Chapter 6
Patrol: The Backbone of Policing
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Patrol can be contributed to each of the
common goals of police departments, including
preserving the peace, protecting civil rights and
civil liberties, enforcing the law, preventing
crime, providing services and solving problems.
Patrol Officer Responsibility:
Providing continuous police service and highvisibility law enforcement to deter crime and
maintain order.
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Most officers in a department are assigned to
the patrol function and most of a departments
budget is usually spent here.
Patrol officers promote and preserve order,
respond to requests for services and try to
resolve conflicts between individuals and groups.
Patrol Officers’ specific responsibilities are to
enforce laws, investigate crimes, prevent
criminal activity and provide day to day police
service to the community.
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Three major spheres of patrol activity are
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Responding to emergencies and calls for service
Undertaking activities to apprehend perpetrators of
crime
Engaging in strategic problem-solving partnerships
with the community to address long-standing or
emerging problems and disorder.
Traditionally, rapid response to calls for service has
driven most departments.
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Traditionally patrol officers have been assigned a
specific time and a specific geographic location,
beat, of equal geographic size , and these
assignments have been rotated.
Patrol is categorized as either general or
specialized: Both seek to deter crime and
apprehend criminals, as well as to provide
community satisfaction with the services
provided by the police department.
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General: is referred to as preventive patrol, random
patrol, and routine patrol
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Specialized patrol: focus its efforts on
already-identified problems.
Traditionally patrol has been random,
reactive, incident driven and focused on
rapid response to calls
Fewer than 25% of dispatched calls
involve a crime in progress.
75% are “Cold Crimes”
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Directed Patrol or Aggressive Patrol: uses crime
statistics to plan shift and beat staffing,
providing more coverage during times of peak
criminal activity and in high-crime areas.
A method that enhances the effectiveness of
aggressive patrol is geographic permanence,
that is, officers are regularly assigned to the
same beat.
This allows officers to get to know the normal
activities of the beat, enhancing their ability to
recognized what is unusual and thus requires
investigation.
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Crime analysis using mapping, geographic
information systems (GIS) and Compstat can
identify hot spots or specific problems to target
through directed patrol.
Crime mapping can be used to determine where
patrol is most needed.
GIS plays a vital role in data-driven decision
making by enabling law enforcement to better
use crime information and statistics to help
guide policy and practice.
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CompStat (Computer Statistics)
Mapping can help identify correlations between
crime, demographics, societal issues and help
determine where to deploy resources more
effectively.
CompStat is based on four crime-reduction
principles:
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Accurate and timely intelligence
Rapid deployment of personnel and resources
Effective tactics
Relentless follow-up and assessment
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While on patrol officer respond to calls for
service and emergencies, undertake self-initiated
tasks and perform administrative duties.
Calls of service drive most departments. This is
known as “incident-driven policing.” 40 to 60
percent of patrol officers’ time is spent
responding to calls for service.
The response is usually reactive, incident driven
and as rapid as possible.
Most departments have found that Differential
Response Strategies, suiting the response to
the call, are much more effective
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Self initiated Tasks:
Usually results from officers’ observations
while on preventive or directed patrol;
that is they encounter situations that
require their intervention.
Administrative Duties:
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Preparing and maintaining the patrol vehicle
Transporting prisoners and documents
Writing reports and testifying in court
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Methods of Patrol:
Foot
Automobile
Motorcycle
Bicycle
Segway
Horseback
Aircraft
Boat
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The most effective patrol is a combination of both foot and
automobile.
When foot patrol is added in neighborhoods, levels of fear decrease
When foot patrol is withdrawn from neighborhoods, levels of fear
increase significantly
Citizens satisfaction with police increase when foot patrol is added in
neighborhoods
Police who patrol on foot have a greater appreciation for the values
of neighborhood residents than police who patrol the same areas in
autos.
Police who patrol on foot have greater job satisfaction, less fear and
higher morale than officers who patrol in autos.
In 1990’s foot patrol became synonymous with community policing.
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Foot patrol is an exercise in COMMUNICATION- an attempt to
develop rapport between the officer on the beat and the citizens he
or she serves.
Automobile Patrol:
Offers greatest mobility and flexibility and is usually the most cost
effective.
However, patrolling in a vehicle, officer can’t pay as much attention
to details they might see if they were on foot.
Technology in Cars:
Visual surveillance and imaging
Dashboard-mounted cameras
GPS
Facial recognition
computers
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One officer vs. Two officer Squads
Circumstances should determine whether
a one-officer or two-officer unit is more
appropriate.
The single-officer is the rule rather than
exception.
Two-officer units should be restricted to
those areas, shifts and types of activities
most likely to threaten the officers’ safety.
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One-officer units offer several advantages,
including cost-effectiveness in that the
same number of officers can patrol twice
the area
Officer working alone are often more
cautious in dangerous situations.
