Publics perception of police essay

Police Stress Stress plays a part in the lives of everyone. Some stress is not only inevitable, it can be good. Police stress, however, refers to the negative pressures related to police work.

Though passed with the PATRIOT Act and justified as a much-needed weapon in the war on terrorism, the sneak-and-peek was used in a terror investigation just 15 times between Publics perception of police essay In drug investigations, however, it was used more than 1, times during the same period.

It's a familiar storyline. In the 10 years since the terror attacks of September 11,the government has claimed a number of new policing powers in the name of protecting the country from terrorism, often at the expense of civil liberties.

But once claimed, those powers are overwhelmingly used in the war on drugs. Nowhere is this more clear than in the continuing militarization of America's police departments.

It in fact began in the early s, as the Regan administration added a new dimension of literalness to Richard Nixon's declaration of a "war on drugs.

But Reagan was more than just rhetoric. In he and a compliant Congress passed the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which allowed and encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, research, and equipment.

It authorized the military to train civilian police officers to use the newly available equipment, instructed the military to share drug-war—related information with civilian police and authorized the military to take an active role in preventing drugs from entering the country.

A bill passed in authorized the National Guard to aid local police in drug interdiction, a law that resulted in National Guard troops conducting drug raids on city streets and using helicopters to survey rural areas for pot farms.

Public Perceptions of Privacy and Security in the Post-Snowden Era | Pew Research Center

InPresident George Bush enacted a new policy creating regional task forces within the Pentagon to work with local police agencies on anti-drug efforts. Since then, a number of other bills and policies have carved out more ways for the military and domestic police to cooperate in the government's ongoing campaign to prevent Americans from getting high.

Then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney declared in"The detection and countering of the production, trafficking and use of illegal drugs is a high priority national security mission of the Department of Defense.

The military's job is to annihilate a foreign enemy. Cops are charged with keeping the peace, and with protecting the constitutional rights of American citizens and residents.

Summary of Findings

It's dangerous to conflate the two. As former Reagan administration official Lawrence Korb once put it, "Soldiers are trained to vaporize, not Mirandize. Over the last several decades Congress and administrations from both parties have continued to carve holes in that law, or at least find ways around it, mostly in the name of the drug war.

And while the policies noted above established new ways to involve the military in domestic policing, the much more widespread and problematic trend has been to make our domestic police departments more like the military.

The main culprit was a law authorizing the Pentagon to donate surplus military equipment to local police departments. In the 17 years since, literally millions of pieces of equipment designed for use on a foreign battlefield have been handed over for use on U. Another law passed in further streamlined the process.

As National Journal reported inin the first three years after the law alone, the Pentagon distributed 3, Ms, 2, Ms, 73 grenade launchers, and armored personnel carriers to civilian police agencies across America.

Domestic police agencies also got bayonets, tanks, helicopters and even airplanes.

The Ferguson Report

All of that equipment then facilitated a dramatic rise in the number and use of paramilitary police units, more commonly known as SWAT teams. Peter Kraska, a criminologist at the University of Eastern Kentucky, has been studying this trend since the early s.

Kraska found that by90 percent of cities with populations of 50, or more had at least one SWAT team, twice as many as in the mids. The number of towns with populations between 25, and 50, with a SWAT team increased percent between and As the number of SWAT teams multiplied, their use expanded as well.

Until the s, SWAT teams were used almost exclusively to defuse immediate threats to the public safety, events like hostage takings, mass shootings, escaped fugitives, or bank robberies.About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world.

It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Media coverage influences the public's perception of the criminal justice system and the policy agendas of those within the system.

This often results in changes within the operational structure of the police, courts, and corrections centers. A study guide series on peAce And conflict for independent leArners And clAssroom instructors Governance, corruption, and conflict Un i t e d St a t e S in S t i t U t e o f Pe a c e Washington, D.C.

Published: Mon, 5 Dec It is the intention of the following literature review to focus upon the gang and focus in detail on youth gang culture and look in detail the media coverage in relation to knife crime, the public perception of the ‘gang’.

Media and the Public Perception of Crime; Media and the Public Perception of Crime. Words Feb 1st, 13 Pages. Public Perception of the Police Essay Words | 6 Pages.

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The media portrayal of policing is filled with both positive and negative representations of police work. As a result, a complex relationship exists between media. Public Policy and the Mass Media: An Information Processing Approach Bryan D.

Jones Michelle Wolfe University of Washington, Seattle this process changes the publics’ perception of political issues and thus impacts the public agenda (64). police brutality – that officials would rather keep out of public discourse. 4.