The state of policing in the United States today needs in-depth analysis. According to protesters, there have been several incidences of police brutality on innocent American citizens. The protests have been followed by widespread looting, bringing to question the real purpose of the protests. It is very ironic for the public to seek justice by looting and damaging public and private property. The police have been accused of racial profiling due to biased intuition, leading to a "Blacklivesmatter" protest that seeks justice for those who lost lives to police brutality. Civilians who have been shot by police mostly fail to cooperate. When a police officer opens an interrogation with a civilian, it is essential to cooperate as they are merely enforcing the rule of law. It is imperative to keep in mind the importance of law in a civilized society. Without laws, society, as we know it, would break down to the ground, anarchy and chaos would be the order of the day. The police have also lost their lives while on duty. Armed civilians have shot at police bringing forth an issue of a policeman's security when on duty. No one would like to go to work and report dead to their loved ones. Therefore, upon knowing that death is lurking around the corner, police take much caution daily. Considering that America has the highest number of civilians owning guns, this probably leads to paranoia in police work.
Technology is everywhere with us today, and with the advent of terrorism, it has been of great importance for bodies such as NSA to prevent and detect terror attacks right before they happen. Technology has been of fair use through interception of communication between a terrorist who was planning on taking innocent civilians' lives. Whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed the government's spying activities after previously being employed at the NSA. The exposure has triggered the debate on American citizens' privacy and made the public question its action. The truth is that there is a thin line between privacy and security. Effective policing relies on hints and suspicion, primarily preventative policing.
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Democratic policing
In the book Unwarranted: Policing without permission , Barry Friedman documents the problems ailing policing in the United States. He finds that the problem is with the people and not with the police because citizens have turned a blind eye to policing legislation. There is no specific definition of democratic policing because the definition depends on our definition of democracy (Bonner, 2019). The idea of democratic policing is in tandem with the new idea of COP (Community-Oriented Policing). COP occurs when police work hand in hand with the community and not against them. A crime commission tasked by President Johnson in the 1960s found that policing would be more efficient if the public participated more fully in law enforcement. Public participation is quite a hurdle when one considers the mistrust that some citizens have in the police.
The wounds between police and the public have to be healed for COP to work. Democratic policing is also about the public proposing changes in policing. However, there is a huge problem whereby policing is a secret. It is nearly impossible for the public to propose changes if they lack an insider view of policing. The public might pour complaints but cannot give propositions to solve problems. Trust and accountability work when there are transparency, and the public cannot trust if they believe that police hide their affairs from them. There are problems of trust in police procedures such as perjury to increase conviction of bad guys. In defense, the police claim the bad guys could walk away scot-free if the public or the court caught wind of their actions. The police have used big brother technology such as "Wolfhounds" and "Stingrays" to help their policing. However noble, prying technology has caused trust issues with the public with concerns of privacy. Police cannot disclose the legal framework supporting their use as it would beat their purpose of securing the public—the criminals would take advantage of information to be more skillful. The innocent public must understand that police need to be a step ahead of criminals and the more criminals are in the dark when it comes to investigative strategies, the more the police win the war against crime. In a democracy, people can quickly reverse the benefits of policing if they knew of investigating techniques used. Then here comes the huge dilemma that is hard to crack. The double edge of transparency; if the police are transparent, public participation can improve police; however, the same public participation could make the police weak and reduce public safety. The legislature is a tool to achieve change. That is why next, the paper discusses the role of the legislature in improving policing.
