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

2. Police Organization
Police are organized in a militaristic hierarchical structure
Principles of chain of command and unity of command are operational
Personnel decisions often based on time-in-rank considerations

3. The Police Role
Fearless crime fighters
Always making an arrest
Most arrests are for serious felonies
Always dealing with crime
Ordinary people doing a job
Arrests average 2 per month
Most arrests are for misdemeanors
Calls dealing with crime are % of total

4. The Patrol Function
Deter crime by being visible
Maintain public order (peacekeeping)
Respond quickly to emergencies
Arrest criminals
Aid citizens in distress
Facilitate movement of people and traffic
Create a sense of safety and security

5. Order Maintenance or Peacekeeping
Order maintenance, or peacekeeping, accounts for the bulk of patrol activities. These functions fall on the border between criminal and non-criminal behavior. In many situations, this means the patrol officer uses his or her discretion to “handle situations” or to be problem solvers.

6. Does Patrol Work: The Kansas City Study
Variations in patrol techniques (normal, proactive, and reactive) had very little effect on crime and citizens’ attitudes towards the police

7. Can Proactive Patrol Effect Crime Rates?
It may not be the mere presence of police that deters crime, but how they approach the job
Targeting certain types of crimes for enforcement may be effective
Aggressive patrol and "crackdowns" in crime "hot spots” may help reduce criminal activity

8. Will Arrests Deter?
Formal police action such as arrest may have a specific deterrent function
Arrests seem to reduce the likelihood that first-time offenders will continue their activity
Some evidence suggests that an increase in arrest rate can help reduce an area’s overall crime rate

9. How Effective are Investigations?
Much time is spent on nonproductive work
Chances of making an arrest are most closely linked to when it was reported
33% chance if reported in progress
10% chance if reported 1 minute later
5% if more than 15 minutes elapse before reporting the crime

10. Reasons for Investigative Inefficiencies
Too little time is spent following unsolved cases.
Sources of information must be broadly based. Victims can play a greater role as the source of important data.
Improving the effectiveness of preliminary investigations by patrol officers will help detectives.

11. Improving Investigative Effectiveness
Increasing the practice of giving patrol officers greater responsibility for conducting preliminary investigations at the scene of a crime
Greater emphasis on collecting physical evidence, identifying witnesses, checking departmental records, and using informants
Police managers should pay more attention to screening cases and monitoring case flow and activity with measurable productivity goals
Use of targeted investigations with direct attention to career criminals
Increase the use of available technologies

12. Changing Concepts of Policing
Police-Community Relations (PCR) - improving the relationships between the police and public
Team Policing - decentralized decision making so the police could easily respond to neighborhood problems
Problem-Oriented Policing - identifying and responding to long term problems

13. “Broken Windows Model”
Neighborhood disorder creates fear
Neighborhoods give out crime-promoting signals
Police need citizens' cooperation

14. Community-Oriented Policing
Problem solving is best done at the neighborhood level, not in some distant headquarters. Locally situated police working with residents are a good problem-solving team.

15. Innovative Neighborhood-Oriented Policing (INOP)
Decentralization of police allows problem solving to occur at the level where issues originate
Stresses shared power with local groups
Patrol officer becomes manager of own beat
Emphasizes results rather than bureaucratic details

16. Community-Oriented Policing: Changing the Police Role
Citizens must actively participate with police in fighting crime. Power must be shared with local groups to give way to a “bottom-up” decision-making process.
The effective police officer will be one whose skills produce well-managed communities. Therefore, training and recruitment efforts must be altered.

17. Problem-Oriented Policing
The core of problem-oriented policing is a proactive orientation.
Police are called upon with the community to identify particular long-term community problems that have a relationship to crime.

18. Hot Spots of Crime
Part of Problem-Oriented Policing
This concept concentrates on a relatively few locations that produce a significant portion of all police calls

19. The Challenges of Community Policing
If Community-Oriented Policing is to be successful, new strategies must be developed to deal with significant administrative problems such as:
Defining the community to which the police respond
Defining the roles of all members of the crime prevention team – police and community members
Changing how police officers are supervised
Re-orienting police values to include community-oriented policing as central to the overall police mission
Revise police training to help them become community organizers
Recruit and promote police managers who are skilled and trained in community change strategies

20. Overcoming Obstacles
The most professional and highly motivated officers are the ones most likely to support community policing efforts.
There is no clear-cut evidence that community policing is highly successful at reducing crime or changing the traditional values and attitudes of police officers involved in such programs.
National surveys find that police administrators still consider law enforcement their top priority.

21. Police Oversight: Civilian Review Boards
Oversight systems generally are organized into one of four models or a variation of one that include:
Citizens investigate allegations of police misconduct and recommend a finding to the head of the agency.
Officers investigate allegations and develop findings. Then, citizens review and recommend that the head of the agency approve or reject the findings.
Complainants may appeal findings established by the agency to citizens who review them and make recommendations to the head of the agency.
An auditor investigates the process the agency uses to accept and investigate complaints and reports to the agency and the community the thoroughness and fairness of the process.

22. Can Police Productivity be Improved?
Consolidation
Informal arrangements for periods of time
Sharing resources
Pooling resources
Contract services
Using more civilians
Give cops more tasks
Provide for a system of Differential Police Response (DPR)