Chapter 6

1. Chapter 6
The Police:
Organization,
Role and
Function

2. The Police Organization
Independent organizations
 No two exactly alike
Hierarchical with a chain of command
 Problems are not uncommon, nor are they
unique to policing agencies
Personnel changes
Internal reorganization

3. Bloomington Police Department
Organization Chart

4. The Police Organization
The time-in-rank system
 Requires that before moving up the
administrative ladder, an officer must
spend a certain amount of time in the next
lowest rank
 Prohibits departments from allowing
officers to skip ranks
 Sometimes prevents them from hiring an
officer from another department and
awarding him/her a higher rank
Private sector manager vs. police sergeant

5. The Police Role
Real police work
 Minor disturbances
Domestics
Thefts
 Service calls
Parking complaint
Noise complaint
 Administrative duties
Delivering trustee mail
Collecting $$ from lots

6. Patrol
Major Purpose
Patrol Function
Improving Patrol

7. The Major Purpose of Patrol
Unlike what you see on tv, patrol officers do
not spend their days issuing arrest warrants,
instead they spend their days in their cars, in
their beats handling calls for service.
 Major Purposes of Patrol:
Deterring crime through police presence
Aiding individuals who cannot help themselves
Facilitating the movement of traffic and people
Maintaining public order
Create a feeling of security in the community
Identify and apprehend law violators

8. The Patrol Function
Patrol officers are the most highly
visible components of the entire
criminal justice system
 Patrol activities and objectives
Deter crime
Crime Fighting
Respond quickly to emergencies
While police patrol has many objectives,
most police experts agree that the
majority of police patrol efforts are
devoted to Order Maintenance

9. The Patrol Function
Procedural justice
 Concern with making decisions that are
arrived at through procedures viewed as
fair
Use of technology
 Technologies such as
CompStat to help guide
patrol efforts

10. Improving Patrol
Proactive policing
 An aggressive law enforcement style in
which patrol officers take the initiative
against crime instead of waiting for
criminal acts to occur
Broken windows model
 The role of police as maintainers of
community order and safety
Rapid response
 Improving police response time

11. Investigations
Investigative Functions
What Detectives Do

12. The Investigation Function
Investigative work is less visible than
patrol work
Work closely with patrol officers to
provide an immediate investigative
response to crimes and incidents
Many police departments maintain separate
units, squads, or divisions of detectives
who investigate crimes ranging from vice to
homicides

13. How Do Detectives
Detect?
Specific focus
 Interview witnesses, gather evidence,
record events, and collect facts
General coverage
 Canvass the neighborhood and makes
observations, conduct interviews with
friends/family/associates, contact others
for information regarding
victims/suspects, construct
victim/suspect time lines to outline their
whereabouts

14. How Do Detectives
Detect?
Informative data gathering
 Use technology to collect records of cell
phones, computer hard drives, notes, and
other information

15. Investigative
Functions

16. The Investigation Function
Sting Operations
 Organized groups of detectives who
deceive criminals into openly committing
illegal acts, or conspiring to engage in
criminal activity

17. The Investigative Function
Undercover Work
 Pose as criminals or as victims
 Considered a necessary element of police
work, although it can prove dangerous for
the officer
 May pose psychological problems for the
officer

18. The Investigation Function
Evaluating Investigations
 Creates considerable paperwork and is
relatively inefficient in clearing cases
Improving Investigations
 Patrol officers should have greater
responsibility at the scene
 Specialized units can bring expertise
 Collection of physical evidence is
important

19. Community Policing
Community Policing
Foot Patrol
Key Components
Challenges

20. Community Policing
Community Policing
 Consists of a return to an earlier style of
policing in which officers on the beat had an
intimate contact with the people they served
 Can be a specific program or a philosophy
 Foot patrol
To form a bond with the community residents by
acquainting them with the individual officers who
patrolled their neighborhood.

21. Community Policing
Important because it promotes
interaction between officers and citizens
 Gives officers the time to meet with local
residents to talk about crime in the
neighborhood and to use personal initiative to
solve problems
Key components:
 Community partnerships
 Organizational transformation
 Problem solving

22. The Challenges of
Community Policing
Defining community
Defining roles
Changing supervisor attitudes
Reorienting police values
Revising training
Reorienting recruitment
Reaching out to every community

23. Problem Oriented Policing
What is it
Bait Car Video
Displacement

24. Problem Oriented Policing
A style of police management that
stresses proactive problem solving
instead of reactive crime fighting
 Requires police agencies to identify
particular long-term community problems
and to develop strategies to eliminate
them
Supported by the fact that a great deal of
urban crime is concentrated in a few hot
spots

25. Video: Bait Cars

26. Video: Discussion
Questions
How is the program
discussed in the video a
good example of Problem
Oriented Policing?
Would you advocate the use
of this type of technology in
your community? Why or why
not?

