Policing & Corruption

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Let's look at the last question first - if you consolidate the police, would you have to do the same to the criminal justice system? It could be argued from the 'no' stance ... mainly because, at the National level of control, it would perhaps be less community based and more formal. It might take away the trust of the people in the community to have police instated at the national level. It might also impact training as the focus would be less on the state, local and county levels of law enforcement, and more on the national level of enforcement - terrorism is important to weed out and protect the citizen's safety, but there are other just as dangerous criminals committing other crimes that also need to dealt with.

However, you could argue either way (with the current threat of terrorism and other dangers to the United States, should the United States combine all the police agencies into one national police organization) ...but combining the police agencies into one national police organization would need a major re-structuring. One national police organizational might also loose its overall power as well. It could increase corruption having fewer levels of quality control than it is currently (federal, state, local and country), leaving more room for corruption at the top. This corruption could also trickle down.

The role of the police might change and compromise some other areas of law enforcement. For example, the police power is the right of the state to take coercive action against individuals for the benefit of society. The role of police is about enforcing the laws and catching people who commit crime for public safety. In terms of health care, Potterat et al. states that "Invoking, monitoring, and relinquishing a public health power: the health hold order," is a classic use of the police power in the control of a communicable disease. Reaching an acceptable balance between the rights of society and those of individuals is the central issue facing public health in the next millennium, and the police power is at the center of this balance. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10417024&dopt=Abstract If the police agencies joined at the national level ...