Public Attitudes Toward Police 57Alternatively, attitudes toward law enforcement and policing practices may stem
more from secondhand accounts from neighbors, family members, or friends' en-
counters with police. Perhaps the largest influence on public perception of any topic
is the mass media. It has a powerful, and in some ways monopolizing, control over
the public's perception of virtually all topics in popular culture, including that of
police decision making. While many scholars have debated the media's influence
on these domains, one need not be a scholar to understand the everyday influence
and clout the press has on the public's perception of forensics in general and police
in particular. The following case scenario illustrates one of the many mechanisms
of how the public come to perceive law enforcement.
Imagine you are sitting at home and hear a tremendous commotion occurring outside
in the street. Intrigued, you go outside to investigate and discover that a roadblock has
been set up right outside your house in the street and that a police car, lights flashing and
siren blaring, is pursuing a car in front of it. Thwarted by the roadblock, the pursued car
stops and the police surround the car. A young man of about 25 is virtually dragged from
his car and thrown onto the hood of a police vehicle. By this time, a rather large crowd
lias gathered around the scene, making for an interesting spectacle. The police gruffly yell
some incomprehensible statements to the young driver, who at this point is not resisting
in any way, and throw him into the back of a squad car. All the police eventually leave,
with one remaining officer yelling to the surrounding onlookers that "the show is over"
and that "everyone must leave the scene and return to their houses immediately."
Your opinion of the situation may be somewhat clouded. What exactly did the
young man do to deserve such reprehensible treatment? Were the police justified
in their handling of the situation? Why didn't an officer inform the onlookers of
what was going on? Confused and intrigued, you are forced to come to your own
conclusions, feeling somewhat frustrated at the lack of information given to you,
and with, perhaps, a distorted view of what just occurred. Issues such as these are
discussed in the following section, as are other aspects of the public's perception of
police and criminal justice. Theoretical views of public perception are examined,
as are ways in which the police deal with media and cooperative relations between
police and media, including practical implications law enforcement establishments
use to effectively deal with media relations in hopes of establishing good public
relations patterns.
Cases such as these and many others influence how the public generally view
police and their practices. Often, police are forced to deal with situations that
are sensitive and therefore cannot reveal information that may be sensitive to a
pending case or which may violate someone's Fourth Amendment rights (the right
to privacy). A good example of the way in which the public's view of police ss
influenced by the media is through popular television.
Literature Review
It has been argued that television shows portraying policing have all but dominated
prime-time television for quite some time. In fact, detailed analyses have been