Popular Image of The Police Officer Discussion

Introduction

The popular image of the police officer—an image reinforced by the media—is that of a heroic figure engaged in battling violent crimes and apprehending dangerous suspects. In reality, police officers spend most of their time on the job responding to calls to maintain order or to provide service of various kinds. Of course, police do also respond to crimes in progress, and apprehending suspects is part of the policing role of enforcing the law. Yet the police cannot routinely enforce all the laws in criminal codes. They tend, therefore, to enforce laws based on their department’s priorities and community norms.

Maintaining order, enforcing the law, and providing service are policing roles common across agencies, but police departments employ different strategies to perform these roles. In preventive patrol, police randomly cruise a neighborhood to maintain a visible police presence in the area, the idea being that maintaining a visible police presence will reduce street crime. However, research experiments have failed to validate the claim that random patrols prevent crime. Problem-oriented policing focuses on identifying the causes of problems in an area and then implementing appropriate, sequential steps to alleviate those problems. In community-oriented policing, police and residents work together to reduce crime and disorder. The principle underlying community policing—that crime prevention is a joint responsibility of police and community members—requires a change in the police culture that traditionally has seen crime prevention and law enforcement as the responsibility of the police alone. Police departments that follow a strategy of aggressive order maintenance, or zero tolerance policing, target minor public order offenses that affect residents’ quality of life. Zero tolerance policing may reduce crime but can have negative effects on police-community relations.

Most police departments are organized hierarchically, with several ranks of officers and a clear and rigid chain of command. Community policing calls for organizational change, with fewer ranks and fewer special departments, thereby allowing patrol officers greater discretion in deciding how to respond to community needs and problems. The communications function within a police department coordinates the performance of law enforcement activities, but the difficulty or impossibility of communication across jurisdictions presents serious problems, particularly in large-scale emergencies. Local government plays a large and influential role in determining how and where police resources of money, equipment, and personnel are allocated. Local politicians must be sensitive to citizens’ demands for police resources.

Most people expect that the police will keep everyone safe, but in fact most violent crimes occur among persons who know each other. Expecting the police to prevent violent acts by one family member against another, or by a friend against a friend, is a tall—and unrealistic—expectation.

Chapter 6 Assignment Outline

Policing Roles

• First, about half of all calls to police result in the dispatch of a police officer, although often, through an interview with the caller, it is apparent that sending an officer may not be necessary.
• Second, contrary to popular belief, most calls do not involve in-progress violent crimes or criminal activities requiring arrest.
• Third, only 19 percent of citizen calls for a police response involve a crime at all, and only 2 percent entail a violent crime

Maintaining Order—Keeping the Peace

• The first of the three major policing roles is maintaining order, or keeping the peace, the goal of which is to reinforce informal control mechanisms already operating in the community.
• Sometimes, this role involves enforcement of local statutes and laws, such as when the police respond to complaints that someone is disturbing the peace.
• Typical examples of maintaining order, or the peacekeeping function, include traffic control and crowd management during sporting events, concerts, and parades.
• Officers engaged in maintaining order typically use informal sanctions such as warnings far more than formal sanctions such as citations or arrests.

Enforcing the Law—When Arrest is Needed

• The primary function of law enforcement is the application of the criminal code to specific, developing situations.
• There are more laws in the criminal codes than police can routinely enforce, so they enforce laws based on their department’s priorities, which are determined by factors such as the seriousness of a crime and the availability of police resources.
• Police often tailor enforcement actions to community norms.
• Apprehending suspects lies at the heart of the law enforcement function.

Providing Service—Nonemergency Police Work

• Service activities are non-law enforcement duties performed by police officers on an as-needed basis.
• Such activities include giving directions, arranging for tows of disabled vehicles, assisting disoriented elder adults, and arranging for barricade placement at dangerous spots along public roads.
• These duties fall to the police primarily because of their round-the-clock availability.

Policing Strategies

Preventive Patrol

• The assumption behind the strategy of preventive patrol, in which officers randomly patrol a neighborhood, is that the visible presence of an officer serves as a deterrent to a variety of street-level crimes, including prostitution, drug dealing, burglaries, and robbery.
• Preventive patrol is most often conducted by patrol car, but police may also patrol on foot or by bicycle.
• The common feature of preventive patrol is the clearly identifiable presence of a uniformed police officer.
• Preventive patrol focuses on reducing street crime rather than offenses committed in the privacy of people’s homes.

Problem-Oriented Policing

• A strategy proposed by Herman Goldstein in the late 1970s, problem-oriented policing emphasizes discovering the underlying causes of problems.
• Goldstein encouraged police departments to consider the complexity of problems rather than narrowly focusing on crimes —a change from previous policing strategies.
• The first step in a problem-oriented policing strategy is conducting specific and detailed research on a community’s problems to reveal the underlying dynamics of crime.
• The second step in problem-oriented policing is to examine the ways in which the police department currently deals with a particular problem in order to identify the most effective responses.
• Problem-oriented policing strategies also include learning from other departments’ successful practices and published studies on policing.
• Once the department has identified the problem and researched ways to deal with it, the third step is devising strategies to address the problem.
• The way problem-oriented policing is practiced in any individual department is influenced by both its priorities and its resources.
• One model of problem-oriented policing is called SARA (a term that stands for scanning, analysis, response, and assessment).
  • In the scanning step, the police department identifies the problem, its consequences, the frequency with which it occurs, and any other information relevant to understanding it.
  • The next step, analysis, identifies anything that may be causing or influencing the problem. During the analysis step, police department researchers gather information on the problem to better understand how the department is currently handling it. While conducting analysis, the department will also learn what resources are already available to help solve the problem.
  • In the third step, response, participants think creatively about ways to solve the problem. As part of the response step, a department will most likely learn how other jurisdictions have dealt with the same problem.
  • The department then creates an implementation plan with clear objectives that will allow for measurable results.
  • The final step is assessment, during which officers determine whether the program was put into effect as intended and whether the goals were met. A plan for continuing assessment of the chosen strategy may also be a part of the assessment stage.

