By Colleen Johnson
The two big policing styles used by public law enforcement are professional policing, which was in greatest use during the 1950s-1970s, and community policing which developed in the 1980s. During his last lecture, Professor Musheno made the claim that professional policing is slowly beginning to gather more attention and that the current policing style may be turning towards professional policing once again. There is a debate in the academic sphere about which method of policing will provide the most benefit to modern society. I believe that public law enforcement needs to maintain a sense of cooperative community policing in order to maintain their legitimacy and thus, their support. Since September 11th, 2011, public law enforcement has presented a stronger, more standardized image of policing, likely to make the public feel safer. Examples of this include heightened measures of security on airports (the TSA and their body scanners) as well as very aggressive responses to daily incidents. These measures, however, appear extreme to the general public. Good community members feel as if they are being harassed without seeing tangible results of crime reduction or safer communities. Criminals are still able to slip into airports. As noted by David Alan Sklansky, the professionalization of policing tactics encourages police officers to react in a standardized way, instead of solving problems by addressing concerns specific to an individual situation or community (Sklansky 8). This issue was brought up in an article written by Henry Lee for the SF Gate. A recent incident occurred where a mentally ill man, David Goins, from San Lorenzo was shot by the police after he refused police requests to get into an ambulance and attacked an officer. According to the family, the police had been called to the house for various disturbances many times and if the police had been using community policing techniques of assessing and addressing recurring problems in the community, they would have known to restrain the man and get him to medical treatment instead of writing him off as too dangerous and shooting him. The family of the man is extremely upset with the actions of the Alameda County Sheriff's Department (Lee 1). Because of incidents like these, people are becoming dissatisfied with public law enforcement and it has begun to lose its legitimacy. Sklansky mentions that community policing also has its faults, but I believe that a severe loss of legitimacy should be a more pressing concern to public law enforcement than immediate crime reduction in today's very politicized society. A significant loss of legitimacy could cause a disregard for public authority, or a slew of social protests, creating more problems than public law enforcement is equipped to handle. Perhaps an eventual blending of the two ideologies will create a policing system that both the government and public find satisfactory.
Sources:
Lee, Henry. http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Family-of-slain-San-Lorenzo-man-blasts-sheriff-s-5260639.php
Sklansky, David Alan. "The Persistent Pull of Police Professionalism."
I liked your point about how "good" citizens feel harassed by the increase in policing since 9/11 because there haven't been many tangible benefits. I think this belief has spurred the increased use of hard community policing in areas undergoing gentrification. In professional policing the emphasis is on objective policing that treats everyone the same. So all citizens, even the good ones, are theoretically policed and treated the same. This creates the kind of tension you brought up where law-abiding citizens feel the police are over policing them without any noticeable improvements. Community policing, at least the "broken windows" aspect, tends to affect a smaller proportion of the population, but more strongly. By focusing on "hot spots" and the enforcement of all minor crimes, the broken windows style places the burden of increased policing on "undesirables", usually minorities. I think this disparity in the felt effects of community policing is a main reason why it is popular in gentrifying communities. The more wealthy residents want the benefits of increased policing without any additional personal costs.
ReplyDeleteChristine Prior
I agree with one of your concluding statements that a loss of legitimacy should be more of a pressing concern than immediate crime reduction, especially as you point out that actual crime reduction is not always the real result of professional policing. In order to for policing to be effective, it is necessary that the public to respect the system, and currently public opinion is on the decline among most all groups in society--until this is fixed, not only will the system be thought of as illegitimate, but ineffective at its duty as well. A greater implementation of the elements of community policing would help--in particular, addressing the greater underlying causes rather than fixing individual problems--but I think perhaps this is a problem in the greater legal system as well, not just policing. The current adversary system yields high rates of recidivism, turning criminals back out onto the very streets which perpetuated their initial criminal behavior/activity. Until there is a serious overhaul in all realms of criminal justice, I don't think we can place all the blame on the police force, but I do think as a society we can and should hold them to a higher standard.
ReplyDeleteAyesha Ali
I really enjoyed reading your blog post, and fully agree that if law enforcement agencies lost their legitimacy -- it could be a problem in the long run. It seems that any kind of policing styles could have its own faults, and your suggestion of perhaps having a hybrid of both community and professional does make sense. I think having a law enforcement agency that has a community presence, yet know how to react in dire situations would make me feel more comfortable and safe with law enforcement.
ReplyDeleteKevin Ramirez