Hi everyone! As I mentioned briefly in the last post, this week I will be addressing the history of policing in the U.S., the connection of that to modern policing, and issues with the systems that are currently in place. Most of this information will be from Chapter 5 of the textbook Introduction to Criminal Justice, by Kenneth J. Peak and Tamara D. Madensen-Herold. I provided a link to the online textbook, but it can only be accessed if you have bought the textbook (I included the link purely for credit/informational purposes; don’t go buying the textbook or anything).

As for the history of policing, the earlier eras of this occupation were characterized by immense corruption and disorganization. First, the Political Era of policing stretched from the 1840s to the 1930s. In 1844, New York state legislature established a full-time preventive police force for New York City as a result of all the crime happening there. However, at this time, politics was a heavy factor in determining which people could become part of the police force. Politicians had the freedom to back whatever potential applicants they wanted to, and knowing or being associated with a politician put applicants in a higher position on the list of recruits.

Secondly, there was the reform era, which lasted from the 1930s to the 1980s. This era was an attempt to reject political involvement in the police, and it was also characterized by an increase in the “crime fighter” image of policing. A greater emphasis was placed on numbers and statistics (such as arrests, citations, and response times) for tracking police progress. Formal police schools were developed, and improvements were made to the overall police organization. This era was the start to reducing police corruption, but there were still many issues.

Finally came the community era, which has lasted from the 1980s to the present day. In this era, more emphasis is being placed on practicing community policing and problem solving. Officers have been retrained to work with the community to solve problems, by looking at underlying causes and developing tailored responses to them. Currently in policing, the problem is no longer really related to organization; it is about implicit bias that comes with the nature of police work.

As we can see based on the history and organization of police, the roles of policing in society have changed over time with the development of different strategies and approaches. As a result, the current state of policing is actually an improvement from what it was before. There is obviously a lot more work to be done, with corruption and bias being ever present, but today’s community era in policing has seen major improvements in overall organization, minimization of corruption, and approaches and responses to fighting crime.

A major point of tension between the police and the community today is how policing involves protecting the community while also keeping themselves safe, but methods of doing this are often biased by nature. What I mean by this is that police have a responsibility to protect citizens first and themselves second, and they protect citizens and themselves by staying vigilant and keeping an eye out for suspicious characters or behavior **this is where I get into tricky/controversial territory, so bear with me**. This sometimes means that police utilize racial profiling. Statistically, African Americans are disproportionately represented in committing violent crimes, compared to their percentage of the population. This means that generally, African Americans commit a higher percentage of violent crime compared to their percentage in the population. According to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2018, African Americans represented 12.5% of the population, but they were responsible for 33% of the nonfatal violent crimes. On the other hand, white people were underrepresented in the percentage of nonfatal violent crimes compared to their population (45.9% compared to 60.4%). You would expect the percentage of population to be proportionate to the amount of violent crime committed, but that is not the case here.

Therefore, it may be relatively understandable why police search, seize, and arrest black people at higher rates (compared to their populations) than white people. It is merely because statistics show higher proportions of violence for black people, and therefore, police have a responsibility to be vigilant and proactive to protect everyone. I am not saying that it is necessarily right to racially profile people, because in instances where there is no clear sign of danger or threat, there obviously is no reason to do so. However, if there is a perceived threat or an appearance of suspicious behavior, police may be warranted in looking into that out of necessity. (Please feel free to disagree by the way. The nature of this is that it’s an issue, and it’s an issue because it’s controversial. Therefore, I’m open to disagreement)

Welcome back everyone! I hope you all had a successful week and that those who moved on campus were able to do so smoothly. So I want to touch on something briefly right now, which I forgot to mention in my Civic Issues #1 post: I am interested in looking at policing as a civic issue because I am a criminology major. A lot of the material I learn in Crim is related to the criminal justice system, the make-up of that system, and reasons that people commit crime, so it’s closely aligned with the policework-related stuff that I will be talking about on here. Therefore, when I’m talking about things I’ve learned in my crim class, that information will be relatively unbiased unless I state otherwise. Disclaimer: today’s post might be a little biased due to the nature of the topic.

In this post, I feel that it is very important for me to talk about a discussion I observed during my Crim100 course on Thursday. I will be giving my take on the issue that was discussed, as well as giving a take from a couple other sources. For the next Civic Issues post (this is sort of a note to myself as well as to you guys), I will get more into the structure of police organization, from local all the way up to federal, and discuss the things that should maybe be changed about these systems.

