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.
I like how you gave context to police and how everything has unraveled. The controversy of police can be a touchy subject. The people we were to told that will protect us from the bad guys are capable of heinous acts because they are just human after all. I look forward to seeing more of this since I am not too informed about police and the requirement and police’s impact on communities. If I may suggest, maybe touch on statistics of police in black/low income or poverished communities and its connection to how that impacts the way the police treat and handle situations. And to extent how low income communities are then force to face the brutality since they are under constant eye of the police.
In the whirlwind of political events that has happened in the last 8 months, the Black Lives Matter and controversy about the police seem to have happened SO long ago. Further, it never really came to a resolution. So I’m glad that you’re not forgetting about this like a lot of the media and general public have. I like that you stayed really unbiased as you introduced everything to us – definitions, their function, societal contexts. There are so many different aspects and layers to this issue – are all cops bad? What exactly needs reform? How much force is too much? Is there identifiable bias when it comes to police brutality? This is absolutely a complex topic so I’m definitely interested to see what all you write about for the rest of the semester!
I think that this is a really good introductory post that establishes some key ideas for your blog posts going forward. Like in one of the above comments, I agree that policing can be a sensitive topic. I agree with you in that there is clearly room for reform especially given the events of the last year. However, personally, I think that I have been able to learn more during the past year and the more I learn, the more I realize that this has not just been an issue in the past year. I think that there is a fundamental issue in the system to have created the environment that we are in today, and this needs to be addressed by more people in a unbiased way like you have taken in your blog post. While the events of the past year have been horrible, I think that the added pressure and attention on reforms to the police system are important if they are ever going to actually address the issues. Also, I think your perspective given your involvement in that program is interesting. My mother is a lawyer and father is a court officer, so I grew up around police officers and like you mentioned I was taught that they were there to protect me. But no matter how we were raised, I think it is crucial to be able to look at the current situation for what it is and how it desperately needs to be improved from a perspective like you did. I am looking forward to reading your posts.