a tactic. It appears to be the combination of the two that make it effective. A…
"Active engagement with a police officer association will accomplish far more than hostile isolation. Responsibility for such engagement lies with management, not labor. A police manager, however, needs to clearly articulate the nature of such engagement and its limitations. Some police chiefs and sheriffs are comfortable with a representative of their police officer association attending any or all staff meetings. Some are not. Some are comfortable having an official representative of the association on all internal agency developmental task forces, some ask the union to participate only on selected task forces. Others would prefer to engage the union only in designated meetings that are particularly designed for labor-management communication. What is essential is some level of engagement, and that everyone understands the rules. Community policing initiatives require planning, restructuring, and reallocation of resources. There is no prescriptive formula for union participation in such efforts; however, it is relevant that community policing efforts are by definition a challenge to traditional policing…
There are multiple risks associated with being a police officer that all who choose to work this field must embrace. There is a commission in every state on peace officer standards and training. Each agency must meet the minimum standards required by the state. Once an officer has met those standards and gets hired, a lot of training hours are given to the officer for to gain the necessary knowledge and tools for be able to protect the citizens in their community against criminal activities. No matter how much training one can receive, there is nothing that can prepare them for every situation they could possibly encounter while on patrol. Officers routinely run the risk of sustaining injury or death when dealing with situations involving physical struggles and/or violent…
Teaching an officer when to use their gun, how far away would be considered appropriate to use their weapon, what type of weapon should they use with certain distances, etc. With this knowledge, we could help our officers better protect themselves from either far away distances or up front. If someone is coming at you from fifteen feet away with a knife, what can you do when they charge at you? There are many different ways an officer could approach this situation, but instinct tells us “grab your gun.” However, grabbing your gun is not always the best option, as grabbing it can lessen your time to react and actually prevent from being…
The solution to problem of police brutality must begin with an reevaluation of the police department as a whole. Law enforcement must make an effort to assure citizens that they trying to protect the community and show that they are not looking to intimidate people. Police departments should revise and reexamine their training exercises in order to provide a solution to excessive force. New training methods should be provided on setting and situations that usually lead to police brutality. Police officers should be trained on how to correctly use pepper spray, how to handle routine traffic stops , and how to handle mentally ill citizens. Although there has been some progress in training and the have introduced new technology such as body cameras there are still incidents of racial profiling and police brutality. With continued training and education within the police department, there will be less brutalities and…
The national police training website (NPT) has some interesting information it states that. It's important for law enforcement personnel to become educated in the appropriate ways to handle potentially violent situations. De-escalation, whether verbal or non-verbal, is an essential practice and officers who develop superior communication skills may be able to keep volatile circumstances under control. There are four things that the national police training emphasize…
Stun guns like Tasers are often preferred by officers simply for their easy use, better user control as well as lesser danger to both the officer and the target. If they are used after a proper warning, that if the target does not calm down, a Taser gun is most likely to be used against him, they could stand a better chance of achieving a safe end…
In a case in Birmingham Alabama, forty-one year old Rockey Bryson was found dead in his jail cell 12 hours after being tasered. His family believed that he was tasered 20 to 30 times just because the police needed to subdue him after a confrontation in the cell. (Hambling) The use of the weapon in a circumstance such as this one could be looked at as unwarranted and unnecessary due to the numerous times he was allegedly tasered. Since officers are forced to use their discretion when making decisions, the use of the taser could be a weapon that an officer may become fond of because of how easy it is to incapacitate offenders and he may become trigger happy. Every time an officer uses this weapon he must tell his supervisor and file a report, and in departments all over the country "there are some names (officers) that keep coming up again and again and again. And if you've got a bad apple in the barrel you have to get rid of it, because if you don't it turns all of the other apples bad” (Brian…
David Hambling, a respected free lance writer on technology and military states, “[a] recent study in the American Journal of Public Health looked at 24, 000 cases in which police officers had used force, including Tasers, pepper spray, batons and manual methods . . . the study found that Taser use reduced the overall risk of injury by 65 percent. In other words, restricting Taser use could triple the number of injuries caused in this sort of incident” (1). Misconceptions on the use of Taser led to a comment by a person who goes by the name “the disturber” on CBC news website, he says, “what's wrong with people when they [start] using devices that can pump out over 1500 volts for self defence that's just not cool. [D]oesn't any one remember the guy who got [tasered] 5 times at the air port because he wasn't "co-operating" with the security; wasn't he killed because of the shock? [I] think that they should be banned from use for a less [lethal] item like pepper spray” (#). Pepper sprays can not be used in closed areas because it will effect innocent bystanders, also, as Jim Wilkinson, the Vice President of the site Your Greatest Protection declares, “[pepper spray] works longer than Tasers or stun guns, it will cause coughing and choking, and it burns really bad . . . [s]tun guns work by disabling the nervous and the muscular system but…
There are many different uses of the use of force. There are three generally held misconceptions about deadly force that need to be addressed. First, an officer can shoot an unarmed suspected under certain conditions; a police officer may use deadly force on an unarmed suspected who is larger, stronger, and if the suspected is attempting to disarm the officer. Second, a police officer can shoot someone in the back in a certain conditions. If officers see their suspected is feeling or is trying to escape and if that person presents any imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm to the community or the officers themselves, then the use of deadly force is justified. Thirdly, officers are not and never will be trained to shoot and wound…
Police brutality is the unlawful use of power, act or authority by the policepersons on the civilians (Russell-Brown 2009). Police brutality is an unfortunate corollary of the dangerous job of protecting society from its worst citizens, an anomaly attributable to the characteristic of individual police officers and the police department (Holmes and Smith, 2008). The actions can be employed with either the use of firearms, other lethal and non-lethal weapons or the improper use of holds or restraining techniques (Belur, 2010). In the United States, the brutality by police officers has been passed on from the time memorial. Police have used forceful methods in trying…
The United States law enforcement development has been a slow and grueling process but has become one of the most recognized in the world. We often at times find the evolution of law enforcement practices to be reactive, while remaining constant. Some practices however, though they have changed over time, has had very little progress when it comes regulations and a clear definition. That practice would be the use of deadly force among law enforcement agencies. Deadly force can be defined as the amount of force used that is most likely to cause death or bodily harm among another individual. Before 1985, the use of deadly force was used to apprehend a suspect, no matter the crime committed at that time. However, as years gone by, the perception…
police in some districts having the use of tasers has been successful, with the stun guns only…
In conducting this research, there was a big gap between police officer and suspect accounts. Usually the suspect would say that the police officer enjoyed seeing them in pain and would try to tase them even though they were under control. This contrasted with how police officers would say that they used only have enough force to get the situation under control (NCJRS Section 7). The police officers said that it was mainly the suspects who resisted more than they should have. From the report it was stated that when police tried to use oleoresin capsicum on drunk or high patients, this had no effect on them (NCJRS, Section 7). This will lead in turn to make some police officers use more force than necessary to help calm down suspects. If a police officer is struggling for his or her life and is trying to put a stop to it, he or she might believe to go straight to a Taser or lethal force in trying to subdue the suspect. This is a downward spiral of events that could result in more force being necessary to accomplish a suspect’s…
Police work can be dangerous and stressful. Officers often deal with violent criminals and may be injured or killed. They must make quick decisions while on duty, yet be tactful and patient with people who are in trouble or have been…
