Content area
Full text
Keywords Police, Violence, Canada, USA, Community relations, Behavioural studies
Abstract Focuses on contemporary law enforcement institutions, in Canadian and US cities, to illustrate the service limitations and public conflicts that are increasingly being generated into violent encounters by the failure to move beyond the authoritarian organizational operational model The capacity of public policing institutions to provide effective, non-violent police services to meet the needs of the communities is determined by the nature of the police institutional and/or organizational model employed. This analysis assesses the appropriateness of current police training models, race relations training, non-violent conflict resolution training and all other police training that may be grounded and generated from a paramilitary authoritarian hierarchical composition. This applied approach discloses much needed systemic and policy reformation by considering a more expanded understanding of this prominent social agency, the actors and the interconnectedness with other institutions.
Introduction and methodology
The persistence of adversarial police-community exchanges in Canada and the USA continues to be exhibited by violent incidents between police officers and the citizens they are sworn to protect. No other issue in policing has caused as much controversy and concern over the last several decades as the police using violence to resolve conflict. In Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Detroit, Miami, and many other cities, excessive force charges against police officers have been made and documented and have resulted in the loss of public confidence in the police. Some social activists maintain that there is an epidemic of police brutality in the USA and Canada. The victims are often African American, Latino, indigenous peoples, and other marginalised individuals. Many victims are youths. Many of these violent confrontations have been captured on video tape and viewed by mass television audiences across Canada and the USA. Although the vast majority of police officers perform their duties every day with no intention of using excessive force, far too many instances of violent encounters still occur.
These violent confrontations have become popular focal points for the media and some community members in highlighting the tradition of violent practices, procedures and policies of police officers in the administration of the criminal justice system. Widespread and continuing media coverage of high-- profile cases such as the Los Angeles police officers' assault on...