Police Abuse Essay, Research Paper
Police Abuse
In recent years, police actions, particularly police abuse, has
come into view of a wide, public and critical eye. While citizens worry
about protecting themselves from criminals, it has now been shown that they
must also keep a watchful eye on those who are supposed to protect and
serve. This paper will discuss the types of police abuse prevalent today,
including the use of firearms and receipt of private information. I will
also discuss what and how citizens’ rights are taken advantage of by
police. For these problems, solutions will be discussed, focusing on
political reform, education, and citizen review boards. These measures are
necessary to protect ourselves from police taking advantage of their
positions as law enforcement officers with greater permissive rights than
private citizens. Because of this significant differential, all citizens
must take affirmative action from physical brutality, rights violations,
and information abuse.
Problems arise, however, when one side is told what to do by
another, as there is bound to be conflicting viewpoints. In regard to
police abuse, there will be many officers who feel that their job of
fighting escalating street crime, gangs, narcotics violations, and other
violent crimes is difficult already, and that worrying about excessive
policy for abusive behavior will only further decrease their ability to
fight crime effectively, efficiently, and safely. Citizens, however, have
been caught up in this gung-ho attitude, and police are more and more often
crossing the line of investigation and interrogation with abusive behavior.
This abuse must be monitored so that police do not forget who they are
serving–not themselves, but the public. This means that even the
criminals, who are a part of the public, have certain rights, particularly,
civil rights. All citizens must be aware of these rights to protect
themselves against over-aggressive officers who take advantage of their
position as badge and gun holders to intimidate and abuse civilians for
personal or departmental goals.
Such conflicts have significant implications on departmental and
administrative policy procedures. One of the main police abuse problems is
physical brutality. The main goal here should be to get the police
departments to adopt and enforce a written policy governing the use of
physical force. The policy should restrict physical force to the narrowest
possible range of specific situations. For example, their should be
limitations on the use of hand-to-hand combat, batons, mace, stun guns, and
firearms. However, limiting polices’ actions will bring much debate,
especially from police officers and administrators themselves. Many feel
that their firepower is already too weak to battle the weapons criminals
have on the streets, and limiting their legality of gun use will not only
endanger them, but the innocent bystanders who must endure the hierarchy
gunpower creates in the benefit of criminals.
For instance, not only should officers use brutality in very
limited situations, to help curtail unwarranted use, but policies should
require officers to file a written report after any use of physical force,
regardless of how seemingly insignificant. That report should then be
automatically reviewed by superior officers. It is necessary to involve
superior officers so that a tolerance of brutality is not established, and
an atmosphere conducive to police abuse is not created. Police may feel
that such action would be burdensome. This is so because police often
already feel burdened and restrained by policy and paperwork which takes a
large amount of their on-duty time. When will police be required to do
paperwork on how long and what was done during each coffee break to ensure
tax payers are getting their every seconds worth? There must be a
reasonable balance between civilian intervention and administration.
Although, if every incidence of police abuse was requested to be reported,
how many actually would be? Maybe only those serious enough, as depicted
in new guidelines, would make it, leaving some space for officers to exert
pressure without crossing serious and abusive policy.
Another tactic to control police brutality is to establish a system
to identify officers who have been involved in an inordinate number of
incidents that include the inappropriate use of physical force. The
incidents should then be investigated. For those officers who are
frequently involved in unnecessary police brutality, they should be
charged, disciplined, re-trained and offered counseling. If such treatment
proves ineffective, officers who violate abuse standards should be brought
up on review before an administrative board comprised of citizens and
police officials. A third violation should be met with termination and
loss of pension. Some may claim that this is paranoia and will simply cost
too much. A single officer can tie up numerous other non-problem officers
during the discipline and re-training stages, only adding to the cost of
rehabilitating this problem officer. When does an officer need
intervention? When is the officer worth keeping or discharging? Is
identifying abusive officers a form of prejudice? The police officer is
there to serve and protect the public who pays his or her salary. The
officer should then be subject to any investigations into his or her
abusive actions on the job.
A third method for controlling police brutality is creating a
civilian review board. The review board should be independent from the
police department so that officers cannot exert their influence over
civilians or the decisions made by the group. The review board should also
hold open meetings so that all members of the community are welcome to come
and share their concerns, complaints, and any ideas about how to monitor
and curtail police brutality. It is imperative that this review board be
made up of strictly civilians, so that information and concerns remain
honest, and not biased by those who hold only polices’ interests at hand.
Of course. police officers and their administrators may feel some prejudice
because they are not represented on the board, yet their own internal
review capability should more than compensate. Once again, a review board
comprised strictly of civilians is the only way to comprehensively and
justly address abuse concerns of the private citizen, short, of course, of
resorting to the formal step of judicial proceedings.
