The Place of Public Police in Contemporary Security - Essay Example

Running Head: The Place of Public Police in Contemporary Security THE PLACE OF PUBLIC POLICE IN CONTEMPORARY SECURITY Institution: Date: Introduction The term Police refers to a governmental organization charged with the responsibility of maintaining law and order in society. They are given the power to enforce the law, protect people and property and control civil unrest. The carrying out of these assigned functions is known as policing. In order to carry out these functions effectively, the Police are empowered to use reasonable force to enforce the law especially when they meet resistance. Since they are state organizations, the Police are usually empowered through training in the use of combat methods, arms and hi tech communication and transport equipment. The term derives from the French word Polis which means polite and the Latin term Politia which refers to Public Administration (Walker, 1977). In contemporary society, Police still play an important role in primarily maintaining law and order but they have also been assigned other duties including controlling the flow of persons at disaster sites and carrying out first aid. Another change has come about because of the fact the citizens have over the years taken the responsibility of ensuring their own security through private security firms and vigilante groups formed to protect neighborhoods (Neocleous, 2004). The aim of this paper is to discuss the place of the role of Policing within the context of this rapidly changing modern society. The paper concludes by stating that the role of the police is still important today though like all other organizations, the Police need to change constantly to cope with modern emergent forms of crime. Policing in Modern Society Preventive Policing Roles of the Police today vary from country to country or state to state in federal nations. However, there are certain basic roles that have remained constant over the years. One of these roles is preventive policing. This involves the deterrence of people from possibly committing crimes and responding to emergencies to rescue those in distress. It also involves avoiding escalation of situations where crime has been committed through timely interventions to arrests criminals or stopping a crime in progress (Neocleous, 2004). Preventive policing is typically carried out by uniformed Police personnel in uniform who carry out foot patrols popularly known as beats; vehicular patrol on streets and highways; boat patrols on water bodies and beaches; and even aerial patrols in helicopters and planes. In any Police Force uniformed officers are usually form the majority of the personnel (Siegel, 2005). Investigations However, preventive policing alone cannot succeed in controlling crime and serving the other purposes of the Police. The other role of the Police is to carry out investigations. An investigation is a systematic inquiry aimed at established the manner in which a crime was committed and the persons responsible. The aim of investigations is to find out the persons responsible for crimes already committed so as to bring them to book. Since criminals tend to grow in crime becoming more sophisticated and dangerous with time, it is a bad idea to let any crime go unpunished as the criminals only grow bolder. Being able to arrest and have them punished whenever possible also helps to grow the confidence of the public in the Police force (Siegel, 2005). Investigations have over the years developed into a highly sophisticated field in which a wide spectrum of specialists on a variety of subjects from within and without the police force are called upon to assist. Among the active departments are forensics laboratories which help in identifying links between sometimes very tiny shreds of evidence to accused persons. Forensic science or forensics refers to the application of a collection of sciences to answer questions before a legal system; be it in relation to a criminal or a civil action. It generally encompasses accepted scientific methodology and norms such that facts regarding an event, artifact or item are ascertained to be the case. It therefore helps in the authentication of allegations made about such items before a court of law (Embar-seddon, & Pass, 2008). From a crime scene items such as body hair, pieces of clothing and even mud from shoes may be chemically marched with those on the accused thus linking them to the scene of crime. Criminals have become more sophisticated thus they rarely leave behind obvious evidence such as finger prints at the scene. Consequently, the police also have no choice but look for what may be overlooked by the criminals (Siegel, 2005). Obviously the main method of investigations has always been asking questions. Potential witnesses are interviewed to help gather information that fall into a sequence logical enough to convince a court of law about the authenticity of the evidence given and its direct relation to the alleged crime. If the time sequence of the narrated events for example does not make logical sense then the evidence can be trashed by judge or jury as being irrelevant, false or farfetched. In modern policing plea bargaining is also used at the court level where an accused