As I walk down the street and spot a police officer, I actually suddenly make an effort to act as typical as possible and get worried, fearing the officer will eradicate me just for being suspicious. Many of my personal fears of the police stem using their portrayal by media as strict by book enforcers and brutal abusers of force. Whilst law enforcement gets such a poor image which is not always authentic, they provide a vital role within our community.
Being a nation, we elect to obtain laws that govern the bounds to our patterns. However , in the event that these laws and regulations are unenforced, they are ineffective. As a solution to deter criminal offense, we make punishments that people risk if perhaps they disobey a legislation. Part of a policeman’s job involves this kind of enforcement from the law”they may possibly issue a problem such as a ticket to someone that works a red light. This kind of duty of your policeman plays a part in the negative view the American society gives the police as they are associated with punishing and stopping people to enforce the law. In light of countering our perspective that police are only out there to issue punishments, Inciardi states that their particular peacekeeping actions even incorporate “areas of public support such as directing traffic, settling disputes¦ and delivering babies” (Inciardi 182). Thus, it can be safe to talk about that we elect our law enforcement officials agents pertaining to activities that expand very much further than merely reducing criminal offense.
Putting law enforcement on duty does not come with no cost to the civil liberties. For example , the surveillance activity of a policeman intrudes into my personal privacy as I walk along the pavement. It gives the law enforcement power over personal individuals that may or may not appreciate losing their autonomy. This is shown when Inciardi mentions a police observer that provides an example that displays this decrease of autonomy”the person in the case in point would contact the police rather than shooting the person that is trying to cut down his tree, hence he manages to lose his directly to use push and gives up to the law enforcement (Inciardi 184-185).
Through strategies of bias, the media can skew each of our view of police toward the more bad view of lacking control over their use of force. An obvious example of this really is in an article written by Jordan Snyder saying: “Just this week, there have been testimonies about police killing a child deer in a animal shelter, about police eliminating a 95-year-old World War II veteran in a retirement living home¦” (Snyder). This prejudice by omission intends to provoke a public opinion ignoring the various more positive contributions such as to get streets secure that the authorities provided during the week. Another key factor to the media’s coverage of police force is that that biases to be able to favor income. With the George Zimmerman and Trayvon Matn case, in respect to Jaime Ortega, the media “turned the whole case into a racially biased alone prosecution to market his sense of guilt and attract an anti-Zimmerman campaign that would last for more than a year” (Ortega). This focus biases the case by simply spin and omission of facts such as Trayvon Martin’s past record, favoring a single sided view that Zimmerman should be reprimanded. By doing so, the situation can be blown up into a very much hotter theme that elevates money pertaining to the news and activist teams supporting Trayvon. Connecting this back to law enforcement situations, the authorities killing a baby deer is definitely an example of an abnormal take action that is a lot more interesting than the usual story a policeman is successful in directing traffic on the busy highway, thus it is going to raise additional money for the media.
Law enforcement officials with its safety of our protection and peacekeeping certainly really does more very good than harm. It is just the misconceptions and biases which the media gives that make all of us feel since it is the other way around.
