Police Administration 11th

POLICE
ADMINISTRATION
Police Administration, 11th Edition, is a b est-selling textbook that examines police
administration from multiple perspectives: a systems perspective (emphasizing the
interrelatedness among units and organizations); a traditional, structural perspective
(administrative principles, management functions, and the importance of written
guidelines); a human behavioral perspective (the human element in organizations);
and a strategic management perspective (communications and information systems,
performance evaluation, strategies and tactics, and prevailing and promising ap-
proaches to increasing effectiveness of police agencies).
Management functions and organizational principles are defined and explained
while providing an emphasis on e vidence-based policing, diversity principles, and
developing police agencies as learning organizations. A concluding chapter covers
contemporary themes such as community engagement and collaboration, important
issues such as police legitimacy and predictive policing, and modern management
perspectives such as emotional intelligence and servant leadership. Case studies based
on real-life events invite students to practice managing conflicting circumstances,
and Modern Policing blog posts offer up-to-date news and breaking developments in
the policing world.
This book is suitable for undergraduates studying police management and su-
pervision in the US and for practitioners seeking promotion to senior management
roles. The ancillaries available include instructor’s manual, test bank, and lecture
slides for faculty and case studies for student use.
Gary W. Cordner is Academic Director in the Education & Training Section of the
Baltimore Police Department. He is also Professor Emeritus at Kutztown Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania and Eastern Kentucky University. He served as Chief Research
Advisor for the National Institute of Justice and Senior Police Advisor for the Inter-
national Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program (ICITAP), both part of
the US Department of Justice. He was a Commissioner of CALEA (Commission on
Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies) for nine years and has been associated
with the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing since its inception. Earlier in his
career he was a Police Officer and Police Chief in Maryland.
Cordner taught at Kutztown University after teaching for 21 years at Eastern
Kentucky University (EKU), including five years as Dean of the College of Justice &
Safety. At EKU he also founded and directed the Regional Community Policing
Institute and the International Justice & Safety Institute. Before joining the faculty
at EKU, he taught at Washington State University and the University of B altimore.
He maintains the Modern Policing blog at https://gcordner.wordpress.com, which
comments on news and developments in the policing world. Cordner is a Past
Member of the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council, the Kentucky Criminal Justice
Council, and the Lexington/Fayette County Civil Service Commission; Founding
editor of Police Quarterly and Past Editor of the American Journal of Police; and Past
President of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS). He is the Recipient
of the Academy Fellow Award, the Bruce Smith Sr. Award, and the Outstanding
Paper Award from ACJS, in addition to the O.W. Wilson Award from the Police
Section of ACJS, the Outstanding Educator Award from the Southern Criminal
Justice Association, and outstanding alumnus awards from Northeastern University
and Michigan State University.
POLICE
ADMINISTRATION
11TH EDITION
GARY W. CORDNER
Designed cover image: Hal Bergman
Eleventh edition published 2023
by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
and by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Gary W. Cordner
The right of Gary W. Cordner to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Addison Wesley 1979
Tenth edition published by Routledge 2019
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-032-25456-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-25365-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-28328-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287
Typeset in Adobe Garamond
by codeMantra
Access the Support Material: www.routledge.com/9781032253657
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations xv
Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xix
Acronyms xxi
Modern Policing Blog xxv
PART I—Basic Considerations 1
CHAPTER 1—Introduction to Police Administration 3

Early Police Administration 4
The Political Era 6
The Professional Era 6
The Community Era 8
The Social Context of Police Administration 9
The Political Context of Police Administration 11
The Legal Context of Police Administration 13
Police Administration in a Democratic Society 14
Community-Oriented Police Administration 16
Homeland Security and Police Administration 19
Ten Guiding Principles 19
Summary 20
Discussion Questions 21
Suggested Reading 21
Notes 21
CHAPTER 2—The Nature of Police Work 23

The Evolution of Police Work 24
Police Discretion 28
Crime Control, Order Maintenance, or Social Service? 31
The Core of the Police Role 32
The Skill of Policing 35
While on Routine Patrol 37
Management Implications 38
Summary 40
Notes 41
CHAPTER 3—Police Goals and Systems 44

The Purposes of the Police 45
The Police Mission 46
Police Goals and Objectives 47
Preventing Crime 48
Solving Crime 49
vi Contents
Making Public Spaces Safe and Orderly 49

Making People Feel Safe 49
Providing Quality Services 49
Using Force and Authority Fairly and Effectively 50
Using Resources Fairly and Efficiently 51
Important Values 51
The Systems Concept 53
Inputs, Processes, Outputs, and Feedback 55
Types of Systems 56
Organizations as Systems 57
The Police Organization as a System 58
The Police in the Larger System 61
Summary 62
Cases 63
Notes 63
CHAPTER 4—Police Organizational Tasks 65

The Operations Subsystem 66
Patrol 67
Traffic 68
Criminal Investigation 69
Vice and Drugs 71
Organized Crime 71
Special Operations 72
Crime Prevention 73
Juvenile Services 74
Community Services 76
School Services 76
The Administration Subsystem 78
Human Resources 78
Training 79
Planning and Analysis 80
Budget and Finance 81
Legal Assistance 82
Information Technology 82
Public Information 83
Inspections 84
Internal Affairs 85
Intelligence 86
The Auxiliary Services Subsystem 87
Records 88
Communications 88
Property and Evidence 90
Laboratory 91
Detention 91
Contents vii
Crime Scene/Identification 92
Health and Wellness 93
Facilities and Maintenance 94
Equipment and Supply 95
Fleet Services 95
Interdependence of Subsystem Tasks 96
Summary 96
Notes 97
PART II—The Traditional Perspective 101
CHAPTER 5—Principles and Policies in the Police Organization 103

Authority, Responsibility, and Accountability 103
Delegation of Authority 106
The Authority-Level Principle 108
Key Organizational Principles 109
Chain of Command 110
Unity of Command 112
Span of Control 113
Grouping Like Functions 114
Written Guidelines 117
Organizational Policy 119
Organizational Procedures 122
Organizational Rules and Regulations 123
Formulation of Organizational Guidelines 125
Discipline 127
Summary 128
Cases 130
Notes 130
CHAPTER 6—Functions of Police Management 133

Management Functions by Level in the Organization 134
System Building 135
Interdependence 135
Environment 136
Feedback 137
Change and Organizational Learning 138
Planning 139
The Planning Process 140
Types of Police Plans 142
Organizing 143
Staffing 144
Recruitment 145
Selection 147
viii Contents
Training 148
Assignment 149
Promotion 150
Termination 151
Directing 153
Controlling 156
Summary 159
Cases 160
Notes 161
CHAPTER 7—The Police Executive 164

Characteristics of Police Executives 164
The Two Basic Roles of the Police Executive 166
The Internal Role 167
Managing 168
Leading 169
The Pursuit of Excellence 170
Reinventing Government 173
The External Role 174
Politics 176
Other Government Agencies 178
Criminal Justice Agencies 180
The Media 182
The Community 183
Police Unions 185
Police Executive Styles 187
The Administrator 187
The Top Cop 187
The Politician 188
The Statesman 189
Summary 190
Cases 190
Notes 191
PART III—The Human Perspective 195
CHAPTER 8—Individuals and Groups in the Police Organization 197

Individuals in Organizations 197
Attitudes 198
Roles 202
Self-Concept 204
Perception 206
Communication 208
Contents ix
Groups in Organizations 211

Groups in Police Organizations 213
Basic Aspects of the Group Social System 215
Emergent System Development 217
Consequences of the Emergent System 218
Group Cohesiveness and Productivity 220
Varieties of Intergroup Behavior 221
Summary 224
Cases 225
Notes 225
CHAPTER 9—Developing the Police Organization 228

Motivation 228
The Coercion Model 229
The Economic Model 229
The Social Model 230
The Growth Model 230
A Modest Theory of Motivation 233
Human Development 234
Theory X and Theory Y 235
Management by Objectives 237
Job Enrichment 239
Participative Management 241
Organization Development 243
Police Organizational Development 244
Police Education 244
Police Training 245
Police Professionalization 247
Civilianization 248
Diversity 249
Organizational Health 250
Organizational Justice 251
Summary 252
Cases 253
Notes 253
CHAPTER 10—Leadership in the Police Organization 257

The Police Leader as a Subsystem 259
The Functions of Leadership 260
Definition of Structure 261
Coordination Control 262
Goal and Norm Clarification 263
Sources of Influence 265
x Contents
Position Power 266

Coercion 267
Rewards 267
Expertise 268
Charisma 269
Styles of Leadership 269
Autocratic Style 270
Bureaucratic Style 270
Diplomatic Style 270
Participative Style 271
Free-Rein Style 271
Leadership Styles in Policing 271
Theories of Leadership 272
Fiedler’s Situational Theory 273
The Leadership Grid 273
Situational Leadership 275
Police Leadership 277
Quality Leadership in Policing 278
Preventing Organizational Failure 280
The Environment of Police Leadership 281
Summary 282
Cases 283
Notes 284
PART IV—The Strategic Management Perspective 287
CHAPTER 11—Information in the Police Organization 289

Organizational Communication 290
Communication Channels 291
Communication Directions and Barriers 293
The Importance of Information 296
Information and Police Decision Making 297
Street-Level Decisions 298
Supervisory Decisions 299
Allocation Decisions 300
Strategic and Tactical Decisions 301
Policy Decisions 301
Administrative Decisions 302
Police Information Systems 303
Operations Information Systems 303
Command and Control Systems 305
Management Information Systems 307
Analysis of Police Information 308
Crime Analysis 309
Other Types of Problem Analysis 311
Operations Analysis 312
Contents xi
Intelligence Analysis 314

Policy Analysis 315
Implications of Community Policing 316
Rational Police Decision Making 319
Bounded Rationality 319
Controlling Decision Making 320
Summary 322
Cases 322
Notes 323
CHAPTER 12—Evaluating Police Performance 326

The Importance of Evaluating Police Performance 327
Issues in Police Performance Measurement 329
Goals and Criteria 329
Objective and Subjective Measures 330
Quantity Versus Quality 331
Reliability and Validity 331
Cause and Effect 333
Individual Performance Appraisal 334
Methods of Performance Appraisal 339
Evaluating Programs, Strategies, and Units 341
Input, Process, Output, and Outcome 341
Monitoring 343
Inside Versus Outside Evaluation 344
Evaluating Overall Organizational Performance 345
Summary 350
Notes 351
CHAPTER 13—Police Strategies and Tactics 354

Crime Control Strategies 355
Preventive Patrol 356
Immediate Response to Calls 359
Follow-Up Investigations 362
Refinements 364
Patrol Refinements 364
Rapid Response Refinements 367
Investigative Refinements 368
Problem-Oriented Policing 370
Community Relations Strategies 371
Public Relations 371
Crime Prevention 372
Foot Patrol 373
Community Policing 374
xii Contents
Specific Problems and Issues 376

Domestic Violence 376
Active Shooters 378
Protest 379
Summary 381
Cases 382
Notes 382
CHAPTER 14—Police and Homeland Security 386

The Police Role in Homeland Security 386
September 11, 2001 390
Hurricane Katrina 391
Department of Homeland Security 392
The Preparedness Cycle 395
Prevention 395
Protection 397
Response 398
National Response Framework 399
National Incident Management System 399
Recovery 401
Technology and Training 402
Information Sharing 404
Domestic Terrorism 407
Intelligence-Led Policing 408
Balancing Safety and Liberty 409
Summary 410
Notes 411
CHAPTER 15—Contemporary Issues in Police Administration 413

Four Contemporary Themes 414
Community Engagement 414
Collaboration 416
Privatization 419
Globalization 420
Four Contemporary Issues 422
Police Legitimacy 422
Police Diversity 424
Predictive Policing 427
Police Technology 428
Modern Perspectives on Management 431
Evidence-Based Policing 431
Learning Organizations 432
Emotional Intelligence 434
Servant Leadership 435
Contents xiii
Summary 436
Cases 437
Notes 438
CASE STUDIES 441

Case 1: Cod Bay 441
Case 2: Rixton 442
Case 3: Strategic Planning in Spokane, Washington 443
Case 4: Gaining Outside Commitment in Lowell, Massachusetts 447
Case 5: Leading Change in Riverside, California 451
Case 6: One Week in Heron City 454
Alphabetical Listing of Suggested Readings 457

Index 461
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURES
3.1 The Relationship between Overall Mission and Specific

Organizational Behavior 45
3.2 Open-Loop System 56
3.3 Closed-Loop System 56
3.4 A Police Action from a Systems Perspective 60
5.1 Two Seven-Member Police Departments. Department A Is
More Hierarchical Than Department B 104
5.2 Organization Chart for a 2 6-Member Police Department 111
10.1 The Leadership Grid® Figure 274
10.2 Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Model 276
11.1 The Informal Organization 292
11.2 Directions of Organizational Communication 294
12.1 Measures of Police Agency Productivity 347
13.1 General Differential Response Model 368
14.1 The Central Role of Police in Homeland Security 387
TABLES
4.1 Thirty Basic Organizational Tasks 66

6.1 Special and Routine Decisions Made in the Termination Process 152
9.1 Human Development Approaches 235
10.1 Comparison of Managers and Leaders 261
10.2 Comparing Police Management and Leadership 278
11.1 New Information Requirements for Community Policing 317
12.1 Methods of Performance Appraisal 340
12.2 Statistical Measures of Police Organizational Performance 349
15.1 Examples of Police Technology Related to Police Functions 429
15.2 Examples of Police Technology Related to Policing Outcomes 430
PREFACE
This book is written for students and practitioners interested in police administra-
tion. Although police administration is far from a simple undertaking, the subject
matter of this book is purposely presented in the simplest possible terms. The diffi-
culties inherent in managing a police department and assuring the quality delivery
of police services to the public can be overwhelming. These challenges demand the
best efforts of the best people who can be attracted to the law enforcement field.
This is especially true in a free, democratic society in which the police are trusted
to exercise great restraint in the use of their awesome powers.
This edition continues to emphasize community policing, the biggest strate-
gic influence on modern policing and police administration. There is also a chap-
ter titled “Police and Homeland Security” because this new mission has important
features that are somewhat different from more traditional police missions. We
continue to give increased attention throughout the book to such matters as tech-
nology, information sharing, and interagency cooperation, along with some im-
portant new developments, including evidence-based policing and the crisis of
police legitimacy that began to attract widespread attention in 2014 and became
even more critical following the death of George Floyd in 2020 in Minneapolis.
The text opens with consideration of several basic factors crucial to under-
standing the unique features of police administration. These include the develop-
ment and environment of police administration, the nature of police work, police
goals and objectives, police organizational tasks, and the role of the police execu-
tive. These basic considerations provide a foundation for more detailed exploration
of modern police administration.
We then examine the challenging enterprise of police administration from sev-
eral important perspectives, including a systems perspective, a traditional, struc-
tural perspective, a human behavioral perspective, and a strategic management
perspective. The systems perspective, which permeates the entire text, emphasizes
the interrelatedness among units and organizations, the influence of external con-
ditions on systems, and the importance of feedback for correcting and improv-
ing performance. The traditional perspective highlights administrative principles,
management functions, and the importance of written guidelines. The behavioral
perspective stresses the human element in organizations, an element that is often
overlooked or taken for granted. The strategic management perspective considers
communications and information systems, evaluation of police performance, the
strategies and tactics by which police work is accomplished, and prevailing and
promising approaches to increasing the effectiveness of police agencies.
We think it is extremely beneficial to examine police administration from these
multiple perspectives. Many texts adopt just one view, thereby ignoring important
aspects of the subject. We hope our approach helps you appreciate the breadth
and complexity of contemporary police administration. If you are interested in
xviii Preface
further exploring this complexity, each chapter includes a short suggested reading
list. These suggested readings are also compiled alphabetically at the end of the text.
Several case studies are included at the end of the book. You may want to prac-
tice using the conceptual and theoretical tools introduced in the text to identify
and analyze the organizational problems and situations presented in these cases.
Many fields of professional activity seek improvement and recognition by es-
tablishing standards. Extensive police standards were first promulgated four dec-
ades ago by the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards
and Goals and the American Bar Association Project on Standards for Criminal
Justice. More recently, the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement
Agencies (CALEA) has created standards and updates them regularly. We have
inserted some of the standards from these sources throughout the text to acquaint
you with the benchmarks that professionally recognized groups use in evaluating
police departments.
We believe that the field of police administration today is vibrant and exciting.
Many studies conducted over the last 50 years have provided useful information to
expand theory and refine practice. New and innovative programs and policies have
been developed and tested. Some of our most basic assumptions about crime, vi-
olence, policing, and police administration have been seriously challenged. In the
1990s, the community policing strategy caught the imagination of ordinary citi-
zens, local officials, the US Congress, and even the president of the United States.
More recently, international and domestic terrorism have dramatically affected
America’s beliefs and expectations about policing and public safety and given rise
to the new construct “homeland security.” The role of local police in homeland se-
curity will continue to evolve in the years to come. Traditional lines between local
police, federal law enforcement, and the military may be blurred. Very important
issues related to public protection and civil liberties will be at stake.
Underlying all this effort and activity are some important fundamental issues
related to order and liberty in a free society. The police are at the vortex of all our
hopes for a fair, just, and safe existence; police administration remains as honora-
ble and challenging an undertaking as any that can be imagined.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to everyone who has contributed to this book in one way or an-
other: by reading the manuscript at its various stages of development and mak-
ing valuable suggestions and contributions; by giving us direct editorial input; by
shaping the attitudes and philosophies that we have taken with us into the book;
and by encouraging us and being patient with us during the long period since we
began the first edition of this book many years ago.
The first five editions of this text were coauthored with Robert Sheehan of
Northeastern University, a true pioneer in police education and police profession-
alization. His words, ideas, and values still permeate the book, for which we are
profoundly grateful. He was the ultimate philosopher, guide, and friend.
I want to thank the following individuals for the professional guidance and per-
sonal kindness they have shown: Larry Ball, Kentucky Law Enforcement Council;
Cornelius Behan, Chief (ret.), Baltimore County (Maryland) Police Department;
Edward Blessing, Chief (ret.), Easton (Maryland) Police Department; Theron
Bowman, Chief and Deputy City Manager (ret.), Arlington, Texas; Ed Brodt,
Jefferson County (Kentucky) Police Department (ret.); J.R. Brown, Kentucky
Department of Criminal Justice Training (DOCJT); Tim Bynum, Michigan State
University; David Carter, Michigan State University; Tom Casady, Public Safety
Director (ret.), Lincoln, Nebraska; Derral Cheatwood, University of Texas at
San Antonio; Larry Collins, Eastern Kentucky University (EKU); Ed Connors,
Institute for Law and Justice; Sylvester Daughtry, Commission on Accreditation
for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) (ret.); Steve Edwards, Bureau of Jus-
tice Assistance; Ron Glensor, Reno (Nevada) Police Department (ret.); Herman
Goldstein, University of Wisconsin (ret.); Shelly Greenberg, Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity; Jack Greene, Northeastern University; Donna Hale, Shippensburg Uni-
versity (ret.); Craig Hartley, CALEA; David Hayeslip Jr, Urban Institute (ret.);
Ashley Heiberger, Captain, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) Police Department (ret.);
Larry Hoover, Sam Houston State University; Dennis Kenney, John Jay College of
Criminal Justice; Maureen McGough, The Policing Project, New York University;
Ken Morris, DOCJT; Rick Myers, Major Cities Chiefs Association (ret.); Truett
Ricks, EKU (ret.); Rana Sampson, San Diego, California; Michael Scott, Center
for Problem-Oriented Policing, Arizona State University; Cindy Shain (ret.),
Southern Police Institute, University of Louisville; Mitchell Smith, Lexington
(Kentucky) Division of Police (ret.); Bruce Sokolove, Field Training Associates;
Mittie Southerland, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ret.); Robert Stack
(ret.), Lexington (Kentucky) Division of Enhanced 9-1-1; Darrel Stephens, Major
Cities Chiefs Association (ret.); William Tafoya, University of New Haven; Walter
Tangel, DOCJT (ret.); Chuck Wexler, Police Executive Research Forum; Brian
Williams, University of Virginia; and Gerald Williams, University of Colorado,
Denver (ret.).
xx Acknowledgments
I am very grateful for the long-standing assistance and encouragement pro-

vided by Anderson Publishing Company, including Michael Braswell, Susan
Braswell, Kelly Grondin, Elisabeth Ebben, and Ellen Boyne. I would particularly
like to acknowledge the pioneering contributions to police and criminal justice
education provided by Bill Simon of Anderson Publishing.
Special thanks to AnnMarie and Lera for their love and support. They even
laugh at my jokes, sometimes.
ACRONYMS
Every professional field has its own vocabulary and terminology. We try hard in
this book to avoid drowning you in police and administration jargon, but some
acronyms are very handy and just cannot be entirely avoided.
AFIS Automated Fingerprint Identification System

AI Artificial Intelligence
AR Augmented Reality
ASEBP American Society of Evidence-Based Policing
ATF Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
BARS Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales
BJA Bureau of Justice Assistance
BJS Bureau of Justice Statistics
BWC Body-Worn Camera
CAD Computer-Aided Dispatch
CALEA Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies
CAPS Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy
CBRN Chemical, Biological, Radiological, or Nuclear
CDC Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CIA Central Intelligence Agency
CIT Crisis Intervention Team
COP Community-Oriented Policing or Community Policing
COPE Citizen-Oriented Police Enforcement
CPTED Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
DARE Drug Abuse Resistance Education
DEA Drug Enforcement Administration
DHS Department of Homeland Security
DOJ Department of Justice
DUI/DWI Driving Under the Influence/Driving While Intoxicated
EAP Employee Assistance Program
EIS Early Intervention System
EMS Emergency Medical Service
EQ Emotional (Intelligence) Quotient
FAA Federal Aviation Administration
FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation
FEMA Federal Emergency Management Agency
FI Field Interrogation
FIP Fair and Impartial Policing
FTO Field Training Officer
GIS Geographic Information System
GPS Global Positioning System
xxii Acronyms
GREAT Gang Resistance Education and Training

HIDTA High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
HSPD Homeland Security Presidential Directives
IACP International Association of Chiefs of Police
IALEP International Association of Law Enforcement Planners
IC Intelligence Community
ICITAP International Criminal Investigative Training Assistance Program
ICS Incident Command System
ILP Intelligence-Led Policing
ISAC Information Sharing and Analysis Centers
IT Information Technology
JTTF Joint Terrorism Task Force
LAPD Los Angeles Police Department
LEAA Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
LEEP Law Enforcement Education Program
LGBT Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender
LPR License Plate Reader
MBO Management by Objectives
MCI Managing Criminal Investigations
MO Method of Operation
MPO Managing Patrol Operations
NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
NCIC National Crime Information Center
NCMEC National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
NCVS National Crime Victimization Survey
NIBIN National Integrated Ballistics Information Network
NIBRS National Incident-Based Reporting System
NIJ National Institute of Justice
NIMS National Incident Management System
NOBLE National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives
NRF National Response Framework
NSA National Sheriffs’ Association
OCOPS Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office)
OD Organization Development
PD Police Department
PERF Police Executive Research Forum
POP Problem-Oriented Policing
PPBS Planning Programming Budgeting System
PPE Personal Protective Equipment
PTA Parent-Teacher Association
PTO Police Training Officer
PTSD Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
RMS Records Management System
ROPE Repeat Offender Program Experiment
Acronyms xxiii
SARA Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment

SRO School Resource Officer
SWAT Special Weapons and Tactics
TDD Telecommunication Device for the Deaf
UCR Uniform Crime Reporting
VR Virtual Reality
WMD Weapons of Mass Destruction
MODERN POLICING BLOG
The Modern Policing blog is located at https://gcordner.wordpress.com. No

opinions, no philosophizing—just news, current events, and professional devel-
opments. If you have an enduring interest in policing and police administration,
you are encouraged to visit the blog regularly. You can also sign up for e-mail and/
or Twitter notifications of new posts. It’s an easy way to keep up with significant
and interesting developments in policing in the United States and throughout the
rest of the world.
A few recent entries from the Modern Policing blog are highlighted throughout
this text to show you how the blog can help you stay current in your professional
field.
PART I
Basic Considerations
The four chapters in Part I serve as an introduction to the study of police admin-
istration. These chapters provide important background information and perspec-
tives for anyone involved in police administration.
Chapter 1 considers the history and context of police administration. The
police manager’s job is greatly influenced by historical, social, political, legal, and
democratic factors; an understanding and appreciation of these factors will help
police managers adjust to their roles and be more effective. We stress that police
executives need to develop c ommunity-oriented approaches to police administra-
tion to complement the community policing strategies and tactics being imple-
mented by their officers. We also introduce the homeland security mission, which
has added new complexity to modern police administration.
Chapter 2 examines the nature of police work. Our rationale is that, to be
successful, the organization and management of police departments must be
consistent with the fundamental realities of police work. Some of these reali-
ties include danger, authority, and discretion. Many of the recurring problems
encountered in police administration can be attributed to a lack of congruence
between traditional administrative methods and the nature of the organization’s
basic work.
Chapter 3 focuses on police goals and systems. Police managers must have a
keen awareness of their organizations’ missions and goals, so that efforts can be
concentrated on attaining those ends. The systems approach is introduced because
it helps us think logically and systematically about police administration; because
it forces us to recognize that police departments are composed of interrelated sub-
systems; and because it emphasizes the interdependence of police agencies, other
organizations, and the community.
Chapter 4 discusses 30 basic police subsystem tasks within the framework of
operations, administration, and auxiliary services. The treatment of these numer-
ous subsystem tasks is necessarily brief. Our intent is to impress upon the reader
the number and variety of tasks that must be performed in a police organization if
the attainment of goals and objectives is to be a realistic possibility.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-1
2 Basic Considerations
Preceding each of the chapters is a list of learning objectives that identifies a

few of the most important facts and concepts introduced in that chapter. The reader
may want to refer to these learning objectives while reading each chapter or use
them later on as a study guide. At the end of each chapter are discussion questions
for the reader to consider and suggested readings for those who want to explore the
subject matter in greater detail.
CHAPTER 1 Introduction
to Police
Administration
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Cite the first two fundamental principles of Peelian reform.

• Contrast the political, professional, and community eras of American policing.
• Identify several reasons for the development of community policing during the last few
decades.
• Briefly summarize the social, political, and legal contexts of American police administration.
• Identify the four dimensions of community policing and the implications of each for police
administration.
Police administration has two primary concerns: (1) an internal one, the per-
formance of management duties within police organizations; and (2) an external
one, the implementation of policies and programs designed to reduce crime and
disorder and enhance public safety. Police administrators must focus internally
on running their organizations and externally on problems in their communities.
They must aim for efficiency in the performance of police duties and effectiveness
in achieving the goals of policing. In their pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness,
police administrators must abide by a variety of legal and ethical constraints, they
must remain transparent and accountable for their actions and decisions, and they
must strive for legitimacy in the eyes of the public.
Thus far in the t wenty-first century, police administration seems to be getting
more and more complicated and demanding. A crisis of legitimacy has erupted over
police use of deadly force following incidents in various cities around the country,
including Ferguson (Missouri), New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Cleveland, and
Baltimore, culminating in the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
This crisis has dominated the headlines, saturated social media, ignited public
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-2
protests, and generated demands that police be equipped with body-worn cam-
eras. In 2015 it led to the creation of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century
Policing,1 and in 2020 it led to demands to reform, reimagine, or even defund the
police. In the meantime, police have had to deal with the C OVID-19 pandemic
that began in 2020 and with a surge in violent crime beginning in 2021.

Letter to Young Cops
June 12, 2018
Here’s a nice blog post by David Couper in the form of a message to young police, reflecting
on his experiences from the 1960s until now. He observes that:
Fundamental to American policing is the belief that every person should be treated as
you and I would want to be treated. When I did this, I found that I was, in turn, respected
(even trusted) and this made me an effective police officer.
He also acknowledges that issues and conditions change over time, which means that it
is essential to keep learning throughout one’s career.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/letter-to-young-cops. The hyperlink at

“Here’s a nice blog post” links to https://improvingpolice.wordpress.com/2018/06/11/a-letter-to-young-cops.
Over and above these very challenging contemporary issues, it is important to re-
alize that police administration does not take place in a v acuum—it has a history and
a context. Particularly in a free society, police administrators should be keenly aware
of the historical, social, legal, and political frameworks within which they operate.
Early Police Administration
The development of police administration had to await the development of

organized policing. The year 1829 marks the origin of organized, paid, civilian
(non-military) policing as we currently know it. In that year, the Metropolitan
Police Act became English law, concluding a long and emotional debate. Prior
to that time, law enforcement in the United Kingdom and the United States had
been the province of ordinary citizens, volunteers, night watchmen, private mer-
chant police, soldiers, personal employees of justices of the peace, constables, sher-
iffs, and slave patrols. This informal and unorganized law enforcement approach,
which had proved satisfactory for centuries, was overwhelmed by the Industrial
Revolution, which spawned rapid urbanization and upwardly spiraling crime rates.
The Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 authorized Sir Robert Peel to establish a
police force for the metropolitan London area, and 1,000 men were quickly hired.
Where no police force at all had previously existed, there suddenly stood a large
organization. The basic organizational and managerial problems faced by Peel and
1 Introduction to Police Administration 5
NOTE TO READERS
For simplicity, throughout this text we use the terms police, police department, and police
administration. When we do, we mean to include sheriffs, troopers, constables, federal agents,
and others who function as peace officers and exercise law enforcement authority. The spe-
cific jurisdictions of police departments, sheriff ’s offices, state police, highway patrols, special-
purpose agencies, and federal law enforcement vary, of course, as do their specific challenges.
These factors contribute to the particular context within which any of these agencies operate.
Despite this variation, the basics of police administration as presented in this text are widely
applicable.
his police commissioners, Charles Rowan and Richard Mayne, were essentially the
same as those faced by police chiefs today. How were they to let their officers know
what was expected of them, how were they to coordinate the activities of all those
officers, and how were they to make sure that directions and orders were followed?
Some of Peel’s answers to these questions can be found in the fundamental
principles of his Peelian reform:
1. The police should be organized along military lines.

2. Securing and training proper persons is essential.
3. Police should be hired on a probationary basis.
4. The police should be under governmental control.
5. Police strength should be deployed by time and area.
6. Police headquarters should be centrally located.
7. Police record keeping is essential.2
The foundation of Peel’s approach to police administration is in his first two

principles. Although he believed strongly that the police and the military should
be separate and distinct agencies, he turned to the military for his model of effi-
cient organization. He also turned to many former military officers in recruiting
his first police officers.
That Peel should borrow his organizational style from the military was not
at all surprising. The military and the Church were actually the only large-scale
organizations in existence at that time. Both were organized similarly, although
their members bore different titles. Both were centralized; a few people held most
of the power and made most of the decisions, whereas many people just did as
they were told. In addition, both operated under a system of graded authority; for
example, generals had full authority, colonels and majors had a little less, captains
and lieutenants had less still, sergeants had only enough to direct their privates,
and privates had none at all.
It was natural, then, that Peel should borrow the centralized organizational
form of the military model. His personnel practices, though, were not copied from
the military, which at that time was composed largely of debtors, criminals, and
draftees, with officers drawn from the wealthy and aristocratic classes. The military
was chronically in need of people and would accept anyone into its ranks. Peel,
however, was highly selective in choosing his police. Only a small percentage of ap-
plicants were accepted, and a probationary period was used to weed out those whose
performance was unsatisfactory. The standards of conduct were very rigid, so many
officers were dismissed, especially in the early years of organizational development.
Peel’s approach to police administration can thus be summed up as follows: (1)
centralized organization with graded authority; and (2) selective and stringent per-
sonnel standards. He fashioned his approach in 1829 and it stands up well even today.
The Political Era
One obstacle to the adoption of Peel’s approach in the United States was
the enduring view of police work as essentially undemanding physical labor. This
widely held belief prevented the establishment of the rigorous personnel standards
advocated by Peel. As a result, the pay and status derived from police work were
well below the middle-class level for many years, and the job, until fairly recently,
attracted mainly those whose employment prospects elsewhere were bleak.
Stringent personnel standards in the early days of American policing were also
subverted by the influence of local politics (see “Politics and the New York Police,”
Box 1.1). Local politics served as the vehicle for bringing immigrant groups into the
American social structure, and police jobs were part of local political patronage. Ini-
tially, police work was the domain of certain politically powerful ethnic groups rather
than a profession of highly qualified people who could meet rigid standards. Con-
sequently, police officers were likely to be dismissed by their agencies not because of
unsatisfactory performance, but because they belonged to the wrong political party.
During the political era of American policing, which continued well into the
1900s, decentralized organizational structures were favored over centralized ones.3
In b ig-city police departments, the real power and authority belonged to precinct
captains, not to chiefs or commissioners. Detectives usually reported to these pre-
cinct captains rather than to a chief of detectives at headquarters. The reason for
this decentralized approach was to protect local political influence over the po-
lice. Local political leaders (“ward bosses”) picked their own precinct captains and
expected them to be very responsive. A strong central headquarters might have
interfered with this politically based system.
The Professional Era
Although complaints about police abuses and inefficiency were common in

the 1800s, widespread criticism of the political model of policing, including its
Box 1.1 Politics and the New York Police

An important reason for the discrepancy between ideals and practice, in addition to public
expectations of the police, was the force’s involvement in partisan politics. Decentraliza-
tion and political favoritism weakened discipline. Before 1853, patrolmen looked to local
politicians for appointment and promotion. Consequently, they were less amenable to their
superior officers’ orders, and friction developed which “soon ripened into the bitterest ha-
tred and enmity, and which were carried out of the department into the private walks of life.”
Policemen participated in political clubs, often resigning to work for the re-election of their
aldermen, who left the positions vacant until they won the election and could reappoint the
loyal patrolmen. Chief Matsell said that this politicking kept the department in “constant
excitement.” Discipline improved somewhat under the 1853 Commission, which cut the tie
to local aldermen and prohibited participation in political clubs. However, the commission
had little chance to improve its effectiveness, for favoritism was rife under Mayor Fernando
Wood, elected in 1854. Captains were not promoted from the ranks but “taken from the
citizens, and placed over Lieutenants and Sergeants of ten years’ experience, depressing
the energies of the men.”
Source: Wilbur R. Miller. 1977. Cops and Bobbies: Police Authority in New York and
London, 1
830–1870. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 43.
decentralization and acceptance of mediocre personnel, did not emerge until the
beginning of the twentieth century.4 Beginning then, however, police practition-
ers, academics, and investigating commissions decried the poor quality of police
personnel; pointed out the need for intelligence, honesty, and sensitivity in po-
lice officers; called for stricter organizational controls; and thus reaffirmed Peel’s
philosophy.
Among the individuals most vocal and noteworthy in support of both cen-
tralized organization and higher police personnel standards were August Vollmer,5
Bruce Smith,6 and O.W. Wilson.7 Each of these pioneers strongly believed police
work to be a demanding and important function in a democratic society, requiring
officers able to deal flexibly and creatively with a wide variety of situations. They
agreed that physical strength was an important attribute, but thought that good
judgment, an even temperament, and other human qualities and skills were more
important. They believed strongly in education, training, discipline, and the use
of modern technology in policing. They and other leaders advocated a professional
model of policing.
Supporting their views were the findings and recommendations of investigat-
ing commissions, most notably the Wickersham Commission in the 1930s and
the President’s Crime Commission in the 1960s. The Wickersham Commission
found that the American police were totally substandard8; the President’s Com-
mission found that insufficient progress had been made from the 1930s to the
1960s.9 Both found that the quality of police personnel was low in terms of car-
rying out the job to be done and in comparison to the rest of the population, and
both called for substantial upgrading of police personnel.
Through the m id-1960s the need for better police personnel and stricter or-
ganizational controls dominated the literature and practice of police administra-
tion. Since then, however, other important issues have e merged—such as the poor
state of p
olice–community relations, the need for a more diverse police workforce,
the ineffectiveness of traditional police strategies, the need for more flexibility
within police organizations, and today’s crisis of legitimacy over police use of force.
These other issues have arisen because of both the successes and the failures of the
professional model of policing.10
The Community Era
In most major jurisdictions today, the need for intelligent, sensitive, flexible
people in policing has been accepted. More well-educated people are being hired
as police officers than was the case 40 or more years ago.11 Over the long run, po-
lice salaries have been improving, along with occupational status. Police agencies
are more selective when choosing their officers.
Quality is subjective, however. Many police departments, in their quest for
higher-caliber personnel during the professional era, emphasized educational at-
tainment, physical skills, appearance, conformity, abstinence from experimenta-
tion with drugs, and spotless police records. Use of such criteria sometimes made it
more difficult for local people, women (with less u pper-body strength, on average,
than men), and members of minority groups (who, in some jurisdictions, are less
likely to have attended college and more likely to have been arrested for minor
offenses) to obtain police employment. The lack of these kinds of employees, in
turn, created police–community relations problems for more than a few police
agencies.
Questions also began to arise about the more centralized structures and
stricter organizational controls that characterize the professional model. The
rigid, military approach no longer seems to fit the demanding, unpredictable,
discretion-laden nature of the police job. Nor does it seem appropriate for man-
agement of the better-educated, more knowledgeable police officers of today.
Other kinds of organizations, in both the business and government sectors, have
moved away from centralized, military forms of organization in favor of more
flexible arrangements.
The professional model of policing has come under criticism on other fronts
as well. The very idea of professionalism may encourage police officers to think of
themselves as better than the average person. Separation of policing from politics,
when taken to extremes, can result in police who are so independent of political
control that they are no longer responsive or accountable to the public.
Perhaps most damaging to the professional model is the question of its ef-
fectiveness. During the model’s heyday in the 1960s and 1970s, crime was not
reduced, but instead increased more than in any other time since we started collect-
ing crime statistics. Also, the key strategies of the professional model (preventive
patrol, rapid response, and follow-up investigations) have each been found to be
far less effective than originally thought (as explained in C
hapter 13).
Beginning in the 1980s, and achieving especial predominance in the
1990s, the community policing model came to dominate US policing. The
community-oriented model advocates, among other things, a less central-
ized organizational structure, closer ties to the community, a stronger focus
on prevention, and a problem-solving approach to police work.12 This model
supports the need for high-quality personnel, but emphasizes education and
creativity over conformity, physical attributes, and unnecessarily rigid back-
ground characteristics.
Even the most fervent supporters of community-oriented policing (COP) see
the continued necessity of some elements of the professional model, however. The
need for high standards, thorough training, and sound organization and man-
agement in policing are widely accepted. The ideas and information presented
throughout this text are equally important whether one is implementing the pro-
fessional model, community policing, or any other strategic approach.
The Social Context of Police Administration
Just as current police administration can be explained in part by its past, so too
can its form and substance be explained in part by the social context within which
policing operates. We have already mentioned, for example, that the low status
of police work in America helped to explain the unsatisfactory quality of police
applicants and thus the inability of police administrators to implement stringent
personnel standards.
The police seem perpetually to be the brunt of c riticism—this has been ev-
ident in the aftermath of such diverse high-profile events as the Rodney King
beating in 1991, the O.J. Simpson trial in 1995, the p epper-spraying of Occupy
protesters at the University of California, Davis in 2011, the murder of George
Floyd in 2020, and the failure of police to take quick action at the school shooting
in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022. One reason for seemingly never-ending disputes about
the police in American communities is disagreement on the most important goals
of policing, not to mention the means of attaining those goals.13
Diverse communities present special challenges for police. Not only do in-
dividual citizens differ in their opinions and preferences, but so do segments of
the community. In Chicago, where community policing was implemented and
systematically evaluated over the period 1994–2003, there were significant differ-
ences among whites, African Americans, and Latinos in the perceived seriousness
of physical decay (graffiti, abandoned cars, abandoned buildings, trash and junk)
and social disorder (disruption around schools, groups of people loitering, public
drinking) in their neighborhoods, with Latinos reporting the most serious prob-
lems. These groups also differed in their evaluations of police performance and
responsiveness, with whites giving police the highest marks.14 Nationally as well,
white Americans report having much more trust and confidence in the police than
do black Americans.15
The social implications and environment of policing have been highlighted
over the last 50–60 years in discussions and debates about p olice–community re-
lations. Mass altercations in the 1960s between minority groups and the police,
as well as between students and police, dramatically demonstrated that police re-
lations with at least these communities were less than ideal. In urban areas, the
estrangement of the police and the community extended beyond civil disorder
to everyday policing, as many other groups seemed also to regard the police as an
army of occupation.16 The problem of police relations with these and other seg-
ments of the community made it clear that the police operate in a social system that
they can neither take for granted nor totally control. Different community groups
view the police differently and have varying notions of the priorities and objectives
of law enforcement and criminal justice (see “Police Role in the Ghetto,” Box 1.2).
Since the 1990s, p olice–minority relations have been brought to the forefront
in discussions about “driving while black,” racial profiling, biased policing, and
use of force.17 The fundamental issue in these discussions is whether the police
have been fair and equitable when using their authority. From a civil liberties and
minority group perspective, it sometimes seems that police power to stop, search,
arrest, and use force is allocated disproportionately against people of color. In re-
turn, police officials often assert that they are simply trying to address problems of
crime, drugs, and gangs, often in response to urgent requests from minority and
low-income neighborhoods. Finding common ground between these opposing
perspectives has not been easy.
The community policing model attempts to address such perplexing problems in
several ways. Through closer contact with individual citizens and community groups,
Box 1.2 Police Role in the Ghetto

Police work in the ghetto encompasses a series of roles and/or responsibilities. The various
attributes of the job can appear, at times, to be working at c ross-purposes but, under closer
examination, the ambiguities of the police role in the ghetto bear definite societal intentions.
On the one hand, the police are expected to represent the strong arm of the law; they must
do battle with the ghetto’s rugged individualism. But, on the other hand, they must be able
to show compassion and understanding to the public being served: the mother of the lost
child, the victim of a crime. As to the other side of the ledger, ghetto residents may see the
police as their oppressors, but at the same time the residents cannot do without the social
services the police provide. In the absence of these services, the ghetto community would
be hard-pressed to maintain social equilibrium. The police may be in adversary relations with
the ghetto, but they are also a necessary linchpin of the community.
Source: Basil Wilson and John L. Cooper. 1979. “Ghetto Reflections and the Role of the
Police Officer,” Journal of Police Science and Administration 7, no. 1: 35, with permission
of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
Box 1.3 Community Policing in Chicago

In the United States, the belief that elected leaders care “what people like me think” has
been on the decline since the 1950s…. Yet during the 1990s, Chicago bucked the trend.
There were positive shifts in views of policing, and support for the police grew among all
major population groups. To be sure, there remained plenty of room for improvement. After
more than a h alf-decade of community policing, public perceptions of police job perfor-
mance just hit the 50 percent mark among African Americans and Latinos, and their percep-
tions of police responsiveness did not rise much above that level. But a larger proportion of
residents in all groups reported that police were helpful, concerned, and fair, and the trend
line for other aspects of their jobs was in the right direction.
Source: Wesley G. Skogan. 2006. Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities.
New York: Oxford University Press, p. 303.
police try to stay attuned to the public’s changing needs and priorities. Departments
are also seeking a more representative workforce, including increasing numbers of
civilians and volunteers to augment sworn officers. In addition, police are varying
their enforcement strategies and programs from one neighborhood to the next, in-
stead of applying one uniform approach throughout the entire community. Despite
these efforts, however, it remains difficult in heterogeneous communities to police
in a way that satisfies all citizens (see “Community Policing in Chicago,” Box 1.3).
The same diversity that makes the United States such a vibrant and resilient country
makes effective and responsive policing a major challenge. This challenge will only
increase in the future as America’s population becomes even more diverse.
The Political Context of Police Administration
Part of the environment of police administration is the governmental and

political system. We have already noted that, during its development, American
policing was closely tied to local politics and that this relationship had important
consequences for police decision making and police personnel standards. Although
this undesirable political relationship is greatly diminished today, the political en-
vironment of police administration is still an important factor to consider in un-
derstanding and explaining police behavior, practices, and organizations.
In our grade school civics classes, we all learned about the American govern-
ment’s system of checks and balances and separation of powers. The Founding
Fathers dispersed authority among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches
of government in order to prevent any one person or branch from becoming all-
powerful. The legislative branch was assigned the roles of enacting laws and ap-
propriating funds. The executive branch was given the tasks of implementing and
enforcing the laws. The judicial branch was directed to review the constitutionality
of legislative enactments and to adjudicate alleged violations of the laws.
The police are a part of the executive branch of government. Their role, then,
is to enforce the laws enacted by the legislature and to refer alleged violations of
those laws to the judiciary. In actual practice, of course, policing is considerably
more complex and less mechanical than this description suggests. Police officers
utilize discretion in such a way that they do not enforce all the laws all the time;
their efforts are not universally reviewed by the courts; and many of their prac-
tices involve activities not related specifically to law enforcement. Nevertheless, it
remains useful to keep in mind that the police make neither the laws nor the deci-
sion between the guilt or innocence of a suspect brought to court. These matters,
although important to policing, are within the domain of other branches of the
government.
Another important characteristic of our governmental system is federalism.
Besides being distributed among different branches of government, power in our
system is also dispersed through several levels of government. As a result, some
functions are performed by the national government, some by the states, some by
counties, some by municipalities, and some are shared.
Policing in America is predominantly a local function, although the states and
the national government are also involved with law enforcement and cannot be
ignored. Three-quarters of our nation’s 1 million-plus police protection employees
work for local governments, and 90% of the 18,000 or so police agencies in this
country are local police departments or sheriff ’s departments.18 One consequence
of the local character of American policing is that most of the country’s law en-
forcement agencies are small—one-half have 10 or fewer sworn employees. There-
fore, police administration in the United States frequently involves organizing
and managing fairly small departments, a fact that is important to keep in mind,
because the natural tendency when speaking of administration is to immediately
think of large, complex organizations.
With respect to objectives, priorities, and budgets, police administrators deal
primarily with city councils, city managers, mayors, and other local executive and
legislative units. State and national law enforcement organizations deal with state
and national executive bodies, respectively. Even local police, however, have rela-
tionships with the state and national governments. The bulk of the law that most
police enforce is state law enacted by state legislatures. Also, in many areas, the
correctional and judicial systems, both of which are important to policing, are
operated by counties and by states. Finally, since the 1960s, many local police
administrators have had increased contacts with state and national government of-
ficials who control special anti-crime funds, drug enforcement monies, and other
federal funds used to augment local law enforcement budgets. In the 1990s, most
of these federal funds were for the hiring of additional police officers to perform
community policing duties in local communities. After the terrorist attacks of
2001, federal funding available to local police shifted substantially to homeland
security; much of this funding was used for the purchase of specialized technol-
ogy and equipment. More recently, numerous federal funding streams have been
opened to help local jurisdictions deal with both police reform and violent crime.
Although the political environment of local police administration varies from

agency to agency, some regional patterns can be discerned.19 In the Northeast,
local city and town government is very strong and partisan. Police chiefs and other
administrators are frequently changed after elections, and local partisan politics
have a strong influence on day-to-day policing. In the Midwest and West, by con-
trast, local politics are much more likely to be nonpartisan, with c ollege-trained
city managers who, like elected mayors in the East, exercise much of the authority.
Police administrators in the West are more likely to be given authority and respon-
sibility for everyday police operations, and “professional” police administration is
more apparent. Moreover, in the West, and in the South, the county plays a larger
role than elsewhere. In many rural areas, the elected county sheriff is the para-
mount law enforcement officer as well as one of the most prominent politicians.
Some counties also have c ounty-wide police agencies serving under an appointed
chief who is responsible to a county executive or county council. In other areas,
however, particularly the Northeast, the county is an insignificant level of govern-
ment, and frequently the sheriff is responsible only for serving civil court papers
or running a county jail.
Thus, the political and governmental environment of police administration
varies widely. Whatever the local circumstances, police administration is strongly
influenced by these factors. Along with the historical and social contexts, the po-
litical context of police administration has important implications for the people,
processes, and organization of policing.
The Legal Context of Police Administration
Although police work involves much more than just enforcing the law, police
administration is constrained and affected by the law in a number of ways. For
example, the criminal law defines what acts are crimes and what actions police
officers may legally take in a variety of situations. Each year legislatures define
new criminal acts that fall within police jurisdiction, such as identity theft, com-
puter crime, stalking, and hate crime, and sometimes eliminate crimes, such as
marijuana possession. Legislatures also sometimes revise police authority, such as
in permitting (or even mandating) warrantless arrests for misdemeanor spousal as-
sault based solely on probable cause. In addition, the courts continuously interpret
and redefine the law by their trial and appellate decisions.
One aspect of the law that is always in flux is constitutional law. At both the
state and national levels, the courts interpret and reinterpret passages in constitu-
tional law pertaining to limitations on police authority, such as search and seizure
and interrogation of suspects. The courts also determine the precise meaning of
individual rights that police officers must protect, such as the rights of assembly
and free speech.
Police departments sometimes inherit new duties and responsibilities through
legislation. Handgun waiting periods and registration laws, for example, frequently
assign to police the task of checking the criminal records of handgun purchasers.
Police are often required by new laws to conduct background checks on school bus
drivers, day-care providers, and others entrusted with the safety and w ell-being of
children. Revised domestic violence legislation sometimes requires police officers
to provide protection and transportation to spousal assault victims.
Even more common is for police administration to be constrained and reg-
ulated by law. In the personnel area, federal legislation protecting the employ-
ment rights of women, minorities, older workers, and the disabled has sometimes
left police administrators thoroughly confused about the types of hiring practices
they can and cannot employ. Many traditional police practices related to roll calls,
lunch breaks, on-call assignments, and special assignments have fallen afoul of the
federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Police departments’ internal disciplinary proce-
dures in many jurisdictions are governed by state law. Laws also regulate the use of
radio equipment, the maintenance of documentary records, the disposal of found
and seized property, and myriad other matters.
Over the last several decades, police administrators have become increasingly
concerned with civil law, particularly civil liability.20 Many police trainers, su-
pervisors, and managers are so worried about being sued that they suffer from
“litigiphobia.”21 In the past, the police officer who made a false arrest, used exces-
sive force, or failed to protect a crime victim might be sued; today, such a suit com-
monly includes others in the chain of command as defendants, alleging that they
failed to properly train, direct, supervise, or control the officer. These kinds of civil
suits are particularly effective if it can be shown that administrators encouraged or
permitted a pattern of improper conduct to develop and continue.
Clearly, police administration takes place in a complex and changing legal envi-
ronment. Although it is not yet the case that police administrators must be lawyers,
they certainly need access to sound legal advice. And, although police executives
need not develop phobias about their civil liability, prudent risk management is
warranted. The best protection is provided by thorough and systematic application
of the modern principles of police administration presented in this text.
Police Administration in a Democratic Society

In discussing the historical, social, political, and legal contexts of police admin-
istration, we have skirted the most basic context of all: the democratic nature of our
society. This one factor has tremendous implications for the ways in which we police
our society, for the role of the police, and for police administration, since it introduces
such fundamental considerations as transparency, accountability, and legitimacy.
George Berkley best described the difficult position of the police in a demo-
cratic society.22 As he noted, democracy is based on consensus among the mem-
bers of the society; but the police job starts when that consensus breaks down.
In a democracy, the government is established to serve the people, to follow their
demands, and to operate with their consent. Much of policing, however, involves
making people behave against their wishes or prohibiting them from doing what
they please. Related to this, a basic element of democracy is freedom, while much
of the police job involves limiting or revoking freedom. An additional aspect of
democracy is equality; however, citizens do not deal with the police on an equal
basis: the police are armed and have the authority to demand cooperation from the
public. So, in many ways, the exercise of policing is in direct conflict with the values
of our democratic society.
These and other conflicts reflect our continuing pursuit of ordered liberty. In our
society, we basically believe that all people should be free to do as they please. However,
we also recognize that the exercise of total freedom by one person inevitably limits the
freedom available to others. The problem, then, becomes one of defining the bound-
aries to individual freedom. We see that individual freedom must be limited, but we
want to limit it as little as possible. We have not found a neat equation for determining
just how much to limit individual freedom, and so all of us have our own opinions on
the matter; plus, our opinions change over time. None of this helps the police, who
must make difficult decisions every day about limiting the freedom of individuals.
Although we (the people) accept that the police function has to be carried out, we
reserve the right to criticize the police any time we disagree with what they have done.
Police administrators are in an especially difficult position, because the public
will hold them accountable for crime control while, at the same time, distrusting
them for the functions performed by their organizations. This distrust will be
reflected in numerous constraints being placed on the measures available to the
police for controlling crime. The police are required to obtain arrest and search
warrants from the courts, they must advise suspects not to incriminate themselves,
their use of electronic surveillance is severely restricted, and so on. Despite these
constraints, the public still expects the police to control crime and holds the police
administrator accountable for accomplishing that objective.

Tough on Chiefs
August 18, 2020
The balancing act that police chiefs face, always tough, has become even more difficult in the
current climate, as reported here. Impossible demands and unrealistic expectations can imperil
even the most experienced and reform-minded chiefs. One observer notes “progressive cities are
relentlessly unforgiving to progressive chiefs” and another comments “It’s hard to know what
success will look like for today’s police chief.” Reflecting on the Atlanta chief ’s resignation just
hours after an officer shot and killed a suspect, a local journalist wrote “Sadly, it’s the unforgiving
environment we’re in. Atlanta is losing a calming police chief who has been implementing the
very reforms protesters are rightfully demanding of police departments throughout America.”
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2020/08/18/tough-on-chiefs/. The hyperlink at “as

reported here” links to https://www.governing.com/now/police-chiefs-most-open-to-reform-are-the-ones-leaving.html.
The aspect of police accountability that has come dramatically to the forefront
recently is accountability for the use of authority, especially when police use phys-
ical force against citizens. Thanks to cell phone videos, police body-worn cameras,
and the Internet, the public has a greatly expanded opportunity to “see” police in
action, and it is not always pretty. Moreover, controversial cases in which prosecu-
tors and grand juries have chosen not to hold police officers criminally responsible
for using force have given rise to claims that police are not accountable for their
actions. Police administrators are often caught in the middle in these situations,
trying to balance citizens’ rights, officers’ rights, and professional judgment in the
midst of a media and political frenzy.
In a free society, it is crucial that the people regard the police as fundamen-
tally legitimate. Naturally, there will always be human errors, some with tragic
consequences, but as long as the people believe that the police and their leaders
can be trusted to use their authority fairly and effectively, the system works. When
there is a crisis of legitimacy, however, such as the police seem to have been expe-
riencing in recent years, the public becomes less trusting, the police job becomes
more difficult, and the challenges facing police administrators become even more
complicated and demanding.
Adding one more layer of complexity is the expectation in a democracy that
governance should be transparent. People in a free society expect their public insti-
tutions, including the police, to act openly, and tend not to trust decisions made
behind closed doors. Transparency is thought to enhance accountability and con-
tribute to legitimacy. Needless to say, this presents some difficulties for police or-
ganizations, since they collect a lot of information that victims and others want to
be kept private, they sometimes perform covert operations, and active investigations
could easily be compromised by premature publicity. Also, when police officers are
being investigated for possible misconduct, including abuse of authority, they have
legal rights that might limit the degree of transparency that can be achieved.
These key components of democracy—accountability, legitimacy, t ransparency—
c reate some rough seas that police administrators must navigate to be successful. As
Winston Churchill famously commented just after World War II:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this
world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or a ll-
wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Gov-
ernment except for all those other forms that have been tried from time
to time.23
Community-Oriented Police Administration
In the modern era, the most promising and effective response to the diffi-
cult challenges of policing in a free society has been community policing. This
strategy, which developed in the 1980s and spread widely in the 1990s, has some
very important implications for police administration. To put it quite simply, if

community policing is a different way of doing policing, it may require a differ-
ent approach to police a dministration—a different approach to both the internal
role of running the police department and to the external role of dealing with the
community and its problems. It is helpful to recognize four major dimensions of
community policing,24 and then consider their impact on police administration:
1. The philosophical dimension.

2. The strategic dimension.
3. The tactical dimension.
4. The organizational dimension.
The philosophical dimension includes the central ideas and beliefs underlying
community policing, such as the necessity of citizen input, the broad nature of the
police function, and the need for police to provide tailored and personal service to
the public. The police administrator’s responsibility in this realm is to articulate the
agency’s philosophy of policing, communicate it to both employees and the com-
munity, persuade employees and citizens of its sensibility, and make sure that the
philosophy really guides the actions of officers. This is a challenging mandate.
The strategic dimension provides the link between the broad ideas and
beliefs that underlie community policing and the specific programs and prac-
tices by which it is implemented. This dimension assures that agency policies,
priorities, and resource allocation are consistent with the c ommunity-oriented
philosophy. Three strategic elements of community policing are: (1) alterna-
tive police operational strategies; (2) a sharper geographic focus; and (3) a
stronger emphasis on prevention. Establishing strategic directions, and seeing
that they really guide the police organization’s policies, priorities, and deci-
sions, is one of the central responsibilities of any police administrator. Chang-
ing the organization’s priorities and allocation of resources is an important step
in the process of implementing community policing or any other new strategy.

