Policing Applicants
Police officers are respected in the society due to their duties to maintain law and order, respond to disturbance calls, incidents and accidents, protect the community against crimes and crime-solving, and enforce laws to achieve the common good of the society. Police officers should, therefore, understand the community in which they operate. Consequently, police officers and sheriffs should possess certain traits that help them render their services to the community (Barlow & Barlow, 2018). Therefore, policing applicants should be first accessed to understand whether they have compatible traits according to the policing departments. This can be achieved through the proper screening process as well as assessing the strengths and weaknesses of such a screening process.
Policing applicants with poor traits are likely to lead to a poorer society, while those with good traits are likely to lead the society to more developments and common growth. One of the major qualities of policing applicants is understanding that we live in a diverse community. American society is composed of different communities with varying cultural beliefs, nationalities, races, and religions, including the LGBTQ community. A policing applicant should, therefore, understand the community they operate in and how to deal with the diverse communities. For instance, lack of these qualities is what has led to discrimination, including the shooting of Michael Brown and the killing of Eric Garner by the police officer in 2014.
Besides, it is argued that some police officers view LGBTQ communities as evil, and thus they do not like to be associated with them. When they are deployed in such communities, they become more discriminative such that those communities do not enjoy their rights. This is why policing applicants should possess the trait of adapting to changes (White, 2018). Police officers do not operate within a fixed geographical location for long as they are sometimes transferred to new environments. They should, therefore, be adaptable to changes within the communities they operate, whether they are African-American communities or an LGBTQ dominated community. Whether the police officer is black or white should be able to work with both groups. If the applicant is not able to exhibit such traits, maybe should not be allowed to operate as a police officer.
A policing applicant should also have the right mental capabilities and should not be associated with any mental defect, as this can turn out to make them mass shooters due to the possession of firearms. A mentally upright police officer will be able to become responsible for any action they take in responding to the different issues within the society. Most proponents in the United States, including the former president Barrack Obama, argue that the number of mass shooters has significantly increased due to mental illnesses. However, there are many other scholars like Reid Meloy and the FBI who argue that mass shooting is mostly due to the need for revenge and depressions (Allwinn, Hoffmann & Meloy, 2019). However, there is a small percentage of police officers who fail to be responsible due to mental illnesses. Finally, ethics is another significant trait for policing applicants. For instance, police officers should portray ethical values to the society in which they operate.
To identify the traits of various applicants of policing, the screening process during the application is an essential aspect. The purpose of screening is to evaluate the candidates and background investigations. After screening, the candidates are therefore eligible to enter a one year pool, after which they can be cooled for interviews by the police applicant screening services (PASS) agencies (Rhodes & Tyler, 2019). The screening process helps police officers discover their potential. During the screening process, employment visibility also increases where a single application is available to all the 13 agencies. However, the screening process is faced with several strengths and weaknesses. Some of the screening processes ‘ strengths are the advantages that impact the applicants with the important qualities of a good police officer. One of the strengths is that the background of such applicants is understood to assess whether they are viable police officers. The screening process is also capable of evaluating whether such applicants are responsible police officers. This is why they are later called for job interviews during the screening process. However, there are still weaknesses in the screening process. For instance, PASS does not employ police officers despite conducting the screening process (Rhodes & Tyler, 2019). This becomes a challenge because some officers may undergo long screening processes without even being employed.
Similarly, the screening process may act as a discouragement due to long, complicated methods and procedures which many individuals are not capable of undergoing. Similarly, some procedures are bureaucratic to the applicants, and due to the racial discriminations existing in nations like the united states makes the whites to be favored than the African Americans. Therefore PASS officials are still discriminative; thus, African-Americans never get equal treatments as compared to the whites undergoing the same screening. This is the reason why many police officers are still the whites who discriminate against other non-white communities.
Therefore the screening process should be fair to all the communities, whether the whites or the blacks, so that all those communities enjoy equal rights. Similarly, PASS employs diversity by ensuring that its officials are mixed with both whites, blacks, and other persons representing other minority races. This will help to avoid cases of discrimination against policing applicants from minority communities. Besides, PASS should also be capable of offering employment to the policing applicants. This is because it may be more aware of those applicants who have undergone full screening and capable of acting as responsible police officers.
In conclusion, police officers will remain important not only in the United States but also in the world. Similarly, the world will remain to be diverse due to the increased migrations. Therefore, evaluating the personal traits of policing applicants will remain an important aspect, and such organizations like PASS will remain important. Understanding diversity will make policing department to get the best police officers. They can deliver the best services to the society and achieve the common good of the nations.
References
Barlow, D. E., & Barlow, M. H. (2018). Police in a multicultural society: An American story. Waveland Press.
Rhodes, T. N., & Tyler, D. H. (2019). Is It Cool to Be a Cop? Exploring the Differential Impact of Ferguson on Police Applicants. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.
White, D. L. (2018). Police Candidate Selection: Assessing the Effectiveness of Pre-employment Polygraph Screening. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice.
Allwinn, M., Hoffmann, J., & Meloy, J. R. (2019). German mass murderers and their proximal warning behaviors. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 6(1), 1.