The two primary
failings of the law enforcement community in America are the
tolerance of an increasing regulatory state which pits the line
officer against the average citizen, and the utter failure to hold
public officials liable for both criminal
acts and violations of oath of office. A third failure of agencies
is the reluctance to confront a biased media when news outlets
present a narrative that lacks crucial facts in incidents the police
deal with. Silvergate discusses the continuing proliferation of
"crimes" that have been invented by bureaucrats over the
last 30 years, including "crimes" that are based upon
regulations rather than on the Constitutional process of law-making.
Policing these “ crimes” puts policemen into conflict with the
average citizen, not with criminals. In recent riots, the governor
of Missouri, Jay Nixon, and the Mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie
Rawlings-Blake, allowed rioters to attack citizens and police and to
destroy property. Rawlings-Blake even
stated she was giving rioters “space to destroy” (Chuck, 1015,
para. 3). Both these politicians should have been arrested for
failure to perform their duty. Finally, we have seen the media report
on use of force incidents and selectively choose
which facts are made public, and which aren't. Ferguson and
McKinelly demonstrate that these portrayals
consistently leave out the facts which
justify the policeman's actions.
The major
challenges for American law enforcement lay in the resolution of the
issues discussed above. The system of checks and balances in the
American governing system are sometimes vague about who has the
responsibility for correcting issues such as nonfeasance and
malfeasance; there are multiple studies done about police corruption
and abuse of authority, but there is an
almost nonexistent body of research
regarding the punishment of elected officials that abuse the system.
Finally, there is a problem with a lack of resources in many
jurisdictions that can affect police
efficiency, To meet these challenges, sworn officers and support
personnel throughout the entire American
security community must confront both the propaganda of the press and
the malfeasance of the politicians with courage, public debate, and
when the law has been violated, with handcuffs.
Other countries
face the same types of issues. England has
a similar problem in that public officials have abandoned
their duty to protect the public. In Rotherham, Muslim men raped
approximately 1,400 children over a period of 16 years, but the
politicians and bureaucrats protected the
offenders instead of the community “for reasons of political
expediency and ideology, unwilling to confront the fact that the
abusers were of Pakistani heritage” (Manzoor, 2014, para.5) .
Indian police must deal with a culture of corruption in their
political system. Canada suffers from scarcity of public resources.
Progression
of organization has always been a matter of stops and starts. This
is due to competing factors. Growth theory suggests that as
organizations grow, they focus more on protecting the organization
than on achieving the mission. Once the rot in an organization
degrades mission effectiveness to a certain point, there will be a
demand for reform. In addition, organizations that are dedicated to
the mission will seek out ways to improve efficiency. Finally, the
politics model suggests that political interests can advance or
hinder the evolution and efficiency of
policy operations.
Law enforcement
may have evolved for the better had criminal justice professionals
been more perceptive of the “poverty pitfall” of Chicago School
sociologists and taken steps to prevent it's influence from taking
hold in law enforcement policies, “Poverty Pitfall” is the term
that I use to describe the fallacy of the
concept that poverty causes crime. This is a prima facie
fallacy. There is crime in communist countries where everyone is
“equal”; rich people commit crime;
middle class people commit crime. The concept fails the test of
logic. Policing in this country could have
been much worse had the law enforcement community not evolved
from the Political Model ( which is
different than the term used previously) to the Professional Model.
The overall success
this country has had in professional policing is often hidden behind
the front page stories of police acting “badly”; these stories
typically omit the facts that would counter
the headline.
References
Chuck, E. (2015,
April 28). Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake under fire for
'space' to destroy comment. NBC News. Retrieved June 17, 2015 from
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/baltimore-unrest/mayor-stephanie-rawlings- blake-under-fire-giving-space-destroy-baltimore-n349656
Manzoor, S. (2014,
September 15). The England that is forever Pakistan: Multiculturalism
and rape in Rotherham. The New York Times. Retrieved June 17, 2015
from
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/opinion/multiculturalism-and-rape-in- rotherham.html
Silverglate, H. (2013). Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target
the Innocent. Encounter Books.
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