President’s Task Force—Final Report
June 25, 2015
The final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing is available here. It
offers 64 recommendations plus 92 action items in six main topic areas: Building Trust &
Legitimacy, Policy & Oversight, Technology & Social Media, Community Policing & Crime
Reduction, Training & Education, and Officer Wellness & Safety.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/presidents-task-force-final-report. The

hyperlink at “here” links to www.nccpsafety.org/assets/files/library/TaskForce_FinalReport.pdf.
The tactical dimension of community policing ultimately translates ideas,

philosophies, and strategies into concrete programs, practices, and behaviors.
Three of the most important tactical elements of community policing are positive
interactions with the public, partnerships, and a problem-oriented approach to
police work. These nuts and bolts activities are primarily carried out by police
officers, detectives, and other o perational-level personnel, not by police admin-
istrators. Administrators, though, must ensure that these kinds of activities really
get implemented, especially if they are different from traditional methods of po-
licing in a department. This may simply require good, sound traditional police
management practice, or it may require innovative and different approaches to
police administration that correspond better with the new and different activities
associated with community policing.
The organizational dimension directly addresses the changes in police organ-
ization, administration, management, and supervision that might be required to
support and facilitate the implementation of community policing. Such changes
may be necessary in at least three areas: structure (how authority, responsibility,
and tasks are arranged in the police organization); management (the process of
running the organization and dealing with employees); and information (the types
of data and information that are needed, and the systems for providing that in-
formation). Many police departments have already discovered that how they are
structured, how they are managed, and how they use information does not cor-
respond very well with their new c ommunity-oriented philosophy, strategies, and
tactics. These and other agencies are currently searching for, and experimenting
with, alternative organizational practices that provide a better “fit” with the new
way that they want to do business—that is, community policing (see “Policing in
a Free Society,” Box 1.4).
Throughout this text we present information and techniques that are con-
sistent with a c ommunity-oriented approach to police administration. These ap-
proaches build upon many of the traditional and fundamental principles of police
administration and are consistent with the social, political, and legal contexts
of policing discussed earlier in this chapter. In some cases, we explicitly use the
Box 1.4 Policing in a Free Society

We are in the early days of a social revolution driven by information technology and moving
at unprecedented speed. The old command and control strategies of police management
will not be adequate to withstand the buffeting of these far-reaching developments. There
is a real need to examine the tight web of structure and policy binding police services to
the past and inhibiting change…. The one thing that has not changed, and never will, is the
need for inspired leadership, motivated and committed to the betterment of policing in a
free society.
Source: Robert F. Lunney. 2012. Parting Shots: My Passion for Policing. Toronto: Robert
Lunney Associates, p . 310.
c ommunity-oriented label, but mostly we just try to present the best information
and practices that we have found for conducting the challenging responsibility of
police administration in a free society.
Homeland Security and Police Administration
ost-September 11, 2001, and subsequently in the aftermath of Hurri-

P
cane Katrina in 2005, the new concept of homeland security introduced an
additional mission for state and local law enforcement agencies and broadened
the context of police administration even further. More than half of all state
and local law enforcement agencies reported in 2004 that they were allocating
more resources than in the past to security for critical infrastructure, security
for special events and dignitaries, intelligence activities (gathering, analyzing,
and sharing information), terrorism-related investigations, port security, and
airport security.25 Also, a majority reported increased interaction with the Fed-
eral Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms,
and Explosives (ATF), and federal homeland security officials, while more than
40% had more frequent contact with immigration and customs authorities,
the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Coast
Guard. In addition, at the local level, police departments are working much
more closely with fire departments, public health officials, and emergency
managers than ever before.
What seems to be happening is that the already broad traditional role of the
police related to crime, disorder, and public service has taken on additional re-
sponsibilities more associated with safety and security. This has enlarged the con-
text or environment of police administration, making it even more challenging
and complex. The homeland security mission of police is discussed in more detail
in Chapter 14.
Ten Guiding Principles

Much of the remainder of this book is focused on the details of police ad-
ministration, on successfully running a police organization. Just as it is easy in
the real world to get caught up in handling day-to-day problems and crises,
however, it is easy when studying a subject to get lost in the details and lose one’s
bearings. For that reason, we suggest that you periodically review the follow-
ing 10 principles of policing and police administration in a democratic society.
These principles should provide you with a solid framework for the study and
practice of modern police administration. They are timeless and impervious to
trends and fads—these principles can still be used 20 years from now, whether
at that time we say we are doing community policing, professional policing,
intelligence-led policing, predictive policing, or just plain good policing for a

democratic society.
1. The police are a general-purpose government agency that provides a wide va-
riety of services to the community, including but not limited to law enforce-
ment and crime control.
2. The police get their authority from the law, the community, political superi-
ors, and the police profession, and are ultimately responsible to each of these
sources of authority.
3. The overriding objectives in every police action or decision must be the pro-
tection of life and property and the maintenance of order.
4. Protection of life is always the primary objective of policing; the relative im-
portance of protecting property and maintaining order varies from place to
place and from time to time.
5. Law enforcement is not an objective of policing; rather, it is one method that
is sometimes employed in the effort to protect life and property and maintain
order.
6. The police are rightly constrained in the methods they can employ in pursu-
ing their objectives; they must resist the temptation to employ unauthorized,
illegal, or unethical methods.
7. The police must treat each individual person and situation according to the
particular circumstances encountered; but individualized treatment may not
include discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual
orientation, social class, or other improper criteria.
8. The police must be willing and capable of employing force when justified
to achieve legitimate objectives, but the use of force should always be a last
resort, and the police must strive to develop nonviolent methods of gaining
cooperation.
9. Police must ultimately be guided by ethical and legal standards that may some-
times conflict with, and should supersede, organizational, community, and
peer pressures.
10. The police are unavoidably associated with those in power; yet they have a
special responsibility to protect those furthest from power, and the democratic
political process itself.
Summary
This chapter helps lay a foundation for the rest of the book. It presents the
historical, social, political, legal, and democratic contexts of American policing, as
well as some implications of community policing and homeland security and some
timeless guiding principles so that you can gain a better appreciation of where police
administration has been and what its present environment is like. These contexts
exert important influences on the people, processes, and organization of policing.
They make police administration in our society very challenging, to say the least.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Do you agree that in our society there is a lack of agreement about the goals and objectives of polic-
ing? What do you think are or should be the goals and objectives of the police? List them in order of
importance.
2. What do you think is the proper role of politics with respect to policing?
3. Policing in America is a fragmented, primarily local function. Do you think it should be? Would you
alter this arrangement in any way? What purposes does the fragmentation of policing serve?
4. The text says that, in large measure, policing conflicts with our democratic values. What is meant by
that? Do you agree? Is that the way things should be? As a police officer, how would you personally
deal with this conflict?
5. What is your perception of community policing, and what implications do you think it has for how
police departments should be organized and managed?
Suggested Reading
Bayley, D.H., and P.C. Stenning. 2016. Governing the Police: Experience in Six Democracies. New
Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.
Brooks, R. 2021. Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City. New York: Penguin Press.
Reisig, M.D., and R.J. Kane (eds). 2014. The Oxford Handbook of Police and Policing. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Weitzer, R., and S.A. Tuch. 2006. Race and Policing in America: Conflict and Reform. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Worden, R.E., and McLean, S.J. 2017. Mirage of Police Reform: Procedural Justice and Police Legiti-
macy. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Notes
1 President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the President’s Task Force
on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
Online at: https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-p341-pub.pdf.
2 A.C. Germann, F.D. Day, and R.R.J. Gallati. 1969. Introduction to Law Enforcement and Crim-
inal Justice. Springfield, IL: Charles C Tohmas, pp. 54–55.
3 G.L. Kelling, and M.H. Moore. 1988. “The Evolving Strategy of Policing.” In Perspectives on
Policing No. 4. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
4 See C.B. Saunders Jr. 1970. Upgrading the American Police: Education and Training for Better
Law Enforcement. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
5 W.M. Oliver. 2017. August Vollmer: The Father of American Policing. Durham, NC: Carolina
Academic Press; A. Vollmer. 1936. The Police and Modern Society. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
6 O.W. Wilson. 1940. “Bruce Smith.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 47, no. 2: 235–
2 37; B. Smith. 1940. Police Systems in the United States. New York: Harper & Brothers.
7 W.J. Bopp. 1977. O.W. Wilson and the Search for a Police Profession. Port Washington, NY:
Kennikat Press; O.W. Wilson. 1950. Police Administration. New York: McGraw-Hill.
8 National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement. 1931. Report on Police. Washing-
ton, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
9 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. 1967. Task Force
Report: The Police. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
10 R.M. Fogelson. 1977. Big-City Police. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
11 C. Gardiner. 2017. Policing Around the Nation: Education, Philosophy, and Practice.
Washington, DC: National Policing Institute. Online at: https://www.policinginstitute.org/wp-
c ontent/uploads/2017/10/PF-Report-Policing-Around-the-Nation_10–2017_Final.pdf; D.L.
Carter, A.D. Sapp, and D.W. Stephens. 1989. The State of Police Education: Policy Direction for
the Twenty-First Century. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
12 G. Cordner. 2014. “Community Policing.” In M.D. Reisig, and R.J. Kane (eds), The Oxford
Handbook of Police and Policing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 148–171.
13 J.Q. Wilson. 1968. “ Dilemmas of Police Administration.” Public Administration Review
(September–October): 407–417.
14 W.G. Skogan. 2006. Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities. New York: Oxford
University Press.
15 J. Jones. 2021. “In US, Black Confidence in Police Recovers From 2020 Low.” Gallup, July 14.
Online at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/352304/black-confidence-police-recovers-2020-low.
aspx.
16 V.G. Strecher. 1971. The Environment of Law Enforcement: A Community Relations Guide.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
17 L. Fridell, R. Lunney, D. Diamond, and B. Kubu. 2001. Racially Biased Policing: A Principled
Response. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
18 S. Hyland. 2018. Full-Time Employees in Law Enforcement Agencies, 1997–2016. Washington,
DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Online at: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/ftelea9716.
pdf; C. Brooks. 2019. Federal Law Enforcement Officers, 2016 – Statistical Tables. Washington,
DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Online at: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/fleo16st.pdf;
C. Brooks. 2019. Sheriffs’ Offices, 2016: Personnel. Washington, DC. Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Online at: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/so16p.pdf.
19 G. Cordner. 2011. “The Architecture of U.S. Policing: Variations among the 50 States.” Police
Practice & Research: An International Journal 12, no. 2: 107–119.
20 V.E. Kappeler. 2006. Critical Issues in Police Civil Liability, fourth edition. Prospect Heights, IL:
Waveland.
21 F. Scogin, and S.L. Brodsky. 1991. “Fear of Litigation among Law Enforcement Officers.”
American Journal of Police 10, no. 1: 41–45.
22 G.E. Berkley. 1969. The Democratic Policeman. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
23 R. Langworth (ed.). 2008. Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations. New
York, NY: Public Affairs.
24 G. Cordner. 2014. Community Policing, pp. 153–159.
25 C. Foster and G. Cordner. 2005. The Impact of Terrorism on State Law Enforcement: Adjusting to
New Roles and Changing Conditions. Lexington, KY: Council of State Governments.
CHAPTER 2 The Nature of Police
Work
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify several explanations for the development of paid, full-time police forces in the early
1800s.
• Describe the evolution of police duties from the early 1800s to the present.
• Explain why it is inevitable that police officers have discretion in their law enforcement duties.
• Assess the evidence bearing on the question of whether police work is mainly crime control,
order maintenance, or social service.
• Identify the core of the police role and the kinds of skills most relied upon by effective police
officers.
Some managers and authorities on management make the argument that

“administration is administration,” meaning that running a bakery, a steel mill,
a law firm, a baseball team, a school, a church, and a police department all in-
volve the same knowledge, skills, and abilities. This point of view has considerable
merit. The bakery manager, school principal, and police chief all have to engage
in planning if their organizations are to successfully achieve their objectives over
a long period of time. The superintendent of a steel mill and a police chief both
have to carefully organize resources and activities to be effective. The general man-
ager of a baseball team, managing partner of a law firm, and police chief all must
give generous attention to staffing in order to attract and retain the best possible
personnel. The parish priest and the police chief both concern themselves with
directing and controlling their employees, as well as influencing others who look
to them for guidance and comfort.
Administration is administration, up to a point. All managers perform sim-
ilar functions, as described later in this text. All administration can be guided by
some general principles. All managers must deal with the complexities of human
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-3
behavior in organizations. It makes sense to have organizations such as the Ameri-

can Management Association and the American Society for Public Administration,
because managers of all kinds of organizations share common tasks, problems, and
information needs.
However, there is a limit to the universality of management and administra-
tion. Most managers are expected to know something about the substance of what
they are in charge of, beyond simply the process of management. Many manag-
ers, in fact, have considerable experience doing the kind of work that they now
manage. Certainly, it is the rare police chief, sheriff, or police commissioner who
does not have experience “on the street.” More generally, it has been argued that
“[t]here can be no great leadership … without a deep substantive knowledge of
the technological and bureaucratic characteristics of the specific setting in which
leadership is expected.”1
It seems quite apparent that such administrative matters as the opportunity
for realistic planning, the form of organizational structure that is most efficient,
the applicability of technical personnel practices, and the means by which em-
ployee behavior can best be directed and controlled depend significantly on the
nature of the work that is performed in the organization.2 In other words, despite
all the commonalities inherent in management of any kind, and thus the problems
and tasks shared by bakery managers, steel mill superintendents, baseball team
general managers, church pastors, and police chiefs, all of these administrators also
have their own unique organizational situations that make their jobs somewhat
different.
Our argument is that police administration is unique because police work is
particularly different from most other kinds of work. Such characteristics of police
work as discretion, authority, variety, ambiguity, and danger distinguish it greatly
from what most people do for a living. Moreover, these characteristics of the work
have profound implications for police organization and management. Thus, po-
lice administration is not merely a subtopic or branch of public administration
or business administration, although it can borrow considerably from those dis-
ciplines; because the nature of the work performed by police organizations is un-
usual and distinctive, the separate and distinct study of police administration is
warranted.
This chapter is about the nature of police work and its effect on the nature of
police administration.
The Evolution of Police Work
In some respects, police work as we know it today is not very different from
that performed by the first London bobbies in 1829 and the first New York cops in
1845. Police then dealt with alcoholics, wayward children, thieves, and smugglers,
as they do now. In other respects, of course, police work has changed dramati-
cally. While modern police ride in automobiles and are in direct radio and mobile
2 The Nature of Police Work 25
phone communication with dispatchers and supervisors, the first police officers
walked their beats and had only the most primitive methods to call for assistance,
such as beating their nightsticks on the pavement or blowing their whistles.
Why were f ull-time, paid, organized police forces created in the United King-
dom and the United States from the early 1800s? It is clear that both countries
were undergoing industrialization and urbanization, trends that were significantly
changing social and economic conditions. Neighbor no longer knew neighbor.
Most of the people one encountered were strangers. People worked long hours
under the worst conditions in a factory for a low wage, instead of working the
land for food to eat and barter. Many of the people who came to the cities looking
for wage-paying jobs found an insufficient number of jobs available and remained
unemployed. Parents working in factories no longer maintained the same level
of supervision over children as they had back on the farm, and children in cities
engaged in more serious mischief than those who had lived under more controlled
conditions in rural settings.
One explanation for the formation of modern police forces sees them as the
logical government response to the inevitable consequences of urbanization and
industrialization. In essence, police forces were a natural development in the march
of civilization. A more cynical interpretation views the creation of the police as an
action taken by ruling elites (those with money and power) to bring under control
the working classes and other dangerous and subversive elements. In this view, the
police are seen as the repressive arm of the capitalists, the owners of the means of
production, who fostered and benefited from industrialization.3
Another factor in the development of the police was the failure of the military
to handle civil disorder effectively. Food riots, draft riots, and race riots were not
uncommon in London as well as in American cities in the early years of indus-
trialization. Prior to the establishment of police forces, such riots and other civil
disturbances had to be dealt with by the military. Too often, the military either
failed to take action out of sympathy for the protesters, or it took violent, oppres-
sive action, treating the riot or disturbance as a military encounter and leaving
extensive casualties.
Regardless of the reasoning behind the creation of organized police forces, it
is clear that the first police were much more significantly engaged in maintaining
order than in investigating crimes. Among the many duties performed by police
in the 1800s were:
1. Controlling alcoholics, drunks, vagrants, the disorderly, and the homeless;

2. Controlling gambling, prostitution, and other forms of vice;
3. Controlling riots, disturbances, and crowds;
4. Watching for fires;
5. Maintaining basic public health standards in the streets and other common
areas;
6. Inspecting businesses, taverns, and lodging houses;

7. Licensing peddlers, transportation for hire, and other forms of commerce.
Prevention of crime was generally accepted as one function of the police, along
with order maintenance and the provision of various government services. Police
were expected to prevent crime by diligently patrolling their assigned beats so that
wrongdoers would be deterred by the fear of police discovery. Police patrolling was
expected to create a sense of police omnipresence, a sense that the police were, if
not everywhere, at least right around the corner.
The early police did not devote a major portion of their time and resources
to the investigation of crimes already committed, or to the apprehension of those
responsible for committing serious crimes. Crime victims commonly offered re-
wards for the return of stolen property or the capture of assailants, and these re-
wards were largely the province of private detectives, informers, and, frequently,
perpetrators themselves. There was a clear distinction between patrol work and
detective work; patrol work was performed by the public police forces, while in-
vestigative work remained largely in the private domain.
Gradually, however, the police became more involved in crime investigation
and criminal apprehension, to the point that, by the 1950s and 1960s, the public’s
image of the police was that of crime fighters. Clearly, the police also came to see
themselves as crime fighters. Exactly how and why the police function changed
from being almost exclusively order maintenance to being dominated by crime
fighting is open to debate, but these may be some of the reasons:
1. The public’s expectations with respect to order, safety, and protection in-
creased. The public demanded that its police provide better and more com-
prehensive services, including protection from crime.
2. The legal system sought to gain greater adherence by the police to legal norms.
The police became less influenced by community norms and more influenced
by legal norms. This orientation naturally inclined the police toward a focus
on crimes, which are the most clear-cut violations of legal norms.
3. Police evolution took place within the context of the reform era in American
government.4 Police departments had to specify their functions and gather
data to demonstrate their efficiency and effectiveness. C rime-related and
enforcement-related activities were much easier to quantify and justify than
more nebulous order-maintenance activities.
4. The police sought professional status. Investigating crimes seemed more pro-
fessional than dealing with alcoholics, vagrants, and prostitutes. The police
could claim special skills as well as the need for special training for investigat-
ing crimes, much more so than for maintaining order. Special equipment and
scientific methods were also part of criminal investigation and could be cited
as evidence that police work was a profession.
5. Products of modern technology that the police were able to include in their
work, such as automobiles, radios, telephones, and computers, are all more
consistent with a c rime-attack model of policing than with a more informal,
order-maintenance model.
6. An action-oriented mandate such as crime fighting is more in keeping with
American cultural expectations than a passive or reserved mandate tied to
informal community norms for order maintenance.5 Thus, the evolution of
American policing toward crime fighting may have been inevitable.
7. The influence of the media on the public’s perception of police work has con-
tributed to the c rime-fighting image. Newspaper, radio, and television pres-
entations on police emphasize crime fighting over order maintenance, because
crime fighting is both more newsworthy and more entertaining than the more
mundane aspects of order maintenance. Not only the public, but also the po-
lice themselves are greatly influenced by these portrayals.
In considering these points, it is important to note that the actual nature of

police work and its popular image are not identical. While it is clear that police
forces have become more involved in crime investigation and criminal apprehen-
sion than was originally the case, with crime fighting perceived by the public to
be the cornerstone of the police image, the actual extent to which modern police
work involves c rime-related activity is less clear. We will address this issue shortly.
Some of the changes in police work since the m id-1800s are so obvious that they
are frequently overlooked. Today’s police officer, for example, typically gives considera-
ble attention to the traffic function, including traffic direction, enforcement, and acci-
dent investigation. An officer in 1870 may have occasionally encountered wagon and
coach traffic jams, but probably dealt with them as public order problems since traffic
laws, vehicle registrations, driver licenses, and traffic tickets were yet to be invented.

Policing Addiction
June 10, 2018
This article reports the increasingly popular development of n on-arrest alternatives to drug
cases, especially those that begin with overdoses. Gloucester, Massachusetts PD is credited
with taking the first big step in 2015 when they announced that anyone coming to them
would immediately be connected with treatment. Since then, some 390 police departments
have joined a national network that has helped 12,000 people get into treatment. One chief
agrees this shouldn’t be a police-run system, saying “I hope that at some point we put ourselves
out of business, and health care and public health take the ball.”
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/06/10/policing-addiction. The hyperlink at “This article”

links www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/02/the-police-arent-just-getting-you-in-trouble-they-actually-care-218586.
Numerous other changes in the nature of police work have occurred. Over the
years, criminal law has expanded to meet new social and environmental demands;
the police today have more laws to enforce than did their predecessors. Crime has
become more organized, presenting new and different challenges and problems.
The problem of drug abuse has become widespread, and society has looked to law
enforcement for a solution. Drug law enforcement requires special kinds of strat-
egies and tactics, such as undercover work, controlled buys, and sting operations
that raise both practical and ethical dilemmas.6
Community policing and problem-oriented policing have also affected the
nature of police work. Some police officers now spend substantial time meeting
with community groups, analyzing and solving problems, working in schools, and
collaborating with other governmental agencies, and thus less time patrolling, re-
sponding to calls, and investigating individual crimes. This leads to police work
that is more visible and personal than bureaucratic, 911-style policing, and tends
to be associated with generalist, rather than specialist, approaches to policing.7 It
may also raise the levels of education, social skills, analytical skills, and maturity
needed by police officers to higher standards than in the past.
On the other hand, many aspects of police work seem relatively unchanged
since the days of Sir Robert Peel. Husbands and wives continue to have quarrels,
occasionally requiring police intervention. People drink too much and need help
finding their way home. Some have no home and need assistance so that they will
not freeze to death on cold nights. Children still run away from home, sometimes
with tragic consequences. Loud parties still have to be quieted so that the family
next door with the new baby can get a little sleep. Police work then and now is
partly a matter of using common sense and good judgment to help sort out the
kinds of problems that naturally arise between and among people with differing
values, goals, and lifestyles.
Police Discretion
Typically associated with the crime-fighting view of police work has been the
idea that police work primarily involves law enforcement. This approach sees po-
licing mainly in terms of legal norms. Police officers are perceived as technicians
trained to apply the law to problems of crime and disorder. Further, their law
enforcement actions and activities are later reviewed by prosecutors and judges
who, as legal experts, ensure that the law has been properly applied. This “civics”
explanation of police work emphasizes that the police neither make the laws nor
sit in judgment of law violators; they “merely” enforce the law.
When scholars began studying the police in the 1950s, however, they dis-
covered that police work, as actually practiced, differed substantially from this
simplistic “mere enforcement” description. A major study by the American Bar
Foundation found, for example, that police exercised considerable discretion
in deciding whether to arrest and prosecute when a law is violated; that police
develop methods other than law enforcement to deal with law violation situations;
and that much of the work that police do is never seen by the courts and, thus,
is not reviewed by prosecutors and judges.8 Numerous studies since then have
documented that police officers operate with considerable discretion; they do not
simply enforce the law. In fact, over the wide range of circumstances and situations
that the police confront, they actually enforce the law relatively infrequently.
In his pioneering study of policing in eight communities, James Q. Wilson
found that a police officer’s discretion varied depending on the type of situation
encountered.9 He found that police had great latitude in self-initiated law enforce-
ment situations, such as traffic or drug violations, mainly because there is rarely a
victim or complainant demanding that a certain kind of action be taken. In citizen-
initiated law enforcement situations, however, the police have less d iscretion—
partly because the police usually have no clues about who committed the crime and
also because, if the offender can be identified, the preferences of the citizen-initiator
(typically the victim) will often influence the officer’s decision to arrest.
The police generally have considerable discretion in dealing with order-
maintenance problems, whether p olice-or citizen-initiated, although their dis-
cretion is not totally unconstrained. When police officers discover a disorderly
situation, they can react to it in many ways, ranging from ignoring the problem
to arresting the disorderly person (see “Police Discretion,” Box 2.1). In this police-
initiated situation, with no complainant and very possibly no witnesses, the police
officers have great discretion. When a citizen reports the disorder, the police officer
is somewhat constrained by that citizen’s wishes. However, even in these c itizen-
initiated order-maintenance situations, both parties often have legitimate claims,
throwing the discretion in the police officer’s lap.
Police work involves selecting which of several options is the best solution to
the problem at hand. If police work simply involved enforcing the law whenever a
violation was observed, it would require no common sense, judgment, or wisdom,
and very little education or training. It would also be easy to manage. However,
police officers inevitably exercise discretion, for several reasons:
1. A police officer who attempted to enforce all the laws all the time would be in
the station house and in court all the time and thus would be of little use when
problems arose in the community.
2. Legislatures pass some laws that they clearly do not intend to have strictly
enforced all the time.
3. Legislatures pass some laws that are vague, making it necessary for the police
to interpret them and decide when to apply them.
4. Most law violations are minor in nature (speeding one mile per hour over the
limit, parking 13 inches from the curb) and do not require full enforcement.
5. Full enforcement of all the laws all the time would alienate the public and
undermine support for the police and the legal system.
Box 2.1 Police Discretion

[S]ome cops will tell drinking youths to “call it an evening” because the neighbors are com-
plaining. Others will just tell them to move. Still others will tell the kids to move and then
give them suggestions on where to drink so they won’t be in the vicinity of households that
might complain. How an officer handles a call is very much a matter of his personal outlook.
Some cops are very much against drinking in public. One cop almost goes into hysteria at
the sight of an open beer can. This officer arrests for public drinking. Some officers think
marijuana smoking is a step on the road to heroin, and they will arrest people for posses-
sion of pot. Others, even if they get a complaint that people are smoking marijuana, will not
arrest. They’ll just tell the people involved to “knock it off.” To them, marijuana smoking is
no big deal.
Source: Stephen Francis Coleman. 1986. Street Cops. Salem, WI: Sheffield, p. 142.
6. Full enforcement of all laws all the time would overwhelm the courts and the
correctional system.
7. The police have many duties to perform with limited resources; good judg-
ment must therefore be used in the establishment of enforcement priorities.
Of course, it is also true that police officers are human beings, with their own
likes and dislikes, values, priorities, and susceptibilities. Thus, police officers may
let law violators go free out of sympathy, because they like them, because they
hope to get something in return, or because they think a particular law is unim-
portant or ridiculous.10
Enforcement of the law is best understood as one means employed in police
work, rather than as an end in itself.11 Ideally, the ends pursued by police work
are its principal goals: the protection of life and property and the maintenance of
order. When police officers confront problem situations in which these proper
ends are in jeopardy, one means they might choose to employ as a remedy is law
enforcement. In most instances, they will have other options as well, especially if
they are skillful and resourceful police officers. They might, for example, use con-
flict resolution techniques or issue a warning. In some situations, they will choose
to enforce the law by issuing a citation or making an arrest because that seems the
best way to protect life and property and maintain order. The law is not always
enforced simply because it is the law. Police officers have other choices, other solu-
tions to problems that, in many situations, offer more goal attainment than would
be achieved by enforcing the law.
The myth of full enforcement and the reality of discretion create ethical di-
lemmas for the police. Most police officers promise to uphold the law when they
are sworn to duty, and the laws of many states seem to mandate that officers shall
arrest whenever they have sufficient evidence. Officers must recognize the legis-
lative intent behind such language in order to avoid feeling that they are shirking
their duties when they exercise their discretion not to enforce the law. To assist
officers in resolving this problem, police codes of ethics should emphasize service
to the public and commitment to the primary goals of protection of life and
property and maintenance of order, rather than emphasizing strict enforcement
of the law.
Discretion introduces another ethical dilemma into police work. Police of-
ficers sometimes confront situations in which it seems that the protection of life
and property or the maintenance of order can be achieved only through the use
of illegal, immoral, or unethical methods.12 For example, the only way to save a
kidnapping victim’s life might be to obtain information about their location co-
ercively (illegally) from a suspect in custody, as in the famous movie Dirty Harry.
Police officers, sworn both to protect life and to obey rules and laws, are some-
times confronted by “no win” circumstances such as these, in which every option
seems to carry ethical costs. We can guide officers in such situations by insisting
that they always obey the law, but what if a life is at stake and, thus, the law that
the officers are considering “bending” does not seem quite as serious?
There are no ready solutions to the ethical problems inherent in police work.
It is important, however, that the existence of such problems be recognized by
police officers and by the public. These ethical dilemmas illustrate the demanding
nature of police work and the need for wisdom in police officers.
Crime Control, Order Maintenance, or Social Service?
When scholarly research on the police began in the 1950s, and when it came
of age in the 1960s, the popular image of police work emphasized crime fighting
and law enforcement. Because social science often amounts to exploring and de-
bunking popular conceptions and misconceptions, it is not surprising that much
of the early research focused on the extent to which police work actually did not
involve crime fighting and law enforcement. Perhaps it could have been predicted
that these results would challenge the popular image of policing.
The cumulative effect of these pioneering studies was to change the scholarly
view of police work.13 In textbooks, college courses, and police training programs,
it became common to find police work described as primarily order maintenance,
providing services, and/or social work. Although these studies performed a val-
uable function by challenging the crime-fighting image of police work, it was
perhaps inevitable that their conclusions would be carried too far. By the late
1970s, it had become common to find police chiefs and scholars downplaying and
de-emphasizing the crime-related and law enforcement aspects of police work. At
least one prominent researcher, James Q. Wilson, noted this disquieting develop-
ment, confessing that he would “prefer the police to act and talk as if they were able
to control crime”14 (emphasis in original).
In fact, much of police work is ambiguous and takes shape in the eye of the
beholder. A domestic argument between husband and wife, for example, might
best seem to fit in the order maintenance category. However, if the responding
officers are trained in crisis intervention or if they refer the couple for counseling,
they arguably have provided a social service. On the other hand, if a husband is
found to have assaulted his wife, it is a c rime-related matter. If the police make an
arrest or even just assist the wife in swearing out a warrant, the matter becomes a
law enforcement issue.
The most valid study of patrol work was the Police Services Study.15 This study
examined patrol work in 60 different neighborhoods, with observers accompanying
patrol officers on all shifts in 24 police departments. The observers collected infor-
mation on each encounter between a police officer and a citizen, detailing nearly
6,000 encounters in all. The fact that this study included so many different police
departments, and police-initiated as well as citizen-initiated activity, makes it very
persuasive. It found that 38% of p olice–citizen encounters dealt primarily with
crime-related problems. Most of these were nonviolent crimes or incidents involv-
ing suspicious circumstances. The next most common kinds of encounters were
disorder problems and t raffic-related matters, each accounting for 22% of the total.
Finally, 18% of the police–citizen encounters were primarily of a service nature.
Similar results were found in two later studies. In Minneapolis, 32% of calls
handled by police were classified as conflict management, 30% as crime, and 19%
as traffic.16 In Wilmington, Delaware, 26% of total patrol time was devoted to
criminal matters, while 50% of patrol officers’ time spent on the combination of
call handling and public contact (as opposed to time spent patrolling and handling
administrative matters) was crime-related.17
Taking all of these studies into consideration, we think a middle-of-the-road
position is advisable. It is obvious that police work is not as much crime fighting
as its public image and media misrepresentations would suggest. However, it is
equally clear that crime-related matters do occupy a significant portion of the
police workload.
The Core of the Police Role

Thus far in this chapter we have reviewed the evolution of police work, the
discovery of police discretion, and the debate over the c rime-relatedness of mod-
ern police work. Some of the more important points made have been these:
1. Police work initially had much more to do with maintaining order than with
crime investigation.
2. Police work became more involved with crime fighting, and today, crime-
related matters make up a substantial part of police work.
3. Police officers have considerable discretion in performing their crime fighting,
law enforcement, and order maintenance duties.
4. Law enforcement is best understood as one means employed by police officers
to solve problems, rather than as an end in itself.
Although law enforcement is but one method used by the police to respond
to the variety of problems that are encountered in police work, it is the method
that we most tend to associate with the police. While we realize that the police
let many lawbreakers go and that much of police work involves disputes that the
police solve informally, we also know that enforcing the law is, and always will be,
a useful and vitally important police tool.
Criminologists Clifford Shearing and Jeffrey Leon discussed the centrality of
law enforcement in the role or function of the police. They refer to the police
“license and capability,” or, in other words, the authority and power vested in the
police. They argue persuasively that:
any suggestion, on the basis of the fact that policemen seldom actually
enforce the law or use physical force, that the police in reality serve a
“social service” rather than a “law enforcement” function is clearly un-
founded. Equally unfounded is any attempt to classify police activity into
two classes, “social service” or “law enforcement.”
Because the symbolic backdrop of the police license and capability
is always present whenever a police officer responds to a problem, he is
always responding as a police officer and not as a social worker, whether
amateur or professional. Indeed, the continual presence of the police li-
cense and capability militates against his ever being able to play the role
of a social worker, as everyone (including the police officer) will know
that ultimately he has access to the means uniquely accessible to police
officers.18
This argument is an important one for our discussion of the nature of police
work. When reviewing the findings of studies of police tasks, citizen calls for police
service, and police–citizen encounters, we run the risk of not seeing the forest for
the trees. We need to look at the bigger picture, the function that police perform
in the social and political system. One approach to this is to ask what functions of
the police are unique—functions that are not performed by other public agents.
According to Shearing and Leon, one of these functions is law enforcement.
Egon Bittner has gone further and argued that the use of force is at the core of
the police role. He notes that many kinds of public agents enforce laws, but it
is the police we call when “something-ought-not-to-be-happening-and-about-
which-something-ought-to-be-done-NOW!”19 It is the police who can ultimately
force compliance (see “Police Work and the Meaning of Justice,” Box 2.2). They
have the legal authority, the tools, the training, and the skills to coerce us into
behaving differently. Stated more eloquently by Bittner, “the role of the police is
best understood as a mechanism for the distribution of n on-negotiably coercive
force employed in accordance with the dictates of an intuitive grasp of situational
exigencies.”20
It is very important to understand that Bittner’s argument does not imply
that the police frequently use force against the public. The point is that the police
Box 2.2 Police Work and the Meaning of Justice

It may appear preposterous to assert that patrolmen have the power to determine the course
of justice; patrolmen obviously do not make the laws, nor do they set policy within a police
department. Indeed, the contemporary view holds that much of what patrolmen do is not
connected with law enforcement and justice at all; rather, they are all-around social workers
who keep the peace and provide services. Patrolmen direct traffic, manage domestic dis-
putes, administer stern warnings to wayward juveniles, find lost children, talk suicidal people
down from rooftops and perform a variety of incidental administrative chores. Such a view
obscures their coercive role and the political consequences of their decisions. Patrolmen
make most of the arrests for major felonies, all decisions to stop and interrogate, and deci-
sions not to enforce the law or take action, particularly in the context of assaults. If and when
the police deny legal protection to individuals, abridge due process, or employ distinctions
of race and class, it is patrolmen who do so. In short, patrolmen are profoundly involved
with the most significant questions facing any political order: those pertaining to justice,
order, and equity. They necessarily trade in the recurring moral antinomies that accompany
political choice, and through the exercise of discretion patrolmen define and redefine the
meaning of justice.
Source: Michael K. Brown. 1981. Working the Street: Police Discretion and the Dilemmas of
Reform. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, pp. 6–7.
“license and capability” to use force is always lurking in the background. In any
particular situation, the police may attempt to d e-escalate, counsel, refer, persuade,
cajole, convince, or con citizens into changing their behavior, and in this respect
they may seem to act as social workers. However, citizens reacting to the police
know that, in the final analysis, the police can force them to cease and desist, if
necessary by arrest; that is, police can use that ultimate power as leverage in gain-
ing compliance (see “The Coercive Nature of Policing,” Box 2.3).
Bittner’s description of the role of the police contains some other important
ingredients. “Non-negotiably coercive force” indicates that the police officer, not
the citizen, decides whether to use force, and how much force to use. Bittner’s
choice of the term “intuitive grasp” suggests that the police officer draws on com-
mon sense, judgment, and other personal resources when analyzing and acting on
a situation, rather than on rules, training, or supervision. The officer considers
“situational exigencies,” that is, the nature of the specific situation at hand. The of-
ficer does not rely on a predetermined plan of action, because no such plan could
possibly cover the variety and complexity of situations that might arise. Instead,
the officer sizes up the situation and has discretion in deciding how to handle it.
To the ordinary citizen, common sense suggests that the function of the police
may be defined very simply by reference to law enforcement and the use of force.
As we have shown, maintaining order, providing social services, and responding
to crime-related problems all account for a sizable share of police activity. Yet
when we ask what sets the police apart from other government workers, it is their
“license and capability”—their authority to enforce the law and their power to use
Box 2.3 The Coercive Nature of Policing

No one else besides police in our society has the authority to place their hands on us, re-
strain, or arrest us, without our permission. That makes police unique in our society. There
are few people who can legally touch us without our consent and force us to comply with
their orders. Police can. They can stop us, ask us questions, put their hands on us, search
us, arrest us, and put us in jail. The force they use doesn’t have to be physical (though the
threat of physical force is always there); police can ask questions of us that no one else has
the right to ask. And if we refuse to answer them we could be arrested, handcuffed, put in
the back seat of a patrol car, and taken to jail, where we are strip-searched, photographed,
fingerprinted, and placed in a cell until we can bail out. If we can’t bail out because we don’t
have the money, we will stay in jail overnight until we appear before a judge in the morning.
Source: David C. Couper. 2011. Arrested Development: A Veteran Police Chief Sounds
Off about Protest, Racism, Corruption, and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our
Nation’s Police. Indianapolis, IN: Dog Ear Publishing, p. 18.
force. As Shearing and Leon concluded, “the common sense view of the police as
law enforcers and c rime-fighters contains an important element of truth.”21
The Skill of Policing
Use of force is at the core of the police role, and as we know from the news,
about 1,000 Americans die each year in encounters with police.22 That informa-
tion, along with seemingly countless YouTube videos of police in action, creates
a perception that police use of force is more common than is actually the case.
Similarly, although authority to enforce the law is an important factor in most sit-
uations that the police handle, the police have considerable discretion in deciding
whether to invoke the law and, more often than not, they find other means for
resolving problems.
The Police Services Study that was mentioned earlier in connection with the
nature of p olice–citizen encounters also examined the specific actions that po-
lice officers took in those encounters. Remember that this study included almost
6,000 police–citizen encounters from 60 different neighborhoods. The figures be-
low indicate the proportion of all encounters in which police officers took each
kind of action. (The figures add up to more than 100% because officers often took
more than one type of action in an encounter.)
Interviewed a witness or person requesting service 57%
Interrogated a suspect 40%
Conducted a search or inspection 29%
Lectured or threatened (other than threat of force) 28%

The police invoked the law relatively rarely, making arrests in only 5% of the
encounters and issuing tickets in less than one of 10 encounters. Officers used force
or the threat of force in 14% of the encounters—most of this involved threatening
to use force, not actually using it. Bigger national studies have found that police
used physical force in about 2% of 61 million public contacts in 2018, with hand-
cuffing, pushing, and grabbing the most common forceful actions taken.23

D
e-escalation
December 19, 2020
This two-part story from Arnold Ventures, here and here, describes the development of the
ICAT (Integrating Communications, Assessment, and Tactics) model and de-escalation train-
ing. Initiated in 2014, it was controversial and strongly resisted at first, but since then has
been widely adopted and found to be effective. The t wo-part series includes testimonials from
officers in several departments who acknowledge they were skeptical at first but discovered
that the training was realistic and practical, and who have since been able to apply it in the
field in potential use of force situations.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/de-escalation/. The hyperlinks at “here” and

“here” link to https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/part-i-you-can-call-me-v-the-rise-and-promise-of-de-escalation-in-
p
olicing and https://www.arnoldventures.org/stories/part-ii-they-fought-smarter-not-harder-de-escalation-put-to-the-test.
Perhaps the most interesting characteristic of police work revealed by the Police
Services Study is the importance of communication skills. Five of the six most com-
mon actions taken by officers consisted entirely of talking and listening. These five
were interviewing, interrogating, lecturing or threatening, giving information, and
giving reassurance. It is primarily by communicating that police officers determine
what is going on in any given situation, and it is primarily through communicating
that an amicable solution is reached. Enforcing the law and using force often come
into play only after communication tactics and informal solutions prove unsuc-
cessful, although, of course, serious law violations sometimes require immediate
enforcement, and very dangerous suspects may warrant immediate use of force.
This brings us to what we think is a tremendously important synopsis of the

police role in our society:
1. The core of the police role involves law enforcement and the use of coercive
force.
2. The primary skill of policing involves effectively handling problem situations
while avoiding the use of force.
3. Skillful police officers avoid the use of force primarily through effective, crea-
tive communication.24
We give our police officers considerable authority in enforcing the law and
using force. The nature of police work demands that officers be given discretion
in exercising this authority. Good police officers understand that enforcing the
law and using force are means to an end, methods that may be used under some
circumstances for solving problems. Generally, they will search for other solutions
first, mostly involving good communication: talking and listening. These officers
know a means from an end and understand their role. As Carl Klockars put it,
“using coercive force is never a good thing for professional police officers, but
when they have used all their skills to avoid its use and something must be done,
it is necessary.”25
While on Routine Patrol
An ironic feature of police work is that officers often seem to be doing

nothing. Traditionally, officers patrolled (on foot and later in cars) for the pur-
pose of preventing crime and disorder; the line between conscientious patrolling
and just driving around (or just walking around) can be a fine one. After the
introduction of two-way radios, patrolling sometimes came to be regarded as
downtime—that is, time that officers spent waiting to be dispatched to crimes
and calls for service. Research indicated that officers varied greatly in their in-
dividual styles of patrol and that patrolling activity varied significantly by time
of day.26 Early studies suggested that 60–70% of patrol officer time was avail-
able for patrolling; that is, not taken up with handling calls or other essential
functions.27 More recently, patrolling time has reportedly been reduced in most
departments by a combination of three or four factors: (1) increased calls for ser-
vice, causing officers to become busier; (2) reduced staffing levels, due to budget
cuts and recruiting challenges; (3) increased directed activities assigned to patrol
officers by police managers; and (4) increased time committed to community
policing activities.
Just how much the nature of patrolling has changed is debatable, however. A
study in Indianapolis and St Petersburg in 1996–1997 found that regular patrol
officers spent only about 25% of their time handling calls and encounters.28 A
later study in Baltimore similarly found that patrol officers spent about 25% of
their time on dispatched calls and/or backing up other officers on calls.29 Signifi-
cantly, this study also found that a system was in place in Baltimore through which
supervisors could assign additional directed activities to patrol officers, but that
such activities accounted for a negligible portion of patrol officer time. It seems
that today, as in the past, despite measurable increases in calls for service plus sub-
stantial changes in police strategy and management, routine patrol still accounts
for a sizable part of police work.
Management Implications
Now that we have discussed some important aspects of the nature of police
work, what does it all mean for police administration? While the rest of this book
takes up that question in some detail, we should consider a few important addi-
tional issues before we attempt to answer that question.
Perhaps more than anything else, the matter of police discretion complicates
police administration. If police officers “merely” applied rules and laws in clear-
cut situations, then police management would “merely” involve teaching those
rules and laws and periodically checking to make sure that they were being ap-
plied correctly. Instead, police officers decide what action to take, based on what
Bittner calls “an intuitive grasp of situational exigencies”; they use common sense
and judgment to size up each problem situation and then choose a solution to the
problem. Although they have rules and laws to draw upon, they are frequently
expected to apply the rules and laws only as a last resort.
Adding to problems created by discretion, the situations that police are thrust
into are often tense and dangerous. Decisions often must be made quickly, with
supervisors rarely present to give advice. Moreover, people’s families and reputa-
tions, and sometimes their freedom and their very lives are at stake; in other words,
it really matters whether the officer makes a wise, intelligent, and compassionate
decision.
The importance of the decisions that police officers make necessitates the
establishment and enforcement of policies and procedures. There must be strict
guidelines governing critical operational issues, such as, for example, the use of
force (especially deadly force) and high-speed driving. At the same time, those
“situational exigencies” referred to by Bittner necessitate that officers have some
leeway to use judgment (discretion) because each situation is to some extent
unique. Part of the skill of the police administrator is in the delicate balancing of
these demands for rules versus discretion.30
The need to use discretion, coupled with the seriousness of the decisions that
police officers make, has profound implications for police selection and training.
Police agencies need to attract and hire the kinds of people who can be entrusted
with such awesome responsibilities. Common sense, maturity, good judgment,
wisdom, intelligence, communication ability, and command of emotions are as

important as physical strength and, in many instances, much more important.
Police training needs to address not only procedural rules and substantive laws,
but also when and how to use them, when and how to avoid their use, and when
and how to use force when force is appropriate. In addition, it needs to produce
officers who can “innovate, solve problems, develop alliances, negotiate, and inter-
nalize the values of community policing.”31 Training needs to focus less on memo-
rization and much more on “the particularities of police work as it is experienced
by serving officers and … analyzing that experience and making it available to
future police officers.”32
Even the best classroom training is unlikely to fully prepare a police recruit
for the wise exercise of police discretion. Not every kind of situation can be
simulated in training, nor can every nuance of police response be duplicated.
Further, some of the skills that officers might apply, especially creative commu-
nication skills, cannot be readily taught in brief classroom training sessions. For
these reasons, much of police work has traditionally been learned on the job,
usually from a skillful veteran police officer. This is one of the reasons James
Q. Wilson refers to police work as a craft rather than a profession.33 Crafts are
traditionally learned by way of apprenticeship, whereas professional preparation
primarily involves formal classroom training. Once professionals have mastered
their body of knowledge, their work is a fairly straightforward application of
that knowledge. Craftsmen, however, always have to adapt their skills to the
materials and situations with which they work, with each outcome being some-
what unpredictable and a little bit different from any other (see “Science or
Craft?” Box 2.4).
Box 2.4 Science or Craft?

[F]rom the point of view of the patrol officer, policing is more like a craft than a science,
in that officers believe that they have important lessons to learn that are not reducible to
principle and are not being taught through formal education. These lessons concern g oals—
which ones are reasonable; tactics—which ones ensure achievement of different goals in
varying circumstances; and presence—how to cultivate a career-
sustaining personality.
“Experience-tested good sense,” as one officer said, is what police must learn over the
years.
What has not been grasped, however, is that even as policing at the present time is more
craft than science, learning can take place, skills can be increased, and levels of expertise
can be discerned. Officers themselves recognize this point when they talk about how they
“learned” to become effective.
Source: David H. Bayley and Egon Bittner. 2001. “Learning the Skills of Policing.” In Roger
G. Dunham and Geoffrey P. Alpert (eds), Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Read-
ings, fourth edition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, pp. 9
6–97.
What organizational structure and management style are appropriate for

such an enterprise? If we were to judge by the typical police department, our
answer would be a hierarchical, centralized organization with an authoritarian,
punishment-oriented management style.34 Some observers doubt, however, that
this style of administration is best suited to manage workers (police officers) whose
jobs involve making momentous life-and-death discretionary decisions, in unpre-
dictable situations, without the benefit of supervisory advice,35 or workers who
have a substantial amount of free patrolling time to use (or waste) largely at their
own initiative. We agree with these observers.
As you read on in this book about principles of administration, management
functions, styles of leadership, and subsequent topics, review them against the
characteristics and peculiarities of police work as presented in this chapter.
Summary
This chapter has examined the nature of police work on the premise that po-
lice administration is different from other forms of administration, because police
work is different from other forms of work. The evolution of police work from its
early emphasis on peacekeeping to its more recent emphasis on crime fighting was
discussed, along with the debate about the extent to which modern police work
actually is crime-related. Research clearly indicates that police work involves a
substantial amount of both crime-related and order-maintenance activities, as well
as numerous traffic- and service-related functions.
The core of the police role revolves around law enforcement and the use of
force, yet police officers have great discretion in enforcing the law and only infre-
quently use force. The skill of policing is in avoiding the use of force while still ac-
complishing the goals of protecting life and property and maintaining order. The
principal means by which police officers get their jobs done without resorting to
force involves communication: talking and listening, reasoning, reassuring, lectur-
ing, persuading, convincing, and otherwise getting people to comply with the law
and reduce their disorderliness. However, because communication does not always
produce the expected or hoped-for results, when police confront “something-that-
ought-not-to-be-happening-and-about-which-something-ought-to-be-done-
N
OW,” they must be willing and able to use force when and if it is justified and
necessary.
1. The police have discretion when deciding whether to issue a ticket, whether to “check out” a suspi-
cious person, and whether to arrest. Is this a good thing? Could police discretion be eliminated? Can
it be controlled? How?
2. Do you agree with us that the media typically misrepresent the real nature of police work? What are
the consequences of this misrepresentation? How does it affect the general public’s perception of the
police? Police self-perception?
3. The police do not often use force, and yet the use of force is at the core of their role. How do you
explain this apparent contradiction? Could the police role be changed? Should it be changed?
4. Skillful police officers use communication to get cooperation from victims, witnesses, suspects, and
other citizens, thus avoiding the use of force except when absolutely necessary. By what methods
would you select the best communicators from among applicants for police jobs? How would you
teach communication skills to police recruits and develop those skills among current police officers?
5. Various authorities have classified police officers as bureaucrats, as professionals, or as practitioners
of a craft. In which category do you think police work belongs? Why?
Suggested Reading
Bittner, E. 1970. The Functions of the Police in Modern Society. Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office.
Hough, M. 2021. Good Policing: Trust, Legitimacy and Authority. Bristol: Policy Press.
Manning, P.K. 2010. Democratic Policing in a Changing World. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
Moskos, P. 2008. Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Novak, K., G. Cordner, and B. Smith. 2022. Police & Society, ninth edition. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Notes
1 H.G. Frederickson, and D.S.T. Matkin. 2007. “Public Leadership as Gardening.” In R.F. Morse,
T.F. Buss, and C.M. Kinghorn (eds), Transforming Public Leadership for the 21st Century. New
York, NY: Routledge, p. 39.
2 R.F. Lunney. 2012. Parting Shots: My Passion for Policing. Toronto: Robert Lunney Associates,
p. 158; C. Perrow. 1986. Complex Organizations: A Critical Essay, third edition. New York:
McGraw-Hill; J. Woodward. 1958. Management and Technology. London: Her Majesty’s
Stationery Office.
3 P.K. Manning. 1997. Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing, second edition. Prospect
Heights, IL: Waveland.
4 R.M. Fogelson. 1977. Big-City Police. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
5 P.K. Manning. 1978. “The Police: Mandate, Strategies and Appearances.” In P.K. Manning, and
J. Van Maanen (eds), Policing: A View from the Street. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear.
6 J.Q. Wilson. 1978. The Investigators: Managing FBI and Narcotics Agents. New York: Basic
Books.
7 P.K. Manning. 2000. “Community-Based Policing.” In G.P. Alpert, and A. Piquero (eds),
Community Policing: Contemporary Readings, second edition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland,
pp. 23–34.
8 W.R. LaFave. 1965. Arrest: The Decision to Take a Suspect into Custody. Boston, MA: Little,
Brown.
9 J.Q. Wilson. 1968. Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of Law and Order in Eight
Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 83–89.
10 S.F. Coleman. 1986. Street Cops. Salem, WI: Sheffield.
11 H. Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger; E. Linn. 2008. Arrest
Decisions: What Works for the Officer? New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
12 C.B. Klockars. 1980. “The Dirty Harry Problem.” Annals of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science 452: 33–47.
13 M. Banton. 1964. The Policeman in the Community. New York: Basic Books; J.H. Skolnick.
1966. Justice without Trial: Law Enforcement in a Democratic Society. New York: John Wiley and
Sons; Wilson. 1968. Varieties of Police Behavior; A.J. Reiss Jr. 1971. The Police and the Public.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Communities, with a new Preface. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. x.
15 G.P. Whitaker. 1982. “What Is Patrol Work?” Police Studies 4: 13–22.
16 L. Sherman. 1987. Repeat Calls to Police in Minneapolis. Washington, DC: Crime Control
Institute.
17 J.R. Greene, and C.B. Klockars. 1991. “What Police Do.” In C.B. Klockars, and S.D. Mastro-
fski (eds), Thinking about Police: Contemporary Readings, second edition. New York: McGraw-
ill, pp. 273–284.
H
18 C.D. Shearing, and J.S. Leon. 1977. “Reconsidering the Police Role: A Challenge to a Chal-
lenge of a Popular Conception.” Canadian Journal of Criminology and Corrections 19: 342.
19 E. Bittner. 1974. “Florence Nightingale in Pursuit of Willie Sutton: A Theory of the Police.” In
H. Jacob (ed.), The Potential for Reform of Criminal Justice. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, p. 30.
20 E. Bittner. 1970. The Functions of the Police in Modern Society: A Review of Background Factors,
Current Practices, and Possible Role Models. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
p. 46.
21 Shearing and Leon. 1977. “Reconsidering the Police Role.” p. 343.
22 https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/.
23 E. Harrell and E. Davis. 2020. Contacts between Police and the Public, 2018 – Statistical
Tables. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Online at https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/
pub/pdf/cbpp18st.pdf.
24 C.B. Klockars. 1985. The Idea of Police. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications; Coleman.
1986. Street Cops; W.K. Muir, Jr. 1977. Police: Streetcorner Politicians. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press; Bittner. 1970. Functions of the Police.
25 C.B. Klockars. 1983. “Policing Everyday Life.” In C.B. Klockars (ed.), Thinking about Police:
Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 231.
26 G.W. Cordner. 1982. “While on Routine Patrol …: What the Police Do When They’re Not
Doing Anything.” American Journal of Police 1, no. 2: 94–112.
27 Cordner. 1982. “While on Routine Patrol”; G.L. Kelling, T. Pate, D. Dieckman, and C.E.
Brown. 1974. The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment: A Summary Report. Washington,
DC: Police Foundation.
28 R.B. Parks, S.D. Mastrofski, C. DeJong, and M.K. Gray. 1999. “How Officers Spend Their
Time with the Community.” Justice Quarterly 16, no. 3: 497.
29 C.N. Famega, J. Frank, and L. Mazerolle. 2005. “Managing Police Patrol Time: The Role of
Supervisor Directives.” Justice Quarterly 22, no. 4: 549.
30 G.P. Alpert, and W.C. Smith. 1996. “Developing Police Policy: An Evaluation of the Control
Principle.” In G.W. Cordner, and D.J. Kenney (eds), Managing Police Organizations. Cincin-
nati, OH: Anderson, pp. 111–126; G.W. Cordner. 1989. “Written Rules and Regulations: Are
They Necessary?” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 58, no. 7: 17–21.
31 F. Himelfarb. 1997. “RCMP Learning and Renewal: Building on Strengths.” In Q.C. Thurman,
and E.F. McGarrell (eds), Community Policing in a Rural Setting. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson,
p. 34.
32 D.H. Bayley, and E. Bittner. 2001. “Learning the Skills of Policing.” In R.G. Dunham and G.P.
Alpert (eds), Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings, fourth edition. Prospect Heights,
IL: Waveland, p. 83.
33 J.Q. Wilson. 1968. “Dilemmas of Police Administration.” Public Administration Review 28:
407–417.
34 J.A. Schafer, M.E. Buerger, R.W. Myers, C.J. Jensen III, and B.H. Levin. 2012. The Future
of Policing: A Practical Guide for Police Managers and Leaders. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press,
pp. 11–16.
35 T.J. Cowper. 2000. “The Myth of the ‘Military Model’ of Leadership in Law Enforcement.”
Police Quarterly 3, no. 3: 228–246.
CHAPTER 3 Police Goals and
Systems
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify three primary police goals.

• Identify seven police objectives.
• Explain the importance of legality, equity, accountability, and transparency in guiding police
actions and decisions.
• Identify the three primary characteristics of systems.
• Define feedback, explain its role in differentiating between o pen-loop and closed-loop sys-
tems, and explain the difference between open and closed systems.
One of the fundamental themes in this book is the systems approach to po-
lice administration. Basically, this approach emphasizes the interrelatedness that
characterizes modern society and the necessity of viewing people, organizations,
and processes as parts of larger systems. As the forces of change, complexity, and
interdependence in our society continue to grow stronger, the need for the systems
approach to organizing and managing increases.
Any system, especially an organizational system, is created and maintained for
a reason—to accomplish some kind of purpose. This chapter begins by discussing
the purposes of police organizations—their missions, goals, and objectives—and
then explains why we believe the systems approach to police administration is an
extremely useful perspective from which to manage a police department. We hope
this discussion will give you a useful framework for reading and thinking about
the rest of the book, which deals with the behavior, processes, and organization
involved in police administration.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-4
3 Police Goals and Systems 45
The Purposes of the Police
Organizations, including police departments, by their nature exist for a pur-

pose. Schools have as their purpose the education of students; hospitals, the treat-
ment of the sick and injured. The purpose of a private company in a capitalistic
economic system is to make money for its owners. In a socialistic system, the same
company’s purpose might be to provide employment or some kind of product or
service that benefits the collective good.
In actuality, of course, most organizations have multiple purposes. The most
general statement of an organization’s purpose is often called its mission. Slightly
more specific purposes are termed goals; even more precise purposes are labeled
objectives. These purposes should serve to guide the development of strategies,
tactics, programs, tasks, policies, procedures, and rules, all of which, in turn, guide
the behavior of members of the organization, as shown in Figure 3.1.
When this process works from left to right, as indicated by the arrows in
Figure 3.1, management is following a rational and proactive path. If, on the other
hand, the process works from right to left, management tends to be c risis-oriented
and reactive. It is crucially important for any organization’s executives to contin-
uously focus attention on the purposes of the enterprise and to design strategies
and tasks that will accomplish those purposes—this is what is meant by the phrase
“keep your eyes on the prize.” However, organizational strategies and tasks are
often undertaken out of tradition or because they offer the path of least resistance.
This tendency is common and must be resisted.
Another frequent source of misdirection arises because of the difference be-
tween official and unofficial (or explicit and implicit) purposes. For example, while
the avowed purposes of a university might be the education of students and the
production of new knowledge, the actual purpose might seem to be the accumula-
tion of the maximum number of federal grants and contracts. Similarly, a hospital
might officially exist for the purpose of treating the sick and injured but, in fact, it
might serve primarily to provide interesting and profitable work for surgeons and
other medical specialists.
We point out this distinction between official and unofficial purposes as a
kind of disclaimer. On the pages that follow, we present and discuss the mis-
sion, goals, and objectives of p olicing—these are the official purposes of the
police, what police departments and police officers are supposed to be trying
Figure 3.1
The Relationship between Overall Mission and Specific Organizational Behavior
Box 3.1 Values in Policing

All organizations have values. One can see these values expressed through the actions
of the o rganization—the things that are taken seriously and the things that are rejected as
irrelevant, inappropriate, or dangerous. Jokes, solemn understandings, and internal expla-
nations for actions also express values.
Police departments are powerfully influenced by their values. The problem is that police
departments, like many organizations, are guided by implicit values that are often at odds
with explicit values. This breeds confusion, distrust, and cynicism rather than clarity, com-
mitment, and high morale.
Source: Robert Wasserman and Mark H. Moore. 1988. “Values in Policing.” In

Perspectives on Policing No. 8. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, p
. 1.
to achieve. Needless to say, many police agencies and officers are also guided
by unofficial purposes. Such unofficial purposes can be as mundane as simply
avoiding hard work, or as deviant and dangerous as making life miserable for
minorities, creating dossiers on political activists, meting out “street justice,” or
collecting graft and corruption.1 Unofficial purposes are as inevitable in police
departments as in any other kind of organization. It is the police executive’s re-
sponsibility to ensure that official purposes remain supreme and that unofficial
purposes do not distract the organization from pursuing its mission and goals
(see “Values in Policing,” Box 3.1). This is a very important responsibility pre-
cisely because the official purposes of the police are so important—the police
are supposed to protect individuals and society from harm and help achieve
“justice for all.”
The Police Mission

The most general statement of the purpose of a police organization is usually
its mission.2 The mission statement typically expresses the most important values
that guide the department and the overall philosophy of the agency. The role
of the mission statement is to “focus on the purpose of the organization, to call
attention to what is important, and to set organizational goals to align practices
with values.”3
Some police departments rely on very succinct mission statements such as “To
Serve and Protect,” while others prefer lengthier and more elaborate statements.
Most agencies do attempt to keep their mission statements reasonably brief so that
officers can remember and be guided by them. There is no reason to expect or
demand that all police agencies adopt the same formal mission statement: the core
essence of policing may be constant throughout the country, but each community
has different needs, and each department has different capabilities.4 Three sample
mission statements are presented below:
Portland, Oregon—The mission of the Portland Police Bureau is to reduce

crime and the fear of crime by working with all citizens to preserve life, maintain
human rights, protect property, and promote individual responsibility and com-
munity commitment.5
Houston, T exas—The mission of the Houston Police Department is to en-
hance the quality of life in the City of Houston by working cooperatively with
the public and within the framework of the US Constitution to enforce the laws,
preserve the peace, reduce fear and provide for a safe environment.6
Madison, Wisconsin—We, the members of the Madison Police Department,
are committed to providing h igh-quality police services that are accessible to all
members of the community. We believe in the dignity of all people and respect
individual and constitutional rights in fulfilling this mission.7
These mission statements are not presented as ideal types, although they have
much to recommend them. Rather, they are meant to illustrate the kinds of state-
ments that police departments are adopting today to express their missions. For
the benefit of both police employees and citizens, each police agency should care-
fully prepare its own mission statement that describes its unique role.
Police Goals and Objectives

An organization’s goals and objectives, although more specific, should be con-
sistent with its mission and contribute to the accomplishment of its overall pur-
pose. The number and variety of goals and objectives that a police department
could adopt are almost limitless. In this chapter, we simply want to highlight three
primary goals that are universally applicable to all police departments.
The three primary goals of any police department are:
1. Protecting life;
2. Protecting property;
3. Maintaining order.
Protecting life, protecting property, and maintaining order are primary police
goals, with protecting life clearly the single most important goal even among these
three. A police department exists to guarantee to its residents and visitors that or-
der will be maintained in society and that their lives and property will be protected
by law. People look to the police for assistance in guarding themselves against
those who would disrupt and disturb their peace, violate their freedoms, threaten
their existence, and steal or destroy their property. All persons have the right to
expect that their lives and property will be protected and that the community in
which they live will be peaceful.
The right to peace and protection is a responsibility of government. The po-
lice department is the primary branch of government to which this responsibility
Box 3.2 Goals and Objectives

Standard 15.2.1 A written directive requires the formulation and annual updating of written
goals and objectives for the agency and for each major organizational component within the
agency. Established goals and objectives are made available to all agency personnel.
Source: Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies: The Standards Manual for the CALEA
Law Enforcement Accreditation Program, sixth edition, as amended. 2022. Gainesville, VA:
Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc.
is assigned. Therefore, it naturally follows that the maintenance of order and the
protection of life and property are primary goals of any police department. This
means that police departments must direct their energies and activities toward the
accomplishment of these primary goals. To do less than this would be to neglect
government’s responsibility to the citizens and the taxpayers of the community.
See “Goals and Objectives,” Box 3.2.
When it comes to objectives, which are more specific than goals, there is
more room for variation across different police agencies. One well-recognized
set of seven police objectives, comprising what might be called the “bottom
line” of policing, is presented below.8 It seems apparent that all seven of these
objectives could apply to every police agency—what might differ are the
priorities that different agencies give to each objective. The seven objectives
are:
1. Preventing crime;
2. Solving crime;
3. Making public spaces safe and orderly;
4. Making people feel safe;
5. Providing quality services;
6. Using force and authority fairly and effectively;
7. Using resources fairly and efficiently.
Preventing Crime
A key objective of the police is to prevent crime. When assaults, shootings,
robberies, burglaries, thefts, stalking, human trafficking, and other crimes occur,
lives and property are put at risk and order is disrupted. The costs of crime, both
personal and financial, are very real. Keeping those harmful things from happen-
ing in the first place is the best possible outcome for potential victims and for
society as a whole.
Solving Crime
A second important objective of the police is solving crime. When prevention
fails and crimes occur, society relies on police to figure out what happened and
to identify and arrest those responsible. When this occurs, victims have a better
chance of recovering, financially or emotionally, and often can be protected from
being re-victimized. Also, society sees that justice is done, and others may be de-
terred from committing similar crimes. Otherwise, if crimes are not solved by
police, people lose confidence in their government and may be tempted to take
matters into their own hands, which further threatens both public safety and the
rule of law.
Making Public Spaces Safe and Orderly

Another police objective is to keep things safe and orderly in the streets, on the
sidewalks, in parks, and in other public places. An important aspect of ensuring
safety in these spaces is traffic s afety—every year, traffic crashes account for more
deaths and injuries in the United States than does crime. Promoting orderliness in
public spaces includes the routine challenge of controlling the kinds of disorderly
conduct and disturbances of the peace that frighten people and keep them from
walking in their neighborhoods, using parks, shopping, and other everyday activ-
ities. Maintaining order also includes the more nonroutine challenges created by
crowds, protests, and civil unrest.
Making People Feel Safe

In addition to objectives directly related to protecting life and property and
maintaining order, the police also have the objective of making people feel safe.
Why is this important? Many studies have shown that because of their fear of crime,
people often stay home, avoid downtown areas, and greatly restrict their children’s
activities. Their quality of life is substantially reduced because they do not feel
safe.9 Up to a point, these feelings may be based on real danger, in which case such
precautions are wise and rational. Often, however, these fears far exceed the real
danger—and when they do, people suffer unnecessarily, as do their communities.
Thus, in addition to efforts to prevent and control crime and other threatening
behavior, police should take steps to create and maintain a well-informed sense of
safety and security in the community. Creating such a feeling of security can reap
further dividends if residents thereby increase their use of, and surveillance over,
the community’s sidewalks, streets, parks, and other common areas.
Providing Quality Services

Because they are a reliable government agency that is open 24/7/365, police
are inevitably asked to provide a variety of services that might seem outside their
core mission. Sometimes the connection is close, such as when police check on
homeless people on cold nights, making sure they are safe and trying to steer them
to shelters. The same is true when police are called to mediate conflicts between
family members, neighbors, or landlords and tenants—successful conflict reso-
lution might prevent a crime from occurring. Likewise, when police search for
missing children, finding them quickly might protect them from harm. When
motorists call police because they have locked their keys in their car, though, or
when a resident calls for help getting a cat out of a tree, the connection to the
police mission and goals is weaker. Within limits (which certainly vary from place
to place), police are public servants and have a responsibility to provide the best
services they can.

