The old adage states that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the Criminal Justice world it is important to remember our history and learn from what we have already discovered.

The Reform Era began early in the twentieth century to deal with the political influence embedded in American Policing. Prior to the Reform Era police officers were under the command of politically appointed captains who “owed their allegiance and their jobs to the political party that appointed them, so they often promoted the interests of political leaders” (text, 84). This type of “sleeping with politics” policing can only invite and encourage corruption. “The ultimate goal of police reformers was the removal of politics from the police” (text, 84). The reformers idea was to get rid of such problems as police brutality, corruption, and political interference by instilling a sense of professionalism about policing.

The reformers were made up of police administrators and urban elites. The police administrators sought to gain independence from political forces and to achieve a higher level of professionalism throughout the policing community. The urban elites

But there were many unintended consequences to this implementation of the professional model of policing. A key consequence would have to be the overall disenchantment of the police officers. The old-timers didn’t want change and most often refused change. And the more progressive college-educated officers had a hard time adjusting in the community leading to detached and impersonal attitudes towards the community. Which also gave rise to the isolation of the police from the community. “(T)he police had some how fallen out of touch with the citizens they were supposed to serve and protect” (Patterson).

“The failure of professionalism became apparent during the urban riots, assassinations, and gang violence of the last 30 years. Police, politicians, and the public alike bemoaned the ineffectiveness of crime fighting efforts” (Patterson). A solution to this problem of lack of community awareness was to implement some type of community policing effort. There are many different forms of community policing, such as Problem Oriented Policing (POP) and Neighborhood Oriented Policing. And many would argue that this solution is not free from problems either. Many of these community oriented policing programs were thrown together very quickly to solve an immediate problem, of which there was no real planning involved to distribute resources evenly. But the key to this unintended consequence has yet to be stated, and that is that these resources for community policing efforts are coming from

Some topics in this essay:
Police IACP, Reform Era, Academy Professionalism, Oriented Policing, LESSONS HISTORY, Criminal Justice, police administrators, Edgar Hoover, Lessons History, professional model, police officers, community policing, oriented policing, urban elites, Jeffrey Patterson, professional model policing, reform era, elites police, control police, corruption “the, programs history policing, elites police administrators, urban elites police,