Continuing the Police book
Section 2
Police departments in the early part of the century were inefficient, ineffective, and generally based on the political “buddy system.” Cops had very little training and practically no education, and laws were enforced arbitrarily. The common citizen expected little from the police department; the police were definitely not your friend, but were sometimes your enemy. The general perception was of an uneducated thug who had power over your life, and therefore must be feared and respected. People in the early part of the century generally avoided seeking out the police for help.
It wasn’t until after World War I that the police image began to change. Soldiers returning from the war with military training often influenced police departments to implement such methods into their working lives, and a new, more effective paramilitary police organization was born. During the Great Depression, police departments became even more focused on maintaining the status quo, and not so much on crime fighting. There were so many people out of work, so many hobos, so many small, petty crimes, and people with money tended to turn their faces away from such problems to avoid seeing them. So the police saw their jobs as more to keep everything looking normal, letting the public avoid seeing all the crime that was going on. The thirties saw a rise in bank robberies and train-robbing, and at that point, the police had to begin developing systems to combat such crimes.
World War II took many young men off to war, but the country’s crime rate went down and more women moved into the police department. These women were social workers then, rather than hard-nosed cops, and those police who stayed at home were older and needed to become more efficient. Afterwards, when the soldiers returned, again with military training as well as experiences with other countries and other police departments, police cultures changed yet again. Women were forced out of the police, or were relegated to more support roles, after having had a taste of real responsibility and power. And as a result of the GI Bill, there were more people receiving college educations, thereby raising the standards of police departments everywhere and, in general, improving the public’s perception of the police. The job of police officer became more of a profession, increasingly respected and valued in the community.
During the sixties, the growth of civil unrest and riots was broadcast on national television, along with the police responses to them (e.g., southern integration efforts, the Chicago Democratic Convention, the Sharon Tate/Charles Manson Murders), and showed the police as irresponsible, brutal and vicious, clarifying for the nation the violence inherent in the police system. New laws arose with the effort to respect suspects’ rights as well as victims’ rights. Often, these rights led to the public’s belief that suspects were given more rights than victims. New laws, such as the Miranda law and others, putting more and more restrictions on the police, were enacted, once again changing the face of police activity.
