Introduction to Law Enforcement
Policing_Today.jpg

Welcome

The police are legitimate, bureaucratically articulated organizations that stand ready to use force to sustain political order. In our constitutionally based criminal justice system we are faced with the dilemmas inherent in policing a free society.

As such, it is my goal to take you beyond mere sound-bites and statistics and present you with a contemporary overview of what it means to be a police officer. To accomplish this goal I have designed this course to provide you with realistic expectations about policing so that you can think critically about the appropriate role of the police in our society. We will discuss contemporary operational strategies and their effectiveness as well as modern innovations that address some of the underlying causes of crime.


Welcome to the class wiki.

Dr. Michael Thompson

Future of Policing
By Zach Friedland

The policing of today is a result of hundreds of years of trial and error in policing the world. Now that cyber crime is on the rise and will continue to be on the rise in the future. In ten years their will have to be a whole organization dedicated to cyber crime. An officer can’t drive around and patrol the cyber area and a lot of older officers barley know how to use a flip phone let alone a computer or the new social networking sites that everybody is on. Many police forces have less people and all of the officers are very generalized in what they can do. In the future jobs will be more specialized because the crime is becoming specialized. The use of omnicompetent officers is fading away due to the advances in crime and technology. The newest fad that many policing officials say is on the rise is predictive policing. what is this you ask, This is police departments analyzing past data and crime patterns to determine where the hot spots are and to patrol their anticipating that the spot will stay hot. Predicting policing has brought about some fourth amendment issues because some think that it violates the right. In the supreme court decision of Illinois v. Wardlow they ruled that the “high crime” designation for an area is a relevant basis to stop somebody based on totality of circumstances of analysis. With all of the budget cuts that have been coming about for some time. This predictive policing should make departments more efficient with the funding they get. Instead of sending out officers on a wild goose chase and have hundreds just roaming around. This predictive policing idea will make it so a department can deploy 20 officers that will do the work of the 100 because they will be concentrated in one “hot” place instead of all over.
predictive-policing.jpg

We are in the era of change and the power in law enforcement is going from the old school power head to the get the job done and more laid back new generation. Baby boomers that were born between the 60’s and 70’s were raised by over protective parents that never left their side and that translated to their work in law enforcement. The new generation was raised by “peer-ents” and want order but not in the traditional form. The new generation of police want a constant stream of feedback instead of the traditional boss that you report to in different time intervals. This new era of people are called the Millennials and they believe that their boss could learn a lot from them by listening to them instead of them just sitting and listening to their superior. This new generation also falls into the “I want it now” time and doesn’t like to wait around for promotions. Paying ones dues is looking like a thing of the past due that the new generation wants to be at the top from the start and a few years of waiting is to long. The future of policing is a bright future and may take a while to get used to but its on its way and everybody is going to have to get used to it.

Sources:
http://www.policeone.com/police-jobs-and-careers/articles/5980033-The-me-generation-and-the-future-of-law-enforcement/

http://www.nij.gov/journals/266/predictive.htm

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License