Police Brutality Essay, Research Paper

Controls for police brutality

There are many different types of controls in policing that keep the police profession in check. These controls are very important; with out them our police force, and the acts of police brutality in our police force would run rampant. There are two different categories. The first being Internal controls which consist of hiring policies, training, supervision, and disciplinary codes. The second consists of external controls, which are made up of external review boards, interest groups and the media.

The first set of controls for police are the internal. A major part of this type of control has to do with training. With proper training police officers will be comfortable in any and all of the many stressful situations that they may be put in. This is very important because without this training an officer may be putting his life and the lives of others in the community at risk. By knowing what to do and when to do it the officer is able to control his or her own behavior and thereby will hopefully not overstep the boundaries of policing. Supervision is another type of internal control but like the previous one is very important. It is always necessary to have someone with more experience supervise you. This is good for two reasons the first being, it gives the supervisee , or the one being watched a chance to pick up new techniques that weren t shown in the academy but that do work in the street in helping to stem the misconduct problem. Secondly, having a supervisor makes you feel more responsible for your actions. This being said you would tend to make better decisions for fear of punishment or reprimand from the supervisor. Another type of control has to do with disciplinary action. If an officer breaks a rule for misconduct, he or she will be disciplined. Depending on the type of crime or misconduct that the officer has committed, he or she

will be disciplined accordingly. This is a very good control measure because it shows the police officer, that yes if you commit an act of police brutality or misconduct you will be subject to disciplinary action. These internal control measures serve as excellent deterrents from participating in police misconduct.

The second set of controls for police are external controls. The first set of external control measures have to do with the media. The media are quite possibly one of the best of controls for police. They are considered the watchdogs of the industry because usually they are just waiting to get a hold of some controversial story. The police do not like having these controversial stories out in the open because it simply makes the look really bad. So they try in most cases either to follow the rules or to try and cover something up it if it happed. This is because there is a great majority of the public that watch the news, and when something bad happens it puts lots of pressure on the mayor and intern he puts the pressure on the police. Police like to avoid this. Another type of controls, are interest groups. Interest groups also called special-interest group consist of any aggregate of individuals from a community that on the basis of one or more shared concerns, make claims upon other groups in order to promote it s objectives. This being said when a interest group doesn t like something they begin to start pressuring the government and that eventually goes down the chain of command to the police departments. Once this happens the police are put in an odd predicament and usually have to justify their actions. Lastly, another type of control measures used for to keep the police in line are external review boards. These boards cost a lot to maintain but in the end work out to be cheaper than an out of control police force. These boards are responsible for keeping the police in check.

It is very important to have all of these different types of controls due to the ever-changing nature of the police force and the environment that we live in. With proper care and attention the police forces brutality should be able to be kept to a minimum.