King's Assignment # 4 - Essay Example

Running head: Police and Society POLICE AND SOCIETY Police department is the executive branch of the government that enforces the democratic laws and is in turn governed by the rule of law. Democracy has certain limitations on the society and the police make sure to enforce them. The integral parts of police field operations are police patrol and investigations. Patrol is known as the ‘backbone of policing’ as large numbers of members of this department are assigned to this work. The most important goal of patrol is to avert crimes.

The work of patrol should be able to create a sense of apprehension in the minds of the troublemakers. A good citizen should feel a sense of security and satisfaction because of patrol. Non-criminal services should also be provided. Traffic control and serving as a means of finding solutions for community problems also contribute to the goals. The police patrol operation is considered to be proactive rather than reactive, the difference being that the police should be able to identify risks and formulate contingency plans rather than taking action after the risk has occurred.

For this, awareness of what, how and by whom something happens in an assigned zone is required. The advanced technologies like wireless radio have made the patrol operations to be reactive. It is also important that the attention and response required out of the police in different situations are different. Some do not require immediate attention while in some cases the response times are critical. To address this issue, the DPR – Differential Police Response is used. This helped in cost reduction and performance improvement.

The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment has found out that random patrols do not have any effect on the crime rates or the citizen satisfaction. As a result, the police have changed their tactics to classifying regions as ‘hot spots’ of crime. These areas can be identifies using analysis of recorded data from previous cases. This achieved the goal of making patrols proactive. The investigation part involves the detective work. The automated finger print identification system and DNA are major breakthroughs that help the police detectives in successfully identifying the culprit.

The police detective may work in intelligence data gathering or as an undercover.Police behaviors may be analyzed from different perspectives. Psychological, sociological and organizational perspectives come under universalistic perspective. Particularistic perspective includes the human nature, the individual view about various formalities and so on. Socialization theory states that the behavior of a policeman is as a result of his encounters in his job. Predispositional theory suggests that a person is attracted to this job as a result of his attitude and values.

West ley’s study (1970) shows that the policemen followed a code of silence in talking about police misbehavior. Three styles are identified by Wilsons study (1968) – watchman, service and legalistic. Van Maanen (1973) identifies four stages that a policeman goes through in his career. The first is when he chooses this path as his career, the second the introduction, the third the experience of learning and the fourth is self-adjustment to this line of work. Crank (1998) proposes four principles of police culture - the first is the use of force, the second is being unpredictable, the third is solidarity and the last one is being innovative.

An important part of police behavior is discretion influenced by departmental variables, neighborhood variables, variables concerning the officer and so on. Police deviance includes corruption, deviance from one’s path of work, misuse of power and police crime. The Knapp Commission (of New York City Police Department) describes two types – the meat eaters who deliberately misuse power and the grass eaters who utilize the opportunities. Thus, the integral field operations and police misbehavior and conduct are summarized.

ReferencesRoberg,Roy, Novak,Kenneth, & Cordner,Gary.(2005)” Police and Society”. North Carolina: Roxbury Publishing Company