Law Enforcement and Power: Do Law Enforcement Officers have Issues with Power or Ego?
The Law enforcement officer includes the various police and various personnel who are mandated to keep law and order in the society. These teams frequently interact with the public in their daily operations. Just like other civil servants, personal characteristics define the performance of the services of these officers including power vested upon them coupled with ego. This is as discussed below into details. The judicial system has no right to detain a person without trying them. The officers will detain an innocent person with a claim of restraining them for officers’ safety or the safety of the public. They are the only individuals who can detain a person without trial. Under these circumstances, the judicial system will always back the officers under the assumption that being a law enforcement officer is dangerous, and later approve the violation of constitutional right. The freedom of detaining a victim is an indication of the high power that the officer has been accorded. However, detention is only under some special circumstances, such as a detailed interrogation of a suspect.
Most occasionally, the law enforcement officers will beat, arrest, torture and falsely accuse those people who may be resistant to the command of the officers. The officers will normally do this to protect their ego and show the rest of the public that they have authority. Others will molest the victims just for fun or with the aim of testing security devices such as rubber bullets and pepper balls. In various occasions, police officers will point a gun at a civilian, order them to lie down, search them, make them sit in their patrol cars and any other kind of command that they may feel relevant (Eterno, 2001).In many cases, the officers give these orders to civilian even when the officers are not faced with a danger that guarantees these orders. In other cases, they will beat up the innocent, and give a false justification of resistance from the civilian. This is attributed to too much power that the officers enjoy from the state.
Law enforcement officers have challenges dealing with their ego in most cases. This is because they are always protected by seniors and political agencies. This is due to their civil liability and reputation to the public. The officers will always back up their fellow officers, regardless of how guilty; they are and regardless of how much the officers violates the human rights. In some occasions, the officers abuse their power by generating false evidence to frame the civilians to protect themselves or their fellow officers from blame. They go to an extra mile of coercing the victims for interrogation without considering their current situations. The officers may conduct their interrogation forcefully or even when the victim is under the restrained environment which instills fear. Under these conditions, the officers will trick the victim to say what the officer wants or will be forced to say …
