Police and Corruption

Police and Corruption

The police. Twenty-four hours a day, three hundred sixty-five days a

year, this division of our government has a mandate to enforce the criminal law

and preserve public peace. Understood in this mandate is an obligation to

police everyday life matters that originate in the daily lives and activities of

citizens within their community. Police interact in some form with the average

citizen more often than any other government official. In society today the

police play a key role in maintaining a civil society. This role assumes a

substantial amount of power and authority over the general public. With power

comes corruption and/or misuse of power. The question that is presented is,

how and why do the police exceed the parameters of their power and authority?

This is an issue that is predominant in urban settings, but not

exclusive to these settings. This is an important issue because it affects all

people. The police is a government service to all people, but all people do not

feel they are being serviced. Not everyone is satisfied with the conduct of the

police. Why do people feel that police are crossing boundaries that they should

not be? This will be observed from four different aspects in which police are

capable of exceeding the parameters of their power and authority: police and

use of discretionary enforcement, “Police justice”, police harassment, and the

unwarranted use of police authority.

Police are allowed to and must use personal discretion in their

determination of law enforcement. Unlike a judge or lawyer a police officer can

not gather information and take time to make a prognosis to make a decision

affecting the fate of a person. He must make a quick decision based on his

discretion to determine the fate of a person.. “...a quick decision is required

to protect the interests of the public and to satisfy requirements of operating

efficiency” (Reiss, p.130) Now we are telling officer to not enforce the law,

but to determine the law.

A policeman's discretionary decision may then be evaluated by others

both inside and outside of the department. This is the cause for a further

complication in the processes because in order to avoid criticism the police

officer then might use his own sense of justice. This “police justice” is

basically having the officer conduct his own trial. Th...

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they received from citizens. Thirty percent felt that the average citizen in

their patrol held the police in some degree of contempt. Nineteen percent felt

that most people in the precinct generally look at the police as enemies. Also

one third of the police in the study frequently stop people to question or frisk

them, which is seen by most citizens as suspicion of crime. This may have

something to do with why so many of the police officers felt the citizens

resented them.(More, p.120)

The best way to study these issues of whether the police exceed the

parameters of their power and authority would be to conduct a survey of citizens,

because the general population is who the police have power and authority over.

Who else would know better if the police were servicing their communities in the

manner in which is expected.

When police take too much power of the criminal justice system into

their own hands they are damaging society. They are splitting society into the

people who are policed for, and the people who are policed against. The police

that abuse their power and authority are no longer enforcing justice, but are

making it just to obey force.