The police have played a crucial part in society since time immemorial. This is one of the professions that is the same worldwide, and in most cases, the police officer has similar roles and responsibilities. There is a different cadre of services in the police department as there has to be a senior who gives out instructions and a junior who carries out the instructions given. In most countries, the police department is civil servants of the country paid by the citizens through the taxes collected by the government. We will see some of the police roles, which are to maintain law and order in the society, protect public property and members of the public, prevent crime, regulate traffic, and manage emergencies and see if they are practiced.
The police’s maintenance of law and order in a country is a guide to society to do what is right and required of them. Maintaining law and order is a critical role of the police department (Chandrashekar, V, 2021). It allows for a country to run systematically and be orderly. Some police are still performing this role as required, but a few are the ones even participating in disobeying the law. It is pretty unfortunate when police officers think that they are above the law since they are the enforcers of the law.
The police are also tasked to protect public property; these are facilities that the government is offering to the public at a low cost or for free and protect the country’s subjects. The assertiveness of the public to the police will affect the level of crime in the society (Alda et al., 2017); that is, the more we are dependent on the police, crime will reduce as they can help curb the menace. Some police work in conjunction with the criminals for personal gains or even exert revenge on specific people. This has become risky because we are left with no one to trust to solve our issues while other police officers perform their duties as required wholeheartedly.
The police department can also perform other tasks such as controlling traffic, as traffic congestion is the main concern in most cities. The police officers are given different areas that they will operate ( Prakash et al., 2018), mostly on busy roads. The police officer checks on the roadworthiness of the vehicle, the availability of required documents, and the motorist is abiding by basic road rules. Some police offices are rouge that when they spot a mistake, they accept to take bribe and let the issue go, not knowing that they are placing the other motorists at risk. They also manage emergencies such as fire incidents, drought, floods, and bombing events.
As we conclude, we can see that the role of the police has remained the same since the earlier period; the only change is that it has become more corrupted, and the officers are not following the set rules. It is not all police officers but some who are spoiling the hard work of the other competent officers. It is therefore important for the force to conduct regular appraisals to weed out the bad police officers.
References
Alda, E., Bennett, R. R., & Morabito, M. S. (2017). Confidence in the police and the fear of crime in the developing world. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management. https://doi.org/10.1108/PIJPSM-03-2016-0045
Chandrashekar, S. V. (2021). Human Rights and Policing in India-A Critical Views on Police Accountability. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-74202-8
Prakash, U. E., Vishnupriya, K. T., Thankappan, A., & Balakrishnan, A. A. (2018, July). Density-based traffic control system using image processing. In 2018 International Conference on Emerging Trends and Innovations In Engineering And Technological Research (ICETIETR) (pp. 1-4). IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICETIETR.2018.8529111
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