Misrepresentation In Law Enforcement

In the recent past, law enforcement in various parts of the world has come under serious threat from different types of media. In the United States, law enforcement agencies argue that their work is greatly affected by the misrepresentation made by the electronic, print, and social media (Colbran, 2014). They fear that in the contemporary world, social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are negatively affecting their work and playing a major role in the rising cases of violence across the country. The misrepresentation of law enforcement by media has been termed as the biggest challenge that authorities have had to deal with in the contemporary world of high technological advancements. People have developed a tendency …show more content…
Psychologists argue that the public has mastered the art of playing the victim when dealing with law enforcement agencies through the help of the media. It ignores reporting on the time that officers take negotiating with criminals before shooting them because of provocation (Garner, 2012). It portrays members of the black community as criminals who are always targeted by police officers. The media has instilled fear in the public with regard to the power of the Black Lives Matter Movement as a way of validating their claims that members of the African American community often face a lot of brutality from the police. This situation has not been made any better by the existence of smart phones and the increasing number of people using social media. People use their phones to record video clips and report various incidents of police misconduct by posting them on social media (Garner, 2012). These videos are shared widely. Various senders end up creating a negative image about the work of law enforcement agencies. The police argue that the challenge does not lie in people recording and sharing their confrontations with the public, but the manner in which the whole situations are put in the wrong context and shared with people that have little knowledge about the real events that took place (Colbran, …show more content…
In the United States, the media has contributed in the development of various divisions within the black community because it portrays them as criminals (Garner, 2012). Most of them make an honest living and do not want to be associated with every crime that happens across the country. Americans have been made to believe that a crime is based on race. This has affected the fight against racism in the country, as many white Americans argue that they tend to feel unsafe around members of the black community (Colbran, 2014). The misrepresentation by the media has also contributed to the public losing trust in the law enforcement agencies. It has portrayed police officers as incompetent, inhuman, and overly insensitive to the safety of the people they are supposed to