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Roles of Police and Media Police officers have many roles in the community. The media has a way of spinning the facts to where often times the police officers are made to look a certain way. Even though the media is just telling the story the way that they perceive the events as happening, the media spins the story to gain an audience whether it is on T. V. , in a newspaper, or on the internet. The media portrays the crime fighter, the social servant, the order maintainer, and the crime preventer in reporting the story.
And by portraying these different aspects of police officers the media is able to draw the crowd that they want to inform with the information about what has happened. In this paper it will look at these 4 types that are portrayed by the media and decide whether it is a real depiction or an image that the media has generated. Crime Fighter The Crime fighter would be the officer that works the street to prevent crime and to enforce laws that they see are being broken as was the case with the driver that has watched one to many action movies.
According to the article Mr. McLellan crashed his car, took off running from the police, slid down a 30 foot embankment and waded into the river. The other offices that were responding where able to get a boat from a local company and they tried to throw a rope to help Mr. McLellan but he said that he did not want to be arrested. A Deputy was able to pull him out of the river by his hair in order to save him from drowning in the river (Steeves, 2010). This article shows that the police are willing to fight crime on any front.
The story makes law enforcement sound like action hero’s that were able to catch the bad guy and save his life at the same time. I think that this article depicts an image that is set forth by movies and producers as to what police officers have to do on a daily basis. Social Servant The social servant is making sure that the community is safe and helping to serve the public in any way that they can. This article explains that a police officer that was just out on his regular patrol happen to have his window down and heard a lady threaten to kill herself.
The police officer jumped out of his car and saw the woman jump off a bridge; he ran over to where she had jumped and saw her 5 feet below and getting ready to jump again. He hopped down and caught the woman by the leg and held onto her despite her pleas to let her go until his back up arrived (Codispoti, 2010). He was able to save this woman from throwing herself in front of a train that was coming, by being in the right place at the right time. This article is a “real image” of how the police assist the public everyday in the heat of any moment. The police are always there to serve and protect the public and all its demands.
This article shows the skills of the police officer and his willingness to help the public in demanding and unusual circumstances by showing that he took it upon himself to jump over the edge without question to attempt to save this woman from hurting herself. Order Maintainer The order maintainer is responsible for maintaining order and following the rules. In this article the police officers had to show there presents in riot gear in order to maintain order and keep the peace between a white supremacist group and a group of counter protester that do not agree with their beliefs (Adelman, 2010).
The police officers had to arrest five of the counter protesters for throwing items at the white supremacist group. This article is a “real image” of how the police department maintains order and keeps the peace even when they may not believe in the cause. The police officers where there in order to keep this protest or rally from getting out of hand. The fact that only five people were arrested shows that the presents of the police department helped in keeping this a peaceful under the circumstances gathering. Crime Prevention Crime prevention falls into education and helping to prevent crime before it happens.
In this article it talks about the precautions that are taken in the New York subway system, which is the largest in the nation. The subway station runs 24-hours-a-day, it has 468 stations, and they average 5 million riders a day (Hays, 2010). They have police officers that know the subway system and ride the trains looking for anything suspicious. The police officers also have little guard shacks that they sit in and are responsible for watching over 14 tunnels for suspicious activities. The officers that are pulling this guard do it on four hours of overtime once their regular shift has ended.
Once an hour they ride the subway looking down the rail for anything harmful (Hays, 2010). They have protocol that they have to follow if they find something which requires them to call their supervisor and not using a police radio to do so in fear that it could trigger a device. This article depicts a “real image” it shows the police and what they do daily to prevent crime from happening to us. It makes people feel more secure to know that they are in the subway system whether they are seen or not. The fact that many officers work 4 extra hours a day to prevent anything bad from happening is truly amazing.
Summarization In conclusion, although the media is just telling the story the way that they perceive the events as happening, the media spins the story to gain an audience whether it is on T. V. , in a newspaper, or on the internet for two main reasons. First, by portraying these different aspects of police offices the media is able to draw a crowd that wants to know about what has happened. But most importantly, the media portrays the crime fighter, the social servant, the order maintainer, and the crime preventer in reporting the story.