Community-Oriented Policing

• A policing strategy that focuses on reducing crime and disorder, such as loitering and graffiti, by involving residents in the job of policing is community-oriented policing.
• Police-community reciprocity requires collaboration between police and community members to solve and prevent crime.
  • The success of community policing relies on a mutually beneficial bond between the police and the public.
  • Community policing contends that policing is the responsibility of all members of a neighborhood and that the public is a partner in the effort to fight crime, disorder, and other community problems.
• A second component of community policing is decentralization of command, the creation of substations or police buildings in various areas so that the police maintain a physical presence throughout the community.
  • Decentralization gives individual patrol officers more discretion to come up with ways to solve neighborhood problems.
  • The belief is that because patrol officers interact daily with people in the neighborhood, they are better positioned than police managers to know what that community needs.
• A third component of community policing is proactive foot patrol, in which officers walk beats to learn more about the people in the neighborhoods they patrol and to develop relationships with them.
• Civilianization of the police force, the fourth component of community policing, involves assigning to civilians tasks previously performed by police officers.
• The goal of civilianization is to increase the number of community residents actively participating in policing.

Implementing Community Policing

• Community policing reformers argue that community policing allows police to change their relationship with the public, partly by reducing the number of ranks in a department.
• Implementing community-oriented policing requires change not only in organizational structure but also in police culture.
• Because of these two requirements, the nationwide implementation of community policing is occurring slowly.

The Impact of Community Policing

• During the early 1990s, when community policing became the model for departments, the crime rate declined, but community-oriented policing was not necessarily the reason.
• A significant measure of this strategy’s influence is the community’s confidence in the police and the development of a positive relationship between the police and the public—a central goal of community-oriented policing.

Aggressive Order Maintenance

• One strategy for fighting disorder is aggressive order maintenance, or zero tolerance policing, in which police focus on minor public order offenses that affect residents’ quality of life.
• One influential perspective on aggressive order maintenance is known as the broken windows theory.
  • Proposed by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George Kelling, this theory argues that there is a relationship between the deterioration of a neighborhood and higher crime rates.
  • In their view, disorder leads to crime because criminals assume that a neighborhood that tolerates disorder—in the form of broken windows, graffiti, and the like—will also ignore more serious criminal acts.

Discussion and assignment 

This week you are being introduced to Law Enforcement.  In particular, the role of policing in our society and the strategies that police use to perform their duties.  In essence, as stated in the above outline there are three main functions of law enforcement and in general there are four overarching strategies that law enforcement uses. 

Read Chapter 6 in your book. 

Review the Chapter 6 PowerPoint and recorded zoom lecture: 

https://ivc-edu.zoom.us/rec/share/TeQj7cl87Nx_3SbMSLh4DZTqHjeEaxHIWhnIciC2vNORhsiCT8VXEhl9zYHxnppt.0qHklnxXD9uUjt1w?startTime=1695746748000Links to an external site.

Watch the two videos provided from Philadelphia PD and Baltimore PD regarding foot patrol for context. 

Watch all other supplemental videos for context.  

Discussion/Assignment: 

I have provided you with a map of IVC for a visual.  Here is the hypnotical scenario:

Parking has been a problem for a long time at IVC.  The College Board of Trustees (City Council) has just declared an edict (legal norm) announcing that effective immediately IVC parking is FREE!  Yeah finally!!!  As a matter of fact, it’s free and open 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  Further, as a way to help the entire Irvine community, parking is also free to the public over the weekends. 

You are the Police Chief at IVC Police Department.  You don’t agree with this new law, and you have provided your opinion to your school Chancellor.  However, ultimately you don’t make (legislate) the laws, you are a public servant, and you now need to perform your duties; maintain order, enforce the laws and provide a service to those who park for free.  Further, your resources are small, and you only have a 25 person police department. 

Since the new law has been enacted crime has gone up; in particular lots 4 and 5.  People are camping with vans/RVs overnight, tailgate parties are happening with alcohol and illegal drug use, assaults, property crimes and damage to vehicles are occurring. 

Review the 4 strategies listed above.  Which strategy (or strategies) would you implement to lessen the crimes that are occurring? Why did you pick that (those) strategy?  Why did you not choose the others?   

In detail, describe what you would do in an outline format?  What would be your plan?  Be creative!  For example, are there technologies out there that can help?  Maybe mutual aid from other agencies?  What future problems can you anticipate from implementing your strategies?  Think about my lecture and what happen to Philadelphia PD when they flooded the streets with 200 officers.      

I would suggest you can organize your plan using the SARA model.  However, use any problem-solving method you like.