Introduction
The police officers in the United States are continually facing a lot of poor treatment as an action that comes due to their approach to multiple issues in society. Similar to other nations, America has multiple crime problems, and this includes the prevention of terrorist activities in their countries, monitoring the movement of people in and out of the country due to displacements that come about because of climate change, poverty, and violence, responding to different technological and economic crimes and racism (Tuttle et al., 2019). The role of this paper is to illustrate the reasons for the poor treatment of police officers in the United States
Literature Review
It is police officers' role to respond to these problems as they are sworn to serve and protect. However, while they operate in their activities and engage in different peacekeeping works, they are treated poorly by the public and their media. This mostly comes from the way they respond to societal problems. The United States has currently faced a wave of protests that come about because of racial injustice that has been perpetrated against African American people. This included unfair arrests, police killings, and unfair treatment in different areas of the public. These racial injustices are seen to be pushed on by police officers due to their activities in their responses. The recent killing of George Floyd was done by police officers recorded by the public in the act. Such acts portray police officers as racist and bring out the systemic racism present in the system.
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The portrayal of the police officers in such views brings a negative perception in public, and it instigates the negative treatment of the police officers in public. Currently, the public views police officers as a group of racist individuals. This means that while they are required to serve and protect all people equally, they single out certain groups and focus on treating them negatively. The public's response is a similar negative treatment where police cars and police stations were set on fire during the protests. The governments also responded to requests by the public to defund the police. Such actions greatly affect the police officers and place them in danger where they must respond to crime, and defunding limits their resources to do so.
Additionally, contemporary policing is marked by uncertainty and diversification of crime control problems in the current social and cultural climate. Before policing models could be focused on stable and relatively known categories of offenders and offenses, the new problems have continually evolved depending on different economic, technological, social, and political factors. They need new skills and innovative and flexible approaches, which require great funding (Tuttle et al., 2019).
Furthermore, the police have also been greatly affected by the new paradigm-changing their effectiveness and relevance, which are the main crime control agents. Police officers have continually dominated the change and delivery of current control of crime approaches. Changes in regulation and governance in society have instigated the privatization and pluralization of policing efforts and increased regulatory and administrative agencies' increase in their prevention and crime control approaches. Despite the promise of community and problem orientation and different innovative and problem-oriented policing models, the police have been subjugated and displaced by different nodes and agents of crime control.
Furthermore, Morrison (2017) illustrates that American police officers must play an essential role in responding to society's different problems and other antisocial behavior. Such roles respond to the threats of security challenges and social cohesion problems instead of external threats (Morison, 2017). The presence of different communities and the increased diversity puts the police in an awkward position where their response to crime is sometimes classified as systemic racism. This means that police officers present in different forms of infrastructure and social service have been continually marked as racist, ensuring that they are treated negatively by the communities they are supposed to serve and protect (Peterson & Uhnoo, 2012).
Police officers are also treated poorly due to the response concerning active shooters. Police officers are often expected to act in the absence of hesitation in their response to active shooter response. In multiple cases, the government and the public are quick to praise officers in their response to threats without looking at their safety, and they are mostly criticized when they are not able to respond quickly to prevent loss of life and to stave off injury (Sousa et al., 2016). The poor treatment evolves when police officers are seen to kill individuals. The public is quick to reprimand officers when they murder individuals that would have been a threat to their lives, often illustrating that there should have been better ways to respond to such threats, which is not always the case. The public should understand that while they are sworn to serve and protect people in public, they would not be able to dispense these services if they cannot protect themselves.
Police officers have transparency issues in terms of their records. All the communication made by the police officers is often a public record, and they can be accessed at need. There are no set protections to prevent public servants' access to information in the scope and course of duty (Peterson & Uhnoo, 2012). The courts are moving to ensure that all information between police officers are public records despite the source. This means that reasonable expectations of privacy are continually turning obsolete. Multiple devices are created to ensure that all information is taken in. in this approach, the provision of privacy to police officers is not being given, which means that several problems arise in line with them (Sousa et al., 2016). The provision of unlimited information may lead to police officers' mistreatment since they sometimes do not show both sides of the story. The use of webcams and other communication sources may incite different blame and lawsuits where all sides of the story are not considered.
The recruitment process is also an avenue through which officers are treated badly. There are several problems associated with finding new police recruits and retaining experienced officers in hiring strategies. This means that most of the good candidates are disqualified. This leads to the absorption of individuals that break the law and commit crimes after they are vetted. Several candidates are seen to be unqualified and could have made better officers than the ones that have been selected. Such approaches greatly affect the force and bring about a negative perception in the force (Hoggett et al., 2019). Such negative biases greatly determine the treatment of the public towards the police officers. There is a need to answer different questions, and it is essential to monitor screening processes. Creating a well-developed recruitment process will help the police force recruit qualified officers that will serve and protect. This will do away with discrimination that is perpetrated by rogue police officers. It will also reduce the amount of crime carried out by officers.
Sanctuary and immigration laws greatly affect police officers. Several laws have been created, and these undermine federal laws. They greatly affect police officers' operation, which may increase suits against police officers, which is poor treatment of the officers and affects how they operate (Morison, 2017). This, however, can be avoided by ensuring that there is proper documentation of different situations such as releases, detentions, and arrests. Proper public education on the laws' limitations under different court orders and applicable laws is also a good start.
References
Hoggett, J., Redford, P., Toher, D., & White, P. (2019). Challenges for police leadership: Identity, experience, legitimacy, and direct entry. Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology , 34 (2), 145-155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-018-9264-2
Morison, K. P. (2017). Hiring for the 21st-century law enforcement officer: Challenges, opportunities, and strategies for success.
Peterson, A., & Uhnoo, S. (2012). Trials of loyalty: Ethnic minority police officers as ‘outsiders’ within a greedy institution. European journal of criminology , 9 (4), 354-369. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370812447266
Sousa, W. H., Coldren Jr, J. R., Rodriguez, D., & Braga, A. A. (2016). Research on body-worn cameras: Meeting the challenges of police operations, program implementation, and randomized controlled trial designs. Police Quarterly , 19 (3), 363-384. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098611116658595
Tuttle, B. M., Blumberg, D. M., & Papazoglou, K. (2019). Critical challenges to police officer wellness. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice . https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.538
