Common Misconceptions About Law Enforcement Officers

 While going to college to get an Associate and Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justice, I ran across a wide range of opinions about the different services of law enforcement:

• police
• FBI
• DEA
• CIA and others

One thing was prevalent in almost every class I took, one person had had one or more bad experiences and hated all law enforcement (weren’t they going for the wrong degree?) or they just made up their opinion by what they saw on television.

    Cop shows like CSI and Law & Order are fun to watch, but most of the technology is made up or cost so much that most departments cannot afford it, not to mention train someone to use the stuff. In addition, police work and forensics is not the same thing. While police can gather evidence, they cannot analyze it, but it can be used in a court of law.

    Now besides the common CSI effect, what other misconceptions do people have about law enforcement officers?

1. That they do not care – could not be further from the truth, if they did not care, they would not do the job. They are trained not to show a lot of emotion or get to personally involved. They are also trained to always be on guard around people, after all, there are people out there who would attack and kill a cop, so they have to always be on guard for that. This readiness can come across as them not caring.
2. They protect their own – now this one is not untrue entirely, after all, when they get the call for backup or that one of their own has been shot, yeah they are all there. Everyone who can be there will be there to help a fellow officer. The one thing people see that bothers them the most is that cops tend to stick to their own. Let me share a story I heard in college and let you all see why this happens. My classmate Julie is a police officer, one night she is hanging out at a bar with some other officers (out of uniform) unwinding after a hard shift. She starts making friendly conversation with some people while playing darts with them. They are fine playing with her, but when she offers to let them join her and the other officers she gets told that, “I ain’t be friendly to no cop.” Now, this is typical, people are afraid to be friends with cops, so that leaves cops grasping on to the only other people in their lives who understand and that is other officers.
3. They are trying to make a quota – very untrue, in fact most officers are not paid more or less depending on arrests or traffic tickets. They get paid by the hour and by rank. Arresting you is not making them money, except for the fact that arresting you is their job. Some department do have a quota, but there is not contest to see who can reach it.
4. They do not care about the poor – this goes back to #1. Police do care, but some jurisdictions have little police departments and some have large ones. In addition, poor people are more likely to commit a crime, then a rich person, because poor people need money and drugs, neither of which the rich people have a problem getting. Now I know rich people commit crimes, but most of them don’t require police, they require federal agents, unless we are talking DUI, drug possession, etc. They also receive training on working with the poor, because sometimes an assault or something stemming from anger can because the assaulter was hungry, yes it is true. You are more likely to get mad and angry when you are hungry and in today’s economy, that is many people.
5. If you are rich, you get an insignificant punishment – police officers have nothing to do with punishment, all they can do is arrest a person and then it is up to a judge.
6. Police are racist – while there are racists that are cops, most are not. No matter what type of job you have, there has to be one or more racists doing the same job, right? Would it be fair to say you were a racist just because others in your line of work are?

       Take the time to get to know more about a job and about the people who do the job. Do not put them all in the same box and treat them the same. Do not make up you mind based on one or two cases, or only on what you have heard, making a big mistake if you do.