Stabilization Center as Jail/Hospital Alternative
January 31, 2022
Spokane, Washington opened a stabilization center in September as an alternative to jail or the
emergency room for people experiencing crises related to mental health or substance disorders,
as reported here. The facility is open 24/7 and staffed by clinicians. Entering and staying is
voluntary. The center has a 48-bed capacity although staffing, due to COVID, has kept them
at about 60% of capacity so far. Financing is aided by Medicare and Medicaid, which will
cover stays of up to two weeks. Police support the diversion o ption—
A lot of times, the jails are full. The emergency rooms are full. It takes law enforcement a
long time to sit in the waiting rooms, sometimes hours, and having a facility like this is a
huge benefit to the community to where it saves officers time. It’s a warm, safe environ-
ment for individuals experiencing crisis.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2022/01/31/stabilization-center-as-jail-hospital-

alternative/. The hyperlink at “reported here” links to https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/jan/23/a-jail-
diversion-unit-opened-in-spokane-three-mont/.
Using Force and Authority Fairly and Effectively

Another objective in the policing bottom line is to use force and authority
fairly and effectively. This objective encapsulates constitutional policing, fair and
impartial policing, and procedural justice. It requires police to follow the law,
avoid bias, listen carefully to people, explain their actions, and demonstrate trust-
worthiness in their interactions with the public, especially when stopping, ques-
tioning, searching, arresting, and using force. It also requires that when using force
and authority is necessary, police will do so effectively, in order to protect victims
and otherwise promote public safety.
Using Resources Fairly and Efficiently

This objective follows from the fact that the police are a public agency sup-
ported by tax dollars. It is incumbent on any public agency to use its financial
resources wisely, avoiding both waste and corruption. In the case of police, if the
organization is not operating efficiently then resources are not available to do the
best possible job of preventing crime, solving crime, making public spaces safe and
orderly, making people feel safe, and providing quality services. Fairness in using
resources is equally critical. If police resources are not allocated where they are
most needed, some people and neighborhoods will suffer at the expense of others.
Important Values
Police work and police administration should be guided by the primary goals
and objectives described above, as well as by a statement of the overall mission of
the police department. The activities of police officers and police administrators
should contribute either directly or indirectly to the attainment of the organiza-
tion’s mission, goals, and objectives. Whenever it is found that resources are being
expended or efforts are being undertaken that are not connected to the depart-
ment’s mission, goals, and objectives, hard questions should be asked, because
those resources and efforts may not be contributing to the true effectiveness of the
agency.
Many of the most important values that should guide policing are explicitly
or implicitly expressed in the police organization’s mission, goals, and objectives.
Nevertheless, many police departments today also identify important values that
they want to serve as guides for the actions taken by police officers in the per-
formance of their duties.10 For example, the Portland Police Bureau highlights
Integrity, Compassion, Accountability, Respect, Excellence, and Service.11 The
Los Angeles Police Department refers to the core values of Service to our com-
munities, Reverence for the law, Commitment to leadership, Integrity in all we
say and do, Respect for people, and Quality through continuous improvement.12
Two important values, efficiency and effectiveness, are embedded in the seven
“bottom line” police objectives identified above. Four other values that we think deserve
special emphasis at this point are legality, equity, accountability, and transparency.
Police officers and administrators must exercise great care in ensuring the
legality of their actions. This can be difficult, given the incredible maze of crimi-
nal and civil law within which the police operate, as well as the frequent pressures
from political leaders and the public to ignore the law in order to accomplish an
objective more quickly or conveniently. In the long run, however, society and the
police are best served when the police carefully operate within the law. Symboli-
cally, as well, it is important that those who enforce the law are seen to abide by it.
It is also quite important that police actions be fair and that police services be
distributed in an equitable manner. Equity can be difficult to prove, of course, and
to some extent it is subjective. It does not necessarily follow that all people or all
neighborhoods must be treated equally, for example—that might require officers to

treat armed felons and lost children exactly the same, or require police departments
to devote the same amount of attention to high-crime and c rime-free neighborhoods.
Instead, equity requires that all actions be guided by principles of fairness so that
decisions are equitable in light of the circumstances in each case. In addition, equity
demands that actions taken in one instance be reasonable in comparison to actions
taken in other instances.
In our constitutional and democratic system of government, the ultimate ac-
countability of the police to the courts, political leaders, and the public must be
unchallenged. In the short run, as discussed above with regard to legality, the po-
lice may sometimes need to resist improper external pressures. In the end, though,
the police must answer for their actions and decisions. After all, the police are
merely government officials appointed to carry out certain functions. They are not
elected by the people or appointed for life, nor do they have the final authority of
the judiciary or the people. The people may entrust the responsibility for policing
to appointed officers and administrators and delegate substantial and awesome
authority to them but, in a constitutional democracy, final authority for police
matters remains with the courts and the people.
This can sometimes be a bitter pill to swallow, especially if judges and citizens
seem to lack common sense and basic intelligence with regard to crime problems
and police issues. Police officers and administrators would do well, though, to ask
themselves whether they would really rather live in a society in which the police
were not accountable for their use of power and authority. Such societies exist, and
most of their citizens seem mainly interested in escaping to countries with more
freedom and more control over their police. Police officials would also do well to
take every opportunity to inform and educate the public about crime and police
issues, and then to develop a healthy trust and respect for the public’s long-term
reasonableness and good sense.

Getting the Facts Out Quickly
September 26, 2018
This article reports an incident in Prince George’s County, Maryland of a SWAT raid at a
wrong apartment, resulting in two officers being shot (not critically) by the startled resident
and one round being fired by police. Noteworthy is that the police chief held a full press confer-
ence in less than 24 hours, providing the facts, apologizing for the bungled operation, halting
serving search warrants until the cause of the mistake is determined, and announcing that the
resident would not be charged. The reporter comments on the rarity of such quick and full
disclosure in the aftermath of a controversial incident.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/getting-the-facts-out-quickly/. The hyper-

link at “This article” links to https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2018/09/24/prince-georges-police-chief-does-
amazing-thing-provides-facts-apologizes-mistake-almost-immediately/.
Informing and educating the public contributes to transparency. In a free

and open society, the people have the right to know what their government is
doing and why. This applies to the police just as much as to the mayor, the city
council, the school system, and other parts of the government. It carries special
significance for police since they exercise power and authority granted to them
by the people. Naturally, police departments do sometimes have to operate clan-
destinely and cannot always release all information publicly. As a general rule,
however, transparency and openness are expected. One modern example is quicker
and more thorough release of information following police use of deadly force.
Another is public posting of a police department’s policies for all to see.13
The Systems Concept
Having identified the most important goals, objectives, and values of policing,
we can now say that the business of police administration is figuring out how to
design and operate a police organization so that it most effectively protects lives,
protects property, maintains order, and achieves the additional and more specific
objectives of policing, in a manner that is consistent with such important values
as legality, equity, accountability, and transparency. The rest of this text is about
how to do this.
First, in this chapter we want to introduce the systems approach, because
“the adoption of systems principles results in a superior model of policing that
eclipses conventional management practice in every respect.”14 Systems thinking
should permeate every aspect of police administration because a police department
is a kind of system, one that is comprised of component parts that interact with
and affect each other. Making the component parts and the agency as a whole
work most effectively requires an approach that recognizes the organization as a
system and focuses on its continuous improvement.
A system is “a network of interdependent components that work together to
try to accomplish the aim of the system.”15 All things are systems. The more parts
and functions they have, the more complicated they are. For example, an automo-
bile engine is a system. Because it has more parts that interact and are interdepend-
ent, a jet engine is more complicated than an automobile engine. Almost anything
you can think of is a system. The human body, General Motors, American Airlines,
the government of South Korea, Indiana University, the Hilton Hotel chain, the
National Broadcasting Company, McDonald’s restaurants, the Knights of Colum-
bus, the Kentucky Derby, the Oshkosh Public Library, the Methodist Church, and
the New York City Police Department are all systems. There are records systems,
thoroughbred handicapping systems, healthcare systems, and global economic
systems.
Because systems imply interaction or interdependence between or among two
or more objects or functions, systems have subsystems. The United States is a sys-
tem made up of 50 subsystems (i.e., states). Each of the states is also an individual
system made of subsystems (counties, cities, towns, and villages), which may also
be viewed as separate systems. Each of these units of government has subsystems:
the legislative, executive, and judicial branches. The executive branch, when looked
upon as a system, has several subsystems (e.g., the public works department, the
water department, the sewer department, the recreation department, the school
department, the health department, the fire department, and the police depart-
ment). Each of these subsystems can also be studied as an individual system. The
police department, for example, is a system made up of bureaus, divisions, units,
squads, teams, shifts, and individual employees. These subsystems interact and are
interdependent. They are established to help the department meet its goals and
objectives, just as the department is established to meet the goals and objectives of
the executive branch of government.
This explanation of the systems concept is an oversimplification, of course.
When one considers that the subsystems of a police department are themselves
systems made up of both human and inanimate components (people, rules, regu-
lations, policies, desks, chairs, radios, telephones, police cars, chemical sprays, jail
cells, records, computers, Breathalyzers, laboratories, booking desks, radar guns,
first aid kits, cutting tools, cameras, helicopters, resuscitators, and much more),
it becomes clear that police systems are extremely complex and involved. A single
change in any one factor of the system will bring about changes in other factors.
An action taken by an individual in the system will inevitably result in reactions by
other individuals. Systems, therefore, are always changing. It is vital to the stability
of any system that any changes within it contribute to its capabilities to meet its
goals and objectives.
In any system, such as a police department, in which people are assigned tasks
within subsystems of the parent system, it must be recognized that these people, as
individuals, are themselves also subsystems of the parent system. This complicates
matters, because people must be dealt with not only as workers in subsystems,
such as operations bureaus, detective divisions, and drug units, but also as indi-
viduals having different backgrounds, ideals, religious beliefs, values, philosophies,
viewpoints, tolerances, and educations. Each individual, therefore, must be looked
upon as a system. For example, think of yourself as a system. How you exercise
and what you eat affects your body’s physiological subsystems. You are also part
of larger systems: your family, your church, the organization for which you work,
the college or university you attend, your government, and your neighborhood.
Whatever you do affects one or more of your subsystems or parent systems.
Consider the chain reaction of processes that take place in your body when
you eat food, have three alcoholic drinks, or run a mile. Consider the impact on
your family if you were to be arrested, break your back in an automobile accident,
or flunk out of college. What you do as a system has a tremendous impact on one
or more of your parent systems as well as your subsystems. In addition, human
beings have their own goals and objectives, can be unpredictable, and therefore,
tend to complicate systems in ways that make managing those systems especially
demanding, difficult, and challenging.
Even the best systems builders make mistakes, often because they fail to an-
ticipate all the consequences of their actions and fail to appreciate the interde-
pendencies among system components. Consider the case of Montana ranchers
who, having been convinced that coyotes were menacing their grazing livestock,
set out to destroy the animals by poisoning them. However, aside from destroying
cattle and sheep, the coyotes were making contributions to the balance of nature,
unbeknownst to the ranchers, by keeping down the gopher population. Once
the coyotes were destroyed, the number of gophers on the ranches increased as-
tronomically. Herds of gophers burrowed all through the ranchers’ grazing land,
which then became overgrown with sagebrush. Because grazing livestock do not
eat sagebrush, their food supply was diminished significantly, and they suffered
accordingly, as did the ranchers.16
We may conclude that systems have three primary characteristics:
1. They are comprised of subsystems that may be looked upon as systems in and
of themselves.
2. They are made up of factors that interact and/or are interdependent.
3. They are established for the purpose of meeting specific goals and objectives.
Inputs, Processes, Outputs, and Feedback

In addition to their primary characteristics, systems can also be described in
terms of what they do. For example, many green plants take sunlight and wa-
ter (inputs), perform photosynthesis (process), and produce oxygen and food
(output). Similarly, a construction company takes various inputs (labor, lumber,
brick, cement, and nails), processes them (carpentry and masonry), and produces
an output (a house).
Besides inputs, processes, and outputs, most systems are also characterized by
feedback. Feedback may be described as an input about how the output is doing.
A foreman who criticizes a mason for bricking over a window space is delivering
feedback (input) about the mason’s results (output). Similarly, when a professor
grades an examination and gives it back to a student, the professor is providing the
student with information or feedback (input) about the quality of the student’s
work (output).
This process of feedback is essential to the proper functioning of any system.
Without feedback, the system cannot know whether its outputs are good or bad,
satisfactory or unsatisfactory, productive or unproductive. When a system contin-
ues to perform poorly, it must be assumed that feedback is not being provided to
those in control, or it is being ignored.
Feedback is what differentiates a c losed-loop system from an open-loop sys-
tem. In an open-loop system, no provision is made for feedback. The system
functions in a one-way, cause-and-effect relationship, as shown in Figure 3.2. In a
closed-loop system, by contrast, provision is made for feedback (see Figure 3.3). In
Figure 3.2
Open-Loop System
Figure 3.3
Closed-Loop System
other words, a c losed-loop system provides for the introduction of information

about how well or how poorly the system is working, information that can be used
to correct problems and fine-tune performance.
Types of Systems
Any system can be described in terms of the interrelatedness and interdepend-
ence of its subsystems; its functions of inputs, processes, and output; and whether
it provides for feedback (closed-loop system) or does not (open-loop system). In
addition to varying in these characteristics, systems differ in their interaction with
the outside world, referred to as their environment.17
An open system is in contact with its environment; input and output are
not restricted to factors directly related to the process involved. (Some additional
characteristics of open systems are described in “Principles of Open Systems,”
Box 3.3.) For example, in the construction illustration cited above, the weather,
an external input, can either help or hinder the process, but it cannot be easily
controlled. Similarly, the output of the construction process, the house, might af-
fect drainage in the area, the habitat of wildlife, or the social relationships of other
people living in the neighborhood.
A closed system, by contrast, is not influenced by its environment, or at least
is influenced very little. The solar system, which is a static structure in an ordered
universe, is a good example of a closed system. Typhoons, atomic explosions, and
intrusions by humans do not change its processes and outputs, although an inter-
galactic catastrophe might. Many machines, such as a wristwatch, are essentially
closed systems, although most would certainly be affected by extreme events. If
you have an old-fashioned watch with a winding stem, though, it is an example
of an open system. Without external input (winding), it will run down and stop
working.
It is very important to recognize that police organizations are open s ystems—
obviously, they affect the outside world and are affected by it. This is true not
Box 3.3 Principles of Open Systems

Homeostasis: an open system seeks a steady state through self- regulation based on
feedback.
Negative entropy: an open system sustains itself by importing energy from its environment.
Requisite variety: the internal regulatory mechanisms of an open system must be as diverse
as the environment with which it is trying to deal.
Equifinality: in an open system there may be many different ways of achieving any particular
goal.
System evolution: the capacity of an open system to evolve depends on an ability to move
to more complex forms of differentiation and integration.
Source: Adapted from Gareth Morgan. 2007. Images of Organization, updated edition.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 40–41.
only at the organizational level, but also because police agencies are made up of
people who themselves, individually, are responsive to and influenced by their
environments.
Organizations as Systems
In 1956, Kenneth Boulding identified nine different levels of systems.18 As
adapted from his research, the nine levels, in order of their increasing complexity, are:
1. Static systems—frameworks;
2. Simple dynamic systems—machines;
3. Cybernetic systems—thermostats;
4. Self-perpetuating systems—cells;
5. Genetic systems—plants;
6. Animal systems—animals;
7. Human systems—people;
8. Social systems—organizations;
9. Transcendental systems—unknowns.
Boulding maintained that beyond the second level we had little understand-
ing of what really goes on in systems. Since his day, however, much has been
learned about the third and fourth levels—cancer research, for example, is at the
fourth level, while genome research going on today promises to advance our un-
derstanding of levels 5, 6, and even 7.
From a systems standpoint, however, tackling police administration is at level

8, four levels more complex than trying to understand and control cancer. This
is not to say that it is impossible, but we should have a healthy respect for all of
the interrelationships and factors that complicate organizations as systems. That
said, systems theory “represents an analytical framework believed to be the most
effective for adequately describing what an organization is, how it functions and
how it should function.”19
The Police Organization as a System
Police departments are systems no more or less complex than other organ-
izational systems. Police organizations consist of numerous involved, interde-
pendent subsystems. The investigations division, or subsystem, for example,
depends on the records division for arrest records, the patrol division for backup,
the intelligence division for information on organized crime, the laboratory for
scientific investigative assistance, the property unit for storage of evidence, the
detention unit for the holding of prisoners, the maintenance division for ser-
vicing its vehicles, the communications division for radio contact, the supply
unit for weapons and ammunition, the training division to keep up with the
latest investigative techniques, the planning division to isolate high-crime ar-
eas, and the payroll unit to distribute paychecks. The work of the detectives
who are assigned to the investigations division is made much more difficult,
and sometimes impossible, when one or more of these other divisions performs
poorly or works in a way that is inconsistent with the goals and objectives of the
organization.
The subsystems of police organizations may be studied from three different
perspectives:
1. The traditional, structural perspective;

2. The human perspective;
3. The strategic management perspective.
The traditional, structural perspective sees the organization from the top,
looking down. The subsystems in this perspective are those found on the tra-
ditional organization chart: for example, the patrol division, the investigations
division, the traffic division, the communications division, and all the other com-
ponent parts of the organization. This perspective is also quite concerned with
principles of administration and functions of management.
The human perspective views the organization from the bottom, looking up.
Some subsystems involved in this perspective are leadership, individuals and their
various characteristics (such as attitudes and motivation), and groups of officers,
including the police subculture.
The strategic management perspective focuses more on the technology of

the organization (its techniques for performing basic functions) and its connection
to the attainment of goals and objectives. In some ways, this perspective takes a
view of the organization from the side, looking across. Its subsystems are the flow
of information, orders, and communications, and the methods used to perform
and process the organization’s work.
All three perspectives are important. They are, in effect, vantage points from
which to examine the police organization. This text utilizes all three of these per-
spectives in order to provide the most comprehensive and thorough understanding
of police organizations possible.
As with other systems, police organizations can be discussed in terms of in-
puts, processes, and outputs. Inputs include police officers, civilian personnel,
equipment (such as patrol cars and two-way radios), rules and regulations, the law,
and community values.
Outputs consist largely of organizational products intended to contribute to
attaining goals and objectives. These include arrests, tickets, prosecutions, prob-
lems identified, conflicts resolved, and services delivered. The processes involved
in police organizations are numerous and relate directly to particular inputs, inas-
much as each input must be processed. Consider, if you will, the single input of
police officers. Processing includes such activities as recruiting, selecting, training,
equipping, assigning, supervising, paying, and evaluating.
Unfortunately, many police departments fail to recognize one of the most
important aspects of the systems approach to police organizations: feedback. For
example, police chiefs occasionally initiate a new policy. If they make no effort to
determine whether their officers understand the new policy, and if they fail to as-
certain whether their officers are following it as a guideline in their work, they lack
feedback as to how their input (the new policy) is actually being used (process)
and whether it is having the desired result (output). Lack of feedback within an or-
ganization results in lack of organizational control. If chiefs fail to make provision
for feedback, they will soon lose control over their entire organization. Feedback
is that important.
Police management consultants have found that many police departments
lack regular feedback and therefore are operating as o pen-loop systems character-
ized by a one-way cause-and-effect relationship. The effective delivery of police
services (output) demands, however, that police organizations be administered on
a closed-loop basis.
A specific example of input, process, output, and feedback may help to illus-
trate. Suppose that a police communications division receives a call from a citizen
that a fight is in progress at Joe’s Bar & Grill. The call from the citizen is the input.
The process is the communications division’s receiving and evaluating the call and
assigning one or more officers to service the complaint. The output is the arrival of
the officer or officers at the scene and the actions they take to break up the fight.
The feedback is the information the communications division receives about the
disposition of the matter: there is no fight in progress at Joe’s; there never was a
Figure 3.4
A Police Action from a Systems Perspective
fight; more help is needed to break up the fight; the fight has been broken up; or
an arrest has been made. Figure 3.4 shows this sequence of events from a systems
perspective.
This one illustration emphasizes the importance of feedback. Without feed-
back, the communications division would have no way of knowing if the process-
ing of the call was correct, and no information would be available as to whether
the output was appropriate. If many people had been injured in the fight, and
if the communications division sent only one car to service the call, the process
involved in evaluating calls of this nature should perhaps be modified through the
introduction of new or different input into the system.
It is essential that the output (what happens at the scene) be described to
the communications division (feedback) for consideration and study. It might
be determined that the communications division failed to obtain sufficient in-
formation from the person who reported the fight. An effort could then be
made to develop better procedures by which information is taken from people
who register complaints over the telephone, thus improving input. It is through
feedback that corrective action is taken, thus providing more effective output in
the future.
As another example, consider police training. Among the inputs are instruc-
tors, lesson plans, and facilities. The process is the delivery of the training to of-
ficers who attend. Outputs include learning and skill development. If it stops
there, without feedback, it remains unknown whether officers learned anything,
whether their skills improved, whether the training actually met their real needs,
and whether there was any impact on their subsequent behavior out in the field.
Since the purpose of training is to prepare officers to perform their jobs according
to the department’s standards and policies, feedback is absolutely critical. Without
it, the organization is just hoping that the training worked. With feedback, the
organization can know whether it worked, and what gaps still remain to be filled
by later training.
In summary, police organizations are open systems in constant contact with

their environments. They can be studied from structural, human, and strategic
management perspectives, and they have inputs, processes, and outputs that can
be identified. Like many other organizations serving the public, police organiza-
tions have a disturbing tendency to disregard the importance of feedback. In order
to deliver services effectively, they must be constructed as closed-loop systems.
Police organizations also have numerous subsystems that interact and are interde-
pendent. These are discussed in detail in Chapter 4.
The Police in the Larger System

Earlier in this chapter we mentioned that police systems are subsystems of the
executive branch of government. Equally important is the fact that police systems
are also subsystems of the criminal justice system, which also has two other major
subsystems: the courts and corrections. The fact that these three subsystems have
often failed to consider their interdependence has been widely noted, even though
each affects the others in a profound way.
For example, a backlog of cases in the courts contributes significantly to
increased police problems: serious offenders who are not held in jail because
so many others are already there awaiting trial; physical evidence that must be
stored for longer periods; witnesses whose memories fade, thus weakening cases;
victims who become increasingly frustrated; and defendants who are allowed to
plea bargain to greatly reduced charges and light sentences in order to dispose of
their cases. Jail and prison overcrowding forces the courts to resort more readily
to the use of probation, home detention, and other remedies when incarceration
would be more appropriate. Similarly, police departments that are particularly
successful in apprehending drug offenders or zealously enforcing minor traffic
offenses are likely to overburden the courts and place severe strains on correc-
tional systems, which are already bulging at the seams with clientele they are
incapable of servicing properly. The courts respond by further delaying cases,
and correctional systems respond by increasing the use of parole to make room
for newly sentenced offenders. The assembly line and revolving door images fit
nicely.
Clearly, police departments need to become more adept at collaborating
with their fellow components of the criminal justice system, in order for the
entire system to function more effectively. The development of community po-
licing in recent years has encouraged some progress in this direction. In part,
this has occurred because collaboration with all kinds of public and private or-
ganizations is seen as an important aspect of community policing.20 In addi-
tion, police officers and police departments have discovered that working more
closely with juvenile services, probation, parole, community courts, drug courts,
pretrial release, and other elements of the criminal justice system can contribute
substantially to problem solving and crime control in specific neighborhoods
and communities.21
Police departments are parts of other systems as well—for example, they are
parts of the mental health, social services, and public safety systems. The latter
system is a particularly important arena for police organizations, as it overlaps
with the criminal justice system, but also includes fire protection and emergency
medical agencies, plus, under certain circumstances, the military. Also, in recent
decades, the line between public and private responsibilities for, and authority
over, safety, security, and crime prevention has become increasingly blurred.22 This
is very significant because it makes public/private cooperation and collaboration a
more and more important concern for police departments. This makes the police
agency’s environment even more complex than it already was and demonstrates
again that police organizations are open systems.
Since September 11, 2001, police departments have also begun to realize
that they are part of an important new system—the homeland security system.
This system overlaps the criminal justice and public safety systems mentioned
above, as well as emergency management, public health, civil defense, military,
and intelligence systems. Among the most glaring challenges facing home-
land security in the twenty-first century are inter-organizational information
sharing, coordination, and collaboration.23 For police departments and police
systems, this has meant an even more complex environment and even greater
interdependence.24
Summary
The purposes of the police—mission, goals, objectives, and other important

v alues—were discussed in detail in this chapter. These purposes should guide po-
lice officers in the performance of their operational duties as well as police execu-
tives in conducting their administrative duties. Three primary goals of protecting
life, protecting property, and maintaining order, and seven police objectives were
described, along with the important concerns of legality, equity, accountability,
and transparency. It is a major challenge for the police in a free society to remain
legal, equitable, accountable, and transparent, while striving for effectiveness in
the achievement of their mission, goals, and objectives.
This chapter has also introduced the concept of systems and has demonstrated
how the concept applies to police organization and management. One overriding
theme of the systems concept is interdependence among s ubsystems—everything
tends to affect everything else. Systems are also characterized by their relationships
with their environments—police organizations are open systems because they
react to environmental inputs and affect their environments with their outputs.
Input, process, output, and feedback were stressed as essential elements of system
design. Feedback, in particular, is crucial to the successful performance of any
system, including a police department.
1. Which of the three police mission statements presented in the text do you prefer? Why? How are the
three different?
2. How would you prioritize the seven police objectives presented in the text? Is it necessary to prioritize
them? If you were a police chief, how would you go about prioritizing them for your community?
3. Feedback is a key concept in the study of systems. What forms of feedback are utilized in the class-
room? On the job? In your personal relationships?
4. Why do you think that many systems, including organizations, fail to provide for and utilize feedback?
5. How is a police department influenced by the larger systems of which it is a part? How are those
larger systems influenced by the police department? Would you say that police departments are more
or less interdependent on other systems than most organizations?
Cases
One of the case studies in the back of this text (Case 3: Strategic Planning in
Spokane, Washington) describes an effort to establish departmental values and a
vision statement in a police agency. You might want to compare that to the sample
missions, goals, objectives, and values presented in this chapter.
Suggested Reading
Cordner, G. 2010. Reducing Fear of Crime: Strategies for Police. Washington, DC: Office of Commu-
nity Oriented Policing Services.
Delattre, E.J. 2011. Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Goldstein, H. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger.
Guilfoyle, S. 2013. Intelligent Policing: How Systems Thinking Methods Eclipse Conventional Manage-
ment Practice. Axminster: Triarchy Press.
Ratcliffe, J.H. 2019. Reducing Crime: A Companion for Police Leaders. New York: Routledge.
Notes
1 V.E. Kappeler, R.D. Sluder, and G.P. Alpert. 1998. Forces of Deviance: Understanding the Dark
Side of Policing, second edition. Long Grove, IL: Waveland.
2 G.J. DeLone. 2007. “Law Enforcement Mission Statements Post-September 11.” Police Quar-
terly 10, no. 2: 218–235.
3 D.C. Couper, and S.H. Lobitz. 1991. Quality Policing: The Madison Experience. Washington,
DC: Police Executive Research Forum, p. 24.
4 M.H. Moore, and D.W. Stephens. 1991. Beyond Command and Control: The Strategic Manage-
ment of Police Departments. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, p . 29; A.Y. Jiao.
2001. “Degrees of Urbanism and Police Orientations: Testing Preferences for Different Policing
Approaches across Urban, Suburban, and Rural Areas.” Police Quarterly 4, no. 3: 361–387.
5 Portland Police Bureau. 2022. “Mission, Values and Goals.” Online at: https://www.portlandor-
egon.gov/police/article/525126.
6 Houston Police Department. 2022. “Mission Statement.” Online at: www.houstontx.gov/

police/mission.htm.
7 Madison Police Department. 2022. “Mission Statement.” Online at: https://www.cityofmadi-
son.com/police/jointeam/whympd.cfm.
8 Moore, M. H. and Braga, A. 2003. The “Bottom Line” of Policing: What Citizens Should Value
(and Measure) in Police Performance. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
9 G. Cordner. 2010. Reducing Fear of Crime: Strategies for Police. Washington, DC: Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services; M.H. Moore, and R.C. Trojanowicz. 1988. “Policing
and the Fear of Crime.” Perspectives on Policing No. 3. Washington, DC: National Institute of
Justice.
10 R. Wasserman. 2013. “Agency Mission and Values, Changes in.” In K.J. Peak (ed.), Encyclopedia
of Community Policing and Problem Solving, Los Angeles, CA: Sage, pp. 1–3.
11 Portland Police Bureau. 2022. “Mission, Values and Goals.”
12 Los Angeles Police Department. 2022. “Core Values.” Online at: https://www.lapdonline.
org/core-values/.
13 See Baltimore Police Department. 2022. “BPD Policies.” Online at https://www.baltimorepo-
lice.org/policies.
14 S. Guilfoyle. 2013. Intelligent Policing: How Systems Thinking Methods Eclipse Conventional
Management Practice. Axminster: Triarchy Press, p. 1.
15 W.E. Deming. 1994. The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education, second edition.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p . 50.
16 P.B. Sears. 1971. “Ecology, the Intricate Web of Life.” In As We Live and Breathe: The Challenge
of Our Environment. Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, as adapted in N. Green-
wood, and J.M.B. Edwards. 1973. Human Environments and Natural Systems: A Conflict of
Dominion. North Scituate, MA: Duxbury Press, pp. 62–63.
17 G. Morgan. 2007. Images of Organization, updated edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
18 K.E. Boulding. 1956. “General Systems Theory: The Skeleton of Science.” Management Science
2, no. 3: 197–208.
19 F.A. Nigro. 1965. Modern Public Administration, second edition. New York: Harper & Row,
p. 100.
20 M.S. Scott and H. Goldstein. 2005. Shifting and Sharing Responsibility for Public Safety Prob-
lems. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
21 N.G. La Vigne, A.L. Solomon, K.A. Beckman, and K. Dedel. 2006. Prisoner Reentry and Com-
munity Policing: Strategies for Enhancing Public Safety. Washington, DC: Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services.
22 The Law Enforcement-Private Sector Consortium. 2009. Operation Partnership: Trends and
Practices in Law Enforcement and Private Security Collaborations. Washington, DC: Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services.
23 G. Cordner, and K. Scarborough. 2010. “Information Sharing: Exploring the Intersection of
Policing with National and Military Intelligence.” Homeland Security Affairs Journal 6, no. 1.
Online at: www.hsaj.org/?article=6.1.5.
24 C. Foster, and G. Cordner. 2005. The Impact of Terrorism on State Law Enforcement: Adjusting to
New Roles and Changing Conditions. Lexington, KY: Council of State Governments.
CHAPTER 4 Police Organizational
Tasks
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify the three major subsystems of the police organization.

• Identify the relationship among operations, administration, and auxiliary services.
• Characterize police operational tasks and identify 10 such tasks.
• Characterize police administrative tasks and identify 10 such tasks.
• Characterize police auxiliary services tasks and identify 10 such tasks.
If you were asked to list police tasks as they are portrayed in the media, you
would probably think only of those that are closely related to apprehending crim-
inal offenders. These are the tasks on which YouTube videos, television shows,
and movies focus. They are certainly the most exciting and interesting tasks that
police officers perform, yet they represent only a small percentage of what police
actually do. Who would want to watch a video about directing traffic, planning,
or maintaining police vehicles? Despite the relatively uninteresting nature of these
and many other kinds of tasks, however, police organizations depend on them in
order to accomplish their goals and objectives.
This chapter briefly discusses 30 basic police organizational tasks. The exact
number of tasks that police departments perform is really not very important; we
have identified 30 that we believe are essential and should be discussed. The num-
ber is significant, though, in that it suggests that there is a multitude of tasks that
must be performed in any police organization.
Some police departments are so large that separate units have been estab-
lished to perform each task; others are so small that all tasks are performed by
one person, usually the chief. The remaining police departments fall somewhere
in the middle; for them, a major-challenge is developing a logical and effective
approach for grouping similar functions together. (This management function,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-5
TABLE 4.1 Thirty Basic Organizational Tasks

Operations Administration Auxiliary Services
Patrol Human resources Records
Traffic Training Communications
Criminal investigation Planning and analysis Property and evidence
Vice and drugs Budget and finance Laboratory
Organized crime Legal assistance Detention
Special operations Information technology Crime scene/Identification
Crime prevention Public information Health and wellness
Juvenile services Inspections Facilities and maintenance
Community services Internal affairs Equipment and supply
School services Intelligence Fleet services
termed organizing, is discussed in Chapter 6.) But it is important to stress that

every police department, no matter how small, has to ensure that all of the tasks
are performed as needed. The smallest agencies may perform some of these tasks
less frequently than larger agencies, or even rely on others to perform them. None
can be ignored, though, no matter how small the community.
The three major subsystems of the police organization are:
1. Operations;
2. Administration;
3. Auxiliary services.
These three subsystems provide the framework for our discussion of the 30
basic police organizational tasks. Table 4.1 shows the tasks arranged within these
three subsystems.
The Operations Subsystem
Operations are activities that directly assist the public. The operations sub-
system is the part of police work with which most people are familiar. Through
the operations subsystem, police officers are deployed to take action, fight crime,
and provide services to the public. The other two subsystems (administration and
auxiliary services) exist to provide day-to-day and long-term services to personnel
working within the operations subsystem.
4 Police Organizational Tasks 67
The goals of the operations subsystem are identical to those of the entire po-
lice a gency—primarily, maintaining order and protecting life and property. All
work in which operations personnel are involved is directed toward the accom-
plishment of these primary organizational goals and the seven objectives discussed
in Chapter 3. The tasks included within the operations subsystem are aimed di-
rectly at achieving one or more of these goals and objectives. These operations
tasks are patrol, traffic, criminal investigation, vice and drugs, organized crime,
special operations, crime prevention, juvenile services, community services, and
school services.
Patrol
Patrol is commonly referred to as the backbone of the police service. Patrol
officers are normally the first to respond to crime scenes, accidents, and calls for
service. In some instances, patrol officers handle the entire matter; in others they
stabilize and assess the situation, protect the crime scene, and/or conduct a prelim-
inary investigation before turning the matter over to specialized personnel. While
patrolling, officers are expected to be alert for crimes in progress, traffic violations,
suspicious persons and circumstances, public property in need of repair, and an-
ything else out of the ordinary. Patrol is also intended to prevent crime through
its omnipresence, to keep in touch with the community, and to be responsive to
citizen needs and problems. One of the most important aims of patrol is to pro-
vide law-abiding citizens with a feeling of security so that they can conduct their
affairs without fear of criminal interference. The patrol function maintains order
and protects life and property on a continuous basis.
The police use various methods of patrolling, such as foot patrol, motorized
patrol (cars, motorcycles, scooters, golf carts, Segways), bike patrol, horse patrol,
aircraft patrol, and marine patrol. Today they may also engage in “virtual” patrol,
such as scanning social media platforms for threatening conduct or watching sur-
veillance cameras focused on hot-spot locations.1
The patrol task must be organized by time and location; that is, patrol per-
sonnel work shifts and are assigned to beats (patrol areas) so that the entire ju-
risdiction receives patrol coverage. Unfortunately, many police administrators
assign personnel to patrol times and locations on the basis of tradition or whim;
as a consequence, patrol personnel in many communities are not allocated to
maximize their effectiveness. Patrol personnel should be assigned according to
patterns of crime and requests for service in the community they serve.2 To do
otherwise is to waste tax dollars, reducing the efficiency and effectiveness of the
police.
A celebrated study conducted in Kansas City, Missouri, raised some serious
questions concerning the effectiveness of motorized police patrol.3 The experi-
ment, conducted by the Police Foundation and the Kansas City Police Depart-
ment, could find no evidence that motorized routine patrol deters crime, improves
the delivery of services, or affects citizen feelings of security. These findings,
although highly controversial at the time, spurred further research into the ef-
fectiveness of police patrol and resulted in a rethinking of the patrol function.
Directed patrol and foot patrol gained some backing as effective supplements to
motorized preventive patrol, while the evolving strategies of community policing,
problem-oriented policing, and i ntelligence-led policing suggest replacing random
patrolling with more focused activity.4 We will look more closely at patrol research
and tactics in C
hapter 13.
Traffic
The traffic task includes several subtasks relating to different police activities
v is-à-vis motor vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians. These subtasks include intersec-
tion control (traffic direction), traffic law enforcement, parking law enforcement,
and traffic accident investigation.
Except for unusual situations at accident scenes or large gatherings, the task
of intersection control is ordinarily a major concern only in urban or highly con-
gested suburban areas. In such situations, the demands of intersection control can
cause severe drains on police personnel. Many police departments employ civilian
traffic controllers, school crossing guards, fire police, and other auxiliary personnel
for intersection work as a cost-saving measure.
The traffic law enforcement subtask involves issuing citations for various mo-
tor vehicle violations; this activity is directed toward the reduction of accidents,
injuries, and fatalities. Because many citizens come in contact with the police only
as a result of having violated a traffic law, this activity has serious implications for

Big Jump in Traffic Deaths in 2021
June 2, 2022
The U.S. had almost 43,000 traffic deaths in 2021, an increase of 10% over 2020 and the
highest number since 2005, as reported here. Pedestrian fatalities increased 13% to the high-
est number since 1981, and almost 1,000 bicyclists died, the most since 1975. Among other
factors, research indicates that speeding and failure to wear seatbelts increased during the
pandemic. According to the Governors Highway Safety Association,
An increase in dangerous d riving—

speeding, distracted driving, d rug-and alcohol-
impaired driving, not buckling up—during the pandemic, combined with roads designed
for speed instead of safety, has wiped out a decade and a half of progress in reducing traffic
crashes, injuries and deaths.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, gcordner.wordpress.com/2022/06/02/big-jump-in-traffic-deaths-in-2021/. The hyperlink

at “as reported here” links to https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-traffic-deaths-jump-105-2021-highest-number-
since-2005-2022-05-17/.
the relationship between the police and the community; consequently, it must be
performed with considerable care and courtesy. Traffic law enforcement should
be based on careful analysis of traffic accident patterns so that the kinds of vio-
lations that cause accidents in certain locations at certain times are suppressed.
This approach, which should be the basis for every police department’s traffic law
enforcement activities, is called selective traffic enforcement.
One aspect of traffic law enforcement of particular importance relates to driv-
ing impaired by alcohol or drugs. Drunk driving has declined over the last few
decades due to changing social norms as well as improved enforcement. Today, a
growing concern is driving under the influence of drugs, especially in states that
have legalized or decriminalized marijuana possession.
The use of radar by police for speed enforcement has become commonplace
and widely accepted. More controversial in recent years are automated speed cam-
eras and r ed-light cameras. These technologies are credited with improving driver
behavior and reducing traffic crashes, but also criticized as m oney-making ven-
tures for local governments. Some states have prohibited their use even though
they save lives.
The enforcement of parking laws is designed to keep traffic moving, to keep
fire hydrants clear of obstructions, to keep intersections unclogged, and to ensure
turnover at meters and in front of businesses. In some large jurisdictions, this activ-
ity is performed primarily by civilians assigned exclusively to the task; in other juris-
dictions, police officers perform the task as a part of their generalist patrol function.
The subtask of traffic accident investigation is designed to determine the
causes of motor vehicle accidents. This is an enforcement task that also provides
input to the process of insurance claim settlement in jurisdictions where insur-
ance claims are based on fault. Traffic accident investigation can also focus on
criminal law violations ranging from assault to manslaughter to murder. Finally,
accident investigation can help identify types of driving behaviors that need to be
discouraged through education and enforcement, as well as dangerous roadway
conditions that need to be corrected. It is an extremely important, specialized task
that requires considerable training and expertise.
In a small police department, intersection control, traffic law enforcement,
parking law enforcement, and traffic accident investigation may all be performed
by officers serving as generalist patrol officers. In a large department, each of these
subtasks may be handled by a separate subunit of a traffic division. Some of these
tasks can easily be performed by civilians at a much lower cost. Any decision to
create a specialized traffic division and/or to employ specialized civilian personnel
should be based on the size of the organization and on the volume and patterns of
traffic-related business.
Criminal Investigation
Criminal investigations, the actions taken by the police to identify and appre-
hend perpetrators of crimes, include such activities as crime scene investigations,
interviewing, and interrogation. Ideally, they culminate in the criminal conviction

of suspects, but most often they do not. In 2019, the most recent year for which
national data are available, police cleared (solved) 45.5% of serious violent crimes
and 17.2% of serious property crimes.5
Detectives are the specialists in criminal investigation; they are not, however,
its only practitioners. As a rule, officers assigned to the patrol function conduct
most preliminary and minor investigations. Since police departments usually have
far more officers assigned to patrol than to criminal investigation, this practice,
which embodies the generalist patrol theory, allows detectives to concentrate on
more serious crimes and, at the same time, provides for the handling of investiga-
tions of less serious offenses, for which most criminal investigation divisions have
little time.
Most police departments with 10 or more sworn officers, no matter how com-
mitted to the generalist theory, find it necessary to assign some personnel solely to
criminal investigation. The number of officers to assign to investigative activities
is a point of contention in many municipal police agencies; 1 0–15% of sworn
officers is a common rule of thumb.
Another common point of controversy is the degree of specialization
needed within the criminal investigations division. Departments with the least
specialization might use the general assignment approach, with all detectives
handling all types of investigations; by contrast, highly specialized departments
might have a Crimes Against Persons Unit, with separate squads handling hom-
icides, assaults, sex offenses, and robberies, and a Crimes Against Property Unit
with specialized squads handling burglaries, auto thefts, and larcenies. The
degree of specialization in any police agency must be based on local circum-
stances, taking into consideration such factors as the size of the department, the
skills of its personnel, the patterns and amounts of its activities, and prevailing
policies.
The actual effectiveness and productivity of detectives has been called into
question by research over the last several decades. Studies have found that most
crime clearances can be attributed to information supplied by witnesses and
patrol officers more than to contributions by detectives.6 In addition, it has
been established through research that detectives spend most of their time in
the office, on the telephone and on the computer, or doing routine paperwork,
rather than out on the street meticulously searching for clues or interviewing
informants, victims, and witnesses. The “detective mystique” seems highly
overrated.7
As part of community policing, many larger police departments have de-
centralized their investigative units over the past decade or two. Following this
approach, detectives are assigned to work under precinct captains or other area
commanders rather than under a chief of detectives at headquarters. The aim of
this approach is to help detectives become more knowledgeable about local neigh-
borhood problems and to encourage them to work more closely with neighbor-
hood residents and patrol officers.8
Vice and Drugs

The responsibility for vice regulation and drug enforcement has caused the
police innumerable problems, largely because vice laws declare illegal a host of
goods and services (e.g., gambling, prostitution, pornography, drugs) that are in-
tensely desired by many citizens. The rationale for these laws is not that some
unsuspecting stranger might be victimized, but rather that people must be pro-
tected from their own wants and desires. Of course, it is true that gamblers and
drug abusers may also cause harm to family members, not just themselves, and
they may commit other crimes, such as theft and burglary, to finance their addic-
tions. Additionally, it is becoming more apparent today that many prostitutes are
actually victims of human trafficking, and therefore not engaging in their crimes
willingly.
Because there is so little consensus about the desirability and importance of
vice laws, the enforcement of those laws places the police in a difficult position.
The police understand that many people desire the goods and services prohibited
by vice laws; also they see that society in general is frequently indifferent to vio-
lations of these laws. The police are not often sought out by aggrieved victims,
as they are in the cases of rapes, robberies, and burglaries. They observe that the
courts usually deal leniently with vice offenders (although harsh sentences for drug
offenders are not uncommon). They further observe that vice and drugs generate
large sums of money.
It is for these reasons that vice regulation and drug enforcement are at the
heart of much of the public animosity toward the police and at the core of much
police corruption. If the police strictly enforce all vice laws, the public as well as
the purveyors of illegal goods and services become upset. If the police are lenient
toward vice or simply put their priorities elsewhere, the public assumes that they
have been corrupted. In many cases, this suspicion has proven to be well founded;
whether well founded or not, however, the damage in terms of public support and
respect is the same.
As long as vice and drug laws remain on the books and as long as vice reg-
ulation and drug enforcement remain the responsibility of the police, the police
administrator will have to deal with these problems. Police today frequently work
closely with neighborhoods in identifying and combating vice and drug problems.
Police have also become creative in their use of such innovative techniques as sting
operations, reverse stings, asset seizure, multiagency task forces, and civil nuisance
abatement procedures, and more recently, they have also sometimes adopted a “no
questions asked” approach in order to encourage drug addicts to come forward for
treatment.9
Organized Crime
Organized crime has always caused difficult organizational problems for the
police, in part because of the extent of the phenomenon. Gambling, prostitution,
pornography, narcotics, hijacking, and loansharking are the bread and butter of
organized crime. However, the need to control the marketplace also gets organ-
ized crime involved with such crimes as murder, assault, robbery, theft, and ex-
tortion. Moreover, the process of laundering dirty profits involves various kinds
of frauds and swindles, some of which affect legitimate business. Because each
kind of criminal offense committed by organized crime may be investigated by
a separate police subunit, the police often fail to see the big picture of organized
crime at work.
In addition to the wide variety of offenses involved, the structure of organized
crime acts to thwart traditional police efforts. The people who collect the bulk of
the profits and who direct the operations of organized crime rarely commit observ-
able offenses. Usually they order someone who orders someone else who, in turn,
orders someone else to commit a crime. Everything is done covertly through layers
of organization designed to protect the leadership. These layers are reinforced by
money, legal services, loyalty, and force. Despite numerous arrests of organized
crime figures, the police are rarely able to bring syndicate bosses to the bar of
justice.
One form of organized crime that gained increased attention in the 1990s was
criminal gangs.10 Gangs tend to be composed of youthful members, although not
necessarily juveniles, and they are often territorially based, but not always. Some
gangs exist simply to meet their members’ social or protection needs, but most
engage in some form of organized criminal activity, whether it be drug dealing,
burglary, theft, or robbery.
The task force or strike force approach has had some success in combating
organized crime and gangs.11 This approach is usually multijurisdictional, often
taking in metropolitan areas, states, and regions. It involves investigators and pros-
ecutors from local, state, and federal agencies. The approach is usually quite sophis-
ticated and often makes use of financial and tax records, on the valid assumption
that profits from organized crime are not usually reported to the Internal Revenue
Service. In addition, the resources of the combined agencies at different levels of
government make more credible the assurances of protection offered informants
and prosecution witnesses.
Special Operations
One clear trend in modern policing has been the development of special ca-
pabilities to deal with particularly difficult situations. Prior to the 1970s, even the
most complicated and dangerous situations were handled by regular patrol officers
without the advantage of specialized training or equipment. The most these patrol
officers could expect in the way of organizational assistance in the handling of
a hostage situation, for example, would be the presence of a supervisor or com-
mander at the scene.
Today, many police agencies have specially trained personnel for handling
these kinds of situations, and all have access to such personnel, if only through
their state police organizations. The range of situations calling for special opera-
tional capabilities is quite broad, but should probably include the following at a
minimum12:
• Armed confrontations, including “active shooters”;

• Hostage situations;
• Barricaded persons;
• Suicide threats;
• Bomb threats;
• Bomb disposal;
• Executive protection;
• Disaster response;
• Search and rescue;
• Riots and civil disturbances;
• Civil defense;
• Terrorist acts.
Police agencies of different sizes arrange for the availability of special opera-
tions in different ways. Small departments may rely almost completely on larger
neighbors (e.g., their county sheriff ’s department and the state police) or they may
have a few officers with some special training and mutual aid agreements to fill
in the gaps. Larger agencies are more likely to have full complements of specially
trained officers for handling the entire range of situations that might occur. Even
in most larger departments, though, these specially trained officers will probably
have regular assignments in patrol or other units, while being subject to c all-out
when situations requiring their expertise occur. Only the very largest police organ-
izations have the demand and resources to justify full-time special operations units
that do nothing but handle special situations.
Crime Prevention
Preventing crime is one of the primary objectives of the police service. It was
traditionally thought that crime prevention was simply accomplished by having
uniformed police officers in marked vehicles driving about the community to give
the impression of police omnipresence. Statistics, however, would seem to prove
otherwise. Traditional police methods have not been very successful in preventing
crime.
Techniques developed in recent years mandate that the police concentrate
on high-crime risks in order to increase the effort, increase the risk, or reduce the
reward associated with crime.13 In many instances, dramatic decreases in crime
rates can result. These techniques, referred to collectively as situational crime pre-
vention and Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), in-
clude improving security, locking devices, and construction; screening or barring
doors and windows; providing more and better alarm systems and lighting; and
teaching citizens and businesspeople how to secure their premises more effectively.
Many police departments loan marking tools to the general public so that citizens
can mark valuable property in their homes and businesses, in order to increase
the chances of recovering property if it is stolen. Some police departments even
provide special officers as security consultants to business and industry in an effort
to prevent or reduce crime.
Another approach to crime prevention relies on mobilizing community
support. Neighborhood Watch programs enlist the eyes and ears of residents,
encouraging and training them to look out for each other and report suspicious
activity to the police. Safe homes in each block are also designated and marked
for the benefit of children who may be frightened, lost, or in the process of
escaping from a suspicious person or attacker. Some communities have even
established citizen patrols that attempt to deter crime and report suspicious
activity.
Learning from the successful experiences of security professionals, whose
private-sector companies are much more interested in preventing thefts than in
prosecuting offenders, the police have slowly come to realize that prosecutions
alone are not an adequate measurement of police success. Controlling, reducing,
and preventing crime are more viable yardsticks for measuring police effectiveness
in dealing with crime. Citizens are far less interested in numbers of prosecutions
than in controlling crime rates. Police success in c rime-related activities, therefore,
should be predicated on crime reduction and not, as has been the traditional prac-
tice, on numbers of crime clearances and prosecutions.
It should be pointed out that the police are limited in what they can do
to control crime. The police are not responsible for the social and economic
conditions that breed crime. They have no control over poverty, bad housing,
poor health care, discrimination, child neglect, and inadequate education. The
responsibility of the police is to prevent crime to the degree that they reasona-
bly can, and to refine their techniques for preventing crime in the milieu that
breeds it.
Juvenile Services
Police services for juveniles constitute a separate task because of the special le-
gal and practical aspects of dealing with children. Juveniles are a clear and distinct
subgroup of society, and their offenses are ordinarily handled more informally and
with more leniency than in the case of adults. In addition, juveniles are usually
dealt with by the criminal justice system as parts of family units rather than as free
and responsible citizens. They are often tried in juvenile courts by special judges;
when incarcerated, juveniles are placed in special institutions apart from adult
offenders. There were 486,000 arrests of persons under 18 years of age in 2019,
representing 7% of all arrests made in the United States. In that year, juveniles
accounted for 11% of property crime arrests, 10% of violent crime arrests, and
5% of drug arrests.14
Most large police departments have separate juvenile or youth divisions, which
are essential because of the factors outlined above and because of the scale of the
juvenile crime problem. In addition to getting referrals from other departmental
divisions and units, the juvenile division may take a special interest in matters of
child abuse and neglect, children in need of supervision, runaways, and truants.
The juvenile division will also ordinarily coordinate relations among the police
department, the juvenile courts, juvenile detention centers, and social service pro-
grams for juveniles.
The focus of the juvenile division is decidedly more on social welfare than on
crime; for this reason, the juvenile division is often denigrated by police officers
who fail to understand the importance of having some police officers involved in
social welfare activities, especially as these relate to children. Yet if the police fail
to become involved in helping children in trouble, even if only by referring them
to appropriate social-welfare agencies, the children will probably receive no help
whatsoever. See “Juvenile Operations,” Box 4.1.
Three of the most pressing problems confronting police departments today
are the often-related problems of child abuse, missing children, and human traf-
ficking. While most police officers have always taken allegations of child abuse
seriously, missing children reports are also prioritized, including activating Amber
Alerts when appropriate.
Box 4.1 Juvenile Operations

Standard 44.1.1 A written directive describes the agency’s juvenile operations function.
The intent of this standard is to establish agency accountability for the juvenile function
in writing. The agency should make a firm commitment to develop and perpetuate programs
that are designed to prevent and control juvenile delinquency, while emphasizing that par-
ticipation or support in the juvenile operations function is shared by all relevant components
and personnel. Law enforcement agencies can also take an active leadership role in devel-
oping community recreational programs for juveniles. If a recreational program is needed
but does not exist, the agency is encouraged to organize one. However, once the program
is established, it is best for the agency to turn over the management to professional recrea-
tional personnel or citizens’ groups and allow agency personnel to participate in the program
on a voluntary basis. Law enforcement agencies should strive to strengthen trust between
youth and police by creating programs and projects for positive, consistent, and persistent
interaction between youth and law enforcement.
Source: Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies: The Standards Manual of the CALEA
Law Enforcement Agency Accreditation Program, sixth edition, as amended. 2022.
Gainesville, VA: Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc.
Community Services
There is a general recognition today that the police have a key role to play
in the delivery of a variety of services to the community. By default, society has
given to the police much of the routine, day-to-day responsibilities that were once
considered solely within the province of social service agencies. What traditional
social service agency operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year?
The police department is the only such agency in the community and, unlike
many other social service agencies, police service is free, and the police still make
house calls.
Depending on the nature of the service needed, the skills of individual police
officers, and the policies of the departments in which they serve, the role of the
police may be to: (1) provide the service themselves; (2) assist others in providing
the service; or (3) refer the matter to another agency. If the appropriate social
service agency is not open, it becomes the responsibility of the police to handle
such matters, at least initially. Police probably handle two-thirds of all threshold
social work in this country when one considers that human trauma occurs more
frequently at night, and often on weekends. When people need immediate help,
regardless of the circumstances, they call the police.
In addition to the kinds of services provided by individual patrol officers re-
sponding to calls from citizens, many agencies have created special programs to
address critical needs in their communities. Among the kinds of formal commu-
nity service programs that police departments frequently provide are s chool-based
programs, recreational programs, victim–witness programs, domestic violence
programs, mental health crisis intervention teams, and homeless outreach teams.
Referral is a practice that even the smallest police department can adopt. All
departments come in contact with various kinds of social problems that do not
require arrest but that cry out for help and treatment. Such situations often involve
people with substance abuse problems, people with mental illness, or homeless
people.15 If police officers know what social services are available in their commu-
nities and the kinds of assistance they offer, they have a viable and productive alter-
native to arrest. They do not, of course, have the authority to require participation
in treatment programs, but their recommendations can be critical to troubled
individuals who need help but do not know where to find it.
School Services
Until recently, one of the biggest growth sectors for policing in the past two
decades had been school-based services and programs.16 In response to concerns
about youth violence, school safety, drug abuse, and gangs, many police depart-
ments and school systems had begun working much more closely together than
ever before. However, concerns about police use of force and the “school to prison
pipeline” have caused some jurisdictions and school systems to scale back the in-
volvement of police in schools.17
One of the most long-standing approaches has been to involve police officers
in educational programs for youths. Since the 1950s, some police departments
have presented Officer Friendly, Stranger Danger, and a variety of safety-oriented
programs (household safety, pedestrian safety, bicycle safety) at the elementary
school level and had officers give law-related talks to middle school and high
school classes. More recently, the DARE program (Drug Abuse Resistance Educa-
tion) and GREAT (Gang Resistance Education and Training) have become pop-
ular. Police also sometimes participate with teachers in presentations on anger
management and conflict resolution.
Another model has been for the police to establish special programs within
schools aimed at reducing crime and disorder problems on school grounds. For
example, many jurisdictions have implemented special versions of the popular
Crime-stoppers and Crime Watch programs within their schools. Some schools
have also worked with police to establish drug tip hotlines and Police Explorer
programs.
A third approach is simply to create closer connections between regular
police officers and schools. Some police departments use the Adopt-a-School
program, in which individual patrol officers and detectives “adopt” a school to
which they will pay special attention, in addition to their regular duties. These
officers spend extra time in the school, perhaps by eating lunch in the school
cafeteria on a regular basis, and generally serve as the police department’s liaison
to that school.
Yet another approach, and one that became very popular, is the utilization of
School Resource Officers (SROs).18 These are police officers who are assigned f ull-
time to work in the schools. SROs may participate in educational programs and
other special programs in the schools but, in addition, the school is their “beat.”
That is, they provide all regular police services within the school, including pa-
trol, investigation, and juvenile services, as well as special s chool-based programs.
Proponents of this approach like the fact that these officers act like “real police,”
not just Officer Friendly, and that they provide a significant police presence in
the school. That is, SROs do not just drop in to give a talk; they are on the prem-
ises during the entire school day. Critics of this approach, however, think SROs
sometimes criminalize student behavior that would better be handled through the
school’s discipline system.
Finally, a few police departments are attempting to engage school students
directly in community policing and problem-solving activities.19 This approach
takes the view that the school is a community and that the students are its most
numerous “residents,” so it is important to involve them in improving the quality
of life and level of safety. In some ways, this is the most far-reaching model, be-
cause it tries to overcome the inherent limitations of a police-focused approach by
harnessing the energy and talents of students while, at the same time, preparing
those students for later life, when, as good citizens, they will also be expected
to shoulder some of the responsibility for keeping their communities safe and
orderly.
The Administration Subsystem
The tasks that constitute the administration subsystem (human resources,

training, planning and analysis, budget and finance, legal assistance, information
technology, public information, inspections, internal affairs, and intelligence) are
performed not in direct assistance to the public, but for the benefit of the police
organization as a whole. One way to differentiate administration tasks from aux-
iliary services tasks (covered later in this chapter) is to ask: “Does this task need to
be performed around the clock?” Tasks that do not, such as planning and budget
preparation, are generally considered administrative tasks; non-operational tasks
that do need to be performed continually, such as communications and detention,
are usually categorized as auxiliary service tasks. Both types of tasks are of bene-
fit, or service, to the department as a whole; both types are primarily performed
internally. Operational tasks, on the other hand, the ones described above, are
performed externally. They are for the direct benefit of the public.
Human Resources
The human resources function (including recruitment, selection, assignment,
transfer, promotion, termination, and labor relations) has to do with who gets
what jobs, and, very often, who gets what pay. Police personnel practices have
often come under close scrutiny with respect to minority recruitment, selection,
assignment, and promotion. In numerous instances, federal courts have found
entrance-level tests and job qualifications to be discriminatory against blacks,
women, and Spanish-speaking Americans. Standards supporting fair and unbiased
personnel practices have been in place for almost 50 years.20
Police human resources activities are frequently constrained not only by
equal opportunity law but also by civil service systems, local government per-
sonnel departments, and state laws and regulations. Many police agencies have
little control over their own personnel systems, with hiring criteria, processes, and
decisions administered by merit boards or civil service commissions. This kind
of structure helps reduce the amount of bias, personal influence, and political
interference affecting police personnel matters, but it also interferes with efforts
by police executives to ensure that personnel decisions contribute positively to
the accomplishment of the overall police mission. A healthy balance should be
sought between external regulation and police input to the police human re-
sources function.
An enduring police personnel issue concerns the desirability of higher edu-
cation for police officers. Police reformers have advocated the hiring of college
graduates for decades, and many police officers today have degrees or at least
some college credits. Attempts to prove that college-educated police officers
perform better have not universally succeeded, but most observers believe that
the college experience makes officers more tolerant, more flexible, more under-
standing of different cultures, and more adept at problem solving. Only 1% of
police departments require higher education for police employment, but many
agencies give applicants extra points for college21; moreover, when final hiring
decisions are reviewed, it seems clear that having a college degree is frequently
an advantage in getting hired even when no formal reward for higher education
is offered.
Training
The police training task can be broken down into a number of different ap-
proaches, including in-class and on-the-job training, academic and skills training,
recruit and in-service training, and training for first-line supervisors, managers,
and executives. On average today, the police academy for new recruits is 21 weeks,
followed by 13 weeks of field training.22 Larger departments often operate their
own police academies, whereas most small departments depend on the services of
nearby larger agencies or regional or state training academies.
Unless new police officers are thoroughly trained before they are on the job
for any considerable length of time, they are likely to develop rigid habits and
attitudes that will be difficult to alter. After recruit training, officers should be
assigned to field training officers who will teach and rate them on the job, show-
ing recruits how their initial training is related to their work on the street.23 Field
training officers (FTOs) should be carefully chosen from among the best officers
in the department. The early days of a new officer’s career are crucial; they should
be devoted to internalizing what they have learned from recruit training and rein-
forcing principles of good police practice. See “Field Training,” Box 4.2.
Box 4.2 Field Training

Standard 33.4.3 A written directive establishes a field training program for all newly sworn
officers with a curriculum based on tasks of the most frequent assignments with provisions
for the following:
a. Field training of at least 160 hours for trainees, outside of the required classroom
training;
b. A selection process for field training officers;
c. Supervision of field training officers;
d. Liaison with the academy staff, if applicable;
e. Training and in-service training of field training officers;
f. Rotation of recruit field assignments;
g. Guidelines for the evaluation of recruits by field training officers;
h. Reporting responsibilities of field training officers.
When patrol officers and detectives are promoted to supervisory positions,

they are usually unprepared for their new responsibilities. Just because they
are capable police officers with considerable street experience and are well
trained for police work does not necessarily mean that they will make good
supervisors. The same holds true for administrative and management posi-
tions; a good supervisor does not automatically become a good administrator.
The higher a police officer ascends in the hierarchy of the police department,
the more training they need to meet increased responsibilities. The training
at each level must necessarily be different and must be designed to prepare
officers for the work they will be expected to do on the level to which they
have been advanced.
In-service personnel, whether generalists or specialists, also need regular re-
fresher training. Some police departments conduct daily r oll-call training sessions.
Others insist that their officers undergo one week of in-service training every year.
Some departments do both, and others have implemented online and distance
learning approaches to training. Regardless of how in-service training is accom-
plished, it is a must in a field as complex and involved as police work. How well or
how poorly a police officer is trained relates directly to the success or failure of the
entire organization in meeting its goals and objectives.
Planning and Analysis

Planning is preparing for the future in the hope that anticipation and prepa-
ration will lead to more effective coping with future events. Planning is a much
underrated function in most police departments. Many police departments do
no planning whatsoever; others, through their budgets, plan only for the coming
year. The philosophy of “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it” is prevalent
throughout the police field.
It is essential, however, that police organizations plan for such eventualities as
civil disorder, natural disasters, and rises in crime and accident rates. They must
also plan for change and the effects of such trends as energy depletion, rapid tech-
nological advancement, and population shifts. Everyday planning for personnel
requirements, police officer deployment, and patrol concentration is also impor-
tant in the planning process.
In order to plan effectively and to make informed decisions about operations,
administration, and auxiliary services, police departments need to perform at least
three types of analyses. One type is crime and problem analysis.24 Departments
must collect and analyze data on crime and related problems in the community in
order to allocate officers to shifts, deploy them to beats, develop effective tactics,
assign special units to problem areas, and generally to respond to the crime prob-
lem as effectively as possible. The data that must be collected on each crime in-
clude location, time, and very specific information on method of operation (MO).
Analysis of these data mainly involves looking for patterns and trends. The most
important aspect of crime and problem analysis is communicating findings to

operational personnel for use in performing their work.
A second type of analysis crucial to police effectiveness is operations analysis.
Operations analysis examines patrol, investigations, and other operational tasks
and seeks to improve their effectiveness. For example, operations analysis uses
crime analysis data and data on other aspects of patrol workload (such as service
calls, investigations, arrests, and auto accidents) to determine whether patrol re-
sources are allocated in proportion to workload. Operations analysis also includes
examinations of traffic accidents and traffic citations in order to establish a selec-
tive traffic enforcement program designed to reduce accidents.
The third category of analytical activity is administrative analysis. This in-
volves the study of internal procedures and practices for the purpose of identifying
problem areas and making improvements. For example, many police departments
have had to analyze their recruitment, selection, and training in order to eliminate
practices that discriminated against women and minorities. Many departments
have performed studies to determine whether to deploy Tasers, whether to adopt
body-worn cameras, whether to switch from simultaneous to sequential line-ups,
the most effective soft body armor to purchase, and the most cost-efficient type of
automobile for patrol work. The variety of administrative analyses that might be
performed is nearly boundless.
Budget and Finance

