CRJ 1010 Lecture Transcript PDF

SPEAKER 0 Greetings all this week we are going to continue discussing the police and focus on contemporary issues facing police agencies and police officers. Today I'm going to begin discussing discretion and use of force and police legitimacy. So it's important to understand, um, what is meant by...

SPEAKER 0 Greetings all this week we are going to continue discussing the police and focus on contemporary issues facing police agencies and police officers. Today I'm going to begin discussing discretion and use of force and police legitimacy. So it's important to understand, um, what is meant by discretion. Like all criminal justice actors, police have discretion in their tool belt when determining between courses of action. So discretion is the ability to choose between different courses of action. For example, to write a ticket or give a warning to make an arrest or not. As the seriousness of the situation increases, police officers discretion is more restricted. For example, if an officer sees a 15 year old assault an elderly person and steal their bag, they are unlikely to give the perpetrator a warning because the criminality witnessed was very serious. Conversely, if an officer sees a 15 year old smoking a joint behind a building, they are more likely to take the marijuana and give the kid a stern warning. Why might this be? Well, despite the fact that the behavior is criminal, it's considered relatively minor, right? We have a pretty good idea that once individuals have official contact with the system, they're more likely to be exposed to the system in the future. So if you're speeding ten miles an hour over the limit compared to 30 miles an hour over the speed limit, I think it's easy to identify which might result in a warning and which might result in a ticket. I think we want police to exercise discretion. Think about a system that did not allow for such right. If they had to make an arrest every time they witnessed a form of criminality, regardless of how minor or severe, but we want them to exercise it properly. So when they do exercise, um, discretion properly, usually things turn out okay. However, when they do not, the consequences are often tragic and sometimes inhumane. When discretion is misused, it can lead to abuse of power. When police abuse their authority, the consequences are almost always devastating, right? You see instances of torture, killing, raping here as examples of recent headlines, all despicable and devastating. As a matter of fact, um, I'm recording this on September 9th, 2024. And, um, today, jury selection for five of the officers involved in the, uh, Tyree Nichols murder. Um, is beginning today. So we can see that when officers misuse their discretion. Um, consequences can be quite, quite devastating. Um, and a lot of examples of police's use of discretion center on police use of force. So not all use of force is created equally. We authorize police to use force when necessary to resolve encounters. As Eagan Bitner, a very famous policing scholar, once said, we want a surgeon to use a scalpel, not a hatchet, when performing surgery. That analogy can be applied to police. Yes, we allow them to use force when necessary, but we want them to use the least invasive amount of force to resolve encounters. So when police use legitimate force, there is usually not an issue. But when they use force that is excessive Or excessively use force, then there is a problem. When we see or hear about horrifying incidents such as those involving Eric Garner, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and scores of others who have been killed by police, it tends to stick with us, and rightfully so. These tragic incidents illustrate too vividly the horrific outcomes that can emerge when police misuse discretion. It's important to note, however, that available research on police use of force demonstrates the following. Police use force infrequently, so it's estimated that less than 2% of police citizen encounters in any given year result in the use of force. The second thing that research bears out pretty convincingly is that when police use force, typically it occurs in the lower end of the force spectrum involving grabbing, pushing, or shoving. And the third thing that we have a pretty good idea on, regarding police use of force, is that it typically occurs when police are trying to make an arrest and the suspect is resisting. So contextualizing police use of force with these pieces of information is not meant to minimize the tragedy that we do see and hear in any way. Nor is it meant to suggest that there's not a problem with police using force, but it is meant to provide context. Right. It's important to point out again that roughly 2% of encounters that result in force annually disproportionately affect minorities, particularly African Americans. So even though that police use force infrequently, we have a pretty clear understanding that it's not used proportionately across racial groups. So we should understand that police misconduct and corruption comes in many forms. And we're going to talk about some of those. As noted in the text, police corruption has had a long history in the United States. So in the 1970s, the Knapp Commission was one of many commissions that examined police corruption within the within the New York City Police Department and is perhaps the most famous. And it resulted in this report on police corruption. The report detailed widespread corruption where officers some officers, were turning a blind eye to illegal acts in return for significant financial gain. In some instances, officers were earning $3,500 or more a month. Now remember that was in the 1970s, where $3,500 meant, um, quite a bit more. Than it means today. Even in today's terms, I think that's a fairly sizable amount of money. But 1970, it was extremely, um, extremely, um, sizable. So the Knapp Commission distinguish between two types of corrupt officers. First, they identified grass eaters. These were officers who accepted graff when it comes their way, but they did not actively solicit opportunities for graft. Second, they identified meat eaters, and these were officers who actively solicited opportunities for financial gain and were involved in more widespread and serious corruption. The commission concluded grass eaters were more of a problem, which might seem counterintuitive, but they concluded this because grass eaters outnumber meat eaters by a lot, meaning there were more officers that were willing to, um. Except graft when it came their way, compared to those that were explicitly looking for it. Moreover, because there were so many of the grass eaters who were, you know, opportunistic, they did not openly talk about what they were doing and tried to keep their activities concealed. This created a code of silence, which the Commission noted was an impediment to cleaning up corruption. Suffice to say, police misconduct is still an issue that we grapple with today, and it's very costly to municipalities. This graphic here, put together by Mother Jones, track payouts for police misconduct and the country's 44, um, largest police departments between 2006 and 2011. And what we can see is, is that municipalities