Yesterday during my Introduction to Criminal Justice course (Crim100), we were talking about ethics in the criminal justice system, specifically in policing, and also about how police have a great deal of discretion in their actions [I learned about police discretion through my textbook, but here is a link to another site about police discretion]. Since police have so much discretion in the things they do, such as search and seizures, traffic stops, and arrests, their possible internal biases can lead to instances of perceived racism.

Naturally then, this led to a discussion on the current state of policework and the social movements that oppose it. An argument erupted in the chat because somebody (a student who happened to be in the Military Police branch of the Army) stated that police are essential to society, and there would be chaos without some sort of organized policing system. He also stated that police brutality against minorities is not actually a problem; it’s just a political tactic. This caused many counterarguments to surface, stating that the black community is actually disproportionately represented in matters of police violence and deadly force compared to the white community. According to the website Mapping Police Violence, Black people represented 13% of the U.S. population in 2020, but represented 28% of those killed by police. In addition, they were about 3 times more likely to be killed by police than white people were. These statistics suggest that police brutality against the black community is, in fact, an actual problem that needs to be addressed.

Now, I generally have a very moderate point of view on most political issues, and that stands true for this topic also. To a certain extent, I am agreeable towards both sides of this controversy, but there are also some undeniable faults on both sides. On one hand, those who support police in this ordeal must admit that SOME police are wrong in their actions. An important part of reaching some sort of compromise or agreement on this issue is for people on that side to accept that systemic racism is present in the criminal justice system, and that it’s a huge factor in the unethical and questionable actions of some police. They also must admit that, although police are still essential to the progression and continuation of society, so is the elimination/reduction of that racism.

On the other hand, those who oppose police and support minority communities must accept that police ARE essential to society. In my opinion, we cannot get rid of them or defund them, because we need them for society to be successful.

Ultimately, this discussion from my crim class brought light to the continued disagreeable nature of the U.S.’s political climate, but it opened up an opportunity for an interesting and relevant post about the differing opinions on the role of police in society.

Welcome to my new Civic Issues blog! For last week’s RCL post, I wrote a little bit about civic issues and political discourse, but in this blog I will be introducing a specific topic and going into that a little bit deeper. The category that I have chosen to talk about for these blogs is social services. I think this field is particularly interesting because it involves government provided services that are meant to assist the public and benefit society. Social services encompass things like education, food assistance, fire services, police, adoption, and education. Although the intentions with these services are often admirable, it seems that often, especially recently, there is a lot of controversy and problems surrounding them. I will be talking about the specifics and controversies of one area in social services: policing.

I have chosen to talk about policing for my civic issues topic because I find the controversies that have emerged with police work to be quite interesting. In addition, I have a bit of a vested interest because I was a part of the police explorers program in my community throughout high school. I was instructed by police officers in this program; I got to experience and practice the nuances of police work, and I learned about their procedures, regulations, and tactics. Therefore, I am looking forward to delving deeper into policework as a civic controversy and learning about the place of it in society.

Since this is just an introductory post, I will not be going into any specifics on policing, but I will explain some basics on the social function of police and address certain issues that have been going on related to that topic. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the police are “the department of government concerned primarily with maintenance of public order, safety, and health and enforcement of laws and possessing executive, judicial, and legislative powers”. It also defines police as “the department of government charged with prevention, detection, and prosecution of public nuisances and crimes”

With these definitions in mind, I will now address what I feel is the function of police in society. I believe the police serve to keep social order and protect citizens from each other and themselves. People are not capable of functioning as a society without two things: first, rules and regulations on what they can and cannot do; and second, a system for enforcing these rules and regulations. Without police, crime would run rampant in society, and society would be dangerous as a whole with criminals running freely. Overall, the primary goal for police is to regulate crime and keep people safe. Admittedly, though, just as there are bad people in every field of work, there are some police with bad intentions and questionable behaviors. This leads us into the topic of recent controversies over police.

As we all know, there has been a great deal of conflict in the last year or so regarding events of police officers killing seemingly innocent citizens and minority individuals. As a result, the two main political parties have experienced further division, as they have split into two competing social movements: the Black Lives Matter movement and the Blue Lives Matter movement. I spoke a little about this in my RCL #1 post last week, but ultimately this division has caused further hostility between the Democrats and Republicans and fostered hatred towards the police. The Black Lives Matter movement (and the branches off of that, such as ACAB) has called for reforms of the police system in order to fix the inadequacies that allow systemic racism. In addition, the BLM movement has pushed towards the idea of defunding police. These conflicts display that many people are unhappy with the police services; therefore, there is definitely room for reform in this branch of the social services.