Police Reforms

Archive Report

Problems of Big-City Police Departments

The policeman's LOT is unhappier today than Gilbert and Sullivan could possibly have imagined. Low pay, long and irregular hours, and hazardous working conditions have characterized police duty from the beginning. Despite these drawbacks, the man in blue could usually count on the respect, if not always the affection, of the people whose lives and property he was paid to safeguard. Now, in contrast, the policeman all too often finds himself the target of oral or physical abuse. In big-city Negro ghettos, he is likely to be looked upon as a hated symbol of the “white power structure”—even if he happens to be a Negro himself.

Recent Supreme Court decisions aimed to protect the rights of criminal suspects are still another ...

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