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According to the FBI, hate crime refers to traditional offenses such as vandalism, arson, murder and so on often instigated by a form of bias such as intolerance to sex, race, religion, transgender, disability to name just a few. Hate is not considered to be a crime and criminal justice agencies are committed to safeguarding civil liberties including freedom of speech. Nonetheless, such agencies are mandated to prosecute crimes of partiality as civil rights violations, which happen to fall under their authority.
From the foregoing definition, it is apparent that no one is immune from hate crime, thus, every right-thinking member of society has a stake in response to crimes of bias as they have the potential of damaging the fabric of any civilized society. Perpetrators of such crimes often intend to intimidate the victim and the members of his or her community. Such prejudiced physical or verbal attacks often leave the victim (s) feeling unprotected by the law, vulnerable and isolated. The situation could turn tragic should authorities turn a blind eye to the perpetrators. Naturally, this would escalate into widespread community tension. Members of a community would then end up feeling victimized by the very authority that is supposed to protect them.
Crimes of bias should be treated with the seriousness that they deserve considering that a single incident could end up fragmenting entire communities. Islam phobia, homophobia, xenophobia relates to intolerance to religion, sexual orientation, and race respectively. The latter is exemplified by an outlawed group in the United States called the Ku Klux Klan which persecuted African-Americans during the sixties based on their race (Ridgeway, 2005). In addition, there is the Hutu/Tutsi conflict in Rwanda which ended up taking over 2 million innocent lives and in recent times, assault on homosexuals has skyrocketed.
Politics can either be positive or negative i.e. they can either enhance the governance of a state or enforce external, partisan political influence on the operation of state organs (Charles et al, 2012). Essentially, politics are supposed to safeguard the interests of the citizen and the city-state. Aristotle had this in mind when he defined politics as the science of the polis. A police administrator must therefore be in a position to draw a clear line between good and bad politics. Hence, he or she should be aware of the degree of subjectivity of local law enforcement to politics at the state level. He or she should be well grounded on the history of local politics and how this has shaped the dominant political culture that has the potential of interfering with the style and quality of law enforcement services provided. A law enforcement officer should assess the local political environment to respond to the needs of the local community effectively, failure to which can lead to job loss of a sheriff or police chief.
A clear understanding of the issues mentioned above among a few others by a police administrator can enhance police performance thereby creating more autonomy for local law enforcement. Failure to do so can only lead to more negative repercussions for police officers who could end up ceding more ground to state organs like courts as it happened during the era of the “due process revolution”. Escalation of crimes led the Supreme Court to issue laws like in the case of Mapp V. Ohio (1961) which forbade the use of evidence that was obtained illegally in a court of law (Brandeis, 2010).
A state of anarchy would be inevitable if the federal government failed to follow laws implemented through its own volition. There should be no exception to this rule. In this regard, the court in the case of Mapp V. Ohio managed to apply the fourth amendment against “unreasonable search and seizure” to state governments in 1961 (Brandeis, 2010). Here, the exclusionary rule forbids otherwise admissible evidence from being used in a criminal trial especially if the evidence was obtained illegally by law enforcement officers and so it wasted to define the meaning of unreasonable search and seizure.
Before this case, it was difficult for defendants to exclude criminal evidence obtained illegally during court proceedings despite the fact that the fourth amendment guaranteed the right of the people to be secured against unreasonable searches and seizures. It was after the ruling in the case of Mapp V. Ohio that the fourth amendment had a real impact on people charged with crimes in a court of law.
To appreciate the significance of this case, it would suffice to consider what happened during the previous case of Wolf v. Colorado in 1949. In this case, the courts held that illegally seized evidence could be used in state prosecutions and that this was perfectly in line with the fourth amendment. However, this interpretation was revised in the 1961 Mapp decision. The state defendants would no longer be held accountable on the basis of evidence that was obtained illegally without their consent. In this regard, the U.S. Supreme court reversed the decision to convict Mapp of crimes of obscenity i.e. possessing obscene material. In dismissing the charges against Mapp, the court rightly ignored the constitutionality of Ohio’s obscenity laws and instead chose to rely on the provisions of the fourth amendment (Brandeis, 2010). It was held that evidence obtained illegally in contravention of the fourth amendment was no longer admissible in state trials considering that policemen who confiscated obscene materials from Mapp had a fake search warrant. Henceforth, the exclusionary rule was extended to state prosecutions in that illegally obtained evidence would be equally excluded for both the state and federal defendants.
References
Brandeis, L. (2010). Mapp V. Ohio: The Exclusionary Rule. American Civil Liberties Union. Web.
Charles, R. S., Territo, L. & Taylor, W. R. (2012). Police Administration: Structures, Processes and Behavior, 8th Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall Publishing Co. Pearson.
Ridgeway, J. (2005). Blood in the face: the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazi Skinheads and the Rise of a New White Culture. New York, NY: Thunders Mouth Press.
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