Legal Issues and Challenges in American Law Enforcement

Abstract

The essay will include information on some legal principles that effect American law enforcement nowadays. It will also observe some facts on how important civil liability is and how it protects citizens from governmental and particularly police officials’ misconducts. This essay will review some principles to promote effectively police accountability. It will explain police discretion and how valuable is to follow the department’s standards and a code of ethics. The essay will present reasons why deviant police behavior takes place and how crucial the use of appropriate force is.

Legal Issues and Challenges in American Law Enforcement

      Fortunately, there has been a significant shift away from the times when police officers physically abused suspects in order to get confessions. Those were the times, when they beat, accused, and tortured suspects in order to obtain information that was necessary to further investigations or incarcerations. Now we have the Bill of rights that protects citizens’ rights from governmental overpowering abuse including unreasonable searches, arrests and gives us an amount of rights (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). Police officers are held liable for their professional misconducts and excessive use of force through the Title 42 US Code Section 1983 and state torts where officers also enjoy some defenses (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). Police departments set their own ethical standards, which officers have to respect and abide. We fight with the existence of police corruption that unfortunately still occurs, where the moral and ethical principles, and also money is on the question. We try to prevent it through the selective programs that are invented for a hiring process to distinguish the officers, who possibly will turn to be deviants and be a shame of a police department. The recruits learn during their trainings what force is accepted in a particular situation and when it is accepted. They also learn the codes of ethics of such an important profession as policing.
      The Constitution was established in 1789 that presented the governmental structure in three branches: the legislative, the judicial and the executive. Later in 1791, the Bill of rights was adopted, which includes the first ten amendments (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). The Bill of Rights guarantees the protection for American citizens
against abuses by the nation’s government. Particularly, the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments put certain limits on police behavior not to violate individual rights of citizens (Palmiotto, 1997).
              The Fourth Amendment puts particular restrictions on police activity in such areas like searches, arrests, seizures, and hot pursuits (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). It specifies that any search or an arrest must be supported by a warrant, which provides an officer a legal protection. Detached and neutral magistrates usually issue warrants where a probable cause should be articulated (Palmiotto, 1997). However, there are some circumstances, that US Supreme Court has established where the places and persons can be searched and seized without an issued warrant. These will include searches based on exigent circumstances, searches incident to an arrest, plain-view, automobile and consent searches (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). The Supreme Court in the case of Weeks v. United States stated the exclusionary rule that excludes from trial any illegally obtained evidences. In the case of Terry v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled that an individual could be detained for questioning without probable cause, but under a reasonable suspicion (Palmiotto, 1997).
        The Fifth Amendment protects accused against self-incrimination. The Sixth Amendment provides citizens with a right to an attorney during police interrogations, arraignments and trial. The Miranda v. Arizona case put some changes on police activity. Miranda warnings are required to be read before an interrogation in order to remind the accused to their right to an attorney (Gaines, 1997).  
      Quite often the police officers are found liable for violation of individual, constitutional and civil rights that bring them to lawsuit, makes the nation’s government pay tons of money and in worse situations might result with incarceration of officers, like it was observed in one of the most famous case of Rodney King, who filed the civil rights suit against the police. King won the suit and was awarded over $3 million in damages
by the city of Los Angeles and of course the police officers who participated in the beating were found liable for the assault (Gaines, 1997).
      Since the 1970s, the United States Supreme has applied Title 42 US Code Section 1983 to check police misconduct (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). Section 1983 deals with procedural remedies. Palmiotto (1997) specifies in his book that “section 1983 allows for a suit in equity, or other proper proceedings for redress, for individuals deprived of their Constitutional rights, privileges, and immunities by an official’s abuse of position.” Title 42 of the United States Code, Section 1983 states:
       Every person who under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory, or the district of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States, or other persons within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or   other proper proceeding for redress (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010).
             The Section 1983 legislation has two elements that must be established for a person to sue a government official for any civil rights violation. A person seeking redress for civil rights violation must show that the officials were acting under color of state law, and the occurred violation was of constitutional or federally protected rights (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). If these two elements are not presented, then a plaintiff cannot redress through the Section 1983. Later then, the civil suit still may be brought at the state level under a tort liability (Gaines, 1997).
