Issues in Policing: Professional, Social, and Legal

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Issues in Policing Professional, Social, and
Legal
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Who Are the Police?

• Demographics
• Almost all officers in early departments were
  white males tended to be recruited from working
  classes a social mobility ladder
• For past 50 years departments have made concerted
  effort to attract women and minority officers
• From 1987 to 2012 minority representation
  increased on local police departments from 14.5
  percent to 22.7 percent
• In sheriffs offices minorities increased from
  13.4 percent to 28.1 percent
• Women now comprise about 32 percent of police
  personnel

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Who Are the Police? (cont.)

• Minorities in policing
• First African American police officer hired in
  Washington, D.C. in 1861
• Earliest minorities experienced discrimination by
  other officers
• As number of minority officers increased, issue
  of discrimination have become more muted and
  subtle.

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Who Are the Police? (cont.)

• Women in policing
• Los Angeles Police appointed first woman police
  officer in 1910
• 1964, Civil Rights Act
• Today, about 32 percent of all officers are
  female, and some have reached the top
• still experience difficulties and struggle for
  acceptance by male officers
• Report higher levels of job stress than males
• Research supports females are highly successful
  in policing

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Who Are the Police? (cont.)

• Research shows that female officers differ little
  in their performance from male officers (despite
  fears form male officer)
• Are just as tough and effective as male officers
• Female officers perform somewhat better than
  males in
• Handling situations without resorting to force
• Attracting fewer complaints
• Dealing with problem populations

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Who Are the Police? (cont.)

• Minority women
• Account for less than 5 percent of police
  officers
• Report discrimination by all other officers on
  the force, including African American male
  officers
• One study found little unity among female
  officers in general
• Female minority officers subject to double
  marginality

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Who Are the Police, cont

• Gay police officers
• Great difficulty getting accepted by other male
  officers
• Have fewer legal protections against
  discrimination than minorities and women
• Can be subject to triple marginality (e.g., a
  gay, female, Hispanic officer)

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Who Are the Police? (cont.)

• Police education
• Very few agencies require a college degree
• Percent of departments requiring some college (AA
  degree) has risen from 19 percent to 37 percent
• 88 percent of departments recognize college
  education is an important element in promotion
  decisions

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Who Are the Police?

• Benefits of hiring college educated officers
• Better written reports
• Enhanced communication with the public
• More effective job performance
• Fewer citizen complaints
• Wiser use of discretion
• More sensitivity to racial issues
• Fewer disciplinary actions
• But little evidence that more formal education
  makes for more effective crime fighters

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The Police Profession

• The police occupational culture
• Experience of becoming a police officer and the
  nature of the job causes most officers to band
  together in a subculture characterized by
  attitudes which differ from other occupations
• Subculture contributes to creation of the blue
  curtain effect where officers isolate themselves
  and are isolated by others from society.

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The Police Profession (cont.)

• Core beliefs of the police subculture
• Police are the only real crime fighters.
• No one else understands the real nature of police
  work.
• Loyalty to colleagues counts above everything
  else.
• It is impossible to win the war on crime without
  bending the rules noble cause corruption
• Members of the public are basically unsupportive
  and unreasonably demanding.
• Patrol work is the pits detective work is
  glamorous and exciting.
• The police are the thin blue line.

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The Police Profession (cont.)

• The police working personality
• Occupational environment creates the working
  personality
• Cynicism, authority and control, conventionality,
  humor
• The Symbolic Assailant
• Danger is exciting
• Force is righteous
• The role of recruitment, selection, training, and
  the job have all been examined as potential
  causes.

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The Police Profession (cont.)

• Research is inconclusive as to how the police
  personality is developed or if one even exists.
• Some research indicates police are cynical,
  dogmatic, authoritarian, and suspicious.
• Other research indicates they are more
  psychologically healthy than the general
  population, less depressed, and more social.

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The Police Profession (cont.)

• Policing styles organizations
• Watchman
• Service provider
• Enforcer
• Policing styles individual
• Crime fighter
• Social agent
• Law enforcer

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Policing Styles
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The Impacts of Police Culture

• Why do beliefs and attitudes matter?
• Police culture and styles impact
• How discretion is exercised
• The incidence and prevalence of corruption
• The use of force
• View on the recruitment of minorities and women
  resistance and denial that can do the job
• Views by rank and file of superiors
• Everything that cops do

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How Do Cops make Decisions in Encounters?

