The Police: Role and Function
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.
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But, substantial discretion rests at the lowest rank level
 Personnel decisions often based on time-in-rank
considerations.
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
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)
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
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The Organization of Police Departments
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:
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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 –
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And competing goals – order, services, law enforcement, intelligence
And higher ups will always “betray” you
Doing Policing: the dirty, impossible job (cont.)
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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
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
What Do Patrol Officers Do?
 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
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 Crime, order maintenance, services, paperwork, time
off
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What percentage of time is spend doing each role
 Are the police proactive or reactive in their work?
What Do Patrol Officers Do?
Findings of workload studies
 Crime fighting efforts are only a small part of the
police officer’s overall activities.
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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
Impacts of Patrol Work
 Deterrent effect of patrol:
 Patrol methods seem to have little impact on public’s
attitude toward police.
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
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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
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 120,000/year to hire and keep one
officer)
Patrol Work (cont.)
 Comp-stats program
 Computer program provides real-time crime data and
improves analysis capabilities for local commanders.
 Commanders are required to justify police deployments and
strategies based on crime trends.
 Both a use of data and a management tool
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
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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
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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
Community Oriented Policing
 COP: Core elements
 Partnership
and co-production
 Problem solving and crime prevention
 Decentralization of control and authority
 From
incident driven policing to analysis of
underlying problems;
 E.g.
hot spots, repeat responses
 Requires new skills and attitudes for police
Community Policing
 Police-community relations programs were
developed to improve relations with the community
and develop cooperation with citizens with the goals
of
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Explaining police activities
Teaching self-protection methods
Improving general attitudes toward policing
 Original programs developed at station-house and
departmental levels.
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
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
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
Doing Problem Solving
 Problem solving in practice: the SARA model
 Scanning
 Analysis
 Response
 Assessment
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
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
End