             State torts usually take place in cases when injures are not serious enough to claim through Section 1983. There are two kinds of state torts liability: intentional and negligence torts that serve a good opportunity for plaintiffs to redress for police misconducts that resulted with some minor injuries (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). Of course, in torts as well as in Section 1983 governmental officials and particularly police officers enjoy some defenses that may justify the officials from legal misconducts or illegal actions. Sovereign and qualified immunities are defenses to Section 1983. Contributory negligence, comparative negligence and assumption of risk are defenses to state tort liability (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010).
      There are also two ways to promote police accountability: external and internal (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). External accountability includes citizen oversight, citizen complaint procedures, agency accreditation, the exclusionary rule, and criminal prosecution. Under citizen oversight, nonsworn personnel oversee and investigate complaints against police work. The next is a citizen’s complaint that includes
documents filed against officers’ misconducts. As statistics show, filed complaints are very seldom resolved in the favor of a person who filed the document (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). Police agencies must be accredited which is very important for them to meet all the professional requirements.The exclusionary rule requires that any intimidating information and evidences should be gathered according to the US Constitution; otherwise, they will not be admitted in trial. Criminal prosecution makes police officers criminally liable for any proven offense.
      Internal affairs are a division that is responsible for investigation of any misconduct inside a department (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). During an investigation, a police officer who is accused of misconduct enjoys a police officers’ bill of rights and other protections. A code of ethics combines standards and principles that an officer should follow.
      Police officers have enforcement discretion that specifies how they enforce the law, maintain order and provide law enforcement service. Every suspect’s fate is in the hands of the police officer who apprehends him or her before going through the criminal justice system. It is up to the officer to decide whether to enforce a specific law, to file the criminal case to the prosecuting attorney for formal charges or not. It should also be mentioned that if discretion is used properly it is a positive aspect of the criminal justice system. In cases when it discretion used improperly, it may turn to be discrimination or illegal and immoral actions. Discretion can be also controlled externally through the courts or citizen reviews. Internally, it can be controlled through the department’s supervision, policies, and trainings (Palmiotto, 1997).
      Deviant behavior occurs when a police officer or any other member of a police profession violates professional law enforcement rules or norms. Deviance can be committed either on duty or off. There are two theories of police deviance: Environmental factors and the Rotten Apple Theory (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). The Rotten Apple Theory says that the deviance is the result of failing to undercover individuals whose interests of corruption were not identified during hiring process. Environmental factors stand for the outside factors that can put some impacts on an officer’s deviant decision-making.
      Young police officers are required to go through different stages of the hiring process, including documentations, tests, interviews, trainings, where the deviance is expected to be discovered and controlled.  Each police department sets their own codes of ethics and standards that specify the rules the officers must follow.
      As it was mentioned above, there are sets of laws professional codes of ethics and departments’ policies that serve as a guide to officers to make a decision, but we should keep in mind, that every situation and circumstance is exclusive and sometimes requires a split-second decision either to use deadly force or not. The use of force might be essential in the job of a law enforcement officer. However, officers are taught that any use of force must be appropriate and used as a last resort. There are two types of force police officers use on apprehending a suspect: deadly and non-deadly (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). Deadly force is defined as a force which leaves death or serious injuries to a target individual. Non-deadly force is a force that does not usually result in serious physical injuries or death. Non-deadly force includes less-lethal weapons (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2010). These would include Tasers, rubber bullets, stun guns, pepper spray and others. We cannot exclude the fact that people affected by less-lethal weapons and even physical force can die or experience some lasting injuries. As a response to some fatal mistakes that took place prior in the history of American law enforcement officials, the US Supreme Court held in the 1989 case of Graham v. Connor that the excessive non-deadly force has to be overseen under the Fourth Amendment’s “reasonableness” standards (Palmiotto, 1997). The point is that if the force does take place, then it must not go over the boundaries, where the force turns to be unnecessarily excessive.
      Police have a variety of duties they have to perform, such as protecting citizens, apprehending offenders, making searches and seizures and other difficult tasks for which they carry responsibility. What makes the profession more complicated is that the police officers often become the targets for lawsuits. Those happen as a result of inappropriate police force and its excessiveness, abuse of authority, bad arrests and others. In order not to violate the civil rights and the constitution, police officers along with their supervisors, police administration, and chiefs must be responsible for their actions, behavior, procedures and policies. We should remember that being a police officer means to keep up with professional ethical codes and moral principles that include only professionalism and dignity in any police action.

References

Gaines, L.K. (1997). Policing in America. Cincinnati, Ohio: Anderson Publishing co.
Palmiotto, J.M. (1997). Policing. Concepts, Strategies, in American Police Forces.
          Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press.
Schmalleger, F. & Worrall, J.L. (2010). Policing today. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey:
          Prentice Hall.