The Police: Role and Function

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The Police Role and Function
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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

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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

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The Organization of Police Departments
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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

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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

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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

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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
• 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?

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What Do Patrol Officers Do?

• Findings of workload studies
• Crime fighting efforts are only a small part of
  the police officers 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

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Impacts of Patrol Work

• Deterrent effect of patrol
• Patrol methods seem to have little impact on
  publics attitude toward police.

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Doing Problem Solving

• Problem solving in practice the SARA model
• Scanning
• Analysis
• Response
• Assessment

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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

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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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End