Junior Year - Week Ten

Ethics of a police officer is a number on important key in law enforcement. The officers must follow a strict code about what they can and cannot do while also having the desecration in a lot of situation. They are able to decide who will and who won’t go to jail because of the crime they may have committed. But this desecration only follows up to a certain point and than they must make an arrest of the suspect.  These ethics are based off the peel principals and are a more modern version. Along with them comes the normative ethics. They are a set of questions that come up when considering how one should act out. They are Utilitarism, kantism,  egoism, intellectualism, and welfarism. The one that most relates to the job of law enforcement is kantism because it is doing the duty they have been given wither it is right or wrong. Unlike utilitarism which is the belief that everything is right as long as it makes the majority happy. These lead to discovering who the officers are that are follow the code of ethics and who might not necessary be following it. So in other words who are the good cops and the dirty cops.

Along with being given desecration though officers have a certain duty that they need to follow up to. As we talked about the Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor we talked about how the officer was not convicted of using excessive force while taking control of this situation although Graham believed officer Connor did. The case had been about the defendant Graham sewing for excessive force while the officer removed him from the car after suspecting Graham had committed a robbery and was under the influence of drugs. The defendant had entered a store after asking to be taken there by a friend because he was in the early stages of a diabetic shock. Once Graham noticed there were too many people in the store and he wouldn’t be able to get what he needed fast enough he left the store. All of this occurring in moments making the officer believe that Graham had committed a robbery.  Officer Connor used force because Graham wouldn’t comply with the officer’s demands because he had entered a diabetic shock. This Supreme Court case has given officers the power to use force in a reasonable matter without being held responsible for any injury that may occur. The objective Reasonableness standard had been created which states that if an “officer” of the same weight and size had been at the scene could they have used the same force at the same moment that the officer did in reality than it is not considered excessive force. This is one of the most important cases that have ever been presented.

As we talked about desecration and force today we worked on using the force. In the classroom we learned why open hand strikes are better than a punch or a closed hand strike. Mr. Lavery and student demonstrated the fighting or open hand closed hand strikes as if they were doing it as a sport and than the street or fighting way also. We practice the street and fighting way to allow us to see that an open hand strike is way more effective than a closed hand strike. We have more power behind our strikes if we are able to step into and put our body weight into it. These strikes are effective because you are not allowing the person to take control of the situation or allowing yourself to break any bones. While the fighter may not fight correctly they may break their wrist and that gives the officer the advantage.

Junior Year - Week Nine

This week we mostly worked out in the weight room for three days than we started with more take-downs and other ways of controlling people. We worked if someone was to grab you by the shirt or grab you how you can disrupt their chemical or thought process. The technique enables the arm from being brought up therefore they cannot hit the officer. The reason this works is because of where the officer is hitting the person. It is in a nerve around the spot were the shoulder and a little lower than the collar bone. Using this technique the officer than can move into a more complex take down in order to take complete control of the suspect. The reason the officer can think and react is because he or she doesn't focus on the arm that someone is grabbing the officer focuses on the arm that could potientally harm them. Than the opposite shoulder of the suspect is hit. That can force the suspect to turn his or her body allowing the officer to than get to the dead side or weapons off side.

We watched about the Dallas SWAT team which was actually very intresting. The Dallas SWAT team is all men, they are kind of older but not old men. It showed a couple different situations including bad ending ones. The first one was a drug bust which was sucessful on their part because they got the evidence and took people into custody. The other one was a not so successful one, the team had been shot at and the officers than had to take control. There was a negotiator who worked with the suspect that had locked himself in a hotel room and refused to come out. This ended with the suspect shooting himself in the head and later dying. That to me would be the hardest part of policing is watching someone die that you just spent four hours speaking to and calming down from the very upset state tha they were in. Also the movie had shown about the families of these officers on the SWAT team and it's hard on them as well as the officers putting their life on the line everyday, and that's not just SWAT that's all law enforcement officers. The families suffer from not seeing there children or wife or husband and the movie slowly depicted that.

For the past few weeks we have been going outside and looking at the decomposment of a chicken body in Forenics class. This is defnintly a very intresting thing to me because it's kind of what I want to do when I get older. I got to take samples of magets off of the decompsing chicken and take them back to lab. While we have been sort of talking about that and looking through the life stages of the magets we have also been looking at DNA and trying to isolate and identify which restriction enyzems will work with what. This is so intresting to me and I love learning about it.