At the same time, organized crime began to take shape, and protests, riots, and petty crimes were also on the rise. The local police forces could not keep up. In response, the Department of Treasury created "T-Men," a group of 4, men who were charged with enforcing the laws of Prohibition. State governments also started creating their own police forces in the early s to stop the spread of crime in cities. Instead of following Vollmer's model, which concentrated on social work and psychology, Hoover made sure local forces were fighting street crimes.
Under this new system, police officers were less connected to the neighborhoods they worked in as officers patrolled neighborhoods by car. During the s, African Americans began to challenge the way police were treating their communities. To protest the treatment and racial profiling , riots, boycotts, and peaceful protests broke out in the US, mainly in the South. In response, the police used harsh tactics to keep order, including tear gas, high-pressure water hoses , and attack dogs.
Some of these events were televised nationally. In response, the patrons and neighborhood residents fought back, starting a riot that lasted six days. The fight against the police sparked the gay rights movement. Studies, like in Kansas City, Missouri , found that patrolling police cars in neighborhoods did not help reduce crime, nor did it ease people's fears.
In fact, it increased the community's dissatisfaction with police forces. In response to these findings, some departments attempted a return to community policing. This form of policing placed minority officers in minority neighborhoods. This model also incorporated the community in helping police the neighborhood. The police officers were meant to become close and familiar with the residents in the community. This became increasingly popular in the '90s. By the early s, two-thirds of police forces across the US implemented community policing policies.
In the s, crime rates in the US started to decline, so that it had roughly halved by While the exact cause is not known, research cited by the Brennan Center for Justice found that hiring more police officers helped decrease crime — in fact, according to the research , up to 10 percent of the decrease in crime in the s was due to hiring more police. Another theory is that technology used by police, such as their crime tracking system, improved in the s, helping them recognize and address trends more effectively.
On April 20, , two students opened fire at Columbine High School, killing 13 people. At the time, police responded by setting up a perimeter before going after the suspects. The response was widely criticized because of the amount of time the police took before moving into the school. Since then, the police have listened to the critiques and transformed their response to mass shootings. Now, one to four officers rush into a mass shooting site and follow the sound of the gun to confront the shooter.
This technique has been successful in a string of US school shootings over the past few years. Some police forces have been lauded for how they've handled active shooters, such as officers who were celebrated for their quick response to a shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice in First responders were called heroes for risking their lives and running towards danger.
The key question, of course, is what was it about the United States in the s that necessitated the development of local, centralized, bureaucratic police forces? One answer is that cities were growing. The United States was no longer a collection of small cities and rural hamlets.
Urbanization was occurring at an ever-quickening pace and old informal watch and constable system was no longer adequate to control disorder. Anecdotal accounts suggest increasing crime and vice in urban centers. Mob violence, particularly violence directed at immigrants and African Americans by white youths, occurred with some frequency.
Public disorder, mostly public drunkenness and sometimes prostitution, was more visible and less easily controlled in growing urban centers than it had been rural villages Walker But evidence of an actual crime wave is lacking.
Officers who joined the Metropolitan Police were expected to adhere to strict standards of behaviour, and were not permitted to accept bribes or rewards for their work.
The instructions issued to Metropolitan Police constables show that they were supposed to be a preventative police force. It was expected that the very presence of a uniformed police force would be a deterrent to potential criminals.
In , the Municipal Corporations Act was passed. This required Royal Boroughs to set up paid police forces, and from , rural areas were also permitted to establish police forces. In theory, there were clear stipulations about who police officers were to arrest; in practice, these officers were drawn from among their communities, and used their discretion in choosing when to make an arrest, and when to turn a blind eye to compromise with the community.
These tensions are not new; policing forces throughout history have faced challenges in negotiating their relationships with the communities they police. People thought the Government would use the police force to force people to do what they wanted. This had been seen in other European countries. People thought the police would be busy-bodies and would pry into people's business.
However, the main opposition was the increased tax that would be required to pay for the police force. Two commissioners were appointed to set up and run the new police force.
Many of the new Constables were ex-soldiers. Numbers quickly grew and by there were 11, men in the Metropolitan Police.
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