Police Training and Police Misconduct in Chicago Police Force, Research Paper Example

Introduction

It is a known fact that police play an integral role in the maintenance of the democratic society. They protect the citizen rights, however are charged for limiting the rights of suspects in the development of society. Misconduct was been a serious problem since the beginning of American policing. Most of the police executives in Chicago have distanced themselves from the wayward employees. As a consequence, high rates of misconduct recidivism in various police departments of Chicago started to prevail.  Though effectively trained, they usually detain, search and arrest citizens (Internal Regulation of Police Departments, 2012). Maintaining public trust in the Chicago necessitates that police misconduct to be dealt in an ethical manner. Whilst the police force in Chicago have been effectively trained to use the relevant force to minimise activities of violent offenders from injuring others, most of the time they have carried this too fat and law respecting citizens have experienced the consequences for no reason. In most of the cases, police officers have sought to move away from the misconduct as a form of political existence. Instead of addressing the factors influencing such misconduct, most of them aimed to obtain quick fixes (Police Misconduct, 2012). These quick fixes acted as catalysts for their mis-conduct and encouraged only a narrow investigative focus, in contrary to investigating the systemic complexities. The powerful police unions, restrictions with the budget, presence of high litigious-minded society and jealous media are some of the alternative concerns for misconduct amongst Chicago police. But, this problem of misconduct is not new for such police executives (US Department of Justice, 2012).

According to Kampanakis (2002), the misconduct of police in Chicago can be attributed to various reasons. It can be as a result of conservatism, cynicism, societal isolation, solidarity, and code of silence, racial influences and others. The study by Eschholz and Vaughn (2001) has indicated that police need to use coercive power for enforcing the law. The usage of such power in an unlawful manner may lead to enormous disasters for a democratic society. According to Russell (1997) and Human Rights Watch (1998), presence of poor training, recruitment practices and management have caused the emergence of various abusive officers in Chicago. This misconduct amongst various police officers, more particularly due to improper training is spoiling entire police department, besides damaging the healthy relationships amongst the police and public. The reports published in the recent years on police misconduct in the United States have indicated greater police accountability and civilian participation with administrative and disciplining choices. The newly involved citizens have called for more strategies for investigating the police misconduct and disciplinary measures.

The above indicated illustrations make it clear that “police misconduct” need to be explored in relevance to “police training” and must be monitored in an effective manner. It indicates the need for exploring the relationship between “training” and “misconduct” to prevent police from breaching of certain standards and legal responsibilities. The essay makes an effort in outlining the perspectives related to misconduct and training amongst police together with the methodological considerations, sampling procedures, discussions and well-defined conclusions. More specifically, its main aim is to look further in depth at the crimes allegedly committed by nearby Police Departments in DeKalb and examine any misconduct that has potentially occurred. There will be a review of trends over the course of several years to determine if misconduct increases or decreases dependent upon the personnel in charge of the department and the policies that were put into place during that particular time period.

Method

In the present study, the participants considered were the local residents, police officials and other employees of Chicago area. Each of the participant’s age ranged from twenty to fifty years old. Both male and female participants were permitted to participate in the study. Around 80.8% of officers in the selected sample were Whites, 10.7 were Blacks, 9.2% of Hispanics or Latino, 8.8% of Spanish and 3.2 % of United States. After obtaining the complete list and ethical approval, a letter was sent to each of the participants asking for their permission to participate in the study. Subsequent to exclusions and other drop-outs, every participant was allowed to sign an informed consent form. This form included information on how the research study will be carried out, what are its potential complications and benefits to the society and how the information obtained from the participants will be confidentially maintained. The final list contained around 100 participants (of local residents, police and other employees) of Chicago area, who were well versed with the police training and misconducts. The survey took an average of 25 minutes to complete and it encompassed careful concern of safeguarding the participant’s anonymity, privacy and confidentiality.

Sampling Strategy and Procedure

For selecting a representative sample of participants from the Chicago area, the study considered a multi-stage “clustered” sampling method. Selection of this sample was started by indicating the sampling frame (which is the complete list of relevant police departments throughout the nation). To gain the inclusion of participants in the sampling frame, the department need to:

• Need to contain primary responsibility for offering the police services to a residential population.
• Contain a minimum of 10 full-time police officers and
• Is either working in the country or a municipal agency?

The sampling frame contained numerous police departments that employed 92% of full time officers serving local agencies in the Chicago.

Since the stratified and clustered sampling procedures were followed for the study, the researchers utilised corrections (depending on the weightage of response obtained from each police officer and local residents). The selected sample indicated that poor training is the root cause for the misconduct behaviours amongst the police. Quite a close examination of these samples has indicated that Chicago policing continues to be predominantly male profession, with only 9.4% to be female.