across the country paid over $735 million, um, in payouts to resolve cases of police misconduct. You might also notice that individual officers paid relatively little right amount paid by individual officers in these cases was just over $171,000. So municipalities bear the brunt of the financial responsibility when officers engage in misconduct. And that money that is paid to the plaintiffs in these cases is money that could be spent elsewhere, money that could be spent on reform efforts, on better training. So it's not just the financial cost, it's all of the other things that might get cut out of the process because of how expensive the police misconduct cases are for municipalities that we should be concerned about. Another major issue in policing right now centers on trust and legitimacy. So legitimacy is the subjective appraisal by citizens about the restfulness of police conduct. So if we were to have an interaction with police officer, we would appraise his or her behavior and conclude, um, whether or not we think that the way that they behaved during the encounter was rightful or legitimate. Similarly, if we see or hear about, uh, an encounter between police and the public, we oftentimes make appraisals about the rightful office of the police conduct in those instances. So Tom Tyler is a famous social psychologist from New York University, maintains that when individuals believe they have been treated fairly, they typically hold stronger beliefs regarding the legitimacy of the legal authorities. So if our subjective appraisal indicates that we believe an officer acted legitimately, legitimately right, it's likely because we feel like we were treated fairly, we were spoken to properly. We weren't disrespected in some way. Conversely, if we feel like we've been disrespected or treated unfairly, we're not likely to, um, assess the officer's behavior as legitimate. An individual's perceptions regarding the legitimacy of legal authorities are influenced by their experiences with those authorities. So perceptions are influenced by our experiences, both direct experiences that we have, as I mentioned, as well as vicarious ones, which I also referenced. So when we see or hear about police treatment of others That's a vicarious experience that we will evaluate the legitimacy of an officer's behavior. But when we are the ones involved in the encounter with the police officer, that's a direct experience. That's a personal experience. And all of these, according to Tyler, as well as others, help formulate our subjective appraisal about policing globally, but also specifically when there are encounters that we either witness or are a part of. Importantly, even if an outcome is not viewed favorably, people are more likely to evaluate their treatment as legitimate legitimate if they believe in the rightful ness of the officer's actions. So outcomes do not have to be positive for police. Um, legitimacy to flourish. Meaning if you're speeding and you get pulled over and the officer is respectful and explains why they pulled you over and explains why they're providing you a ticket. Tyler's research, as well as others, suggest that you're likely to identify that police officer's actions as legitimate. Yes, you were violating the law. The officer was respectful. You felt like you were treated fairly, and so legitimacy of that individual officer is intact. Conversely, the officer pulls you over and it's rude and disrespectful. That outcome might not be viewed as legitimate, even though, yes, you were violating the law. And I think the point here is that legitimacy is often in the eyes of the beholder, but it's also something that police themselves can help shape by how they treat citizens. I think, you know, it's important to note these words that are underlined and italicized. You know, legitimacy is subjective. It's basically based on beliefs. Two based on perceptions. Right. And all of which, again, um, are easy to see how they vary across individuals. Right. Given the fact that it's highly dependent on our past experiences, both vicarious and in-person ones, we can see how legitimacy of police can be influenced pretty easily, particularly when it relates to high profile cases. So just as we talked about, um, earlier in the semester, uh, regarding crime trends in the United States, the the public doesn't always have the most accurate perception of what's going on. Um, and this is true to some extent with policing issues, particularly police use of force. So this is a study that came out of the Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute in Portland, Oregon, where researchers asked survey respondents to indicate whether they thought police use had force. Police use of force had increased or decreased over a five year period. And you can see response categories were ranging from decreased a lot, decreased somewhat, stayed the same increase somewhat, increased a lot. And results show that over 62% of respondents indicated they felt that police use of force in their jurisdiction, um, had increased somewhat well, when compared to actual instances of use of force um, by Portland Police Department officers. You can see that use of force dropped considerably by more than 50%. And so what does this tell us? Again, this tells us that the average person's perception about police use of force and how often it's used is pretty inaccurate. Um, and there are a whole host of reasons that that might be the case, right? I mean, we have media outlets that tend to, um, repeatedly show things. Um, we have social media. We have a whole lot of, um, platforms for which people can repeatedly be subjected to the same information, and they may not consciously think about that. Right. But the larger point is contrary to a lot of people's perceptions. Police are not out using force willy nilly all of the time. If you remember just a moment ago, I said, um, you know, roughly within any given year there are somewhere around 60 million police citizen encounters. And for the past. Over a decade, um, research has demonstrated that less than 2% of those result in police use of force. And again, saying less than 2% is not meant to minimize the importance or severity. It is meant to highlight that we're not talking about police using force and the vast majority of interactions which someone could, um, come to the conclusion of if they're just looking around them and looking at what's in the media, social media, what, you know, even, um, if we look at crime dramas, they tend to Disproportionately show um encounters with um suspects that result in force. And so we know of these inaccuracies, particularly in the crime dramas. But we also know that, uh, media tend to, um, like to show highly sensationalized events because that's what draws the public's attention. So, again, a point of showing this is, you know, the idea that perceptions might not always map on to reality. But that said, police use of force is still a serious issue that the public should be concerned with. We should always be, um, looking to to ways for reform and minimizing the harm that citizens experience at the hand of hands of police, because ultimately police are there to protect and serve. And that means serving everyone.