This task involves the administration and handling of departmental money
matters. It includes such activities as payroll, purchasing, budgeting, billing, ac-
counting, and auditing. Depending on the size of the department and local gov-
ernmental practice, some of these activities are handled by the parent system. In
the case of budgeting, the police department usually has the opportunity to de-
velop its proposed budget for the next year, which requires justifying current staff-
ing and expenditures, anticipating future needs, and presenting carefully reasoned
arguments for additional funding. Then, once the year’s budget is established,
responsibility shifts to carefully managing the funds that were allocated to the
department.
A common tendency is to rely too heavily on incremental budgeting, which
entails copying the present year’s budget and adding a few new items. This kind of
copycat budgeting fails to incorporate evaluation of the actual desirability of vari-
ous programs and budget categories and leaves no room for innovation. No effort
is made to determine what kinds of expenditures might bring the organization
closer to achieving its goals and objectives.
Other approaches include programmatic or activity budgeting, zero-based
budgeting, performance-based budgeting, and priority-based budgeting. These
systems attempt to force administrators to tie funding requests more directly to
goals, objectives, and priorities. They make budgeting an ongoing process that
mandates continuing evaluation of programs to determine their effectiveness and

usefulness.
Most administrators find it difficult to evaluate their own programs objec-
tively and resist change even in the face of facts. The true relevance of programs
to departmental goals and objectives is often difficult to determine. In addition,
budget review and appropriation committees of the parent governmental system,
accustomed to working with traditional incremental budgets, are frequently unim-
pressed with what they often view as the overly sophisticated nature of these more
innovative approaches. Despite these shortcomings, however, non-incremental
methods are helpful because they force police administrators to ask themselves
whether they are making the best possible use of the public’s tax dollars. These
systems force administrators and reviewers to consider financial requests in light
of actual goals and objectives and allow them to manage their organizations sys-
tematically through their budgets.
Legal Assistance
The legal assistance function within a police department includes, depend-
ing on the jurisdiction, training of personnel in legal matters, legal advice in
policy formulation and planning, liaison with legislatures and the courts, de-
partmental representation in civil proceedings, advice and direction for internal
administrative hearings, and counsel on specific problems arising out of criminal
cases.25
Additionally, in some jurisdictions, the police prosecute their own cases in the
lower courts without any assistance from a district attorney or a state’s attorney. In
such instances, legal assistance is of the utmost importance and is concerned pri-
marily with aiding officers in the prosecution of misdemeanor criminal cases and
traffic cases. A police department may designate a police officer who has had legal
training as its prosecutor and legal advisor, or it may hire an attorney specifically
for this purpose.
Because most police departments are not large enough to employ a full-time
attorney, many small departments band together on a regular basis to hire a legal
advisor who is available to all of them on a full-time basis. Other departments
retain counsel on a part-time basis and/or rely on advice from their parent govern-
ment’s legal office.
Information Technology
Information is the lifeblood of most organizations, especially police depart-
ments. Traditionally, the task of processing information within police agencies
included a variety of secretarial, clerical, and d
ata-processing duties. Today, com-
puters and other information technology (IT) systems are typically utilized for
information processing in police organizations, although much information is still
processed verbally or in handwritten form.
Police communications systems (9-1-1) and records systems are discussed in

the next section on the auxiliary services subsystem, because they are needed to
provide ongoing information and support to police officers in the field. Police de-
partments also need internal mechanisms that provide and process administrative
information, however. Letters, memoranda, training bulletins, personnel orders,
schedules, policies, procedures, and rules must be prepared and disseminated. Sys-
tems are also needed to keep track of expenditures, vehicle maintenance, officer
training, departmental equipment and supplies, found property, evidence, and
numerous other matters. In addition, police administrators need systems that pro-
vide them with information about how well the department is doing in meeting
its primary goals and o bjectives—that is, with feedback to establish a c losed-loop
management system that corrects mistakes and keeps the organization on track
toward efficiency and effectiveness.
The technology of information processing changes ever more rapidly in today’s
electronic age. In some police agencies, a significant amount of internal informa-
tion sharing is now accomplished via e -mail, Internet mailing lists, and an organ-
izational intranet. More and more, of course, external information sharing is also
electronic, utilizing e-mail, Web pages, social media, and the Internet. Additional
IT challenges have been introduced with smartphones and body-worn-cameras.
Information security has also become a serious concern, as police department sys-
tems have been hacked and held for ransom, sometimes costing local jurisdictions
quite a lot of time and money to recover.
Public Information
Keeping the public informed about police activities includes news about
crime, media relations, features on police officers and programs, information on
crime prevention and how to avoid being victimized by crime, public lectures on
policing, and explanations of policies and procedures that affect the public. The
public information function is important to the police because it gives them the
strategic opportunity to tell their story, to explain their position on controversial
issues, and to respond in a meaningful way to public concerns.26
New methods of disseminating public information include the agency’s Web
page or home page, and social media. Most police agencies today have their own
home pages that can be used to post the latest information about crimes, wanted
persons, and new police programs, as well as to solicit public input on important
police-related issues. Police agencies are also making extensive use of social media,
including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. These media are excellent vehicles for
disseminating brief bits of information to the public, soliciting input (such as
crime tips), and drawing citizens to the agency’s Web page where more-detailed
information can be obtained.
Many police officials find it difficult to relate to the news media. Because of
poor experiences with newspapers and television stations, some police officials see
members of the media as enemies or, at the very least, antagonists. As a result, they
Box 4.3 Public Information

Standard 54.1.1 The public information function shall include:
a. Assisting media personnel in covering news stories at the scenes of incidents;

b. Preparing and distributing agency media releases;
c. Arranging for, and assisting at media conferences;
d. Coordinating and authorizing the release of information about victims, witnesses, and
suspects;
e. Coordinating and authorizing the release of information concerning confidential agency
investigations and operations;
f. Developing procedures for releasing information when other public service agencies are
involved in a mutual effort;
g. Providing guidelines for the use of social media by the agency.
make it difficult for reporters to get the news and sometimes exhibit open hostility
toward the press. This creates a negative attitude on the part of media represent-
atives toward the police and contributes to the development of what can easily
become a vicious cycle of open warfare between the police and the press. Such a
relationship works to the detriment of everyone concerned and negatively affects
the image of the police.
It is essential for police administrators to cultivate good relations with the
press.27 Whether this is done through the formal establishment of a public infor-
mation division, as in large departments, or through the careful handling of me-
dia relationships by the chief or a designated officer in smaller departments, it is
important to understand that a positive policy needs to be developed within every
police department for the handling of public information. Whoever is responsible
for public information should make every possible effort to provide news on po-
lice activities as accurately and as quickly as possible. The designated public infor-
mation officer should also encourage feature stories about the police department
and cooperate fully in their development. See “Public Information,” Box 4.3.
Inspections
The aim of the inspections function, sometimes also referred to as auditing,
is to ascertain compliance with agency directives and standards. People handling
this task systematically check the organization to determine how well policies,
procedures, rules, regulations, and training are being followed.
Although larger departments need to establish specialized inspections units,
it should be understood that, in all police departments, regardless of size, every
administrator and supervisory officer has inspection responsibilities. Each must

attempt to learn how well subordinates adhere to directives and to control subor-
dinates in this adherence.
In departments large enough to have a specialized inspections unit, the per-
sons responsible for this function are not directly involved in the controlling pro-
cess. That is, they merely inspect the organization and report their findings, both
good and bad, to the chief. If they discover any lack of adherence to directives, it
is the chief who exercises the controlling function, not them.
It is essential that the inspections function be administered on a totally pro-
fessional, objective, and impartial basis. Under no circumstances should those as-
signed to inspections go about their work in a clandestine fashion. Officers should
be advised that inspections are an ongoing function within the department and
that all operational, administrative, and service subsystems will be examined to de-
termine compliance with directives. It should also be understood that all positive
as well as negative findings will be reported.
The inspections function will serve the chief as a secondary source of informa-
tion to supplement information received through the regular chain of command.
Many important matters that the chief should be aware of will, either purposely
or inadvertently, never come to the attention of anyone at the command level.
Some of these problems will be of such significance that they will negatively affect
the entire organization if they are not identified and solved. A good inspections
program will identify them so they can be solved.
Internal Affairs
Internal affairs personnel investigate specific allegations of police miscon-
duct and criminality. If inspections personnel are the “internal patrol officers”
of the department, then internal affairs personnel are the “internal detectives.”
Internal investigations emanate from information received from the public,
from within the police department, and from independently developed sources.
The internal affairs function should always be a specialized function in large
departments. In small departments, the chief should be responsible for internal
affairs.
The need to have the internal affairs function performed by the chief of police
in small departments should be obvious. In such departments, the chief is, as a
general rule, the only sworn officer in the department who will not be reduced
in rank and reassigned. In highly politicized police departments, in which police
chiefs change with the election of a new mayor or with the appointment of a new
city manager, it is virtually impossible to establish viable internal affairs programs.
This is especially the case if police chiefs are recycled back into the organization
with every change in political administration. Consequently, many departments,
especially small ones, rely on an outside agency, such as the state police, to conduct
particularly sensitive or serious internal investigations.
Several years ago, a presidential commission noted that “if the police are
to maintain the respect and support of the public, they must deal openly and
forcefully with misconduct within their own ranks whenever it occurs.”28 This
can be accomplished only through the establishment of an internal affairs com-
ponent that is designed to meet its obligations fully. In some situations, this
may even require proactively seeking out corrupt officers by staging integrity
tests, rather than merely sitting back and waiting for allegations to investigate.29
The people who “guard the guards” must be skilled investigators of unquestion-
able integrity.
A practice that has become more common in the last few decades is external
or “civilian” review of complaints against the police. A variety of models are now
in existence, from ones in which non-police personnel conduct the investigations
all the way to models in which the external board serves only as an avenue of ap-
peal for those complainants who are not satisfied with the police handling of their
case.30 While still somewhat controversial among police officials, these external
mechanisms for responding to police misconduct seem to be gaining popularity,
probably because they offer the public some assurance that its complaints against
the police will be taken seriously and not swept under a rug.
Intelligence
For the most part, the intelligence function within a police department in-
volves collecting and analyzing information that relates to the existence, scope, and
impact of gangs, organized crime, drug trafficking, and terrorism. See “Criminal
Intelligence Procedures,” Box 4.4.
Intelligence units operate through the extensive use of open-source informa-
tion, informants, and undercover employees. Officers and civilians assigned to the
intelligence function usually serve in a staff capacity and rarely become involved
Box 4.4 Criminal Intelligence Procedures

Standard 40.2.3 If the agency collects criminal intelligence, a written directive addresses its
processing and sharing with appropriate entities, to include:
a. Purpose and responsibility of personnel;

b. Procedures for safeguarding, securing, and storing information;
c. Requirements and procedures for the distribution of information;
d. Procedures for purging information;
e. Annual review of procedures and processes.
operationally. In most departments, intelligence personnel report directly to the

chief or some other high-level commander, who makes tactical and strategic deci-
sions based on the information and analyses provided.
With the emergence of domestic and international terrorism, the police in-
telligence function has become increasingly important and controversial. Many
police departments are now linked to s tate-wide fusion centers as well as regional
and national intelligence and information systems operated by the US Depart-
ment of Justice and Department of Homeland Security. Collection, analysis, and
sharing of intelligence have come to occupy a central role in the new homeland
security mission.31
That the government and the society have a right and an obligation to defend
themselves from violent criminal and terrorist groups is not usually questioned,
but of great and legitimate concern are decisions about which groups to investigate
and what means of investigation should be used. A few decades ago, many police
agencies closely monitored groups whose suspected “crimes” were little more than
support for civil rights and opposition to the Vietnam War. More recently, since
9/11, police and national security agencies have greatly expanded their electronic
surveillance of phone calls and e -mails. We risk forgetting that it was the efforts of
earlier political dissenters, such as John Adams, Thomas Paine, and George Wash-
ington, that made political dissent legal and, indeed, important in our system of
government. Police administrators must have a strong appreciation of this. They
must be careful to differentiate between dissenters and truly violent opponents of
the democratic process. The latter, but not the former, are worthy targets of police
intelligence activity.
The Auxiliary Services Subsystem
We have described operations as activities performed in direct assistance to

the public and administration as activities that are likely to be of long-term benefit
to all units within the organization. The remaining activities constitute the aux-
iliary services subsystem. These activities, like administrative ones, are mainly
internally focused to benefit other units within the department, but on a more
continuous basis than administrative activities. Auxiliary services functions are
usually available to assist operational police officers on a 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-
a-year basis; administrative functions are usually available only eight hours a day,
five days a week. Although it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between these
two categories of activities, it is useful to think of administrative services as long-
range services available on a limited basis and of auxiliary services as direct services
available on a continuing basis. The tasks included within the auxiliary services
subsystem are records, communications, property and evidence, laboratory, deten-
tion, crime scene/identification, health and wellness, facilities and maintenance,
equipment and supply, and fleet services.
Records
The records task, a vitally important one for the police organization, furnishes
the agency with a memory, enabling it to retrieve information long forgotten. It
can provide information on wanted persons, unpaid parking tickets, last year’s
traffic accidents, crime patterns, and activity statistics.
The foundation of the records task is the reporting system. Some depart-
ments use one report form for almost all types of complaints; others have sep-
arate forms for different types of complaints. Regardless of the system used,
each complaint should be assigned a unique complaint number for use in case
control. All initial and follow-up reports on a given complaint should bear this
number, enabling the records unit to maintain individual files on all investiga-
tions. In regard to crime reporting, departments around the nation are in the
process of converting from the older Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system
to the more modern, flexible, and accurate National Incident Based Reporting
System (NIBRS).32
In addition to files of complaint reports, the records unit should ordinar-
ily maintain files on arrests, warrants, traffic tickets, summonses, methods of
operation (MOs), aliases, and mug shots. The records unit should also main-
tain cross-index files, whether manual or digital, for the quick retrieval of
information.
Most police departments now have computerized Records Management Sys-
tems (RMS). Many departments have refined this process to the point of installing
computers in patrol cars and providing officers with laptop computers, tablets,
and/or smartphones, thus giving individual officers the opportunity to immedi-
ately check on such matters as suspicious persons and stolen vehicles they come
across in the course of their duties. The computerization of records has made po-
lice work vastly more effective and efficient.
Departmental records must be available 24 hours a day. For the small de-
partment with limited personnel, this sometimes poses a serious problem, es-
pecially from a security standpoint. Because of the need to control access, the
records room—where original, official, and sometimes confidential documents
are stored—cannot be left open and unsecured, nor can confidential electronic
records. Therefore, small departments must assign officers who will be responsible
for records for control purposes during given shifts. A strict system of accountabil-
ity should be enforced in all such instances.
Communications
The communications function (call taking and dispatching) is integral to both
operations and auxiliary services. In many instances, communications personnel
handling incoming telephone calls are able to satisfy callers’ needs directly, with-
out having to refer matters further. When such services are provided to the public
directly in this way, they are operational. But for the most part, communications
Box 4.5 Telecommunications

Standard 81.2.1 The agency provides 24-hour, toll-free voice and TDD (Telecommunication
Device for the Deaf) telephone access or an equivalent system for emergency calls for
service.
Standard 81.2.7 The agency has the capability of immediate playback of recorded telephone
and radio conversations while it maintains a continuous recording of radio transmissions and
emergency telephone conversations within the communications center. A written directive
establishes procedures for the following:
a. A requirement that recordings be retained for a minimum period of 90 days;

b. Secure handling and storage of recordings;
c. Criteria and procedures for reviewing recorded conversations.
personnel provide internal services that benefit police officers and assist them in
their work. The bulk of their work is directed toward helping officers perform
their tasks, and therefore they are generally looked on as being auxiliary service
personnel. See “Telecommunications,” Box 4.5.
As a vitally important police function, communications provides the link be-
tween the police and the public for the delivery of police services to the community
at large. It should go without saying that people assigned to the communications
task should be effective communicators who are receptive to and concerned about
the public interest. When answering telephones, communications personnel must
obtain as much accurate information as possible about complaints, so that appro-
priate responses can be chosen and responding units can be prepared for what is
likely to await them. As dispatchers, communications personnel must be aware of
the seriousness of all calls and assign appropriate numbers of officers and vehicles
to accommodate needs and ensure officer safety.
The communications unit is the brain or central nervous system of every po-
lice department; it receives information, processes it, and sends signals out into the
system to be acted on. Not surprisingly, the work of communications personnel
is more and more assisted by computers and other modern technology integrated
into what are called c omputer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems. Personnel in the
communications center typically have access to multiple databases and informa-
tion systems, and often monitor surveillance camera systems and even gunshot
detection sensors. More and more, they can receive “calls” from the public via text,
e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook as well as the traditional telephone call. Finally, re-
gional and county-wide communication/9-1-1 centers are increasingly common,
which helps spread the cost of equipment and 24-hour staff across multiple police
and other public-safety agencies.
Box 4.6 Property Management

Standard 84.1.2 All in-custody and evidentiary property is stored within designated, secure
areas with access limited to authorized personnel.
Standard 84.1.6 In order to maintain a high degree of evidentiary integrity over agency con-
trolled property and evidence, the following documented inspections, inventory and audits
shall be completed:
a. An inspection to determine adherence to procedures used for the control of property

and evidence is conducted semi-annually by the person responsible for the property and
evidence control function or their designee;
b. An inventory of property occurs whenever the property and evidence custodian is as-
signed to and/or transferred from the position and is conducted jointly by the newly
designated property and evidence custodian and a designee of the CEO to ensure that
records are correct and properly annotated;
c. An annual audit of property and evidence held by the agency is conducted by a supervi-
sor not routinely or directly connected with control of property and evidence as directed
by the agency’s chief executive officer;
d. Unannounced inspections of property storage areas are conducted, as directed by the
agency’s chief executive officer, at least once a year.
Property and Evidence

This task encompasses the handling of all property for which the police are re-
sponsible (e.g., prisoners’ property, recovered stolen property, lost/found property,
confiscated property, departmental property, abandoned and towed vehicles, and
evidence). See “Property Management,” Box 4.6.
The handling of property, thought by some to be a simple warehouse oper-
ation, can be complicated and burdensome for the police administrator. In all
cases, property must be protected in a systematic way. Although some items need
to be stored for only short periods, others, such as perishable goods or narcotics
evidence, need special care, and continual surveillance. Honest attempts must be
made to find owners of lost property; departmental property and equipment must
be accounted for and maintained.
Special procedures must be devised for the control of all property, and records
must be maintained so that any single piece of property can be easily located. A
rigid system of security for the property storage area is essential for the protection
of all property, and great pains must be taken to control property in the possession
of the police.
Handling evidence is an especially difficult and important task. In order for
evidence to be admissible in court, it must be maintained within a chain of custody
that guarantees that it is in the same condition as when it was seized by police.
Each time a piece of evidence is passed, for whatever reason, from one person to
another, the person taking possession becomes a link in the chain of custody. Staff
responsible for property within a given police department must maintain records
indicating the chain of custody and describing the purposes for which evidence
has been passed from one person to another. Property custodians must establish
a system to maintain the integrity of evidence, always exercising caution that it is
not altered or contaminated.
Laboratory
Sophistication in investigative activities requires the use of technology and
science. Instead of relying solely on confessions to obtain convictions, which had
been the traditional approach, the police now often rely on the development of
scientific evidence through techniques such as DNA analysis and Automated Fin-
gerprint Identification Systems (AFIS).33 Physical evidence such as fibers, tool
marks, tire tracks, bloodstains, and fingerprints are considered the most reliable
of all forms of evidence; the examination and classification of such evidence rest
with the laboratory.
Few police departments have the financial resources to maintain their own
laboratories. Most police departments rely on the facilities of regional, state, or in
some cases federal and/or private laboratories for the scientific analysis of evidence
once it has been collected. In departments that do not have their own laboratories,
one person is often designated as laboratory liaison officer and given the respon-
sibility for coordinating physical evidence examinations. It is important for this
individual to carefully track evidence processing so that cases get resolved and
evidence is available for court proceedings when needed. Unfortunately, in part
because crime labs are overwhelmed, evidence often gets backlogged or misplaced,
as indicated by the hundreds and thousands of untested rape kits that have sat in
storage in multiple jurisdictions around the country.34
Detention
For most police departments, the detention task involves the temporary con-
finement of arrested persons for short periods after their arrest. If the accused
person is not released by the court after their arraignment or cannot raise the
necessary bail for release, they are usually taken to a holding facility (jail), often
administered by the county, until trial. Incarceration in police lockups, therefore,
is usually for short periods, and police detention populations are generally very
transient.
Because our system of justice presumes the innocence of all persons charged
and because our culture dictates that all human beings be treated with dignity,
arrested persons in the custody of the police deserve fair and just treatment. Sep-
arate quarters for juvenile and female detainees must be provided. Detention
areas should be clean and should give prisoners the opportunity to rest, wash, and
use toilet facilities. Prisoners should be fed and housed in accordance with their
needs; they should be protected from other prisoners, as well as from themselves
at times. All personal property, including belts, shoelaces, neckties, matches, and
cigarettes, should be temporarily confiscated. In order to prevent prisoner sui-
cides, cells should be constantly monitored by c losed-circuit television and by
sound systems, and all cells should be constructed or reconstructed to be suicide-
proof. Prisoners should also be checked periodically to prevent them from doing
bodily harm to themselves. If prisoners need medical attention, it should be pro-
vided immediately. In short, in attempting to meet the needs of prisoners, the
police should act responsibly.
Detention facilities should be secure and should be designed to prevent escape
as well as any danger to police personnel. One officer should be placed in charge
of all prisoners and held accountable for their care while in custody.
Crime Scene/Identification
The crime scene/ identification task, which involves evidence collection
at crime scenes, fingerprinting, and photography, relates most notably to de-
tention, records, and criminal investigation. Prisoners should be fingerprinted
and photographed immediately following arrest. Fingerprints are maintained as
permanent records in local, state, and federal files. Arrestee photographs (mug
shots) are usually maintained locally for future reference, although the advent
of digital photography has made it easier to share them in multijurisdictional
databases. Both fingerprints and photographs are extremely useful in criminal
investigations for identification purposes. Photographs are used to identify sus-
pects and to record crime scenes in vivid detail; they are often useful in the prose-
cution of cases. Fingerprints also serve to identify suspects, sometimes providing
the only link between a crime and a criminal. Modern AFIS systems have greatly
improved the value of fingerprints, both for positive identification of prisoners
using aliases and for suspect identification using latent fingerprints found at
crime scenes.35
Large police departments usually have crime scene/identification experts
who are skilled in all aspects of evidence collection, fingerprinting, and pho-
tography. With the advent of quality cameras within cell phones, some depart-
ments require their patrol officers and detectives to do their own photographing
except in serious cases. In this regard, digital photography has become standard,
in part because it saves substantial cost that formerly went toward film and film
processing. Some small departments also train one or more officers on each shift
to handle fingerprinting, photography, and other technical crime scene services
as a part of their normal patrol or investigative activities, as the need arises.
For the proper investigation of major crimes, it is essential for all police de-
partments to have available to them the resources of truly professional crime scene
technicians and police photographers. If such experts are not locally available, the
department should depend on the services of personnel available from regional
facilities or state police agencies.
Health and Wellness

The safety, health, and wellness of police officers have gotten increased atten-
tion in recent years. Previously, many departments offered their members little
more than access to the same Employee Assistance Program (EAP) available to
other government workers. Moreover, officers often worried that if they did seek
advice or counseling via the EAP, word would get back to the police department,
resulting in questions about their fitness for duty. As a result, many officers expe-
riencing psychological distress, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
just kept quiet, not getting any help.

Promising Strategies for Police Wellness
October 4, 2021
PERF and the COPS Office have released a report titled Promising Strategies for Strength-
ening Police Department Wellness Programs, available here. Based on a technical assistance
project with 3 medium-sized agencies, the report “provides a roadmap to creating a wellness
program, … encouraging participation in the program, and normalizing the routine use of
mental wellness services in policing.” The report offers 82 recommendations applicable to
physical, mental, emotional, financial, and spiritual wellness, along with links for numerous
resources.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, gcordner.wordpress.com/2021/10/04/promising-strategies-for-police-wellness/. The

hyperlink at “available here” links to https://cops.usdoj.gov/RIC/Publications/cops-w0964-pub.pdf.
Today, it is more typical for police departments to take an open and posi-
tive approach to officer safety, health, and wellness.36 This includes recognizing
that police work can be traumatic, and it is bound to affect how police officers
feel. Officers react to their experiences differently, but frustration, anxiety, stress,
burnout, and depression are not uncommon, sometimes resulting in relation-
ship issues, substance abuse, medical problems, and even suicide. Many agencies
have established peer support networks, since officers are usually more willing to
share their feelings with other officers. A growing practice is mandatory annual
psychological check-ups for all personnel—when these are required for everyone,
the stigma of going to see a counselor is eliminated. Departments are also now
paying much more attention to factors that can impair officer physical wellness,
such as forced overtime, second jobs, sleep deprivation, poor nutrition, and lack
of regular exercise.
Facilities and Maintenance

The police facilities task involves all aspects of the building or buildings in
which a police department is housed. It encompasses the allocation and effi-
cient use of space. The facilities task is designed to make the best possible use of
available space, with full consideration given to the goals and objectives of the
organization.
Because most police chiefs are not qualified as building superintendents or
architects, the police facilities task has often been poorly handled over the years.
Yet the way space is used is of supreme importance in the implementation of po-
lice programs and in getting the work done. On the positive side, design of police
facilities has become a recognized specialty within architecture, and several firms
that have experience and expertise in designing or redesigning police facilities can
easily be located on the Internet.
The structural grouping of related police functions is one of the most im-
portant aspects of the facilities task. Subsystem components that depend on each
other or are similar in nature should be located in close physical proximity. The
communications and records sections, for example, should be close together, with
consideration given to the necessity of locating records in an area accommodating
public access while at the same time sealing off communications from the range
of public view and hearing. Similarly, offices used for operational purposes, such
as patrol and investigations, should be separate but, at the same time, near each
other. In order to enhance prisoner safety, detention facilities should be located in
or near an area that is staffed 24 hours a day.
Keeping police facilities clean and equipment repaired and functioning prop-
erly has a positive impact on the effectiveness of every police agency. There is
nothing more frustrating for a police officer than to be forced to work out of a
dirty police facility with equipment that only works sometimes. In departments in
which maintenance of facilities and equipment holds a low priority, the morale of
police officers is likely to be low.
Many police chiefs find that it is more cost-effective to have maintenance
service performed by outsiders on a contract basis. Some departments, for ex-
ample, hire custodial services to maintain their buildings. Because such services
are provided on a competitive basis, outside service agencies are often found to
perform them significantly better than departmental personnel assigned to this
task. Most departments cannot afford full-time radio and computer technicians,
mechanics, and custodians. They can, however, afford to assign the responsibility
for maintenance to someone within the department and hold that person ac-
countable for overseeing performance of the function. Although the maintenance
function is not glamorous, it is nonetheless vital to the proper functioning of the
organization.
Equipment and Supply

There is an almost endless variety of police equipment and supplies. Police
equipment includes vehicles, bullhorns, searchlights, first aid kits, computers,
firearms, cameras, uniforms, riot gear, radios, dogs, horses, microscopes, aircraft,
boats, motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles. Supplies include items such as paper,
forms, pens, gasoline, tires, fingerprint powder, bullets, bandages, thumb drives,
and flashlight batteries.
Personnel responsible for the equipment and supply task are involved from
purchasing through installation and disposal. They monitor equipment perfor-
mance and evaluate departmental needs for new equipment. One of their more
important functions is to develop an inventory system by which equipment and
supplies can be controlled, replenished, and prevented from being lost or stolen.
Every police department should calculate the rate of usage of each kind of sup-
ply item and flag items for repurchase when stocks have dwindled. Because good
equipment and supplies are essential in the operation of every police department,
this function should be recognized as an important one deserving regular atten-
tion. As with all the other tasks discussed in this chapter, this is a function likely
to be specialized in a large police agency, or combined with a few other auxiliary
services and administrative tasks in a medium-sized agency, while in a small agency
it will probably be one of many tasks shouldered by the chief of police.
The personnel in charge of this responsibility should attempt to purchase
equipment and supplies at the lowest possible cost. It is their obligation to estab-
lish bidding procedures, to put items out for bid, and to supervise the bidding
process. In addition, to the degree possible, they should enter into regional or
state-wide purchasing compacts or price contracts in order to purchase equipment
and supplies in quantity and therefore obtain the lowest possible unit costs.
Fleet Services
Police vehicles are a subcategory of equipment but deserve to be considered
separately since they are so fundamentally connected to the delivery of police ser-
vices. Patrol cars are typically in service around the clock, which means they need
frequent oil changes, tire rotation, tire replacement, and scheduled maintenance
of engines, brakes, alignment, etc. Even with conscientious care, patrol cars may
need to be replaced after two or three years due to high mileage. Given that cars
are probably the most expensive pieces of equipment in the police inventory,
careful attention to purchasing and fleet management is essential to support the
effectiveness of police operational systems and efficiency in the use of police
resources.
Some agencies lease or rent vehicles, especially for detectives and other n on-
patrol functions. When vehicles are leased or rented, it is incumbent on personnel
responsible for fleet services to carefully monitor contracts to avoid incurring un-
necessary costs. Another factor that can complicate fleet services is diversification,
especially when hybrid or electric vehicles are introduced. Unless an agency is very
large, it will likely need to depend on dealerships and private garages for vehicle
servicing and maintenance. Monitoring the quality and cost of services provided
by these businesses is another of the responsibilities falling within the fleet services
function.
Interdependence of Subsystem Tasks
The 30 basic police subsystem tasks discussed in this chapter must be per-
formed in every police agency. If any of these tasks is neglected or not performed,
the job of providing good police services to the community will be impaired, often
to a great degree. Inasmuch as each task is an integral part of the police system as a
whole, the system itself as well as component subsystems will be affected adversely
if any one of the subsystem tasks is performed poorly or not at all.
There is a great deal of interdependence among these tasks. When an organ-
ization fails to meet its goals and objectives, the failure can always be attributed
to a breakdown in one or more subsystem tasks. Understanding the importance
of these tasks is the first step in understanding the organization itself (i.e., the
system). All of the organization’s subsystem tasks are parts of the machinery that
make the system run. Just as a bald tire, clogged fuel injector, or worn brakes re-
duce the efficiency of an automobile, an inept patrol supervisor, an inadequately
equipped laboratory, or a poorly planned budget reduces the efficiency of a police
department. When all component parts of a system are working together in good
order, the total system works in good order. Take away or damage one component
part of the system, however, and you damage the whole system; it begins to break
down. Systems that are put together poorly to begin with or lack the necessary
parts to function stand little or no chance of achieving their goals and objectives.
Summary
In this chapter, we have examined the most important basic police subsystem
tasks, tasks that must be performed if police departments are to be viable. To
suggest that these subsystem tasks are the only ones that police perform would be
naive. Each subsystem task could in fact be looked on as an individual system in
and of itself, with each task comprising numerous additional subsystems.
You should be aware that operations, administration, and auxiliary services
are the three major subsystems of the police organization and that each comprises
several additional important subsystem tasks that are essential to the system as a
whole if it is to function properly. We have examined 30 of these subsystem tasks
and have explained their importance and interdependence. In the final analysis,
it is how well these tasks are performed that will determine a police department’s
success or failure.
1. When the subject of police work comes up, what kinds of activities come to mind? What are the im-
plications for police work of the glamorized, fictional presentations seen by the public on television,
in the movies, and in novels?
2. Juvenile services, community services, and crime prevention are often looked down on by police
officers as not being “real police work.” What is real police work? As a police manager, how would
you go about elevating the status of such tasks?
3. When police recruits leave the training academy and hit the streets, they are frequently advised by
more experienced officers to forget everything that they were taught, because it is not applicable to
the real world. The recruits then learn from the “old salts” such things as sleeping on the job, accept-
ing gratuities, quickly disposing of non-emergency service calls, and padding their activity reports to
make themselves look busier than they really are. How can this cycle be broken? How can the de-
partment guarantee that the proper procedures taught in training classes are actually implemented?
4. An age-old problem concerns the responsibility for police abuses. If the investigation of police cor-
ruption and brutality is left to the police themselves, how can the public be sure that proper action
is taken? If the responsibility is placed elsewhere, such as with a civilian review board, how can the
police be convinced that they will be dealt with justly?
5. The police must collect intelligence about certain groups. However, experience suggests that the
police often exceed their proper role and use illegal means or improperly collect intelligence on legal
and nonviolent groups. How can these problems be resolved? Who should decide what means are
proper and what groups should be investigated?
Suggested Reading
Carter, D.L. 2009. Law Enforcement Intelligence: A Guide for State, Local, and Tribal Law Enforcement
Agencies, second edition. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
Katz, C.M., and V.J. Webb. 2006. Policing Gangs in America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kilgallon, M, and M. Wright (eds). 2022. Behavioural Skills for Effective Policing: The Service Speaks.
St. Albans: Critical Publishing.
Phillips, P.W. 2005. Policing and Special Units. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Walker, S., and C. Archbold. 2014. The New World of Police Accountability, second edition. Thou-
sand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Notes
1 J. Lantigua-Williams. 2016. “Using a Green Light to Bring Crime to a Stop.” The Atlantic (May
19). Online at: www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/project-green-light/483300/.
2 M. Levine, and J.T. McEwen. 1986. Patrol Deployment. Washington, DC: National Institute of
Justice.
3 G.L. Kelling, T. Pate, D. Dieckman, and C.E. Brown. 1974. The Kansas City Preventive Patrol
Experiment: A Summary Report. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
4 J.H. Ratcliffe. 2008. Intelligence-Led Policing. Cullompton: Willan; G.L. Kelling, and M.H.
Moore. 1988. “The Evolving Strategy of Policing.” In Perspectives on Policing No. 4. Washington,
DC: National Institute of Justice.
5 Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2020. Crime in the United States 2019, Table 25. Online at:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-25.
6 P.W. Greenwood, and J. Petersilia. 1975. The Criminal Investigation Process. Santa Monica, CA:
RAND Corporation.
7 J.E. Eck. 1992. “Criminal Investigation.” In G.W. Cordner and D.C. Hale (eds.), What Works
in Policing? Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, pp. 19–34.
8 C. Cosgrove. 1999. “Investigations in the Community Policing Context.” In C.S. Brito, and T.
Allan (eds), Problem-Oriented Policing: Crime-Specific Problems, Critical Issues, and Making POP
Work, Volume 2. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, pp. 151–176.
9 E. Trickey. 2018. “The Police Aren’t Just Getting You in Trouble, They Actually Care.” Politico
Magazine (June 2). Online at: www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/06/02/the-police-arent-
j ust-getting-you-in-trouble-they-actually-care-218586.
10 S.H. Decker. 2008. Strategies to Address Gang Crime: A Guidebook for Local Law Enforcement.
Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services; Police Executive Research
Forum. 2010. Gang Violence: The Police Role in Developing Community-Wide Solutions. Wash-
ington, DC: Author.
11 C.M. Katz, and V.J. Webb. 2006. Policing Gangs in America. New York, NY: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press; P.W. Phillips (ed.). 2005. Policing and Special Units. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
12 Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies, sixth edition, as amended. 2022. Gainesville, VA: Com-
mission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Chapter 46.
13 R.V. Clarke (ed.). 1997. Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies, second edition.
Guilderland, NY: Harrow and Heston, pp. 3–21; D.M. Robinson (ed.). 2002. Policing and
Crime Prevention. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
14 Federal Bureau of Investigation. 2020. Crime in the United States, 2019, Table 38. Online at:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/topic-pages/tables/table-38.
15 G. Cordner, M. Scott, and M. Sanchez. 2022. People with Mental Illness, second edition.
Problem-Oriented Policing Guide No. 40. Phoenix, AZ: Center for P roblem-Oriented Policing.
Online at: https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/people-mental-illness-2nd-edition; P. Finn, and
M. Sullivan. 1988. “Police Response to Special Populations.” In Research in Action. Washington,
DC: National Institute of Justice.
16 B. Raymond. 2010. Assigning Police Officers to Schools. Washington, DC: Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services.
17 J.M. McKenna, and A. Petrosino. 2022. School Policing Programs: Where We Have Been and
Where We Need to Go Next. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice. Online at: https://
www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/301592.pdf.
18 J. Rosiak. 2015. “How SROs Can Divert Students from the Justice System.” Community Polic-
ing Dispatch 8, no. 5. Online at: http://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/05–2015/sros_and_stu-
dents.asp.
19 D.J. Kenney, and T.S. Watson. 1999. Crime in the Schools: Reducing Conflict with Student Prob-
lem Solving. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
20 National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. 1973. Police. Wash-
ington, DC: Government Printing Office, pp. 329, 342.
21 C. Gardiner. 2017. Policing Around the Nation: Education, Philosophy, and Practice. Washington,
DC: Police Foundation. Online at: www.policefoundation.org/publication/policing-around-
t he-nation-edu-cation-philosophy-and-practice/; B.A. Reaves. 2015. Local Police Departments,
2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Online at:
www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd13ppp.pdf.
22 E.D. Buehler. 2021. State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies, 2018: Statistical
Tables. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Online at: https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/
xyckuh236/files/media/document/slleta18st.pdf.
23 Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. 2004. PTO: An Overview and Introduction.
Washington, DC: Author. Online at: http://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-w0150-pub.
pdf; M.S. McCampbell. 2001. “Field Training for Police Officers: State of the Art.” In R.G.
Dunham, and G.P. Alpert (eds), Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings, fourth edi-
tion. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland, pp. 107–116.
24 R.V. Clarke, and J.E. Eck. 2005. Crime Analysis for Problem Solvers in 60 Small Steps. Washing-
ton, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
Report: The Police. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 63–65.
26 X. Hu and N. Lovrich. 2020. Electronic Community-Oriented Policing: Theories, Contemporary
Efforts, and Future Directions. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books; G. Cordner, and E.B. Perkins.
2013. E-cop: Using the Web to Enhance Community-Oriented Policing. Washington, DC: Office
of Community Oriented Policing Services. Online at: http://ric-zai-inc.com/Publications/cops-
w0706-
pub.pdf; D.W. Stephens, J. Hill, and S. Greenberg. 2011. Strategic Communication Prac-
tices: A Toolkit for Police Executives. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services.
27 M. Motschall, and L. Cao. 2002. “An Analysis of the Public Relations Role of the Police Public
Information Officer.” Police Quarterly 5, no. 2: 1 52–180; J.E. Guffey. 1992. “The Police and
the Media: Proposals for Managing Conflict Productively.” American Journal of Police 11, no. 1:
33–51.
28 President’s Commission on Campus Unrest. 1970. Report of the President’s Commission on Cam-
pus Unrest. Chicago, IL: Commerce Clearing House, pp. 5–8.
29 L.W. Sherman. 1978. Scandal and Reform: Controlling Police Corruption. Berkeley: University of
California.
30 Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and International Association of Chiefs of
Police. 2009. Building Trust between the Police and the Citizens They Serve: An Internal Affairs
Promising Practices Guide for Local Law Enforcement. Washington, DC: Authors; S. Walker.
2005. The New World of Police Accountability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
31 D.L. Carter. 2009. Law Enforcement Intelligence: A Guide for State, Local, and Tribal Law
Enforcement Agencies, second edition. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Polic-
ing Services.
32 See https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/nibrs.
33 G. Cordner. 2013. “Science Solves Crime: Myth or Reality.” In R.M. Bohm, and J.T. Walker
(eds), Demystifying Crime and Criminal Justice, second edition. New York: Oxford, pp. 157–165.
34 National Institute of Justice. 2015. Untested Evidence in Sexual Assault Cases. Washington,
DC: Author. Online at: www.nij.gov/topics/law-enforcement/investigations/sexual-assault/
Pages/untested-sexual-as-sault.aspx.
35 D.J. Klug, J.L. Peterson, and D.A. Stoney. 1992. Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems:
Their Acquisition, Management, Performance, and Organizational Impact. Washington, DC:
National Institute of Justice.
36 See https://cops.usdoj.gov/officersafetyandwellness and https://bja.ojp.gov/program/law-
enforcement-officer-safety-and-wellness/overview.
PART II
The Traditional Perspective
The three chapters in Part II address topics traditionally considered central to

police administration. The discussions rely heavily on such matters as struc-
ture, principles, and functions. Although in some respects modern manage-
ment has gone “beyond” these concerns (as Parts III and IV will demonstrate),
we feel strongly that the elements of traditional police administration are the
building blocks for more advanced practices. To use a sports analogy, they
are similar to the basketball fundamentals of passing, dribbling, and defensive
position. The most sophisticated offensive and defensive schemes in basketball
depend on such sound fundamentals. In the same fashion, police departments
utilizing the most u p-to-date organizational and managerial practices still de-
pend in large measure on the sound application of traditional concepts of po-
lice administration.
Chapter 5 presents the basic principles of police organization and discusses
the role of policies in police administration. Organizational principles are useful
guidelines for organizing police work and police personnel. Although the applica-
bility of the principles varies somewhat depending on department size, all police
managers need a working familiarity with them. Policies, procedures, rules, and
regulations provide the flow of direction from management to employees, and
their enforcement is the police manager’s basic means of control. Exercising effec-
tive direction and control is a particularly challenging aspect of police administra-
tion, because police officers have so much discretion in their decision making in
the field.
Chapter 6 considers six basic functions of police management: system build-
ing, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. The first three of
these functions are focused on creating and revising the structure and processes of
the organization and are of particular concern to top managers. They are centrally
concerned with “setting the stage” upon which managing, supervising, and actual
work performance are carried out. The latter three functions—staffing, directing,
and controlling—are heavily people-oriented. They are concerned with acquiring
and utilizing the organization’s human resources and making sure that employees
both know and do what is expected of them.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-6
102 The Traditional Perspective
In Chapter 7, we present an overview of the role of the police executive. Inter-

nal roles of managing and leading are discussed, as are external relations with
political leaders, unions, the media, and the community. Several different styles
of police executive behavior are considered. Modern approaches that emphasize
excellence and the “reinvention” of government are explored.
CHAPTER 5 Principles and
Policies in the Police
Organization
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain the relationships between authority, responsibility, and accountability.

• Define the principles of chain of command, unity of command, and span of control.
• Explain why organizational guidelines are especially important in policing, but also difficult
to apply.
• Compare policies, procedures, and rules in terms of specificity.
• Identify the four sources of organizational policy.
This chapter addresses two related issues: (1) principles that guide the struc-
ture of the police organization; and (2) policies and procedures that guide police
employees in their decision making and actions. The information in this chapter
lays the foundation for the discussion of the functions of police management pre-
sented in C hapter 6.
Authority, Responsibility, and Accountability
Any organization in which someone has authority over someone else is a hierar-
chy. Governments, corporations, fraternities, universities, and police departments
are all hierarchies. Most organizations are hierarchical in some respects; some are
more hierarchical than others. The greater the number of levels of supervisors or
administrators an organization has, the more hierarchical the organization is. For
example, F igure 5.1 shows that police department A is more hierarchical than de-
partment B, even though both have the same number of employees.
Typically, larger organizations are more hierarchical than smaller ones, simply
because more employees require more supervisors, more supervisors require more
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-7
Figure 5.1
Two Seven-Member Police Departments. Department A Is More Hierarchical Than
Department B
Box 5.1 Authority and Responsibility

Standard 11.3.1 A written directive requires that:
a. Responsibility is accompanied by commensurate authority;

b. Each employee is accountable for the use of delegated authority.
id-level managers, and so on. If too many levels of hierarchy are created, however,
m
many different kinds of organizational problems can arise, such as delays in commu-
nication from the top of the organization to the bottom and lack of feedback at the
top of the organization. Many organizations today, including police departments,
are trying to become “flatter” by eliminating unnecessary levels of hierarchy.1 As with
most elements of organizational structure, balance is r equired—in this case, balance
between the need for sufficient supervision and the desire to streamline the organi-
zational structure as much as possible. See “Authority and Responsibility,” Box 5.1.
5 Principles and Policies in the Police Organization 105
When we say someone is a person’s boss, we generally mean that they have the
authority to give the person orders. In terms of authority, the boss is the supervisor
and has the power to command the subordinate. Authority also gives the boss the
right to make decisions and take actions. A police sergeant, for example, has the
right as supervisor to approve a patrol officer’s request to leave an assigned patrol
area. The sergeant makes such a decision based on the responsibility to exercise
delegated authority.
Authority and responsibility should be balanced in each position in the or-
ganization. It would not be fair to make an employee responsible for a function
without also providing sufficient authority to make decisions and take actions
in carrying out the function. By the same token, employees should not be given
authority without commensurate responsibility, because of the possibility of abuse
of that authority.
Police chiefs should never make the mistake of assuming that those to whom
they have delegated authority will use it wisely. In order to minimize the e ver-
present possibility that delegated authority will be misused or abused, chiefs must
institute a formal system for monitoring the activities of all staff who have been
delegated authority. Such a system is based on the principle of accountability.
The principle of accountability means that all individuals to whom authority
has been delegated must be held accountable for its use. It demands that action be
taken if and when individuals exercise their authority improperly or irresponsibly.
Further, it requires that a conscious effort be made to identify organization mem-
bers who fail to use their authority, use too much authority, or use their authority
improperly.
The police chief can monitor the use of authority by organization members in
several ways. The basic way is through supervision within the chain of command.
In addition, the inspections and internal affairs subsystems described in C hapter 4
provide information (feedback) about the use of authority throughout the depart-
ment. The organization’s information system should be designed to aid in moni-
toring performance, including use of authority. The performance appraisal process
by which each employee’s performance is periodically reviewed and evaluated is
another important source of information.
The principle of accountability is put into effect through swift and certain
action that is uniformly and fairly administered. All individuals should be treated
alike, regardless of rank or position, and no favoritism should be shown in im-
plementing the principle. Therefore, an action must be taken in every instance
in which authority is misused or when it becomes apparent that an individual
is shirking responsibility or not doing the job as assigned. Distinctions must be
made, of course, between intentional acts and honest mistakes made by employees
trying to do their jobs properly.
If a chief does not use the principle of accountability as a control device and
takes no action, everyone tacitly learns that the department will condone cer-
tain improprieties and misbehavior. When officers realize that they can misuse
their authority or neglect their responsibilities with impunity, authority will be
misused and responsibilities will not be met on a continuing basis throughout the
organization.
In departments in which functions are poorly defined and little or no au-
thority is delegated, it is impossible to put the principle of accountability into
effect. In such organizations, authority, which is the glue that holds an organi-
zation together, becomes an administrative tool by which friends are rewarded
and enemies are punished. Personalities, rather than organizational principles, take
over the department and become the focal point around which the organization is
administered. In such departments, an officer gets ahead by siding with the right
people politically, not by doing the job. The job becomes incidental to personal
priorities and prerogatives. The department becomes self-centered rather than
community-centered.
Delegation of Authority
In a properly organized police department, the chief delegates authority for

decision making to people at all levels within the organization. Authority is the
power to make decisions or to perform tasks. The ultimate authority in a police
department lies with the chief, who must wisely delegate authority to others so
that decisions can be made and tasks performed.
Every person within an organization who is expected to perform a specific
task should be delegated the necessary amount of authority to perform it well. In
police departments in which chiefs do not understand this necessity, there will be
few operational decisions made and little work accomplished. For example, when
the chief of one small department was first appointed, there was only one other
member of the department. Thirty years later, the department had more than 20
members. Although the chief was well intentioned and had the best interests of
the department and the town at heart, the department had grown so much that he
was not able to adjust to the fact that he could no longer retain all authority and
make all decisions. He gave the one lieutenant and three sergeants little authority
to make decisions and to assume command and supervisory responsibilities. As a
result, the patrol officers’ work was totally unsupervised. The sergeants were little
more than patrol officers with three stripes on their sleeves and greatly resented the
fact that the chief would not give them the authority to do their job. Both the town
and the department suffered because of the chief ’s unwillingness to delegate his
authority to others who needed it to do their work and meet their responsibilities.
The failure to delegate authority is not at all uncommon in police organiza-
tions. In many instances, police chiefs simply do not understand the mechanics of
the delegation process. In other cases, chiefs are unwilling to delegate authority,
fearing that it will be abused by subordinates and reflect negatively on both the
department and themselves. Many chiefs are aware that ultimate responsibility
is theirs and, accordingly, are extremely cautious about allowing others within
their organizations the opportunity to make mistakes that could prove to be
embarrassing. Often, though, police chiefs are the least qualified people within
their organizations to make decisions, because they are generally furthest removed
from the people and the situations their decisions will affect.
The ironic aspect of this unwillingness to delegate authority is that it affects
administrative matters more than operational matters. Police chiefs often refuse to
delegate the authority for purchasing a tire to keep a patrol car on the road, issuing
flashlight batteries, switching from summer-weight to w inter-weight uniforms in
the autumn, or making minor work schedule alterations. Yet the authority to use
force or to take away a person’s freedom is delegated to the lowest-ranking mem-
bers of the organization, almost without a second thought. Perhaps it is because
police chiefs realize that such awesome legal authority is so widely delegated that
they jealously guard the limited administrative authority they have.
In delegating authority, chiefs should make absolutely certain that everyone
within their departments has a precisely defined understanding not only of the
authority they have been delegated, but also of the circumstances under which
that authority may be used. In order to be sure that the person receiving delegated
authority thoroughly understands it, it should be delegated in writing, whether in
policies, procedures, or special orders. Except for emergency situations, a chief of
police should never delegate authority using only the spoken word. Confusion,
forgetfulness, and misunderstandings can quickly dissipate authority that is not in
writing. It is imperative then, that any delegation of authority be put in writing.
Just as the chief has total authority over the entire police department, officers
in high-ranking positions have more authority than those in lower ranks. Captains
generally would have more authority than lieutenants; lieutenants, more authority
than sergeants. A captain in charge of an operations bureau, for example, should
have the authority to decide what priorities will be assigned to various types of
investigations. The captain exercises authority by establishing these priorities re-
sponsibly in terms of a number of factors, which might include workload, se-
riousness of the offense, current crime problems, and availability of personnel.
The captain might reasonably choose to delegate the authority to establish these
priorities to the lieutenant in charge of the investigations division or retain the au-
thority and establish the priorities personally. The lieutenant, however, should not
delegate this authority to investigative sergeants. The lieutenant, with an overview
of the entire investigations division, is in a much better position than the sergeants
to establish investigative priorities.
Whenever feedback within a police system indicates that authority is being
abused or that officers to whom authority has been delegated are not using it
responsibly, that authority must be recovered or taken back. When they delegate
authority, police chiefs must be fully aware that the delegation is never permanent.
This must also be understood by everyone to whom authority is delegated. When
a department is reorganized, when duties are rearranged or reassigned, and when
departmental objectives, policies, and programs are modified, authority will in-
evitably be recovered. The delegation of authority and the recovery of authority
are continuing processes by which the organization is made more responsive to
the interests of its clientele (citizens, in the case of a police department) and more
productive in terms of its output (services).
If the concepts of authority, responsibility, and accountability are fully un-
derstood by everyone within a police department and if the chief follows some
simple principles of organization in administering the agency, there should be
no difficulty in using authority delegation as an organizational device to increase
departmental efficiency and effectiveness.
The Authority-Level Principle
The authority-level principle is based on the premise that authority exists

within an organization at all levels and only decisions that cannot be made at a
given level because of lack of authority should be referred upward for resolution.
It is based on the assumption that within an organization there will be problems
everywhere that must be solved on an ongoing basis if the organization is to meet
its goals and objectives. Further, it dictates that “all decisions should be made as
low as possible in an organization.”2
In police departments in which functions have been improperly grouped, in
which the chain of command is not in effect, and in which individuals at various
ranks lack the authority to do their jobs, departmental personnel tend to ignore
problems or rely on the chief to make most of the decisions. Ignoring the problems
is the easier of the two alternatives; the chief, lacking a viable chain of command,
will in all likelihood never be advised that problems exist.
The a uthority-level principle is perhaps the most difficult principle of organ-
ization to put into effect. Weak c ommand-level personnel and inept supervisors
can be expected to avoid their p roblem-solving responsibilities and allow problems
to increase in number and severity. Insistence that problems that cannot be solved
at lower levels be communicated upward is, therefore, essential. In police depart-
ments, this insistence should be procedurally formalized, with officers and man-
agers at all levels required to write regular reports on problems that have surfaced
that they lack the authority to solve themselves. By writing down their problems
and passing along their reports to the person within the organization to whom
they report and from whom they receive their authority through the chain of com-
mand, they are in fact referring the problems upward for solution. Then, when
superiors receive reports outlining problems from subordinates, it is incumbent
on them, if they have the necessary authority, to solve the problems themselves. If
they lack the authority to solve the problems, they, too, are obliged in their regular
reports to their superiors to list the problems that they lack the authority to solve
personally. If such a system is put into effect, and if reports are kept by the depart-
ment, accountability can be placed on officers, supervisors, and managers who are
shirking their problem-solving responsibilities.
Most problems in a majority of departments will probably be solved more
informally. For example, a patrol officer who is having mechanical difficulties with
a patrol vehicle should only need to mention this to the sergeant in order to have
arrangements made for the vehicle’s repair. If this problem is then solved, it would
not be listed among the problems the sergeant outlined in their regular report. On
the other hand, if the sergeant refuses to make arrangements to have the vehicle
repaired, thereby refusing to make a decision on the matter, it would be the patrol
officer’s responsibility to list this as a problem in their report. By insisting that the
patrol officer commit this problem to writing, and by keeping the reports for at
least a year, it will be a relatively easy matter for the lieutenant in charge of the
shift, or for the captain in charge of operations, to place accountability on the
sergeant for not dealing with a problem for which authority had been delegated.
Both the captain and the lieutenant should, by departmental policy, be required
to make periodic spot checks on reports in an effort to find problems that their
subordinates may be attempting to keep from them.
Although this example may seem to be a rather inconsequential matter, it
illustrates the kind of situation that can seriously impede the effectiveness of a
police unit or the entire police organization. In one department that was studied,
minor problems similar to the one above seriously affected the morale of police of-
ficers and stood in the way of achieving departmental goals and objectives. Almost
no problems were solved at the operating level, and no systems existed for refer-
ring problems upward. Although the department consisted of almost 200 police
officers, it had a very loosely knit chain of command and no organization chart.
If the chief was aware of the principle of accountability or of the a uthority-level
principle, he was certainly not applying them to the management of the depart-
ment. As a result, portable radios were in varying stages of disrepair, and many
were missing. Police vehicles were poorly equipped and maintained. Several would
have had difficulty passing state inspection; one car had a nonfunctioning front
headlight, another had a blown muffler. A patrol vehicle was once out of service
for five days because no one assumed the responsibility of cleaning vomit from
its rear floor rug. Patrol cars had no fire extinguishers or first aid kits. These and
other problems remained unsolved because no one had the authority to solve them
and because the chief was either unaware of or chose to ignore their existence. He
simply did not know how to apply the basic principles of police organization to his
department. He, the officers in his department, and the citizens in his community
all suffered as a result of his inability to manage.
The authority-level principle, if it is applied consistently throughout the or-
ganization, will help to solve many problems that would otherwise go unsolved.
It is a device that all police chiefs should utilize to the fullest extent if they expect
their departments to meet their goals and objectives.
Key Organizational Principles
This section discusses several fundamental organizational principles: chain of

command; unity of command; span of control; and grouping of like functions.
Along with the concepts of authority, responsibility, and accountability, these

principles are used to help guide the structure of police organizations.
Chain of Command
Chain of command, also referred to as the scalar principle, is an organizational
mechanism that establishes formal lines of communication within a police de-
partment. It is founded on the premise that the clearer the line of authority from
the chief executive to every subordinate, the more effective decision making and
organizational communication will be. It establishes a vertical flow of information,
directives, and orders downward through an organization. The chain of command
establishes a path between every person in the department and the chief. The path
may also be viewed as a two-way street whereby information may flow upward
through the organization from subordinates through superiors and ultimately to
the chief.
The schematic design that establishes the chain of command is the organiza-
tion chart. Organization charts may be very simple or very complex, depending
on department size. Regardless of their simplicity or complexity, however, they
all show the relative positions of subsystems within the police department. The
organization chart in Figure 5.2, for example, shows a chain of command from
chief to operations lieutenant to shift sergeant to patrol officer. In the same chart,
the chain of command links the crime prevention officer and the chief directly.
The chain of command is an invaluable organizational tool because it estab-
lishes formal communication links. If a department is to be properly organized,
these communication links must be used by everyone within the organization to
communicate formally. If the chain of command is not used for all formal com-
municating, serious organizational difficulties can be anticipated. For example, a
chief of police who disregards the chain of command and bypasses supervisors and
managers by issuing an order directly to a patrol officer is breaking the chain and
dissipating the authority of all those within the chain who have varying degrees
of authority over what the patrol officer does. If the chief makes a habit of issuing
orders directly to patrol officers, they quickly learn that the chain of command is
inconsequential in internal communications and that they, too, may disregard it
in their efforts to communicate upward in the organization.
In applying the chain of command to the organizing of a police department,
a chief should consider the fact that there are various levels of management, each
with somewhat different functions. (In a small police department, of course, all
three levels may simply be combined in the chief ’s position.) For our purposes, we
can group these levels of management into three categories:
1. Chief administrative level;

2. Command level;
3. Supervisory level.
Figure 5.2
Organization Chart for a 26-Member Police Department
The chief administrative level, always the top level within the organization,
consists of the chief and the chief ’s staff. The command level generally is com-
prised of all officers of the rank of lieutenant and above who have authority and
overall responsibility for line or staff functions. The supervisory level consists of
ranking officers below the rank of lieutenant who are assigned to supervisory du-
ties. Most departments have sergeants, and many have corporals who also fall into
this category.
Ranking officers who neither command nor supervise line or operational
functions are generally referred to as staff personnel. Although they hold rank and
often perform important functions, they do not have command or supervisory
authority over anyone. Most often staff personnel are assigned to higher levels of
management. A lieutenant, for example, who is assigned to the operations bureau
as legal advisor is in a staff position, not a c ommand-level position, even though
the work is performed at the command level. Another lieutenant assigned to the
operations bureau might have the overall responsibility for running a patrol shift.
Because the assignment would involve command responsibilities, this lieutenant

would be considered to be in a command-level position.
Unity of Command
The principle of unity of command insists that the reporting relationship
between subordinate and superior be on a one-to-one basis. A subordinate should
not be expected to report to more than one superior or take orders from more than
one superior.3 See “Unity of Command” Box 5.2.
If a person is expected to take orders from more than one superior, tre-
mendous confusion can result, just as in a family when two parents give a child
conflicting instructions. Consider the case of a patrol officer who receives three
different patrol assignments from the sergeant, lieutenant, and chief, respectively.
Both the sergeant and the lieutenant will be upset by the chief ’s action, and the
patrol officer will be totally frustrated: which of the three superiors’ orders should
be followed?
This kind of problem must be taken into consideration when a police de-
partment is organized; departmental policy must stipulate that each officer takes
orders from and reports directly to only one person: their immediate superior in
the chain of command. If the chief wants to issue an order to a patrol officer, it
must be understood by everyone that this can be done only through the chain of
command. In this instance, the chief would tell the lieutenant how to assign the
patrol officer, the lieutenant would tell the sergeant, and the sergeant, as the patrol
officer’s immediate superior, would issue the order to the officer.
Box 5.2 Unity of Command

Standard 11.2.1 Each organizational component is under the direct command of only one
supervisor.
Standard 12.1.2 A written directive establishes the command protocol for the following sit-
uations, at a minimum:
a. In the absence of the chief executive officer;

b. In exceptional situations;
c. In situations involving personnel of different functions engaged in a single operation;
d. In normal day-to-day agency operations.
Standard 12.1.3 A written directive requires employees to obey any lawful order of a supe-
rior, including any order relayed from a superior by an employee of the same or lesser rank.
The directive must also include procedures to be followed by an employee who receives a
conflicting or unlawful order.
The principle of unity of command is a simple device that helps to avoid

confusion in the issuance of orders. It makes all personnel within the organi-
zation more comfortable in their roles and more secure in terms of reporting
relationships.
Practical necessities do sometimes complicate unity of command, however. In
the 26-member police department described in Figure 5.2, for example, the five
clerk/dispatchers report to the lieutenant in charge of administration and services.
Because they work shifts, though, the lieutenant frequently will not be on duty
when they are. In this department, the on-duty clerk/dispatcher would typically
be directly supervised by the o n-duty patrol shift sergeant. Out of necessity, the
clerk/dispatchers would be required to take orders from these patrol sergeants re-
garding, for example, when they could take their meal breaks. Ultimately, though,
they would remain responsible to their superior in the chain of command, the
lieutenant in charge of administration and services.
In situations such as these, which often arise in police agencies because they
provide 24-hour-a-day service, two adjustments to the unity of command princi-
ple are required: (1) it must be clear to employees which supervisors have the au-
thority to command them under what circumstances; while (2) at any given time,
the employee should be expected to take orders from only one superior. With these
adjustments, the principle of unity of command can be made compatible with the
practical realities of police work.
Span of Control
The total number of subordinates reporting to a single superior is referred to
as that superior’s span of control. The chief who commands three captains has a
span of control of three. The patrol sergeant who supervises the activities of nine
patrol officers has a span of control of nine. The operations lieutenant in F
igure 5.2
has a span of control of four—the three shift sergeants and the detective.
Early theorists believed that the proper number of persons within a span of
control could be precisely established. Formulas were developed to “prove” that
six or seven or some other number of people was the optimum number that could
be supervised effectively. Over the years, however, it became apparent that the
complexities of tasks and responsibilities, the skills of subordinates, and the talents
of supervisors make it impossible to establish an ideal span of control. Rather,
determining a given span of control is based on a subjective evaluation of the
number of people a given supervisor can supervise effectively. Peter Drucker even
suggested that a supervisor’s span include a few more persons than they can closely
supervise, thus making it impossible for a supervisor to do subordinates’ work for
them.4
It is useful to think of the span of control as narrowing progressively toward
the top of the organization. Thus, a police chief might have the smallest span
of control in the organization. A good rule of thumb is that the span should be
devised according to the degree of responsibility and authority that exists at a
particular level in the hierarchy. The greater the degree of authority and responsi-
bility that exists, the narrower the span of control.
Depending on circumstances, however, this general guideline can be ad-
justed. It is possible, for example, that a chief might have a span of control con-
sisting of four captains, whereas a lieutenant who is in charge of a patrol shift
in that department has responsibility over only three sergeants. As Pfiffner and
Presthus point out, “there is no constant number applicable to every situation.”5
In short, span of control is an organizational tool that, if used with care and re-
vised through experience, can contribute significantly to organizational cohesion
and effectiveness.
Grouping Like Functions