regarded as the lesser criminal is given incentives such as a lighter sentence than he deserves or even freedom in exchange to given a confession to implicate a greater criminal. Investigations may also involve delving into classified state records where such classification is used by state agents to cover up crimes committed. The confusion here arises from the fact that the police who are one arm of the government are investigating another arm of government. Where that arm of government is the police force, then it becomes a case of the police investigating itself. Such contradictions have often resulted in massive cover up operations which may include destruction of gathered evidence, sabotage of investigations or even murder of police officers by their own kind. Such are the contradictions of modern policing that have sometimes put entire police departments under the scrutiny of the public. Intelligence Intelligence gathering is another aspect of policing that enhances efficiency in modern police organizations. This refers to the art of gathering information on intended actions by individuals bent on breaking the law. This is especially important in the modern era of international terrorism, large scale organized crime and street gangs. By monitoring and gathering facts on what the intentions of such miscreants are, the police are able to prevent crimes before they are committed thus saving the public from the potentially hazardous exposure to such activities. Community Policing Another emergent method of modern Police work is Community Policing. Community policing is a philosophy based on the idea that interaction with the community and enlisting its support helps to control crime and reduce fear. Community members help to identify suspects, apprehend vandals and give tip-offs to the Police (Committee on Law and Justice, 2004). Community policing is comprised of three main aspects. The first is community partnership. This involves collaboration between the Police and the individuals and organizations they serve to build trust and develop solutions collectively to problems of crime. The second component is Organizational Transformation which involves the structural and functional reorganization of the Police to fit in with the demands of the community. This enables the emergent Police force to serve the community more effectively. The third component is primarily problem solving. This involves the analysis of the success of problem solving programs and adjustment to cope with any emergent scenarios. The Police tend to achieve more cooperation and success when they approach the solution of problems together (U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented policing Services, 2010). In addition, community members understand better the role they are supposed to play in this process of problem solving (Beito, 1999). The development of community policing has been steady and progressive over the years as the realization dawned on police officers that it is not effective to continue trying to monopolize security service provision. In fact the police have always depended on the general public for information on crime and provision of evidence to help in establishing the guilt of offenders and secure convictions. So the idea of community policing is not exactly something new, but is rather a way of ensuring that there is a structured and organized approach to the method (Beito, 1999). Crowd Control Police officers have always had the responsibility of crowd in situations where large groups of people suddenly share a collective uncontrolled anger and go berserk over it. In many cases such anger is provoked by political policies that the public find unacceptable. Crowds of people may choose to express their disquiet through demonstrations which may turn unruly hence the police have to come in to disperse them. A good example is the mass demonstrations that hit the city of Copenhagen in December (2009) over climate change. Over 600 people were arrested (Henry, 2009) Other forms of crowd violence may emanate from gang violence or even a face off between rival religious groups as was the case in January - March 2010 in Jos Nigeria (Smith, 2010). The police are therefore always called upon to control such crowd situations. However in the context of modern policing they have to ensure that they do not use unnecessarily excessive force in order to achieve their objective since that may be regarded as human rights abuse by the victims and wider society. Whereas it was common in the past for the police to even shoot people dead on such occasions, human rights campaigners have rigorously opposed such police brutality thus forcing the police of review their methods in view of such complaints (Siegel, 2005). Emergent Crimes In recent times two of the most problematic emergent crimes for the police have been organized and cyber crime. These two areas have been especially problematic since they come up with new challenges that police organizations did not anticipate before. They also keep changing as the criminals, like any others, become more sophisticated in their mode of operations (Neocleous, 2004). Organized crime refers to illegitimate groups of persons who operate using organizational rules similar to those of legal