Police toe thin blue line, noted a headline in the initial installment of the newspaper series entitled Tarnished Badges. DILEMMA OF DUTY, another headline said, identifying the issue in the 1995 package of stories about law enforcement use of force published in a trio of editions of The Canton Repository. What is necessary? And what is excessive? Increasing reports of brutality make an officer s job harder and the public fearful.
The words narrowed the focus of a front-page discussion of the duty of law enforcement and a need for respecting civil rights rights, issues that still are currently dominating newspapers and electronic media throughout the nation. The stories in the series highlighted both the priorities of police and the problems surrounding the training that policemen receive so they can do their jobs.