Policing: Purpose and Organization Chapter 6 Copyright ©2011, 2009, 2007, 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Pearson [imprint] Criminal Justice.

Policing: Purpose and Organization

Chapter 6

Copyright ©2011, 2009, 2007, 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc.publishing as Pearson [imprint]

Criminal Justice Today: An Introductory Text for the 21st Century, 11/eFrank Schmalleger



The Police Mission

• The purposes of policing in democratic societies is to:

– Enforce and support the laws– Investigate crimes/apprehend

offenders– Prevent crime– Ensure domestic peace and tranquility– Provide the community with

enforcement–related services



Enforcing the Law

• Only about 10–20% of all calls to the police require a law enforcement response.

• Police cannot enforce all of the laws. Resources are limited.

• Law enforcement priorities are significantly affected by community needs. Individual discretion also impacts them.

• Police are expected to support the laws they enforce.



Apprehending Offenders

• Offenders may be apprehended: – While committing a crime– Shortly after committing a crime– After an extensive investigation



Preventing Crime

• Crime prevention is proactive. It aims to:– Reduce crime and criminal opportunities– Lower the rewards of crime– Lessen the fear of crime

• Law enforcement’s ability to prevent crimes relies in part on their ability to predict crime. – Determining when and where crimes will occur– Allocating resources accordingly– Crime mapping, as with CompStat, helps



Preserving the Peace

• Law enforcement do a number of activities to help ensure domestic peace and tranquility.

• Officers may focus on quality-of-life offenses, acts that create physical disorder or reflect social decay or that could lead to further deterioration (broken windows theory). – Examples: Vandalism, excessive noise.



Providing Services

• About 70% of the millions of daily 9-1-1 calls are directed to the police.

• Police handle emergency and non-emergency calls, such as: – Barking dogs– Lost and found items– Minor accidents



Operational Strategies

• There are five core operational strategies, each with unique features:

– Preventive patrol– Routine incident response– Emergency response– Criminal investigation– Problem solving

• Additionally, there is an ancillary operational strategy: support services.



Preventive Patrol

• The dominant operational policing strategy is preventive patrol, which places uniformed officers on the street in the midst of the public.

• The backbone of police work.

• It consumes most of the resources of local and state-level agencies.



Emergency Response

• Emergency responses (or critical incidents) occur in response to crimes in progress, serious injuries, natural disasters, and other situations in which human lives may be in jeopardy.



Criminal Investigation

• Criminal investigations dominate media attention but constitute a relatively small proportion of police work.

• An investigation involves discovering, collecting, preparing, identifying, and presenting evidence to determine what happened and who is responsible.



Criminal Investigation

• First responding officers:– Provide assistance to the injured and in

capturing suspects. – Secure the crime scene. – Conduct the preliminary investigation.

• Follow-up investigations are based on solvability factors.



Problem Solving

• Historically, it is the least well-developed by the police profession.

• The methodology is known by acronyms such as SARA or CAPRA.



Problem Solving

• Problem solving policing requires: – Gathering knowledge of problem

causes– Developing solutions in partnership with

the community – Responding with a workable plan – Assessing the progress



Support Services

• Support services are ancillary services such as dispatch, training, personnel, property control, and record-keeping that keep agencies running.



Managing Police Departments

• Police management refers to the administrative activities of controlling, directing, and coordinating police personnel, resources, and activities in order to:– Prevent crime– Apprehend criminals– Recover stolen property– Perform regulatory and helping services



Police Organization and Structure

• Line Operations• Field activities or

supervisory activities directly related to day-to-day police work

• Staff Operations• Include support

roles, such as administration



Chain of Command

• The organizational chart of any police agency shows a hierarchical chain of command.– Represents order of authority– Quasi-military structure– Span of control—the number of

personnel or unites supervised by a particular commander.



Policing Styles

• History helps shape policing styles, how agencies see their purpose, and choose to fulfill it.

• There are three basic policing styles:

– Watchman– Legalistic– Service



Historical Eras in American Policing

FIGURE 6–3 Historical eras in American policing.



The Watchman Style of Policing

• The watchman style of policing are typically in lower- or lower-middle class areas that have a lot of crime.

• This style is marked by:– Order maintenance– Controlling illegal and disruptive

behavior– Considerable use of discretion



The Legalistic Style of Policing

• Legalistic style police departments are committed to enforcing the letter of the law and take a “laissez faire” stance on behaviors that are simply bothersome.



The Service Style of Policing

• Service style police departments strive to meet community needs.

• They are:– Concerned with helping rather than

strictly enforcing the laws.– More likely to supplement law

enforcement activities with community resources.

– Popular today.



Police-Community Relations (PCR)

• Movement began in the 1960s and 1970s. This movement recognizes the need for the police and the community to work together. – Store-front auxiliary police offices– Neighborhood watch– Drug awareness programs– Project ID



Team Policing

• Team policing is an extension of the PCR movement.

• With team policing, conventional patrol strategies are reorganized and police teams are assigned to fixed districts.– Police become more familiar with the

people of their districts and their problems and concerns.



Community Policing as Corporate Strategy

• Some suggest that police departments operate like corporations, and that community policing is the newest strategy. Other strategies are strategic policing and problem-oriented policing.



