Academic Article Summary

Cory Havlicsek
Comp 106
October 2, 2009

Academic Articles Summary
Police officers are needed in every society all over the world. Without some kind of neutral force keeping the peace, what would our world be like? Murderers, rapists and other criminals would roam freely and commit crimes whenever given the chance. Yet, even though we do have police officers, there still is an ever climbing rate of crimes and chaos. Is if the police officers fault? Are they not doing their job effectively, or do they simply need help in the age of technology?
First we look at the police officer. In the first article I read, the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals stated that if the minimum condition for employment was more than just a high school diploma of GED our police departments would be more professional and modernized. Meaning that as a prerequisite for employment you must have some kind of college education. Now some states such as Arizona and Florida already require this. According to the Minnesota Post (1978) police officers with a college degree handled stress better, worked with fellow officers more effectively and exhibited less aggression and abuse of authority. I think if every state had this as a requirement our police forces across America would be substantially more effective.
Maybe it’s not the police officer but the criminals themselves. Another article I read focused on sex offending criminals. Mainly, how we could as a community, stop these criminals from reoffending. Now our state of Michigan, along with all the others, already has registration and community notification program to keep everyone informed about these sex offenders. More than twenty states have restricted where these offenders can live. So what more can we do? The author proposes that prisons and jails make it mandatory for sex offenders to undergo psychiatric treatment. Of course, we as tax payers would fund this, but how far is one willing to go to keep the streets clean and safe? Also, what I didn’t like about this article was that the author never asks how effective this would be.
Maybe technological advances in police equipment would help our officers in the line of duty. One area of focus is preventing pursuits. One idea that actually exists now, is somehow being able to electronically disable the car by disrupting the twelve volt current between the alternator and the coil, I thought this was ingenious. Further reading revealed to me that this kind of technology has already been used in a pursuit situation. An officer, John Smith, of the Denver police department was in pursuit of a 2005 Chevrolet corvette for speeding. When he entered the license plate number into his cruisers on board computer, the car came up as stolen. As the corvette accelerated in an attempt to try to elude Officer Smith, Smith flipped on a switch on his dash board. Immediately a coded radio frequency was transmitted from the police cruiser. When this frequency was received by the corvette’s factory installed circuitry, the engine shut off. Pursuit averted! This seems like something of the future! This to me is the most interesting and safe technological advance in police equipment.
In the never ending battle to try to decrease the number of crimes, police need all the help they can get. All of the ideas mentioned in this paper are great and sound effective, but I would like to see these ideas being used more, or even considered more often. I, myself, would like to be a police officer and any one of these ideas would contribute to keeping me and all other officers safe in this chaotic and dangerous line of work.