Essay 1
Name:
Institution:
Course:
Tutor:
Date:

Introduction
In the United States, significant strides have been made towards achieving policy accountability. In the recent past, the civilian oversight of the law enforcement movement has expanded and evolved in their primary role of ensuring that the police respect the civil rights of members of the public. It is against been background that citizen oversight systems has been lauded for maintaining vigilant of excessive use of force, disparate treatment, false arrest, suspect harassment and torture, officer misconduct, racial profiling among other in the law enforcement agencies (Dempsey & Forst, 2012). Therefore, the citizen oversight of police serves to hold law enforcement officers to high standards of integrity, equity, honesty, and professionalism. The rationale for citizen oversight of police is said to be failure of the police profession to prove to assure the public of their ability and commitment to holding their members accountable for their actions.
On the contrary, however, citizen oversight systems have been criticized of failing to effectively execute their role and the failure is attributed to poor planning, lack of political goodwill and financial support, unrealistic expectations, as well as the apparent lack of cooperation from the police administrators and police officers themselves (Prenzler, 2004). In this regard, citizen oversight systems grapple with the dilemma of having to create a positive working relationship with the police on the one hand, while remaining independent and impartial on the other. This paper explores the role of citizen oversight in policing, making comparisons of its effectiveness, and the inherent challenges in investigating citizen complaints. Further, the paper critiques the effectiveness of citizen oversight both as a police management tool and an early