Law Enforcement Deviance

Law Enforcement Deviance

Law Enforcement Deviance

Police officers use unethical and illegal methods when apprehending and arresting people who are suspected of committing a crime. This type of behavior has become a growing problem because these police officers believe their actions are for the greater good. Because these police officers have been allowed to continue this behavior they believe this is expectable and the problem continues to grow. This problem will continue to grow if something is not done. In order to fix these problems there must be stricter regulations and harsher punishments for guilty parties.

In the mid 1980's the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) created a branch called the Community Resource Against Street Hoodlums (CRASH) to help lower crime in the city. This department was comprised of officers who were specially trained to handle the type of crimes that where being committed. This department did what it set out to accomplish by lowering the amount of crimes by over half. However, the methods used by these officers were not always ethical or legal.

One of the biggest forms of police deviance that CRASH was guilty of was the amount of officers involved in shootings. There are rules that allow officers to use force and even shoot their weapons when the circumstances require these actions. For example, officers can use their weapon to shoot a suspect when either the officer or someone else's life is at risk. However, officers involved in the Rampart Scandal have been accused of shooting suspects and then planting weapons on them after the fact. There have even been incidents where a suspect had been shot in the back (Olsen & Khanna, 2005). These officers believe these actions are acceptable because they are getting criminals off the streets.

This type of thinking and behavior continues because of the policies that are currently in place for investigating these incidences. Many officers who were involved in an illegal shooting would not get in trouble. This is because by the time a formal investigation was complete the statue of limitations had run out. This allowed the police officers to believe they could do whatever they wanted without punishment. This type of thought process needs to be stopped.

The best way of doing this is by making sure the officers responsible for committing these crimes are punished. This can only be done by speeding up the investigation process. Whenever an officer is involved in a shooting there must be an immediate investigation. This investigation needs to be done by another department besides the one whose officers was involved, like the Officer-Involved Shooting Section (OIS).

This is because many police officers will stand-up for each