There are also methods of controlling police brutality through
state channels. First is establishing an office that oversees complaints
and cases of police abuse. All complaints should be made public, either
through television or print news, so that the community is aware of which
officers have a history of brutality. In addition to a governmental
investigation board, there should be a state-oriented civilian review board
who collects data from the various cities around the state to monitor
trends and problems with brutality, as well as to offer suggestions to
cities based on methods which have proven successful in others. This is
similar to a state-wide civilian review board support and coordination
group. Together, these groups can gain political force and keep police
departments aware of the concern of citizens and the government as to the
safety and legality of police actions.
Yet even if internal policy and external government supervision is
successful, it is difficult to say how the ethics of police officers will
affect abuse policy as they are based on personal, socioeconomic background
and upbringing that have little to do with the issue at hand. However,
assuming police adopt some common form of action through job association,
it becomes not so difficult to see how police abuse tactics can spread.
When it comes to police taking advantage of citizens’ rights, there are
numerous circumstances of which a private citizen must be aware.
To ensure citizens’ know what rights they have, they must be
educated. First, all people should know their constitutional rights. For
example, if you are stopped in you car, do you have to let an officer
search your car? What should you do? First, you should show your driver’s
license and registration upon request. If the officer wants to look in you
car, in most cases, such as if he pulled you over simply for not wearing
your seat-belt, there is no reason for him or her to search your car and
you do not have to oblige. However, the officer can claim he or she had
probable cause if, for example, you had alcohol on your breath or there was
drug paraphernalia present. If the officer insists on searching the
vehicle, to protect yourself later, you should make it clear that you do
not consent to a search. You do not have to consent! However, if you are
suspected of drunken driving and refuse a blood, urine or breath test, your
driving license can be suspended. Still, many people are intimidated by
police officers and the power they have, and this is where officers take
advantage of those who do not know their rights or do not know how to stand
up for them. The ethics of police as people is often overridden by their
goals as police officers which is to stop any illegal activities. This,
too, may be overridden by a set of departmentally unendorsed personal goals
leading to both citizen and police procedure abuse.
Another form of unethical police abuse is spying, or information
gathering, on constitutionally protected political, religious and private
sexual behavior. Spying is a difficult abuse to monitor because it is a
covert activity which makes those who participate in it all the more
unethical. The victim does not know it’s happening, and it is not
witnessed by others. One way to curtail spying or excessive information
gathering is to restrict the information police have access to. All
information to be collected can only be done so if that person is
reasonably suspected of having committed a crime, and the information must
be relevant to that crime.
A second solution to controlling illegal access to information is
to implement an independent civilian auditor who must review all police
authorizations to collect restricted i
other police files. This will ensure the police are not gathering
superfluous information. The use of an independent civilian auditor will
also ensure the process does not represent the interests of officers only,
but also those of the general pubic, whom they are charged with protecting.
If the auditor finds that the police have violated the law, he or she must
so notify the individuals who are the subjects of the unlawful
investigations so that they can then press charges against the city and
collect damages. This is a form of punishment which will discourage the
officers from spying, and will encourage city officials to crack down on
those who do to legally protect themselves.
Most of the cost of the above mentioned police abuse prevention
strategies lies with the taxpayer, for when it comes to funding discipline
and re-training yet again, the burden is on the taxpayers. What this means
is that citizens must be willing to take on this additional financial
burden or take a loss in some other area of police protection. For
example, to pay for the additional manpower it takes to implement the new
policies, from disciplinary actions and mental and physical training, the
department may have to cut back on the total number of officers, both in
the field and holding administrative positions. This would mean less
officers on the street for protection. Response time may slow down as
officers have larger areas to cover. In less affluential neighborhoods,
where adopting the higher cost is not a small issue, and where added police
protection is most often needed, and where crime and abuse most prevalent,
added stress of police budgets does not serve as many people. For those
who can afford the financial increase, they are morally aware that police
are being kept in-line. For those who cannot afford it, they see more of
the negative implications such as increased cost–possibly–or less
available officers. Is there a way for police abuse to be monitored
without the direct community taking the full burden? Perhaps the federal
government can supply the additional manpower, and hence the additional
cost, of implementing an investigation and rehabilitation team. Surely, at
least some portion of the newly passed Clinton Crime Bill provides for such
subsidization.
Even if the financial subsidies are provided, practical problems to
abuse policy implimentation still surface. One example of such a problem
occurs through media. Many times in movies or on television, when an
officer arrests a person you hear him or hear rattle off a list of “rights”
from a card. The officers are reading, and they are required to read it
from the card to avoid mistakes, the Miranda rights. This is a very simple
operational step. It only takes a moment to read the rights, and the person
in question is made aware of his or her rights for the purposes of
constitutionality–at least in the movies. Often, such a procedure is
omitted or bypassed by an over zealous officer, in deferrence to the
departmental policy and the citizen’s rights.
