Police Shootings of Unarmed Civilians - Research Paper Example

Number; “Research Report on Police Shootings of Unarmed Civilians’’ Terms of the Study: The survey was conducted on a segment of the population mostly comprising the white, blacks and Hispanics population of the Americans leaving in the affected areas. I was assigned to target the more whites (three) since I’m one of them and one African American and one Hispanic (Survey Questions). This had a positive impact on the research as the respondents easily associated with me and hence the research. The survey was supported with a closed ended questionnaire with a few questions being left open for the respondent opinion. The target populations were of all races living in the affected neighborhood and were the ones administered with the questionnaires by the respective researchers. This was due to the luxury of time and finance available at the time of the interview that limited the research only to the affected neighborhood instead of nation-wide. Respondents were allowed to ask any question pertaining to the questionnaire that they did not easily understand so that they were able to respond clearly with knowledge of every requirement of the questionnaire. The interviewers were particularly keen on observing if there were any cases of any misinterpretation as well as decency effects. This was to reduce systematic, respondent and administrative errors. The main aim was to collect standardized information regarding the above subject from the respondents in a self-report format. However, it is important to note that this was a group work and everybody had an assignment to undertake. Work that majorly involved the field application of the questionnaire was divided amongst the five members to administer to people. However, coming up with the questionnaire was an all-inclusive task that involved all group members. Discussion was flowing smoothly and faster until the part of designing the questionnaire was reached, particularly the part of structuring the questions. The structure of the questions was mutually agreed upon to be both closed and open ended but the type of questions and how to post them dragged the group since everybody had a diverging opinion. The group was very keen on designing the questions that will be convenient to respondents and the ones they could answer comfortably. In other words, the questions had to be ethically, culturally and professionally upright. It is however, imperative to note the important contribution that the group members gave in the whole research process. Considering the latest police brutally witnessed especially on black community, we expected everybody to agree with our hypothesis that “The decrease in moral and ethical American values of police officials has resulted in an increase of unwarranted civilian shootings in the past decade’’ Raw Data Results: The result of five respondents interviewed whose ethnicity were three whites, one African American and one Hispanic with their ages ranging between 27-34 except for one white whose age ranged between 34-42 were as follows; Population of the neighborhood- all of them came from a neighborhood whose population exceeded 25,000. This was represented by choice (E). All respondents agreed that Police officers just like everyone else, need to be held accountable for their actions, whether they are intentional misdeeds, mistakes, or the result of improper or inadequate training. On the part of what suggestions that would help in restoration of trust and respect, all respondents suggested the following should be wholly embraced; Body and dash cameras on all law enforcement officers and vehicles. Better training in situation assessment for more accuracy in evaluating danger. More use of non-lethal methods of control. Improved independent methods to assure accountability of public servants.  The same was true to the question that inquired if the pay given to officers was a contributing factor to the recent behavior to which four of the respondents agreed but one declined. The table below summarizes the research result, with the help of the copy of questionnaire, it should be easy to analyze and understand. Race Age Qtn. 4 Qtn 5 Qtn 6 Qtn 7 Qtn 8 Qtn 9 Qtn 10 Qtn 11 White 27-34 TRUE YES E YES B A E White 27-34 TRUE NO E NO C D E African American 27-34 TRUE YES E YES D D E Hispanic 35-42 TRUE NO E YES B A E White 27-34 TRUE NO E YES B D E Analysis: The results indicate that all the respondents agree that Police officers, just like everyone else, need to be held accountable for their actions, whether they are intentional misdeeds, mistakes, or the result of improper or inadequate training. In fact, from the way they answered question on suggestions they believed may help restore trust and respect on the police officers, all of them seemed to accept all the proposed strategies. This simply means they both lack confidence in the current police officers and the measures put in place to check on how they react to situations. However, when it came to the part of what kind of education they thought police officers should complete, three respondents chose the option of mental health sensitivity training against two who chose cross-cultural training. This was never expected since the only incident of a civilian being shot dead but was alleged to be suffering from mental case was only one person, the rest were all blacks with no such cases. In fact, the first option was more expected especially from the black respondent just as it was the case. It is also important to note that all the female respondents gave almost the same response but only differed in the type of education they recommended, with the black choosing cross cultural training and the white choosing mental health sensitivity training. This probably means the whites were viewing it from the perspective of the police being the wrong doer while the white viewing the behavior leading to the shoot up resulting from the victims behavior. On the other hand, looking at the question nine that was left open for respondents to give their response, most of them seemed to blame the victims while suggesting improvement of the latter’s behavior on the street. One however, proposed cultural education with the remaining one taking a hard stand on civilian shooters being penalized for such an offence. From the results, it is also clear that age of the respondents never influenced the answers they gave. Either way, it is clear that the respondents accept that police officers should be responsible for the crime they commit but also suggest that civilians are also to be mindful of their behaviors toward police officers. Conclusion: The overall experience of the research process was quite exploring. Even though it took us much time incoming up with the questions, we managed to put each opinion into the process and sieve through the best inputs. We were able to learn from each other. However the part of questionnaire design was boring compared to the actual field work experience. The challenge though was in interviewing the victims of police brutality on the same issue when it was still an emotive issue in the public domain. This method of research though has limitation of being prone to errors, communication problem, and posing risk to the interviewer, it also has the advantage of being faster, cost effective accurate and generally efficient (Satria). In conclusion, according to this research the method was moderately ok and for such other research that are not in-depth but cover a larger population. Most survey studies however have standardized questions which are mostly closed ended leaving respondents with no option but to choose the already available options. This may limit the responded that might have a divergent answer to the already available formatted questions. This therefore may not give the real opinion of the respondent. Works Cited Satria, Riri. "Survey Research." Research Methodology Class Lecture Notes. 10th November 2009. Survey Questions, survey. "Survey." Group, April 2015. Read More