Criminal Justice Discussion Board, Essay Example

Question 1

While the role of a police chief is a very demanding politically influential position so is the role of other highly influential positions such as high school principals, university presidents, prison wardens, mayors, business CEO’s and sheriffs. For the purpose of this discussion question I will compare the difference in the roles the various occupations play in relation to political influence with each other particularly with respect in the political arena influence. Police chiefs have a lot of influence over decisions made in the community especially over citizens with arrests and who gets arrested with respect to arrest warrants being issued because they have influence over judges. Without the influence of citizen oversight there would be no redress for the community to have a say so in what happens in the larger and some smaller communities and the police chief and its padre would be able to run ramped over the community. It is important the citizens know the legal procedures and are able to make a stance in the community to take a stance to ensure they are not overrun by the police officers and the police chief. Through the use of the media the citizens are able to have redress to ensure the police and police chief’s powers are kept in check and the citizens can live in a democratic town, city and nation as the founding fathers wanted it to be according to the United Stated Constitution. “Others on the other side of the spectrum feel no one should be left to judge themselves and support legislation, judicial and the police powers and feel the police chief should have sole authority to proscribe, lead and deal with all aspects of the community including policing the streets like a dictatorship leaving the citizens with little to no powers.” (Farrow 2001). Policemen should be gatekeepers and the Police chief should be the guiding gate keeper but should not be allowed to abuse his powers. Everyone needs to be accountable to their powers and to a superior whether it be a sole person or to citizens of a community through a volunteer service. It is agreed there is tremendous pressure on police officers and their chief and with that is room for mistakes. Mistakes should not be punished only cover-ups and negligence. The role of a police chief is to keep other officers in line, to keep the streets safe and to manage the officers to conduct themselves in an orderly fashion high and above the law. They have a lot of political influence over officers and the community and must vehemently respect themselves and the community in which they live in order to keep from abusing the power in which the position they have been elected does not go to their head whilst not abusing their inherited powers of influence.

Other possessors of such political influence such as high school principals, wardens, university coordinators, etc are in the same arena with respect to political influence but their decisions do not quite affect citizen’s rights as do those decisions of a police chief. Police chiefs decisions can put a citizen in jail or give them a criminal record and a principal’s decision can give a person an academic record but the same can all affect a person’s future and self-dignity, self-respect and affect their ability to carry on in a positive manner in society. These other positions carry with them a hierarchy position capable of affecting individuals personal life to the point that a person life can be affected in a major capacity where social norms can change according to criminological studies based on factors such as geographic and cultural backgrounds.

Question 2

Have you ever gotten a speeding ticket near the end of the month and yelled, “The police are simply trying to meet their monthly quota of giving tickets?” I think we have all been guilty of that! Yes it is true that police officers have to give out a certain amount of tickets to keep the state happy in so many words to keep their jobs and say to speak keep the number up but not in the manner most people think. The numbers reflect themselves in the manner that most people commit crimes seasonally and that is just the way the police officers have been trained to stake out the criminals or speeders or minor crime committers. So with that said, watch out for the cops on those peak seasons if you don’t want to get caught.

It certainly would not be conducive “for a police force to force police officers to play a numbers game to force results to throw criminology facts and figures off just to make ratings simply to bring in funds” for the sake of it says, Riley because that would be “ludicrous for the future of all police work” and the future of police credibility.” (2007). “It behooves me the number of people that think we simply try to meet quotas when we are out there simply trying to keep the streets safe and clean”, states office Leonardo Brown of Washington Parish.

Some benefits of having a positive competition system might include proactive monitoring of the lighting systems that are currently in place in Louisiana parishes such as Jefferson and Orleans, though it has already been dismissed in those parishes as being unconstitutional to stop people with strict liability red light violations by the use of red light cameras. It would be better to use proactive officers on the scene to give red light tickets. Rather than seasonal ticketing such as bringing on officers to different check points on interstate sections at the end of the months and vacation times it might be better to load the highways at periodic points during the months and during rush hours also.

Giving the officers pay rate incentives and perhaps vacation incentive plans might be a positive force to guide them since they are known to risk their lives and be paid very low salaries for doing so. It behooves me the many officers that are out on the streets especially patrol officers that work for low salaries with the state wasting many dollars and all the trillions of dollars being spent on the military abroad and we cannot even pay our officers a decent salary to keep our streets and neighborhoods safe. Yes a healthy competition would certainly keep our officers working avidly to keep crime and small infraction rates down and also keep harassment of small crimes and infractions to a minimum where our citizens would not feel the officers are attempting to “simply meet a quota”. “We would actually prefer an incentive plan”, says Corporal L. Jamison of Westminster (2010). Peter Finn states rates of minor infractions might “actually decrease by a rate of 21% if incentive programs were implemented across the board for new and existing officers. (2001).

Works Cited

Farrow, J. (2001) Citizen Oversight of Law Enforcement: Challenge and Opportunity Retrieved May 30, 2010 from, http://policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=111&issue_id=102003

Riley, M. (2007) Faking the Future Trends of Policing the Numbers Retrieved May 31, 2010, from, http://policiingthenumbers.org/subtopic/index.cfm?actionforthedayarchive.id/4445

Washington Parish, Officer Leonardo Brown, Louisiana, 2010 “It behooves me the number of people that think we simply try to meet quotas when we are out there simply trying to keep the streets safe and clean”

Corporal L. Jamison, Westminster, London, United Kingdom, 2010“We would actually prefer an incentive plan”.

Finn, P. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, National Institute of Justice, Citizen Review of Police: Approaches and Implementation, 2001.