entities to propagate crime. Such organizations are in most cases unregistered but may run several legitimately registered businesses to aid them I crime or as a means of investing their criminally acquired proceeds. In some cases they are registered but pursue objectives other than those stated in their articles (Sullivan, 2002). Organized crime includes extortion gangs, drug trafficking groups, terrorism practitioners, pimping groups that organize prostitution and street gangs. Like any other organization they have rules, organizational structures and financial management systems. However they ruthlessly enforce these rules and break the law regularly in pursuit of their objectives. Events such as murder, assault and gang shootouts are a common feature among them (Sullivan, 2002). A common form of organized crime is the variety known as the mafia. Originating in Italy as the Cosa Nostra, the mafia refers to a highly structured profit driven business organizations that involves itself in underground criminal activities while holding a visible front of genuine businesses. The mafia usually involve themselves in merchandizing assassinations, extortion, drug trafficking among other ills while threatening their own members and the general public with death to ensure they toe the line (Sullivan, 2002). Most organized crime is difficult to deal with for modern policing agencies since there sphere of operation is in many cases international and thus requires cooperation and coordination between different police organizations in the countries involved. This cooperation is severely limited by the differences in laws governing the different countries (Sullivan, 2002). Also known as computer crime, cyber crime involves the use of computers or computer based networks to break the law. Though there are several forms of computer crimes, the two that immediately come to mind are bank fraud and hacking. Bank fraud occurs when mostly insiders conspire to draw money illegally from private accounts held by individuals and transfer it to their own accounts. International wire transfer has the disadvantage that once money is wired it is very difficult or even impossible to wire it back to the source. Though Banks always take precautions with strict regulations on wire transfer, such rules differ from country to country and thus those countries with the lax laws become easy targets for fraudsters on the international arena. Fraudsters have also been known to acquire bank information of unsuspecting targets using false pretences and then using the same to empty the accounts of the unfortunate targets (Siegel, 2005). Hacking is the practice carried out by people known as hackers. A Hacker is a person who breaks into private information stored in computers without necessarily causing harm to the computer or its storage. Most hackers are usually harmless and are driven by curiosity and the spirit of testing their abilities in outsmarting difficult codes that are used as passwords to safeguard information. They are usually computer programmers who are overconfident of their abilities to solve puzzles posed by computer programs. In fact, police organizations have their own hackers who help them to access information for the sole purposes of investigation whenever a crime is reasonably suspected to be in progress through a protected website or computer (Gregg, 2006). However there is a variety of hackers popularly known as crackers who break into computers to gather classified information for clandestine and unlawful purposes. Their aim is to sell the information to willing buyers or even illegally transfer cash that belongs to other people on money transfer sites. Crackers have been known to break into classified information of governments, intelligence networks, banking organizations, media houses and international non- governmental organizations (Hafner, & Markoff, 1991). On June 1 1994, Kevin Poulsen also known as Dark Dante was convicted in the United States after pleading guilty to seven counts of mail, wire and computer fraud; as well as money laundering and obstruction of justice. He was sentenced to 51 months in prison and ordered to pay US $ 56,000 in restitution (Gissel, 2005). Other fraudsters such as Jan De Wit in the Netherlands have also been convicted for creating havoc by coming up with viruses. In his particular case he came up with the self-replicating program known as the Anna Kournikova virus that damaged programs in several computers across the globe (Gissel, 2005). Interpol The Interpol refers to the International Criminal Police Organization. It is an organization formed to facilitate international police cooperation. By January 2008 it had a membership of 188 all of who make regular contributions to facilitate its services. The organization strictly deals with crimes of an international nature only. However, it does deal with cases involving war crimes such as genocide and activities like piracy even if these are propagated within a single country’s borders. To many people Interpol is only known for facilitating to arrest of international criminals who hope to escape justice by running out of their home countries. However, this is mostly done with the cooperation of police organization in the country in which the fugitive is