Training in San Jose Police Department Paper Example

Introduction

The San Jose Police Department has been running very stringent pre-hiring background checks after the disturbing events that led to the death of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Protests against police brutality and issues such as the 'Black Lives Matter Movement' have encouraged a more diversified police force in the region. San Jose comprises a mixed composition of American races. These include; Asian Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans, Native Americans and the White population. The San Jose Mayor set out to ensure that the police force is depictive of the racial composition of the region, to discourage police brutality and unlawful treatment by police officers in the region (Bauman et al., 2018). To ensure that all the police department members were keen on ensuring a consistent and lawful approach to maintaining peace, their background checks were done to ensure that they had no connection to extremist movements in America such as the White Supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan (Baron, 2018).

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Training Environment for Recruits

The California State is vast with a forested and mountainous terrain. The immense forest land is common ground for police training activities. Training officers from the San Jose Police Department involves getting them ready to handle crimes committed in the California forest, as well as handling crisis management in issues such as earthquakes and forest fires that are common in the region (Grawert, Onyekwere & Kimble, 2018). It is critical to ensure that the officers assigned to the county can react efficiently to different scenarios that require specialized entry procedures as well as having the right equipment to handle lurking dangers in these locations. Since members of the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team in the region are recruited from the police departments in the area, the police outfit ensures that its members are well prepared to handle strenuous and unpredictable situations that are demanded of officers (Greenhut, 2018).

Recruits are instructed, tested and trained in a collective enclosure in the Californians forests and deserts. They are expected to handle terrains that call for a lot of hardships and survival skills. Similarly, the San Jose Police Department maintains programs to encourage racial tolerance among police officers (Arabe & Stover, 2018). Police units are often sensitized on the need to uphold the law and stay clear of controversial cases involving mistreatment of immigrants. The level of training for police officers at the recruit level, however, does not include measures to deal with suspects from different races. Many of these officers thus end up shooting suspects out of frustration and not necessity (Bird, Lofstrom, Martin, Raphael & Nguyen, 2018). While San Jose does not record as many killings as other California cities, the fact that there have been recorded national controversies involving police brutality in the past is a reason to worry about. The training on suspect management in the country needs a lot of improvement if police shootings on innocent victims are to stop.

Post Academy Training

Police officers often get a great level of training and experience beyond what they are taught at the academy. The San Jose Police Departments, for instance, trains its officers to handle domestic disturbances, traffic infractions and even common law enforcement measures. The challenge is often in describing scenarios similar to what these officers end up meeting in the city they end up being assigned to (Kwong, 2018). California is a state that has a significant gun problem. Gun violence in the state is quite difficult for police officers to manage. Essentially, it is a concern that many police officers walk into unsecured zones expecting to meet law abiding citizens only to be met with stiff resistance from gun-wielding residents. Managing the use of guns by common citizens is a difficult aspect to work around. While many of these citizens are licensed, a good number do not know how to use a firearm well (Baron, 2018).

Gangs often contribute to the greatest security threat a police officer has to face outside the academy. Training on gangs is done at a low level in the police academy because most roles involving dealing with criminal gangs fall on agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). Many young police recruits are threatened and even molested by criminal gangs due to their inability to handle these criminal organizations (Baron, 2018). In some unfortunate circumstances, police officers joining criminal gangs have been reported in California, including the San Jose County (Bauman et al., 2018). It is difficult to stay away from criminal gangs without being directly affected by their activities. Police officers in the San Jose County need to be well trained on techniques to deal with gangs, as well as how to involve other law enforcement agencies to aid in challenging gang investigations.

Issues in Police Officer Training

The police officer training budget in San Jose does not cater for specialized training. The county is a very dangerous policing area for police officers. Patrols have often been ended by marauding youths, and several officers' lives have been lost in criminal gang shootings. Nonetheless, the training offered in the San Jose County exposes police officers to stereotypes and mentalities about minority immigrant communities. A good number of the shootings associated with the San Jose Police Department have been violent shooting acts on African-American and Asian-American citizens (Lee, 2018). The nature of police training in the region also needs to put more effort into the matter of police-citizen relationships. Allowing citizens to aid the police in identifying and arresting criminals is not the only issue; there is a need for trust-building between the police and the civilians in San Jose County (Bird et al., 2018).