Police officers have many basic responsibilities and work in a variety of ways.
They direct traffic, intercede in family disputes, counsel youths, make arrests,
drive patrol vehicles, conduct surveillance, enforce laws, write reports, maintain
records, interrogate suspects, interview complainants and victims, testify in court,
enforce parking regulations, investigate accidents, supervise subordinates, prepare
budgets, provide for the safety of schoolchildren, give first aid, inspect liquor es-
tablishments, book prisoners, check doors and premises at night, collect and pre-
serve evidence, perform Breathalyzer tests, deliver babies, and engage in myriad
other functions that come within the purview of their mission. Their duties are
many and are often conflicting.
Because a police organization cannot have a separate unit to perform each
of the tasks listed above, it becomes necessary to combine them in some system-
atic way. The most useful way of grouping functions is through application of
the principle of functional definition which, in police circles, is usually referred
to as grouping like functions. This c ommon-sense principle holds that functions
that are similar should be grouped together organizationally. Functions are similar
when:
1. The same level of authority is required for their execution;

2. Responsibility for them is executed at the same time or in the same place;
3. They require the same amount of training and/
or degree of skill to be
performed.
It is through the grouping of similar functions that the various units within a
police organization are formed. Chiefs of police should make a concerted effort to
group similar tasks together logically within their organizational framework.
The chief should be guided not only by similarities in functions but also by
the size of the department. In a department with one chief and four patrol of-
ficers, the chief would in all likelihood perform all administrative and auxiliary
service functions as well as numerous operational tasks. The patrol officers would
probably be assigned exclusively to operational responsibilities. In departments

with more personnel available to perform specialized functions, any number of
possibilities exists for grouping like functions.
You should note that the organization chart for a 26-member police depart-
ment depicted in Figure 5.2 does not have a box for each and every one of the
30 police organizational tasks described in Chapter 4. Still, those tasks must be
performed within this department, as in any other. Many of the 20 administra-
tive and auxiliary services tasks, for example, would probably be performed by
the chief or the lieutenant in command of administration and services. With re-
spect to these 20 tasks and the 10 operational tasks, the chief should be careful in
delegating authority so that it is clear which tasks are the responsibility of which
personnel.
Unless a conscious effort is made to group like functions in some systematic,
logical way, officers within the department will eventually become confused about
how they should perform assigned tasks. In one department, a sergeant assigned to
the day shift was given responsibility for the safety of children as they traveled to
and from school. In this position, the sergeant served as supervisor for more than
50 school crossing guards who assisted youngsters across busy city streets. That the
sergeant and the crossing guards were placed organizationally in the same division
was an appropriate grouping of similar functions.
The sergeant, however, was also assigned the task of inspecting the operations
division’s police vehicles at 8:00 a.m. Monday through Friday. These inspections
usually lasted between 15 and 30 minutes. With schools opening at 8:30 a.m.,
the half hour between 8:00 and 8:30 was critical in terms of the sergeant’s pri-
mary responsibility. His assignment to vehicle inspection created a timing conflict
that made it impossible for him to perform both duties responsibly. Also, the
school safety and vehicle inspection tasks were not so similar that there was an
overwhelming rationale for combining them in one position. It would have been
more logical to assign patrol vehicle inspections to someone else in the operations
division, or to have scheduled vehicle inspections at a different time.
Over the last few years, in conjunction with growing interest in community
policing, the criterion of “place,” or geography, has become more important in
grouping similar functions together. Departments that once gave greater emphasis
to time in organizing patrol units (making the shift the primary building block
of patrol operations) are now emphasizing place by creating beat teams and sim-
ilar geographically focused units. In addition, departments that once organized
largely on the basis of function (due to skill and training requirements of differ-
ent specialized jobs) are now organizing more on the basis of geography. Under
this model, for example, detectives report to an area commander rather than to a
chief of detectives based at headquarters. Some departments have also reduced the
number of functionally specialized jobs (detectives, traffic officers, etc.), arguing
that neighborhood-based patrol officers can perform many of these functions, and
can perform them more effectively due to their in-depth knowledge of their geo-
graphic areas of responsibility.
Grouping like functions inevitably raises the issue of specialization. In a five-

member police agency, the patrol and investigative functions must be grouped
together as similar functions and performed by the same people. A 3 0-member
department, on the other hand, might lend itself to the establishment of both
a patrol division and an investigations division. In a much larger department,
where the availability of personnel would suggest further specialization, the patrol
division might be subdivided into a number of subsystems to include a tactical
unit, an emergency operations unit, a domestic violence unit, a helicopter unit, a
mounted unit, and a bomb unit. Similarly, the investigation division in the larger
department could be subdivided into a vice unit, a narcotics unit, an auto theft
unit, a fraud unit, a homicide unit, a burglary unit, a robbery unit, and a cyber-
crime unit.
Care should be taken in determining the degree of specialization that should
be introduced in any police department. Although traditional organization the-
orists tend to believe that effectiveness increases with specialization, this is not
necessarily so. It was originally thought that the more concentrated the talents and
energies of a worker, the greater the worker’s productivity. The assembly line, the
logical manifestation of this belief, revolutionized the manufacture of goods. In
time, however, problems arose. Many workers became bored with the repetitive-
ness of their routine, which led to absenteeism and labor problems. This pointed
out that there are pros and cons to specialization. It allows a worker to develop
a higher level of expertise and experience in a narrow slice of the organization’s
work, but it can inhibit their professional development in other areas. Also, in an
organization like a police department that performs so many different tasks, it is
desirable to have individuals who are versatile and can work effectively in more
than one area.
In police departments, specialization tends to deflect efforts away from meet-
ing total organizational objectives and to concentrate efforts on attaining the
narrower goals of the specialist’s subunit. If a narcotics detective, for example, is
paying an addict-informant for information, a real possibility exists that the in-
formant may be committing burglaries to support their drug habit. Although the
objectives of the narcotics detective may be satisfied by the information provided
by the addict-informant, the overall goal of the department to decrease crime is
not. The narcotics detective is, in fact, working against the overall goals and objec-
tives of the department while pursuing the special unit’s goals and objectives. The
tendency of subunits in an organization to pursue their own narrow objectives,
regardless of the effect on overall organizational goals, is called suboptimization.
A related problem caused by specialization is that, if some activity or function
is assigned to a specific officer or unit, then the rest of the organization often
believes that it is no longer responsible for that function. This happened in many
police departments in the early stages of implementing community policing and
problem-oriented policing.6 Moreover, specialized officers and units can easily be-
come isolated from the rest of the organization, which can impede communica-
tion, reduce effectiveness, and lead to misunderstandings and stereotyping.
Decisions about how much specialization there should be in organizing a

police department are vitally important because they will directly influence the
department’s overall effectiveness. In departments with many specialized sub-
units, the chain of command becomes a less effective communication device.
These units tend to work independently of one another. Information tends to be
guarded on a unit-proprietary basis and not shared with the rest of the depart-
ment, creating so-called silos. Detectives in some departments have been known
to pocket arrest warrants in anticipation of making a major arrest themselves.
Specialization tends to increase unit competition and negate overall departmental
cohesiveness.
The problem of specialization versus generalization does not lend itself to an
easy solution. One former police chief recommended that when specializing is
necessary, personnel should be rotated frequently; otherwise, “a good general rule
to follow is to specialize if you must, generalize if you can.”7 This seems to be an
excellent rule to follow in organizing any size police department.
Written Guidelines
In the police field, policies, procedures, and rules are extremely important.8
These are, in effect, statements that define how police officers are expected to
perform. Police officers are given powers not granted to the ordinary citizen and
thus parameters must be in place to ensure that they perform in accordance with
departmental rather than personal expectations. At a minimum, police in a demo-
cratic society are expected to perform within the confines of legal constraints, but
in addition, their actions should be guided by written guidelines that reflect the
organization’s mission, goals, and values.
One must also consider the fact that the police task is characterized by an
enormous degree of discretion afforded to individual officers in the exercise of
their duties. The incredible variety of situations that police officers encounter, the
omnipresence of danger in their work, their need to settle problems informally,
and the variable personal skills that individual officers bring to their work all mit-
igate against narrow, unbending policies and procedures. Thus, the goal of any
police chief must be to find the middle ground between unlimited discretion and
rigid standardization (see “Police Discretion,” Box 5.3). This is not an easy task,
but it can be accomplished through an understanding of the proper applications
of policies, procedures, and rules.
The case for clear behavioral guidelines in police organizations has been made
time and again. In 1967, the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and
Administration of Justice recommended that “police departments should develop
and enunciate policies that give police personnel specific guidance for the com-
mon situations requiring exercise of police discretion.”9 Soon after, the American
Bar Association asserted that “police discretion can best be structured and con-
trolled through the process of administrative rulemaking by police agencies. Police
Box 5.3 Police Discretion

Standard 1.3
1. Every police agency should acknowledge the existence of the broad range of admin-
istrative and operational discretion that is exercised by all police agencies and indi-
vidual officers. That acknowledgment should take the form of comprehensive policy
statements that publicly establish the limits of discretion, that provide guidelines for its
exercise within those limits, and that eliminate discriminatory enforcement of the law.
2. Every police chief executive should establish policy that guides the exercise of discre-
tion by police personnel in using arrest alternatives.
3. Every police chief executive should establish policy that limits the exercise of discretion
by police personnel in conducting investigations, and that provides guidelines for the
exercise of discretion within those limits.
4. Every police chief executive should establish policy that governs the exercise of discre-
tion by police personnel in providing routine peacekeeping and other police services
that, because of their frequent recurrence, lend themselves to the development of a
uniform agency response.
Source: National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. 1973.
Police. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, pp. 21–22.
administrators should therefore give the highest priority to the formulation of

administrative rules governing the exercise of discretion.”10
Throughout the 1970s, many police departments promulgated policies and
procedures in response to national and state efforts to establish standards for the
law enforcement profession. The National Advisory Commission on Criminal
Justice Standards and Goals published a lengthy volume in 1973.11 Since then,
states have often formed their own commissions to establish police standards,
or have mandated policies and standards legislatively. The International Asso-
ciation of Chiefs of Police (IACP) currently develops and recommends model
policies.12
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two additional stimuli for the development
of standardized police guidelines appeared. One was the legal doctrine of civil lia-
bility, and the other was the creation of the Commission on Accreditation for Law
Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). Under the vicarious liability doctrine, police su-
pervisors, administrators, and departments can be held financially liable if it can
be demonstrated that a police officer has abused their authority as a result of not
having been properly directed and/or controlled.13 Police departments have thus
been encouraged to develop precise guidelines addressing operational activities
that could result in lawsuits.
CALEA was established through the efforts of four major police professional
organizations: the IACP; the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement
Executives (NOBLE); the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA); and the Police
Executive Research Forum (PERF). The Commission produced a lengthy set of

standards by which agencies could become accredited. Most of the standards are
stated in such a way that they identify procedures that must be covered by agency
guidelines.14 For example, Standard 70.1.7 states, “A written directive describes
actions to be taken by transporting personnel following an escape of a detainee
while being transported.”15
As a result of these stimuli and the general evolution of police administration,
most police departments today have extensive and well-developed policies and
procedures, although some small agencies still lack adequate written guidelines.
An additional challenge is that policies and procedures must be regularly updated
to reflect changes in the law and professional practice—too often, agencies adopt
policies but then fail to keep them current and relevant. Good sources of u p-to-
date policies include CALEA, IACP, and PERF. 16
The police role is much too ambiguous to become totally standardized,

but it is also much too important to be left completely to the discretion of
individual officers. The following discussions of policies, procedures, and rules
should shed some light on the manner in which police chiefs can strike the
right balance in guiding and restraining, but not completely restricting, their
employees.
Organizational Policy
Policies are more general than procedures and rules. Policies are primarily
guides to thinking rather than to action. They are especially important as guides to
decision making. Therefore, policies should reflect the purpose and philosophy of
the organization and help interpret that purpose and philosophy for its members.
There are four sources of organizational policy:
1. Originated policy;
2. Appealed policy;
3. Implied policy;
4. Externally imposed policy.17
Originated policy emanates from within the organization itself, usually from
top management, but often from other levels of management as well. Most of the
policies found in a police department’s policies and procedures manual are origi-
nated policies.
Appealed policy also comes from within the organization. Somewhat like the
common law, appealed policy develops haphazardly as decisions are appealed or
simply passed up the chain of command. As with the law, unwritten and written
precedents that gather force with time and use are established. These appealed
policies are often confusing, conflicting, and uncoordinated.
Implied policy derives from the impression given by the organization’s ac-
tions rather than its words. For example, if the expressed policy of a police depart-
ment is that promotions are based on merit when in fact only the chief ’s friends
get promoted, the implied policy is that it is not what you know that counts, but
who you know. Similarly, if a police department’s official policy strictly limits
the use of force by officers, but officers are informally encouraged to rough up
prisoners, the implied policy creates a different impression and, indeed, dictates a
different behavior than the originated policy.
Externally imposed policy originates outside of the organization. Four major
sources of externally imposed policy for police departments are legislative bod-
ies, the courts, other governmental agencies, and employee organizations. State
legislatures and city councils sometimes mandate that police departments adopt
certain policies or incorporate specific language in existing policies. The courts
have imposed a variety of policies on police departments over the years, such as the
requirement that employees accused of wrongdoing be treated according to due
process considerations. The federal government has imposed the policy that per-
sonnel selection, assignment, and promotion will be made without discrimination
according to race or sex. Employee unions are instrumental in establishing policy
with respect to hours of work, pay, and grievance procedures. Such policies are all
externally imposed.

To Chase or Not to Chase
June 30, 2018
This article provides a balanced discussion of police pursuit policies and practices. According
to a 2015 analysis, chases account for over 300 deaths per year in the U.S., nearly half being
bystanders or passengers. Many agencies have adopted stricter guidelines, limiting pursuits
except in serious violent crime cases and putting decisions in the hands of supervisors. But
other agencies continue to pursue and give officers discretion, not wanting offenders to believe
that it’s easy to escape.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/to-chase-or-not-to-chase. The hyperlink

at “This article” links to www.delawareonline.com/story/news/crime/2018/06/29/recent-delaware-police-chases-put-
scrutiny-pursuit-policies/736326002.
Another important source of external input to police organizational policy is

the community. Some police officials are inclined to resist such community in-
put, but they should recognize that in a free and democratic society, the public is
supposed to have a substantial say in how their government, including the police,
operates.18 Naturally, a balance has to be struck between appropriate citizen input
and improper interference in day-to-day operations. Allowing, and in fact encour-
aging community input at the policymaking level is a good way of achieving the
Box 5.4 Written Directives

Standard 12.2.1 The agency has a written directives system that includes, at a minimum,
the following:
a. Agency values and mission statement;

b. A statement that vests in the agency’s chief executive officer the authority to issue,
modify, or approve agency written directives;
c. Identification of the persons or positions, other than the agency’s chief executive officer,
authorized to issue written directives;
d. A description of the written directives system format;
e. Procedures for indexing, purging, and revising directives;
f. Statements of agency policy;
g. Rules and regulations;
h. Procedures for carrying out agency activities;
i. Procedures for review of proposed policies, procedures, rules, and regulations prior to
their promulgation to ensure they do not contradict other existing agency directives or
applicable law.
right balance, because policies are broad statements of purpose and philosophy
rather than narrow operational dictates.
In order for an organization to develop coherent policy, the four types of
policy must be consolidated. To this end, appealed policy must be recognized
and then incorporated into originated policy. Implied policy should be mini-
mized through the simple act of honoring originated policy. If originated policy
is carefully adhered to by management, the development of implied policy will
be significantly hindered. Finally, the impact of externally imposed policy can be
minimized by having comprehensive originated policy. When imposed, it must
be accepted as binding and included in organizational policy. The police agency
accreditation process, with its emphasis on self-study and continuing oversight,
provides a highly effective mechanism for developing and maintaining coherent
written policy (see “Written Directives,” Box 5.4).
With regard to the actual development of policies, several considerations are
important.19 Policies should reflect organizational goals, objectives, and plans.
Under no circumstances should any policy exist that does not serve a useful pur-
pose. Inasmuch as policies are guidelines for clear thinking and decision making,
they should be consistent. They should also be flexible so that they may be applied
to varying situations and changing times.
Policies should be committed to writing as a prerequisite, although not a
guarantee, of clear thinking and understanding. All policies should be thoroughly
explained to all personnel, with training provided as needed, and feedback should
be sought to ensure understanding. Finally, policies should be controlled, added
to, adjusted, and deleted according to the requirements of changing circumstances.
Organizational Procedures
Procedures are more specific than policies. As the means for carrying out pol-
icy, procedures are, in effect, guides to action. According to Wilson and McLaren,
a procedure is “more specific than a policy but less restrictive than a rule or regu-
lation …. (It) describes a method of operation while still allowing some flexibility
within limits.”20
Most organizations abound in procedures. Police organizations, for example,
have investigative procedures, patrol procedures, booking procedures, arrest pro-
cedures, radio procedures, roll-call procedures, sick-leave procedures, promotional
procedures, evidence handling procedures, reporting procedures, and many more
procedures that describe specific methods of operation. These procedures are ac-
tion plans or designs for implementing policy. They are not totally inflexible, but
they do describe rather detailed methods for carrying out policy.
The need for new procedures can arise for a variety of reasons. If a police de-
partment installs body-worn or in-car video cameras, for example, it will need to
implement procedures that tell officers when to activate the cameras, when to turn
them off, and what to do with recordings at the end of each shift. If a department
implements a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) for handling calls involving persons
with mental illness,21 it will need to specify procedures for calling out the team, for
patrol officer responsibilities until the team arrives, and for CIT liaison with men-
tal health agencies. Sometimes procedures are externally mandated. After the US
Supreme Court issued the Miranda decision, police departments had to develop
procedures that outlined how officers should advise suspects of their constitutional
rights to remain silent and to be represented by legal counsel.
In most organizations, procedures multiply and become more exacting at
lower organizational levels.22 This is due to the need for closer control of lowest-
level employees, the advantages of detailed instructions, the reduced need for dis-
cretion, and the applicability of the idea that there is a best way to accomplish
routine tasks. Although this theory may hold true in most organizations, it does
not quite fit the same way in police organizations. Police patrol officers operate
at the lowest organizational level, yet their work is far from routine and requires
enormous discretion. Because of this unusual characteristic of police organiza-
tions, James Q. Wilson, for one, concluded that precise, positive guidance in
the form of detailed procedures cannot realistically be made available in many
circumstances.23
An abundance of standardized procedures can also tend to discourage initia-
tive and imagination. Procedures that appear useless can unnecessarily complicate
jobs and make it difficult to attract and keep capable and enterprising employees.
On the other hand, procedures can decrease the time wasted in figuring out how
to accomplish tasks and thereby increase productivity. They can also ensure a con-
tinuing level of quality output. Finally, good procedures can help cut training costs
because they describe in an explicit way what actions an employee is expected to
take. Again, finding the right balance with regard to procedures is crucial for effi-
cient and effective performance.
As with policies, a middle ground must be sought in procedure development.
One option is to think in terms of three categories of police activity: (1) those
requiring strict procedural controls; (2) those requiring structured guidelines; and
(3) those requiring only summary guidance.24 The types of situations requiring
strict controls are those that pose the greatest risk, such as the use of force and
pursuit driving.25 In these situations, very serious harm can result if poor decisions
are made. Both police officers and other subjects, including innocent bystanders,
can suffer injury or death, and the department could incur lawsuits and negative
publicity. Therefore, strict controls that attempt to minimize the chances of poor
decision making are certainly justified, even though they limit police officer dis-
cretion and flexibility in decision making.
The types of situations requiring structured guidelines are primarily those in
which police officers have discretion in solving problems and enforcing the law.
In these situations, officers need to retain substantial discretion in order to fashion
tailor-made solutions to the wide array of unpredictable problems they are asked
to handle. Without such discretion, officers would be too restricted in their op-
tions, and many citizens would be disappointed in the services that they received.
Guidelines are still needed, however. In domestic violence cases, for example, the
department may strongly prefer that officers use the arrest option, unless very
unusual circumstances are found, and may also mandate certain options, such as
transporting the victim to a shelter whenever requested.
Situations requiring only summary guidance are those that are low risk and
relatively routine. They may still involve some use of discretion, but the range
of options is smaller to begin with and less is at stake. Examples of such situa-
tions might include parking enforcement and telephone contacts with the public.
Officers and other police department employees who engage in these activities
need some guidance in order to perform them correctly, but that guidance need
not be overly detailed or restrictive.
Organizational Rules and Regulations

Rules and regulations are specific managerial guidelines that leave little or no
room for discretion. They either require or prohibit specific behavior on the part
of organizational employees. Whereas policies are guides to thinking, and pro-
cedures are guides to action, rules and regulations mandate (or prohibit) certain
actions.
The requirements that uniformed officers not smoke in patrol cars, that they
be in court 30 minutes prior to the opening of sessions to confer with prosecutors,
that they not accept gratuities, and that they appear for roll call are a few examples
of rules and regulations. These requirements leave no room for discretion and
mandate that specific actions be taken. There will, of course, always be instances
in which some rules or regulations may be waived; however, these are limited. A
regulation specifying that all officers appear for roll call, for example, might be
waived by a commanding officer or a supervisor who, for whatever good reason,
believes it is necessary for certain officers to report directly to fixed assignments
rather than to roll call. Officers handling an emergency call during the 30 minutes
prior to the opening of court should not be expected to leave the emergency situ-
ation before it is resolved just because rules and regulations require them to arrive
early for court. Most of the time, however, rules and regulations are mandates that
police officers must follow.
Rules and regulations must be fair, reasonable, pertinent, and in keeping with
the times. Therefore, they must be subject to change and updated periodically. The
police department must be careful not to allow rules and regulations to interfere
materially with an officer’s use of discretion in unpredictable situations. They must
apply only to those specific situations that actually are predictable and therefore
can be safely handled the same way each time. Unless they are so limited, officers
will be hampered in the performance of their duties and will come to regard rules
and regulations as bothersome and invalid.
Furthermore, the number of rules and regulations should be kept to a mini-
mum because of their unbending and coercive nature.26 If rules and regulations are
allowed to proliferate unchecked, management is, in effect, saying to its employ-
ees, “we are telling you exactly what and what not to do because we do not have
confidence in your abilities to act responsibly.” If such a message is transmitted to
employees, they must either acquiesce or rebel; in neither instance will they remain
active partners in the effort to accomplish organizational goals and objectives.
Once again, that elusive middle course must be sought. Some rules and regu-
lations are obviously necessary. These should be confined strictly to nondiscretion-
ary matters in which no behavioral latitude should be granted. When discretion is
needed, policies or procedures should be used. Management must be careful not
to overdo it when it comes to restrictive rules and regulations. As one police chief
put it:
Certainly we must have rules, regulations, and procedures, and they should
be followed. But, they are no substitutes for initiative and intelligence.
The more [an officer] is given an opportunity to make decisions and, in
the process, to learn, the more rules and regulations will be followed.27
Policy, procedures, and rules pertaining to a particular aspect of police work

are often combined in a single written guideline. An example is the Baltimore
Police Department’s Policy 1115, Use of Force (see Box 5.5 for excerpts).28 The
11-page policy articulates the department’s philosophy regarding use of force, with
references to core values such as the sanctity of life, the value and worth of all
persons, and the importance of de-escalation. It also outlines steps that should
Box 5.5 Policy 1115, Use of Force, Baltimore Police

Department (Excerpts)
Policy
Sworn members have the authority to use Reasonable force when Necessary to accomplish
lawful ends. This authority is limited by the laws of the State of Maryland, federal law, the
United States Constitution, and the provisions of this policy. Members must conform their
actions to the law, the Constitution, and BPD policies. When members use force, they shall
exercise the utmost restraint.
Procedure
Members shall talk to the person; attempt to convince the person to comply; reduce any
threat presented by withdrawing to a position that is tactically advantageous; or take actions
that allow the member greater distance and time, in order to d e-escalate a situation or de-
ploy a lesser force option or no force at all.
Rule
Members shall not use force against persons who are handcuffed or otherwise restrained,
except in exceptional circumstances where the Totality of Circumstances makes it Reason-
able and Necessary to prevent injury or escape.
Source: Baltimore Police Department. Online at: https://www.baltimorepolice.org/transparency/

bpd-policies/1115-use-force.
be taken in situations that might involve the use of force, such as d e-escalation,
providing medical care, and reporting. Then it also emphasizes a number of rules,
such as prohibiting firing into crowds and requiring officers to intervene if another
member is engaging in illegal, inappropriate, or excessive use of force.
Formulation of Organizational Guidelines

The formulation of policies, procedures, and rules for a police department
has an important effect on not only the department, but also individual police
officers and the community in general. The manner in which these guidelines are
developed can be as crucial as the guidelines themselves.
Several sources of organizational policy have already been noted. These reflect
the fact that police departments are open systems, are affected by their environ-
ments, and receive inputs from external systems. Any given police department
receives inputs from its parent governmental system, the community, the courts,
employee groups, professional police organizations, and many other special and
general interest groups.
Because the police administrator receives inputs from so many different quar-
ters, it is unwise to develop policies, procedures, and rules without giving seri-
ous consideration to both external and internal constraints. There are three good
reasons guidelines should not be formulated as if the police administrator were
operating in a vacuum.
First, the police administrator must recognize that the police department is a
part of the executive branch of a democratic government. People who are intensely
involved in the selection of those who make the law can be expected to show just
as much interest in those who enforce it and to demand that police officers be re-
sponsive to their interests. Aware that their tax dollars pay police salaries, citizens
expect some consideration in return. The police administrator must therefore take
into consideration community input in the formulation of policies, procedures,
and rules and regulations.
Second, the police executive should seek employee “buy-in” as guidelines are
being developed. The only effective way of doing this is to involve those who will
be affected by the guidelines in their development. This kind of democratic, par-
ticipative involvement can help considerably in promoting acceptance of guide-
lines once they are implemented. This gives the members of the department a
better understanding of the rationale behind the guidelines and a stake in their
successful application.
Third, the involvement of numerous concerned parties in the formulation of
guidelines is likely to result in better guidelines. In particular, the involvement of
organizational employees in the development of procedures will result in better
procedures, because the people who actually do the work know the most about
how it can best be done.
Police administrators should not be concerned that the involvement of the
community and of employees will be considered an abdication or usurpation of
their authority. Their authority originates in the community, and police leaders are
expected to use it in the community’s best interests. The community should have
input in determining what these interests are. Also, police administrators accom-
plish the goals and objectives they establish for their organizations through their
employees, who should also have input in how these are best achieved. Meeting
responsibilities by sharing authority is an indication of strength and wisdom, not
weakness.29
In order to establish a closed-loop policymaking system, it is not sufficient to
simply formulate policies and other types of guidelines and then turn attention to
other matters—in fact, creating written guidelines can be thought of as just the
first step in a four-step process that also emphasizes implementation, accountabil-
ity, and review:30
1. establish policies that guide the most critical decisions made by personnel;
2. make certain that personnel are trained in what these policies mean and how
they apply to them;
3. hold personnel accountable for abiding by policy;

4. continually review policies to ensure that they are responsive to community
needs and that they hold personnel properly accountable as new problems are
identified.
Discipline
Who will investigate acts of misfeasance and malfeasance by the police? As the
Romans put it 20 centuries ago, “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” (“Who will guard
the guardians?”), a question that has plagued governments since they were first
organized.
If guidelines are established for the purpose of controlling personnel in their
official operational duties, then routine supervision, as well as uncompromising
inspections and internal affairs programs, must be designed to identify those who
would willfully or incompetently violate fundamental organizational guidelines.
We discussed the inspections and internal affairs functions in Chapter 4, as well
as civilian review options, but did not emphasize the importance of discipline in
their implementation. These a ll-important functions are needed to ensure compli-
ance with official organizational guidelines, and discipline is needed to put teeth
into compliance enforcement. See “Disciplinary Procedures,” Box 5.6.
Traditionally, discipline in law enforcement agencies was confined to the exer-
cise of seven possible options: oral reprimand; written reprimand; punishment duty
(work without pay); transfer; suspension; termination; and prosecution. Officers
could be disciplined with little or no consideration for their constitutional rights and,
in many instances, were disciplined in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Because
of some outrageously unfair disciplinary practices, the courts and the National Labor
Relations Board outlawed numerous unfair labor practices and provided officers re-
lief in the courts.31 Many states also passed “Police Officer Bill of Rights” statutes.
The establishment of new and rather restrictive legal constraints on a po-
lice chief ’s previously unilateral disciplinary prerogatives sent a signal to police
Box 5.6 Disciplinary Procedures

Standard 26.1.4 A written directive establishes a disciplinary system, to include:
a. Procedures and criteria for using training as a function of discipline;

b. Procedures and criteria for using counseling as a function of discipline;
c. Procedures and criteria for taking punitive actions in the interest of discipline.
managers that, in the future, greater care should be taken to exercise their disci-
plinary responsibilities within established legal parameters designed to ensure fair-
ness, equity, and constitutional protection. This was definitely a positive change,
however in some jurisdictions the chief ’s disciplinary authority has been limited
even further due to appeals mechanisms and binding arbitration, often mandated
by law or through labor contracts. Some departments now have discipline cases
that linger for years through the appeals process, and one recent study found that
almost 25% of big-city officers who had been fired were later reinstated, over the
objections of agency leadership.32 The best solution is not to turn back the clock
and eliminate officers’ due process protections, but rather to put in place some
parameters on appeals and arbitration, in order to strike a better balance.33
Generally speaking, the trend in disciplinary procedures has forced police
administrators to adopt a more positive and constructive attitude toward the
process, with more emphasis on training, guidance, and correction and less on
punishment.34 It has also become more common in police discipline decisions to
distinguish between errors and rule violations that are inadvertent or well inten-
tioned, versus those that are intentional and committed for personal or malicious
reasons.35 Police departments have even gone so far as to promise their officers that
honest, reasonable mistakes will not be punished. Certainly, an agency that wants
to encourage extra effort and creativity from its officers will quickly negate any
enthusiasm and trust if it punishes minor rule violations or those that have been
made in good faith.
In considering disciplinary measures, the police manager must carefully weigh
disciplinary objectives and employee relations as well as legal issues and constraints
before taking disciplinary action. In all but the most blatantly serious situations,
every effort should be made to emphasize redemption, rehabilitation, and reform,
not punishment. When punishment is required, departments generally follow the
principle of progressive discipline, with specified ranges of punishment for first
and subsequent violations of various rules. The objective is to treat individual em-
ployees fairly while, at the same time, sending a convincing message throughout
the organization that failure to follow directives will not generally be tolerated.
Summary
This chapter has presented the basic principles of police organization. It
should be noted that these principles are means to ends (meeting departmental
goals and objectives) and are not ends in themselves. They are not all intended to
be universally applicable within all organizations all the time. Therefore, their use
should be situational and dependent on the character of the police organization
and the quality of its personnel. Just as builders need blueprints to build houses,
so too do police chiefs need organizational principles to build police departments.
If they judiciously use these basic principles in organizing their departments, they
can be certain that their organizations will be constructed in solid fashion, capable
of meeting their responsibilities and achieving their goals and objectives.
There is a great need for clear policies, procedures, and rules in police depart-
ments. Conformity to such guidelines is important, and therefore they must be
well defined and understandable. Much of police work is routine and easily stand-
ardized. Parts of the job that are not routine are much too important to be left
completely to the discretion of the individual police officer. On the other hand,
discretion is inevitable and therefore must be structured and controlled. Deciding
what parts of the job are routine and what parts of the job are not becomes critical
for the police administrator. The administrator’s overall success may very well be
predicated on their ability to make such decisions and to deal with disciplinary
matters in a constructive manner within established legal parameters.
Another way to think about this situation is to recognize that police managers
need to control their employees and, at the same time, empower them. Striking
the right balance between control and empowerment is a big part of the police
manager’s job. Erring too far in either direction is likely to cause severe organiza-
tional problems. As a device for empowering employee decision making without
abdicating responsibility or accountability, the Carrollton (Texas) Police Depart-
ment created the following template36:
1. Is it ethical?
2. Is it legal?
3. Is it the right thing to do for the community?
4. Is it the right thing for the Carrollton Police Department?
5. Is it within our policies and values?
6. Is it something you can take responsibility for, and be proud of?
If the answer to all of these questions is yes, then it is a good decision and it
should be implemented.
1. Think of the organizations to which you b

elong—for example, family, school, employment, voluntary,
and others. Are any of them not hierarchical? Which are the most, and the least, hierarchical?
2. Some managers never learn how to delegate authority. Because they have no confidence in their sub-
ordinates, they try to do everything themselves and become worn out in the process. Do you know
managers like this? How do their subordinates react to the unwillingness to delegate? How would you
explain such managerial behavior? How would you change it?
3. Many organizations use specialization to create units and positions through which they can rotate
personnel. This is thought to be pleasing to employees, because they can transfer from one posi-
tion to another when they get bored. On the other hand, specialized jobs may become boring more
quickly than generalist jobs because they are so narrowly defined. So in one respect specialization
contributes to boredom, and in another respect it seems to combat it. How do you explain this ap-
parent contradiction? How would you resolve it as chief of police?
4. The authority-level principle seeks problem resolution at the organizational level where authority ex-
ists for such resolution. It is a principle that attempts to overcome both buck-passing and problem-
hiding. It seems simple, and yet it is very difficult to implement. Why?
5. We recommend that police administrators seek input from the community and from police em-
ployees when developing organizational policies and other guidelines. Do you agree with this
recommendation? How would you carry it out? How can a police administrator, when developing
organizational guidelines, take community interests into consideration and yet remain impartial and
objective?
Cases
Two of the case studies in the back of this text (Case 1, Cod Bay and Case 2,
Rixton) describe situations in which some officers perform improperly. You might
consider how their behavior could be improved by using the basic principles of po-
lice organization as well as policies, procedures, rules, regulations, and discipline.
Suggested Reading
Alpert, G.P., D.J. Kenney, R.G. Dunham, and W.C. Smith. 2000. Police Pursuits: What We Know.
Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
Kappeler, V.E. 2006. Critical Issues in Police Civil Liability, fourth edition. Prospect Heights, IL:
Waveland.
Police Executive Research Forum. 2016. Guiding Principles on Use of Force. Washington, DC:
Author.
Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies: The Standards Manual of the CALEA Law Enforcement
Agency Accreditation Program, sixth edition, as amended. 2022. Gainesville, VA: Commission
on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc.
Walker, S. 2003. Early Intervention Systems for Law Enforcement Agencies: A Planning and Manage-
ment Guide. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
Notes
1 G.W. Cordner. 2015. “Community Policing: Elements and Effects.” In R.G. Dunham, and G.P.
Alpert (eds), Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings, seventh edition. Long Grove, IL:
Waveland, pp. 432–449.
2 R. Townsend. 1970. Up the Organization. New York: Knopf, p. 45.
3 O.W. Wilson, and R.C. McLaren. 1977. Police Administration, fourth edition. New York:
McGraw-Hill, pp. 80–81.
4 P.F. Drucker. 1954. The Practice of Management. New York: Harper & Brothers, p. 139.
5 J.M. Pfiffner, and R. Presthus. 1967. Public Administration. New York: Ronald Press, p. 190.
6 E.F. McGarrell, E. Langston, and D. Richardson. 1997. “Implementation Issues: The Special-
ized Unit or D epartment-Wide Community Policing.” In Q.C. Thurman, and E.F. McGarrell
(eds), Community Policing in a Rural Setting. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, pp. 59–64.
7 T. Reddin. 1966. “Are You Oriented to Hold Them? A Searching Look at Police Management.”
The Police Chief 33, no. 3: 12–20.
Principle.” In G.W. Cordner, and D.J. Kenney (eds), Managing Police Organizations. Cincin-
nati, OH: Anderson, pp. 111–126.
9 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. 1968. The Chal-
lenge of Crime in a Free Society. New York: Avon Books, p. 267.
10 Advisory Committee on the Police Function of the American Bar Association Project on Stand-
ards for Criminal Justice. 1973. The Urban Police Function, approved draft. New York: A merican
Bar Association, p. 8.
11 National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals. 1973. Police. Wash-
ington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
12 IACP Law Enforcement Policy Center, International Association of Chiefs of Police. 2022.
Online at: https://www.theiacp.org/policycenter.
13 V.E. Kappeler. 2006. Critical Issues in Police Civil Liability, fourth edition. Prospect Heights, IL:
Waveland.
14 S.D. Mastrofski. 1986. “Police Agency Accreditation: The Prospects of Reform.” American Jour-
nal of Police 5, no. 2: 4 5–81.
mission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc.
16 See www.calea.org, www.theiacp.org, and www.policeforum.org.
17 H. Koontz and C. O’Donnell. 1968. Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Func-
tions, fourth edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 178–188.
18 Cordner. 2015. “Community Policing.”
19 Koontz and O’Donnell. 1968. Principles of Management, p. 88.
20 O.W. Wilson, and R.C. McLaren. 1972. Police Administration, third edition. New York:
McGraw-Hill, p. 130.
21 M. Reuland. 2007. “Law Enforcement Policy Recommendations.” In T.J. Jurkanin, L.T. Hoo-
ver, and V.A. Sergevnin (eds), Improving Police Response to Persons with Mental Illness: A Progres-
sive Approach. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, pp. 61–74.
22 Koontz and O’Donnell. 1968. Principles of Management, p. 88.
Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 278–279.
24 Alpert and Smith. 1996. “Developing Police Policy.”
25 G.P. Alpert, D.J. Kenney, R.G. Dunham, and W.C. Smith. 2000. Police Pursuits: What We
Know. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
26 G.W. Cordner. 1989. “Written Rules and Regulations: Are They Necessary?” FBI Law Enforce-
ment Bulletin (July): 17–21.
27 Reddin. 1966. “Are you Oriented?” p. 17.
28 Baltimore Police Department. Online at: https://www.baltimorepolice.org/transparency/bpd-
policies/1115-use-force.
29 L.P. Brown. 1985. “Police–Community Power Sharing.” In W.A. Geller (ed.), Police Leadership
in America: Crisis and Opportunity. New York: Praeger, pp. 70–83.
30 J.J. Fyfe, J.R. Greene, W.F. Walsh, O.W. Wilson, and R.C. McLaren. 1997. Police Administra-
tion, fifth edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 490.
31 L.G. Bender. 2005. Critical Issues in Police Discipline: Case Studies. Springfield, IL: Charles C
Thomas.
32 K. Kelly, W. Lowery, and S. Rich. 2017. “Fired/Rehired.” The Washington Post (August 3).
Online at: www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/investigations/police-fired-rehired.
33 S. Rushin. 2018. “Police Disciplinary Appeals.” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 167:
forthcoming.
34 G.W. Garner. 1984. “The Supervisor’s Role in Discipline.” Law and Order 32, no. 3: 41.
35 D.W. Stephens. 2011. “Police Discipline: A Case for Change.” New Perspectives in Policing.
Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
36 D.L. Carter, and G.W. Cordner. 1998. “Merging Community-Oriented and C rime-Specific
Policing: Problem-Oriented Approaches.” TELEMASP Bulletin. Huntsville, TX: Law Enforce-
ment Management Institute.
CHAPTER 6 Functions of Police
Management
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify the six basic functions of police management.

• Identify the three management functions that are primarily performed by top-level managers.
• Identify the five steps in the planning process.
• Identify six separate staffing functions.
• Distinguish assessment centers from other techniques used in the promotion process.
What do people who are called managers do? What are their primary respon-
sibilities? A review of the literature on management functions shows that author-
ities have different answers to these questions. Acronyms such as PODSCORB
(Planning, Organizing, Directing, Staffing, Coordinating, Reporting, Budget-
ing)1 and POSTBECPIRD (Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Training, Budgeting,
Equipment, Coordination, Public Information, Reporting, Directing)2 were pro-
posed years ago by management theorists in order to define management func-
tions. In one of the earliest police administration texts, Eastman and Eastman
identified planning, organizing, assembling resources, directing, and controlling.3
In this chapter we will discuss six basic police management functions:
1. System building;
2. Planning;
3. Organizing;
4. Staffing;
5. Directing;
6. Controlling.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-8
Performing these management functions skillfully and knowledgeably is crit-

ically important. This sometimes gets overlooked because most of the attention
over the last couple of decades has been focused on finding the most effective
police strategies for reducing crime and the best policies for reducing police mis-
conduct. The tendency has been to take basic police management functions for
granted, or to assume they are not very important. But as one recent study found,
“Many (perhaps most) police departments perform far below their potential be-
cause of how they are managed. One hopeful implication of this discovery is that
if we can improve police management, we can reduce crime and the harms of
policing simultaneously.”4
Management Functions by Level in the Organization
To some extent, every manager in the police organization performs the six
management functions of system building, planning, organizing, staffing, direct-
ing, and controlling. However, the relative importance of the functions varies,
depending on the manager’s level in the police organization.
Managers at the chief administrative level in a police agency are obviously
responsible for the successful performance of all six management functions. It is
their responsibility to ensure that the department achieves its goals and objectives
as fully as possible, that the department abides by the law, and is responsive to its
community. Police chiefs, in particular, can never delegate responsibility for any of
the six management functions. Responsibility for the six is uniquely theirs.
By the same token, police chiefs must delegate authority as discussed in
Chapter 5, including managerial authority. Except in the smallest departments,
chiefs must delegate some of the authority and some of the work involved in
system building, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling to sub-
ordinate managers at the command and supervisory levels.
Delegation of authority to lower levels of management to perform the three
functions of staffing, directing, and controlling is essential. This is not to say that
these functions are any less important than the other three, but rather that they
are more appropriately performed by subordinate managers. The staffing func-
tion should be assigned to a c ommand-level manager, except in small agencies, in
which the chief will perform most staffing tasks. Directing and controlling are the
basic elements of every manager’s job throughout the police department. Com-
manders and supervisors must be primarily concerned with making certain that
their direct subordinates know how to perform their jobs and that they perform
them effectively and productively.
These three functions—staffing, directing, and controlling—can be thought
of as operating the organization, and making sure that the organization runs ac-
cording to design. They primarily depend on managers’ technical and human
skills; that is, on their expertise in doing the work of the organization and their
skills in dealing with people. The other three management functions—system
6 Functions of Police Management 135
building, planning, and o rganizing—are more concerned with formulating and

constructing the design of the organization in the first place. These latter three
functions, therefore, are less amenable to delegation. Developing the overall de-
partmental design and deciding on goals and priorities and how best to achieve
them are functions best performed at the chief administrative level in the police
agency. These functions depend heavily on conceptual skills—“the ability to see
the enterprise as a whole” and to see “how changes in any one part affect all the
others.”5
System Building
In the ideal organizational setting, in which the systems approach to manage-

ment has traditionally been applied, it might not be necessary to address system
building as a separate management function. However, in the police field, it is
essential for administrators to realize that many police problems have evolved spe-
cifically because police administrators have developed their organizations without
paying attention to systems concepts.6
In part, system building simply means constructing coherent systems that
take inputs, process them, and produce outputs that meet the goals and objectives
of the police department. Other management functions are concerned with com-
ponents of this responsibility. Staffing, for example, attempts to ensure that the
organization has the numbers and kinds of people (employees) needed to process
inputs into outputs by doing the work of the agency. Directing is concerned with
making sure that employees know what they are supposed to do and how to do it.
What distinguishes system building is its focus on the entire management system
and its application of systems concepts.
Carrying out the management function of system building requires that the
police executive give considerable attention to four interrelated systems concepts:
the interdependence of elements in a system; the organizational environment; the
key role played by feedback; and the need for ongoing adaptation, learning, and
change.
Interdependence
The various parts of a system are interdependent, meaning that each part af-
fects the others. Consequently, a change made in one part of a system is likely to
have an impact on another part. In addition, because police departments are open
systems, changes occurring outside the organization are likely to affect the police
system’s inputs, processes, and outputs. An important managerial responsibility is
to anticipate and manage these interactive effects, so that the effectiveness of the
police agency is not hampered by external changes.
Sometimes it is obvious that new inputs or changes in the environment are likely
to affect the police organization. Major changes in inputs include new employees,
budget cuts, a new police facility, new types of information made available by de-
veloping technology, or new departmental responsibilities, such as homeland secu-
rity tasks. Environmental changes could include newly elected political officials, a
downturn in the economy, annexation of additional land area, or new laws passed
by the legislature. Most police managers could and would anticipate that changes of
this magnitude might affect various parts of the police organizational system. These
managers should then take the necessary actions to keep their systems functioning
as effectively as possible, regardless of the changes that face the agency.
Sometimes, relatively insignificant changes can have surprising effects. One
competent police chief who managed his department from a systems perspective
learned very quickly the importance of seemingly insignificant factors when he de-
cided that it would be in the best interests of departmental efficiency if he moved
the office of a civilian employee from one area of the police station to another. His
decision was made purely on the basis of a need to utilize space more effectively;
the decision was made in keeping with the goals and objectives he had established
for his department. The civilian employee was a responsible person who had com-
plete authority over the department’s fiscal affairs. When the chief announced
that her office was to be moved, she construed it as a personal affront, a reflection
on her abilities, and an attempt to downgrade her status. She became extremely
emotional and expressed her outrage to family and friends. Her husband became
so concerned about her condition that he came to the police station and personally
registered a complaint with the chief. The woman’s work suffered as a result, and
she sought employment elsewhere.
After much deliberation, the chief finally decided to reverse the original order
to move the woman’s office and made every conceivable effort to explain a mistake
for which he took total blame. The woman was satisfied, her work output became
better than ever, and her feelings toward the chief were warm and friendly.
In another, smaller department, the hiring of several zealous young officers
over a two-to three-year period gradually changed the personnel makeup and
its operational style. What had been a service-oriented and community-oriented
police agency became a much more legalistic and e nforcement-oriented one. Had
this gradual evolution matched corresponding changes in the community or its
political leadership, the effects might have been positive. In this instance, however,
police–community conflict developed, and the chief eventually became discred-
ited and lost his job. He either misjudged the needs of his community or failed to
monitor and manage the effects of new inputs to the system.
Environment
As open systems, police organizations interact with their environments.
Changes in the police organizational environment can have important effects on
police system functioning, as noted above; thus, a crucial aspect of system building
and police administration involves managing these effects. In addition, police ex-
ecutives should seek positive inputs from their environments; constantly monitor
changes in the environment; and, when possible, attempt to modify the environ-
ment for the benefit of their communities and police departments.
Among the inputs that police departments need from their environments are
fiscal resources, material goods, job applicants, new creative ideas, and commu-
nity and political support. Part of system building, then, involves seeking fiscal
resources through the budget process, grants, and other sources; obtaining needed
equipment and, when appropriate, encouraging research and development efforts
to produce better equipment; attracting sufficient numbers of the best possible
applicants for both sworn and civilian positions; identifying new concepts, tech-
niques, and ideas, and bringing them into the police organization; and developing
and sustaining moral support and active assistance within the community and
among the political leadership. Performing these aspects of system building helps
contribute to healthy system functioning by maintaining a steady flow of new
energy into the system.
To secure these kinds of inputs for their organizations, and to anticipate ex-
ternal changes that might affect their organizations, police executives should con-
stantly monitor their environments. This means that they, or their staffs, should
keep up with changes in the community, technological developments, social
changes, legislative proposals, and political trends. They must also keep abreast of
developments within the field of policing by reading the literature, belonging to
professional associations, attending professional meetings, monitoring important
websites, and keeping in touch with colleagues who themselves are well informed.
Their objective should be to take advantage of new developments, adapt when
possible and, at the very least, prevent their departments from being surprised
or embarrassed by important changes in the environment. Even when it is not
possible for the police agency to avoid being affected adversely by some change in
the environment, it is useful to be well informed and to have the opportunity to
minimize any negative effects.
Sometimes organizations can take a more proactive role by modifying, rather
than merely adapting to, their environments. They may be able to develop support
in the community for new strategies of policing, prevent serious budget cuts, or
press for needed legislation. One police chief, believing that career criminals were
getting off too lightly, systematically championed a tougher approach to handling
repeat offenders. He convinced the state to allocate funds for experimental pro-
grams, and he convinced other criminal justice officials in his area to cooperate
with the police department on a coordinated new interagency initiative. In this
instance, this police chief went beyond merely reacting to or adapting to his or-
ganization’s environment and was able to change the environment itself in a way
that benefited the community and the police department.7
Feedback
Construction of c losed-loop systems that provide feedback is an essential as-
pect of the system-building function of police management. It is also probably the
most neglected aspect. Police executives tend to stop short of acquiring authori-
tative feedback. It is much easier for a police manager to ignore feedback than it
is to aggressively seek feedback, some of which may identify the manager’s own
shortcomings.
Any individual or organization truly concerned about effectiveness, excellence,
quality, and serving the customer will have a great desire for feedback. Feedback
can provide the information that is needed to determine which organizational
components are operating properly and which are not. With feedback, executives
can routinely correct system parts that are not working properly, reward those that
are, and generally keep the enterprise on course.
What this means for police managers is that they must build and maintain
systems that provide feedback. Mechanisms for providing feedback vary with each
system and can include information systems, program evaluations, performance
appraisals, inspections, internal affairs, customer surveys, and “management by
walking around.”8 The use of feedback is typically within the context of one of
the other management functions—to exercise control over improper conduct, for
example, to provide clearer direction to employees, or to reorganize within the sys-
tem in order to facilitate better coordination. Managers will only know that these
kinds of actions are necessary, however, when systems have been built in such a
way that they provide ongoing feedback.
Change and Organizational Learning

Many capable police chiefs have exerted tremendous efforts in order to build
sound organizational systems in their departments, only to discover serious prob-
lems after only a few years. What these chiefs failed to understand was that system
building, like all of police administration, is a continuous process that is never
completed. The world surrounding a police agency is always changing, as are the
people within the police department. Ideas change within the police profession
regarding the most effective operational strategies, the viability of civilian review
boards, the proper limits on h igh-speed pursuits, and other important matters.
The community changes. Political administrations change. Society changes.
Because the police system and its environment are dynamic rather than static, a
key aspect of system building is designing systems that can change, adapt to changes,
and learn from their experiences.9 Many people improve with age by gaining expe-
rience and knowledge, which makes them wiser and savvier. Organizations can also
change positively for even longer periods, if properly designed and maintained. As
one veteran police chief put it, “an organization that is learning to learn together can
sustain itself.”10
Two considerations pertinent to system change and adaptation have already
been discussed—the environment and feedback. An additional consideration is
system learning. The most effective systems are those in which lessons are learned
and not forgotten, and in which lessons learned in one part of the system are
shared throughout the system.11 Lessons are embodied in formal systems and
written policies and can be preserved in histories, diaries, slogans, and files. Shar-
ing of lessons can be accomplished through various ways, such as cooperation,
teamwork, newsletters, and training.12
Over the long term, the most effective organizations will have these properties:
1. Positive interchanges with their environments;

2. Continuous monitoring of their environments;
3. Proactive modification of their environments;
4. Systematic feedback;
5. Ongoing adaptation to internal and external changes;
6. Shared learning among elements of the organization;
7. Mechanisms that preserve and update system learning.
One of the primary functions of police management is to build systems within

the police organization that have these properties. When successfully accom-
plished, police agencies will not only function effectively, they will also adapt over
time through changes to maintain their effectiveness.
Planning
Planning is a future-oriented, proactive management function. One plans in

order to prepare for the future. Organizations plan so that when a decision has
to be made or an action has to be taken, they will be prepared. The decision or
action itself tends to be driven by a short-term focus. If effective planning has pre-
viously taken place, though, a longer-term perspective has already helped identify
the choices that employees have.
Planning is perhaps the most analytical aspect of management. It requires a
certain amount of foresight and creativity, and a willingness to dedicate sufficient
time to the planning process. However, police culture tends to be a ction-oriented,
often seeking a quick fix. Consequently, police organizations often confront prob-
lems only when it is too late and they have become crises.
Effective planning is especially crucial for the police. The protection of lives and
property and the maintenance of order in the community depend on the police re-
sponding at the right time, and taking appropriate actions. In our complex and rapidly
changing society, only careful planning can make this possible. For example, if a police
administrator has not properly staffed patrol shifts, there is a distinct possibility that not
all calls for service can be handled. In one Eastern city with a population of 360,000
people, 15,000 calls for service per year went unanswered because of a lack of available
personnel during peak workload times. This was a serious matter that reflected poor
planning; the department had enough personnel, they just were not allocated properly.
Planning frequently begins with the identification of a problem. The problem

may be identified by a patrol officer, the chief, a clerk in the records division, a cit-
izen, or by anyone else, either inside or outside the organization. If the authority-
level principle has been applied to the department, the planning involved in
solving many problems will be relatively simple and will not require the attention
of specialized planners or a planning unit. Planning is an important part of every
supervisor’s and manager’s job. Only problems that require extensive research and
cannot be solved at any working level within the police department should be
referred to the planning unit, if there is one, which should be responsible for stud-
ying specific problems that are not easily solved and presenting solutions to these
problems in the form of plans that can either be accepted or rejected by the chief.
The planning unit itself should have very broad responsibilities and be in-
volved in studying every aspect of the department. It should periodically examine
every procedure and every operation within the department to determine if these
are operating effectively and efficiently. The planning unit should be self-starting,
proceeding on its own without waiting for direction from the chief, but in no way
precluding the chief ’s involvement in the planning process.
An excellent vehicle for undertaking an organizational self-assessment is the
accreditation program run by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforce-
ment Agencies (CALEA).13 Even if a department elects not to take part in the for-
mal accreditation program, the standards promulgated by CALEA provide useful
benchmarks by which to judge the department’s current practices.14
Questions such as the following might be asked when examining procedures
and operations:
1. Is this really necessary?

