resolution once again.
Police pursuit Controversy
The United States always have hundreds if not thousands of speed police pursuit every year. Although the pursuit is focused at eliminating any danger from the public, some have gone very wrong resulting into a hot debate on the speedy pursuit against the suspect. The speedy Pursuit ends up eliminating security threat to the public by cornering the suspect being pursued but also causes unwanted injuries and times causing unwanted deaths of innocent people (Hill, 2018). Many Americans are fully convinced that their safety is not guaranteed within the streets in the event police officers are involved in the hot pursuit of criminals. The debate has shifted into calls for developing other alternatives for stopping criminals using automobiles.
According to NHTSA reports close more than three hundred people die every year simply because of speed pursuit involving police cars and criminals. The agency only records the cases formally reported leaving others that are not reported. More than three hundred deaths out of speedy police pursuit is a clear indicator that at least one person dies every day out of police pursuit (Norse & O'Connor, 2006). The debate focuses more on the causes of the increase crashes. First, police pursuit involves high speed. The speed results out of the fact that criminals are always trying their best to avoid the police arrests at all the cost while police officers are focused on eliminating the impending danger that may perpetrate by the criminal.
The debate now focuses on establishing new speed regulation policies to avoid the risky speeding behavior among the police officers. Although the call may help solve the crashes caused by police cars the policy won't help avoid speeding criminals. The most important thing for the majority of criminals is to secure their freedom by getting away with the crime regardless of the costs involved. Even though police get refrained from speeding beyond certain speed limits speeding criminals might cause crashes with aims of causing confusion for the easy scape. Limiting police ability to pursue criminals would only promote criminals confidence thus increasing criminals activities.
Careless driving is the second factor attributed to increased cases of a car crash during a speedy police pursuit. Criminals will not shun away from driving carelessly with aims of causing fear among other road users so as to gain escape advantage (Norse & O'Connor, 2006). Also, some of the Police officers driving police cars disregard all road safety to pursue the criminals. The move at results into careless driving that ends up in unwanted crashes. Most police departments have in place in place policies governing how criminal pursuit should be handled but fails to solve the ever-increasing challenge of crush out of police pursuit.
Policy review in pursuit law is now inevitable. Law enforcement agencies must now focus on other safe ways to pursue criminals using automobiles. Use of technology such as CCTV installed across highways and cities can be used to pursue criminal movements with ease (Hill, 2018). Other alternatives may involve the use of helicopters to pursue criminal's movements. The approach may be expensive to implement but would help lower crushes resulting out police speedy pursuit. Actual police pursue on the roads need to be fully discouraged and the police department is fully supported to develop other alternatives to replace the risky trend. Various studies have been conducted and established that criminals who have been involved in hot pursuit by police cars would not have indulged themselves in the risky behavior if the police officers backed down from the chase. It is now clear that we need to abandon the risky pursuit approach.
Suicide by Cop
Suicide by cop involves a situation whereby someone decides to die by being killed by police officers. Suicide by cop incidents takes two major forms. One if when a criminal is being pursued by police officers but decides better dying rather than letting cops arrest him. Normally such individuals may not have any suicidal thoughts in normal conditions but the thoughts of dying come to their minds by weighing in mind what will befall them after being arrested (Lindsay & Lester, 2004). For instance, a criminal may opt dying while resisting arrest rather than risking arrest that would result in being sentenced to death or life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
The other form of suicide by cop involves individuals who had premeditated suicide thoughts but decides to provoke police officers so as to be killed (Mohandie, Meloy, & Collins, 2009). Such individuals at times may indulge themselves in serious crimes that would trigger the cops to kill him or her without much hustle. For instance, such individual may attack police offers in the streets with a gun or any other weapon with intentions of being killed. Law enforcement has their own policies governing on the circumstances through which police officers can result into a deadly force to protect themselves or others from a threat. Other incidents individuals may opt to kill others so as to provoke law enforcement officers to kill him or her. Such cases have been well witnessed in the recent mass shootings that have happened in the United States
Actions such as pointing firearm to a police officer or attacking a police officer with a knife and be killed are used as an argument as that persons desire to end his or her life. Such claims are difficult to establish through post-mortem results conducted by coroners. The situation is well solved as defined in the event such scenario happened in presence of witnesses. Some cases termed by the police department as suicidal have sparked an outcry from the public and activists groups. The situations arise in the event the victims had fake or toy guns or failed to leave suicide notes. Many demonstrations have been organized in the streets to condemn police force for using deadly force.
To eliminate confusion and dilemma surrounding some of the cases, some police departments have embraced technology such as the use of body cameras to capture events that they face every day. Use of cameras has been of great help to solve crises surrounding some of the suicidal cases involving cops. Such move would help differentiate fact from hearsay and public and media speculations (Mohandie, Meloy, & Collins, 2009). Avoiding use of deadly force can at times challenging since police officers also fear for their own life. Despite the risk involved, police officers can simply identify individuals attempting suicide and avoid the use of deadly force. Use of modern protection such as bulletproof vests can be used as a primary defense mechanism to take down criminals without killing.
At times individual provoke police officers while threatening them with a less deadly weapon such as knives and calling on cops to shoot them dead. Such actions should be treated as suicide attempts and police officers should think of other alternatives to take the individuals down instead of gunning them down. Unless the police officers get well trained and are fully equipped with right protection gears the suicide by cop will always remain a concern within the United States.
References
Cammack, M. E. (2012). The United States: The Rise and Fall of the Constitutional Exclusionary Rule. Exclusionary Rules in Comparative Law, 3-32.
Christopher, H., Valerie, B., Howard, G., Makoni, S., Pecchioni, L., Louw-ptogieter, J., & Myers, P. (2006). Communicative Dyanamics of Police-Civillian Encouters: South African and American Interethnic Date. Journal Communicationn Research, 35(3), 161.
Community policing defined [PowerPoint slides]. (2012, May 4). Retrieved from U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services: http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Publications /e051229476_CP-Defined-TEXT_v8_092712
Hampton, T. (2011). Creating an Organizational Paradigm. I N T E R N A T I O N A L P O L I C E E X E C U T I V E S Y M P O S I U M G E N E V A C E N T R E F O R T HE D E M O C R A T I C C O N T R O L O F A R M E D F O R C E S (pp. 1-26). P h o e n i x: University of Phoenix.
Hill, J. (2018, May 3). High-speed police pursuits: dangers dynamics and risk reduction" The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin . Retrieved from Washington DC: US Department of Justice: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_7_71/ai_89973554
Jones, G. R. (2010). Organizational theory, design, and change (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River: NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lindsay, M., & Lester, D. (2004). Suicide by Cop: commiting Suicide by Provoking Police to Shoot you. Amityville: NY: Baywood.
Mohandie, K., Meloy, J. R., & Collins, P. I. (2009). Suicide by Cop Among Officer-Involved Shooting Cases. Journal of Forensic Sciences, 456-462.
Norse, W. L., & O'Connor, P. T. (2006). Police Pusruits: A Comprehensive Look at the Broad Spectrum of Police Pursuit Liability and Law. Mercer Law Review, 11-48.
Peak, K. J., & Glensor, R. W. (2012). Community Policing and Problem Solving Strategies and Practices (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River: NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
Underwood, E. D., & Frey, L. R. (2007). Communication and community: Clarifying the Connection Across Communication Community. Annals of the Internationsl Communication Association, 31(1), 370.
