What are the ideal traits of police officers?
What will be an ideal response?
Dennis Nowicki has identified twelve qualities that he believes are important for entry level police officers and that make “good cops.” Enthusiasm involves believing in what one is doing and going about even routine duties with a certain vigor that is almost contagious. Good communications skills including both speaking and listening skills and the ability to interact well with a wide variety of people. Good judgment involves having wisdom and the ability to make good analytic decisions, based on an understanding of the problem at hand. Officers also need a sense of humor, so they can laugh and smile in order to help themselves cope with regular exposure to human pain and suffering. Creativity allows officers to place themselves in the mind of the criminal and accomplish legal arrests. Another important characteristic is self-motivation, which involves making things happen, proactively solving difficult cases, and creating one’s own luck. A good officer needs to know the job, including the police officer’s role, and the criminal justice system. Good officers need a healthy ego; they must believe they are good officers and have the self-confidence to solve difficult crimes. They also need courage, which includes not only the ability to meet various physical and psychological challenges, but also the ability to think clearly during times of high stress, to admit when they are wrong, and to stand up for what is right. Officers need to have discretion, which involves having empathy and enforcing the spirit rather than the letter of the law. They also need to be tenacious, to stay focused, to see challenges rather than obstacles, and to view failure as an experience instead of a setback. Finally, officers need to have a thirst for knowledge and to always be learning.
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Critical social science is ____________________
a. a critical process of inquiry that generates liberating knowledge so as to reveal structural and cultural inhibiting forces in an attempt to help people change their living conditions and build a better world for themselves b. an approach to research that emphasizes the systematic analysis and detailed study of people and text in order to arrive at understandings and interpretations of how people construct and maintain meaning within their social worlds c. a method for combining deductive logic with precise empirical observations in order to discover and confirm a set or probabilistic causal laws that can be used to predict general patterns of human activity d. a philosophical position that views reality and causal processes as fairly straightforward and determinable through scientific observation
______ is the U.S. assertion of the right to prosecute and punish criminal acts that occur outside American territory.
a. Foreign indictment doctrine b. Extraterritorial jurisdiction c. Foreign extradition doctrine d. The Patriot Act
Compared to life course–persistent offenders, low-level chronic offenders ______.
A. peak at around age 16 and then decline during late teens and early adulthood B. begin antisocial behavior early and then remain at a high level throughout their lifetimes C. exhibit a rise in offending through early adolescence, plateau, and then remain at the same offending level well past age 18 D. engage in no delinquency in early adolescence but then display high-level delinquent behavior throughout adulthood
______ is a process of hiring and promoting employees that is designed to eliminate political influence and nepotism.
Fill in the blank(s) with the appropriate word(s).