Question

Examine the “Police Use of Force” article from the e-activity and discuss the use-of-force continuum and how much force should be used during an arrest. Then, analyze the interrogation and questioning process that law enforcement officers can conduct after a justifiable arrest. In your own opinion, determine whether or not you believe that these processes restrain officials from obtaining information related to crimes and include in your thoughts how the Miranda rights relate to your ideas. Then, examine the e-activity article and discuss the use-of-force continuum. Justify your answer.

Answer 1

After going through the article  “Police Use of Force”, the use-of-force continuum are the rules and procedures framed by the agencies, who are in control of maintaining law and order. This serves as a guide to decide how to react to a given situation and to bring the total scenario under one's control. The use of force by the police depends on the demand of the circumstances. There are many divisions in which the force is applied according to the situations.

Police should use minimal force during the arrest, but it totally depends on the scenario. Like in some circumstances, if the victim does not resist his/her arrest, then there is no need for the police to apply force. In certain situations only the presence of the police person makes the situation under control and in some situations, verbal force and no physical force is required. In some situations, they may apply a little physical force or some kind of device like that of tear gas or electric shock etc. But in certain deadly situations the police have to exert high force, when they have to save their own life or life of any other person. In this case they may use a weapon as a last option to control the situation. The amount of force during an arrest, depends on the resistance faced by the police from the suspected culprit at the time of arrest.

After a justifiable arrest, the investigation procedure will be designed, according to the evidence available or prospective pieces of evidence that may be available for the case and based on that they plan their course of action to extract a confession in the case. To start this procedure, they start with questioning firstly about the issue about suspicion of police in the case. The police tell the culprits about the suspicion they have and the suspected evidence they have to prove the crime. This is a low level of questioning the suspected culprit. Secondly, the culprit can be detained and ask in a little detailed with the evidence that was more sure to prove the culprit accuse of the crime. Thirdly, there is a very serious level of questioning to extract the truth from the perspective culprit. There is foolproof evidence, that will make the person prove culprit of the crime.

These  processes may sometimes restrain officials from obtaining information related to crimes when the culprit is stubborn and professional criminals. They do not like accepting their crime and try to defend themselves by keeping quiet. But for people who are not so adamant in their approach, these policies can defend them from getting exploited by the police in the name of confessions. There may be some police personnels  who could be short-tempered and may exert heavy force, when it is not needed. These rules protect the culprits from this type of police personnels. But these rules definitely refrain officials from abstracting information from those who are not ready to cooperate with them. Another factor here is that of Miranda rights, the culprits have the right to stay silent and any words they say could be an evidence against them. This right in one way is protecting the criminal to defend himself and also appoint some legal help to defend them, but in some cases may pose a higher difficulty for the police to seek confession from the culprit. In this case, the police may be compelled to use force to seek confession. But, the police have to use force, according to the situation and act wisely to seek the confession from the culprit and have to keep in mind that they act as the situation demands. Use-of-force continuum is necessary to limit the power exerted by police, but at the same time have made their task of seeking confession a little difficult.