The basic building block of society is its laws. A society without laws is unfathomable. In the process of enforcing laws, there are SWAT raids that end in excessive use of force. Failed raids leave families broken due to a skewed process that is merely a standard procedure. The SWAT teams go on to get away with their actions. In every government institution, there are systems of checks and balances that help in proper management. In the police sector, the police oversee themselves. They do the checks and balances on themselves, not to imply the police are bad; however, if there is a bad crop in the system, there should be systems to keep them in check. The police oversight is lacking (De Soto, 2018). In a democratic society, the laws should be king, and neither police nor civilians should be above the law. Police laws are very general and broad. The laws declare the general police duty of preserving peace, prevent crime, detect and arrest offenders, suppress riots, mobs, and insurrections, disperse unlawful gatherings, and protect the rights of persons and properties. Given this broad responsibility, legislation should cater for specifics that include when, where, and a chain of command regarding a particular course of action. There are gaps in rulemaking that legislators should fill. However, special interests get to win, police unions are strong, and they hire the best legal advice money can buy. When it comes to lobbying, police and prosecutors prioritize their jobs and reduce legislation that stops them from doing their jobs or ties their hands. Legislators know that the public is afraid of crime, so to make sure their careers improve, they make stringent laws against crime and none that ties the police's hands. Even if the legislators were to put in oversight legislation, it would not be easy to legislate deep policing procedures.
The legislator's solution is to set up boilerplate laws that the police executives use to create more oversight details. The laws should be made public, and if they are counterproductive or harmful, they are improved. Probable cause has been a subject of argument in its ability to waste public resources in wild goose chases. The counterproductive nature of such laws, especially in this age of big data, is of concern because authorities gather more data than they can process, leading to wasted time and resources searching for probable cause (Brayne, 2019). Predictive models generated from a massive pool of data are used to predict the probability of crime happening before it does. This surveillance power still has no proper governing rules as the public has left the responsibility of oversight to judges. However, judges are also a stumbling block to police oversight despite the responsibility given to them.
In his book "Unwarranted: Policing without permission," Barry highlights instances of strip searches that minors underwent in school. Billingslea and Morgan strip-searched students and threatened them with jail terms if they did not cooperate. When judges heard the case of the students, they found that the searches violated their constitutional rights. Further, they decided they would do nothing to find anyone culpable, citing a lack of clarity in the law. If nobody is responsible for policing the police, then who will do the oversite work? This has led to the current protests experienced in the United States that make the police look bad. However, in truth, it is the lack of legislation on the appropriate use of force and de-escalation when suspects suffer from mental problems using the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model (Dempsey et al., 2019).
The case of constitutional policing
Policing practices should lean on protecting civil rights. The police ought to be the guardian rather than the warrior. In America today, police are leaning towards a warrior attitude with SWAT raids and the killing of unarmed men. Probable cause has made civilians subject to random searches, infringing the constitutional rights of citizens. When police catch drug couriers, the court requires that they give reasonable cause for stopping them. The police use the "drug courier profile" as an excuse. Profiling in America has put blacks on the receiving end leading to the "Blacklivesmatter" movement. Profiling has a high failure rate, which means that those who are found innocent are automatically victims of harassment. The law is not clear on when to stop the search. If thresh holds for hunches are reduced, then anyone becomes a suspect.
The critical concepts of policing
Civil liability
When incidences of police injustices happen, like in the killings due to excessive use of force, police scrutinize facts around the event. Camera recordings have been instrumental in such cases. The point of scrutiny is to seek the possibility of prejudice in the officer because police work is intricate due to the variations in situations that call for their attention. If persons have suffered as a result of prejudice, they are granted remuneration following a court process. However, what happens when police fail to act at all?
Failure to protect
Police are liable if they fail to protect a citizen against foreseen dangers. Witness collaborating with police are at risk of being killed or threatened by criminals. Police must protect witnesses' and informant's identities.
Duty of care
When in police custody, the police are under a legal obligation to take good care of the suspect. The police should provide medical care if necessary and generally be humane to detainees. There would be an exception to the possibility of suicide or self-harm if it were unforeseeable. The variables in policing work can be vast. One can only imagine when the suicide of a detainee was "reasonably foreseeable" through his statements or actions, and hence the police have a duty to prevent it. Jail facilities should also enable monitoring detainees, and they should be human-inhabitable, or else the detained authority is liable to any harm to the detainee. To add to the complexity of police work and responsibility is the concept of proximate cause.
