The Police: Role and Function

1. The Police: Role and Function

2. Police Organization • Most municipal police departments are independent agencies within the executive branch of government. • Most departments follow para-military model adhering to semi-rigid chain of command. • But, substantial discretion rests at the lowest rank level • Personnel decisions often based on time-in-rank considerations.

3. The Multiple Goals of Police Work • Basic goals: social control: how? • control crime • maintain order • provide services • gather information (intelligence, investigation) • special tasks (crowd control, SWAT) • be a symbol of justice

4. The Multiple Goals of Police Work (cont.) • Issues: • What if goals conflict? (e.g., crime control and justice –”due process”); what goal receives priority? • How to divide and organize all this work within one agency: look at organization charts • How to control power and discretion (e.g., use of force, corruption, discrimination)

5. The Formal Roles of Police • Formal roles: sworn officers and civilians • Street work: patrol officers • Investigations: detectives • Undercover: vice, corruption • Traffic control • Special: K9, SWAT, community relations, juvies, internal investigations • Training: academy, FTOs, in-service, special skills workshops • Support: planning, budgets, records, equipment – often civilians

6. The Organization of Police Departments

7. Doing Policing: the dirty, impossible job • Doing policing: • “Dirty” job? call the cops • Discretion, power, external, and internal judgments • The nature of street, patrol work: • Deal with the dismal side of life – makes one cynical, disillusioned, few decent folk • Need to use force • Visibility – everyone can see you, and tape you • Potential for danger • Uneven work rhythms – boredom and adrenaline • Authoritarian work environment – • And competing goals – order, services, law enforcement, intelligence • And higher ups will always “betray” you

8. Doing Policing: the dirty, impossible job (cont.) • Discretion - unavoidable normative, legal and policy judgments – situational decision-making • Someone will always complain – the nature of law, criminal justice and policies • Plus, now COP work: be nice, other skills, performance evaluations unclear

9. The Patrol Function • Account for 2/3 of most departments’ personnel • Deter crime through visible presence • Maintain public order • Respond to law violations or emergencies • Identify and apprehend criminals • Aid citizens in distress • Facilitate movement of people and traffic • Create a sense of safety and security

10. What Do Patrol Officers Do When They Work • Workload studies: how do patrol officers spend their time? • How is this measured? • Participant observation: ride around with cops • Analysis of 911 calls for policing: why do people call the police • Crime, order maintenance, services, paperwork, time off • What percentage of time is spend doing each role • Are the police proactive or reactive in their work?

11. What Do Patrol Officers Do When They Work Findings of workload studies • Crime fighting efforts are only a small part of the police officer’s overall activities. • On average a police officer makes less than 2 arrests per month and less than 1 felony arrest every 4 months. • Majority of time spent handling minor disturbances, service calls, and administrative duties

12. Impacts of Patrol Work • Deterrent effect of patrol: • Patrol methods seem to have little impact on public’s attitude toward police.

13. Patrol Work • Patrol Activities • Majority of efforts devoted to order maintenance or peacekeeping • Requires officers to use discretion and resolve situations without making an arrest • Use of selective enforcement

14. Patrol Work (cont.) • Proactive patrol • Department emphasizes stopping crimes before they occur rather than traditional reactive approach. • Aggressive enforcement is used to create belief that criminals stand a significant risk of being caught. • Special programs may target specific crimes. • Zero tolerance policies • New York experience

15. Patrol Work (cont.) • Adding patrol officers • Research indicates adding police officers may in fact reduce crime and improve overall effectiveness of the justice system. • Agencies with more officers per capita than the norm experience lower levels of violent crimes. • A costly policy (costs about 80,000/year to hire and keep one officer)

16. Patrol Work (cont.) • Compstat program • Computer program provides real-time crime data and improves analysis capabilities for local commanders. • Commanders are required by HQ justify police deployments and strategies based on crime trends. • Both a use of data and a management tool

17. The Investigation Function • Detective investigate the causes of crime and attempt to identify the individuals or groups responsible for committing particular offenses. • Undercover/sting operations • Police deceive criminals into openly committing illegal acts. • Common in investigation of prostitution, gambling, and narcotics • Critics argue constitutes entrapment or may be encouraging commission of additional offenses

18. The Investigation Function (cont.) • Evaluating investigations • Most arrests are made by patrol officers. • One study indicates half of all detectives could be replaced without negatively influencing crime clearance rates. • Police have only a 5 percent chance to solve a crime if more than 15 minutes elapse from the time of occurrence to reporting. • Detectives generally lack sufficient resources to carry out lengthy probes of any but the most serious crimes. • Most crimes are solved by leads from the public

19. The Investigation Function (cont.) • Improving investigations • Use of patrol officers for preliminary investigations to free up time for detectives • Increased use of specialization • Greater reliance on technology • Better relations with community members, who provide most of the leads that help solve a crime

20. Community Oriented Policing • COP: Core elements • Partnership and co-production • Problem solving and crime prevention • Decentralization of control and authority • Flexibility: no one style fits all • From incident driven policing to analysis of underlying problems; • E.g. hot spots, repeat responses • Requires new skills and attitudes for police

21. Community Policing • Police-community relations programs were developed to improve relations with the community and develop cooperation with citizens with the goals of • Explaining police activities • Teaching self-protection methods • Improving general attitudes toward policing • Original programs developed at station-house and departmental levels.

22. Community Policing (cont.) • Broken windows model • Primary function of police should be community preservation, public safety, and order maintenance. • Neighborhood disorder creates fear. • Neighborhoods give out crime-promoting signals. • To be effective police need citizen cooperation. • If small crimes/offenses are not taken care of, the community will deteriorate

23. Community Policing (cont.) • Implementing community policing • New Jersey and Michigan foot patrol experiments • Creation of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) • Neighborhood-oriented policing

24. Community Policing (cont.) • Problem-oriented policing • Form of proactive policing • Identifies long-term community problems and develop strategies to eliminate them • Relies on assistance of local residents to identify and resolve problems • Specialized units may concentrate on “hot spots” where significant portion of calls originate

25. Doing Problem Solving • Problem solving in practice: the SARA model • Scanning • Analysis • Response • Assessment

26. Community Policing (cont.) • Challenges of community policing • Must define community • Define roles • Change command structure • Re-orient police values • Revise training • Reorient recruitment • Sustain community participation • It has to work – it is still policing

27. The Changing Concepts of Policing (cont.) • Support functions • Personnel services • Internal affairs • Budgeting • Data management • Dispatch • Forensic laboratories • Planning and research • Equipment: police buy a lot of cars - supply and maintenance

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