Police Accountability In Law Enforcement

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Both individual officers and law enforcement agencies should be held to account for their actions. Accountability includes both what the police do and how they perform. According to Petter Gottschalk Agency-level accountability involves the performance of law enforcement agencies with respect to controlling crime, disorder, and providing services to the public. (Petter Gottschalk).
According to www.ncjrs.gov the accountability of individual police officers is a fundamental issue for police executives. Police officers are the public officials that society has authorized, even obliged, to use force. Ensuring that police officers use that warrant equitably, legally, and economically on behalf of citizens is at the core of police administration. …show more content…

Police accountability is responsible to deliver crime control and maintain order, while treating individuals fairly and within the bounds of law. Police officers are expected to uphold laws, regarding due process, search and seizure, arrests, discrimination, as well as other laws relating to equal employment, and sexual harassment. Holding police accountable is important to build trust with the public's and for them to have faith in the system. There have been many complaints from the public against law enforcement, rather than relying on police departments. Integrity and accountability issues in policing is one of the reasons why the community feel unsafe and bias towards police officers because of the physical abuse of some police officers who are careless and abused of their power. Another issue is prisoner mistreatment, there are many people who have been incarcerated and are victims of abuse emotionally, physically, and mentally by correctional officers. Finally, corruption is problem because personal gain is a primary motivation for all criminal behavior because of the special trust and responsibilities placed in police officers the opportunities for them to abuse that trust to obtain money or advantage are considerable. Therefore, these are some reasons why the public have no trust in the police officers which is understandable, but as a community we need to also understand and be aware that not every police officers are bad there good ones too and we must treat them and everyone with

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