Jesse Buehler

Victimology
Barbie Underwood
September 12, 2021

1.  After reading the case study on page 47, what do you see as the primary role of law

enforcement?   What is the relationship between upholding the law and protecting the

public?  Is the role of law enforcement to be proactive or reactive?

After reading the case study, it appears to me that the role of law enforcement is to uphold the

laws of their agency and community and to also investigate crimes committed by suspects and/or

offenders. Upholding the law and protecting the public share a relationship if the role is in the

proactive state. In proactive law enforcement, officers respond to crimes that are actively

occurring to protect the safety of the community and also uphold the law. I believe the role of

law enforcement is to be both proactive and reactive. As I stated above, proactive involves

responding to active crimes, while reactive involves being first responders to the aftermath of a

crime and working to investigate the scene.

2.  What obligation does law enforcement have to the victim?

Law enforcement acts as the first responder to the victim. They are there to collect statements

and then refer the victim to services needed. Law enforcement does not have obligations to

protect, work for, advocate, or conduct a proper investigation-according to the case study.

3.  Why do law enforcement agencies down grade and misclassify statistics?  Do you

suspect your law enforcement agency does this?

Law enforcement agencies down grade and misclassify statistics to prevent public panic or to

hide their real job performance rating. If a certain type of crime is high, the public will take

notice and put blame on the law enforcement agency. I suspect that any law enforcement agency

that volunteers to submit statistics has altered their numbers at one point in time, including my

own agency.

4.  After reading the case studies on pages 58 and 61, what was the rationale used by the

agencies to support their falsification of data.

Both case studies mentioned the fact that reporting officer involved justified deaths as homicides

would increase their statistics reported to the FBI. This is one reason that the data was falsified.

Another reason that both case studies focused on was the simple fact that there is a ton of human

error within the agencies. The lack of training, improper data systems, and neglect led to

numerous mistakes that resulted in falsification of data.