Police officer training should make more efforts to discourage unnecessary use of firearms. Excessive use of force by the police is an affront to human rights and similarly a cause of mistrust between the police and the civilians in the county (Mrozla, 2018). Police members should be held to the highest level of discipline and strongly reprimanded for undisciplined conduct. Issues such as excessive use of force of unarmed civilians should not be reported. Police officers should use their discretion and training to identify civilians who pose threats before drawing their weapons on them. Similarly, police in San Jose Police Department need to show as much restraint as possible even when dealing with armed civilians (Lee, 2018). Some of these civilians have mental conditions while others have anxiety problems when confronted by the police. It should thus not be automatically considered as a resistance to arrest, especially when the suspect does not show the intent to harm the police officers.

Ethical Training of Police

Police training is a process that takes into consideration many procedures, protocols as well as combat scenarios. The ethical training of police officers has two aspects to it; ensuring that the training is done accordance to the statutes of the California State Police training procedures, and ensuring that the ethical issues align with the state's needs for better performance among the officers (Arabe & Stover, 2018). Police officers are often faced with difficult scenarios that may not be easy to maneuver without a psychological basis on which to make decisions. Police officers in any state, not just California often face ethical dilemmas in their line of work. They need to be well acquainted with the variables in the working environment to determine the right action to take (Blumauer, et al, 2018). In as much as there are different theories that a police department can take when dealing with criminal situations, ethical issues often need to be handled delicately least they lead to legal suits.

Scandals in the Police Service

The San Jose police department had to deal with several scandals between 2003 and 2015. The first of these was the 2003 shooting of a Vietnamese woman who was allegedly threatening her family with a vegetable peeler. Police in the San Jose Police Department decided to neutralize the threat by shooting at her. She was fatally wounded as a result. In 2011, a man wearing a classic Halloween costume was also sprayed with over 20 rounds of ammunition for refusing to stand down on police orders. The brutal nature of the killing brought to question the issues of assailant training among police in the county (Grawert, Onyekwere & Kimble, 2018). Many police officers have been associated with criminal gangs, including a rape allegation on a department police officer that was launched in 2014. A good number of these allegations have led to department payouts to affected victims. Not only has this resulted in negative publicity, but it has also immensely fractured the relationship between civilians and the police in the county.

Efforts to Correct Public Perception of Police

The San Jose Mayor's office has made many attempts to repair police relationships with the public since 2005. Many of these efforts have led to town hall meetings and even memoranda signed between representatives from both parties. Regardless, many San Jose residents have continued to complain about police brutality in the county (Bird et al., 2018). While police officers are keen on guaranteeing that there is security in the region, the harassment of residents has often been received with significant protests from the public. It seems that there is a need to address the police definition of 'reasonable force' that needs to be applied to arrests in the county (Bauman et al., 2018). Police officers have been asked to always approach suspects with caution and never arrest suspected culprits without ensuring sufficient back up from fellow officers. Making arrests as police groups and investigating criminal cases more diligently has significantly minimized cases of police brutality in San Jose County since 2015 (Mrozla, 2018).

San Jose police officers have consistently been trained with the help of collaboration with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on how to deal with criminal investigations and arrests in the county (Arabe & Stover, 2018). Help from the LAPD has been seen as a welcome effort to ensure that these officers are more acquainted with issues relating to public relations and constant enhancement of trust between the police and the public in the larger California area. Regardless of these efforts, it is still important that training of the San Jose Police officers be done regularly and effectively to cover pertinent issues that a majority of the police officers are not conversant with. Police in San Jose County needs to be more efficient in their approach to security and criminal confrontation. The stereotype mentalities maintained by a majority of these police officers often impair their judgment when dealing with criminals (Greenhut, 2018). They need to be objective and impartial in their investigations even as they receive additional training from the LAPD.

Conclusion

Police officers at the San Jose Police Department can protect their integrity and that of the department by ensuring that they always abide by the law in all decisions they take. Confusing issues revolving around criminal arrests and the use of firearms should be minimized as much as possible. The Marshall at the San Jose Police Department needs to manage the police officers in the county to ensure that they are less prone to harm unarmed civilians. Thanks to the level of their training, officers should be able to arrest unarmed criminals without using much force. They can use a...