Motorcycle Patrol:
First introduced in Pittsburgh almost 100
years ago.
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Disadvantages of motorcycles are their
relatively high cost to operate, limited use
in adverse weather and the hazards
associated with riding them.
Bicycle Patrol:
First introduced in Detroit in 1897
Good community policing tool
Used in parks, beaches and in conjunction
with stakeouts and college campuses
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Segways: (Segway Human Transporter)
Introduced in 2001
Extremely intelligent technology that has
gyroscopes and tilt sensors that monitor a
riders center of gravity. When the rider
leans forward, the Segway follows the
shift of gravity and moves forward. When
the rider leans back, it move backward.
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Mounted Police:
1871: New York City
One mounted officer is equal to 10 foot
patrol officers in crowd-control situations.
Air Patrol:
Effective in large geographic areas.
Good for searching for lost people,
downed planes or escaped convicts.
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A helicopter 500 feet in the air has 30
times the visual range of a unit on the
ground providing a patrol capacity equal
to 15 squad cars.
They are extremely expensive to maintain.
Water Patrol:
used to apprehend weapons and narcotics
smugglers. Inland, water patrols are used
to control river and lake traffic.
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High Visibility Vs. Low Visibility:
High visibility is often used in high-risk
crime areas in hopes of determining
criminal activity.
Types of high visibility patrol: foot, K9
patrol, mounted police, marked police car,
motorcycle patrol and helicopter.
Low Visibility: many specialized patrols fall
into this category.
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Types of low visibility patrols include: unmarked
police cars and bicycles.
Traffic Division:
In 1901 Connecticut established the world’s first
speed statue limiting horseless carriage speeds
to 12 mph in cities and 15 in rural areas.
The principal objectives of the traffic division are
obtained, through voluntary citizen compliance
with traffic laws while keeping traffic moving
safely and smoothly.
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Traffic officers may be responsible for
enforcing traffic laws, directing and
controlling traffic, providing directions and
assistance to motorists, investigating
motor vehicle crashes, providing
emergency assistance at the scene of a
crash, gathering information related to
traffic and writing reports.
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Among the most common violations of
traffic laws are speeding, red light
running, nonuse of seatbelts, aggressive
driving and road rage, and driving under
the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Red light running is currently one of the
most frequent and least punished traffic
offenses.
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When safety belts are combined with air
bags, injuries are reduced by 68 percent.
Beginning in 1998 all new cars were
required to have driver and passenger air
bags along with safety belts.
Bolton (2003) reports that use of safety
belts for toddlers has increased to 94
percent, also up 4 percent from 2002.
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Aggressive Driving and Road Rage:
The NHTSA makes the distinction that
aggressive driving is a traffic violation and
road rage is a criminal offense, with
aggressive driving often precipitating road
rage.
Behaviors of Road Rage:
Changing lanes unsafely
Weaving in and out of traffic
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Exceeding speed limit
Driving too fast for road conditions
Ignoring traffic control devices
Driving Under the influence of Alcohol or
Drugs:
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An estimated 3 or every 10 Americans will be
involved in an alcohol-related traffic crash at
some time in their lives
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Data from NHTSA estimates that in 2002
almost 17,500 people were killed in a
alcoholic related crash.
One alcohol-related fatality occurred every
30 minutes and one injury every two
minutes for a total of an estimated
258,000 injuries. Approximately 1.4 million
drivers were arrested in 2001 for driving
under the influence of alcohol or narcotics
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Implied Consent Laws:
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State that a person driving a motor vehicle is
deemed to have consented to a chemical
blood test of the alcohol content of his or her
blood if arrested while intoxicated; refusal to
take such as test can be introduced in court
as evidence.
The alcohol content can be tested through
blood, breath or urine tests
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In 1966, the landmark case Schmerber v.
California, the Supreme Court upheld the
conviction and stressed that taking a
blood sample was not a violation of the
privilege against self-incrimination.
Officers can detect impairment through
standardized field sobriety tests and drug
recognition experts, as well as through
testing for blood-alcohol concertration.
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Racial Profiling: “the use of discretionary
authority by law enforcement officers in
encounters with minority motorists,
typically with the context of a traffic stop,
that result in the disparate treatment of
minorities.”
Jurisdictions across the country place
racial profiling among the top most
important law enforcement issues.
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Motor vehicle crashes are leading cause of
death for people ages 1 to 44.
The basic causes of motor vehicle crashes
are: human faults, errors, violations and
attitudes, road defects; and vehicle
defects.
Good driving attitudes are more important
than driving skills or knowledge.
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Patrol and Community Policing:
Support of patrol officers for community
policing is vital.
In Rhode Island and South Carolina,
McDonald’s Restaurants have provided
reserved tables and telephones for officers
to use “Police Work Station.”