Law Enforcement Today Essay

Trust is a huge issue police department’s face in today’s society. Society’s faith in policing has been diminishing as the century has passed because of corrupt police officers and brutality scandals. An immense amount of law enforcement administrators are overwhelmed with the task of again bringing a trust worthy structure to police departments. One reason for the corruptness is the extraordinary level of drugs, growing gang members, and guns in the different cities. Agencies are blind to see who they are hiring, some departments continue to hire the wrong type of people then are forced to participate in cover-ups of misconduct in hope the department will not receive a bad reputation. Money, a controversial issue, can be another factor. Officers that know and deal with the dangers of the daily life that citizens are living each day, are helpless to finding real hard-core evidence or gain real suspects as some small town departments are not funded for the more serious crimes. Stress is likely an issue that police officers in today’s society deal with. Humans just like the rest of us, police officers cannot show any symptoms of weakness in front of their co-workers, or emergency services as well as public safety workers, but more importantly the accused. Police officers do not have an easy job. These men and women are forced to make split-second decisions involving the life or death of not only themselves, but of the victims as well as the accused. Sometimes the decisions that officers make can result in serious injury or bring death to the wrong person. In some instances police officers are killed because they do not act quickly enough or make immediate decisions. Each day officers are subjected to danger and extreme mental coupled with physical stress. Unfortunately this intense amount of stress can cause officers to engage in brutal offenses, which reflect opon the department, such as beating the guilty or snapping on the innocence. Violence is another issue police department’s face daily. About 70 percent of police officers who suffer from bullet inflicted wounds leave the police force within seven years of the experience. â€Å"Police are admitted to hospitals at significantly higher rates than the general population and rank third among occupations in premature death rates (Sewell et al, 1988)† The federal government supports State and local authorities when their resources are in high demand or are predicted to be overwhelmed. The federal departments are there to respect the independence in addition to responsibilities of local, tribal, and State governments while providing assistance. The Department of Homeland Security also known as DHS is on the federal level, though state governments are assigned to lead the role in Homeland Security. In response to the assignment, many states brought together existing public security, law enforcement, and emergency response services by drawing them together and opening channels to other states. The connection between DHS, law enforcement, and intelligence has practically demolished as some law enforcement departments are becoming more like intelligence agencies while the existence of foreign intelligence is primarily improved. The Department of Homeland Security, in hopes of improvement, has established the six-point agenda. The agenda begins with 1. â€Å"Increase overall preparedness, particularly for catastrophic events 2. Create better transportation security systems to move people and cargo more securely and efficiently 3.  Strengthen border security and interior enforcement and reform immigration processes; 4. Enhance information sharing with our partners 5. Improve DHS financial management, human resource development, procurement and information technology 6. Realign the DHS organization to maximize mission performance. † In the year 2006/2007, Congress developed the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act which requires the Department of Homeland Security Office of Emergency Communications to create an order to provide a roadmap that will improve the Nation’s emergency communications purpose.  The National Emergency Communications Plan is a goal setter in hopes to enhance governance, planning, technology, training and exercises, as well as disaster communications capabilities. It also makes recommendations available which include improvements of the emergency response in emergency communications. Police departments can improve by cleaning up the corruption in their departments in addition hiring the right types of individuals, lowering the number of minutes in response time, and obeying the law themselves.