Since the creation of team policing or “community” policing, establishing a healthy relationship with the public has been a main priority. Creating a good relationship with the public made it easier to work with them, build trust and possibly have less crime on the streets. Fortunately, police related violence has been declining in numbers in the last decade but there have been some major instances that can cause a threat to a possible rise in those numbers one day. It seems monotonous that every week there is another headline in the news regarding a controversial topic with law enforcement. An example of how this relationship is becoming more is the shooting of Dallas police officers in 2016 which ended up killing five officers and injuring nine. This attack on police was the deadliest event for law enforcement in the U.S. since 9/11. The shooter of this catastrophic event plead that he was angry and upset with police shootings of black men and wanted his revenge on white police officers. The abundance of police related shootings with the public led to this fatal shooting and was the direct result of the hostile environment between the police and the community.
The Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter movements have been sweeping over the United States and the media has been there the whole time covering it every step of the way. The media has been known to usually be negatively portraying the police in incidents with the public or do a poor job fully explaining it, for years now and this is how they can be defined as the “fuel” to the fire. In a recent article “Retaliatory violence between police and citizens is primed by social media”, Veronica Pozo of Utah State University states that ““Black Lives Matter-related tweets were associated with increases in both the numbers of minorities and law enforcement officers killed. This implies that that social media can rapidly spread a negative message and act as a contagion.” As you can see there is a direct relationship involving what goes down on social media and what goes on in the streets. The problem with this is that almost everyone nowadays has access to the internet so by these topics circulating the web, you are bound to read about them at some point. But, in a situation like this it is impossible to define one instance or reason to be the cause to this madness but it is very easy to see that these groups and the publicity they receive definitely does not help the situation. These anti-law enforcement groups berate and discriminate police officers all over the internet and by publicizing it on the news it is giving the exactly what they want, attention. This has a negative impact on society because they believe what they hear on the news, and these headlines are the way people form opinions about certain topics. The news really shouldn’t skew the information for their benefit, it should be told how it really is because if all the news is showing is hatred towards cops and controversial police topics, it is going to have people formulating the wrong ideas about law enforcement. So as you can see, the media has a major influence with the ongoing issues between the community and law enforcement. The news should just focus on getting their story across to the people who watch, not just a company for headlines.
References
Retaliatory violence between police and citizens is primed by social media. (n.d.). Retrieved from
https://phys.org/news/2018-01-retaliatory-violence-police-citizens-primed.html
Stoughton, S. (2016, July 08). Is the police-community relationship in America beyond repair? Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-police-community-relationship-in-america-beyond-repair/2016/07/08/595c638c-454b-11e6-bc99-7d269f8719b1_story.html?utm_term=.e58d4def990a.
Rowan Counterintuitive 