Police Corruption in The United States

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Policing has evolved over the span of many decades throughout America’s history. It is safe to say that policing has made drastic improvements since its nascent days of the 1800s. America is presently in progress of refining its law enforcement capabilities. America will incessantly continue to be in the improvement phase of perfecting their craft regarding policing. Policing is not a perfect system. In fact, policing is a very faulty assembly at best. Freedom of choice can be perceived as a liberating panorama, or worse as a cudgel against those that are on the receiving end of impartiality.

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There is too much marginal error for something bad to happen regarding discretion among law enforcement professionals. Law enforcement groups have innumerable ways when it comes to dealing with adverse scenarios in their careers. The biggest issue with policing is that there is corruption, and the potentiality to abuse discretion/power is very high and it threatens the safety and security of the public.

Protecting and serving the civilization is the duty of any individual that works within the public sector, especially in the Department of Justice. Policing means to regulate and maintain public order, security, and health within a body of people. Policing shows up in numerous physical noun forms such as stateside sheriffs/police personnel to agents of the federal government. Policing is also a type of methodology that is executed in various ways in order to regulate a segment(s) of society. Depending on the scenario and the nature of it, it will call upon a set(s) of approaches to address the given predicament.

Not every law enforcement personnel want to aid the public the way that they are obligated to do so. Sometimes these individuals take the circumstances into their own hands and run it their way and in the manner that they intend to do so.

Managing crime was done by a small section of society via in local neighborhoods and nearby communities. Crime management was not a statewide issue. External help was very limited in maintaining order in society. During 1800s, “Americans sometimes rationalized [the idea of] lynching as so-called lynch law, a constitutionally legitimate expression of popular sovereignty outside statutory law”. Lynching was the go-to method for dealing with wrongdoers. To put it in another way, it was the people of a community that have come together and took the law into their own free will and exploited it to its maximum. To justify the use of lynching as a proper statute, it is “…when citizens take back the law, they do not defy the law but actually assert it…”. Needless to say, lynching was short lived. Crimes that took place that involved lynching eventually hit headline news nationwide. Justifying the reason to lynch to maintain peace and tranquility in society became difficult for these isolated groups to execute. The Department of Justice eventually established itself as the lead professional organization in dealing with misconduct. Lynching has not completely gone away. As a matter of fact, lynching can be seen in modern America. Police shootings, beatdowns and imprisonment of unarmed civilians continue to make headline news across the nation.

Race alone is a big factor that influences the way how police responds to any occasions, such as events of protests. African Americans throughout history have dealt with many bloodshed instances. The sacrifice of the past has generated a better forthcoming. The 1960s was a tumultuous era and a place in time where policing showed a lot of its ugly side to the nation. Davenport et.al article examines how African Americans were treated by law enforcement during times of protest. It explains that “…race is a critical piece of information that policing agents have at their disposal when deciding how to respond…”. The 1960s was a time where a lot of civil rights activists took to the streets to protest to stand up for equal rights between both whites and blacks. To understand the reason why blacks were policed hard during this time period, Davenport et.al examined about 15,000 different protests over the course of 1960s to the 90s. The 60s is documented in a lot of history books regarding the development of America because it is to teach the new upcoming generations of Americans about the wrongs and injustices society had to deal with in its primitive days. We study the past so that history does not repeat itself in the modern day.

One of the core fundamental functions of the criminal justice system is its reliance on Miranda rights. The root of Miranda is that it reinforces the values of freedom and fairness for everyone. The person of interest under police custody is read a set of rights, such as the right to remain silent; the right to an attorney etc. If Miranda is not read to a suspect, then the suspect’s statement may not be valid for use in the court of law. Miranda is essentially the foundational standard of law enforcement as it “…strikes the right balance between protecting freedom of choice and improving American policing. They provide clear standards for law enforcement. And they protect citizens by ensuring that people in custody know their legal right”. Booker et.al article states that our criminal justice system is indeed a very broken one at best. America is practically the one country in the entire world where “…we incarcerate more of our own citizens here in America than any other country on Earth, charging them with overly punitive sentences, releasing them, and then blocking their opportunities to succeed in work, school, and as a member of society”. It has been 52 years since Miranda was decided in court back in 1966. Just because Miranda was established.