hiding if that country is a member of Interpol (Interpol, 2010). Relevance of the Police in Modern Society Difficult as it may be to imagine, policing in today’s society faces challenges that sometimes boarders on the consideration that this long standing institution should be done away with altogether. Though that is extremely radical, it is quite obvious that the police have always been forced to bend over backwards in order to accommodate the ever changing laws in an increasingly freedom oriented society. With the emergency of strong human rights advocacy groups always pushing for more freedom of individuals and constant lawsuits by increasingly restive members of the public, the police are definitely on the spotlight (Schulte, 1996). First of all, the Police as a force has become extinct in many countries having been replaced by a Police Service. The role of the Police as enforcers of the law is slowly becoming reinvented as that of service to the community. In its rich history, the Police were at one time regarded as the protectors of capital owned by the rich against a populace bent on acquiring it for themselves. This role is no longer relevant as it has emerged that they are public servants paid by all in the service of all. This makes it difficult for Police managers who handle a force that has been trained to enforce the law mostly by targeting the low class citizens as the main potential law breakers. The Police Chief has therefore been called upon to reform the force constantly to maintain its relevance in modern society (Schulte, 1996). However, with retraining on issues such as protection of human rights and equal enforcement for all citizens, many modern police forces have emerged out of the morass in which they operated in the past. Methods such a torture as a way of retrieving information from suspects for instance have long been outlawed with only moderate methods being advocated. Police officers therefore constantly face the challenge of retrieving information using moderate methods that involve persuasion and bargaining rather than force (Neocleous, 2004). Another front of change for the police lies in the fact that they increasingly deal with a populace that is well aware of their rights. Such individuals keenly observe that such rights are observed to the letter every time they have a run in with the police. Conversely though, this newfound power of the lawbreaker over the police must be delicately balance with the danger facing the police officer. Criminals don’t like being arrested and the possibility of them beginning to shoot their way to freedom is nearly always a grim reality. Since no Police Chief wants his officers to end up as statistics of deaths on the line of duty, all these guarantees of rights must be delicately balanced with the ever present need to use force before the criminal dies. If this is the dilemma facing the society; balancing the right to life of the criminal and that of the officer; the direct victims of this dilemma are the police officers themselves (Neocleous, 2004). The modern police officer is also an integral member of the society in which he operates. He has to partake in collective community activities in order to maintain the touch with his surroundings necessary to help him gather all requisite information relevant to his work (Beito, 1999). Yet his duty calls upon him to immediately apprehend any member of the society who breaks the law. It is another dicey balance between duty and building trust. It is no secret that the long arm of the law is the last thing a citizen wants nosing around once he has committed a crime (Schulte, 1996). Another of the main challenges posed to policing is the emergence of private security firms that offer their services at a local level. Those who can afford such services tend to prefer them since they have an element of leverage in the control of these organizations. Though the security firms still report to the police whenever they apprehend criminals and need legal action, they are the preferred mode of security on petty maters that can be resolved locally. In addition, the fact that these organizations are locally based gives them an advantage over the police who operate on a larger scale (Beito, 1999). However, all and sundry know that these forms cannot replace the Police. Whenever local crimes are committed by larger gangs with more fire power and a wider organizational level, the only organization large, experienced and equipped enough to deal with them is the Police Service. So rather than replace the Police locals prefer to work in cooperation with them (Beito, 1999). Private firms have also developed the tendency to buy policemen since they operate on a smaller scale and charge highly for their services thus they are able to pay better. This is also coupled by criminal elements compromising uncommitted police officers by paying them to perpetrate crimes. Luckily, in most cases this situation is unsustainable since any police department that involves itself in such kinds of deals with criminals soon find themselves being victims of the very crime they are perpetuating. Those who join security firms also realize that their scope of operations, availability of equipment and back up is so limited that they have to resort