2. Should this be eliminated?
3. How could this be done better?
4. Could this be done less expensively?
5. If a change were made, what would the result be?
6. Has another police department found a way of doing this better?
The Planning Process

Regardless of whether planning is conducted by a separate planning unit or by
an individual police manager, the planning process includes five steps:
1. Ends analysis;
2. Forecasting;
3. Means analysis;
4. Implementation;
5. Evaluation.
The first step, ends analysis, focuses either on an identified problem, as de-
scribed above, or on the organization’s mission, goals, and objectives. Whichever is
the case, ends analysis simply identifies the purpose of the planning e xercise—the
problem that needs to be solved or the goal that needs to be achieved. Problems
are sometimes identified by organizational members and sometimes by members
of the community or other representatives of the police agency’s environment.
Similarly, goals and objectives may be developed by the police department or they
may be thrust onto the department from outside. Problems and goals may be well
defined or vague, well understood or poorly understood. An important aspect of
ends analysis is to gather as much information about the problem or goal as possi-
ble. This involves analyzing the situation in order to describe it (who, what, when,
where, how) and, if possible, explain it (why).
Once problems or goals have been identified in the planning process, an
important next step to undertake is forecasting. This is the point at which plan-
ning becomes explicitly future-oriented. Planners must recognize that while
problems exist in the present, solutions will be implemented and goals will be
achieved in the future. Thus, planners should seek information about the future
context within which their forecasted solutions will be applied. One good re-
source for police planners at the forecasting stage is the Society of Police Futur-
ists International.15
Oftentimes plans will be implemented just a few days or weeks into the future,
in which case it may be reasonable to assume that little will have changed. How-
ever, other plans have longer duration. Suppose, for example, that a police depart-
ment’s deployment plans are revised annually. These plans deploy patrol resources
around the community, based on the previous year’s workload. If, in formulating
these plans, planners were to ignore a new shopping mall about to be completed
or serious impending budget cuts, their deployment plans for the upcoming year
could be seriously flawed. The entire department’s efforts to protect life and prop-
erty and maintain order might be jeopardized.
Once ends have been identified and forecasting has taken place, alternatives
must be explored and studied through means analysis. It is crucial to conduct a
wide search for alternative solutions. Existing alternatives can sometimes be found
within the organization; more often, however, other police departments can be
located that have already developed and tested alternatives in response to similar
problems or goals. Competent police planners take maximum advantage of the
efforts and experiences of other agencies in order to avoid spending considera-
ble time “reinventing the wheel.”16 These existing alternatives can be uncovered
through personal contacts, professional organizations, published material, and the
Internet. The International Association of Law Enforcement Planners (IALEP) is
a particularly good resource.17
Once alternatives have been chosen and put in the form of a strategy, policy,
program, or plan, they must be systematically implemented and carefully eval-
uated. Implementation is often overlooked to the detriment of perfectly good
planning; many well-developed and carefully thought-out police programs and
plans have either failed or never really been tried due to lack of implementation.18
What is required for implementation is simply the remaining management func-
tions of organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Many times, however, as
soon as the design of the program or plan is completed, the police organization’s
attention turns to the next problem or goal, and only later do managers realize that
implementation was a failure.
Finally, evaluation of the planning product provides information about
whether the problem was solved, whether the goal was achieved, and whether
adjustments are needed. Simply stated, evaluation is feedback to close the loop of
the planning system. With feedback, rational adjustments and decisions can be
made.19 Without feedback, the police organization is just hoping that things will
turn out all right.
Types of Police Plans

It is important to realize that planning is an ongoing process consisting of
ends analysis, forecasting, means analysis, implementation, evaluation, and more
planning. It is somewhat risky to present information on types of plans, because
you may be diverted into thinking that the plan itself, the document on the shelf,
marks the end of the planning process. In fact, the plan has value only to the extent
that it affects real-world actions, and even then the process continues as the actions
are evaluated and the planning process begins anew.
Nevertheless, different types of plans do exist in police agencies and should be
recognized. Because police work is enormously varied, there is potentially a wide
range of types of police plans. Four basic types are:20
1. Reactive plans;
2. Contingency plans;
3. Operational efficiency plans;
4. Strategic plans.
Reactive plans are probably more common in police departments, and in

many other kinds of organizations, than any other type. Reactive planning occurs
in response to a crisis or a decision forced on the department from the outside.
Police agencies engage in reactive planning, for example, when new federal or
state legislation requires them to change their policies or implement new train-
ing. Departments have no choice but to plan for how they will adhere to these
laws.
Contingency plans vary in their breadth and focus but have in common
an attempt to prepare in advance for possible occurrences. A plan to deal with
burglars caught in a building would be a contingency plan. This kind of plan is
often formalized as a policy, procedure, or special operations order. Other kinds of
contingency plans typically deal with special events and with natural and human-
caused disasters, such as hurricanes, that can result in extreme damage. These types
of situations call for massive coordinated responses that are difficult to make up on
the spot. Contingency plans can also be more administrative in nature, such as a
plan for the possibility of a major budget cut.
Operational efficiency plans seek to improve routine operations. Some are
prepared on a regular basis, such as annual allocation and deployment plans that
analyze workload information to determine how best to utilize departmental re-
sources. Others are prepared on more of a special basis, such as a plan to increase
the collection and submission of shell casings found at shooting scenes. Oper-
ational efficiency plans may be developed in response to perceived problems in
the organization or simply as part of an ongoing effort to improve efficiency and
effectiveness.
Strategic plans are the broadest of the four types of police plans and usually
are the longest lasting. They deal with the police organization’s mission and primary
goals and objectives and identify an overall strategy for accomplishing them. An ex-
ample would be an agency’s community policing plan.21 Good strategic plans that
are well communicated help police executives fulfill some of their most important
and most difficult leadership responsibilities. They provide the “big picture” that
many people, police officers included, sometimes have a difficult time grasping.
Organizing
Organizing is the process of grouping like functions, of putting together the

subsystems of an organization in order to achieve maximum efficiency, effectiveness,
and productivity, while meeting organizational goals and objectives. The subsystems
of any organization must be arranged so that they can work well with one another.
In police organizations, the key organizer is the chief of police. A chief who is unable
to organize the police department properly, using the systems approach as a basis
for organizational efforts, will achieve little success in meeting goals and objectives.
Organizing is not a simple process. It takes time, effort, and energy. It also
takes skill, considerable patience, and a willingness to apply organizational princi-
ples to the process of organizing. Inevitably, it also requires a balancing act between
competing interests: centralization versus decentralization of authority; specialists
versus generalists; flatter hierarchies versus wider spans of control; unity of com-
mand versus practical necessities; formal versus informal communications; and so
on. There are not many universal rules to follow to resolve these issues, only the
kinds of general organizational principles presented in C hapter 5.
The nature of jobs to be performed is one important input to the organizing

process. Each job must be carefully assessed and placed into a position within the
organization where, grouped together with other similar functions, it can be per-
formed most effectively. Specific jobs are the basis for the establishment of bureaus,
divisions, units, squads, teams, and other subgroupings within the organization.
In organizing a police department, the objectives of the organization must
be kept clearly in mind. Although all police departments have maintenance of
order and protection of life and property as primary goals, the priorities and ex-
act content of their other goals and objectives might differ. For example, some
police departments are responsible for animal control while others are not. Some
have high-risk critical infrastructure located in their jurisdiction, like a nuclear
power plant, but most do not. Some experience dramatic seasonal fluctuations in
workload, such as resort communities, but not all. Organizing, therefore, is a situ-
ational process that depends on the accurate identification of varying organization
inputs. The process depends on the application of the basic principles of police
organization, especially grouping of like functions, assigning functions to appro-
priate subsystems, delegating authority, and coordinating overall effort.
The effectiveness of organizing can be gauged in various ways, such as whether
workers have the necessary authority to do their jobs, whether they exhibit confu-
sion over the identity of their immediate superiors, or whether, within units, each
worker’s tasks are relatively similar. An important consideration is that people,
jobs, technology, priorities, and the organization’s environment change, so peri-
odic reorganizing is likely to be necessary.
It must also be understood that the organization is much more than a chart
on the wall. Organizations should not be thought of as simple, unchanging groups
of homogeneous people working together with computer-like efficiency. Rather,
organizations are “rich, volatile, complicated but understandable systems of tasks,
structures, tools and people in states of continuous change.”22
Staffing
Staffing involves the functions of recruiting, selecting, training, assigning, pro-

moting, and terminating. These functions are often performed by a police depart-
ment’s personnel or human resources division; they are of such extreme importance,
however, that they come within the purview of the police chief ’s major duties.
As with all other basic functions of police management, staffing should be
examined from a systems standpoint. Inputs to the staffing function are of three
types. The people input includes both present employees as well as candidates for
job openings. The jobs input involves the positions presently held by employees
plus job openings. The objectives input is the standards used to measure the per-
formance expected from present and prospective employees.
The output of all staffing function activities (recruitment, selection, training,
placement, promotion, and termination) is the staff itself. The staff does the work
of the organization; through its efforts, the organization either fails or succeeds.
The importance of staffing should be apparent; it may well be the most important
aspect of the police administrative process.
Feedback in the staffing function is the evaluative tool by which the per-
formance of people within an organization is measured. The methods used to
achieve such feedback are often the subject of considerable controversy. In po-
lice departments not administered from a systems perspective, little or no ef-
fort is made to evaluate performance. Departments that understand the systems
approach use various kinds of quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate
performance and provide feedback both to the individual employee and to the
organization.
By emphasizing factors of performance that are relevant to the department’s
goals and objectives, the police administrator is indirectly exerting a degree of con-
trol over the organization. A well-designed performance evaluation system signals
what the organization considers important, and therefore should be built around
the department’s goals, objectives, and strategies. Today, these systems should re-
flect the community policing and evidence-based policing strategies being adopted
by many departments.23 This matter of evaluating police performance is so impor-
tant that we will consider it in more detail in Chapter 12.
Finally, in this discussion of feedback as an important element in the staffing
function, some consideration should be given to the need that police departments
have to evaluate the numbers and types of personnel required to protect life and
property and maintain order. All too often in the past, the number of police of-
ficers needed in particular assignments or in specified geographical areas has been
predicated on political and sometimes even emotional factors. By conducting a
personnel requirements survey (sometimes called a workload study), based on ac-
tual activity and the time needed to perform it, a department will be armed with
information that can be fed back into the staffing process so that assignment ad-
justments can be made in terms of the department’s actual needs.
The inputs of people, jobs, and objectives are processed through recruitment,
selection, training, placement, promotion, and termination to produce an or-
ganization’s staff. Feedback is provided through performance evaluation of staff
members and analysis of staff requirements. Although many aspects of the staff-
ing function legitimately belong to the department’s personnel division, others
are either the direct or indirect responsibility of each and every supervisor and
manager.
Recruitment
The first stage of the staffing process is recruitment. Somehow a police depart-
ment must persuade individuals to apply for position openings. This became a sig-
nificant issue for police departments in the first decade of the 2000s, when a strong
economy and increased military commitments seemed to cause a serious decline
in the number of police applicants leading to a “recruiting crunch.”24 The issue
surfaced again a decade later and has continued, with police departments finding
it difficult to attract a sufficient number of qualified applicants for the positions
they have open.25 Reasons seem to include a smaller number of young people, pro-
portionately, in the population, less concern about finding a job that would last an
entire career, and less positive perceptions of policing following highly publicized
and controversial police actions, including the George Floyd murder.
Generally, there are three categories of people who seek employment with a
given organization:
1. People who are very interested in the type of position or the specific
organization;
2. People who are modestly interested in the position and who see it as one em-
ployment alternative among many;
3. People who have no particular interest in the position but who, because of a
tight economy or their lack of marketability, see it as their best employment
alternative.26
Although one might assume that people in the first category would tend to
perform better on the job than those in the other two groups, research fails to
support that contention. Surprisingly, there is not a simple correlation between
reasons for seeking employment and applicants’ subsequent performance. It is
clear, however, that the image of an occupation and of a specific organization
are important factors in attracting applicants. At the national level, the IACP
and the COPS Office have established the website DiscoverPolicing.org to attract
people to the policing occupation. This website provides interesting information
about various aspects of police work, helping to demonstrate that policing is a
rewarding career and that police employment is open to all kinds of people. At
the organizational level, many police departments have developed sophisticated
media campaigns aimed at convincing a diverse pool of applicants to come to
work for them.27
In addition to attracting a large number of job applicants, police depart-
ments also engage in targeted recruitment. For example, many departments
have few minority group employees in relation to the demographics of their
communities and have learned that they need to engage in proactive recruiting
to overcome the effects of past discrimination as well as current perceptions of
policing. Many departments also target women in their recruiting. Nationally,
only 12% of US police are women, and lots of agencies struggle to meet even
that low figure.28
One focus of targeted police recruiting over the past 30–40 years has been
higher education. This emphasis has succeeded to the extent that today over o ne-
third of police have four-year college degrees.29 What was once considered a rather
radical idea—that police officers should be college-educated—is now largely taken
for granted. Few police departments absolutely require applicants to have higher

Competition in Recruiting
April 22, 2018
This article reports continuing recruitment challenges facing police agencies due to the strong
economy, retirement of baby-boomers, and recent negative narratives about policing. One
result is more competition between agencies for the best recruits and lateral hires, including
bonuses for successful applicants and for current officers who refer them. Average police sala-
ries have been raised 15% since 2010 to make them more attractive. Larger agencies continue
to offer substantially higher salaries than smaller ones.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/04/22/competition-in-recruiting. The hyperlink

at “This article” links to www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/gov-hiring-police-officers.html.
education,30 but many give preference to applicants with college degrees and
offer educational incentives to their current employees. Applicants without any
college education can still apply for positions in most police agencies, but they
find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
Selection
The process of choosing from among applicants is called “selection.” Every
applicant for almost any type of job expects to be accepted or rejected as the
result of some type of selection process. The typical police selection process in-
cludes multiple steps and criteria (see “Police Selection,” Box 6.1),31 with the most
time-consuming and expensive steps held to last, when the number of candi-
dates has been reduced by eliminating applicants who are ineligible or obviously
unqualified.
The psychological screening of applicants has recently become a major part of
the selection process in a number of police departments.32 Because police work is a
difficult, demanding, and stressful occupation, it is becoming increasingly evident
that applicants who are stress-prone should be identified early in the selection pro-
cess and screened out. Although much more empirical research is needed before
we can easily identify such people, we do know that those who have not learned
“healthy coping behaviors,”33 such as continuing involvement in regular exercise
and participation in hobbies and sports, are prime candidates for stress. We also
know that unhealthy coping, such as smoking, excessive drinking, lack of exercise,
and limited n on-job-related interests are stress indicators that can and should be
determined during the selection process.
While police selection methods in the professional era tended to emphasize
“screening out” applicants with background or psychological problems, a stronger
effort has been made under community policing to “screen in” applicants with par-
ticularly desirable characteristics.34 The same can also be said for e vidence-based
Box 6.1 Police Selection

Steps Related Issues
Recruitment Advertising, requests, referrals
Selection criteria Age, height, weight, vision, criminal record, and

possible residency requirement
Written examination General intelligence or job content
Physical examination Agility and endurance
Personal interview Communication skills, interpersonal style, and

d
ecision-making ability
Psychological testing and Emotional stability and psychological profiles

interview
Background investigation Character, employment/credit history, education,

references, and criminal record
Polygraph examination Character and background information
Medical examination and drug General health and specific problems

testing
Source: Kenneth Novak, Gary Cordner, Brad Smith, and Roy Roberg. 2020. Police &
Society, eighth edition. New York: Oxford University Press, p
. 186.
and intelligence-led policing. Such desirable traits include higher education, var-
ied life experience, cognitive problem-solving skills, communication skills includ-
ing listening, and good interpersonal relations, such as empathy and respect for
others. Today, these kinds of positive success characteristics are often summed up
as emotional intelligence.
Training
Once selected, a new employee enters the training stage of the staffing process.
Organizations tend to utilize four major training activities:
1. A basic orientation, outlining organizational goals and objectives;

2. A planned, scheduled training program aimed at teaching new personnel how
to perform tasks expected of them;
3. An organized in-service training effort directed toward upgrading personnel;
4. A self-development training program designed to encourage personnel to de-
velop themselves professionally.35
The first two of these activities are generally referred to as “recruit training” in
the police world, and typically involve both in-class and on-the-job training, also
known as “field training.” Many police departments are too small to support their
own recruit training programs, and therefore send newly hired officers to regional
or state training academies.
In-
service training is provided to a greater or lesser degree by many
departments—more progressive agencies provide at least one week of in-service
training a year for each police officer, and many states require at least one week
every two years. Some departments take advantage of excellent in-service training
courses offered by organizations such as state and regional training academies,
the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and the Southern
Police Institute at the University of Louisville. In-service police training is widely
available, including online courses that have become more common and more
effective in recent years.
The fourth training activity, s elf-development, was strongly encouraged in the
1960s and 1970s through the establishment of the Law Enforcement Education
Program (LEEP) of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), a
federally funded effort that paid the tuition of more than 100,000 in-service po-
lice officers who attended colleges and universities throughout the United States.
As these federal funds became less available, police administrators and educators
have been challenged to devise new programs to encourage employees to further
develop themselves, such as tuition-reimbursement policies and online degree
programs.
Training is an important part of the staffing process; it is concerned with
molding selected job applicants into knowledgeable, skilled, committed employees
of the organization, and with upgrading and remolding current employees. Train-
ing is also a basic component of the directing function of management which, as
explained in a later section, is concerned with making sure that employees know
what to do and how to do it.
Assignment
Once trained at the orientation and recruit levels, an employee must be as-
signed to a job within the organization. The nature of the job in which the
trained recruit is placed ordinarily requires little choice for most police depart-
ments, because most new sworn police employees begin their careers as patrol
officers. This tradition has changed very little since Sir Robert Peel established
the first metropolitan police department in London in 1829. However, in larger
police departments, the assignment of rookies may involve some choice as to
the locations of their assignment. Some departments assign officers to districts
in which they live; others intentionally assign officers away from their places of
residence.
Assignment should be regarded as a continuous staffing process. Those respon-

sible for the staffing function should continually seek feedback in order to make
staffing adjustments in the form of personnel transfers. Very few police officers
spend their entire careers in the positions to which they were assigned as rookies.
Although many may remain at the patrol officer rank throughout their careers,
most will probably be transferred from district to district within the community or
to specialized duties within the organization. The transfer of personnel should be
considered a healthy application of the systems concept to the police management
function. It should never be anticipated that everyone placed in every position will
always be best suited to perform in that position.
Although long-term beat assignments for patrol officers are often preferred,
there is also much to be said for regular, periodic shifting of personnel. It not only
develops more well-rounded employees, but by re-challenging them to learn new
and more interesting jobs also lessens the likelihood that they will stagnate in one
position. Transfers also become necessary in problem situations. Some employees
simply may not be able to perform in a particular area of the community or in a
particular job. Disputes between c o-workers or between subordinates and superiors
may be unsolvable except through transfers. However, when personality problems
impede an organization from meeting its goals and objectives, great care should be
taken in using transfer as the solution. In such cases, transfers should be used only
as a last resort, especially when feedback indicates that transfers would only move
problems from one subsystem of the organization to another. Therefore, transfers
should be made only if it appears likely that they will positively affect system output.
Promotion
Promotion as a staffing activity is a transfer upward in rank. The methods
used by police departments to determine who will be promoted vary tremen-
dously; there is no consistent police promotion pattern in the United States. Police
promotional systems usually include one or more of the following techniques:
1. Written examinations;
2. Oral interviews;
3. Experience (sometimes called “longevity”);
4. Past performance evaluation;
5. Assessment centers.
As a rule, various percentage weights are assigned to each evaluative technique.

These will vary from department to department, depending on which criteria the
department’s administrator regards as most important or which ones are mandated
by a civil service system or collective bargaining agreement.
Police departments that use only one or two of these techniques in their pro-
motional systems can anticipate having problems in the administration of the pro-
motional process. It is not recommended, for example, that promotions be based
solely on the outcome of a written examination; this technique favors those who
are good at reading, studying, comprehending, and memorizing, all traits that are
valuable but not necessarily strongly correlated with good performance as a police
officer, supervisor, or manager. A better approach is to combine written tests with
other techniques that measure different skills and traits, in order to get a more
complete picture of candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. Departments that fail
to use multiple techniques, with published weighted values assigned to each crite-
rion, impede the successful output of the staffing process, which, in turn, hinders
their efforts to meet goals and objectives. The value of the systems approach to any
process of police management, including promoting and staffing, is that problems
will be identified through feedback and that systems will be improved by using
new input.
Of the five promotion techniques discussed here, perhaps the most prom-
ising is the fifth: the assessment center. This method uses simulated real-life
situations designed to place the person being evaluated into scenarios in which
they will have a full opportunity to exhibit job-related skills closely identified
with the position to be filled. Although assessment centers can be utilized in the
initial selection process of hiring police officers,36 they are most frequently used
in the police field to help make promotion decisions.37 Typically conducted over
a period of two or three days,38 the assessment center places the candidate for
promotion in a variety of exercises and scenarios in which the candidate’s prior-
itizing and d ecision-making capabilities, as well as their ability to communicate
orally and in writing, are closely tested and examined under the most realistic
conditions possible. For example, one evaluation, known as the “in-basket ex-
ercise,” requires a candidate to assume the role of a police supervisor and to
carry out a series of difficult simulated assignments in a limited period of time.39
After submitting a written report on the rationale for actions taken and being
orally questioned on positions adopted, the candidate’s performance is rated on
a whole range of job-related criteria. Other simulations might include placing
a candidate in a police manager’s role at a press conference called to deal with a
controversial issue or having the candidate counsel a problem subordinate. There
is literally no end to exercises that can be easily designed and validated to test
skills in this manner.
Termination
The final staffing activity, terminating, may occur on the employee’s own ini-
tiative through normal retirement, early retirement, or resignation. It may also oc-
cur at the department’s direction through forced retirements, forced resignations,
or firings. Terminations may also be based on sickness, injury, or death. Table 6.1
TABLE 6.1 pecial and Routine Decisions Made in the

S
Termination Process
Source of Decisions Special Decisions Routine Decisions
Department Forced retirements Retirements due to sickness or injury

Forced resignations Terminations due to death
Firings
Employee Voluntary Normal retirement

resignations Early but voluntary retirements
shows the various kinds of special and routine decisions made in the termination
process by both the police department and the employee.
An employee’s voluntary retirement is usually the cause of much rejoicing
and is regarded as the happy ending to many years of productive employment.
By reaching retirement age or by choosing to retire early, the employee leaves the
police department with the realization that they performed adequately for a con-
siderable period of time.
When a police department fires employees or forces them to resign or retire,
it is telling them, in effect, that they are no longer useful to the organization in its
attempts to meet its goals and objectives. Such an action will necessarily affect the
entire system and potentially cause strong reactions that may be either positive or
negative. When an employee is fired or forced to resign or retire as the result of an
internal investigation that uncovered corruption or other unacceptable behavior,
the effect on the system should be positive. When an employee is forced out of a
department based on inconclusive evidence or when there is a perception that the
employee deserved a lighter punishment, it should be anticipated that the effect
on the system will be negative. In the former instance, the action taken by the
department serves notice to all other employees about behavior that will not be
tolerated by the department. In the latter instance, action against the employee
may be seen as evidence that discipline within the organization is not fair and
just, likely creating a morale problem that could, in turn, affect performance and
effectiveness.
The voluntary resignation of an employee short of retirement age is usually
regarded as a setback for the department. When a police officer resigns, the de-
partment loses not only its investment in the individual but also an experienced
employee. Although many employees terminate voluntarily for personal reasons
beyond the control of the police department, such as sickness, injury, or a better-
paying position, others terminate voluntarily because of dissatisfaction with their
jobs or because of departmental problems with which they cannot cope. Still others
quit because they are uninterested in their jobs, cannot get along with people, or
find it difficult to make a long-term commitment to one employer. Voluntary ter-
minations should be expected. Large numbers of voluntary terminations, however,
should be a signal to people involved in the staffing function that something is

seriously wrong with the department. To assess this condition, many police de-
partments annually calculate their turnover rate, the percentage of employees who
leave the agency during the preceding year.
Exit interviews with terminated employees are useful in getting feedback on
staffing problems.40 If an organization’s selection, training, and assignment pro-
cesses can be refined so that most problems are eliminated through the adjustment
and change of systems input, a department can improve its turnover rate and avoid
many involuntary terminations.
Directing
Think for a moment of motion picture directors and what they do. Obviously,
their job is directing; they tell the actors to speak their lines, what movements to
make before the cameras, and what emotions to display. They show their camera
crews what angles, lenses, and filters to use. They establish filming schedules. They
direct the activities of people involved in casting, costumes, and makeup. Their
job involves telling people what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. They call
the shots. They do this by bringing together all of the talents they have at their
disposal and orchestrating them as best they can into what will become the final
production, a motion picture.
This job may seem to be a simple process. It is not. Consider some of its
complications. Actors are professionals in their own right and some of them may
be more highly paid than the directors. They may refuse to comply with shooting
schedules or refuse to take direction. Other members of the crew may have tech-
nical disagreements with the directors, or they may simply misunderstand their
directions. In other instances, personality conflicts between the directors and their
employees may impede progress. Problems involving sickness, injury, substance
abuse, family, and just plain irresponsibility will contribute to delaying production
and are likely to be costly.
In the directing function in an organization, managers develop and dissem-
inate directives and provide leadership, guidance, coaching, coordination, and
encouragement. Outputs of the directing process are policies, procedures, rules,
regulations, general orders, special orders, personal orders, training curricula,
training bulletins, advice, suggestions, encouragement, and persuasion. Subordi-
nates receive and act on those directives, influenced by their differing skills, abili-
ties, knowledge, attitudes, perceptions, and levels of motivation.
Feedback to the directing function comes from evaluation of the extent to
which directives (orders, rules, regulations, policies, and procedures) are under-
stood and followed. Because dissemination and reception of directives involve the
intricate processes of communication and perception, it is essential that the output
of the directing process be carefully evaluated on an ongoing basis so that any
directives that are improperly communicated or misunderstood can be further
explained or redesigned as new input and re-disseminated through the directing

process.
Some types of directives lend themselves to immediate feedback. For ex-
ample, in issuing a personal order to a patrol officer to leave the police station
immediately to answer a b urglary-in-progress call, a sergeant will learn within
a matter of seconds whether the patrol officer understands the order. Similarly,
in discussing a newly disseminated general order with patrol officers at roll call,
a sergeant can learn from their responses whether they understand the content
of the order. However, most feedback to the directing process is not such a
simple matter. Several months might go by before officers encounter a situ-
ation in which a new directive should be applied. If they have forgotten the
directive, they will improvise as best they can under the circumstances, but may
not necessarily perform according to the method prescribed by the department
through the directive. If they misunderstood the intent of the directive when it
was issued, chances are good that they will perform in a manner not consistent
with departmental procedure. Supervisors must be alert to such possibilities and
advise their superiors when directives, for whatever reason, are not being fol-
lowed. Therefore, supervisors are key people in providing feedback to keep the
loop closed in the directing process. If supervisors fail to provide information
for evaluation and new input, the department will likely be unaware that its
directives are not being followed and will be lulled into a false sense of security
about the activities of its officers.
There is no quicker way for a police department to degenerate organizationally
than to allow the directing process to function in an o pen-loop fashion. Depart-
ments that fail to approach the directing process from a c losed-loop systems per-
spective actually encourage their police officers to defy directives and to handle
situations through a process that the President’s Crime Commission referred to
as “unarticulated improvisation.”41 This means, in effect, that police officers will
handle situations according to their own individual judgments and whims and not
according to the articulated policies of their own departments. This results in laws
being enforced arbitrarily and services being provided haphazardly. The resulting
inconsistencies in levels of enforcement and services negatively affect the police
generally and the individual department specifically.
Although feedback from supervisors is probably the single most important
factor in keeping the loop closed in the directing process, other methods should
also be used. One such method is testing. When a directive is issued, all employees
governed by the directive should be tested on their understanding of its specifics.
The test can be written or oral; the written test, however, is more advantageous
because it affords a better opportunity to thoroughly examine the individual’s re-
ception and perception of the directive. Moreover, an individual forced to describe
the directive in written form is more likely to remember it than if the description
is given orally. If testing indicates that the directive is generally misunderstood, di-
rection has failed and needs to be fixed. The directive might have been confusing,
or poorly communicated, or simply misunderstood. Once the cause is diagnosed
the directive can be corrected and r e-issued, again using feedback to make sure it
has been clearly understood.
Informal conversations with police officers themselves can also be helpful.
One former chief of police in a large West Coast city devoted one-half day
per week to informal interviews with individual officers. This proved to be an
effective feedback device and gave the chief an opportunity he would not oth-
erwise have had to learn in what ways his own direction was ineffective. Other
chiefs and lower-level police managers simply engage in “walking-around man-
agement” by regularly spending some time observing their employees in the per-
formance of their duties and by talking frequently with the police department’s
customers.
How should directives be developed? Although this is clearly a management
responsibility, input from two groups is extremely valuable, as noted in Chapter 5.
First, it is a good idea to involve employees in the development of directives, be-
cause they are probably more knowledgeable about the practical realities of the
work setting than most managers. Involving employees at this stage also makes
it more likely that they will understand and comply with the directives that are
ultimately developed. Second, it is desirable to engage the community in the de-
velopment of some types of d irectives—those that most directly affect the public,
such as recruitment and selection criteria, complaint review procedures, and u se-
force policies. A central tenet of community policing is that, in a free society,
of-
citizens should have such opportunities to shape the style and manner of policing
in their communities. An additional benefit of such citizen participation is usually
an increase in trust and confidence in the police.
It is also important to consider, in the development stage of directing, what
skills, abilities, and knowledge employees need and how best to fill those needs.
Formal training may be required or o ne-on-one coaching may be more appro-
priate. Sometimes employees have the necessary tools but lack the will, commit-
ment, or motivation to perform properly. In these instances, the directing function
should focus on providing encouragement, incentives, and leadership. C hapters 8
through 10 are devoted to the human aspects of management that come into play
when carrying out the directing function.
Directives are disseminated, or communicated, from superiors to subordi-
nates; they are also disseminated as part of recruit and in-service training. Interper-
sonal and organizational communication are important topics that are discussed
in Chapters 8 and 11.
What matters the most are the actions that employees take and whether they
are consonant with organizational directives. This depends on a number of factors,
including the effectiveness of dissemination, how the directives are understood
and perceived, group dynamics, leadership, values, attitudes, and motivation.
Taken as a whole, the process of directing is tied up with the psychology of human
behavior, which itself is an entire academic discipline. The better one understands
the pragmatics of human behavior, human relationships, and human interaction,
the better a director one becomes.
Controlling
The management function of controlling is closely related to directing.

Whereas directing is involved in communicating what should be done, controlling
is involved with ensuring that what should be done is done. If directing is mak-
ing and communicating instructions of various kinds, controlling is enforcing the
instructions.
Controlling as a management function is somewhat broader, however, than
simple rule enforcement, and includes functions that might not generally be
looked on as control devices. Budgeting, for example, is one way in which an
organization uses the allocation of money to control its subsystems. Another con-
trol mechanism is the gathering and evaluation of statistics, a means by which an
organization learns about the effectiveness of its operation and thereby controls its
activities. Controlling is designed essentially to make certain that an organization
and its component parts adhere to established plans and directives.
A significant gap between the way functions are performed and the way they
are supposed to be performed is an indication that the controlling function is
not serving its purpose. It may also indicate a failure of the directing function;
in such instances, employees simply do not understand directives. It may further
indicate that prevailing directives are not consistent with organizational goals and
objectives, presenting employees with a choice between doing what they have been
told to do and what they honestly judge is best for the organization. Each of these
possibilities must be kept in mind by police managers who administer their or-
ganizations from a systems perspective and who are responsible for directing and
controlling.
Controlling involves influencing behavior. Numerous methods are used to
influence behavior: rewards, punishments, threats, promises, and persuasion (see
“The Control Principle,” Box 6.2). Influencing human behavior is a difficult,
complex, and involved process. Most parents are thoroughly familiar with prob-
lems inherent in the process. Although they have almost total authority over their
children, especially in the younger years, they often find it impossible to control
Box 6.2 The Control Principle

Police activities range from low-criticality to high-criticality and low-frequency to high-
frequency. Police officials must identify which activities require strict c ontrol-oriented poli-
cies and which require only summary guidance. In other words, the style of policy will vary
according to a continuum of control. In addition, there must be training to the policy, control
and supervision of the activities and a system of discipline that holds the officers and agency
accountable for the behavior.
Source: Geoffrey P. Alpert and William C. Smith. 1996. “Developing Police Policy: An
Evaluation of the Control Principle.” In Gary W. Cordner and Dennis Jay Kenney (eds),
Managing Police Organizations. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, p. 124.
their behavior and to have them act according to parental expectations. Parents’
failures in controlling their children are disruptive to the family and harmful to
the children themselves. Testing their parents to see how much they can get away
with is common among children; it is, in fact, a continuous process. Consider
how much more difficult it is to control an entire organization. In an organization
composed of tens or hundreds of people, the controlling function is quite involved
and requires a concerted effort. If one is to achieve any degree of success in con-
trolling people within large organizations, it is absolutely essential that a variety or
continuum of techniques be employed42 and that a closed-loop systems approach
be used in the process.
Techniques for influencing behavior must be used intelligently to motivate
people to perform effectively. Once a directive is issued, there is no guarantee that
an individual will automatically be inclined to follow it, even if they understand
it. In most organizations, the tendency is just the o pposite—the tendency is called
“beating the system.” People must somehow be motivated to follow directives if
the organization for which they work is to meet its goals and objectives.
Of the many methods used, the two most important for police administrators
to consider are reward and recognition, both of which are easy to develop and
implement. Reward and recognition might take the form of pay increments for
work well done, promotions, public recognition, days off, favorable assignments,
and special awards. Even a pat on the back for a job well done should not be un-
derestimated as a motivational factor.
Recognition is perhaps the most compelling behavior modifier of all. People
who do good work should be recognized for their contributions. Recognition gives
an individual a sense of organizational belonging. It is non-monetary pay for a
job well done. It says to the officer: “We recognize your worth, and we place great
value on your being an important part of the organization.” It provides an incen-
tive for the officer to want to continue to perform effectively. The officer feels a
part of the organization team and is further motivated to follow directives in an
effort to help the organization meet its goals and objectives.
Police departments that fail to realize the importance of reward and recogni-
tion as behavior modifiers cannot possibly meet their goals and objectives and will
be constantly plagued by large numbers of officers attempting to beat the system.
The system has to be geared to recognize the need that all people have to feel im-
portant. It must consciously devise as many methods as possible to make people
feel appreciated. If not, employees will think that the system does not recognize
their talents and contributions and that, regardless of how well they do their work,
nobody really cares. This contributes to a feeling of uselessness and a commitment
to do as little work as possible just to get by.
Because police officers often work alone with little direct supervision, their ac-
tivities are especially difficult to control. An assembly-line worker with a hovering
supervisor is much easier to control than a police officer who might see a super-
visor only once or twice during an entire tour of duty. It is therefore important to
realize that controlling a police officer involves applying motivational techniques
aimed at creating and supporting a sense of belonging and commitment to the

organization’s goals and values. The mechanisms of reward and recognition, when
properly applied, can make the difference between meeting or not meeting organ-
izational goals and objectives.
As effective as reward and recognition can be, realistically, it must be understood
that some people are difficult to motivate except through punishment. The effort
to motivate people through other means should always be made and punishment
used only if everything else fails. Departments should have in place a discipline
system that is clearly spelled out, that is applied consistently, and that takes into
account the seriousness of the infraction, prior infractions, mitigating factors, and
aggravating factors. The best method for effecting control within any organization
is through the sensible application of as many different motivational techniques
as possible, including rewards, recognition, and a fair and systematic discipline
system.43 Discipline is very important, but overreliance on punishment can lead
to unnecessary conflict that can interfere with the organization’s effectiveness and
make the chief ’s job even more difficult (see “Police Discipline Issues,” Box 6.3).
The evaluation of the effectiveness of established control mechanisms provides
feedback for the controlling function. The feedback of supervisors who observe
their officers at work and who review their reports is critical to the controlling
process. Informal feedback from officers themselves and from the public can also
be helpful.
Large departments have specialized inspection divisions that make periodic
checks throughout their organizations in an effort to determine the degree to
which directives are being followed.44 Inspections exist primarily to provide feed-
back in the controlling process. Their very existence, however, is a control mecha-
nism in and of itself that ensures a certain degree of compliance with departmental
directives. Even in the smallest police departments the inspection function can be
performed by the chief or a trusted associate, as discussed in C hapter 4. It is an
excellent feedback device.
The departmental audit is another mechanism that is frequently used to pro-
vide feedback on compliance. Audits can be performed to determine conformity
to almost any type of organizational directive, not just finances. Some departments
rely on independent outside consultants or organizations such as the IACP and
the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). The CALEA accreditation program
also provides a form of external audit, since assessors visit the agency periodically
to verify compliance with standards.
The establishment of an internal affairs division is another useful feedback
device. These divisions internally investigate such matters as police impropriety,
excessive force, corruption, and malfeasance. Aside from being a response to citi-
zen interest in having the police “police themselves,” internal affairs divisions pro-
vide a strong incentive for police officers to comply with organizational directives,
particularly to directives relating to behavior that borders on being improper or
criminal. The results of internal affairs investigations should always be fed back
into the controlling function as new input.
Box 6.3 Police Discipline Issues

Effective policing depends on a disciplinary process that is capable of serving the interests
of all three parties [community, officers, and department] in a fair and equitable manner. In
many cases the current disciplinary systems fail to do this, reducing police legitimacy and
effectiveness. Some current issues with police disciplinary processes include:
• The disciplinary process is an ongoing source of conflict with employees and unions.
• The disciplinary process is a source of mistrust and tension for some in the community,
particularly in minority communities where many believe too many police decisions are
influenced by race.
• The focus of discipline is predominately punishment, not behavior change.
• For the most part, the disciplinary process fails to deal adequately with the small group
of officers who are the source of a disproportionate share of complaints received and
use-of-force situations.
• Inconsistent messages are sent to officers by the department heads handling com-
plaints and misconduct allegations.
• The disciplinary appeal processes often weaken the purpose of discipline.
• Processes generally take an excessive amount of time to complete.
• Processes and outcomes often do not appear to be fair to employees.
• Processes and outcomes may be influenced by the amount of publicity the alleged
misconduct receives.
• Discipline in some states is very public (e.g., Florida and Texas) but in most, it is a per-
sonnel matter protected by privacy laws (e.g., North Carolina).
• The police chief’s authority to administer discipline varies widely even though it is a
critically important responsibility in the overall operation of the department.
• The administration of discipline in police departments has taken on the characteristics
of a criminal process in the way the investigation is conducted, testimony and evidence
are considered and, in many respects, the way sanctions are imposed.
Source: Darrel W. Stephens. 2011. “Police Discipline: A Case for Change.” In New
Perspectives in Policing. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, pp. 5–10.
As with all management functions, the importance of feedback cannot be

stressed too strongly. No chief of police, especially one several levels removed from
operational components, can assume that directives are being followed; if the job
of management is not approached from a systems perspective, the chief can be
almost certain that directives are not being followed as consistently as intended.
Summary
This chapter has presented the six primary functions of management: system
building, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. The first three
are the particular responsibility of top-level police managers, while the second
three are among the standard responsibilities of virtually all managers in police
agencies, from first-line supervisors through the chief executive. Each function
is extremely intricate and could be the subject of a separate volume. We have
discussed these functions within the framework of systems theory. We urge you
to retain the systems concept as a frame of mind and as an important point of
reference. By regularly searching for the inputs, processes, outputs, and feedback
in management activities, you will become more adept at analyzing and building
systems. Or, to put it another way, you will become more adept at managing.
1. What specific steps can police agencies take to enhance system learning? What happens to the store
of knowledge and experience in a police department when key members retire after long careers?
How could their knowledge and experience be “saved” by the agency?
2. Some people argue that planning is a wasteful activity, because they believe that the future is either
preordained or too unpredictable to prepare for. Do you agree with these people? Does planning
serve any useful purpose?
3. African Americans, women, and other groups have traditionally been underrepresented in police or-
ganizations. Why do you think this has been the case? How would you correct this situation?
4. Police departments have traditionally required their employees to retire once they reach a certain age,
for example, 55 years old. Do you think this is fair to employees? What should police agencies do with
older officers who do not want to retire? As a citizen, how would you feel if you were in trouble and
the police officer who responded to your call for assistance was 65 or 70 years old?
5. Some authorities have proposed that police officers should be chosen only from among people pos-
sessing college degrees. Do you agree with this position? If you do, how would you answer the
criticism that many otherwise w ell-qualified people would be excluded from consideration? What
about the argument that college is not as available to poor people and thus they would be unfairly
discriminated against by a college degree requirement? On the other side of the coin, if you do not
favor the requirement, what consideration would you give to those people who do have the degree?
Would you offer promotional advantages, extra money, or special positions?
Cases
Two of the case studies in the back of the text might be analyzed using ma-
terial from this chapter. You should compare the chapter’s discussion of planning
to Case 3, Strategic Planning in Spokane, Washington. You should also examine
Case 5, Leading Change in Riverside, California from the standpoint of manage-
ment functions by level of organization—as you will see, the chief tried to change
the duties and responsibilities of sergeants, lieutenants, and captains in the police
department.
Suggested Reading
Geller, W.A., and D. Stephens. 2003. Local Government Police Management. Washington, DC: Inter-
national City Management Association.
PERF. 2017. Hiring for the 21st Century Law Enforcement Officer: Challenges, Opportunities, and
Strategies for Success. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
PERF. 2019. The Workforce Crisis, and What Police Agencies Are Doing About It. Washington, DC:
Police Executive Research Forum.
Rabe-Hemp, C. 2017. Thriving in an A
ll-Boys Club: Female Police and Their Fight for Equality.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Schafer, J.A., M.E. Buerger, R.W. Myers, C.J. Jensen, and B.H. Levin. 2012. The Future of
Policing: A Practical Guide for Police Managers and Leaders. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press
(Routledge).
Notes
1 L. Gulick. 1937. “The Theory of Organization.” In L. Gulick, and L. Urwick (eds), Papers on
the Science of Administration. New York: Institute of Public Administration, p . 13.
2 R.L. Holcomb (ed.). 1961. Municipal Police Administration. Chicago, IL: International City
Management Association, p. 77.
3 G.D. Eastman. 1969. “Police Management.” In G.D. Eastman, and E.M. Eastman (eds),
Municipal Police Administration, sixth edition. Washington, DC: International City Manage-
ment Association, p . 37.
4 M. Kapustin, T. Neumann, and J. Ludwig. 2022. “Getting More Out of Policing in the US.”
Online at: https://voxeu.org/article/getting-more-out-policing-us.
5 R.L. Katz. 1974. “Skills of an Effective Administrator.” Harvard Business Review 52, no. 5: 26.
6 S. Guilfoyle. 2013. Intelligent Policing: How Systems Thinking Methods Eclipse Conventional
Management Practice. Axminster: Triarchy Press.
7 G.W. Cordner. 1983. The Baltimore County Repeat Offender Planning Project. Baltimore, MD:
University of Baltimore.
8 T.J. Peters, and R.H. Waterman Jr. 1982. In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run
Companies. New York: Harper & Row.
9 L.F. Alarid. 1999. “Law Enforcement Departments as Learning Organizations: Argyris’s Theory
as a Framework for Implementing Community-Oriented Policing.” Police Quarterly 2, no. 3:
321–337; P.M. Senge. 1994. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organiza-
tion, revised edition. New York: Doubleday.
10 D.C. Couper. 2011. Arrested Development: A Veteran Police Chief Sounds Off about Protest, Rac-
ism, Corruption and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nations Police. Indianapolis, IN:
Dog Ear Publishing, p . 177.
11 D. Ogle. 1991. “A Model for Strategic Planning.” In D. Ogle (ed.), Strategic Planning for Police.
Ottawa: Canadian Police College, pp. 14–15.
12 W.A. Geller. 1997. “Suppose We Were Really Serious About Police Departments Becom-
ing ‘ Learning Organizations’?” NIJ Journal No. 234. Online at: https:// www.ojp.gov/
pdffiles/jr000234.pdf; R. Stata. 1989. “Organizational Learning.” Sloan Management Review
30, no. 3: 63–74.
13 G.L. Williams. 1989. Making the Grade: The Benefits of Law Enforcement Accreditation.
Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum. The Commission on Accreditation for
Law Enforcement Agencies can be found online at https://calea.org/.
15 The Society of Police Futurists International can be found online at https://www.policefuturists.
org/.
16 J.K. Hudzik, and G.W. Cordner. 1983. Planning in Criminal Justice Organizations and Systems.
New York: Macmillan.
17 The International Association of Law Enforcement Planners can be found online at https://
ialep.org/.
18 J.R. Greene, W.T. Bergman, and E.J. McLaughlin. 1994. “Implementing Community Polic-
ing: Cultural and Structural Change in Police Organizations.” In D.P. Rosenbaum (ed.),
The Challenge of Community Policing: Testing the Promises. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
pp. 92–109.
19 T.D. Cook. 1997. “Lessons Learned in Evaluation Over the Past 25 Years.” In E. Chelimsky, and
W.R. Shadish (eds), Evaluation for the 21st Century: A Handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage,
pp. 30–52.
20 G.W. Cordner, C.B. Fraser, and C. Wexler. 1991. “Research, Planning, and Implementation.”
In W.A. Geller (ed.), Local Government Police Management, third edition. Washington, DC:
International City Management Association, pp. 333–362.
21 See, for example, the Baltimore Police Department’s Community Policing Plan. Online at:
https://www.baltimorepolice.org/transparency/bpd-policies/10-bpd-community-policing-plan.
22 H.J. Leavitt. 1972. Managerial Psychology: An Introduction to Individuals, Pairs, and Groups in
Organizations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 250.
23 T.N. Oettmeier, and M.A. Wycoff. 1997. Personnel Performance Evaluations in the Community
Policing Context. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
24 M. Lysakowski. 2008. “The Recruitment Challenge.” Community Policing Dispatch 1, no. 7.
25 R. Young and D.M. Sayers. 2022. “Why Police Forces are Struggling to Recruit and Keep Officers.”
CNN (February 3). Online at: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/02/us/police-departments-
struggle-recruit-retain-officers/index.html.
26 S.W. Gellerman. 1963. Motivation and Productivity. New York: American Management Association,
p. 238.
27 T. Cherry and A. Gibson. 2021. “Developing an E vidence-Based Police Recruitment Video.” Police1
(August 27). Online at: https://www.police1.com/iacp/articles/developing-an-evidence-based-
police-recruitment-video-lu8puHVIqByj59km/. Also see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
NNT9Ce-geTU.
28 G. Cordner, and A. Cordner. 2011. “Stuck on a Plateau? Obstacles to Recruitment, Selection,
and Retention of Women Police.” Police Quarterly 14, no. 3: 207–226.
DC: Police Foundation. Online at www.policefoundation.org/publication/policing-around-
the-nation-education-philosophy-and-practice.
30 B.A. Reaves. 2015. Local Police Departments, 2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices. Washing-
ton, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Online at www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd13ppp.pdf.
31 K. Novak, G. Cordner, B. Smith, and R. Roberg. 2020. Police & Society, eighth edition. New
York: Oxford University Press, pp. 177–189.
32 T. Ho. 2001. “The Interrelationships of Psychological Testing, Psychologists’ Recommenda-
tions, and Police Departments’ Recruitment Decisions.” Police Quarterly 4, no. 3: 3 18–342; V.B.
Lord, and N. Schoeps. 2000. “Identifying Psychological Attributes of Community-Oriented,
Problem-Solving Police Officers.” Police Quarterly 3, no. 2: 1 72–190.
33 J.D.K. Aaron. 2000. “Stress and Coping in Police Officers.” Police Quarterly 3, no. 4: 438–450.
34 E. Metchik. 1999. “An Analysis of the ‘Screening Out’ Model of Police Officer Selection.” Police
Quarterly 2, no. 1: 79–95.
35 R.O. Loen. 1971. Manage More by Doing Less. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 126–131.
36 D.A. Kent, C.R. Wall, and R.L. Bailey. 1974. “Assessment Centers: A New Approach to Police
Personnel Decisions.” The Police Chief (June): 72.
37 P.F. D’Arcy. 1974. “In New York City Assessment Center Program Helps to Test Managerial
Competence.” The Police Chief (December): 52.
38 C.L. Quarles. 1985. “A Validation Study of a Police Managerial Assessment Center.” American
Journal of Police 4, no. 1: 80.
39 C.D. Buracker. 1980. “The Assessment Center: Is It the Answer?” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin
(February): 15.
40 T. O’Brien. 2022. “Issues Assessment: Find Out What Police Are Not Saying When They
Leave.” Police1 (April 18). Online at: https://www.police1.com/chiefs-sheriffs/articles/issues-
a ssessment-find-out-what-police-are-not-saying-when-they-leave-9zG2N3uEy4yx1Vpy/.
Report: The Police. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, p . 18.
Principle.” In G.W. Cordner, and D.J. Kenney (eds), Managing Police Organizations. Cincinnati,
OH: Anderson, pp. 111–126.
43 D.W. Stephens. 2011. “Police Discipline: A Case for Change.” New Perspectives in Policing.
44 P.V. Murphy, and G. Caplan. 1991. “Fostering Integrity.” In W.A. Geller (ed.), Local Gov-
ernment Police Management, third edition. Washington, DC: International City Management
Association, pp. 239–271.
CHAPTER 7 The Police Executive
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify and contrast the two basic roles of the police executive.
• Explain the difference between managing and leading.
• Explain the difference between “Politics” and “politics,” and the proper influence of each on
• Explain the historical benefit that civil service reform brought to police administration, and
describe some modern problems caused by civil service agencies.
• Identify four police executive styles.
In this chapter, we review the duties and responsibilities of the police execu-
tive. We frequently use the term police chief in this chapter and throughout the
text; most of the information presented, however, will be just as applicable to other
police executives, including police commissioners, superintendents, directors,
chief constables, sheriffs, and all other heads of police agencies, regardless of title.
In earlier chapters, we examined in considerable detail such topics as police
goals, systems, and subsystem tasks as well as organizational principles and man-
agement functions. In this chapter, we discuss the fundamental roles played by
police executives and some common styles or patterns of police executive behav-
ior. We also present some contemporary views on organizational improvement,
including approaches that emphasize excellence and “reinventing” government.
Characteristics of Police Executives
Police chiefs have become a lot more diverse over the last few decades than was
the case throughout most of American history. According to a 2021 survey of PERF
members, 14% of 347 responding chiefs were Black/African American, 6% were
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-9
7 The Police Executive 165
Hispanic/Latino, and 9% were women. PERF membership skews toward larger

agencies so these figures may not hold across all 18,000 US law enforcement agencies,
but they represent significant progress. All of these figures represent increases since
a 2014 PERF survey, and in the case of Black chiefs, the proportion has doubled.1
The PERF survey provided some other interesting information about their
sample of police chiefs:
• They had an average of 24 years of experience before being appointed to their

first chief ’s job.
• Seventy-eight percent had a master’s degree, law degree, or doctoral degree.
• orty-five percent had been promoted from within the agency, while 55% had
F
come from the outside.
• Based on their immediate predecessor, the average tenure in a chief ’s job is
seven years.
A 2017 study of 315 Texas police chiefs found a similar average tenure of
eight years in office.2 When queried about their experiences, the Texas chiefs re-
ported being relatively satisfied, having only low to moderate levels of exhaustion
and disengagement, and not having strong intentions of looking for alternative
employment. One of the factors that did affect the chiefs’ job satisfaction and
burnout was the degree of w ork-family conflict they experienced. Needless to say,
being a police chief can be very demanding. In addition to d ay-to-day responsibil-
ities, many chiefs find themselves meeting with community groups several nights
a week. The job can become a ll-consuming if a chief lets it.

Churn at the Top
July 23, 2021
Some 40 major U.S. cities have changed police chiefs in the last 18 months, according to this
article. Increased turnover at the top is not surprising given recent events, and it’s clearly a 2 -
edged sword. As one observer put it, old school chiefs are “making a wise decision by leaving
the profession,” and their departure opens the door for reforming and reimagining policing.
However, it’s also true that it takes time and effort to implement change, especially culture
change. Frequent turnover of chiefs can interrupt the change process, resulting in stops and
starts in different directions and little real progress. Another problem is that many of the chiefs
who have recently departed were progressive, not old school, but were caught up in situations
where satisfying the community, political leaders, and members of the police department—
the proverbial 3-legged stool—was simply impossible.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2021/07/23/churn-at-the-top/. The hyperlink at “this

article” links to https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2021/0720/Police-reform-Why-it-s-so-tough-to-get-and-keep-the-
right-chief.
An average police chief tenure of seven to eight years suggests a fair degree of
stability. In the period immediately following the 2020 George Floyd murder in
Minneapolis, however, many cities experienced civil unrest that was difficult to
manage, plus many departments came under strong pressure to reform and re-
imagine their strategies, policies, and priorities. These conditions, along with the
threat of defunding the police, resulted in quite a few chiefs retiring early or being
let go. The situation for police chiefs seems to have settled down to some degree
since then, but those experiences in 2020 and 2021 serve as a reminder that most
police chiefs do not have a great deal of job security.
The Two Basic Roles of the Police Executive
The police executive has two basic roles. The first involves internal matters
in the police organization and focuses on the organization itself, including such
concerns as employees, tasks, rules, supervision, jobs, workload, efficiency, and
budget. In this role, the police executive is concerned with making sure that the
organization functions correctly. The executive is at the helm of the system and
must ensure that inputs, processes, outputs, and feedback are properly dealt with
so that the system achieves its goals.
The second basic role of the police executive is an external one. You will re-
call that police organizations are open systems. As such, they interact with their
environments. The environments of police organizations present numerous and
variable demands, including both routine and unusual requests for police services,
such as inquiries concerning police handling of specific incidents, directives from
the judiciary, and state-mandated training requirements. The police executive per-
sonally receives many of these demands and requests from the environment and is
responsible for the organization’s response. More generally, the police executive is
responsible for managing the interaction between the organization and the envi-
ronment so that the system’s goal attainment is not impeded.
These internal and external roles are equally important and “walking the
tightrope” between the two is one of a police executive’s biggest challenges.3 It is
obviously crucial that the police chief pay close attention to the inner workings
of the police department. This internally directed role clearly fits everyone’s con-
cept of a manager’s duties and responsibilities. The importance of the external
role, however, is somewhat less obvious. As we have pointed out, a police depart-
ment is an open system and is affected by its environment. Job applicants, the
criminal law, money to pay police employees, and requests for police assistance
all come to the police department from the environment. The parent govern-
ment system, the criminal justice system, the community, and the media are all
major aspects of the police organization’s environment. For the organization to
be successful, police executives must give as much attention to relations with
these and other elements of the environment, as they can significantly affect the
police organization.
Box 7.1 Internal and External Roles

A police chief must be a team player. From the chief’s perspective, there are two teams:
city hall and the police department. Many people in a police department like to see the de-
partment as separate from city hall, but it’s not. The chief has got to be the bridge between
these two teams because he’s the only one who plays on both. The chief cannot afford to
be seen by the council as just another cop, nor can he afford to be seen by his department
as a lackey of city government.
Source: Chief Tom Nichols, Lubbock (Texas) Police Department, as quoted in Michael S.
Scott, Managing for Success: A Police Chief’s Survival Guide. Washington, DC: Police
Executive Research Forum, 1986, p. 49.
Failure to perform either role adequately can ruin a police chief and the chief ’s
department. Problems of internal management may result in low productivity,
poor morale, substandard personnel and equipment, negligent work, and such
abuses as brutality and corruption. As a result of poor internal management, the
system can easily fail to attain its goals. In the police context, this means substand-
ard protection of life and property and inadequate maintenance of order, resulting
in numerous adverse consequences.
Failure to properly manage the police organization’s interaction with the ex-
ternal environment will also result in limited goal attainment. If a police executive
alienates city hall, for example, it is possible that police budget requests will be
jeopardized and funding will be less than adequate for peak police performance
(see “Internal and External Roles,” Box 7.1). The police executive who interacts
poorly with the media is unlikely to develop an image for the department that
enhances citizen respect and support. If relations with prosecutors and the courts
are not cultivated, police efforts to curtail crime might be undermined.
In the next two sections of this chapter, we will examine these two police ex-
ecutive roles, one internally focused and one externally focused.
The Internal Role
The internally oriented role of the police chief involves managing the police
organization itself. One way to picture this role is to imagine the police chief
viewing the organization through the systems perspective, focusing their attention
downward on the inner workings of the department. The internal role is con-
cerned with everything that takes place within the boundaries of the organization.
Although this internal role of the police executive certainly fits the traditional
concept of a manager’s duties and responsibilities, some police chiefs virtually
ignore the role. For example, in one 2 00-person, Midwestern police department,
the chief was found to be almost totally preoccupied with external relations.
This was partly the chief ’s fault and partly the fault of the city government
administration, which required the chief to serve on citywide budget, personnel,

and labor relations committees. Because the chief was actively involved in var-
ious community groups, he was well regarded both by the community and his
political superiors; however, he was a virtual stranger to the police department
employees. The internal administration of the department was left completely
to the chief ’s subordinates. If the chief had talented and loyal employees, this
arrangement might have worked out reasonably well. However, in this city, the
chief ’s absence resulted in the police department being mismanaged almost to
the point of being not managed at all. No one really commanded the depart-
ment, making sure that the system worked correctly. Some individuals in the
department did their best, but others did as they pleased, and no one took
corrective action to keep the system operating smoothly. The result was depart-
mental chaos.
In the following two subsections we will look at two interrelated aspects of the
internal role of the police executive: managing and leading.
Managing
Managing can be thought of as “making sure that the job is done correctly.”
Managers work with and through other people to guide their organizations toward
the achievement of goals. Managers have the authority to direct the work of others
in their organizations, and they are responsible for exercising control in order to
achieve desired outcomes.
In systems terms, managing involves creating and guiding the system so that
goals are attained. In the police system, managers are concerned with inputs such
as money, employees, equipment, and information, as well as with outputs such as
arrests, reports, and services to the public. Managers are responsible for obtaining
the inputs, for designing and directing organizational processes, and for inspecting
and improving outputs. Managers must also solicit feedback about the operation
of the system, so that inputs, processes, and outputs can be evaluated, corrected,
and improved in order to achieve organizational goals and objectives: the maxi-
mum protection of life and property and maintenance of order.
In Chapter 4, we highlighted the most important organizational processes
found in police departments. We identified and discussed 30 such processes,
from patrol to internal affairs to detention. These are the specific processes that
police managers must establish and oversee in order to turn inputs into desired
outputs.
In Chapter 5, we presented a number of principles of organization that are
valuable guidelines for the police manager. The police manager cannot personally
do all the work of the organization or make all of its decisions. This is particularly
true of organizations such as police departments, which are open for business 24
hours a day, every day of the year. Thus, police managers must delegate author-
ity and work throughout the organization. They must also logically organize the
many tasks, processes, and subunits in their police departments. The principles
presented in Chapter 5 can aid the police executive in these matters of authority
delegation and task organization.
In Chapter 6, we considered the basic functions of management, the fun-
damental duties that all managers, including police executives, must perform.
These functions are system building, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and
controlling.
Leading
To a large extent, managing a police organization involves managing people.
Unlike some systems, in which inputs and processes are primarily raw materi-
als such as machines, money, or information, police systems are labor-intensive.
Police departments typically spend 75–80% of their budgets on employee salaries
and benefits,4 and virtually all of the work of police organizations is performed by
people rather than by machines.
Managing people introduces complications not encountered in managing raw
materials, machines, money, or information. People have feelings, ideas, and per-
sonal goals. People vary tremendously, are not always consistent, and sometimes
defy understanding. People change, and yet they frequently resist change. The
so-called human element really takes management out of the realm of science and
into the realm of practical affairs. In the next chapter, C hapter 8, we will look
closely at some theories and concepts of individual and group behavior in police
organizations, freely admitting that the extent of our knowledge about such mat-
ters is decidedly limited.
Directing and controlling employees, making sure that they know what to
do and how to do it, and supervising their work to ensure that it is done cor-
rectly, are basic components of management. Successful police executives must
go beyond these basic components, however, to attain lasting organizational pro-
ductivity. Beyond simple adherence to job specifications and organizational rules,
the police executive must reach out for the hearts and minds of employees. This
involves leadership, an activity that is somewhat different from management (see
“Managing and Leading,” Box 7.2).
Leading involves showing the way, in most instances by example or by ex-
hortation. Leaders help people in their organizations understand how their ef-
forts contribute to valuable outputs. They help them picture goals worth striving
for. They reinforce values that contribute to organizational success. Leaders help
encourage commitment to values, ethics, integrity, principles, and goals, rather
than merely advocating minimum performance designed to satisfy rules and
supervisors.5
As part of the internal role of the police executive, leadership is discussed
further in Chapter 10. You will find that leaders vary in personal characteristics
and in leadership styles. Despite our limited understanding of what makes a good
leader, the importance of leadership in police organizations is evident. Police of-
ficers perform extremely sensitive duties with little supervision and a great deal of
Box 7.2 Managing and Leading

Chiefs must be more than mere managers performing the routine administration of a large
organization. They must be dynamic leaders creating vision and purpose; driving change in
an environment of flux, where resistance presents itself and must be overcome. In seeking to
provide this transformational leadership there must be a consciousness of the legal obliga-
tions placed upon the police to maintain the “rule of law” and regulate society. Equally, there
must be an awareness of the rights of the individual based upon national and international
law.
The balance which has to be achieved is a very fine one. Decision makers within the
police service are like circus performers walking a “tight rope” with people tugging at the
rope. There is a large audience viewing from different perspectives demanding a high degree
of performance; some hope for failure, others complain that the balancing act is not very
good, with only a few leaving satisfied. The most critical point for the police is not to fall off
the “wire” through loss of balance as a result of the tugging at the rope. Effective strategic
thinking and planning will minimize this risk.
Source: Norman S.J. Baxter. 2001. Policing the Line: The Development of a Theoretical
Model for the Policing of Conflict. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 137–138.
discretion. In a sense, their actual work performance is only marginally directed

and controlled by the organization. In the absence of strong direction and control,
the organization’s best chance for achieving desired behavior is through employee
commitment to w ell-established professional values and goals; it is through lead-
ership that police executives must seek that commitment.
Thus far, we have discussed leadership in terms of leading people; we have
emphasized that this dimension of leadership is an important activity for the
police executive. A second dimension of leadership involves leading the organiza-
tion as a whole. Earlier we described management as making sure that the job is
done correctly. In this vein, leadership involves making sure that the correct job is
done. To draw a similar analogy, management is involved with guiding a system
so that it stays on track, but leadership is involved with laying the track in the
first place.
The police executive’s leadership role, in other words, includes charting the
course of the organization. The executive must give serious consideration to the
organization’s goals, objectives, and priorities. There is little value in being on
track if that track does not take the organization where it needs to go. This dimen-
sion of the police executive’s role, which involves leading the organization itself
toward the right destination, is one that cannot be delegated and probably will not
be performed at all unless given high personal priority by the executive.
The Pursuit of Excellence

