Unit 8: Law, Courts, and Procedure

Politics and Policing

Politics, simply stated, is the exercise of power. Even though we generally use the term in a negative sense, for our purposes it is value neutral. The people who wield the power can use it for either good or bad purposes.

It is impossible to “keep politics out of policing”, since police exist only with the acquiescence of the policed. This means that the public allow themselves to be “policed”, in the general sense. There are limits to the power that you can use. For example, there is a severe limit to the types of circumstances under which you can enter a private residence. They are called exigent circumstances.

Using power for personal gain, (called partisan politics) and policing have a long history, however, and the
association has not always been a healthy one.

In New York City in the middle of the past century, the approval of a ward’s alderman was required  before one could be appointed to the police department, and the Tammany Hall corruption of the same period depended in part on the use of the police to coerce and collect graft and to control elections. At the turn of the century, graft and corruption ran rampant at all levels of government, and the country turned to a paradigm coined by Woodrow Wilson, that called for the separation of politics and administration. In this usage, “politics” means “machine politics” and all of the ills associated with it. In the early years of the 20th Century, these reforms began with police (and others in government) being hired on merit rather than political connections. It is because of these reforms that you will have to go through the arduous hiring process that includes exams, screenings and interviews. Politics is not entirely a thing of the past, however. Even today, in Missouri, to become a highway patrolman, you must declare your political affiliation, and out of every recruit class an even number of Democrats and Republicans must be appointed.