Police_Officers

Issues That Affect Police Personnel Lindsay Handy Everest College Phoenix Online CCJ 1020 - 80 February 25, 2012 Abstract In this paper I will be discussing the issues that affect police personnel. I will be using two of these issues that affect them for this discussion. The two that I will be talking about are job stress and corruption. I will also talk about some ideas that can be applied to or are being applied to help with these issues to make it easier on police. Job Stress First I will talk about job stress. I found a great definition of this on a website called heavybadge.com and he states it as follows “That feeling and desire along with the ensuing bodily effects, experienced by a person who has a strong and true longing to choke the living shit out of someone who desperately deserves it, but you can't.(Goldfarb)” I think that this is an excellent definition of not only job stress but stress in general as I know when all either feel like that now or have felt like that at some point in our lives. There are many different things that can cause stress for police officers and they are divided into four categories: external, organizational, duty, and individual (Siegal & Worrall p. 260). The external stressors are things like being bashed by the public, an inefficient justice system, and court decisions that favor the criminals. The organizational stressors are things like bad pay, too much paperwork, not much room for advancement tin the ranks, and rues that are different from one precinct or station to the next. Duty stressors are things like fear, danger, overtime, and rotating shifts from week to week. Individual stressors are things like being discriminated, family problems, and personality clashes with others. According to Dan Goldfarb the biggest stressors that police face are: killing someone in the line of duty, having you partner killed in the line of duty, lack of support by the department, shift work and disruption of family time, and the daily grind of dealing with the stupidity of the public, or the "asshole factor"(heavybadge.com). I will now talk about some ways to help combat job stress in the police force. The more support that police personnel received the lower their feeling of stress is, therefore most departments have attempted to fight job-related stress by training them on how to cope with the effects of stress (Siegal & Worrall p. 260). This can include things fro diet to exercise and meditation. Nowadays police departments include stress management as part of their wellness programs that police personnel receive. Some programs actually include family members as they cab better help them cope with stressors if they have a better understanding of the difficulties they face each day and for some it is easier when you have someone else in your family in the program with you as it shows that you are not alone in it (Siegal & Worrall p. 260). Corruption Next I will talk about corruption. According to our textbook Introduction to Criminal Justice the definition of corruption is “exercising legitimate discretion for improper reasons or using illegal means to achieve approved goals (Siegal & Worrall p. 263).” Corruption has been in the police force in the United States since it as first formed. Most of the police force is not corrupt but the ones that are tarnish the reputation of the rest of the police force. This is often hard to combat because of the police code of silence that states that police officers do not turn in other police officers, even if they are involved in illegal or corrupt practices but recent studies show that corruption is rare and career-ending misconduct is the exception (Siegal & Worrall p. 263). There are several different kinds of corruption and they are as follows: internal corruption, selective enforcement or nonenforcement, active criminality, and bribery and extortion. Internal corruption means exactly that internal or among the police officers themselves. Selective enforcement or nonenforcement is when they use their discretion abusively like not charging a drug dealer is they give them the name of their supplier and charge the dealer for the information. Active criminality is when they use their power to commit the crimes that they are supposed to be preventing. Bribery and extortion are plain and simply getting paid by someone to look the other way while then do things that they shouldn’t do. There are also various causes of corruption and they are as follows: police personality, institutions and practices, moral ambivalence, environmental conditions, corrupt departments, and officer characteristics (Siegal & Worrall p. 265). According to Arshrika Singh “police corruption is also a violation of human rights as it denies some very basic rights to the citizens (pucl.org).” I agree with this statement as it shows that citizens that have money can buy their way out of trouble but the majority of us that don’t have that kind of money have to suffer the consequences of the actions of the people that can. I will now talk about some ways to help combat or at least control corruption in the police force. One approach that was instituted by then NYPD Commissioner Patrick Murphy is the accountability system in which the supervisors at each level are held responsible for the behaviors of all the officers that are in their command ((Siegal & Worrall p. 266). Under this system a commander can be demoted or even forced to resign if one of the officers under his command is involved in corrupt practices. Some police departments also have outside companies that review them and investigate any reported incidents of corruption. Arshrika Singh says that some other ways to try an eliminate corruption in the police force are increased salaries, incentives for education, and developing polices that focus on the factors that lead to corruption (pucl.org) In conclusion I have discussed some of the issues that affect police personnel. I used two of these issues that they are affected by. The two that I wrote about were job stress and corruption. I also discussed about some ideas that can be applied to or are being applied to help with these issues to make it easier on police. References http://www.heavybadge.com/efstress.html. Retrieved February 25, 2012 http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Police/2007/police-corruption.html. Retrieved February 25, 2012 Siegel, L. J., & Worral, J. L. (2012). Introduction to Criminal Justice (Thirteenth Edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.