Missions of police

Missions of Police
Name
Institutional Affiliation

Missions of Police
Police officers play a highly demanding role in the society. They undergo specialized training that seeks to make them protect and serve the communities, which places them in a dilemma. As a protector, a police officer becomes a crime fighter, meaning that he or she is ready to engage even in unorthodox methods, such as using deception, coercion, and unnecessary force, to get a culprit of a crime to ensure that the culprit does not continue to harm society (Pollock, 2010). For the sake of community service, a police officer becomes a public servant, meaning that he is ready to serve even the criminal, as the criminal is also a member of the public, for the sake of ensuring that there is due process.
Too much reliance on either of the two missions may make the police officers ineffective to meet the society’s needs. Nevertheless, expecting the police officers to handle both of their roles effectively and smoothly without prioritizing either is wishful thinking. One might be tempted to think of police officers as public servants, but if they all fit in this category and become so soft with the criminals, the society may suffer a lot. For a better community, police officers should be ready to employ a side-by-side theoretical integration approach. This approach advocates for the use of two different strategies for dealing with an issue, by using either when it is more applicable than the other (Katz, 1999). In the case of police officers, it means that they should try to balance both missions by using them where it is appropriate.

For example, it is appropriate to use excessive force to keep a criminal from hurting police officers or the members of the public. If the criminal is a calm and collected individual, police officers should become public servants.
References
Katz, R. S. (1999). Building the foundation for a side-by-side explanatory model: A general theory of crime, the age-graded life course theory, and attachment theory. Western Criminology Review, 1(2)
Pollock, J. (2010). Ethical dilemmas and decisions in criminal justice (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.