The purpose behind managing and leading is to make the police organization
as efficient and effective as possible at protecting life, protecting property, and
maintaining order. Because the policing “bottom line” is complex, though, with
multiple goals and objectives, measuring how well a police organization is doing is
challenging.6 Equally difficult for a police executive is communicating to members
of the department what they should do to improve overall performance. The risk
in saying that everything is important is that it does not provide clear d
irection—if
everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
One solution to this dilemma is to emphasize an overarching principle that
supports all the various goals and objectives of the organization. When Peters and
Waterman studied American businesses they identified “pursuit of excellence” as a
unifying principle, and they drew some conclusions about what separated the most
successful companies from the rest.7 Although their research was based on the man-
agement of private corporations, their conclusions about the causes of organizational
excellence are certainly relevant to police agencies. They are summarized below:
1. The best organizations exhibit a bias for action. Although analytical in their
decision making, these organizations lean toward experimentation and will-
ingness to take risks in seeking organizational improvements.
2. The best organizations stay close to their clientele. They emphasize client sat-
isfaction and actually listen intently to client ideas and suggestions.
3. These organizations permit internal autonomy and entrepreneurship. They
delegate authority and encourage their employees to grow and develop.
4. Excellent organizations stress productivity through people. They treat their
employees with respect. They value employees as sources of ideas, not just as
human machines.
5. Executives in the best organizations stay closely in touch with the organiza-
tion’s work and workers. These executives avoid becoming so caught up in
long-range planning and other administrative tasks that they lose touch with
the organization’s basic operations. They also keep an ear to the ground to
monitor the attitudes and values of employees, and take a personal leadership
role in maintaining commitment to the organization’s goals and values.
6. The best organizations avoid branching off into activity sectors that are unfa-
miliar or very different from their basic functions and services; they stick to
what they know best.
7. The most successful organizations favor lean staffs and simple structures. They
keep the bulk of their people close to the action, directly involved in providing
services to clients.
8. Finally, excellent organizations are both centralized and decentralized. While
autonomy is widely granted and authority widely delegated, nearly fanatical
commitment to the organization’s core values is emphasized. In addition, high
standards of performance are established, and accountability to these stand-
ards and to core values is strictly enforced.8
While these prescriptions for organizational excellence are far from startling,
they are not consistently followed in all police organizations. Rather than demon-
strating a bias for action and experimentation, for example, many police organi-
zations seem to suffer from inertia. Modern police organizations also often fail to
keep in close touch with their clientele, although this has been one of the empha-
ses of the community policing model.9
Ironically, modern police organizations have traditionally allowed their em-
ployees considerable autonomy; they often do their best, however, to deny it and
to give exactly the opposite impression.10 Police executives typically deny the
existence of discretion, partly because they find it difficult to justify and partly
because admitting its existence might bring demands for more accountability
in its control.11 By establishing and enforcing great numbers of rules and regu-
lations, police executives create the impression that police officers work under
strictly controlled conditions. On close examination, however, these rules can
be seen to affect peripheral matters, such as when the uniform hat must be worn
or whose approval of overtime is required, rather than the actual performance of
police duties.
Many police agencies demonstrate little respect for the intelligence, creativ-
ity, and integrity of their employees. Police departments have traditionally been
managed as p unishment-centered bureaucracies, with heavy emphasis on man-
agement by fear and strict discipline.12 This management style clearly indicates
to employees that executives do not see them as trustworthy. In such situations,
it is not surprising that labor relations are characterized by distrust and conflict.
The community policing and problem-oriented policing strategies, though, put a
much higher premium on empowering police officers by recognizing their talents
and encouraging initiative and creativity.13
Perhaps the single most common criticism of police executives by police of-
ficers is that executives have lost touch with police work on the street, that they
do not remember what it is really like out there. While sometimes this criticism is
just typical of any employees complaining about their bosses, it often contains a
kernel of insight. Most police management training over the last few decades has
emphasized to newly promoted executives that they are now police managers, not
police officers. Many police executives are so conscious of their new management
role that they avoid any real contact with actual police work. In the process, they
often become proficient at acting like managers while gradually losing contact
with the police organization’s very purpose for existing, its goals and objectives,
and its everyday bread-and-butter operations.
Many police departments, especially larger ones, have fallen prey to o ver-
specialization and staff proliferation. As a result, although the patrol division may
still be referred to as the “backbone” of the police department, fewer and fewer
resources are devoted to patrol and other basic operations. One study found that
smaller police agencies actually kept a substantially greater proportion of their
employees assigned to direct services to the public than did larger police depart-
ments.14 In large organizations, subunits are always clamoring for more people;
over time, administrative staff and special units tend to grow at the expense of
patrol and investigations.
Excellent police departments exist, as do poor ones. In our experience,
though, most police agencies fall well short of excellence. Police executives are
in a position to correct pervasive problems and improve the delivery of police
services by their organizations. The characteristics of excellent companies discov-
ered by Peters and Waterman provide some useful guidelines for police organ-
izational improvement. Police executives should use them in conjunction with
the theories and principles of management and leadership presented throughout
this book.
Reinventing Government
There are certainly important differences between public administration and
private-sector, for-profit management. In the book Reinventing Government,15
Osborne and Gaebler recommended a set of principles for providing public ser-
vices that embody an entrepreneurial spirit, yet recognize the public nature of
government enterprises. They also reported on contemporary application of these
principles in government agencies, including police departments, all over the
country. A subset of their principles which are applicable to police administra-
tion and compatible with principles of organizational excellence are summarized
below.
1. Government should steer more than row. Government’s main responsibility

is to see that services are provided but not necessarily to provide all services
itself. The roles of catalyst and facilitator can be more appropriate for govern-
ment than the role of provider.
2. Government should empower citizens and communities instead of just
serving them. Helping people become self-reliant has more long-term value
than making people dependent. When citizens coproduce government ser-
vices, those services are more effective and cheaper.
3. Government should be m ission-driven, not rule-driven. Accomplishing
missions and goals is the ultimate purpose, not adhering to laws, rules, or
procedures. Missions should be well understood and they should guide the
operation of the agency.
4. Government should be results-oriented and focused on outcomes, not
inputs. How hard the government works and how many pieces of paper it
processes is not what really matters. What matters are outcomes: how well
children are educated, how safe communities are, and so on.
5. Government should serve its customers, not its own bureaucracy. Gov-
ernment needs to measure citizen satisfaction with its services and use such
information to make improvements and corrections.
6. Government should prevent as well as cure. Correcting conditions that give

rise to problems is more efficient and effective than continually reacting to
problems with short-term, b and-aid solutions. Deal with the disease, not just
the symptoms.
7. Government should decentralize and adopt more participative styles of
management and leadership. Workers always know more about their jobs
and about how to improve efficiency and effectiveness than staff analysts or
bosses. Relying on workers and trusting them will help get them involved in
reinventing government.
Vito and Kunselman surveyed police middle managers to examine their per-
ceptions of these principles of reinventing government.16 The researchers chose
this group because middle managers would be those most likely to implement
these principles, so their support would be critical. They found that the manag-
ers most supported the principles of community-owned government, customer-
driven government, and decentralized government, which the authors contend
reflect community policing ideals. The notion of reinventing government could
be especially useful in organizations making the transition to community policing
and problem-oriented policing.
The External Role
The preceding discussion mostly focused on the police executive’s internal role
of managing and leading the police organization and its members. The external
role of the police chief involves managing the organization’s interaction with its
environment. As open systems, police departments do things that affect their envi-
ronments, and they are affected by events and developments that originate in their
environments. The overall effects of these interactions can be positive or negative
or both. The police chief must deal with all of these.
One aspect of the police executive’s external role is that of official organiza-
tional representative. The police executive serves as the department’s spokesper-
son in official communications with a variety of governmental and community
groups. The executive also represents the agency at functions, on committees, and
before political, private sector, and administrative bodies. In a symbolic sense, the
executive epitomizes the image of the police department.
One of the most important external responsibilities of the police chief in-
volves securing the resources necessary for effective departmental performance.
The police department’s resources (employees, equipment, and funding available
for performing tasks and achieving goals) are allocated by people and organiza-
tions in the department’s environment. Most of the department’s resources are
made available through its budget. Budget decisions are made by elected political
leaders and by bureaucrats working for executive and legislative agencies in the po-
lice organization’s environment. Some additional resources may be available from
other governmental agencies and from private groups and foundations. These fis-
cal sources are also located in the environment of the police organization. The
effectiveness of any police agency depends on the availability of adequate resources
and, thus, on the police executive’s ability to obtain these resources from funding
organizations located in the environment of the police agency.
Another significant dimension of the police executive’s external role involves
protecting the police agency from external threats. Such threats can arise in the
form of arbitrary laws, unfair administrative decisions, constraining policies, bad
publicity, public criticism, new technology, and degenerating social conditions.
Any developments of this nature could threaten the safety of police officers and
the ability of the organization to protect life and property and maintain order.
The executive must protect the police organization from all unwarranted attacks
from the outside, being careful not to be overly defensive in attempting to protect
the status quo and the self-interests of the department and its members. The best
way to avoid knee-jerk defensiveness is for the executive to evaluate all threatening
inputs in terms of their effects on the police department’s attainment of primary
goals. The executive’s task is to defend the organization against genuine attacks
and threats, not to resist any and all changes.
When changes do occur in the environment of a police agency, the executive’s
responsibility is to monitor and analyze them so that the agency can successfully
adapt. Open systems not only have environments, but they also have changing
environments. The systems that survive and improve are those that continually
adapt to their changing environments. Social conditions, economics, demograph-
ics, politics, values, customs, technology, laws, policies, and regulations are just a
few of the characteristics of the environment that can change. Police departments
today face types of cybercrime that literally could not have been committed 10 or
20 years ago, social media pressures that did not exist until the early 2000s, and
must abide by legal procedures that can change at a moment’s notice due to court
decisions.
During the period from 1968 to 1980, police departments competed vigor-
ously for federal funds granted by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administra-
tion (LEAA), an agency that was created, attained annual budgets of hundreds
of millions of dollars, and then was abolished, all in less than 15 years. Later,
substantial federal funding was once again available starting in 1994, this time
from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (OCOPS). After 2001,
these federal funds for the enhancement of community policing were substantially
reduced and replaced by funding to support critical infrastructure protection and
other homeland security-related initiatives. Most recently, federal funds for vari-
ous police improvement and crime reduction initiatives has gone back up. Police
organizations that have successfully adapted to changes such as these have been
able to provide better services and protection to their communities. Guiding this
adaptation process is a critical part of the police executive’s external role.
The external role of the police executive includes serving as the official repre-
sentative of the agency, obtaining agency resources, protecting the agency against
threats, and ensuring that the agency successfully adapts to its changing environ-
ment. In a nutshell, the external role involves managing the department’s inter-
action with its environment, a vast and complicated region that we shall explore.
Politics
A major objective of both the reform era in American government and the
police professionalization movement was to insulate police departments from pol-
itics.17 This objective was intended to eliminate the overwhelming infusion of
partisan politics in police administration, a legacy that had endured during the
first century of American policing. During that period, police personnel decisions
and enforcement decisions were commonly dictated by whichever political party
happened to be in power, a situation that led to uneven enforcement of the law,
substandard police personnel, considerable corruption, organizational chaos, and
general ineffectiveness.
By the same token, there is a strong positive tradition of constructive political
influence over police matters in this country. One of the oldest and most tradi-
tional of law enforcement positions, that of sheriff,18 is filled by election. Prose-
cutors are also elected in many jurisdictions. Police chiefs are generally appointed
rather than elected, but they are usually appointed by and serve at the pleasure of
elected officials. In general, the extreme decentralization of American policing re-
flects our desire that police departments be closely tied to political and community
interests and that they be held politically accountable for their actions. Politics is
one of the primary instruments that a democratic society uses to keep police power
in check.
Police executives must continually wrestle with society’s ambivalence between
political control over the police and police independence.19 Inappropriate political
interference will usually take the form of pressure on police executives. They must
decide how to respond to requests and demands from political and community
interests.
One important distinction for the police executive to make is between Politics
and politics.20 Politics with a capital “P” (the use of partisan political influence on
police department decisions) is generally unhealthy. On the other hand, politics
with a small “p” refers to a manner of governance, the science of politics, intended
to serve the will of the people. As a part of the executive branch of government,
police departments are required to serve the public. A police executive answers to
appointed and elected officials who are accountable to the community for their
actions, while a sheriff literally answers to the people. It is proper and, indeed,
healthy for police agencies to be influenced by this variety of politics. As one police
chief put it, “policing and police administration should avoid party or partisan
politics but should embrace politics and political action in the highest sense of
those terms.”21
To help police executives make the distinction between appropriate and in-
appropriate kinds of political influence, Patrick V. Murphy, who headed police
departments in New York City, Detroit, Washington, DC, and Syracuse, sug-
gested some negotiable and nonnegotiable issues.22 He listed the most important
areas in which the police executive needs independence as personnel matters, dis-
cipline, and prohibition against partisan political activity by police agency mem-
bers. Other areas in which the chief should seek independence, but that are not
as crucial, are control over budgeting and resource allocation, control over media
relations, and the availability of in-house legal advice. Matters over which Murphy
thinks police executive independence can be negotiable include the chief ’s terms
of employment, the chief ’s role in making decisions and policies in n on-police but
related government matters (such as traffic engineering or zoning), and the chief ’s
degree of independence in police policymaking.
The extent and effect of political influence on the police executive depends
on government structure, political culture, and the particular relationship between
the police chief and political superiors.23 In jurisdictions with nonpartisan elec-
tions and strong city manager forms of government, the police executive is of-
ten largely free of partisan political interference. To the extent that the governing
principles are rationality and efficiency rather than partisan politics, the chief will
probably enjoy considerable independence.24 In jurisdictions with partisan elec-
tions and strong-mayor forms of government, by contrast, the police chief will
more likely have to contend with partisan political pressures.
The police chief ’s relationship with the mayor, council president, city man-
ager, or whoever supervises the police department is crucial. One mayor noted that
“if the chief and the mayor are on the same general wavelength in understanding
and commitment, the chief should be able to proceed with a minimum of in-
volvement by the mayor.”25 This mayor also points out that the intelligent police
executive will be familiar with the mayor’s law enforcement priorities, will avoid
intruding on politicians’ “turf ” unless important police matters are involved, and
will not generate more controversies than those that naturally arise as a result of the
police role in our society. The police chief who abides by these understandings is
more likely to be trusted by politicians and given independence in police matters.
The classic distinction between policy and administration is perhaps the best
shorthand explanation of the proper relationship between politics and policing. It
is through the political process that broad police policy is established (enforcement
priorities, funding levels, and appointment of the police chief ). Under the um-
brella of this broad policy, the police executive deserves substantial independence
in administration of the police department. Broad policy is formulated through
politics but implemented through police administration. Politicians and commu-
nity groups “should provide guidance on direction and priorities, but they ought
not become involved in developing detailed instructions on how policies are to be
implemented.”26 Under this system, the politician
does not actually run the police department; rather, he ensures po-
lice department compliance with obligations imposed by authorities
higher than the municipality (federal constitution, state law), as well
as police department receptivity to input from more localized interests

(neighborhood groups and the like).27
The precise police/politics relationship will vary from community to com-

munity; it would be wrong for us to impose too binding a prescription for the
proper relationship. But, as discussed in this section, there are some matters over
which the police executive should insist on independence. Certainly, police exec-
utives need to carefully develop and nurture their relationships with their political
superiors, showing sensitivity to the legitimate concerns of political leaders but
resisting inappropriate interference.
Other Government Agencies

Police departments interact with a host of government agencies. Interaction
arises when the police department needs the services of another agency, or vice
versa. The police executive can enhance this interaction through effective commu-
nication, formulation of policies and procedures, and the creation of an atmos-
phere of cooperation. Interaction also occurs in the budget process when resources
are being allocated to the police department and other government agencies. This
interaction is inevitably competitive, because one agency’s gain is every other
agency’s loss. Yet another kind of interaction is of a regulatory nature. A number
of government agencies (such as police training commissions, civil service com-
missions, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) establish and
enforce regulations that affect and constrain the police department. The police
executive’s management of this type of interaction guides the department’s adap-
tation to changes and may also ultimately influence the content of the regulations
and their enforcement.
Civil service is a governmental agency that affects many police departments.
In jurisdictions covered by civil service or institutionalized merit systems, police
personnel matters such as recruitment, selection, and promotion are generally un-
der the control of the civil service agency rather than the police department. One
study found that 85% of police agencies in medium-and large-sized cities were
governed by some degree of civil service regulation.28 Degree of control varied
from simple oversight to total control in which the civil service agency determined
selection criteria, tested applicants, and dictated to the police department which
applicants to hire.
Civil service systems began for the same reasons as the police professionaliza-
tion movement. Before civil service, it was common for police officers to be hired
on the basis of their political connections and personal friendships rather than
on the basis of any objective qualifications for the job. Civil service commissions
seek to protect “personnel practices from adverse political influences and to ensure
that some measure of fairness and rationality is brought to the personnel pro-
cess.”29 This objective has largely been achieved. In many jurisdictions, however,
civil service systems have become bureaucratic impediments to police personnel
improvement.30 Civil service systems frequently interfere with the police exec-
utive’s need to examine, hire, promote, and terminate employees, often taking
months to accomplish what could be done internally in a day. Whenever feasible,
the police executive should insist on control over personnel processes and deci-
sions. Civil service oversight and broad personnel policymaking are acceptable,
but civil service control is not.
A management concern over which police executives have less justification
and opportunity for control is budgeting. In every jurisdiction, political leaders
make the final decisions about how much money to allocate to each government
agency. These political leaders are generally advised by budget bureaus, city man-
agers, and other watchdog administrative officials. Police executives can usually
present arguments and rationales in support of their budgets during the budget
formulation process. The final decisions, however, are always out of their hands
and are always politically made.
Police executives should seek to maximize the influence they have in the budg-
eting process. To the extent that police executives are trusted and respected by
administrative and political officials, their arguments and requests will have cred-
ibility. In addition, budget requests that are rational and supported by convincing
documentation are more likely to be given consideration than those that are ex-
travagant and poorly documented. One study found that budget decision makers
are increasingly likely to demand empirical justifications for police department
and other public agency budget requests.31
In an attempt to exert control over budgetary matters, one type of influence
that the police executive has available for use is political influence. The police chief
usually has the opportunity to generate public pressure in support of police inter-
ests and even to grant small but legitimate favors to political decision makers. The
police chief should tread this path carefully, however. Once the police executive
“gets political,” the battle lines will be drawn and the executive and the entire de-
partment will be open to political interference. The professional and n on-political
image of the police chief, often so valuable, will be lost. Generally, the police exec-
utive should refrain completely from exercising even the most legitimate varieties
of political influence unless the welfare of the department and the protection of
the community clearly necessitate such drastic action. Relationships between the
chief and governmental agencies that decide budgetary matters should never be
allowed to place the police department in a position where it is vulnerable to inap-
propriate political interference or corruption.
Almost all states now have police training commissions that establish mini-
mum recruit and in-service training requirements for police officers. A few states
also set selection standards for police officers and require state certification. These
kinds of training and selection regulations have obvious merit and affect police
departments in a positive way. They serve to make police departments more pro-
fessional and more responsive to the public interest.
The police work with a number of other government agencies in the provi-
sion of services to the public. Fire departments and rescue/ambulance squads join
the police in providing emergency services. A variety of social service agencies,

such as child protective services, welfare departments, and senior citizen agencies,
call the police or are called by the police for assistance. Police departments also
often find it necessary to cooperate with public works departments, utility com-
panies, highway departments, and parks and recreation departments. In disaster
situations, police departments must work with emergency management agencies,
the Red Cross, and the National Guard. In addition, police agencies at all levels
of government must work together. Municipal, county, and state police must co-
operate with one another, and all three work with federal police and investigative
agencies. Collaboration with federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies
became even more common in the era of homeland security.32 Ensuring cooper-
ative and successful interaction with all of these agencies is a responsibility of the
police executive.
Interagency collaboration is seen as particularly important within the frame-
work of community policing and problem solving.33 Police agencies today rec-
ognize that they alone cannot effectively control crime and disorder. Moreover,
police departments have discovered that many of the problems that neighbor-
hood residents cite as their greatest safety-related concerns are things such as
abandoned buildings and vehicles, poorly maintained streets and sidewalks, poor
lighting in public places, trash, litter, graffiti, and similar “quality of life” issues.
Clearly, in order for the police to respond to these types of safety-related con-
cerns, collaboration with other government agencies is required, unless officers
themselves want to begin performing sanitation and public works duties on a
regular basis.
Criminal Justice Agencies

Whether you prefer to think of police, courts, and corrections as comprising a
criminal justice system or a non-system, the agencies within the process obviously
interact. At the front end of the system, the police have a tremendous impact on
other criminal justice agencies, particularly in terms of the quantity and quality
of cases they generate in the courts. Police departments, in turn, are affected by
actions taken by the other agencies in the system. Prosecutors determine whether
arrests proceed to the courts, and prosecutorial policies guide police enforcement
decisions. The courts decide guilt, innocence, and punishment in cases initiated
by the police, and also make more sweeping decisions about the legality and pro-
priety of police tactics. Jails and prisons aid the police by maintaining custody
of arrested and convicted persons and sometimes need police assistance during
disturbances and escapes. Probation and parole agencies often share information
with the police about released persons in the community; their decisions whether
to seek revocation of probation or parole for violators are of great interest to the
police. In general, the more effective or less effective the rest of the criminal justice
system is in dealing with offenders, the easier or more difficult, respectively, the
task of the police.

Police vs. Prosecutor on Transparency
May 26, 2018
This article reports push-back by Phoenix in response to their county attorney asserting con-
trol over “when and how police departments should release officer body-cam video and other
evidence.” The city says “Transparency is absolutely necessary for the Phoenix Police Depart-
ment to build and maintain stronger trust relationships” but the prosecutor says statutes and
rules govern the release of evidence in ongoing criminal investigations.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/05/26/police-vs-prosecutor-on-transparency. The

hyperlink at “This article” links to www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix-breaking/2018/05/25/phoenix-city-
leaders-oppose-bill-maricopa-county-attorney-bill-montgomery-public-records-rules/646368002.
While the police executive has no authority to demand particular actions of

other criminal justice agencies, they can take a leadership role in encouraging
improvement of the system and cooperation among its member agencies. The po-
lice chief is one of the most visible of criminal justice agency heads and, in most
jurisdictions, probably enjoys more support and respect than most other criminal
justice administrators. Corrections agencies rarely attract much public attention,
and even less public support. At one time, judges were held in extremely high
regard by most citizens, but public support and respect for the judiciary have
eroded.
An example of criminal justice interagency cooperation led by a police exec-
utive was provided by the Repeat Offender Program Experiment (ROPE) project
in Baltimore County, Maryland. The impetus for establishing the project came
largely from county police chief Neil Behan, an enlightened and dedicated police
executive. A small planning grant from the state was obtained, and a steering com-
mittee was formed, comprised of the chief, the county prosecutor, the head of the
state parole and probation agency, representatives of state corrections and juvenile
services agencies, and the county criminal justice coordinator; the committee was
chaired by the county manager.
The committee’s work began on the assumption that repeat offenders were
not being adequately treated by the county’s criminal justice system and that this
was a major problem for the county. Not much data was available, however, to
support the assumptions or, indeed, to define the problem adequately. The com-
mittee hired a consultant to research the problem, to identify it definitively, and
to assist the committee in designing a satisfactory solution. Each of the agencies
represented on the steering committee opened its records to the consultant and
assisted in data collection. As the problem was defined and the consultant’s atten-
tion turned to solutions, he sought direction and input, including program sug-
gestions, from members of the committee, as well as from operational personnel
in their agencies.
Because each agency had been represented in the research and planning pro-
cesses, more consensus was achieved among steering committee members than
would have ordinarily been expected from people with such differing roles and
constituencies. Agreeing on a final program of action was not easy and required ne-
gotiation and compromise; a consensus was reached, however, and a program was
established, one that each represented agency agreed to support with resources and
involvement. After the program was implemented, the steering committee contin-
ued to meet periodically to monitor progress and make changes when necessary.
Complete cooperation among criminal justice agencies is not always possible
and, in some instances, may not be desirable, because parts of the process are ad-
versarial. In the ROPE project, for example, judges declined to be steering com-
mittee members, although their views and concerns were sought and considered
by the consultant and the committee. During the implementation of ROPE, the
main stumbling block was judicial resistance to mandatory sentences for repeat
violent offenders. Nevertheless, the ROPE project did succeed in focusing crimi-
nal justice resources and attention on repeat offenders, resulting in stronger cases,
more convictions, longer sentences, better treatment, and more intensive com-
munity supervision. The success of the project was made possible by an unusual
degree of cooperation among criminal justice agencies and was largely due to the
leadership and innovative organizational efforts of the county police chief.34
The Media
The media are important components of any police agency’s environment,
because they control much of the information that the public learns about the
police agency. The media present information about the police to the public in the
form of news, investigative reports, feature stories, public service announcements,
and entertainment. The content of these messages and the manner of their pres-
entation greatly affect public views of the police (see “Media Relations,” Box 7.3).
The police executive must recognize that the media, sometimes referred to as the
“fourth estate,” play an important role in our system of government. The Found-
ing Fathers distrusted government authority and provided for freedom of the press
as a check against government abuses. Although reporters’ demands can at times
be a nuisance and an imposition to the police executive, it should be understood
that the public has a right to know about police activities in a free society and that
it is the media that have the responsibility for keeping the public informed.
It is in the police department’s best interests for the police executive to es-
tablish good relations with media representatives and to provide procedures for
dissemination of news information. If the police executive is open and honest with
reporters, p olice–press relations will become less adversarial and reporters will be
more likely to consider the department’s viewpoint on controversial or embarrass-
ing issues and news stories. As one observer noted, “You’re not going to control
the media, but you do in fact influence their thinking if you work with them on
a regular basis.”35
Box 7.3 Media Relations

When questioned, the chiefs we interviewed stressed the importance of good media
relations. When asked to rank on a scale of 1 to 10 the importance of communication
with the media as compared with other features of the police chief job, the median score
given by the 25 chiefs was 8.5, with six giving media communication a top rank of 10. No
chief responded with a ranking below 7. To test police chiefs’ responsiveness to media,
we asked the following: If three office phones were ringing and their secretary told them
that the calls were from the mayor, a member of city council and a reporter, which call
would they answer first? One chief chuckled at the question and gave an answer that ex-
pressed the consensus of the group. “I’d pick up the mayor’s call first,” he said. “But I’d
also figure that the mayor was calling me about what I was going to say to the reporter.”
Source: Jerome H. Skolnick and Candace McCoy. 1985. “Police Accountability and the
Media.” In William A. Geller (ed.), Police Leadership in America: Crisis and Opportunity.
New York: Praeger, p . 113.
In some agencies the police chief handles all media relations. This model gives
the executive the most control over information released to the media but can
consume much of the executive’s valuable time and also denies other members of
the department the experience of media relations. Other agencies have a media
relations unit or designated public information officer. This model relieves the ex-
ecutive of the responsibility, while still allowing the chief to maintain control over
the release of information. A third approach is to authorize every employee, within
certain parameters, to release news information and answer media questions. This
approach is the most risky in the sense that the opportunities for inappropriate
comments and improper release of information are increased. However, allowing
all officers to handle media relations shows confidence in employees, gives them
useful experience, gives the media greater opportunities for f irst-hand accounts of
events, and may contribute to reducing the typical police antipathy toward the
media.
One sensible approach is to permit all officers to release information and an-
swer questions concerning routine incidents, accidents, and arrests. Media ques-
tions pertaining to administrative matters, police policies, sensitive investigations,
or any controversial issues, on the other hand, should be referred to a media re-
lations specialist, if the department is large enough to employ one, or to the top
executive. Much more important than the particular procedure that is used to
disseminate information, however, is genuine departmental cooperation in media
relations.
The Community
The community is an element of the police organizational environment. For
the working police officer, the community generates police activity (law violations
and calls for service) and provides the setting within which police work must be
performed. For the police executive, the community represents a source of both
support and complaints and, most importantly, is the final arbiter of the quality of
police services and the effectiveness of the police department. In today’s commu-
nity policing environment, the community is also seen as a valuable partner of the
police department in efforts to control crime and disorder and improve the level
of safety and quality of life in the community.
The police executive primarily encounters the community in the form of or-
ganized community groups. By meeting regularly with groups such as business
and citizen associations, church and youth groups, Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions
Clubs, the Chamber of Commerce, the PTA, and the NAACP, the police ex-
ecutive can establish open lines of communication with influential community
interest groups. Such meetings give the executive the opportunity to present and
explain publicly the police department’s viewpoint; the executive, in turn, is ex-
posed to a variety of community concerns, interests, and viewpoints (see “Getting
Out into the Community,” Box 7.4).
Traditionally, police executives emphasized their public relations role vis-à-vis
the community; telling and selling, promoting the police department to the com-
munity. More recently, some police executives have sought to move beyond that
format in order to take up leadership positions in their communities, drawing on
their positions, reputations, and expertise to influence community attitudes and
behaviors. For example, police chiefs who want to alter the style and role of their
police officers can build community support to counteract internal opposition
and criticism.36 Police chiefs can also educate the public about the many causes
of crime and the inability of the police, acting alone and on their own, to control
crime. They can “take the lead in addressing broadened local social service needs
that could, if neglected, produce greater crime problems.”37
Police executives should adopt this kind of proactive leadership role in the
community. Their positions give them the opportunity and the credibility needed
to affect community attitudes and actions. Top executives of other organizations,
Box 7.4 Getting Out into the Community

In communicating with the community, show real empathy. Don’t hit them with statistics to
show them why their concerns shouldn’t exist. They do exist and their perceptions are all
that matter. Get to know the neighborhoods very well. Listen to people. And do something
about their problems. Remember, what’s important in one neighborhood, may not be in an-
other. So be discriminating and attentive. Make those speeches. Get out into the community
directly. Show your face. Let them know you are the chief for all of them. It’s not how good
you think you are, it’s how good they think you are that matters.
Source: Commissioner Bishop Robinson, Baltimore Police Department, as quoted

in Michael S. Scott. 1986. Managing for Success: The Police Chief’s Survival Guide.
Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, p. 46.
public and private, have historically served as community leaders. Police chiefs
should do the same, particularly when issues of crime and related social problems
are at stake. In so doing, the police executive has the opportunity to shape the
police department’s environment instead of merely adapting to it.38 According to
one highly regarded police chief, “initiating positive interaction with the commu-
nity generally results in increased citizen support, higher morale in the workforce,
protection against or insulation from many hostile external forces, and increased
resources.”39
Police Unions
Although police unions and employee associations are made up of members of
the organization and thus might be thought of as internal system factors, the po-
lice executive deals with them as collectivities and confronts them more as interest
groups than as employees.40 In this sense, labor relations more accurately reflect
the police executive’s external role than their internal role. Still, it is obvious that
the executive’s performance of the internal role (managing and leading employees)
greatly affects labor relations.
The existence and influence of police unions and employee associations vary
greatly around the United States. In the South, in particular, police executives
rarely have unions or strong employee associations to contend with. In the in-
dustrialized Northeast, virtually every police department is unionized. In general,
large police departments are more likely to be unionized than small departments,
but again, geographic variation is evident. Individual police unions may be com-
pletely independent, they may be associated with mainstream labor unions such
as the Teamsters or the United Auto Workers, and/or they may be affiliated with
national umbrella groups of police unions and associations, such as the Fraternal
Order of Police.
Almost all police unions engage in collective bargaining, but some employee
associations serve as little more than social clubs. The kinds of issues that unions
and police executives tangle over can range from salaries and fringe benefits to
so-called management prerogatives, including such matters as assignments, shift
schedules, overtime, promotion, and discipline, to mention only a few. Tradition-
ally under the control of the police executive, these prerogatives are now a part
of the collective bargaining process in some unionized departments, and many
of them are controlled by contractual agreement rather than by police executive
order. Some observers regard this kind of union activity as threatening to the po-
lice department’s ability to protect the community and provide quality services.41
Other observers, however, blame management instability and incompetence for
such union activity, and see employee influence over traditional management pre-
rogatives as a positive trend.42
One study that examined changes in police labor contracts in medium-and
large-sized cities over a 1 0-year period shed some light on the kinds of issues
covered by labor contracts.43 The typical police labor contract did not tie the
Box 7.5 Working with the Union

One of the benefits of regular, open dialogue with the union is that you don’t waste time
posturing before getting to business. The union leaders may be sufficiently impressed with
this communication that they won’t feel compelled to work actively against you. Allowing the
union representatives to participate at staff meetings and on task forces also gives them the
opportunity to see how you operate. They may then recognize the conflicting pressures you
face and not see you as an enemy of the rank and file.
Accord the union leaders all the dignity and respect they deserve. Invite them to partici-
pate in ceremonial affairs with you. Participate in some of their ceremonies. Even if you don’t
allow the union leaders to participate in management affairs, make sure they are informed
early of your decisions. Don’t force them to learn what’s going on in their police department
by reading the newspapers. They have to answer questions about management decisions
from the officers, so be sure they have all the information they need to do so accurately.
Source: Michael S. Scott. 1986. Managing for Success: A Police Chief’s Survival Guide.
Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, pp. 3
8–39.
hands of the police executive, but did introduce some constraints. The trend
was in the direction of strengthening management’s position with respect to the
internal administration of the police organization. It may have been the case that
most police unions’ efforts during this period were focused on wage and benefit
issues rather than on employee relations or management rights issues. But it also
seems that police management had become more sophisticated in the area of
labor relations and better able to protect its interests. Overall, “one may conclude
that the police collective bargaining process is stabilizing. Management’s seat at
the collective bargaining table is increasingly one of true negotiation rather than
reaction.”44
Because the existence and strength of police unions varies considerably
among jurisdictions, it is difficult to prescribe the proper labor relations role for
the police executive. Certainly, the police chief who treats employees with respect
and who stays in touch with d ay-to-day operations and problems is more likely
to enjoy a positive relationship with the employees’ union or association (see
“Working with the Union,” Box 7.5). When it comes to collective bargaining,
the police chief should either serve as the department’s representative on matters
of working conditions and management prerogative, or at the very least have veto
power over such matters.45 Otherwise, the city manager or labor lawyer bargain-
ing on behalf of the police department may unwittingly bargain away crucial
management authority.
In collective bargaining, the police executive is in the awkward position of
needing to protect management authority against union encroachment while, at
the same time, demonstrating respect for employees and support for their wage
and benefit positions. The police executive is in the middle—both an adversary
and an advocate who must in good conscience put aside personal feelings and
consider all proposals in terms of their effects on the police department’s ability to
protect life and property and maintain order. The best justification for supporting
or opposing union demands rests on the effects that such support or opposition
would have on the police department’s attainment of its goals and objectives. In
the long run, the police executive who acts in good conscience and in the best
interests of the police organization should gain the support of the community and
of police employees.
Police Executive Styles
In the performance of their internal and external roles, police executives make
numerous decisions and handle all kinds of problems. Executives vary on a num-
ber of matters, including how they allocate their time and the relative importance
they attach to internal and external responsibilities. Consequently, police executive
behavior can take many forms. In the following sections, we identify and briefly
describe four police executive styles. While some police executives clearly exhibit
just one style, others represent combinations of two or more styles.
The Administrator
The administrator style emphasizes the internal role of the police executive as
well as the managing aspects and manifestations of that role. The administrator
concentrates on planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling the po-
lice organization. The administrator adheres to the professional model of police
administration, with a belief in police autonomy and great faith in education,
training, and technology as methods for police improvement. The administrator
believes that as a police executive, they are is a manager first and a police officer
only a distant second.
There are advantages and disadvantages of the administrator style. The strong
belief in police autonomy and consequent lack of attention to the external role of
the police executive can lead to trouble with elected officials, unions, the commu-
nity, and the media. Emphasis on the managing role can reap internal benefits,
especially in greater control and efficiency, but the positive results can be short-
lived if they are made at the expense of relations with employees and the public.
The administrator also tends to focus on internal procedures rather than on actual
work products, thereby creating an organization that looks and acts efficient but
may not satisfy its clientele or achieve its goals. The executive adopting the admin-
istrator style has to avoid being perceived mainly as a bureaucrat, since that label
rarely brings positive credit.
The Top Cop

The top cop style, like the administrator style, emphasizes the internal role
of the police executive but focuses more on leading than on managing. The top
cop is heavily involved in police operations, often commanding the troops in the
field or taking charge of the more interesting and most important investigations.
Through example as much as by other means, the top cop demonstrates to police
officers what behaviors and attitudes are most highly valued by the organization.
Top cops are more likely than administrators to be liked and respected by police
employees, although this depends heavily on their operational abilities. If top cops
fail or act incompetently in field command or investigations, they quickly lose the
respect of their troops. In addition, executives adopting the top cop style can some-
times be resented by police managers and police officers who interpret their involve-
ment in police operations as an indication of a lack of confidence in subordinates.
If the top cop neglects the more mundane, routine aspects of management,
as is likely to be the case, the police department will gradually become more dis-
organized and less efficient. The top cop’s effect on external relations is harder to
predict. Some politicians, media representatives, and community members may
be in awe of the top-cop chief, to the organization’s benefit. On the other hand,
the top cop police executive probably will not spend much time or expend much
energy on external relations, and their style, if overly aggressive or combative, will
inevitably alienate some people.
The Politician
The politician emphasizes the external role of the police executive. The pol-
itician is likely to leave the internal administration of the police department to
subordinate managers and to view the chief ’s role as primarily externally oriented.
This can be risky. Even if the subordinates are talented and capable, in all likeli-
hood they will manage the organization less than satisfactorily in the absence of
the chief executive, whose authority and leadership are needed on a continuing
basis to provide organizational guidance and stability.
The politician’s approach to external relations emphasizes protecting the
police department’s interests by meeting with community and governmental
groups and political leaders, defending the organization from any and all ex-
ternal threats, and constantly courting resource constituencies for support. By
paying so much attention and committing so much time to external forces, the
politician is frequently successful in gaining both fiscal and community support
for the police agency. The executive adhering to the political style is rarely caught
by surprise because of external developments that might affect either the police
department or the executive. The clever politician executive avoids making en-
emies and is adept at surviving fluctuations in the political climate. However, if
police employees conclude that their chief is “a politician,” this is usually not a
compliment. It generally means that employees believe the chief is mainly con-
cerned with making political leaders happy at the expense of police employees or
good police work. From their point of view, a politician chief cannot be trusted
to do the right thing.
The Statesman
The statesman emphasizes leadership—among the troops, throughout the en-
tire organization, and in the community. The statesman recognizes the aspects of
the police executive’s responsibilities that can be carried out by no one else. While
not ignoring the internal management of the department, the statesman delegates
most management tasks and concentrates on charting the overall course of the
organization and influencing the core values of employees. The statesman also
delegates some externally oriented tasks in order to concentrate on serious threats
to the organization and to provide leadership in the community.
The essence of the statesman style involves being “a leader of a democracy, some-
one who can transcend the current values of the day and lead both police and the
public into accepting a better set of values and strategies for policing.”46 Police organ-
izations are involved in controversial, emotional, honor-and-dishonor, life-and-death
matters. Police officers and citizens frequently become frustrated and confused by the
ethical and practical issues at stake and are often inclined to support drastic remedies
for ordinary problems. Police executives who act as statesmen seek to temper momen-
tary fears and frustrations, chart a course for the long haul, and reinforce by example
and exhortation the core values underlying our democratic, free society.47
As admirable and necessary as the statesman style may seem, it can have its
limitations. The lofty concerns of the statesman can sometimes deflect attention
from the day-to-day operations of the police department and the subsequent
quality of services received by the public. Personally or through subordinates, the
statesman executive must ensure that basic services do not deteriorate while high
ideals are being stressed. Similarly, the statesman executive runs the risk of losing
touch with reality, or at least seeming to have lost touch with the opinions of po-
lice employees and the community. To impress these constituencies and to avoid
becoming irrelevant or out of touch, the statesman may occasionally be forced
to return to the streets to demonstrate competent police operational skills. The
statesman may also lose credibility with police officers and the public by espousing
ideas and values too far removed from the norm. In some situations, the shock
value of radically different ideas can be employed to overcome inertia and chal-
lenge hidden assumptions, but the executive using this strategy runs the risk of
being labeled a radical. An alternative strategy is to encourage gradual change over
a long period. This approach is safer for the police executive but less likely to bring
about immediate changes. The choice can be a difficult one.
A case can be made for the value of each of these styles. The best police exec-
utive probably would adopt a mixture of the four styles. The most effective style
depends on the situation. Factors such as the capabilities of subordinate managers,
the political climate, the militancy of the police union, and the particular strengths
and weaknesses of the police department all go into determining which style or
which blend of styles is most effective in any situation.
Although in any particular situation the administrator, the top cop, or the pol-
itician might be the most successful style, there is little doubt that what American
police service needs most today is more statesmen.48 Of the four styles, the states-
man, unfortunately, is found least often in police departments.
Summary
The police executive fills two basic roles—one is focused internally on run-
ning the organization; the other is focused externally on relations with the en-
vironment of the organization. The two basic components of the internal role
are managing and leading. An emphasis on the pursuit of excellence and on the
principles of reinventing government was recommended as a guide to performing
the internal role. The external role of the police executive includes representing the
organization, securing resources, defending the department against threats, and
guiding the agency’s adaptation to changes in its environment. Important compo-
nents of the police organizational environment include politics, other government
agencies, criminal justice agencies, the media, the community, and police unions.
In the performance of their internal and external roles, police executives ex-
hibit four styles of management behavior: the administrator, the top cop, the pol-
itician, and the statesman. The style most appropriate and effective depends upon
the situation, but the statesman style is probably the rarest and the most needed in
contemporary law enforcement.
1. In this chapter, we cite the findings of a recent study of management practices in private corpora-
tions. Are these applicable to police administration? To what extent can the lessons learned in busi-
ness administration and public administration be applied to police administration? What similarities
and differences do you see?
2. A few years ago, one of the most popular bumper stickers read “KEEP THE POLICE OUT OF
POLITICS, AND POLITICS OUT OF THE POLICE.” Why do you think it was so popular? Should poli-
tics and the police be completely separated?
3. Police unionism is controversial. Should police be allowed to unionize? Should they be allowed to
affiliate with other labor unions, such as the Teamsters? As workers, how can police officers protect
their rights except through unionization? Under what circumstances should police be allowed to go
on strike? To engage in work slowdowns? To conduct “no confidence” votes against their police
chiefs?
4. Which police executive style would you be most likely to adopt? Why? What styles have been exhib-
ited by police chiefs that you have observed?
5. What do you think of the relative importance of education and experience as qualifications for police
chiefs? How much of each would you require of police chief applicants?
Cases
Two of the Case Studies in the back of the text pertain to information pre-
sented in Chapter 7. You might want to look at how Chief Davis carried out
his internal and external roles in Case 4, Gaining Outside Commitment in Lowell,
Massachusetts. In Case 5, Leading Change in Riverside, California, one of the con-

stituencies that Chief Fortier had to contend with was an employee association/
union that did not always share the chief ’s vision for change.
Suggested Reading
PERF. 2011. Labor—Management Relations in Policing: Looking to the Future and Finding Common
Ground. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
PERF. 2016. Advice from Police Chiefs and Community Leaders on Building Trust: Ask for Help, Work
Together, and Show Respect. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
PERF. 2020. Police Chiefs and Prosecutors Work Through Challenges to Find Common Ground.
Schafer, J.A. and R.W. Myers (eds). 2022. Rethinking and Reforming American Policing: Leadership
Challenges and Future Opportunities. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wexler, C., M.A. Wycoff, and C. Fischer. 2007. “Good to Great” Policing: Application of Business
Management Principles in the Public Sector. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
Notes
1 PERF. 2022. Police Chiefs Compensation and Career Pathways: PERF’s 2021 Survey. Washing-
ton, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, p . 10. Online at: https://www.policeforum.org/
assets/ChiefsCompensation.pdf.
2 P.Q. Brady. 2017. Chief Concerns: Identifying the Personal and Work-Related Factors Associ-
ated with Job Satisfaction, Burnout, and Turnover Intentions among Police Chiefs. Dissertation,
Sam Houston State University. Online at: https://shsu-ir.tdl.org/shsu-ir/bitstream/handle/
20.500.11875/2200/BRADY-DISSERTATION-2017.pdf.
3 R. Reese. 2005. Leadership in the LAPD: Walking the Tightrope. Durham, NC: Carolina Aca-
demic Press.
4 W.D. Orrick. 2018. Best Practices Guide for Budgeting in Small Police Agencies. Alexandria, VA:
International Association of Chiefs of Police, p. 2. Online at: https://www.theiacp.org/sites/
default/files/2018-08/BP-Budgeting.pdf.
5 U.S. Department of Justice. 1997. Police Integrity: Public Service with Honor. Washington, DC:
U.S. Department of Justice.
6 M.H. Moore, and A. Braga. 2003. The Bottom Line of Policing: What Citizens Should Value (and
Measure) in Police Performance. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
7 T.J. Peters, and R.H. Waterman Jr. 1982. In Search of Excellence: Lessons from Americas B est-Run
Companies. New York: Harper & Row.
8 Peters and Waterman. 1982. In Search of Excellence, pp. 13–16.
9 G.W. Sykes. 1985. “The Myth of Reform: The Functional Limits of Police Accountability in a
Liberal Society.” Justice Quarterly 2, no. 1: 5 1–66.
10 G.W. Cordner. 2010. “Community Policing: Elements and Effects.” In R.G. Dunham, and G.P.
Alpert (eds), Critical Issues in Policing: Contemporary Readings, sixth edition. Long Grove, IL:
11 H. Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, pp. 106–116.
12 E. Bittner. 1970. The Functions of the Police in Modern Society. Washington, DC: U.S. Govern-
ment Printing Office; M.K. Brown. 1981. Working the Street: Police Discretion and the Dilemmas
of Reform. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
13 H. Goldstein. 1990. Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-Hill; Cordner. 2010.

“Community Policing: Elements and Effects.”
14 E. Ostrom, R.B. Parks, and G.P. Whitaker. 1978. “Police Agency Size: Some Evidence on Its
Effects.” Police Studies 1, no. 1: 34–46.
15 D. Osborne, and T. Gaebler. 1992. Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is
Transforming the Public Sector. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
16 G.F. Vito, and J. Kunselman. 2000. “Reinventing Government: The Views of Police Middle
Managers.” Police Quarterly 3, no. 3: 3 15–330.
17 G.L. Kelling, and M.H. Moore. 1988. “The Evolving Strategy of Policing.” In Perspectives on
Policing, no. 4. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
18 D.N. Falcone, and L.E. Wells. 1995. “The County Sheriff as a Distinctive Policing Modality.”
American Journal of Police 14, no. 3/4: 123–149.
19 K.D. Tunnell, and L.K. Gaines. 1996. “Political Pressures and Influences on Police Executives:
A Descriptive Analysis.” In G.W. Cordner, and D.J. Kenney (eds), Managing Police Organiza-
tions. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, pp. 5–17.
20 W.H. Hudnut III. 1985. “The Police and the Polis: A Mayor’s Perspective.” In W.A. Geller (ed.),
Police Leadership in America: Crisis and Opportunity. New York: Praeger, p . 20.
21 R.J. Brzeczek. 1985. “Chief-Mayor Relations: The View from the Chief ’s Chair.” In Geller,
Police Leadership, p. 48.
22 P.V. Murphy. 1985. “The Prospective Chief ’s Negotiation of Authority with the Mayor.” In
Geller, Police Leadership, pp. 33–39.
Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
24 J.M. Bourey. 2022. “City Manager’s Role in Policing Reforms.” In. J.A. Schafer and R.W. Myers
(eds), Rethinking and Reforming American Policing: Leadership Challenges and Future Opportuni-
ties. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 121–142.
25 D.M. Fraser. 1985. “Politics and Police Leadership: A View from City Hall.” In Geller, Police
Leadership, p. 43.
26 Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society, p. 150.
27 Brzeczek. 1985. “Chief-Mayor Relations.” p. 52.
28 G.W. Greisinger, J.S. Slovak, and J.J. Molkup. 1978. Police Personnel Practices in F orty-Two
American Cities. Washington, DC: Public Administration Service.
29 J.H. Burpo. 1979. Police Unions in the Civil Service Setting. Washington, DC: Public Adminis-
tration Service, p . 2.
30 G.W. Greisinger, J.S. Slovak, and J.J. Molkup. 1979. Civil Service Systems: Their Impact on Police
Administration. Washington, DC: Public Administration Service, p. v.
31 G.W. Cordner, J.R. Greene, and T.S. Bynum. 1982. “Police Human Resource Planning.” In J.R.
Greene (ed.), Managing Police Work: Issues and Analysis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 53–74.
32 G.W. Cordner, and K.E. Scarborough. 2010. “Connecting Police Intelligence with Military
and National Intelligence.” In K. Logan (ed.), Homeland Security and Intelligence. New York:
Praeger/ ABC-CLIO, pp. 174–210.
33 M.S. Scott, and H. Goldstein. 2005. Shifting and Sharing Responsibility for Public Safety Prob-
lems, Response Guide No. 3. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services.
34 G.W. Cordner. 1983. The Baltimore County Repeat Offender Planning Project. Baltimore, MD:
University of Baltimore.
35 M. Clark. 1997. Quoted in J. Travis, and J.E. Brann. 1997. “Measuring What Matters: Devel-
oping Measures of What the Police Do.” In Research in Action. Washington, DC: National
Institute of Justice, p. 13.
36 R.C. Davis. 1985. “Organizing the Community for Improved Policing.” In Geller, Police Lead-
ership, pp. 84–95.
37 L.P. Brown. 1985. “Police–Community Power Sharing.” In Geller, Police Leadership, p. 71.
38 A.J. Reiss, Jr. 1985. “Shaping and Serving the Community: The Role of the Police Chief Exec-
utive.” In Geller, Police Leadership, p. 68.
39 Davis. 1985. “Organizing the Community.” p. 85.
40 R.W. Myers and J.A. Schafer (eds). 2022. “Reform from the Top Down: Views of Chief Exec-
utives and Professional Associations.” In J.A. Schafer and R.W. Myers (eds), Rethinking and
Reforming American Policing: Leadership Challenges and Future Opportunities, Cham: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 73–76.
41 A.V. Bouza. 1985. “Police Unions: Paper Tigers or Roaring Lions?” In Geller, Police Leadership,
pp. 241–280.
42 R.B. Kliesmet. 1985. “The Chief and the Union: May the Force Be with You.” In Geller, Police
Leadership, pp. 281–285.
43 PERF. 2011. Labor–Management Relations in Policing: Looking to the Future and Finding Com-
mon Ground. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum; D.L. Carter, and A.D.
Sapp. 1996. “A Comparative Analysis of Clauses in Police Collective Bargaining Agreements as
Indicators of Change in Labor Relations.” In Cordner and Kenney, Managing Police Organiza-
tions, pp. 19–43.
44 Carter and Sapp. 1996. “A Comparative Analysis of Clauses.” p
. 40.
45 A.H. Andrews, Jr. 1985. “Structuring the Political Independence of the Police Chief.” In Geller,
Police Leadership, pp. 5–19.
46 L.W. Sherman. 1985. “The Police Executive as Statesman.” In Geller, Police Leadership, p. 462.
47 K.A. Betsalel. 1996. “Police Leadership and the Reconciliation of P olice–Minority Relations.”
In Cordner and Kenney, Managing Police Organizations, pp. 67–78.
ism, Corruption and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nation’s Police. Indianapolis, IN:
Dog Ear Publishing.
PART III
The Human Perspective
The three chapters in Part III discuss the human, or behavioral, perspective on
police administration. The importance of this behavioral approach was recognized
several decades ago by business and industrial managers who observed that peo-
ple at work do not always produce with machine-like regularity and efficiency.
Since that revelation, management has come increasingly to be viewed as a people-
oriented function in terms of both managers and those managed. Management
is often now described as the business of getting things done with and through
people. Certainly this description of management in general closely fits the tasks
and purposes of police administration.
In Chapter 8, the behavior of individuals and groups in organizations is dis-
cussed. The primary aspects of individual organizational behavior presented in this
chapter are attitudes, roles, self-concept, perception, and communication. Features of
groups in organizations include culture, norms, cohesiveness, cooperation, competi-
tion, and conflict. We attempt to provide some clues for understanding why people
behave as they do in organized settings. Such understanding can be very helpful to the
manager charged with the responsibility for directing and controlling people at work.
Chapter 9 begins with a discussion of work motivation and then presents a
variety of important human development approaches to modern management,
such as management by objectives, job enrichment, participative management,
and organization development. Then the focus shifts specifically to police organ-
izational development, covering such topics as education, training, professional-
ization, civilianization, cultural diversity, and police organizational health. The
recurring theme is that people represent the greatest asset and resource in a police
organization, so police management must learn to identify and satisfy employee
needs in order to be successful.
Chapter 10 discusses leadership, one of the most critical and elusive elements
in management. The differences between management and leadership are sketched;
although the two concepts are closely related, we stress that they are not identical.
A number of functions, styles, and theories of leadership are presented; we empha-
size, though, that the intangible quality of leadership makes it difficult to pin down
with precision. Universally valid advice for developing and applying leadership tal-
ents in all situations have not yet been discovered and likely never will be.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-10
CHAPTER 8 Individuals and
Groups in the Police
Organization
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Characterize the relationship between attitudes, self-concept, and behavior.

• Describe the role of feedback in perception.
• Differentiate between one-way and two-way communication.
• Characterize the likelihood of an emergent system developing in an organization.
• Characterize the relationship between group cohesiveness and productivity.
This chapter introduces the fundamentals of human behavior in organiza-

tional settings. Factors that mold and inspire individual and group behavior and
affect interaction between and among individuals and groups are discussed.
An understanding of human behavior is extremely important for police man-
agers, because every aspect of organization and management involves people.
Police managers do not have to be expert psychologists, but they do have to deal
with the behavior of people inside their organizations as well as citizens, stake-
holders, and partners outside the police department. Gaining an understanding
of other people’s behavior can help police managers influence them in a positive
way. Understanding one’s own behavior can also help a manager be more effective.
Individuals in Organizations
The individual is the basic subsystem of the organization. In structural terms,

individuals are grouped to form bureaus, divisions, units, squads, shifts, and
teams, which together make up the formal organization. Individuals do the work,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-11
198 The Human Perspective
pass the information, and communicate in the organization. Individuals also cre-
ate informal groups, which combine to form a powerful informal organization. It
is individuals who provide leadership and make the decisions in the organization.
As pointed out in Chapter 3, an individual consists of numerous interde-
pendent subsystems, each of which may be considered a system in and of itself. In
physiological terms, an individual has muscular, skeletal, nervous, sexual, diges-
tive, circulatory, and respiratory systems; in psychological terms, emotional, value,
ethical, moral, religious, and motivational systems. Each of these interdependent
systems is a subsystem of the whole individual, and each works in concert with the
others to influence the individual’s behavior.
In addition to internal subsystem influences, the individual is influenced by
external subsystems and systems of which they are is a part: among them, the
governmental system, the political system, the religious system, the family system,
and the organizational work system. Dynamic interdependence between human
and organizational systems accounts in large part for the complexities of human
behavior.
Our discussion of human behavior, borrowed mainly from psychology and
sociology, will focus on the following five major aspects of organizational behavior:
1. Attitudes;
2. Roles;
3. Self-concept;
4. Perception;
5. communication.
Attitudes
An attitude can be defined as a psychological “mental set” that represents
“a predisposition to form certain opinions,”1 or as “a constellation of beliefs,
sentiments, and behavior tendencies concerning some object.”2 Attitudes in-
clude ideals, values, sentiments, thoughts, ideas, concepts, feelings, beliefs, and
assumptions.
Attitudes affect people’s perceptions and behavior. People with different atti-
tudes may form different opinions of the people with whom they associate. They
will also evaluate events and activities in which they are involved differently, de-
pending on their attitudes. They will perceive their fellow workers, their com-
manding officers, the citizens of their communities, their pay, the way they are
treated, and everything they do according to their opinions or attitudes. In short,
attitudes are what people are predisposed to bring to everything in which they
become involved.
It is crucial to recognize, however, that the relationship between attitudes and
behavior is not a direct one.3 For example, some people have the attitude that their
8 Individuals and Groups in the Police Organization 199
work is boring, yet they still work. Some police officers believe that their sergeants
are incapable of supervising, yet they follow orders. Others believe that their police
chiefs deserve their best efforts each and every day, but nonetheless find themselves
coasting in their jobs. Although how people behave is affected by their attitudes,
it is not completely governed by them, and behavior is also influenced by many
other factors.
The classic example of the indirect relationship between attitude and behavior
is the relationship between prejudice (attitude) and discrimination (behavior). All
of us have prejudices, or preconceived notions, about groups of people. People
tend to form attitudes about individuals on the basis of the groups to which they
belong. In terms of racial prejudice, for example, whites’ attitudes about individ-
ual African Americans are often based on what they think they know about black
people in general. For various reasons, however, whites’ behavior toward blacks
may not flow directly from their prejudices. A white store owner who does not like
blacks may still act friendly toward black customers because he or she needs their
business. Similarly, a businessman who believes that women are not as competent
as men may still employ women, thinking that it is only fair or because a union or
the government requires it.
In his study of p olice–community contacts in large cities conducted in the
mid-1960s for the President’s Crime Commission, Reiss found very little evidence
of discriminatory behavior on the part of white police toward black people.4 How-
ever, he did find that the white police officers he studied had very prejudicial atti-
tudes toward blacks. Similarly, Coleman found that the police officers he studied
were very prejudiced, but that their attitudes did not often directly translate into
brutality or illegal arrests.5 The effect of the prejudiced attitudes was more subtle,
as officers were more likely to be suspicious of black citizens and less likely to be
friendly or respectful toward them. So again, although attitudes have an important
influence on behavior, the relationship is not as simple or controlling as one might
think.
From an organizational point of view, an important set of attitudes are those
toward work and authority. Some people express the attitude that work is enjoy-
able and should be done well, while others look at work simply as a means to an
end, a contract in which they trade their time and energy for money to spend on
their real pleasures. Similarly, some people accept the legitimacy of organizational
authority without question, while others spend a major portion of their time un-
dermining their bosses’ authority. Despite these variations, though, most people
willingly join organizations, work, and develop at least some commitment to their
places of employment. These basic social norms, often taken for granted, make
collective action and organizational control possible.
When describing behavior in systems terms, Huse and Bowditch classify at-
titudes as steering mechanisms rather than inputs in the behaving process; factors
that influence and direct tasks, problems, relevance, and rewards as each of these
bears on eventual behavior.6 In other words, attitudes impart only general tenden-
cies to behavior.
The development of a person’s attitudes is influenced by such factors as family,

gender, age, race, ethnicity, economic and social status, education, intelligence, and
place of residence. Attitudes are also influenced by myriad other factors that are
unique to a given person. Each person’s set of attitudes, therefore, is different from
every other person’s. Even in a c lose-knit family, in which one might expect similar
attitudes to prevail, the members’ differences in attitudes are likely to be substantial.
Individuals usually have fairly elaborate rationales with which they explain
and justify their attitudes to themselves and others. People even tend to associ-
ate with others who have similar attitudes; this is a means by which individuals
reinforce their own attitudes. Living becomes a more comfortable experience if a
person can be surrounded by like-minded people. Thus, conservative Republicans
might not associate socially with liberal Democrats, or p ro-choice advocates with
anti-abortionists. People with different attitudes are often psychologically threat-
ened by one another; the sacredness of one’s own attitudes is a personal domain
in which the individual encourages little or no interference. However, behind the
“rational” explanations for one’s attitudes are strong emotional reasons. Because
a person becomes emotionally attached to their attitudes through years of condi-
tioning and experience, attitudes are extremely difficult to change.
The traditional route to changing people’s behavior, in organizations and
elsewhere, has been by way of attitudinal change. Because of the strong emo-
tional aspect of attitudes, however, this route often fails. By contrast, behavior
m odification bypasses attitudes and concentrates on using rewards and punish-
ments to influence behavior. The organization essentially says “what you believe is
your business, but your behavior on the job is our business.” Then, the organiza-
tion carefully rewards correct behavior and punishes incorrect behavior.
A good example of police behavioral change that was not dependent on atti-
tude change pertains to the use of deadly force. Many police departments made
their policies and procedures on discharging firearms much more restrictive be-
ginning in the 1970s and 1980s. Officers were carefully informed of the limited
circumstances in which use of their firearms is permitted. The penalties for un-
authorized use of force were increased, and procedures for investigating police
shootings were tightened. The focus of the entire effort was on the behavior of
police use of firearms; the attitudes of police officers toward the use of force, or
toward different types of people, were not targeted—at least not directly. The
available evidence indicated that this behavior-modification approach succeeded
in substantially reducing police use of firearms (without any increased danger to
police officers, it should be added).7 In the New York City Police Department, for
example, the number of people shot by police fell from 314 in 1971 to 25 in 2013;
the annual number shot and killed was reduced from 93 to eight.8
An approach being used extensively today that does focus on attitudes is train-
ing on implicit bias, such as Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP) training.9 This pro-
gram avoids blaming participants by stressing that everyone has prejudices and
stereotypes in their heads. By taking a scientific rather than moralistic approach,10
FIP training tries to defuse the issue and put more focus on the importance of
recognizing one’s prejudices, so that one can avoid behaving improperly due to
them. Then the point is made, of course, that this is especially important for po-
lice, since they are expected to treat everyone fairly and impartially, without bias
or discrimination. Basically, this approach provides a dose of cultural diversity
education with the hope of influencing people’s attitudes, but mainly focuses on
ways to avoid letting one’s attitudes improperly influence one’s official behavior.
Besides education and training, the cumulative effect of everyday experience
can sometimes change attitudes, as can a single powerful experience. Police of-
ficer attitudes, for example, are definitely affected by work experiences (see “Police
Attitudes and Police Personality,” Box 8.1). Police officers often become more
Box 8.1 Police Attitudes and Police Personality

Most police officers conclude that they have been affected by their career in the police
service and that they have changed at both the level of personality and at the level of social
attitudes.
First, the level of personality changes: in general, there is a gradual increase in the level
of self-confidence and assertiveness. One inspector summarized his experiences very suc-
cinctly: “When I first joined I was inhibited and had difficulties dealing with ‘new’ people.
Now I’m not afraid of anyone.”
There is usually a rather profound emotional “hardening.” Different officers experience
this in different ways, but most admit (and admit this sadly) that they have developed a
protective shell which insulates them from the emotional upheavals caused by some of the
dreadful experiences they have had to undergo. Suspiciousness, cynicism and skepticism
may not be bad qualities to have as operational police officers. Indeed, they may well be
necessary to assist in the process of being operationally competent. These feelings are prob-
lematic when they extend beyond immediate police work into all aspects of the officer’s life.
Officers feel that they become either more or less dogmatic. There is probably a complex
interaction between individual personality dynamics and social experience. Some officers,
so irritated by the world they see about them, wish for a powerful cleansing of society. They
become intolerant, bigoted and punitive. Others become more broad-minded and compas-
sionate and blame not individuals but an iniquitous social history and/or social environment
for the behaviors they observe.
Initially most officers experience a widening of horizons. Closely allied to this breadth of
social experience is a loss of naiveté.
Police officers find themselves adhering to various norms within the police subculture.
These norms include a derogation of the social services and the liberal “do-gooders,” a
distrust or even blatant dislike of ethnic minorities, a vilification of certain types of offender
(especially the sex offender), a dislike of theory (and ivory-tower intellectuals), and a positive
regard for common sense and the “practical man.” Finally, adherents to the police culture
also support a rather traditional masculine set of outlooks on the world.
Source: K. Robert and C. Adlam. 1982. “The Police Personality: Psychological

Consequences of Being a Police Officer.” Journal of Police Science and Administration 10,
no. 3: 347–348, with permission of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
suspicious of others, more cynical about the human condition, and more po-
litically conservative, especially during their first few years in the profession.11
Officers may also become more racially prejudiced, particularly if they work in
areas where suspects and troublemakers seem to disproportionately represent one
racial or ethnic group.
In principle, at least, more positive attitudinal changes should also result from
everyday experience. A case in point may be police officers’ racial prejudices. Some
observers believe that the one factor most likely to reduce police prejudice is the
increased employment of African-American and other minority police officers.
Herman Goldstein argued “no training program can possibly work as well as this
day-to-day contact among peers to break down the barriers and hostilities between
different cultures.”12
Along with work experiences, peer pressure is another profound influence
on police officers’ attitudes. Young police officers crave acceptance from their
more experienced colleagues; adopting and displaying the “right” attitude is of-
ten a prerequisite for initiation into the police subculture. Rookie officers also
tend to adopt the dominant attitudes of their peers, because those attitudes help
make sense of the danger, hostility, fear, violence, and authority in their new
world.
A major challenge for police managers is to harness these powerful peer in-
fluences, so that young officers’ attitudes change positively rather than negatively.
Although distrust and cynicism are among the common effects of police work
and the police culture on young officers, it is also possible for officers to remain
optimists or become realists rather than developing into pessimists or cynics.13 In
fact, studies show that police attitudes vary substantially from officer to officer and
from one police department to another, so being a police officer and being part
of the police culture affects one’s attitudes, but police are still individuals too with
their own personal beliefs and opinions.14 Carefully chosen field training officers
can help young officers interpret their early experiences, while sergeants should
regard the moral development of their subordinates as a very important aspect of
their mentoring responsibilities.
Roles
In much the same way that an actor plays a role, all human beings play real-life
roles. These roles exert a degree of consistency to behavior—we expect someone
who is a teacher to behave in certain ways, for example. And when we assume
a role ourselves, we adjust our behavior to our understanding of how someone
should behave in that role.
People are involved in playing many roles simultaneously, which presents
somewhat of a problem, because the roles played are often very different from
one another, with different expectations. A woman may be a mother, wife, daugh-
ter, sister, aunt, cousin, member of a choir, police officer, Methodist, Democrat,
Southerner, golfer, soccer fan, and amateur photographer. Moreover, because
norms and expectations are usually flexible, people often differ in how they play
the same role. Some mothers work outside the home; others do not. Some hus-
bands outwardly manifest affection for their wives; others do not. Some daughters
feel a responsibility to visit their aging parents frequently; others feel no such re-
sponsibility. Some police officers see themselves as tough, hard-line crime fighters;
others see themselves as professional, s ervice-oriented public servants. Some think
of themselves as warriors, others as guardians and protectors.
Some roles influence behavior in virtually every situation, whereas others ap-
ply only in specific circumstances. Sex roles, for example, influence behavior in a
wide range of situations: in most instances, they have a much stronger impact than
many of the other roles that people play. The fact that a person is a woman will
probably influence her behavior to a much greater degree than will her member-
ship in Toastmasters or the Democratic Party.
The role of police officer seems to be one that strongly influences those who
play it. For some it is more of a “calling” than a job. The authority that police are
given, the danger they face, the social stigma that attaches to them, and the isola-
tion from “civilians” that often develops, all contribute to a strong sense of identi-
fication with fellow police and with the police role, however it is conceived.15 The
strength of the police officer role may also carry over into other roles and aspects
of life. Police officers are often said to act like cops even when interacting with
their families and to react with suspicion and cynicism in everyday social settings.
In part, this may be fueled by the common view that “police officers are always on
duty, 24 hours a day.”
As strong an influence as the police role can be, officers do vary in how they
view their role, much as their attitudes vary. Five major types have been identified
based on several dimensions, including particularistic versus universalistic values,
outcome versus process orientation,16 aggressiveness, selectivity,17 perspective, mo-
rality of coercion,18 and emphasis on due process versus social order.19 The five
resulting types are professionals, tough cops, clean-beat crime fighters, problem
solvers, and avoiders.20
Professionals are willing to use coercive police authority when necessary but
are not inclined to overuse it. They define the police role in broad terms and look
for varied ways of accomplishing legitimate objectives. They have empathy for
the people they have to deal with and can imagine themselves experiencing other
people’s problems. Professionals understand the limits to their own ability to solve
other people’s problems, though, and are thus able to do their best without being
overly frustrated or tormented. They generally retain positive views toward both
police work and the public.
Tough cops are enthusiastic about using police authority and generally be-
lieve that the people they deal with deserve what they get. Instead of looking
into various options for solving problems, they jump quickly to the use of co-
ercive authority, without too much concern for its legality. They lack empathy
for other people, and typically adopt an “us versus them” mentality. Tough cops
blame the continuance of crime and disorder problems on lack of support from
the community, the courts, and their own administrators. They usually develop
quite negative attitudes toward just about everything and everybody except their
fellow tough cops.
Clean-beat crime fighters share many attitudes and beliefs with tough cops,
but they are more willing to stay within the rules and the law. In this respect they are
more process-oriented, whereas tough cops are more outcome-oriented. Clean-beat
crime fighters see their role primarily as law enforcement, and believe that systematic
and thorough application of the law will lead to a safer and more orderly commu-
nity. They often experience frustration, either because their efforts to enforce the
law aggressively are thwarted by administrators and the community, or because their
enforcement efforts fail to deter law violators to the extent they had expected.
Problem solvers share empathy and a broad view of the police role with the
professionals, but are more conflicted over the use of coercive authority. They
want to be a positive influence on individuals and the community and see law en-
forcement and the use of force as negative influences. They emphasize delivering
services, collaborating with citizens, and resolving conflict, and they avoid the use
of authority. In some communities, these problem solvers experience considerable
success and public support but, in others, they can become frustrated if their ef-
forts are not successful or appreciated. Moreover, if their dislike of using authority
is extreme, they may either fail to perform effectively in critical situations, or if
they use authority despite their dislike for it, they may become tormented by self-
doubt or even guilt.
Finally, the avoiders lack both empathy for other people and a willingness
to use force to solve problems. These officers go out of their way to avoid diffi-
cult situations, as their label implies. They tend to shirk their duties, are not very
productive, and try to attract as little attention as possible. These avoiders often
cannot be reached on the police radio, never arrive first at the scene of a serious
incident, and engage in little proactive policing. Basically, they seem to care about
little more than surviving until their retirement starts.
Police managers should be attuned to these different conceptions of the po-
lice role. In the recruitment and selection of new employees, managers should
seek individuals who are already inclined toward the type of police role that the
department prefers. In recruit and field training, strong efforts should be devoted
to molding young officers in appropriate roles and discouraging support for in-
appropriate roles. Supervision and management should reward appropriate be-
havior and discourage the types of behavior associated with unsatisfactory role
conceptions. The leadership of the department should articulate and reinforce the
particular conception of the police role that is considered most appropriate for the
community and the department.
S
elf-Concept
Self-concept, another influence on behavior in organizations, is defined as the
image a person has of their current self and of their ideal self: how and what they
are and would like to be. Both aspects of self-concept have important effects on
the ways people act in organized situations. Self-concept contributes to our per-
sonality that, in turn, influences behavior, which generates responses from others
that serve as feedback about whether they see us as we do. That feedback can also
help us make adjustments in order to come closer to achieving our ideal self.21
Some psychological dimensions related to s elf-concept include s elf-awareness,
self-confidence, and self-esteem. Self-awareness refers to how knowledgeable,
insightful, and realistic a person is about their own strengths, weaknesses, and
personality. Self-confidence is the degree to which a person believes they can do
something, including whether they believe they can attain their ideal self. S elf-
esteem is how positively a person regards themself.
Some people enter police work either because their view of the role of the
police fits their self-concept (how they see themselves) or because being a police
officer coincides with elements of their ideal self-concept (how they would like
to be). How well their career choice works out depends on the fit between self-
concept, ideal self, and police work. One person may be big and strong and choose
police work because it seems to present plenty of opportunities for commanding
and authoritative behavior. This person may be capable of playing the role as per-
ceived, but may be frustrated if the nature of police work turns out to be different
from what is anticipated. Another person might seek strength and authority in
their ideal self in an effort to compensate for a sense of weakness or inadequacy
in their current self-concept. This person might choose policing as a means of
achieving the ideal and might fail for lack of the physical and mental toughness
that police work sometimes demands.
Other people might go into policing because they see it as a helping profession
and because their ideal s elf-concept includes notions of charity and service. Such
people could easily become frustrated if the good deeds performed in the course of
their work do not seem to significantly improve people’s lives, or if the recipients
of their help do not always seem grateful.
These examples illustrate some of the problems related to self-concept and
ideal self that can be associated with a police career; however, they are probably
most often encountered in extreme cases. Individuals with inaccurate conceptions
of their present selves (poor self-awareness) or unrealistic conceptions of their ideal
selves may be most susceptible to the kinds of problems described above, and are
perhaps not good candidates to fill the police role. Nor are those who expect a po-
lice career to contribute too dramatically to improvements in present self-concept
or achievement of ideal self likely to make successful and satisfied police officers.
Because work is an important aspect of a person’s s elf-concept, superiors are
important participants in one’s effort to achieve an ideal self-concept. By accu-
rately appraising subordinates in terms of who they think they are and what they
think they can become, a police manager is in a good position to understand their
behavior and to make a positive contribution toward their personal and profes-
sional development by, for example, helping them develop more self-confidence.
By carefully providing them with information (feedback) about their progress
toward achieving ideal self-concept goals and by encouraging them in every pos-
sible way to establish reasonable and justifiable ideals, a police manager can be
assured of better work performance and greater productivity for the organization
as a whole.
The relationship between behavior and self-concept is quite direct, compared
to the indirect relationship between attitudes and behavior. Generally, people eval-
uate situations and choose behaviors on the basis of how they think their self-
c oncepts will be affected. Thus, behavior perceived as satisfying or enhancing ideal
self-concepts is chosen; behavior perceived as damaging to ideal self-concepts is
rejected.
Perception
Most police officers learn quickly about the importance of differences in per-
ception. It is common to interview two witnesses of the same incident only to ob-
tain accounts with little similarity. Often, after interviewing two drivers involved
in an automobile accident, it is hard to believe that they are describing the same
accident. It is not unusual to interview a complainant in an order-maintenance
situation and be ready to apply the full force of the law to the offending party,
only to discover that the other side of the story is every bit as believable and
deserving of consideration. Admittedly, some of these differences are due to in-
tentional lying, but quite frequently each participant is telling the whole truth as
they perceive it.
People behave differently from one another in part because their sensory or-
gans have varying capabilities. For example, the information gathered by people
with excellent eyesight differs from that gathered by people with poor eyesight.
The behavior of these two groups is based on different information. The behavior
of a person walking in the dark along a narrow, lonely road who hears a car ap-
proaching at a fast rate of speed would differ greatly from the behavior of a person
who fails to hear the car; one would jump out of the way, and the other would
continue walking.
Some of the perceptual process is carried out mechanically by the sensory
organs. Your eyes, for example, sort out and arrange a steady flow of light, so that
you can see objects, people, color, and movement. This mechanical interpretation
is important, although people tend to take it for granted, becoming aware of it
only when something such as an optical illusion deceives them.
Some perception is based on fairly straightforward learning. As your eyes
present you with visual data on objects, for example, you learn to see and dif-
ferentiate chairs, tables, books, automobiles, and a great number of other com-
monplace items. You learn to interpret the visual image of an object with four
wooden vertical legs and a rectangular wooden top as a table, something on
which to eat a meal, play Monopoly, or study. In other words, you learn to per-
ceive the object as a table, and you perceive it in terms of the various ways you
relate to it or use it.
Box 8.2 Police Perception and the Symbolic Assailant

The policeman, because his work requires him to be occupied continually with potential
violence, develops a perceptual shorthand to identify certain kinds of people as symbolic
assailants, that is, persons who use gesture, language and attire that the policeman has
come to recognize as a prelude to violence. This does not mean that violence by the sym-
bolic assailant is necessarily predictable. On the contrary, the policeman responds to the
vague indication of danger suggested by appearance. Like the animals of the experimental
psychologist, the policeman finds the threat of random damage more compelling than a
predetermined and inevitable punishment.
Nor, to qualify for the status of symbolic assailant, need an individual ever have used vi-
olence. A man backing out of a jewelry store with a gun in one hand and jewelry in the other
would qualify even if the gun were a toy and he had never in his life fired a real pistol. To
the policeman in the situation, the man’s personal history is momentarily immaterial. There
is only one relevant sign: a gun, signifying danger. Similarly, a young man may suggest the
threat of violence to the policeman by his manner of walking or “strutting,” the insolence
in the demeanor being registered by the policeman as a possible preamble to later attack.
Signs vary from area to area, but a youth dressed in a black leather jacket and motorcycle
boots is sure to draw at least a suspicious glance from a policeman.
Source: Jerome H. Skolnick. 1966. Justice without Trial: Law Enforcement in a Democratic
Society. New York: John Wiley, pp. 45–46.
Perception involves your own peculiar interpretation of sensory information;

it includes both mechanical and learning processes. However, the combination
of these two processes is not enough to explain the wide variety of ways in which
people interpret identical situations. Alexis and Wilson point out that “the infor-
mation gathering function is not a sequence of purely mechanical, routine phys-
iological processes. Personalities and social needs are intricately woven into how
people see things.”22
To a large extent, then, people see things in terms of their attitudes, roles, and
self-concepts (see “Police Perception and the Symbolic Assailant,” Box 8.2). A po-
lice officer may perceive a drug addict as a criminal. To a doctor, the same person
is sick or perhaps a patient; to a psychologist, an individual with an emotional
problem; to a drug dealer, a customer; to a parent, a child who is unable to cope
with the stresses of society. In all instances, the drug addict is the same person but
is perceived differently by different people playing different social roles. In each
example, the personal attitudes held by the perceivers with respect to drug addicts
and drug addiction would further differentiate their perceptions.
Similarly, a person’s self-perception as a result of interaction with others may
be a behavioral determinant. A person who has a concept of self as being intelli-
gent may perceive going to school and taking examinations as enjoyable, reward-
ing experiences; a person who has consistently failed in academic studies, on the
other hand, may perceive themself to be considerably less intelligent, fear school,
and freeze when taking examinations.
Each person behaves so as to protect or enhance their perceived s elf-concept.

