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This book is dedicated to my dear parents, James and Christa Albrecht (RIP), and to my two children, Jimmy and Kristiana, who through their curiosity and enthusiasm give me the energy and desire to stay committed to my research and who provide me with pleasant distraction from life’s challenges.
–James F. Albrecht
This book is dedicated to my two grandsons, Liam and Joshua.
Garth Den Heyer
To my father, Horace Charles Stanislas, and cousin, Rosamund Stanislas.
Perry Stanislas
And this book is also dedicated to all of those who work in law enforcement across the globe. We understand and appreciate your commitment and sacrifices.
Blessed are the Peacemakers for they shall be called Children of God.
(Mathew 5:9 King James Bible)
The police have power, and they use it. The precise dimensions of their authority certainly vary from country to country, according to legal systems and forms of government, but exercising the coercive power of the state is a defining characteristic of the police institution.
The question of who benefits when police exercise their power is a crucial one. In totalitarian states, the police role is mainly regime protection. In free societies, by contrast, police are expected to protect and serve all the people. These differences are a reflection of the fact that state power can be used to benefit just a few, or to benefit many.
The reality, of course, is much more complex. Totalitarian and free are two ends of a continuum, not a simple dichotomy. The degree to which political, economic, and coercive power are dispersed among competing interests varies widely among countries around the world. Furthermore, the distribution is not static but rather shifts over time, sometimes becoming more concentrated in the hands of a few, sometimes becoming more widely dispersed, and sometimes simply being redistributed among competing groups.
To the extent that states are totalitarian, there is not likely to be much concern about police-community relations or what we now call police legitimacy, as it is simply assumed that police will act in a repressive manner to protect those in power. At the other extreme, however, in democratic and free countries where police are expected to act in the interests of the people, any evidence of poor police-community relations is likely to be a concern, since it may indicate that police are not serving the public as well as they should. For states that are in the process of trying to become more free and democratic, which applies to many countries around the world, finding ways to improve police-community relations is typically a key focus of reform. If the public can be convinced that the police are paying more attention to their needs, that may be a big step toward building more confidence in the rest of the government.
So police-community relations are a concern in many countries. But why are those relations often poor? Some reasons are just inherent in the police function. Police are called upon to handle difficult situations – political protests, labor unrest, and family disputes – in which any actions taken, or not taken, can seem to favor some over others. Also, police are given impossible missions – handling people in mental health crisis, dealing with homeless people, and responding to epidemics of drug addiction – that are far outside their expertise, mainly because society has turned its back on such people. And even more fundamentally, police have the power to make us stop doing things we want to do, like driving too fast or having loud parties – power that we tend to resent when it is applied to us, even though we probably want the police to stop other people from doing the same things.
Besides the kinds of conflict that are just inherent in policing, the fact is that not all residents believe the police treat everyone fairly. It is a common belief that the well-to-do get treated better than average or poor citizens, for example. Since most police are men, it is often a perception, and may be a reality, that women victims do not get the level of service and protection they deserve. And frequently, young people bear the brunt of a lot of police attention – after all, police, their governing authorities, and the people who come to community meetings with complaints are all adults, while kids seem to be the cause of most crime and disorder problems (at least according to adults).
On top of these typical and perhaps endemic sources of police-community strains is one addressed throughout this book — police-minority relations. Racial, ethnic, religious, and other minority groups typically have less political and economic power than the majority groups, putting them at a disadvantage. People who are in the majority sometimes look down on minority groups, stereotype them, discriminate against them, fear them, and even hate them, making members of minority groups that much more powerless and vulnerable.
Where do police fit in this equation? Sometimes, police are openly and officially used to enforce discrimination. In other situations, the official role of police is to protect and serve all citizens, but social and economic discrimination puts minority group members in such a disadvantaged position that they become the focus of a large share of police intrusion and enforcement. This takes place in the name of public safety for all, including the poor who may need police protection even more than others, but one main result is disproportionate stops, arrests, and sanctions against people in marginalized communities. Also, of course, if actual prejudice toward minority group members is common in a society, it is likely that police themselves are affected, consciously or unconsciously.
In principle, at least, and hopefully in practice, it is equally possible that police are the main protectors of the rights and safety of minority group residents and other vulnerable persons. Police typically take an oath to protect the rights of all people, and there has been substantial emphasis on human rights in police training and policy-making in recent decades. This is especially true for countries that are in transition and receiving international assistance of one kind or another – police reform is often high on the agenda, and human rights protection is often a key component of that reform.
The contributions in this book address these kinds of situations across a wide range of countries, including Canada, Kosovo, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States. The details and the context of police-community relations and police-minority relations vary widely from country to country, yet there are similarities in the underlying challenge of providing effective policing that controls serious crime, protects innocent people, brings offenders to justice, and maintains public order while also treating all people fairly within the parameters of universal human rights. The editors and authors are to be congratulated for bringing attention to such an important topic and providing insights from around the world.
