Police Officer Essay

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THE ROLE OF POLICE The history of the role of police strongly indicates that as societies increased in diversity and complexity, policing systems based on self policing and individual responsibility deteriorated. Generally, the public has gradually abdicated its role in peacekeeping and law enforcement and increasingly expected police to take on these responsibilities which were once a citizen’s civic duty. There has also been increasing pressure on police to intervene in civil matters. The emerging role of police in the 1990s is one characterized by expansion and change. Therefore, “there is considerable uncertainty on the part of both the police and public about the role of the police in Canadian society” (Griffiths & Verdun-Jones, 1994, p. 70). Nonetheless, while there has been an expansion of the police role, the activities of police forces are still discussed in terms of three major categories: crime control - responding to and investigating crimes and patrolling the streets to prevent offenses from occurring; order maintenance - preventing and controlling behaviour that disturbs the public peace, including quieting loud parties, settling domestic disputes and intervening in conflicts that arise between citizens; service - the provision of a wide range of services to the community, often as a consequence of the 24-hour availability of the police, including assisting in the search for missing persons and acting as an information/referral agency. (Griffiths & Verdun-Jones, 1994, pp. 70-71) Even though the police perform an increasingly wide range of functions, it is crime control which remains uppermost in the perceptions of the police role in the minds of both the police and the public. Despite the widely held perception that the police spend the majority of their time detecting and apprehending offenders, a considerable amount of research conducted

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