Law Enforcement Today

Policing Issues and Challenges

Keenan Williams

CJS 200

July 15. 2012

James Williams

Policing Issues and Challenges

Enforcing the law is not an easy task. Police officers, and other law enforcement agencies, have one of the toughest and most dangerous jobs to perform, and it does not come without a set of challenges and issues which they have to deal with. Commonly, those issues and challenges are with personality and culture, corruption and integrity, the dangers of police work, use of force, racial profiling and bias, and civil liability.

New recruits of the police force, generally learn their behaviors and from working with and observing senior officers, or veterans of the force. Like any job, new hires look to the people who have been there longer and know the job well for guidance and help. Through conversations with experience officers, the new recruits are introduced to police subculture. Police subculture is a set of informal values which characterize the police force as a distinct community with a common identity (Schmalleger, 2011). Through this learning of the subculture of police work, a new recruit will learn the best and safest way to carry out their job duties, something that comes from experience rather than academy training. They apply this learning to how they handle situations they encounter, such a hostile or combative suspects; however, some do not always apply this effectively and end up acting more hostile towards suspects instead of being conservative.

Once officers have developed the personality and culture within their department, the next issues that they may encounter is dealing with corruption and integrity. Unfortunately, corruption in the departments has always been an issue and still is today. Police corruption is the abuse of police authority for personal or organizational gain. According to Schmalleger (2011) there are many forms and levels of police corruption, low to high, and those actions include: accepting...