Contents
Contributors 1
received his education in Mathematics, Mathematical Statistics, Music, and Psychology at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has broad industrial experience from working in a number of different fields, including in European aerospace and in the Norwegian insurance industry. He now lectures and conducts research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and BI Norwegian Business School. His main field of research is within psychometrics.
served in the European Union Rule of Law (EULEX) Mission in Kosovo as police chief in charge of criminal investigations from 2007 through 2010. He is also a 22-year veteran of the NYPD who retired as commanding officer of NYPD Transit Bureau District 20. He was a first responder and incident command staff manager at the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and possesses separate master’s degrees in Criminal Justice, Human Physiology, and History and is currently a professor of Criminal Justice and Homeland Security at Pace University in New York. Moreover, he is editor and coauthor of a number of books and journal articles on policing, terrorism, criminology, and criminal justice, often from a global perspective.
is a professor of Counseling and Criminal Justice at the Department of Guidance and Counseling at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. His research interests cover police behaviors, police culture, and dynamics of police and public relationships in polity. He is one of the foremost police scholars in Africa.
is professor of Criminal Justice at Western Connecticut State University. He received his PhD in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University in Texas and is considered an international expert in police-involved shootings.
holds the following degrees: BA (Criminology), BA Honors (Criminology), MA (Criminology), DPhil (Criminology), and MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Oxford. He is currently a professor attached to the Department of Social Work and Criminology, University of Pretoria, where he teaches psychocriminology, criminal justice, and contemporary criminology at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
is a retired police chief in the Turkish National Police. He received his PhD in Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University in Texas and is a professor of Criminal Justice at Penn State University.
is a professor of Criminal Justice at Texas A&M University. He received his PhD from Sam Houston State University in Texas.
is a professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. He received his PhD at Sam Houston State University in Texas and is considered an authority on psychological issues impacting law enforcement and criminal justice officials.
is a professor at Arizona State University and Senior Research Fellow at the Police Foundation. He is also a contributing faculty member at Walden University and an associate professor at the Scottish Institute of Policing Research. He served with the New Zealand Police for 38 years, retiring as an inspector. His main research interests are policing, militarization, service delivery effectiveness, policy development, strategic thinking, and organizational reform.
received his education at the Norwegian Police Academy. He has a broad background in the police and now serves as associate professor in organization and management at the Norwegian Police University College in Oslo. He conducts research in management, organizational culture, and changes in police organizations.
is a large-scale change expert and was an instrumental part of the Charleston Illumination Project team. He has worked with countries, companies, and communities for the past 30 years in a wide variety of change efforts, always building partnerships between key stakeholders so they can formulate their collective future. It was his honor to serve the city of Charleston, its police department, and citizens in this exciting and very worthwhile project.
was a project leader in the Charleston Illumination Project. He serves as the pastor of Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
is chairman of the Criminal Justice Department at Midwestern State University and senior distinguished professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice. His research interests are in international organized crime, terrorism, law enforcement, and comparative systems analysis.
is a professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada in Reno. She received her Juris Doctorate from Gonzaga University.
is a professor of Political Science at Western Nevada College. He received his Juris Doctorate from Gonzaga University and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Nevada at Reno.
is the former chief of police for the City of Charleston, South Caroline. He is now the associate vice president for Public Safety and chief of police at Clemson University.
has a Master in Education and is a registered nurse. She is presently a clinician promoting mental health for individuals, families, and communities in Vancouver area of British Columbia in Canada, who has conducted extensive research on mental health in policing.
is a retired police sergeant who worked in the Delta Police Department in British Columbia, Canada. He is now an associate professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University. He has written many books and articles on a variety of police-related topics and is considered an expert in police-involved shootings and suicide by police.
is a senior lecturer in Community and Criminal Justice at De Montfort University in Leicester in the United Kingdom. She has published extensively on the impact of religion and hate crime on policing.
has 20 years of domestic police practitioner experience having served in positions from patrolman to deputy chief of police. He is a former director of personnel and administration for the UNMIK Police in Kosovo and is a former regional commander in the United Nations Mission in Haiti. He currently teaches criminal justice at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Brownsville, Texas.
is the founding leader of the Illumination Project and is the polarity thinking master at Seidler & Associates in Charleston, South Carolina.
is an Assistant Professor of Policing and Security at Rabdan Security Academy in Abu Dabi, UAE. He has over 35 years policing starting his career as a security and intelligence officer for a Pan African political organization, before joining the Bedfordshire Police in the United Kingdom. He currently leads teaching and research on police and security leadership and related matters.
is a police chief within the New York City Police Department in charge of coordinating interorganizational collaboration. She received her PhD from the University at Albany, SUNY, and is a Professor of Criminal Justice at Molloy College in New York.
received his Master of Economics Sciences in Entrepreneurship and Local Development at the State University of Pristina in 2012. He is currently a police colonel in the Kosovo Police and serves as a professor in the Faculty of Public Safety.
is a retired police captain in the Charleston Police Department. He is now an instructor at Trident Technical College in Charleston, South Carolina.