Walker, Samuel Introduction to Law Enforcement

1. Introduction to Law Enforcement
Norwalk Community College
Gregory L. Riley, Sr., Instructor
“The Police In America, An Introduction”
9th Edition
Samuel Walker & Charles M. Katz, Authors

2. Why Do We Have Police
• Controlling Crime
• Maintaining Order
• Providing Miscellaneous
Services
• All laws cannot be enforced.
• The police solve this dilemma
by using their discretion not to
enforce all the laws all the
time. (p.3)

3. President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
• The Task Force framework
addressed the following issues:
• A democratic police
• A legitimate police
• An open and transparent police
• An accountable police
• An effective police (p. 4)

4. A Democratic Police
• Democracy and the police
means that the police are
both answerable to the
people and accountable to
the people they serve. (p.5)

5. President’s Task Force recommendations for
“A Democratic Police”
• Holding public meetings with residents
• Conducting surveys of the public they serve
• Making official policies and procedures
publicly available, on their websites
• Establishing some form of civilian oversight
of the police (p. 5)

6. Democracy and
Accountability
Public control of the police has its
dangers. The worst case involves policing
in the southeastern United States, during
the slave era and Reconstruction, when
the police and the entire criminal justice
system were used to maintain a racial
caste system.
In 2014, a federal investigation of
the events in Ferguson, Missouri found
that the elected officials were using the
police to generate revenue to support the
city’s budget. (p. 5)

7. A Legitimate Police
• Legitimacy means more than just the police following the rule
of law.
• It means that the people they serve have trust and
confidence in them.
• Trust that comes from respectful treatment.
• Trust that the police are conducting themselves in a lawful
manner.
• Confidence that they are controlling crime and disorder
effectively. (p. 7)

8. President’s Task Force for
“A Legitimate Police”
• A “guardian” mindset is the opposite of the
“warrior” mindset, in which police officers
see their work as combat and too often
view members of the public as the
“enemy.”
• A police officer’s mission is that of a
guardian: to protect. The rules of
engagement evolve as the incident unfolds.
Soldiers must follow orders. Police must
make independent decisions.
• Guardians are members of the community,
protecting from within. (p. 7)

9. A Guardian Mindset
• A guardian mindset involves cultivating trust and
legitimacy in the police.
• A guardian mindset is being open and
transparent about police activities.
• A guardian mindset is holding both the
organization and individual officers accountable.
• A guardian mindset is about adopting recognized
best practices from around the country in order
to be effective in controlling crime and maintain
order. (p. 7)

10. Procedural
Justice
• In dealing with an organization, people
are concerned not just what happens to
them but also with how they are treated.
• In policing, this means the difference
between getting a traffic ticket and how
the officer acted: for example, being
rude, being polite, not answering the
person’s questions, explaining the reason
for the stop, and so on. (p. 7)
• “The public confers legitimacy only on
those whom they believe are acting in
procedurally just ways.” President’s Task
Force

11. Legitimacy, Trust,
and Race Relations
President’s Task Force
recommends that “law
enforcement agencies should
strive to create a workforce that
contains a broad range of diversity
including race, gender, language,
life experience, and cultural
background to improve
understanding and effectiveness
in dealing with all communities.
(p. 9)

12. An Open and
Transparent Police
• Openness and
transparency involves
police explaining to
the public what they
do and how they
handle certain critical
situations. (p. 10)

13. Practices That Create Openness & Transparency
• Law enforcement agencies should make all department policies
available for public review and post on the department’s website
information about stops, summonses, arrests, reported crime, and
demographics.
• Schedule regular forums and meetings
• Engage community members in officer training
• Report and make available data on the composition of their
departments including race, gender, age, and other demographic data
• Officers identify themselves by their full name, rank, command and
provide that information in writing to individuals they have stopped
(p. 11)

14. An Accountable
Police
Accountability is one of the
basic elements of a
democratic police.
The use of force by police
officers is a critically
important issue with regard
to accountability.
(p. 12)

15. Police Have Extraordinary Powers
1) The power to stop and detain
people on the street
2) The power to conduct a frisk or
a search of a person or vehicle
3) The power to arrest
4) The power to take someone’s
life

16. President’s Task Force recommendation on
Use-Of-Force
• Police department policies on the use of force need to cover
when and in what circumstances officers are authorized to
use force, including both deadly physical force and physical
force; training that ensures all officers know their
department’s use-of-force policy; procedures for thoroughly
and fairly investigating use-of-force incidents to determine
whether an officer acted according to the department’s
policy; and mandatory use-of-force reports to facilitate
investigations and to permit the department to identify
problems that need to be corrected. (p. 13)

17. Systemic Bias
• A pervasive pattern of
discrimination against
members of a particular
group within an
organization. (p. 579)

18. Unconscious Bias
• This involves officers
acting on the basis of
deeply embedded
stereotypes about
racial or ethnic groups,
involvement in crime,
or the perceived
“dangerousness” of
certain people. (p. 16)

19. Citizen Oversight:
Two Basic Forms
1. Complaint review boards investigate citizens
complaints, determine the disposition of the
complaint (sustained, not sustained, or
unfounded), and make recommendations to
the police chief for action.
2. Police auditors or inspector general, do not
investigate complaints but instead are
designed to investigate the policies and
practices of the police department for the
purpose of identifying problems that exist
and recommending improvement. (p. 17)

21. The Complex Responsibilities of the Police
• Three major
responsibilities:
1) Controlling crime
2) Maintaining
Order
3) Provide services
to the public (p.
17)
• The most enduring myth is that the police
are primarily crime fighters, devoting most
of their efforts to patrolling neighborhoods
to deter crime, investigating crimes, and
arresting criminals.
• The reality of police is very different from
that. The crime-fighter image does not
represent an accurate picture of the reality
of police work. (p. 18)

22. Crime-Fighter Image
• Studies of 911 calls & direct
observations of police patrol
work have established that a
vast majority of police work
involves order maintenance &
peacekeeping.
• Crime related calls represent
19% of all 911 calls for service.

23. The End