27. Criminal Acts, Criminal
Places
Combating auto theft
 Use of technology to reduce car thefts
Reducing violence
 Operation Ceasefire
Formed to reduce youth homicide and youth
firearms violence in Boston

28. Displacement
Unintended consequences of Problem
Oriented Policing’s “Targeting”
 Targeting can reduce crime in one area…
 But can also move crime to another area
Called Displacement:
 Displacement is when criminals move from
an area targeted for increased police
presence to another that is less well
protected.

29. Intelligence-Led Policing
What is it
The processes

30. Intelligence-Led Policing
 The collection and analysis of information to
generate an “intelligence end product”
designed to inform police decision making
at both the tactical and the strategic level

31. Intelligence-Led Policing
Relies heavily on:
 Confidential informants
 Offender interviews
 Careful analysis of crime reports and calls
for service
 Suspect surveillance
 Community sources of information

32. Intelligence and the
Intelligence Process
Tactical Intelligence
 Gaining or developing information related
to threats of terrorism or crime and using
this information to apprehend offenders,
harden targets, and use strategies that will
eliminate or mitigate the threat
Strategic Intelligence
 Information about the changing nature of
certain problems and threats for the
purpose of developing response
strategies and reallocating resources

33. Intelligence-Led
Policing
Fusion Centers
 Support for a range of law enforcement
activities
 Help for major incident operations and
support for units charged with interdiction
and criminal investigations
 Provide the means for community input,
often through “tip lines”
 Assistance to law enforcement executives

34. Support / Productivity
Support Functions
Improving Productivity

35. Police Suppor t
Functions
Dispatch
Training
Citizen Police
Interactions
Forensics
Planners
Personnel Service
Internal Affairs
Division
Administration
and Control of
Budgets
Maintenance and
Dissemination of
Information

36. Improving Police
Productivity
Multiple Tasking
Special
Assignments
Differential
Police
Responses
Consolidation
Informal
Arrangements
Sharing
Pooling
Contracting
Service Districts
Civilian
Employees

37. Kansas City Patrol
Experiment
Overview
The Design
The Experiment
Lessons Learned

38. Overview
 The Kansas City preventive patrol experiment
 A landmark experiment carried out between 1972 and
1973 by the Kansas City Missouri Police Department
 Designed to test the assumption that the presence (or
potential presence) of police officers in marked cars
reduced the likelihood of a crime being committed.
 It was the first study to demonstrate that research into
the effectiveness of different policing styles could be
carried out responsibly and safely.
 The goal of the Kansas City Patrol Study was to
evaluate the effectiveness of different patrol models

39. The Design
 The experiment was designed to answer the
following questions:
Do citizens notice changes in the level of patrol?
Do different levels of visible police patrol affect
recorded crime or the outcome of victim surveys?
Would citizen fear of crime and change their
behaviors as a result of differing patrol levels?
Would the degree of satisfaction with police
change?

40. The Experiment
 The experiment took three different police beats in
Kansas City, and varied patrol routine in them.
 The first group received no routine patrols, instead the
police responded only to calls from residents.
 The second group had the normal level of patrols.
 The third had two to three times as many patrols.
 Victim surveys, reported crime rates, arrest data, a
survey of local businesses, attitudinal surveys, and
trained observers who monitored police-citizen
interaction were used to gather data.
 These were taken before the start of the experiment
(September 1972), and after (October 1973), giving
'before' and 'after' conditions for comparison.

41. The Results
 The principal findings of the Kansas City Patrol Study:
 There is little evidence to suggest that increased police
patrol deters crime.
 Citizens did not notice the difference in the change of patrols.
 Increasing or decreasing the level of patrol had no significant
effect on resident and commercial burglaries, auto thefts,
larcenies involving auto accessories, robberies, or
vandalism–crimes.
 The rate at which crimes were reported did not differ
significantly across the experimental beats.
 Citizen reported fear of crime was not affected by different
levels of patrol.
 Citizen satisfaction with police did not vary.