Law Homework Help

Discuss with your classmates about the areas in which you submit police departments have been found to be defective or deficient concentrating on i.e., constitutional due process, civil rights, use of deadly force and police brutality, abuse of discretion, corruption and police-community relations. In doing so, generalize about any possible solutions to these problems and reforming the criminal justice system. ( 

Peer 1:For this week’s forum I would like to focus on police-community relations. A lot of the departments that I have been in have had a community police office. For the most part their focus there was to shake hands and kiss babies to keep it short. The officers that worked there did a lot of work in the schools and would go out to a lot of the local community events to show face and talk to the people there. I have always felt like this kind of community policing is a waste of money to have a sworn officer not doing law enforcement and really provides nothing of substance back to the tax payers of the area. In my opinion every officer who works can do “that” kind of community policing, and should since, for the most part, that is what is expected. This is not to say that officers should not make time do conduct these type of interactions but it is to say what are we getting out of it to have someone who’s soul job it is to do that.            While in the military I was exposed to a practice called Counterinsurgency Operations (COIN). To me the operation was not a bad idea though in practice I did not think it would work with US forces since we were never there long enough. The more I read about COIN during my time in I thought it could be a good practice for community policing. COIN was designed to be done from the bottom up, which is to say starting from the individual and family level through to the community level (Zambri, 2014). Putting the right people in the right places to affect that area. The way that I have seen it used in law enforcement has been the same way except for those agency’s will have officers who can investigate crimes and are experienced enough to pass information to the proper department. The main point to me is that you must have dedicated people who are experienced so that they can push information received from the local community to the right areas.            One thing that I have found while working in law enforcement has been that what works for one department might not work for the other. Though COIN might be good for some it might not be good for all, though I do not think that the shaking hands and kissing babies idea is a good use of time. There are a lot of issues within law enforcement as you can see with the topics in the forum instructions. This is just the one that mostly has stood out to me during my time as an officer. Thank you all for reading this if you do and I hope that you all have a good rest of the week and good luck on your papers for this week.

Peer 2:The idea of community policing is to be a proactive problem-solving individual whom in a systematic and routine fashion gets things done. Instead of responding to a crime, only after it occurs, community policing wants agencies to make proactive solutions to the immediate up-front conditions contributing to public safety problems. Problem solving must be built into police operations and thrust decision-making efforts. Police agencies are encouraged to think on their feet and fast about their responses and view making arrests. These are only one of a wide variety of potential responses. According to (Broken, n.d.) the broken windows theory of policing was introduced in 1982 in an article by Wilson and Kelling. Briefly, the model focuses on the importance of disruption in creating and sustaining serious crime. The disruption is not directly correlated to serious crime, but disorder leads to increased fear and withdrawal from residents. This allows the serious crime to move in because of decreased levels of informal social control. The police have a major role in breaking this process. If the police focus in on disorder and the less serious crime in a neighborhood then they have not yet been overtaken by serious crime, and they can help mitigate that fear and resident withdrawal. Promoting the higher levels of informal social control can help the residents take control of their own neighborhood and prevent serious crime from happening. There has been a concern on how to measure the usage of the broken window model. Police help mitigate these issues by being present. When police are present it allows for the citizens to have a sense of protection and the fear dissipates. When that fear goes away then confidence rises and citizens can help themselves thus, broken window model has worked. Officers have shown to arrest less and give out less tickets in the broken window model areas. There is also the concern that in areas where the broken window model is implemented, that there is citizen dissatisfaction due to the aggressiveness of the model when in use. This model is usually only used in high crime areas and serious crime areas. Sometimes fighting fire with fire is what’s needed to combat bad situations. In cities where the Broken Windows model  has taken root, there’s little evidence that it has worked as it was intended too. This theory has resulted in what people say is aggressive over-policing of minority communities, which often creates more problems than it solves. It could be said that this model is flawed due to the focus it places on disorder. Disorder and crime change the way officers perceive residents, by creating the assumption that those committing minor offenses may do something worse if they’re not allowed. Leaders play an important role in implementing this model making sure that it works and is being used how it is meant to be and not abused in anyway. Leaders are there to teach the young new guys because they will one day be the leaders. This is the start to making a newer and better police structure.