Reform Era

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The American Policing has gone through three different periods beginning with the political era, reform era to our most current policing system the community era. During the political era they had many disadvantages compared to the great advances we have today such as technology, better policing system, transportation and armed weapons. In the political era there were many struggles in where groups were interested in governing the police. It was a time in which the people did not feel like they were being protected from criminals, nor they felt like the politicians were doing a great job in policing. The reform era came along after the struggles of the political era. The reform era began to change and add a better security type of policing,…show more content…
His vision of policing was that it needed to progress to prevent lesser crimes throughout the cities and make it more professional. According to the article the evolving strategy of police: A minority view stated that “many departments were unwilling to accept any applicant who had been arrested or convicted for any criminal offense, no matter how trivial-the President's Crime Commission showed that blacks were more likely to have a criminal record than whites (Williams and Murphy, 1990, Pg.10).” He began to add several tools to the policing that helped these officers have it easier on them. For example, he created the first police academy. Vollmer was the founder of policing who added the first motorized patrol, first crime lab, and first paramedic amongst others. These were created for a most efficient and quick response to a crime, but were mainly for those officers who had trouble walking. For example the reform era progressed a lot by having many improvements in technology and decreasing the corruption from politicians. The article the school for police as planned at Berkeley stated, “Detectives are usually selected from the uniform ranks, because of their special fitness for the work; among them may be found many keen, intelligent, conscientious officials who are devoted to their profession (Northwestern University School of Law, 1917, Pg. 878).” It is clear…show more content…
The reform era did improve policing, but it was weaken in certain areas that Herman Goldstein believes he could improve. According to the article Improving Policing: A Problem Oriented Approach it was stated that the “efforts to improve policing in this country concentrated almost exclusively on internal management: streamlining the organization, upgrading personnel, modernizing equipment, and establishing more business like operating procedures (Herman Goldstein, 1979, Pg. 238).” It was important to improve policing everyday; therefore the reform era did change because of the reforms. It was all do that these reformers needed more improvement regarding management, security, techniques and financial improvements as well. In the article Improving Policing stated that the “The greatest potential for improvement in the handling of some problems is in providing police officers with new forms of specialized training (Herman Goldstein, 1979, Pg. 253).” Eventually, the community era has been giving great results in policing in the last few decades. It keeps on improving regarding new technology advices to try and avoid police corruption towards citizens and for the safety of these officers in duty. Nevertheless, the Community policing advocates argued “that what was needed was a reprioritization of police functions in which police address the root causes of crime, such as

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