Shelby

=Shelby Sullivan = =Do cops have a positive or negative affect on society as a whole? Police officers are one of the most important positions in a functioning society and therefore their ability to successfully and responsibly do their job is vital. There have been many reports of police brutality and it is an important issue because through their power they have the ability to “be above the law”. =

__First Article__ United States. U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. //Police Attitudes Toward Abuse of Authority: Findings from a National Study//. By David Weisburd and Rosann Greenspan. 2010. Print.

This article is very reliable because it is a scholary source that stems from the U.S. Department of Justice. The Police Foundation is a non profit in Washington D.C. that is working towards improving our policing. There are many statistics in this briefing that will be helpful towards providing evidence in my research paper. The authors are all knowledgable on their subject and have different perspectives that allow for their product to be fairly unbiased. David Weisburd has a Ph.D and is Senior Research Scientist at the Police Foundation and Director of the Institute of Criminology at Hebrew University Law School in Jerusalem, Israel. Rosann Greenspan also has a Ph.D and is Research Director of the Police Foundation. This study was awarded on behalf of Community Oriented Policing Services,U.S. Department of Justice.

This source is largely comprised of statistics taken from police over the abuse of power and provides evidence towards cop's opinions. Through surveying police officers they found that the use of force is a relatively low occurence, but when it does happen it often escalates to extreme and excessive force. Officers also claimed that when such events do take place the department reacts with harsh and strict punishments. I found it interesting, however, that 67.4% of cops surveyed either agreed or strongly agreed that turning in another officer for misconduct would result in being ostracized by their fellow officers. That statistic would lead one to believe that the number of cases for police misconduct actually reported may be drastically different than how many occur.

__Second Article__ Bandes, Susan A., Patterns of Injustice: Police Brutality in the Courts. Buffalo Law Review Vol. 47, No. 3, p. 1275, 1999. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=165395 or doi:10.2139/ssrn.165395

This article is also a scholary source because the author Susan A. Bandes is a professor in DePaul University College of Law and Florida State University College of Law. It provides a counter opinion that is more biased against cops rather than just purely numbers, in comparision to my previous source.

The article debates the damage that derives from courts viewing cases of police brutality as singular incidents, as opposed to a chronic wide-spread problem. This is relevant because in the statistics from my previous article police officers answered questions reflecting that misconduct was a rare occurance and not an accurate depiction of the police force. If it is a pervasive problem then the fact that it is not viewed as such in a court setting increases the risk of police brutality continuing without any attempt to minimize it. "The Blue Wall of Silence" refers to how police officers can withhold or twist information in order to protect their fellow cop. This idea extends beyond just officers and into the court scene being more leneint, which allows these actions to prosper. Examples of police brutality include Area Two Violent Crimes Unit where police in South Chicago continously torturted people, which resulted in said people's execucations due to their confessions under torture.

__Third Article__ Zimbardo, Philip G. "The Stanford Prison Experiment." //The Stanford Prison Experiment: A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment//. 1999. Web. 28 Oct. 2010. [].

My third source was an online slideshow based on the standford prison experiment. Many credible people were involved in this process, such as James Zurcher who is Chief of Police for the City of Palo Alto and Marvin Herrington who is the Director of Police for Stanford University. Mike Lestik and Scott Plous were responsible for designing the website, which gives a clear explanation of what the experiment is and what it tells us about humanities reaction to authority.

In 1971 the standford prison experiment was a case study where undergraduate volunteers were randomely assigned to be either prisoners or guards.Only after six days the experiment had to be stopped because of the guards abusing their power and causing physical and mental harm to the prisoners. This shows the effect that a simple title can have psychologically on a person of power. Even though there was no differences whatsoever between the two groups they each reacted and responded according to their fake title, which is an interesting concept when looking at the abuse of cop authority. Are similiar pyschological reasons behind the illogical actions of some police officers due to their authority?

__Fourth Article__ Police brutality is a systemic problem across America that is being ignored as a result of the judicial system being biased towards the officers. Oscar Grant was an unarmed civilian that was brutally murderd, however the man responsible for this act was charged with involuntary manslaughter even though he through Grant on the ground and shot him in the back.

__Fifth Article__ My fifth article is a website where people can write their personal testimonies of being mistreated by cops. While not a scholarly source this will give me a more informal perspective of how everyday citizens view police.

__Sixth Article__ Peace Officers Bill of Rights

__Seventh source: book__ Race and Policing in America Conflict and reform Ronald Weitzer Steven A. Tuch

eighth source; book Police Violence Geller and Toch