• Police work under conflicting demands
• Have to balance
• Law - the latest from the courts
• Organization - what the chief wants,
  organizational rules
• Public - especially in Community Oriented
  Policing
• Peers and fellow workers advice and assistance
• Personal values and beliefs on right and wrong
• The specific characteristics of each encounter

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Police Discretion in Encounters

• Low-visibility decision making
• Legal factors
• Police discretion inversely related to severity
  of offense
• Environmental factors
• Community expectations impact the amount of
  discretion officers are expected to exercise.
• Officers who live in the community are more
  likely to adhere to community expectations than
  those who do not.

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Police Discretion (cont.)

• Departmental factors
• Organizational policies, practices, customs, and
  supervision
• Peer pressure
• What other cops would do

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Police Discretion (cont.)

• Situational factors
• Immediate interaction with offender, citizen, or
  victim
• Demeanor and behavior of person encountered
• How the encountered was entered proactive or
  reactive
• Nature of the offense
• Public or private space
• Presence of bystanders
• Reason for the encounter suspicion, probable
  crime

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Police Discretion (cont.)

• Extralegal factors Who are the police dealing
  with in encounters?
• Age
• Gender
• Income
• Race

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Police Discretion

• Racial (and other) profiling
• Using non-legal factors to shape decisions (e.g.,
  traffic enforcement)
• Whom to stop
• How to conduct the stop language
• Outcomes of the stop warning, citation, arrest
• Racial profiling it unconstitutional and illegal
• It is extremely offensive to those stopped
• Impacted by police culture prevalent in an
  organization

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Problems of Policing

• Job stress
• Complexity of the police role
• Need to exercise discretion
• Stress linked to marital disputes and domestic
  violence
• Stress can lead to alcoholism and drug use,
  depression, health problems, aggressive behavior
  towards others and self, even suicide

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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Causes of stress
• 24-hour duty
• Risk of death
• internal conflict with administrative policies
• conflict over job definitions (e.g., the utility
  of community oriented policing)
• personal lives
• poor training and substandard equipment
• inadequate pay lack of opportunity
• job dissatisfaction
• overwork and lack of sleep

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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Four categories of stressors
• External stressors
• Organizational stressors
• Duty stressors
• Individual stressors

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Problems of Policing, cont.

• Combating stress
• Less work - no second jobs, overtime
• Relaxation meditation
• Biofeedback therapy
• Stress management
• Involving family members in the process
• Male and female officers have somewhat different
  styles of dealing with stress

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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Police and violence
• Out of 45 million contacts only about 1.5 percent
  involved use or threatened use of force.
• Minorities more likely than whites to experience
  violence
• Young people (16-29) 3 times more likely to
  experience
• Most common use of force is verbal commands,
  physical restraint, pushing, or grabbing.
• Cities with large African American populations
  experience the highest amount of deadly force.

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Police use of force

• The multiple determinations when and how is force
  used by cops
• Legal restrictions Tennessee v Garner, defense
  of life principle
• Organizational rules regulations on use
• Professional ethics ladder of force
• Police culture need to control, protect, sense
  of danger, force is righteous, it works
• Peer pressures what other cops are doing
• Situational factors and assessments of persons
  encountered threat, danger
• Public demands do something, get rid of
  undesirables

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Ladder of Force
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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Problem officers
• A small proportion of officers are continually
  involved in use-of-force incidents
• Research shows a few officers are responsible for
  a significant portion of all citizen complaints
• Tend to be young, less experienced, and more gung
  ho

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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Curbing violence
• Better recruitment to weed out violence prone
  individuals
• Specialized training programs
• Use of early warning systems
• Administrative policies to limit the use of force
• Use of integrity testing programs
• Threat of civil judgments against officers and
  supervisors
• Use of non-lethal weapons (to prevent deadly
  violence)

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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Factors related to police shooting
• Perceived threat in the situation
• Immediacy of threat
• Community threat levels
• Exposure to violence
• Ambiguities in administrative policies, lack of
  training, lack of supervision
• Racial discrimination (sometimes)

