One of the areas of police departments have been deficient in is addressing the issue of use of deadly forces, especially when dealing with peaceful protesters. Often, peaceful protesters encounter police officers in full riot gear, including shields, batons, and helmets, who surround and trap the protesters before beating and shoving them to the ground (Smith, 2011). Such police responses occur in the U.S. cities whenever people protest over an unaddressed societal problem, such as racism. However, police departments have done little to discourage their officers from using excessive force when facing peaceful protesters.
To address the issue of police brutality, police departments should educate their officers about the need to apply proportional force when quelling protests. The education should be centered o the police misconduct provision, which makes it illegal for police officers to engage in patterns of actions that deprive citizens of their rights that are protected under the Constitution ( Merjian, 2009) . The conducts covered under this provision include use of excessive force, false arrests, and unlawful stops, searches, and arrests.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The second area that police departments have failed to concentrate on is improving the relations between the police officers and the communities they serve. Poor police-community relations exist because law enforces do not understand the desires, problems, and goals of communities, especially those which are experiencing socio-economic challenges like crime, homelessness, racism, and poverty (Smith, 2011). Also, police departments tend to harbor contrasting perspectives and poor communication and these imped the officers from understand the methods of social control that are appropriate in a free society. When police officers’ actions are perceived to be antagonistic to the desires and perspective of the community, discontent and dissention thrives and police-community relations deteriorate.
Police-community relations can be improved through problem-centered policing. In this case, police work with the communities they serve to formulate solutions to crimes ( Merjian, 2009) . Also policing by objectives is a strategy that involves holding consultative forums between police and communities to discuss crime-related problems and solutions. The operations of police departments should be informed by the notion that what members of the community need is to have their concerns addressed, to be given a voice, and to be treated with respect. In addition, the citizens want to be reassured that police departments and officers are sincere and unbiassed and that care about the well-being of the community.
Police departments in the U.S. have also fallen short of addressing the menace of abuse of discretion. Officers abuse discretion when they make policing decisions in bad faith in order to achieve personal or professional goals ( Merjian, 2009) . Discretion, for example, may lead police officers to summarize statements with bias, focus on guilt-finding, rather than truth-finding, fabricate evidence, and handle evidence poorly or refuse to present evidence. Abuse of police discretion has led to many innocent people being apprehended and prosecuted.
Abuse of discretion thrives because most police officers work without supervision for large amount of their day. Thus, the remedy to abuse of discretion would be assigning more experienced superiors to patrol officers to provide supervision on the streets. Abuse of police discretion can also be curbed through policies that clarify the officers’ roles, operational procedures, protocols, and responsibilities that should be observed when police officers are handling suspected criminals or offenders ( Merjian, 2009) . Emphasis should be placed on the use of discretion only to identify and sieve cases that are important and that deserve investigation because this is a good way to make police departments efficient.
Reference
Merjian, A. H. (2009). Anatomy of a Wrongful Conviction: State V. Dedge and what it tells us about our Flawed Criminal Justice System. U. Pa. JL & Soc. Change , 13 , 137.
Smith, D. J. (2011). Reforming Criminal Justice System: A Pragmatic Approach to Building a Sustainable System. Thesis. Master of Arts, Political Science- Public Administration.
