The Police and the Public

Police are government officers who enforce the law and maintain order. They work to prevent crime and to protect the lives and property of the people of a community. There are many ways policemen and policewomen serve their communities. They patrol streets to guard against crime and to assist people with various problems. The police are often called to settle quarrels, find lost people, and aid accident victims. During floods, fires, and other disasters, they help provide shelter, transportation, and protection for victims.

The police form part of a nation's criminal justice system, which also includes courts and prisons. Police officers enforce criminal law, which covers murder, robbery, burglary, and other crimes that threaten society. They investigate such crimes and arrest suspected lawbreakers, using whatever they need to get the job done. They also testify in court trials.

Every nation in the world has a police system. Canada has national, provincial, and city police forces. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) enforces federal laws throughout Canada. The RCMP provides police services on a contract basis to about 175 cities.

Throughout the years, police had gained an awful reputation. Presumptions such as the fact people think that prejudice leads to police violence have raised many questions. Many other people say whether police use excessive force depends more upon conditions of the encounter than on racial prejudice. Ever since long time ago, police were from time to time called a bad name. The society is now wondering: are the police over-stepping their boundaries and are taking part in what is called abuse of power?

Ever since that first industrial revolution of which the mass of the population soared, it is happening again. Policemen were forced to come to terms with a society changing with even more speed, and mass than during that first revolution. Therefore, it results in the lack of mutual misunderstandings.

Police work offers many opportunities to help people and to serve a community. However, it can be dangerous and sometimes required working irregular hours. Imagine the pressure police officers are going through everyday just to keep the community from harm.

Manpower problems are of primary concern. To attract and keep professional people and to maintain public services proves ever more difficult; and both the shortage and the rapid turnover of policemen delay the making of constant social policies and practice in these areas. Now, the question is: can crucial services even keep going? Putting off economic and human factors come together here, particularly the stress of demanding work in unrewarding, often hostile, circumstances. For the metropolitan police, these pressures are particularly severe, as increasing demands are made on inadequate human resources. At times, they require such an order of commitment on police officers as to put even their marriage and other personal relationships at risk. Small wonder if men opt for service in other areas or for alternative forms of employment.

In areas with high immigrations make up a new working class, these are usually areas of deprivation and urban stress. In some, where the immigrant groups least capable of advancement live under conditions of greatest stress, tensions run high and the potential for breakdown in social organization. At such points, our society is at its most vulnerable, the tasks of a police service most difficult.

Some people see a police not as a symbol of authority, but in distinct human form: a man who has made himself their policeman: whom they see calming their conflicts, breaking up their fights, saving them from fire, and disarming a man run berserk at the point of a knife. Using his police discretion to the limit, at times his fists, the policeman has earned the respect he commands.

It is not surprising the community often turn to the police when in trouble. So, they aid, moderate, control; and in these ways, preserve their small patch of the social fabric at a point of great and constant tension.

The most basic argument for punishment is that it preserves law and order and respect for authority. From this point of view, punishment does two things. It upholds the law, and it prevents others from thinking they can get away with doing the same thing without punishment. Many experts believe that strict gun-licensing laws would greatly reduce crime. However, weapons for police must be needed for self defense issues, and to obtain a strict image. Weapons such as tasers are really useful in combat. Stun guns provide an alternative to the use of deadly force to subdue violent or threatening suspects. The physical effects of a taser is that it causes temporary incapacitation but is said to have no permanent effect, the darts do not have to penetrate the flesh to work, and it works by "electro-muscular disruption".

In general, society has much to gain from consulting the police more fully on matters of social policy, and from involving them more formally in the processes of policy making. Sheer pressure of work also enforces dialogue between police and society. More and more policemen now ask themselves whether a stance of soldiering on stiff-lipped, silently coping with the ever growing, ever more thankless and complex tasks which society thrusts upon them until demands overwhelm resources. The police are uniquely placed to see what storm clouds gather on the social horizon, and uniquely experienced to interpret the nature of those storm clouds. As such, they have a duty to raise the necessary storm signals for society, which society ignores at its peril.

The greatest danger is lack of dialogue between police and society; failure to connect. "The gap between the government and people is widest...the relationships between sections of the public and the police are at their worst." (Peter Evans). Risks of breakdown increase, in which the police may be called on to assume roles quite alien to their traditions: that of a containing force rather than of a service to society.

It the police are not strict enough, and become aloof, their work will become ineffective. Also, they are expected to be close to the community, but not too close so that it seems that the police are creeping into other's personal lives.

Society's failure to hold freedom and authority in reasonable balance could only serve to distort the traditional police role and to damage traditional police relationship. Both the actually and the potential condition of our shaky times therefore insist on the priorities of preserving, renewing and, where necessary, remaking the compact between police and society.

It is true that police work on dangerous tasks and are under intense pressure each day. However, the