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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Controlling deadly force
• Fleeing felon rule
• State laws
• Department internal reviews

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Problems of Policing, cont

• Police as victims
• About 50-60 officers are killed feloniously each
  year in the line of duty.
• About 80 die in job-related accidents across the
  country
• Citizens as victims how many people are killed
  by police?
• No accurate national statistics
• Estimates range from about 5 to 8 times as many
  people are killed by police than officers are
  killed by people
• Have to differentiate between good police
  killings and excessive force killings no
  national statistics on that either

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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Corruption
• Extent and pervasiveness of corruption is mostly
  guesswork
• Knapp Commission
• Meat eaters and grass eaters
• Mollen Commission
• Shermans Typology
• Rotten apples and rotten pockets
• pervasive unorganized corruption
• pervasive organized corruption

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Problems of Policing (cont.)

• Categories of corruption
• Gratuities and the slippery slope
• Noble cause corruption lying, violations of law
• Non-performance of duties sleeping, copping,
  avoiding work
• Material gains money, services
• Selective enforcement or non-enforcement of laws
• Extortion and active criminality (if done under
  color of law)

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Controlling Corruption

• External controls
• Civilian Review Boards
• Media attention and exposure
• Complaints and law suits
• Federal consent degrees and oversight monitors
• Internal controls
• Internal affairs units
• Administrative sanctions and controls
• Public relations offices

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Police and the law

• Law is the shield against arbitrary government
  power (Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth amendments)
• Substantive law (authorizes police power) and
  procedural, due process law (restrains the
  exercise of police power)
• Law is what the courts say retroactive (e.g.,
  exclusionary rule)
• Police culture and law law is a tool and a
  hindrance, flexible
• Law is a game how far can the police go?

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Legal Control of Policing

• 4th Amendment Search and Seizure
• All searches and seizures require probable cause.
• As a general rule searches or seizures conducted
  without a warrant are invalid.
• Warrants must be obtained from the court and be
  supported by an affidavit that establishes
  probable cause, and identify the place to be
  searched and property to be seized.
• Surveillance and the principle of curtilage and
  private space (e.g., listening in on phone
  conversation, thermal imaging, body scans require
  probable cause)

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Legal Control of Policing (cont.)

• Warrantless searches when are they legal?
• Terry stops (field interrogations, stop and
  frisk) but require reasonable suspicion
• Incident to lawful arrest
• The special case of automobiles, airports, and
  planes
• Consent
• Plain view
• Public danger
• Seizure of nonphysical evidence overhear a
  conversation

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Identification of suspects

• Pre-trial identification line ups
• Non bias
• Witness credibility
• Excessive publicity perp walk

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Legal Control of Policing (cont.)

• Custodial interrogation
• 5th Amendment
• Miranda v. Arizona, 1966 warning has to be
  given before interrogation
• Right to remain silent
• Any statements may be used in court of law
• Right to consult with an attorney and have
  present during interrogation
• If a person cannot afford an attorney, one will
  be appointed for them
• Improper gathered confessions and statements are
  generally inadmissible.

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Legal Control of Policing (cont.)

• The Miranda Rule today
• Case law has been used to define boundaries of
  Miranda and to create exceptions to its
  requirements.
• Inevitable discovery
• Public safety doctrine

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Legal Control of Policing (cont.)

• The Exclusionary Rule
• A legal rule first stated in 1914 by the Supreme
  Court to control misconduct by police officers
• All evidence obtained by unreasonable searches
  and seizures, coerced confessions or other
  violations of Constitutional rights is
  inadmissible in criminal trials
• Under the good faith exception evidence is
  admissible if the police acted in good faith on a
  warrant, even if the warrant is invalid or out of
  date.

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Legal Control of Policing (cont.)

• Critics argue exclusionary rule allows guilty to
  go free.
• Research shows less than 1 percent of cases are
  dismissed because of the rule.
• Alternatives to Exclusionary Rule
• Administrative policies which support good police
  work and sanction bad work
• Criminal prosecution of officer who violate
  constitutional rights
• Internal police control
• Civil lawsuits against state or municipal
  officers
• Federal lawsuits against the local government
• Contingent exclusionary rule

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END