back to the thin blue line for support (Neocleous, 2004). Emergent crimes have always posed challenges to the police as well. The officers are called upon to constantly devise ways of dealing with these new crimes and then request for the enactment of laws to ensure that convictions are made. The main difficulty always stems from retraining officers to be able to deal with new and more sophisticated forms of crime. The areas of concern include detection of the crimes, investigation and the kind of evidence to be gathered and finding of credible witnesses even in areas where it may not be so easy to find any, like in cyber crime. Nevertheless, the Police always have to endeavor to do all these so as to remain relevant (Gissel, 2005). The emergence of technology has also rendered the police either minimally required or even irrelevant. The police beat is still useful in apprehending criminals on the spot, but the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) is now able to play the role of crime detection in areas where only the eyes of the policeman could be relied upon before. In fact, CCTV also helps in gathering accurate and convincing evidence in certain crimes which make it easier to achieve convictions. This is because it actually records the crime in progress, keeps exact appearances of the criminals and even records the time and place of the crime. In a sense this makes the investigative work of the Police easier, but it also renders irrelevant the need for their hawk eyed presence. The connection CCTV to satellites has also made it impossible to erase evidence of crime on the spot by the criminal. As technology advances, the police maintain a delicate balance with it alongside their regular services (U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented policing Services, 2010). White collar crime still poses a major challenge to police officers in a many countries. The line of command of the Police is such that politicians and other leaders are privy their internal secrets, plans, activities and problems. When the public leader becomes involved in crime therefore, he tries his best to keep the information from the police thus making these crimes pretty hard to detect. Even though the truth will always out, it sometimes does when it is too late to prevent the damage from happening. Enforcing the law against white collar crime therefore remains a constant challenge to the police. Unfortunately, the disgruntled public often judges the performance of the police not against how many muggers they pick off the streets, but by the one white collar criminal they fail to apprehend. This is understandable since white collar criminals tend to steal in millions (U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented policing Services, 2010). Conclusion The Police remain a relevant service in modern society just a much as they were in medieval times. The one thing that remains constant however is that their roles have kept changing in will keep on doing so in future. For them to continue remaining relevant and useful, they have to keep changing with changes in the society. This of course applies not just to them but to any other institution. But even with these changes, the Police will continue to remain relevant and needed even as the society progresses. Everyone can rest assured that there will always be elements in society incapable of keeping to its norms without being forced to. And in such instances we shall always call upon the Police; regardless whether they are a force or service or whatever other name shall be coined for them. References Beito L. R. (1999). Leadership Effectiveness in Community Policing. Bristol, Indiana: Wyndham Hall Press. Committee on Law and Justice (2004). Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing. Washington: National Academies Press. Embar-seddon, A. & Pass A. D. (eds.). (2008). Forensic Science. New York: Salem Press. Gissel R. (2005). Digital Underworld (August 23, ed.). Raleigh NC: Lulu. Gregg M. (2006). Certified Ethical Hacker. New York: Pearson. Hafner, K. & Markoff, J. (1991). Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. New York: Simon & Schuster. Henry, R. (2009, 12 December). “Copenhagen summit: 600 arrested at climate change protest.” The Times on Sunday. Retrieved on 16th April, 2010 from Interpol ( 2010, April 18). “About Interpol.” Retrieved on April 18, 2010 from Neocleous, M. (2004). Fabricating Social Order: A Critical History of Police Power. New Jersey: Pluto Press Schulte, R. (1996). “Which Challenges will Police Managers have to Meet in the Future.” Policing In Central and Eastern Europe. Retrieved on 16th April 2010 from Siegel, L. J. (2005). Criminolgy. New York: Thomson Wadsworth. Smith, D. (2010, March 8). “Hundreds dead as more religious violence hits Nigeria.” The Guardian Newspaper. Retrieved on 16th April, 2010 from Sullivan, R. ed. (2002). Mobsters and Gangsters: Organized Crime in America, from Al Capone to Tony Soprano. New York: Life Books U.S. Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented policing Services. (2010). “Community Policing Defined”. Retrieved on 16th April, 2010 from Walker, S. (1977). A Critical History of Police Reform: The Emergence of Professionalism. Lexington, MT: Lexington Books Read More