Special Problems and Challenges and the Future of Policing In America

Special Problems and Challenges and the Future of Policing In America

The common advancements in technology have ensured that the police have to change some of their ways and tactics to guarantee they are up to speed on matters that pertain to security. Several years ago, the threat of security issues such as cyber terrorism, cyber-attacks, and other forms of security threats advanced by modern technology has raised the question of whether the police are ready to combat this unseen threat. With this notion in mind, it suffices to note that this paper will explore the best practices law enforcement agencies use to ensure that officers are trained in all aspects of understanding and manipulating technology and technological devices in their attempts to keep up with the rapidly changing technological environment. Also, it will touch on different ways in which police officers are responding to a changing and diverse community and what police agencies can do to improve the trust between diverse members of the community, Identify the agencies involved in investigating hate crimes and the challenges involved in investigating hate crimes, as well as analyzing the problems related to determining the actual number of hate crimes and what makes a hate crime different from other crimes, describe how domestic terrorism and hate crimes are similar, and what the future of policing looks like in America as well as Identifying the myriad of challenges that those in the law enforcement community are currently facing, and will face in the future.

Foremost, it is crucial to note that the possible threat that is posed by cyberterrorism has given rise to numerous alarms. Many security experts and even politicians have extensively publicized the ramifications that would result after cyberterrorists manage to hack into the government’s computer systems and successfully manage to cripple the military, the service sector, and the financial sectors of advanced economies. Doubtless, the threat is not minimal. Yet, despite the grim predictions, not even a single case has been recorded. Inevitably, questions arose about whether the threat was real or not. The sheer fear of violent and random victimization from cyber-terrorism increases the fear of computer technology. It goes without question that cyberterrorism is an attractive selection for modern terrorists, who treasure its anonymity, the psychological ramifications it brings, media appeal, and its capacity to inflict tremendous damage, which has been largely overstated and, to say the least, exaggerated. By so saying, it is not to rubbish the fact that there have not been cyber-attacks, but not from terrorists. It is safe to assert that nuclear weapons and other delicate military systems and computer systems belonging to the FBI and the CIA, for instance, are essentially ‘water-tight,’ which means they are inaccessible to hackers from without.

It is crucial to understand that technology is rapidly transforming and creating changes in police work today. New tools characterize its need to fight crime and the emergence of new types of crimes to fight. Since numerous police forces are employing technology such as drones to act as ‘their eye in the sky,’ the report from the FBI suggests that these very drones are used for criminal activities (Fritsvold, 2021). With the accelerated pace of developments in technology, more agencies are finding more potent ways that are better and more innovative to leverage these disadvantages in technology to bolster public safety, save lives, and catch criminals.

Facial recognition software has been used today. It was one of the most controversial police technologies in recent history. When it first made its way to the security agencies, there was widespread concern that these would be used in an unethical manner. However, this has not been the case, and it has been used efficaciously. Facial recognition software has aimed to ameliorate the level of safety and security in several instances. The NYPD officers, for instance, were able to locate a rape suspect within the first 24 hours through facial recognition software. This software has ensured that officers understand and manipulate technology and software to keep up with the rapidly changing technological environment.

Also, security agencies have employed biometrics to keep them up to date with the trends and advancements in technology to combat crime (Fatih & Bekir, 2015).  In this case, the police have been using fingerprints to make identifications for almost a century now. In the intelligence community, adding on DNA and facial recognition, more expanding biometric systems and behavioral characteristics that the law enforcement agencies utilize include; palmprints, iris recognition, voice recognition, heartbeats, and even gait analysis. The FBI has gone even further to create the NGI (Next Generation Identification) system that offers the criminal justice community essentially the largest and most productive electronic repository of criminal history and biometric information in the world.

Besides, artificial intelligence is one of the potent practices that the agencies in law enforcement use to ensure that officers are well trained in every aspect of comprehending and making manipulations of technology and even technological devices in their efforts to keep up with the fast-changing technological environment. In this case, with the current expansion of the IOT (Internet of Things), it means that more data gets generated, collected, and analyzed—whereby essentially, the vast majority of these can be of great assistance in the context of law enforcement (Fritsvold, 2021). However, the process of getting actionable insights from the tremendous data amount is extensively time-consuming. As such, AI (Artificial Intelligence) comes to the fore to help with this workload. AI is crucial in supporting many other technologies used by the police, such as ShotSpotter, biometrics, and facial recognition. Crime mapping also plays a vital role in helping the police to monitor high-crime areas and be in a position to deploy more resources. Still, security agencies have also used AI for crime forecasting. In this case, they use deep learning algorithms, whereby programmers can make the computer analyze data from a vast selection of sources to essentially predict when and where a crime can potentially occur, allowing agencies to efficiently make an allocation of resources and increase the possibility that officers will thus be at the right place at the right moment.

Further, the use of automatic License Plate Recognition (ALPR), which toll collectors have used, has been incorporated by the police for various intentions in law enforcement. In this case, they use ALPR to identify stolen vehicles. Also, the latest version of the ALPR technology interlinks optical recognition technology with Artificial Intelligence, which allows law enforcement agencies to identify the license plates (Fritsvold, 2021) efficaciously. After interlinking it with AI, a modern ALPR camera can positively identify the model, color, and make of the cars, regardless of the weather and poor visibility.

