Police Officer Heroes

Police Officers: Heroes of the 21st Century
It is the bad things that the media highlights in the news when it comes to law enforcement and the bad things that people remember when it comes to police officers. The job of an officer changes daily and from one circumstance to another; they must use their best judgment to make the best decision in the most critical of times ensure the safety of everyone. With the advancement of technology and weapons of all sorts, law enforcement has come a long way from where it began to “ensure that justice prevails” (Grant & Terry, 2012, p. 4), but even those do not change that dangers the come with the job and the some of the unfortunate outcomes.
Police officers knowingly insert themselves into potentially
Starting with police cars, 2-way radio communications, and the telephone; technology has helped increase the response rate within the department, with the public, and the report time to the scene of a crime. Contrary to police officers receiving calls, even newer communications and crime mapping technology allow officers to contact residents if there is important information in an area (Walker & Katz, 2011). In-car cameras operated via touchscreen inside of the police cars are very popular in policing, however, is only limited to the area of the vehicle. Movement toward cameras on officers uniforms are nearing, maximizing distance for recording capabilities for patrols away from the police car (Fiumara, 2012). A lot of information technology has replaced paperwork like personnel records and written reports. The Records Management System (RMS) was designed to “input and organize information from different types of reports in one easy-to-access format” (Walker & Katz, 2011, p. 502), allowing the capabilities to share information within a department efficiently. Sharing intelligence is not only important within a department but across agencies as well. To help mitigate linkage blindness, (Grant & Terry, 2012) the Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) was created to enable adequate sharing of information between federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities to help fight the war on terrorism, connecting all law enforcement entities to Washington D.C. and major municipals. Relationship between local and state law enforcement agencies are most often result in competition instead of cooperation. If informal agreements are made between local, state, and federal agencies, then that can eliminate the barriers that divide them yet clearly define what the goals of each are (Walker & Katz, 2011). Cooperation and coordination would help all departments and agencies accomplish the