Police officers are members of the police force and go by different names according to their ranking within the police force. Generally, the police detect and put off crimes, arrest criminals and ensure that public order is sustained. This essay will explore the job description of police officers and point out a few issues that may need further clarification.
The police carry out their duties by proactively patrolling the areas that lie within their jurisdiction, responding to service calls, and looking for lawbreakers. Their responsibilities are wide and those already mentioned in this essay are just but a few of them (BNA, 2004). Police are always expected to respond to situations in certain fashions and are expected to assume the duties of government officials whenever there are investigations. In some countries, it is expected of officers to be on standby so they can respond to situations at any given time.
Apart from maintaining order and keeping the peace, the police also have the role of discouraging, deterring, and investigating crimes. They mostly emphasize the crimes committed against people and properties and when they make arrests, they detain the suspects and afterward forward them to the appropriate authorities.
Emergencies are the other situations in which the police are very helpful. Whenever emergencies occur, for instance, accidents or fires, the police together with firefighters and ambulance services are called in to bring order and try quelling the situation. In some regions, the emergency number connects to the police, ambulance services, and the firemen at the same time and as such, they all accompany each other to the emergency scenes (Peden, 2004). Besides the emergencies, civil and criminal situations, the police also take charge and act on minor violations by giving warnings or citations which in many cases result in fines, particularly in cases of traffic laws violation.
Uniformed police officers perform general law enforcement activities and spend a significant fraction of their time doing paperwork and responding to calls of duty. They usually operate from police stations which contain several departments, each performing different tasks and having officers assigned to perform the specific departmental duties. Officers in plainclothes or detectives mostly have investigatory duties and these they do by gathering important information related to the criminal cases that they are assigned to. These officers specialize in specific violation cases, for example, murder or robbery cases.
Some officers specialize in particular fields, such as firearms inspections, fingerprint and handwriting analyses, or microscopic and chemical investigations (Willoughby, 2007). During court cases, it is expected of arresting officers to be witnesses and as such, they have to have with them good recordings of whatever happened relating to the particular cases.
According to Rafilson, and DeAngelis (2008), all the activities mentioned in this article occupy only about a fifth of the police officers’ time and this raises the question of why the police have to undergo vigorous training just to spend most of their time doing less glamorous public services.
From this article, it can be noted that the job description of police officers is complicated and consist of activities that are both visible to the general public and those that take place behind the scenes. The media, mostly through movies, portray the jobs of police officers as very visible, but in reality, their duties are more than those portrayed in the media. One thing that is easily agreeable to all is that police officers serve an important role in society and, without their vital services, public order would be difficult to maintain.
References
Bureau of National Affairs (2004). Government Employee Report, Volume 42, Issues 2066-2088. Rockville, MD: Bureau of National Affairs.
Peden, M.M. (2004). World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention. New York: World Health Organization.
Rafilson, F. & DeAngelis, T. (2008). Master the Police Officer Exam. Lawrenceville, NJ: Peterson’s.
Willoughby, W.F. (2007). Principles of Judicial Administration. Baltimore, MD: The Lord Baltimore Press.