Discuss the benefits of an "empowered community" to local law enforcement?

Question

Discuss the benefits of an "empowered community" to local law enforcement?

Answer 1

let them know that the commuinty is armed and will not put up with gestapo methods .also they are being watched and filmed

Answer 2

I don't know what "empowered community" means. Please explain.

Answer 3

An "empowered community" means that the community has oversight when police activities result in some action that is questionable.  Usually this is in the form of "citizen police boards" or civilian members on police commissions.

There is a tendency in municipal police departments to treat the population as if they are "underlings" or "subordinates" to the municipal government.  With the huge powers that a police department has over individual and groups of citizens, there has been a documented trait of police departments and city governments to hide information from the public in the cases of brutality and abuse of power.

There are benefits and pseudo benefits as well as liabilities for an "empowered community".

First of all, most municipal police departments require extensive police academy training for their candidate officers.  The quality of employed police officers has increased dramatically since the 1960s, and I mean it really does show!  However, there are always those officers who either make mistakes or who make bad judgements, and those mistakes and bad judgements can range from actual illegal behavior to accidental infractions.  Then there are the truly criminally-minded police officers, such as New York City has had a lot of trouble with.

A civilian review board has less effect than a civilian police commission.  Saint Louis Missouri fought tooth and nail to keep its citizens from forming a cvilian police board, and wants to limit civilians out of its police commission, to keep them in the minority.  The benefit of a civilian police board is that they can bring legal indictment of police officers that the civilian board thinks is obviously a violation of laws and/or civil rights.  The problem is when certain civilian interests have a vendetta against either the police department or against a particular officer or group of officers.  But as is very historically documented, Saint Louis has a rash of police shootings that are highly suspect!  A few are justified, but most are quite questionable!

When a municipal government does NOT want to investigate an officer, as has happened many times in major cities such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City, just to mention a few I know of, then a civilian board who has the right and the authority to begin a legal investigation can get to the facts in the case IF THEY HAVE THE LEGAL POWER AND AUTHORITY to do so!

The problem is in getting qualified civilians into those roles.  Usually that means advocacy group members or attorneys or anybody else who can convince the community that they have a right to be on the board.  If you can get such qualified persons on the board, then there is a great difficulty in the legal and municipal establishment being able to cover things over.