Conversely, the police make several plausible efforts to respond to the changing and diverse community. In this case, enforcement agencies have been seen to begin more community-led safety approaches by hiring more civilians to be in charge of roles such as dispatch, record keeping, administrative duties, and even crime scene forensics (Morant & Edwards, 2011). Also, there are various ways the police agencies can improve the trust between diverse community members. Doubtless, the aspect of police-community relationships needs more than simply an attitude change. Law enforcement agencies have to ensure a decentralized redistribution of resources to allow the officers to understand the neighborhood’s concerns better. More interactions with community members will go a long way in shaping and improving trust between the two factions.

Further, there is a need for the police to share problem-solving aspects with the diversified communities. In this case, the largest repercussions of organization transformation as the partnership with the community has primarily been the success of shared problem-solving. As such, the departments of police that have the best examples of community policing strategies whereby the focus is on training officers to lay their attention on creative and actively solving problems in the community, with the aid of the members of the community, instead of simply reacting to disorder or crime. The best of several approaches is the SARA Model for problem-solving within the community. SARA (Scanning, Analysis, Response, and Assessment) involves identifying recurring issues within the bounds of the community and making consultations with the community members, determining the causes of the issues, and finding long-term solutions to solve an issue permanently. Numerous pieces of evidence imply that a shared problem that is based on the SARA Model can potentially achieve remarkable crime reductions in traditionally based models. Also, proactive solving of problems has a remarkable ramification for the amelioration of public safety. The shift from the reactive response to crime led to particular social issues getting resolved and crimes being avoided even before they occurred.

Nevertheless, many people, especially minorities, have experienced hate one way or another. In the civil rights program, hate crime is a priority due to its devastating reverberations on community members and families. Hundreds of cases are investigated yearly. Traditionally, the investigation of hate crimes was curtailed to those who did it based on racial discrimination. Later, the bureau was mandated to investigate crime interlinked with gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or gender. However, since various technological solutions have been developed to pinpoint and prevent digitally-enabled crimes, generic solutions to these issues are unable to fully address the needs of the professionals and the policymakers in criminal justice.  Besides, the police are not fully equipped with the skills and training to exhaustively handle this problem. As such, it is a problem that is yet to be fully handled (Williams et al., 2021). Furthermore, according to Kaplan et al. (2003), “The Internet is vast, and perpetrators of online hate crimes hide behind anonymous screen names, electronically garbled addresses, and Web sites that can be relocated and abandoned overnight,” implying that the security agencies have an uphill task in solving these problems. Also, it is crucial to note that domestic terrorism and hate crime are similar because the effects of an attack from either of the two have far-reaching consequences and are not limited just to the victim of the crime or domestic terrorism.

Lastly, in matters of the future of policing in America, it will entail both revolution and evolution of ideas, implying that it will develop from the decisions that are made at the national, state, or local levels but stem from the radical changes in an interlink of the perception of individuals. For example, with the current advancements in technology, cars will soon be fully automated, and therefore auto-drive will be the new normal. In this case, it will have to adjust to the speed limit and obey traffic signs, limiting police interactions with people due to the efficiency of technology. The advancement in technology will imply that police will always have to style up to counter them. Inadequate funding for this project today will still affect them in the coming future.

In conclusion, the paper has explored different ways in which police officers are responding to a changing and diverse community and what police agencies can do to improve the trust between diverse members of the community, identify the agencies involved in investigating hate crimes and the challenges involved in investigating hate crimes, as well as analyzing the problems related to determining the actual number of hate crimes and what makes a hate crime different from other crimes, describe how domestic terrorism and hate crimes are similar in nature, and what the future of policing look like in America as well as Identifying the myriad of challenges that those in the law enforcement community are currently facing, and will face in the future. Also, it has touched on the implications for the police today and in the coming future

References

Fatih, T., & Bekir, C. (2015). Police use technology to fight against crime. European scientific journal, 11(10).

Fritsvold, E. (2021). 12 Cutting-Edge Technologies That are Transforming Policing. onlinedegrees.sandiego.edu. https://bit.ly/3nL18u3

Kaplan, J. E., Moss, M. P., Lieberman, M. L., & Wessler, S. (2003). Investigating hate crimes on the Internet.

Morant, N., & Edwards, E. (2011). Police responses to diversity: A social representational study of rural British policing in a changing representational context. Journal of community & applied social psychology, 21(4), 281-296.

Williams, M., Butler, M., Jurek-Loughrey, A., & Sezer, S. (2021). Offensive communications: Exploring the challenges involved in policing social media. Contemporary Social Science, 16(2), 227-240.

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Law enforcement operations and strategies were historically driven by proven best practices. Current and future challenges now require a new approach combined with the responsiveness and comprehension of officers using a different thought process and judgment. These challenges require a fundamental transformation inclusive of new tools, strategies, and approaches. Use your textbook, the Internet, and/or the Strayer Library to research credible sources on the issues related to law enforcement operations and management and the social aspect of policing.

Write a 6–8 page paper in which you answer the following questions:

Identify the best practices used by law enforcement agencies to ensure that officers are trained in all aspects of understanding and manipulating technology and technological devices in their attempts to keep up with the rapidly changing technological environment.
Identify the ways in which police officers are responding to a changing and diverse community. What can police agencies do to improve the trust between diverse community members?
Identify the agencies involved in investigating hate crimes. Identify the challenges involved in investigating hate crimes. Analyze the problems related to determining the actual number of hate crimes and what makes a hate crime different from other crimes. Describe how domestic terrorism and hate crimes are similar in nature.
What does the future of policing look like in America? Identify the myriad of challenges that those in the law enforcement community are currently facing and will face in the future.