Professionalism of Law Enforcement in the 60s and 70s

Professionalism of Law Enforcement in the 60s and 70s

In the United States and around the world, police forces are formed by the government in order to protect the citizens of a given community. Since before the time the United States was a country, groups were appointed to protect and serve the people who lived here. As time has progressed, people have changed and technologies and laws have likewise developed. With each period, people have entrusted their policemen and policewomen to protect them and to preserve and promote the laws of the country and of the state. However, in certain periods of history wherein the police have not conducted themselves appropriately and have violated certain population's civil liberties and the letter of the law in order to promote the agenda of other groups. In the 1960s and 1970s, the professionalism of the police in general was called into question because of the behaviors of some of their number, particularly in the American south during the Civil Rights Movement and in many cities across the country where police had to respond to the protests of anti-Vietnam War activists. Past decades had an unfortunate result of damaging the reputation of members in law enforcement because the profession was aligned with the poor choices of a select number of this group. Since that period, police officers all over the nation have been devoted to professionalism and to the perpetuation of the police officer as everyday hero.

Almost always the question of professionalism of police conduct has to do with the orders that they receive, but there have been occasions wherein the actions where neither ordered nor condoned by their superiors. The police force became more militarized throughout the United States and particularly in places where there were discrepancies between the police and the people they were protecting (Harlan 2009). The effect was that people began to mistrust their police officers. This, in turn, led to an increase in the number of unreported crimes particularly in minority areas where a larger population of people believed that the police didn't care about them or their problems.

In the 1960s, the United States was a hotbed of political unrest. For example, in the American south, repressed African-Americans and sympathetic supporters fought to enfranchise those who were refused equal rights by the oppressive white regime in states like Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama. Black codes allowed for the government to demand separation and segregation of black and white members of a community. When the African-Americans of that community rose up and protested their oppressors, the police of that same community would come and most often they would defend the white people and arrest the African-Americans, violating their First Amendment right to peaceful assembly and protest. In such instances, the police, rather than protect the people were instrumental in the abuse and in some cases the murder of American citizens.

There were also many situations in the 1960s and 1970s where although the police forces did not aid in the commission of crime, they were insufficient in their duties towards the protections of citizens. These events, such as the Watts Riot would lead to the investigation into police forces and the reorganization of many departments in some states and cities. To remedy these wrongs, the government began a process of law creation which would ensure proper behavior by police and the protections of the citizenry by officers and others involved in law enforcement. In the later 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson initiated legislation which would become the Omnibus Crime and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (Weissman 1999). Even so, there was still quite a bit of antagonism between members of the police and civilians.