Police Roles and Functions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Police Roles and Functions - Essay Example ils to truly encompass all of the roles that police officers should be serving: in fact, many of the roles that police officers fill have very little to do with law enforcement at all, and are not necessarily related to crimes. Law enforcement may be the central role common to all police forces, but they have many different roles on top of that. The primary function of any police force is law enforcement. Each police force has a set of laws that they are expected to enforce by catching and aiding in the prosecution of people who break those laws. The laws that a particular force are expected to enforce varies. Federal officers, for instance, can be of assistance in local matters, but only when invited by local police forces. The primary purpose of federal law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI, is the coordination of larger resources to solve interstate or international crime: things like organized crime, trafficking across state lines and so forth (Villa and Morris 1999). Local police tend to be on-the-ground officers who may see crimes being committed, who respond immediately to crime calls, who secure crime scenes and so forth. State police are usually responsible for administering zones between local police offices – this can be anything from traffic enforcement to a wide variety of other tasks. Law enforcement may be the primary mission of any police agency, but it is not what takes up the vast majority of an officer’s time. There are many other roles that a police officer fills, and that are of immense benefit to his community. Police officers, for instance, can be first responders to any emergency situation. This could mean giving first aid to someone who has had a heart attack to responding to a traffic collision or treating victims at the scene of a shooting (Villa and Morris 1999). Furthermore, police officers are often called on to adjudicate quasi-legal situations in which someone might be or feel threatened, even when no charges