Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Noah Tsika
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Police Legitimacy ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Police Power ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classical Hollywood ◽  
Twentieth Century America

This introduction historicizes cinema’s relationship to policing and particularizes that relationship beyond familiar questions of regulation and censorship, while also revisiting those very questions in the context of a broader study of police power. How did the institution of law enforcement interact with the studio system? How was classical Hollywood shaped by—and how, in turn, did it shape—specific police activities? To what extent and in what ways did cinema serve the emergent public relations needs of police agencies, and vice versa? Police departments were not passive beneficiaries of Hollywood’s fiscal and ideological investments but active and self-interested contributors to various cinematic projects, many of which they themselves initiated. The relative fragility of police legitimacy—its disputability, particularly in the face of obvious abuses of power—necessitated this constant advocacy in twentieth-century America, as did Hollywood’s generic, formula-driven, reiterative commercial character.

Filmgoers’ Fingerprints

2021 ◽  
pp. 223-256
Author(s):  
Noah Tsika
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Police Power ◽  
Movie Theaters ◽  
Movie Theater ◽  
Crime Films ◽  
Local Police ◽  
Biometric Information

This chapter focuses on fingerprinting stations, which, from the early 1920s until the late 1950s, were often located in the lobbies of movie theaters and used both in conjunction with crime films and as part of a broader push to collect Americans’ personal biometric information. An increasingly popular component of efforts to normalize civil identification, fingerprinting stations routinely functioned to promote both crime films and local police departments. They also raised alarming questions about the scope of police power in the United States. Fingerprinting stations were naturalized aspects of a cinematic assemblage that served police power, smuggling law enforcement into the local movie theater and making the collection of patrons’ personal biometric information seem continuous both with screen representations and with the wider work of advertising and publicity departments.

Alcohol and Drug Problems: Law Enforcement and Legal Policy

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Celeste Burke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Drug Policy ◽  
Drug Control ◽  
Demand Reduction ◽  
Prevention And Treatment ◽  
The Face ◽  
Supply Reduction ◽  
Drug Problems ◽  
Over Time

Historically, U.S. policy has been characterized by long-standing ambivalence evident in the changing emphasis placed on prohibition as the aim of drug policy, and in debate about the relative merits of various approaches to drug control. Often characterized as supply reduction versus demand reduction efforts, significant changes have occurred over time in these efforts, and in the emphasis placed on them. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, U.S. drug policy adopted a more prohibitionist stance, with increased reliance on a variety of law enforcement, and even military actions, to control the supply and use of drugs, even in the face of evidence for the effectiveness of prevention and treatment, and high costs associated with the burgeoning incarceration rates.

Variability in the Use of Misdemeanor Arrests by Police Agencies From 1990 to 2013: An Application of Group-Based Trajectory Modeling

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 536-560 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Lum ◽  
Heather Vovak
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
The United States ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Trajectory Modeling ◽  
Patterns Of Use ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
Long Term Trends ◽  
Zero Tolerance Policing

Arrest for minor offenses has become one tool that some police departments employ to fight crime and disorder in their jurisdictions. Dubbed by some as “broken windows” or “zero tolerance” policing, a few police agencies in the 1990s and 2000s notably and significantly increased their use of arrest for such misdemeanors, such as New York City and Baltimore. But was this the case for other law enforcement agencies in the United States? Our analysis is the first to examine long-term trends in the use of misdemeanor arrests in a sample of U.S. law enforcement agencies using group-based trajectory modeling. Results show that police agencies have distinct longitudinal patterns of use of arrests for minor crimes from 1990 to 2013; some agencies significantly increased their use of arrests for minor crimes while others did not. Further analysis of possible explanations for agency membership in any given longitudinal trajectory found that agencies with similar patterns in their use of misdemeanor arrests were not similar on demographic or crime characteristics. This finding suggests that the decision to increase the use of arrest for minor offenses may have been a policy choice by agencies influenced by factors not detected here.

Cinematic Badges

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-130
Author(s):  
Noah Tsika
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Film ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Police Departments ◽  
Police Power ◽  
American Police

This chapter examines some of the tensions involved in the development and maintenance of film-specific forms of police public relations and addresses the persistence of certain cultural and institutional anxieties. From the threat of repetition and generic stagnation to the frictions resulting from the coexistence of strict representational codes and countervailing “realist” imperatives, these tensions and anxieties further illustrate the sheer complexity of cinema’s intersections with police power in the United States. American police departments have long been committed to shaping American film culture to their own advantage. American police officials were not necessarily easily satisfied by screen representations, and their ongoing demands had unexpected and sometimes contradictory effects.

Training Police in Professional Ethics

1996 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 264-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander E. Hooke
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Professional Ethics ◽  
Police Work ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Professional Status ◽  
Law Enforcement Agencies ◽  
Police Agencies

Throughout the twentieth century, efforts have been made by police agencies to achieve professional status. However, it remains problematic if police work can be conceptualized as being that of professionals. This paper argues that while the objections to calling the police a profession as well as the disjunctives between public perceptions and those of the police themselves are sometimes great, claims to professional status can be legitimate. Tables are developed to show how training can both identify tensions and provide ethical resolutions. Such training in ethics is viewed as a way to help police become professionals and minimize many of the serious errors that law enforcement agencies are currently under attack for allegedly committing and/or condoning.

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