Reflection on Law Enforcement and Advancement of Policing

The police system in today’s society and back during the seventeenth century both have the same agenda which is enforcing the law and keeping the peace amongst the people and the city, state or town. Although the two different time frames adopted the same mission they also demonstrated police corruption. The differences between modern day policing and the police system back in history is that, in today’s society they have access to better transportation, outlets for communication, better technology, and different divisions of the police force that specializes in specific crimes.

In the early seventeenth and eighteenth century the police system usually consisted of rangers, sheriffs, deputies. The sheriff offices back then had limited effectiveness in crime prevention and controlling those that broke the law. As stated in the text “the sheriff’s responsibility was for conduct of civil processes, administration of the county jails, and in some cases the collection of taxes” (Inciardi. , 2010, p. 158).

Whereas in modern day society there are so many divisions that specialize in a certain police force such as, SWATS, Tactical Units, Specialized Police Units, Homicide Detectives, Web Police and others. With all the advancement in a new era of technology it is much easier to detect criminals while maintaining some form of control throughout the city and or town. I’ve never had an encounter with any police, but I’ve seen how they treat others and how they target and even profile certain ethnicities.

Many times the law enforcement will turn the other cheek when crime is being committed depending on ethnicity. Now days many police officers utilize force to get a handle on situations and sometimes take their forcefulness too far. In maintaining peace the police have rules that they must follow that will not go against citizen’s rights. Law enforcement have evolved from the way crimes and criminals were handled many years ago, and I think that in some circumstances the police approach in controlling order is designed to protect civilians but can also contradict some rights that civilians have.