Police officers

People think a police officer is anybody who works for a police organization and is authorized to carry a gun and make arrests. For police themselves, however, a police officer is the bottom rank, and most of these who hold that rank do patrol work. The police officer is truly the front line of policing, responsible for the vast majority of contacts between police and citizens, responding to almost all calls for service, and making most of the arrests in any force.

A police officer does a grubby, physical job that involves coming into a close contact with people who are dirty and foul smelling. People think that police use their guns and clubs often; they don’t. But they frequently have to wrestle with people, struggle with them on the ground, restrain them in the back seats of patrol cars, twist their arms behind their backs, or hold them tight to prevent violence. The work of police officers is also physically grueling. They have to work all hours of the day and night, in many departments rotating from day to evening to night shifts every week or ten days. They also have to work outdoors in rain, snow, or heat as they respond to calls for assistance.

Police officers live with danger. The central fact of a police officer’s life is that she or he must be prepared to step forward to protect the rest of us from life-threatening danger. They never forget this. Police officers are expected to be brave. The ultimate disgrace in policing is cowardice.

2.

The performance of the police should be judged in terms of three criteria: effectiveness, efficiency and rectitude.

Effectiveness is judged in terms of whether the police are achieving the objectives for which they were created. The general public would say this means the enhancement of public safety and good order. Simply put, the criterion of police effectiveness requires a reduction of crime.

Efficiency deals with the costs of what the police do in relation to what they achieve. The question is not what the police accomplish but whether the costs of what they do are minimized. Efficiency and effectiveness represent, respectively, the costs and benefits of police activity. Although both must be considered in judging performance, greater attention must be given to one or the other at particular times by different police forces.

Rectitude is probably the most sensitive issue for the general public. Here attention focuses on whether the police are treating people properly, legally, and morally, regardless of their effectiveness in preventing crime or their efficiency in receding costs.

Altogether these three criteria create different agendas for improving police performance. Effectiveness is concerned with doing the right thing; efficiency with doing things right; and rectitude with treating citizens right.

Unit 10. My future profession