The Social Desire for Legitimate Policing

Police Officers play a complex role in society, their role involves many tasks. There are many issues in the community that conflict with society’s desire. There are things that the society wants and there are things that they need. The conflict with society’s desire is that things are happening between society’s desire for legitimate policing and procedural justice, society has a lot of things that they desire from the police officers but then there are things that the society really needs. The things that the society wants from police officers are warnings for traffic tickets, patrol officers on every street, breaking up unnecessary fights and arguments but then there are things that society needs, police knowing how to interact with the community, control crime, positive treatment, patrol streets, always active and adjusting to the community. Some terms regarding these issues are society’s desire, legitimate policing and procedural justice but the correlation between procedural justice judgments and police legitimacy is positive and statistically significant.

Society’s desire is a group of people that strongly feel the wanting of something and legitimate policing is what the public see the police officers as, which mean that the public’s willingness to obey and cooperate with the police and procedural justice is an idea of fairness in the process that resolves disputes and allocates resources by one aspect of procedural justice which is discussions of the administration of justice and legal proceedings. Many times there is a conflict between what society wants injustice and how justice plays out in the system.

Society wants law enforcement to regulate and handle issues. This isn’t always legally possible. A good example that I took from the class was that a woman had called the police because she wanted them to get her child from underneath the bed. Police officers have no control over getting anyone child from underneath the bed, there’s nothing they can do about that but of calling the police for something like that they could have been doing something was more important. There’s a lot of things that society want but don’t need. For example, people want warnings for traffic tickets, patrol officers on every street, breaking up unnecessary fights and arguments. Things like that are unnecessary calls and things that people in the community want but don’t need but things that society need are police officers that are always active, interacting with the community, controlling crime, positive treatment, patrolling streets, and adjusting to the community.

Another example is a protest would have a conflict with societal needs because if you own a business and there’s a bunch of people in front of your business protesting then you would need to contact the police to move those people off your property because other than that you won’t make any money.

Another example, if you are an emergency medical technician or paramedics and you are rushing someone to the hospital but you notice there are people in the street causing traffic then you would call the police and it would be their job to get all those people out of the street because they back up traffic.

There are certain things that society wants that are unnecessary and there are things that they need are necessary and important. Further, police needs to follow the rules in a lawful manner, respecting the social and also protecting the society in the way that they should in order for society to have trust and confidence in the policing. If there were higher levels of public collaboration with police officers then the efforts of addressing crime, increasing compliance with the law, stronger support from public and police interacting with the community members will help be able to do their job more effectively.

Also, if police and society were to use very useful, plain language working definition of police legitimacy and procedural justice. Police officers need to build public confidence, treat people with dignity and respect, make decisions fairly, give people a chance to have a voice, let them tell their side of the story, act in ways that encourage the community that they will be treated with respect and dignity.

There are things that the social desire for legitimate policing and procedural justice but some things are necessary and there are things that aren’t necessary. Things that are needed in the society for the future is trying to change the policing for change and things that are needed are police officers interacting with the community, adjusting to the community, knowing how to handle situations, patrolling areas, positive treatment and just always being active to keep the community safe. Things that are conflicting with society’s desire for legitimate policing and procedural justice are things that need change and without a change then things won’t change.