History of Policing in America Essay

Introduction

After the development of policing in England, the United States of America also developed the policing. There were two forms of policing at that time, the one is informal and the other communal. They were referred as Watch or also private for profit policing. The overall system was known as The Big Stick. The people who were part of this system were mostly volunteer from the community who serve the duty to keep the watch on any possible danger. The system was first implemented in Boston with the name of night watch and after that both New York and Philadelphia adopted this system. There not strictly to control the crime at first but this system was developed as the punishment to people that they have to perform the night duty as watchmen. The functions of these watchmen were mostly to serve the land surveyors and provide verification of the accuracy of measures and weight. The categories of this system was night and day duty were served by constables. The structure of policing system changed and evolved during time to time and even stayed in working after the American Revolution. Now advancement of technology demands in the development of modern policing and the future percepts needs the attention (Cordner, 2014).

Discussion

Now, the modern policing system also shared the same characteristics which are, supported by the general public and have the form of bureaucracy. The second one is that they are fully employed instead of just the volunteers, the third one is the policing policy is now fully designed with designated role and duties with criteria of selection. The last characteristic is that the ultimate authority of this system is police department and they will answer to central authority of government. The history of policing structure is that southern states developed this system to look after the affairs slaves. Their duties were to enforce laws on the slaves and keep a pressure on those slaves chasing those who run away and the last was to keep discipline among the slaves. This form of policing structure after the revolution turned into the law enforcer for free slaved because they were turned into laborers (Cordner, 2014).

The need during those times of developing police was the growing population and cities. The rapid urbanization requires the government the additional amount of law enforcers to keep the order of law maintained. But soon this volunteer policing was turned into authorized law enforcers because increase in crime and violence and the volunteers didn’t had the authority to enforce law but only to look for possible danger. There are evidence which showed that this system help greatly in bringing the order because of increase in crimes. The other reason of need of this system is economic and social differences. These differences among classes raised the crime rates because of injustice in the overall system. To control these violent crimes government enforced policing system. It was collective effort of businessmen and government to design and implement this system with defined system and duties.

The 20th century brought may changes and one of the most significant change was the technological change. Including every other thing, the system of policing also needs the change in the technological system they use. Government should make sure in that police should be fully equipped in order to be able to perform the job fully (Tyler, Goff & MacCoun, 2015).  The need of advancement in police system because of:

• To work in the streets ensuring the safety of people and their efforts directly links with policy makers.
• The concern of citizens because of increase in crimes.
• The media and leaders are interested in making this system more efficient.
• The technology is developed by private sector that’s why their concern over the technology changed.

To perform the job, police is emphasizing on the technology they need in order to make the job more effective and efficient. The technology related to finger prints and laboratories for crime observation greatly influenced the job of police and made it effective. Not to forget the communication through radio and use of advanced cars made this job more productive and beneficial to overall society even more. All these technology first reached to army but t police it reached quite late because of no priorities were ever given to them. After having all these facilities they are more efficient to perform the job. Technology is evolving with each year and emphasize should be put on the policymakers not to ignore once again the police department but timely change will be more effective and timely change will help in controlling the possible crimes. It was technology through which Crime Commission created the system of 911 which is widely praised and still the most effective system which is being used by every citizen (Ratcliffe, 2016).

The concern which was earlier mentioned by the private sector is because of all the technological instruments are being bought by the private business owners.  Cars, computers, radio and firearms are the example of those tools and instruments which are owned and manufactured by the private sector. This concern can be entertained if the policy makers gives these private sector the resource and allow them to spend resources in advanced technologies which are not in the access of police department. Their manufacturing will eventually help the police department to deal with lethal weapons used by the terrorists and to meet the challenges which they face on daily basis task to enforce laws and prevent violent crimes. The other concern which is directly related to policy makers is to emphasize on the integration of the federal agencies who provides the advanced technologies to other apartments but ignore the policy department. The integration between local and federal will not just help in sharing the advance technology but also the procedures and trainings could also be shared for dealing with crimes. There are also several other technological tool which police use but are old and do the damage which leaves the bad impact of the reputation of police. For instance use of pepper spray in police is being use from several years and this should be replaced with other tools which are more efficient but leave less damage. There is other issue with the detection doors for detecting weapons, it raised the concern that it’s an invasion to privacy. The advancement in technology should also cater these issues and give such tool which can help police in detecting the weapons without invasion the privacy of other people (Carter & Phillips, 2015).

The advanced technologies can be acquired by police departments themselves if the funding to them increase. They have now their own research and development departments and they can work in efficiently. They are capable of creative effective tools but the lack of funds are bounding them to ask such tools from the federal. The future of police department in America is full of power as the policymakers are inclined towards the empowerment of police department. The advance trainings given to them which is close to army is because of the terrorism growing in the world and threat to America. These technologies will allow them tackle such incidents efficiently. They are also being integrated with federal intelligence agencies and will work closely with same functions as intelligence functions. This is raising the concerns of people because of privacy issues but this will make police department efficient. The core object of the police department to bring back the law and order by decreasing the crime rate. The rights of citizens like the weapons is a challenge to police department but such advanced technology and training will help them dealing every possible threat. The other most significant step is taken by the government is to liberate the policy departments from the politics which was also influencing them to work efficiently (Friedman & Pnomarenko, 2015).

Conclusions

In the end, the strong emphasize is one the system which is purely on the citizen’s safety and keeping in view the history where mistakes were made to ignore this department. The modern policing system also shared the same characteristics which are, supported by the general public and have the form of bureaucracy. Their duties were to enforce laws on the slaves and keep a pressure on those slaves chasing those who run away and the last was to keep discipline among the slaves. The need during those times of developing police was the growing population and cities. The rapid urbanization requires the government the additional amount of law enforcers to keep the order of law maintained. There are evidence which showed that this system help greatly in bringing the order because of increase in crimes. All these technology first reached to army but t police it reached quite late because of no priorities were ever given to them. After having all these facilities they are more efficient to perform the job. Technology is evolving with each year and emphasize should be put on the policymakers not to ignore once again the police department but timely change will be more effective and timely change will help in controlling the possible crimes. They are capable of creative effective tools but the lack of funds are bounding them to ask such tools from the federal. The future of police department in America is full of power as the policymakers are inclined towards the empowerment of police department. The future holds many new reforms closely associated with intelligence and advanced technological equipment will make them able to work as efficient as it was never done before.

References

Cordner, G. (2014). Community policing. The Oxford handbook of police and policing, 148-171.

Tyler, T. R., Goff, P. A., & MacCoun, R. J. (2015). The impact of psychological science on policing in the United States: Procedural justice, legitimacy, and effective law enforcement. Psychological science in the public interest, 16(3), 75-109.

Ratcliffe, J. H. (2016). Intelligence-led policing. Routledge.

Carter, J. G., & Phillips, S. W. (2015). Intelligence-led policing and forces of organisational change in the USA. Policing and society, 25(4), 333-357.

Friedman, B., & Pnomarenko, M. (2015). Democratic Policing. NYUL Rev., 90, 1827.