Proximate cause
In police work, some criminals try to evade police through motor vehicles. There might ensue a police chase in traffic that could endanger other motorists, or the chase could end fatally in such an event. If the pursuit injures an innocent civilian, is it the responsibility of the police? If the police are negligent, prosecutors establish proximate cause.
Negligence
If a police officer conducts their duty in a manner that puts others at risk of injuries and harm, the police may be considered liable. In the cases of false imprisonment, assault and battery done by police, invasion of privacy, negligence, and malicious prosecution, litigants bring torts to court. False imprisonment occurs when a person is intentionally illegally detained. When detainees post bail or bond and police delay the release of a suspect, it amounts to false imprisonment.
Use of force
Police are allowed to use force when protecting others and themselves--this includes directives, hand grabs, and less lethal means like in protests where there is the use of chemicals. The majority of the time, the use of force depends on the circumstances and variables at play. American police have the authority to use force up to when it is lethal. However, its use must be judicial and only when necessary. In the case of power abuse, then it amounts to police brutality.
Police brutality
Use of force must be "objectively reasonable," which is challenging to constitute due to police's intricate work and unstable situations. In light of today's events where minorities claim excessive use of force on innocent civilians, the President established a Presidential Task Force on 21st Century Policing to examine the use-of-force problem. The task force found a loss of harmony in the relationship between police and communities. Police brutality ranges from verbal abuse to physical violence. Most civilians do not report brutality incidents; however, if reported, Section 1983 is an instrument that civilians can use against the police, which the next paragraph discusses, rather than seek street justice.
Section 1983
It is a piece of legislation that allows legal action against a person in a position of power that uses the authority to violate others' civil rights. Litigants take advantage of the law and sue players in vital administrative positions for vicarious liability or against the principle of respondeat superior, which is discussed below.
Vicarious liability and respondent superior
Vicarious liability is a situation where one party is held responsible for a third party's actions to whom they exercise supervision. When police chiefs give orders that result in harm to civilians, then such liability is considered.
The principle of respondeat superior provides for an employer to be responsible for the employees' irresponsible actions. Cities are sued for compensation when lives are lost to police brutality. If police agencies violate the constitution, the Department of Justice can compel such institutions to change their behavior through a consent decree. The principle is used against the negligence of officers in litigations (Hawkins, 2018).
Consent decree
It is a memorandum of agreement to bring specific change to the policing institution. The decrees provide a methodology of policing strategy that is constitutional and specific goals that have to be met (Phillips & Jiao, 2016).
Diversification of the police force
For police to win the support of the communities they serve, they could have a roster that shares demographic characteristics with the area of jurisprudence. This move could solve legitimacy issues and change the police's culture (Nowacki et al., 2019).
Conclusion
In light of American policing today, where there seems to be a deep-rooted culture of poor policing and discrimination, collaboration between citizens and police could bring down both crimes committed in the police and public crimes. Citizens should change their hearts and forgive bad history because the police's 21st-century role is not the same as what was seen before 1865 when slavery was legal. Today, everyone has the role of being their neighbor's keeper, and people should take the chance they get to join the police and collaborate with them. Minorities should join the police to represent their interests to end the outsider mentality and change the police force's culture.
References
Bonner, M. D. (2019). What democratic policing is… and is not. Policing and Society , 1-17.
Brayne, S. (2017). Big Data Surveillance: The Case of Policing. American Sociological Review, 82 (5), 977-1008. Retrieved November 27, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26426413
Dempsey, C., Quanbeck, C., Bush, C., & Kruger, K. (2020). Decriminalizing mental illness: specialized policing responses. CNS spectrums , 25 (2), 181-195.
De Soto, W. (2018). Do Police Officers in the USA Protect and Serve All Citizens Equally? Social Sciences , 7 (10), 190.
Nowacki, J., Schafer, J. A., & Hibdon, J. (2020). Workforce Diversity in Police Hiring: The Influence of Organizational Characteristics. Justice Evaluation Journal , 1-20.
Phillips, J. R., & Jiao, A. Y. (2016). Institutional isomorphism and the federal consent decree. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management .