Each of the participants was informed about the fact that various negative consequences of misconduct may not lead towards attaining positive outcomes. They were indicated about the facts that citizens may become discouraged and lose interest in the police department with the misconduct and improper behaviour. All the responses obtained from the participants were carefully transcribed and reviewed on a timely basis.

Results and Discussion

The study explored the officers’ attitudes towards misconduct and training in two ways. Firstly, the researchers asked the police officers whether they accept with the following statement:

“Training exerts positive and negative consequences on the police officials and enhances the likelihood that officers enjoy free lunches, discounts and appreciation gifts”. Around 80% of them accepted this statement and 20% of then disagreed. More than one-third of the officers illustrated the role of community police training in minimising the likelihood of misconduct and corruption. The police officers in the sample were asked about how they handle the cases related to abuse and authority. Most of the officers overwhelmingly indicated that the police departments undergo a very tough stance on improper behaviour. Most of them disagreed with the suggestion that exploration of police misconduct due to training. For the question on “Relationship between Training and Misconduct”, most of them have ascertained that poor training lead to improper behaviour amongst the police officials. They recognised the role of effective guides and trainees to minimise the implications of bad policing. Some of the scholars have even indicated that community oriented police training minimises the likelihood of officers in engaging in various forms of misconduct. However, some of them have illustrated that the same type of police training may enhance the likelihood of officers engaging in less serious forms of corruption. Others ascertained that community oriented police training contain no discernible influence on the misconduct. Some of them illustrated that use of fire-arm simulators to enhance more realistic evaluation of trainee responses to real time life and death situations.

Results from this survey study indicate the fact that police officers contain complex and at certain times contradictory attitudes towards the innocent citizens. The majority of local residents considered for this study have accepted the fact that training has severe consequences on the misconduct amongst Chicago police officials. In addition, vast majority of other officers indicated serious incidents associated with the police misconduct as isolated and highly rare occurrences. They even recommended departments to undertake necessary actions on minimising such a type of misconduct.

This survey study provides crucial lessons about police officers on their ways of controlling abuse. It even illustrated effective educational measures, besides training are useful for minimising misconduct. A considerable proportion of officers who obtained training in development of interpersonal skills have even ascertained that education or training need to be effective to minimise misconduct. Although, these responses are not suffice to establish the effectiveness of such a type of programmes, they still suggest that Chicago police find the training to have certain relationship with their misconduct. Police officers in this study even illustrated the significance of police management in minimising violence and other forms of misconduct. The findings of this study strengthen the scholars and police professionals with a long held perception that developing effective methods of supervision need to be first priority for police departments as they strive to control and minimise abuse of authority.

The validity issues in the present study were attributed to demoralisation, attitudes of participants towards misconduct and training. Since the participants were from the nearby police departments and offices, the individuals noticed less attention with the other groups. This eventually caused demoralisation making the other officers feel that they were left out and made less important for the study. Ensuring about their accurate participation in the assigned role and effectively answering the questions would have minimised this issue. Another crucial issue witnessed with this study was the attitude of subjects that persist with the police officials who have undergone training. In their professional settings, they can gain more attention and perform well to the survey. The final issue is the generalisability and applicability over larger populations. Since, the participants selected for the study were minimal; the findings obtained from this study cannot be applied over larger population. To minimise the likelihood of the validity issues and render the study successful, it is extremely crucial to be discrete and discern the findings.

Conclusions and Recommendations

This study has indicated a close relationship with the training and overall misconduct amongst the police officials. It emphasised the police departments to maintain open communication with its officers and the public. The study even illustrated maintenance of ethical standards and professionalism amongst the officers in the departments. These values must also encompass what the public has come to expect from police officers in regards to their actions and reactions to certain circumstances and their attitudes regarding certain situations.

References

• Eschholz, S. & Vaughn, M. S. (2001). Police sexual violence and rape myths: Civil liability under Section 1983. Journal of Criminal Justice, 29, 389-405.
• Human Rights Watch. (1998). Shielded from justice: Police brutality and accountability in the United States. New York, Washington: Human Rights Watch.
• Internal regulation of police departments. (2012). Retrieved from Revisiting Who is Guarding the Guardians?:Retrieved from USCCR: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/guard/ch3.htm
• Kampanakis, J. (2002). Police organizational culture and policemen’s integrity. [online]. Retrieved from: http://www.geocities.com/sifiskam. 02/25/2002.
• Police Misconduct. (2012). Retrieved from Chicago Tribune:http://articles.chicagotribune.com/keyword/police-misconduct.
• S. Department of Justice. (2003). Principles of good policing: Avoiding violence between police and citizens.Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.

Appendix

Figure-1: Figure indicating the impact of officer’s attitudes towards the treatment of poor citizens.

Police Officers usually consider whites better than blacks and other minorities.