One of these rights includes the right to a lawyer before you talk
to the police. You only need to tell the police your name and address. Do
not give explanations, excuses or stories! You should confer with a lawyer
to make a defense in court. Police often resort to threats or trickery to
get people to confess. This is a violation of your rights! Even if you
cannot pay for a lawyer, you have a right to a free one, and you should ask
the police how the lawyer can be contacted. Do not talk without a lawyer.
One of your telephone calls should be to contact this lawyer. Call one
immediately after your have been arrested. Don’t worry about calling your
mother, your lawyer will help protect your rights and to get a fair
trial–should it come to that. Your second call can be to anybody, but
preferably someone who can post your bond. This suggestion may irritate
some police as it holds up the investigation process. However, without a
lawyer present, a person cannot know all of the legalities involved in
being arrested from the minute the officer approaches you to the minutes,
if it comes to this, the person is incarcerated. Making a person aware of
his or her rights is practical in the short and long run for both parties,
yet even in light of departmental mandates, officers often overlook this
basic step in avoiding police abuse.
While there are specific solutions to brutality, rights abuse, and
spying, there are also some general solutions that could be implemented
before the problems even arise. For example, there should be changes in
police officer training. Some communities have demanded their officers
receive higher education. However, there is no proof that well-educated
officers rely less on abuse and more on departmentally-sound investigation
techniques. The length of training of police personnel should be
increased, as has been the trend in recent years. The average length of
police academy programs has more than doubled, from about 300, to over 600
hours; in some cities, 900, or even 1200 hours are the rule. As the time
devoted to training has increased, the institutions should also stress the
importance of the growing trends in criminal activity so that they are
prepared to deal with them. These include such areas as race relations,
domestic violence, handling the mentally ill, and so on. This will, in
turn, enable operations run more smoothly, hopefully avoiding police abuse
problems in the future.
Such training translates into several goals in creating a
professional police force. The first goal is in establishing a first rate
police academy curriculum that includes classroom and in the field
training. In addition to being given weapons and taught how to use them,
police recruits should also learn special skills, such as techniques of
de-escalating violence and communications skills which will help them
defuse and avert situations that might lead to the necessary use of force.
Police training programs should also include community sensitivity
training to reduce community-police tensions. Examples of such successful
programs introduced to the community include those to reduce tensions,
particularly with the homeless, gays, and African-Americans. Education of
both police officers and citizens will help police meet their ultimate goal
of controlling crime. Implementing policy may, at first, hinder police
from performing their duties, as they have grown used to certain pressure
tactics. However, as education and communication skills increase, the
ability of the police department to interact with local resources instead
of taking so much of the burden internally, will help alleviate some of the
pressure felt by citizens. Citizens, then, will have more involvement, and
hence, more satisfaction with the job police departments are doing.
As the prevalence of police abuse as shown through the media has
drawn attention to the need for increased surveillance on police, a
mandated cure is now a necessity. While brutality and police abuse seems
to be a prehistoric idea, the surge of violence has caused police to fight
back in often un-police like manners, though seemingly acceptable to deal
with those break the law. Methods must be implemented which effectively
deal with police who tend to cross the line, from simple situations to
serious firearm use or prejudice. These solutions should be offered by a
variety of view points, so as to address both the needs of police and
citizens themselves. Some of the solutions, particularly the policy
changes, will be met with controversy and will be difficult to implement.
Citizen watch groups will be much easier to organize as there are already
thousands of neighborhood watches illustrating that citizens are willing to
become involved to protect both their community, as well as themselves.
Keeping track of police is the next step in self-protection. Some of the
goals addressed here are most helpful for the citizen as a first step in
the education process, and will hopefully inspire those who feel they need
to take affirmative action against police abuse.
While the threat of a world war has diminished, the violence on the
streets across America has increased at a dramatic rate. Police are forced
to face this violence and are sometimes caught up in the same violent and
abusive cycle while trying to fight it. Citizens realize that police
intervention is necessary, but they also realize that there are limits as
to what a police officer can do. To make society a safe place for both
citizens and officers, it is imperative that they work together for a
comprehensive checks and balances system. The United States Constitution
guarantees certain rights for everyone, and is the very backbone of this
country. If it is to be ignored, either through permissive laws enacted
for law enforcement against private citizens, or through a lack of
maintenance of existing protective legislation, private citizens–indeed,
the entire country–will become paralyzed. Because of this, the
opportunity and freedom which this country is built on must be enforced,
and those charged with doing so must not abuse their power.
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