Community Policing

• Strategic policing– Enlarges the enforcement target to

include nontraditional kinds of criminals

• Problem-solving policing– Takes the view that many crimes are

caused by existing social conditions



Community Policing

• Consistent with service policing, community policing emphasizes the idea that police must partner with the community to help fulfill the community needs.

• Police actively work with citizens and with social services to help solve problems.



Community Policing

• Community policing involves at least one of four elements:

– Community-based crime prevention– Reorientation of patrol activities to

emphasize nonemergency services– Increased police accountability to the

public– A decentralization of command,

including greater use of civilians at all levels of police decision making



Critique of Community Policing

• Some criticize community policing, citing problems such as:– Too abstract of a concept– Hard-to-measure success– Difficult to conceptualize and quantify “citizen

success”– Not readily accepted by all police officers or

managers– Difficulty coming to a consensus with regard to

what’s considered a “community problem”



Terrorism’s Impact on Policing

• The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks changed the role of police departments.

• The core mission has not changed, but all police departments now devote much more resources to preparing for a possible terrorist attack and intelligence gathering.– Local police departments play an especially

important role in responding to the challenges of terrorism.



The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Approach

• The IACP identified five key principles behind an effective homeland security policy.

– Proposals must be developed in local context.– Prevention is a key part of any strategy.– State and local law enforcement can help

identify, investigate, and apprehend terrorist suspects.

– Strategies must be coordinated nationally, not federally.

– There cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach.



Field Intelligence Groups

• Field Intelligence Groups (FIGs) represent another FBI counterterrorism effort. FIGS work closely with Joint Terrorism Task Forces to provide information to state and local law enforcement personnel. They help generate intelligence and disseminate information.



Intelligence-Led Policing and Antiterrorism

• Intelligence-Led Policing (ILP) is a technique involving the use of criminal intelligence to guide policing in the fight against terrorism.– Police should be able to collect and/or

analyze intelligence information and form an effective response to credible threat.



Information Sharing and Antiterrorism

• Sharing information across jurisdictions is crucial to effective antiterrorism plans and creating a fully integrated criminal justice information system. Such efforts are called boundaryless policing.

• Examples of information sharing: – Law Enforcement Online (LEO)– NLETS



Fusion Centers

• A new concept in policing, pool and analyze information from law enforcement agencies at all levels.

• Information sharing is the central purpose.



Discretion and the Individual Officer

• Even as police agencies adapt to threats posed by terrorism, individual officers still retain a considerable amount of discretion.

discretion = choice



Factors that Influence Discretion

• Officer’s background

• Suspect’s characteristics

• Department policy

• Community interest

• Pressure from victim

• Disagreement with the law



Professionalism and Ethics

• Today’s demands for police professionalism require that police officers have specialized knowledge and they adhere to professional standards and police ethics.– Accreditation is a step toward greater

professionalism. – Ethics training is integrated into most

basic training programs.



Education and Training

• Modern police education programs involve training in areas like: – Human relations– Firearms– Communications– Legal issues– Patrol– Investigations – Report writing



Education and Training

• Federal law enforcement agents training at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC).

• American Society for Law Enforcement Training (ASLET)

• A post-academy field training program (PTO) is a recent development in police training.



Formal Education

• Formal education is not required by all police departments, though for decades it has been recommended by several Commissions and groups.

• Departments vary with regard to hiring requirements. Some require no college; others require a four-year degree. Most federal agencies require college degrees.



Benefits and Problems Associated with Hiring Educated Police Officers

Benefits

• Better written reports• Enhanced public

communication skills• More effective job

performance• Fewer citizen complaints• Greater initiative• Wiser use of discretion• Heightened sensitivity to

racial and ethnic issues• Fewer disciplinary

problems

Problems

• More likely to leave police work

• More likely to question orders

• More likely to request reassignments



Recruitment and Selection

• Law enforcement agencies use a variety of applicant screening methods, including:– Personal interviews– Basic skills tests– Physical agility measures– Medical exams– Drug tests– Background investigations– Psychological testing



Percentage of Local Police Departments Using Various Recruit-Screening Methods, (Bureau of

Justice Statistics, 2006)

FIGURE 6–4 Percentage of local police departments using various recruit-screening methods.



Ethnic and Gender Diversity in Policing

• Opportunities for women and minorities in policing are expanding.

• Although ethnic minorities are now employed in policing in significant numbers, women are still significantly underrepresented, especially in top command positions.



Women as Effective Police Officers

• Some women have integrated well into the role of police officer. Others feel strain and isolation. – Strain caused by family roles and

parenting, underutilization, uncooperative attitudes of male officers.



Increasing the Number of Minorities and Women in Police Work

• The Police Foundation recommends: – Involving underrepresented groups in

departmental affirmative action and long-term planning programs.

– Encouraging the development of an open promotion system.

– Periodic audits to make sure that female officers are not being underutilized by ineffective tracking into clerical and support positions.

Policing: Purpose and Organization Chapter 6 Copyright ©2011, 2009, 2007, 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc. publishing as Pearson [imprint] Criminal Justice.

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