It is important to understand that the way in which another person perceives a
situation and subsequently behaves on the basis of that perception is likely to be
different from the way you perceive the same situation and subsequently behave.
In a very real sense, your own perceptions obstruct your ability to understand be-
havior in others. People tend to believe that other people should perceive and be-
have in exactly the same way that they do. Managers must overcome this tendency
in order to deal effectively with the various kinds of behavior one can expect from
individuals within an organization.
In addition, administrators must realize that perception is a selective process
through which people accept or reject what best or least suits their needs. Leavitt
tells us that “people perceive what they think will help satisfy needs; ignore what is
disturbing; and again perceive disturbances that persist and increase.”23 Perception
controls interpretation of sensory information, blocks out bothersome informa-
tion, and accentuates pleasing information.
Another important aspect of perception is that it can be made more accu-
rate through the use of feedback. A child who perceives a red-hot coal to be
inviting and touches it gets immediate feedback in the form of pain; the pain
“says” that the perception was inaccurate and that the child had better change
that perception before being tempted again to touch a red-hot coal. Chances
are excellent that the child’s perception and subsequent behavior will change as
indicated.
Unfortunately, feedback is not usually this direct and immediate. The manager
who sincerely wants to improve perception must always actively seek information
either to substantiate or correct initial perceptions of people and situations. There
must be an awareness that perceptions may be inaccurate and that subordinates,
individually and collectively, may perceive situations differently. Additionally, the
good administrator must understand that varying perceptions are major causes of
behavioral differences among people.
Communication
The attitudes, roles, self-concepts, and perceptions of others become known
primarily through communication. Two people learn about each other through
the communication process. It is through this process that people attempt to in-
fluence the behavior of others. Communication is the medium through which a
police manager conducts day-to-day activities.
It has become fashionable in recent years to attribute every kind of organiza-
tional deficiency to “a failure to communicate.” People who are likely to use com-
munication as a scapegoat for all organizational difficulties do not fully appreciate
or understand human behavior as it is affected by attitudes, roles, self-concept,
and perception. To say simply that an organization has communication problems,
without considering that other aspects of organizational behavior affect commu-
nication, is an oversimplification that cannot be easily justified. This is not to say,
however, that poor communication does not cause problems; it does, just as all of
the other aspects of organizational behavior cause problems.
For the purposes of our discussion here, communication simply means the
way in which information is exchanged. Communication can be verbal or non-
verbal. Verbal communication is based on words and can be either written or oral.
Nonverbal communication, in contrast, takes place without any use of words.
People tend to be much more aware of verbal communication, although in
actuality a great deal of information that is neither written nor spoken is received
and transmitted. Gestures, facial expressions, and body language are a few exam-
ples of nonverbal communication.
Different effects can be achieved through nonverbal communication even
though the same medium of communication is used. If you are driving down the
street and see a friend, you are likely to tap your horn two or three times, smile,
and wave. If, on the other hand, you are driving down the street and are abruptly
cut off by a driver you do not know, you are likely to lean hard on the horn two
or three times, grimace, and possibly even make an unfriendly gesture. In both
situations you communicate nonverbally: in the first instance, you use the horn
to communicate friendship; in the second, you communicate anger. Both recipi-
ents probably fully understand your nonverbal messages, even though not a single
word was spoken.
The ability to receive nonverbal communication is especially dependent on
the powers of observation. In the examples given above, one need not have acute
powers of observation to understand the intended messages. Not all nonverbal
communication is so obvious; much of it is very subtle and extremely difficult to
interpret. People who have superior powers of observation and who understand
the importance of nonverbal communication are much more adept than others at
picking it up and interpreting it correctly.
Whether the message is verbal or nonverbal, the information received is use-
less if the recipient is unable to interpret it accurately. Such interpretation involves
perception. Physiological capacities, attitudes, roles, and self-concepts combine
to determine how accurately a person receives information. Two individuals may
receive the same message but perceive it differently. Faulty perception, therefore, is
a main cause of organizational communication problems.
Increasingly, another challenge to communication, both within a police or-
ganization and between the organization and its community, is language. Only
a few decades ago, most police departments could conduct all of their business
in English, with perhaps only an occasional need for a translator. Today, many
police agencies frequently need to be able to communicate in Spanish, and some
departments encounter a wide variety of languages on a regular basis. Thus, police
officers and police executives can no longer take for granted that effective com-
munication requires only careful listening and speaking in the English language.
Most of a police chief ’s communication is verbal, either written or oral. The
chief transmits information to subordinates and superiors and receives information
from many other people. Communication is, in fact, the medium of management.
It is the device by which management transmits and receives information essential

to organizational stability and well-being.
Inasmuch as people speak to one another more often than they write to one
another, most organizational communication is oral. This has been changing,
though, as e-mail and other digital formats have come to dominate communica-
tion in some organizations.24 E-mail communication has the advantage that it is
written, so in principle it can be more precise than oral communication, plus a re-
cord of it can be made and referred to later if necessary. However, as almost every-
one has experienced, e -mail is often informal and frequently m isunderstood—that
is, recipients do not always perceive the message as it was intended.
Verbal and nonverbal communication can be either one-way or two-way.
One-way communication involves the transmission of information; the reception
of such information may or may not occur. Two-way communication involves: (1)
transmitting and receiving information, and (2) a retransmission of the informa-
tion by the recipient back to the transmitter, confirming the fact that the commu-
nication is fully understood. In two-way communication, the recipient is required
to indicate what they perceived the message to be. The transmitter learns through
this process whether the intended message was accurately received.
From a systems perspective, the essential difference between one-way and t wo-
way communication is that the latter provides for feedback, a necessary element
in maintaining a c losed-loop system. In t wo-way communication, the transmitter
gets information (feedback) about the quality of the attempt to communicate,
learning whether success was achieved in getting the message across. Two-way
communication, therefore, has a distinct advantage over one-way communication:
accuracy. Because accuracy is essential to the communication process, a police
chief should utilize two-way communication whenever possible.
The only apparent advantage of one-way communication is that it is faster. If
one considers the time lost as a result of organizational problems created by faulty
communication, however, one-way communication is not a time saver in the long
run. O ne-way communication serves a valid purpose in policing only in emer-
gency situations that require immediate action and in which a commanding of-
ficer has no time to evaluate through feedback whether orders are understood. It is
only in such emergency situations that o ne-way communication becomes prefera-
ble to two-way communication—and even then, only when absolutely necessary.
Notwithstanding its obvious faults, one-way communication is frequently
used by most people. There are numerous reasons for this. People find it difficult
to understand that others do not perceive in exactly the same way that they do.
Others are totally unaware that people perceive differently. O ne-way communica-
tion is easier and quicker. It also spares one the embarrassment of learning that one
did not transmit and receive information perfectly.
Both one-way and two-way communication can involve either writing or
speaking; in some instances, they can involve both. Written messages generally
have the advantages of being more carefully formulated and more permanent.
Oral messages, however, are speedier and permit immediate feedback. On the
negative side, written messages are more expensive and more time-consuming; if
they are poorly written, conveying unintended ideas and questionable informa-
tion, they accomplish little. Oral messages may have similar negative effects if the
receiver is at all hesitant in asking questions to clarify meaning.25
The formal structure of communication as a system within the police organi-
zational framework will be discussed in Chapter 11. Here, we are more concerned
with communication as an interpersonal activity; as such, it requires technical
proficiency in formulating and interpreting messages as well as an understanding
of and commitment to two-way communication processes. The latter requirement
is every bit as important as the former. Even the most perfectly worded message
can be misunderstood. Feedback is the only technique available that can ensure
that the transmitter and the recipient have the same perception with respect to the
meaning of a given message.
One study found that 72% of a police officer’s time is spent in some form
of communication activity.26 This percentage for police chiefs would probably be
even higher; most of a police chief ’s time is spent communicating. Success in man-
agement is clearly related to success in communicating. The police chief who is a
poor communicator can never become a successful police manager. Peter Drucker
tells us that
the manager’s … effectiveness depends on his ability to listen and to read,

on his ability to speak and to write. He needs skill in getting his thinking
across to other people as well as skill in finding out what other people are
after.27
In short, the effective manager needs to be an effective communicator.
Groups in Organizations
The sociological view is that people naturally form groups and that much of a
person’s identity is based on group membership. The organization itself is a group,
a formal configuration to which managers, supervisors, and workers all belong. If
the organization is large, there will be many subgroups within it, each subgroup
comprised of employees who also belong to the larger organization. Employees are
likely to also belong to a number of outside groups that have nothing to do with
the organization that employs them. In some cases, outside as well as inside groups
influence employee behavior and thereby affect job performance and attitude.
Groups and subgroups tend to develop their own cultures that guide their
members’ behavior (see “Organizational Culture,” Box 8.3). These cultures in-
clude such characteristics as norms, roles, and status.28 Over time, some group
members come to identify so strongly with the group that their individual atti-
tudes, values, and beliefs change to fit those of the group. The desire to belong and
be accepted by the group, in combination with peer pressure, can exert a strong
Box 8.3 Organizational Culture

Every organizational culture is different for several reasons. First, what has worked repeat-
edly for one organization does not for another, so the basic assumptions differ. Second, an
organization’s culture is shaped by many factors, including, for example, the societal culture
in which it resides; its technologies, markets, and competition; and the personality of its
founder(s) or most dominant early leaders. Some organizational cultures are more distinc-
tive than others. Some organizations have strong, unified, pervasive cultures, whereas oth-
ers have weaker cultures; some organizational cultures are quite pervasive, whereas others
have many subcultures in different functional or geographic areas.
Source: J. Steven Ott. 1989. The Organizational Culture Perspective. Pacific Grove, CA:
Brooks/Cole, p. 3.
conforming influence on individuals. This conforming group influence is proba-

bly at least as strong in police departments as in other types of organizations. Of
primary consideration then is the influence of the police organization’s culture and
its effects on the functioning of the organization.
The police organizational culture is frequently referred to as the police subcul-
ture. Some authors contend that the police subculture dominates the organization
and all individual behavior within the organization. While the police subculture is
an important concept, we believe that this term does not adequately depict what
is going on in the police organization. There is an occupational culture, created by
virtue of the unique characteristics of police work. Then there is an organizational
culture based on characteristics of the police department, including official and
unofficial norms and values. And then, except in the smallest police agencies, there
are subgroups that may develop their own specific cultures.29
Subgroups may be formal or informal. Some formal subgroups are formed as
a result of the functions of people working together, as in a particular unit such as
the detective bureau or traffic division. Other subgroups are formed as a result of
administrative levels of organization, for example, those in management and su-
pervisory positions as contrasted with other workers in the organization. Informal
subgroups that exist in the police organization are frequently socially based and
sometimes affected by shift work. For example, members of a uniformed patrol
shift that works days may frequently associate in the evenings not only as a means
of social activity but also as a means of maintaining their work relationships out-
side of the workplace.
It is critical for the police manager to understand that subgroups, both formal
and informal, are composed of individuals who have, or tend to develop, similar
values and norms. This means that collectively these individuals can have a sig-
nificant impact on the organization, either positive or negative. A police manager
must be able to either subvert negative effects of subgroup behavior or harness
positive effects, whichever a situation merits.
Groups in Police Organizations

Because most police work is performed by officers working alone or in pairs,
the need for direct cooperation in work performance is not as great in a police
department as in, for example, an army battalion or a coal mine. Police do not typ-
ically do their work in groups except in special operations situations or major case
investigations. However, police officers still tend to identify strongly with their
entire group of fellow employees or with formal or informal subgroups within
the police organization. These groups inevitably have significant effects on how
individual police officers think and act, and thereby affect organizational behavior
as well.
The 24-hour-a-day nature of the police business generally requires that patrol
officers be divided into shifts or squads; these formal organizational subunits often
become separate and influential groups. It is not unusual to discover that these
patrol squads have distinct personalities, with differing values, beliefs, and norms
that lead to distinctive behaviors. Police departments large enough to have sepa-
rate precincts or district stations also frequently find that a similar phenomenon
develops. The same may be true of specialized units such as detective divisions or
juvenile bureaus.
Subgroup differences were observed in one police department that was called
upon to handle numerous noise complaints, usually in the form of calls about
loud parties. One patrol shift approached most of these calls from a negotiating
standpoint, trying to convince partiers to be quieter, to move indoors, and to close
down at a reasonable hour. The approach was friendly and relaxed. Another patrol
shift took a much more legalistic and combative stance. At every opportunity, par-
tiers were arrested for drinking in public or disorderly conduct. Partiers’ cars were
ticketed or towed whenever possible. The antagonism and conflict caused by this
approach often resulted in additional arrests for interfering with a police officer
and resisting arrest. Pitched battles sometimes broke out.
The primary causes of this dramatic divergence between two patrol shifts in
discharging their order-maintenance function were differences between the two
shift commanders. One subscribed mainly to the professional role and was a talker
and negotiator who believed in resolving conflicts peacefully and informally. He
trained and led his subordinates accordingly. The other shift commander took a
much more legalistic approach, loved a good fight, and had little regard for young
people having fun late at n ight—he subscribed more to the tough cop role. He
selected shift members in his own image and rewarded them for emulating his
behavior.
This extreme inconsistency between subgroups should not be permitted when
it subjects the public to such unpredictable and capricious police behavior. Top
police managers must be conscious of the different groups that exist or develop in
their organizations. In particular, they need to be sensitive to the norms, values,
and behaviors that are supported within the overall group and within subgroups
(see “Police Culture,” Box 8.4). Some differences between groups are inevitable, as
Box 8.4 Police Culture

Culture covers a lot of intellectual and emotional territory. Police organizational structures,
policies, behaviors, arrest patterns, corruption, education, training practices, attitudes to-
ward suspects and citizens, forms of patrol, and all other areas of police work—the whole
ball of wax—are witnessed and practiced through the lens of culture. All areas of police
work have meaning of some kind to cops, and as every reformer and chief who has sought
to change any organization knows, these meanings tend to bind together in sentiments and
values impossible to analytically separate and individually change.
Carried in the minds of street cops who work together, culture enables a wide vari-
ety of police activities to link together in ways that are, although not systematic, sensible
enough to give meanings to different kinds of situations in which cops find themselves.
Organizational traditions are customary ways of doing things, and they take on c ommon-
s ense value that cannot be changed easily or frivolously. This is why many insiders say
that efforts to change the police, whether the change concerns traditional ideas of patrol,
getting officers to talk about corrupt fellow officers, even changing the type of weapons
they carry, must first win the hearts and minds of its officers. Until advocates of police
change recognize the importance of culture, they will continue to be as surprised as they
have been for the past 100 years at the profound limitations of reform efforts to yield real
and enduring changes.
Source: John P. Crank. 2014. Understanding Police Culture, second edition. New York:
Routledge (Anderson), pp. 3–4.
are differences between group norms and official departmental values and policies.
Extreme differences between groups are not a good sign, however, and everything
possible should be done to encourage group norms that support rather than im-
pede the organization’s accomplishment of its goals and mission.
Perhaps the two most common subgroups in police organizations are “street
cops” and “management cops.”30 Sharp divisions between workers and manage-
ment are common in many organizations, but they can be especially deep in po-
lice departments. This is partly because of the skepticism and cynicism that are
common traits in police o rganizations—police officers tend to be cynical toward
their bosses just as they are cynical toward the courts, politicians, and just about
everyone else. In addition, though, a significant part of police management’s role
is to control the exercise of authority by police officers. This control focus of
management collides directly with officers’ desires for autonomy and their be-
liefs about what it takes to do effective police work. So management and officers
often feel as though they are pitted against each other not only in the typical
labor/management sense, but also in the effort to reduce crime and disorder. This
becomes particularly divisive whenever officers perceive management controls as
compromising their safety out on the streets.
Another division between subgroups in modern policing often occurs in de-
partments that have specialist officers or units implementing community polic-
ing.31 These specialists frequently resent the lack of cooperation they get from
other officers in the organization. Even more commonly, other officers deride
these specialists as “kiddie cops” and complain that community policing officers
fail to do their share of work by handling calls and taking enforcement action. To
some degree, this conflict is typical of that surrounding any type of organizational
specialization. It is exacerbated, however, by the fact that many traditionalist po-
lice officers do not believe that community policing is an effective or appropriate
strategy. Thus, this particular split between policing subgroups reflects some fun-
damental disagreements about the police mission, what works in policing, and the
future of police work.
Other subgroups in police organizations are often defined by gender, race,
and ethnicity. Because female police officers are still relatively few in number
and because they frequently encounter discrimination and harassment within
police departments,32 the formation of subgroups is not surprising. In fact, the
degree to which policewomen seem integrated within other groups, such as pa-
trol squads or the “street cop” group generally, is more surprising and a tes-
tament to the practical necessity in policing of obtaining acceptance by one’s
peers. The same can be said for racial and ethnic minority groups within police
agencies. Male members of these groups have not faced the “masculinity tests”
that have confronted policewomen, but they have often had to deal with preju-
dice and discrimination.
Basic Aspects of the Group Social System

We can identify three basic aspects of the group social system within an organ-
ization: the required system; the personal system; and the emergent system.33 The
required system is composed of activities, sentiments, and interactions that are
necessary for group survival. This refers essentially to the mandates of the job itself
and to the required tasks that must be performed in order for the job to be pro-
ductive and remain worthwhile and viable. Part of the required system of a police
organization, for example, includes activities such as writing reports and retrieving
records, sentiments such as believing in the concept of due process of law, and in-
teractions such as questioning witnesses and settling disputes. If the police system
falls short in any aspect of the required system, its chances of accomplishing its
goals and objectives are severely diminished.
The personal system is comprised of all of the personal predispositions that
members of an organization bring to the workplace. However much management
would like its employees to be blank slates or automatons, waiting to be pro-
grammed for the job at hand, in the real world people come already equipped with
deeply entrenched ideas, expectations, values, beliefs, attitudes, prejudices, and
feelings. All of these elements of the personal system have an important, although
imprecise, influence on the behavior of people at work in organizations. In police
organizations, for example, many members have in their personal systems deep
ethnic, religious, and racial prejudices and attitudes that often run counter to the
stated policies and legal requirements of the organization they work for. Although
Box 8.5 Peer-Group Pressure and Police Corruption

Many of the committees investigating police corruption of the past described very vividly
how officers were socialized into corrupt practices, in other words, how they responded
to peer pressure to become corrupt. Therefore, the essence of the problem in controlling
and preventing police corruption involves developing peer group attitudes that are intol-
erant of corruption. To be sure, the organization must still have an internal affairs unit and
other organizational procedures which will combine with peer group pressure to reinforce
the concept that corruption within the organization will not be tolerated. However, the
most important factor in the prevention of police corruption will be the r ank-and-file atti-
tude of police officers’ condemning corruption as being wrong and contrary to their own
code of behavior.
Source: Joseph D. McNamara. 1976. “The Impact of Bureaucracy on Attempts to Prevent

Police Corruption.” In Arthur Niederhoffer and Abraham S. Blumberg (eds), The Ambivalent
Force: Perspectives on Police, second edition. Hinsdale, IL: Dryden, p
. 155.
their prejudices and attitudes may not always be reflected in their official behavior,
they nonetheless become a factor in the group social system.
The emergent system is composed of the behavior in the group setting that
is not required for the group’s survival. It is the result of the collision that occurs
when the personal system impinges on the required system. The personal needs of
the members of an organization, as expressed by their ideas, feelings, and values,
are rarely satisfied within the purely job-related activities and interactions of the
required system. While at work, people are usually not content with just silently,
steadily working. Their personal systems make them want to talk, take breaks,
work slowly sometimes and quickly other times, and behave in many other ways
that are not strictly in accordance with the required system.
Emergent-system behavior is sometimes counterproductive to the pursuit of
organizational goals and objectives (see “Peer-Group Pressure and Police Corrup-
tion,” Box 8.5). In a police organization, for example, the emergent activity of
“cooping” (sleeping on the job), the emergent sentiment that free restaurant food
is a fringe benefit of the police officer’s job, and the emergent interaction of ad-
dressing ethnic-group members with derogatory slurs all will have a negative im-
pact on organizational effectiveness. These are all behaviors not demanded by the
required system, which makes them emergent, and by their nature they interfere
with the organization’s attainment of its goals and objectives.
There are two important considerations about the emergent system. First, its
development is inevitable. Given human nature, no organization can exercise the
degree of control necessary to eliminate it. Second, the emergent system is not nec-
essarily the negative influence that the examples above might suggest. Emergent
interaction, for example, might result in improvements in the required system.
Frequently, worthwhile and profitable suggestions are received by management
from members of the organization who are not officially expected to contribute to
the organization beyond their own narrow scopes of interest. An individual with
special knowledge or insight, a commitment to efficiency and effectiveness, and
a dedication to the organization might very well make a contribution in the form
of emergent interaction that benefits the required system and the organization as
a whole.
As an example of emergent behavior that is not necessarily counterproduc-
tive, in one police department a patrol officer submitted to his chief a proposal
for an anti-burglary program. This was emergent behavior because the officer’s
assignment was to the patrol division, with no planning or program-development
responsibilities. The chief responded cordially that the proposed program was a
good one but that it would never work because of public apathy. A year later,
the chief asked the patrol officer and another officer to explore outside funding
possibilities for an a nti-burglary program he was devising, and another year later
the program was initiated with federal funding. The chief ’s a nti-burglary program
mirrored the patrol officer’s earlier suggestion. The emergent behavior of submit-
ting the program proposal had resulted in an innovative program that contributed
to the organization’s attainment of its goals and objectives, even though it took a
circuitous route.
Emergent System Development

The emergent system is composed of all of the behavior in the group or organ-
ization that is not necessitated by the required system. It is all the behavior, then,
that is not required in getting the work done and in ensuring the survival of the
group. Because these activities, sentiments, and interactions of the emergent sys-
tem are “extras” and are not required, they are not taught in training or addressed
in general-orders manuals. Individually, they are brought to the workplace by the
people employed there. Collectively, in terms of the emergent system of the group,
these behaviors develop over time. This development of the group emergent sys-
tem can be described in terms of three identifiable stages: elaboration; differentia-
tion; and standardization.34
Elaboration is the initial stage of development of the emergent system; mem-
bers of the group develop activities, sentiments, and interactions not mandated
by the required system. This process is generated, as previously mentioned, by the
inability of the required system to satisfy all of the personal needs of the members
of the group as expressed by their ideas and values.
Differentiation refers to the process whereby the activities, sentiments, and
interactions of the emergent system become valued differently. Some behavior is
seen as furthering the formal and informal interests of the group; this behavior is
valued and reinforced. Other behavior is perceived as hindering the formal and
informal interests of the group; as might be expected, this behavior is looked on as
being objectionable and is likely to be suppressed.
Differentiation also includes the rank relationships between and among
people in the group, the so-called pecking order. Rank within the emergent
system may or may not be associated with formal rank in the required system
of the organization. A police union leader, for example, may hold high rank in
the emergent system and low rank in the required system. Similarly, status in
the police recruit training class may or may not be related to formal success
in exams.
While the activities, sentiments, and interactions of the emergent system are
being differentiated according to their perceived value to the group, standardiza-
tion is also occurring. As various behaviors are coming to be identified as having
value, most group members will tend to gravitate toward those behaviors. Norms
develop in the emergent system that give group members clues and provide them
with guidelines on which to base their behavior in certain situations—for exam-
ple, norms develop concerning output limitations. In a police organization, the
emergent system might adopt a norm that regulates the number of traffic tickets
issued by patrol officers during a given period. This norm would be adopted on
the basis of experience; it would satisfy the minimum standards of the required
system, and it would not put a particularly heavy burden on any member of the
group.
Why would such a norm develop? Without it, different officers might be writ-
ing widely varying numbers of tickets. Management would see that some officers
were writing many tickets and would want to know why other officers were writ-
ing so few. Management might penalize those who wrote few tickets and come to
expect all officers to write as many as were written by the zealous officers. Output-
limitation norms thus develop. Pressure is brought to bear on the high performers
and the absolute “gold-bricks,” encouraging each type to adhere more closely to
the group norm. If they fail to conform, in all likelihood they will be ostracized by
the group, which would have the effect of making their work lives difficult. This
threat of being ostracized is particularly relevant in policing, where the support
and assistance of fellow workers can be lifesaving. As a result, emergent systems in
police organizations tend to have strong norms.
In his study of police discretion, Brown found that the two core values in the
police emergent system were loyalty and individualism.35 Police officers demand
loyalty from one another, sometimes to the extreme of lying to cover up illegal or
improper actions. In return for accepting the value of loyalty, officers are granted
considerable leeway by their peers in the performance of their duties. Through
the processes of elaboration, differentiation, and standardization, these two values
attained high standing in the police emergent system.
Consequences of the Emergent System

We have noted that the development of the emergent system in any organi-
zation or group is inevitable and that the emergent system can have both positive
and negative effects. In addition, we have discussed the process of emergent-system
development, which includes elaboration, differentiation, and standardization.
Next, we will mention three important consequences of the development of the
emergent system that are of concern to administrators: productivity, satisfaction,

and growth.36
Productivity is the output of the labor contributed by members of the or-
ganization. It involves both the quality and the quantity of the services that the
organization is in business to provide. It should be obvious that productivity is the
basic concern of the required system and that it is greatly influenced by the emer-
gent system. As mentioned earlier, the emergent system frequently develops norms
of output limitation; these often compete directly with the productivity standards
of the required system. Other emergent-system norms, such as those supporting
sleeping on duty, accepting bribes, or roughing up prisoners, also reduce the ef-
ficiency and effectiveness of the police organization. Conversely, activities, senti-
ments, and interactions spawned by the emergent system can positively contribute
to productivity, as in the case of officers who voluntarily create a police athletic
league or lead a drive to collect food for the needy at Christmas time.
Satisfaction involves how the members of the group feel about their work, the
personal relationships and interactions they experience at work, and the rewards
and costs associated with their group membership. Satisfaction depends on the
makeup of the personal system of the group member, their position in the required
system and in the emergent system, and the prevailing norms of the emergent
system, among other things.
Emergent groups within organizations can have complicated effects on satis-
faction. On one hand, membership in such groups can provide employees with
satisfying experiences, thus enriching their organizational lives. On the other
hand, if the emergent group is in conflict with other subgroups or with manage-
ment, satisfaction can suffer. This seems to happen particularly often in police
organizations, where morale always seems to be low. Officers will typically report
general satisfaction with their work and their colleagues but express complaints
about management, working conditions, politicians, and the community. Often,
these complaints seem to be expressions of group sentiments more than strongly
held individual views.
Growth involves both individual group members and the group social system.
It implies change for the better. Individuals who cease to grow and groups that be-
come stagnant experience a decline in creativity, enthusiasm, fresh ideas, and com-
mitment. Growth for the individual means learning new concepts, experiencing
new ideas, confronting new situations, meeting new people, perfecting skills, and
continuing in the process of maturation. Growth for the group means personal
growth for its members, increases in the number of members, continued develop-
ment of the required system, and improvements in productivity and satisfaction.
Successful administrators must be concerned about all three of these conse-
quences. If they neglect productivity, the primary concern of the required system,
it is impossible for the organization to achieve its goals and objectives. If they ne-
glect satisfaction, the emergent system will provide it, sometimes to the detriment
of productivity, through its own activities, sentiments, interactions, ranks, and
norms, which may not support the organizational culture. If they neglect growth,
their organizations will not be prepared to deal with the changes that the future is
sure to bring.
These concerns are critical for the police manager, who must constantly
monitor productivity, especially in these times of limited resources. In doing so,
however, the manager cannot ignore the matter of satisfaction. We all know of
wonderful programs and ideas, in policing and other pursuits, that were sab-
otaged on implementation by the workers who were expected to put the ideas
into action. This kind of failure is often the result of single-minded attention
to productivity and inattention to satisfaction. By the same token, satisfaction
is not a guarantee of high productivity. Police managers must maintain a strong
concern for both at the same time—a difficult (but not impossible) task.37 They
must also show an interest in individual and group growth. They can do this by
encouraging comment and criticism, strongly supporting education and training,
and demonstrating a willingness to try different approaches to problem solving
and decision making.
A study of the emergent system in an organization can provide insight into the
caliber and climate of its management. If the emergent system is clearly at odds
with the required system, as demonstrated by strong output-limitation norms,
highly divergent formal and informal rank structures, and hostile m anagement–
employee relations, it is likely that management is concerned solely with pro-
ductivity, to the exclusion of growth and satisfaction. If, on the other hand, the
emergent and required systems are in complete harmony (an indication that
management probably has low expectations and is neglecting the mandates of
the required system), productivity is likely to be extremely low. At both extremes,
serious management problems are likely. To avoid these kinds of situations and
problems, the manager must learn to emphasize productivity, satisfaction, and
growth simultaneously and in balance. Again, this is not a simple matter, but it is
the ideal toward which managers must strive.
Group Cohesiveness and Productivity

It is often assumed, incorrectly, that there is a positive relationship between
group cohesiveness and productivity. Empirical research has consistently shown
that no such relationship exists.38 Some cohesive groups are productive, whereas
others are not; some loosely knit groups are productive, whereas others are not.
Cohesiveness refers to the feelings of closeness and camaraderie that bind
the members of a group together. It is the glue that holds the people of an organ-
ization together, working in the common interest. Cohesiveness is demonstrated
by how well the group members get along with one another, how strongly they
identify with the group, and the extent to which the norms of the group are ac-
cepted and followed. Two key indicators of cohesiveness within an organization
are employee turnover and attendance. To some extent, cohesiveness is related to
satisfaction; the more cohesive groups are, the more their members tend to be
satisfied.
Box 8.6 Cohesiveness and Performance

For most urban police recruits, the first real contact with the police subculture occurs at the
academy. Surrounded by forty to fifty contemporaries, the recruit is introduced to the harsh
and often arbitrary discipline of the organization. Absolute obedience to departmental rules,
rigorous physical training, dull lectures devoted to various technical aspects of the organi-
zation and a ritualistic concern for detail characterize the academy. Only the recruit’s class-
mates aid his struggle to avoid punishments and provide him an outlet from the long days.
The main result of such stress training is that the recruit soon learns it is his peer group
rather than the “brass” which will support him and which he, in turn, must support. For
example, the newcomers adopt covering tactics to shield the tardy colleague, develop crib-
bing techniques to pass exams and become proficient at constructing consensual ad hoc
explanations of a fellow-recruit’s mistake. Furthermore, the long hours, new friends, and
ordeal aspects of the recruit school serve to detach the newcomer from his old attitudes and
acquaintances. In short, the academy impresses upon the recruit that he must now identify
with a new group: his fellow officers.
Source: John Van Maanen. 1978. “Observations on the Making of Policemen.” In Peter K.
Manning and John Van Maanen (eds), Policing: A View from the Street. New York: Random
House, pp. 296, 299.
The relationship between cohesiveness and productivity depends on whether

the goals and objectives of the required system and those of the emergent sys-
tem are similar. If the goals are divergent, then cohesiveness within the group
will tend to support the emergent system and its o utput-limitation norms; this
inevitably results in a curtailment of productivity (see “Cohesiveness and Perfor-
mance,” Box 8.6). If the goals of the emergent and required systems are similar,
however, a lack of cohesiveness within the group will not necessarily hinder
productivity.
The complexity of the relationships among cohesiveness, satisfaction, and
productivity can certainly be found in police organizations. “Poor morale” has to
be one of the most commonly identified characteristics of police agencies.39 Some-
times this poor morale, or low job satisfaction, is accompanied by a high degree
of cohesiveness among street-level officers, reflecting conflict with management,
the courts, or the public. In some police departments, the opposite is found: poor
morale is associated with little or no cohesiveness among street-level police of-
ficers. To take the possibilities a step further, some police organizations with low
morale are nevertheless productive and effective, while others are inefficient and
unprofessional. The relationships that exist among cohesiveness, satisfaction, and
productivity are not as simple and straightforward as might be expected.
Varieties of Intergroup Behavior

In addition to the relationships that exist between and among individual
members of a group, a study of groups would be incomplete if it did not include
the relationships between and among groups themselves. These relationships can
run the gamut from perfect cooperation to bitter conflict. There are three basic
factors involved in this spectrum of intergroup behavior: cooperation, competi-
tion, and conflict.
Cooperation refers to situations in which groups involved with one another
lend assistance when needed, share information, and generally work together
toward a common goal. Cooperation allows the groups to be more productive
and effective than they would be if they worked alone. Cooperation, however,
is not always a positive factor and does not always provide the spark that ignites
groups to superior performance. Athos and Coffey note that cooperation can lead
to contentment and that “unlike contented cows, contented groups do not al-
ways achieve the best possible results.”40 Cooperation, then, can sometimes lead to
groups becoming lethargic and can negatively affect group productivity.
Competition is a factor that fits into the American creed somewhere between
Kansas in August and apple pie. It is a cherished American value and the basis
of the American economic system. It is understood that groups in competition
vie with one another in order to achieve greater productivity, win, or accumulate
greater portions of available resources. In some instances, competition can spur
groups on to increased effort. On the other hand, the desire to win and the fear of
losing can produce harmful effects among the competing groups. The ends may
come to be seen as justifying the means, for example, and the fear of failure may
prevent some groups from entering the competition at all.
Conflict occurs as the result of competition for limited resources and rewards.
It also arises between and among groups with incompatible goals and values.
Groups in conflict tend to become more internally cohesive, distrust one another,
characterize themselves positively, and stereotype competing groups as negative in
every respect. Huse and Bowditch point out that group competition and conflict
are useful in a clear win/lose situation in which the groups involved are independ-
ent of one another, such as in the case of two advertising agencies competing for a
particular account.41 Where the groups involved are interdependent, such as two
divisions of one organization, the winning group will be adversely affected by the
failure of the losing group. In this instance, victory will always be accompanied
by defeat.
Intergroup behavior involving police organizations is rarely of a win/lose va-
riety, because police organizations are independent of very few groups in soci-
ety. Police competition for funds with other criminal justice agencies and social
service agencies illustrates this. If the police were to “win” the competition with
these other organizations for the limited resources available, it would certainly
be a defeat for them in the long run. The criminal justice system, except for the
police, would be unable to operate efficiently or effectively, so suspected criminals
would not be convicted, restrained, reformed, rehabilitated, or reintegrated into
society in any meaningful manner. Moreover, the more general social service sys-
tem would be unable to serve its clientele in a fashion designed to solve human
problems. As a result, the social climate and the criminal justice system would
deteriorate, causing severe problems for the police, all because they “won” the
competition for resources.
A healthy mixture of competition and cooperation is a better approach to the
“contest” for resources between the police and other public agencies. The same
can be said for competition among different law enforcement agencies. Several
agencies may be investigating related crimes, for example; some competition can
be useful, but not if it prevents these agencies from cooperating and sharing in-
formation needed to solve crimes. At one time, the FBI was notorious for seeking
information from local police agencies and using that information to enhance its
own image while giving little or no information and cooperation in return.42
The critical importance of cooperation among police agencies is perhaps best
illustrated by the phenomenon of serial murder. Often, each of a serial murderer’s
crimes is committed in a different jurisdiction, sometimes spanning states or even
the entire country. Without extensive cooperation among police agencies, each
department might perceive its murder case as an isolated incident and never rec-
ognize the pattern among the multiple offenses. Only through cooperation would
any of the agencies have a reasonable chance of identifying and apprehending the
murderer. The Violent Criminal Apprehension Program coordinated by the FBI43
and various regional investigative programs44 are efforts to identify connected
crimes and encourage cooperation in the investigation of serial crime. In addition,
in the realm of terrorism, the need for coordination among law enforcement agen-
cies has become even more apparent and will likely increase in the coming years.
One unfortunate by-product of competition is that relations among law en-
forcement agencies can degenerate into hostile conflict. In one instance, a state
police agency investigated a municipal police department for suspected violations
of automatic weapons laws. The municipal police chief was so enraged by this
intrusion that he ordered his officers to ticket any illegally parked state police cars
they observed, regardless of circumstances; he also forbade any cooperation with
the state agency. This occurred in a rural area, where the state police were an im-
portant law enforcement presence, and between agencies that ordinarily worked
quite closely together.
Intergroup behavior involving groups within police organizations is also rarely
of a win/lose variety. Competition to solve a criminal case may lead to an un-
willingness to share information between, for example, the patrol and detective
divisions. Each wants so badly to solve the case personally that everyone loses sight
of organizational goals and objectives. In such a situation, the pooling of informa-
tion might well lead to an early solution, but the fear of not getting credit often
prevents such cooperation. It is still possible, though, for the competitive atmos-
phere to spur investigative efforts. The police manager must attempt to maintain
a healthy balance between competition and cooperation.
Production competition among groups within a police department is common.
For example, patrol squads sometimes compete for numbers of arrests or tickets issued.
This competition can emanate from patrol officers themselves but more frequently re-
sults from pressure exerted by commanders who are evaluated in terms of their squads’
or districts’ productivity, a situation that sometimes arises in conjunction with Comp-

stat programs.45 In general, production competition can be healthy and can increase
productivity. However, in the police context, an administrator has to be careful when
pressuring officers to produce tickets, arrests, or other quantitative indicators—the
public never likes to hear that police officers have quotas they have to meet. Situations
have occurred in which police officers have made dubious stops and arrests in order
to satisfy their superiors. The police administrator must attach a qualitative dimension
to any quantitative productivity pressure in order to avoid citizen harassment and the
deprivation of personal rights all in the name of production competition.
Conflict among groups is inevitable. This includes conflict among groups in a
single organization. The challenge for the administrator is to manage conflict so as
to minimize its negative consequences. The best way to accomplish this is to keep
conflict out in the open, attempt to reduce stereotyping, move people internally
on a frequent basis from group to group, actively seek input on conflict resolution
from everyone involved, encourage group interaction, and seek participation from
the members of individual groups on the establishment of organizational goals
and objectives.46 In other words, attempt to manage conflict by actively promoting
cohesiveness in the required system.
Summary
This chapter emphasized the importance of attitudes, roles, self-concept, per-

ception, and communication as elements of individual human behavior in organi-
zational settings. These are just a few of the elements involved in human behavior,
but they are among the most important. Understanding and controlling human
behavior in police organizations is challenging; a police manager’s job would be an
easy one if human behavior were less complex. Police managers who are interested
in reaching an objective understanding of the behavior of others must first come
to a point of self-understanding and must develop an awareness of their own at-
titudes, roles, self-concepts, perceptions, and communication talents, and under-
stand that their behavior is determined largely by these factors. Only then can the
police manager begin to understand why others behave as they do.
It is impossible to understand human behavior without also taking into con-
sideration the influence of groups. The group social system is made up of the
required, personal, and emergent systems. The emergent system develops because
of the inherent inability of the required system to satisfy all of the personal needs
of group members. The development of the emergent system involves three iden-
tifiable characteristics: elaboration, differentiation, and standardization. The rela-
tionship between the required and emergent systems, and particularly the degree
of congruence between their respective goals and objectives, influences produc-
tivity, satisfaction, and growth, as well as the cohesiveness of the group. Group
cohesiveness is also influenced by intergroup relations, which are characterized by
cooperation, competition, and conflict.
1. Try to identify your prejudices. Are they rational or irrational, in your opinion? Try to figure out how and
when you developed them.
2. What roles do you play? Try to put them in rank order from most important to least important. Are
there situations in which your least important roles become very important?
3. Because of their role, in what ways do police officers perceive things differently from other people?
4. How conscientious are you in maintaining two-way communication? How important do you think
two-way communication is for the police manager?
5. In your school and/or work career, have you encountered o utput-limitation norms? In what situa-
tions? How did you react to them? How would you react as a manager?
6. Describe some groups with which you are familiar in terms of their cohesiveness, then assess their
productivity. What seems to be the relationship between cohesiveness and productivity in these
groups?
Cases
All of the cases in the back of the text present some opportunity to examine
individual and group behavior in police organizations. In particular, you might
want to analyze Case 1, Cod Bay and Case 2, Rixton, from the perspectives of
attitudes, roles, self-concept, perception, communication, group dynamics, and
organizational culture.
Suggested Reading
Cockroft, T. 2013. Police Culture: Themes and Concepts. London: Routledge.

Crank, J.P. 2014. Understanding Police Culture, second edition. New York: Routledge.
Linn, E. 2008. Arrest Decisions: What Works for the Officer? New York: Peter Lang Publishing.
Reuss-Ianni, E. 1983. Two Cultures of Policing: Street Cops and Management Cops. New Brunswick,
NJ: Transaction.
Robbins, S.P., and T.A. Judge. 2019. Organizational Behavior, eighteenth edition. Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Notes
1 N.R.F. Maier. 1973. Psychology in Industrial Organizations, fourth edition. Boston, MA:
Houghton Mifflin, p . 42.
2 R.E. Worden. 1996. “Police Officers’ Belief Systems: A Framework for Analysis.” In D.J. Kenney,
and G.W. Cordner (eds), Managing Police Personnel. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, p. 139.
3 S.P. Robbins, and T.A. Judge. 2019. Organizational Behavior, eighteenth edition. Upper Saddle
4 A.J. Reiss Jr. 1971. The Police and the Public. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
5 S.F. Coleman. 1986. Street Cops. Salem, WI: Sheffield, pp. 145–148.
6 E.F. Huse, and J.L. Bowditch. 1977. Behavior in Organizations: A Systems Approach to Managing,
second edition. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, p . 75.
7 J.J. Fyfe. 1979. “Administrative Interventions on Police Shooting Discretion.” Journal of Crim-
inal Justice 7: 313–335.
8 NYPD. 2014. “Annual Firearms Discharge Report: 2013.” New York City Police Department.
Online at: www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/nypd_annual_fire-
arms_discharge_report_2013.pdf.
9 L. Fridell, and S. Brown. 2015. “Fair and Impartial Policing: A S cience-Based Approach.” The
Police Chief 82, no. 6: 20–25. Also see https://fipolicing.com/.
10 M.E. Buerger. 1998. “Police Training as Pentecost: Using Tools Singularly I ll-Suited to the Pur-
poses of Reform.” Police Quarterly 1, no. 1: 27–63.
11 J.H. Skolnick. 1966. Justice without Trial: Law Enforcement in a Democratic Society. New York:
John Wiley.
12 H. Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, p. 271.
13 M. Bjork. 2008. “Fighting Cynicism: Some Reflections on Self-Motivation in Police Work.”
Police Quarterly 11, no. 1: 88–101; W.K. Muir Jr. 1977. Police: Streetcorner Politicians. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago.
14 G. Cordner. 2017. “Police Culture in the 21st Century.” The Police Chief 84, no. 2: 50–51.
15 J. Van Maanen. 1978. “Kinsmen in Repose: Occupational Perspectives of Patrolmen.” In P.K.
Manning, and J. Van Maanen (eds), Policing: A View from the Street. New York: Random House.
16 S. White. 1972. “A Perspective on Police Professionalization.” Law & Society Review 7: 61–85.
17 M.K. Brown. 1981. Working the Street: Police Discretion and the Dilemmas of Reform. New York:
Russell Sage Foundation.
18 J. Broderick. 1987. Police in a Time of Change, second edition. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland.
19 Muir. 1977. Police: Streetcorner Politicians.
20 Worden. 1996. “Police Officers’ Belief Systems.” pp. 140–147.
21 L. Munoz. 2012. “Theories of Self-Concept Maintenance.” Learning Theories and All Things Edu-
cational. Blog Post Online at: https://lynnmunoz.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/theories-of-self-
concept-maintenance/.
22 M. Alexis, and C.Z. Wilson. 1967. Organizational Decision Making. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, p. 69.
Organizations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p . 25.
24 M.L. Markus. 1994. “Electronic Mail as the Medium of Managerial Choice.” Organization
Science 5, no. 4: 502–527.
25 H. Koontz, and C. O’Donnell.1968. Principles of Management: An Analysis of Managerial Func-
tions. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 607–608.
26 T.R. Cheatham, and K.V. Erickson. 1975. “Law Enforcement Communication Contacts.” The
Police Chief 12, no. 3: 49.
27 P.F. Drucker. 1954. The Practice of Management. New York: Harper & Brothers, p. 346.
28 Robbins, and Judge. 2019. Organizational Behavior.
29 E.A. Paoline. 2004. “Shedding Light on Police Culture: An Examination of Officers’ Occupa-
tional Attitudes.” Police Quarterly 7, no. 2: 205–236.
30 E. Reuss-Ianni. 1983. Two Cultures of Policing: Street Cops and Management Cops. New Brun-
swick, NJ: Transaction.
31 E.F. McGarrell, E. Langston, and D. Richardson. 1997. “Implementation Issues: The Special-
ized Unit or D epartment-Wide Community Policing?” In Q.C. Thurman, and E.F. McGarrell
(eds), Community Policing in a Rural Setting. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson, pp. 59–64.
and Retention of Women Police.” Police Quarterly 14, no. 3: 2 07–226.
33 A.G. Athos, and R.E. Coffey. 1968. Behavior in Organizations: A Multidimensional View. Eng-
lewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
34 G.C. Homans. 1950. The Human Group. New York: Harcourt.
35 Brown. 1981. Working the Street, pp. 82–86.
36 Athos and Coffey. 1968. Behavior in Organizations.

37 R. Blake, and J.S. Mouton. 1985. The Managerial Grid III. Houston, TX: Gulf.
38 C.R. Shepherd. 1964. Small Groups: Some Sociological Perspectives. San Francisco, CA: Chandler,
pp. 85–96.
39 V. Franz, and D.M. Jones. 1987. “Perceptions of Organizational Performance in Suburban
Police Departments: A Critique of the Military Model.” Journal of Police Science and Adminis-
tration 15, no. 2: 1 53–161.
40 Athos and Coffey. 1968. Behavior in Organizations, p. 207.
41 Huse, and Bowditch. 1977. Behavior in Organizations, pp. 203–204.
Books.
43 J.B. Howlett, K.A. Hanfland, and R.K. Ressler. 1986. “The Violent Criminal Apprehension
Program (VICAP): A Progress Report.” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 5, no. 12: 14–22.
44 P.R. Brooks, M.J. Devine, T.J. Green, B.L. Hart, and M.D. Moore. 1987. “Serial Murder: A
Criminal Justice Response.” The Police Chief 54, no. 6: 37–45.
45 J.A. Eterno, and E.B. Silverman, 2012. The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipula-
tion. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
46 Huse and Bowditch. 1977. Behavior in Organizations, pp. 210–213.
CHAPTER 9 Developing the
Police Organization
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify four models of work motivation.

• Describe Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how it fits in Theory Y.
• Identify several human development approaches to organizational improvement.
• Explain the difference between hygiene factors and motivators in job enrichment.
• Identify several reasons why diversity within police organizations is important.
In Chapter 8, we discussed individuals and groups in the police organization,

with an eye on understanding individual and group behavior better. In this chap-
ter, our attention shifts more toward the police manager’s job—seeing to it that in-
dividuals develop professionally and that the whole organizational system develops
in a healthy and productive way. Individual professional development in policing
includes education, training, mentoring, and career enhancement. Organizational
development focuses on how the organization in its entirety can become stronger,
more competent, more resilient and, ultimately, more successful over time. Both
of these sets of considerations, individual and organizational, tend to be based on
theories of work motivation and on strategies aimed at making employees more
motivated to work hard on behalf of the organization.
Motivation
One of the more important aspects of human behavior in organizations is

motivation. Motivation refers to motives, or what makes the individual behave in
a certain way. It involves the “why?” question in human behavior. The answer, as
might be suspected, is not an easy one.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-12
9 Developing the Police Organization 229
Because we are interested in police officers who work in organizational set-

tings, our primary concern here is “What motivates people to work?” Described
below are four general models of motivational systems: the coercion model, the
economic model, the social model, and the growth model.1
The Coercion Model

According to the coercion model, human beings work because they have to in
order to avoid pain and punishment. The parent who says to their child, “Learn
your spelling words before supper or you can’t watch television tonight” is attempt-
ing to create motivation based on this model. The o nce-widespread institutions
of serfdom and slavery were based on total compliance with the coercion model.
In modern American society, forcing and coercing behavior is regarded as
distasteful. It seems de-humanizing plus it does not work very well; it encourages
only the minimum amount of work necessary to avoid punishment. It also breeds
resentment and causes morale problems. In extreme cases, it can lead to open re-
bellion and even organizational sabotage.
Although motivation based on force and coercion is generally out of favor in
progressive businesses and government agencies, it is not uncommon to find that
employees and their bosses in an organization disagree about the motivational
model in use. This is certainly true in many police departments. In one study of 64
police agencies in Illinois, for example, operational and supervisory personnel re-
ported that motivation was sought primarily by way of threats, fear, and coercion,
while administrators claimed to be emphasizing higher-level needs to motivate
their employees.2
There are instances in policing, though, when coercion may be the only
methods that can be used to motivate desired behavior. If the dominant police
subculture dictates role expectations that are diametrically opposed to organiza-
tional goals and objectives, resulting in behavior that conflicts with departmental
policies, a police administrator might have to resort to force and coercion. In
situations in which police officers are protected by outmoded civil service regula-
tions, tenure, or strong union backing, coercion may very well be the only means
by which a police administrator can demand behavior consistent with the police
department’s goals and objectives. Even in these circumstances, though, force and
coercion are likely to be successful only in the short term, and probably will not
achieve more than minimal compliance. For more long-term success, the police
executive will need to figure out how to get officers to work harder and more pro-
fessionally because they want to, and because they recognize it as the right thing to
do, not just because they have to in order to avoid punishment.
The Economic Model

The economic model suggests that human beings work just to obtain tangible
rewards like pay and benefits. In the c arrot-and-stick approach to motivation, this
model represents the carrot. According to economic theory, work is nothing more
than a means to an end; it implies that if somehow everyone immediately became
wealthy, they would stop working.
The police chief who subscribes fully to the economic model views police
officers basically as machines designed to produce in return for pay. The chief
is not particularly concerned about employees except in terms of their perfor-
mance and productivity. The main concern is efficiency, getting maximum re-
turn for minimum investment. If the chief wanted to get more productivity out
of officers, the natural inclination would be to offer some overtime pay or a pay
raise.
The Social Model

Through the Hawthorne studies, a classic motivational research effort, it
became apparent that immediate economic reward was not the only reason for
individual productivity at work.3 These studies demonstrated that social and
psychological factors in the work setting also have considerable impact on per-
formance. Specifically, the studies found that the output of workers improved sig-
nificantly when they were made to feel important and when they were consulted
about job decisions.
These findings are at the heart of the social model of motivation, which
holds that workers are motivated to work because of their social needs, their
need to engage harmoniously with other people. This model is most dramat-
ically represented by those people who say that they would continue to work
even if they won the lottery, because they love their c o-workers so much. Also,
many people discover how important their work setting is for meeting their so-
cial needs when they retire. Some retirees miss the work itself, but many others
primarily miss the camaraderie and friendship they enjoyed with their fellow
workers.
The Growth Model

The growth model of motivation grew out of the Hawthorne studies and their
subsequent findings. This model incorporates much of the philosophy on which
the economic model is based; in addition, it gives consideration to those social
and psychological forces that influence work behavior. This combination of the
two other models is an open system, because it recognizes and stresses that the
work situation cannot be insulated from the outside world; it emphasizes the fact
that the individual at work must be looked on as a human being influenced by the
environment (see “Knowing Your Employees,” Box 9.1).
A central theme of the growth model of motivation is that people work in or-
der to satisfy certain human needs. Five levels of human needs, known as Maslow’s
hierarchy, are as follows:
1. Basic needs (food, clothing, shelter);

2. Security needs (protection against physical and psychological threats to an
individual’s well-being);
3. Social needs (love, friendship, camaraderie, acceptance);
4. Esteem needs (recognition, respect);
5. Self-actualization needs (achievement, accomplishment).4
This is called a hierarchy of needs because, after satisfying basic and security
needs, an individual progressively seeks to satisfy higher-level needs (social, es-
teem, and actualization). In other words, people fill their needs step-by-step in the
hierarchy, moving from level to level. When one level of needs has been satisfied,
it generally ceases to have strong motivational value. If a person feels secure physi-
cally and psychologically (Level 2) and has satisfied social and esteem needs (Levels
3 and 4), any additional motivation will probably derive from Maslow’s fifth level.
In modern times, the basic needs of the great majority of employed workers
are satisfied. Police pay scales in most jurisdictions within the United States are
sufficient to meet police officers’ most basic needs. Consequently, according to
Maslow’s theory, basic needs no longer have significant motivational value for po-
lice officers. Therefore, the police department that seeks to motivate its employees
primarily through salary increases and other lower-level incentives is applying a
technique that is not likely to cause officers to be more motivated.
In reality, though, this is only partially true. Many police officers, like other
workers, have fulfilled their basic needs but feel insecure about those needs being
met in the future; the strength of police unions is a manifestation of this insecurity.
The threat of having fulfilled needs cut off at any one of the five levels is in itself
a strong motivational force; only when that threat dissipates does an individual
cease to be motivated at any given level. Certainly, this phenomenon came into
play during and after the Great Recession in 2008. Many jurisdictions furloughed
or laid-off police officers while others reduced police pay and benefits. In this
Box 9.1 Knowing Your Employees

My life as a chief would have been easier if I had learned and practiced the following earlier
in my career: listening more, speaking less, managing by walking around, working more
closely with the police union, knowing more about the personal lives of my employees (there
is no way police officers can leave their personal lives in their lockers when they come to
work and strap on a gun). I wish I had more understanding and empathy when my officers
were suffering from depression, a divorce, or a death in the family.
Source: David C. Couper. 2011. Arrested Development: A Veteran Police Chief Sounds Off
about Protest, Racism, Corruption and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nation’s
Police. Indianapolis, IN: Dog Ear Publishing, pp. 199–200.
situation, police officers’ basic and security needs came under threat. As a result,
the motivational value of pay, benefits, and job security increased in comparison
to earlier times when salaries were regularly increasing and job security was taken
for granted.
Additionally, many people remain strongly motivated by pay incentives even
when they may also be responsive to factors higher in Maslow’s hierarchy. One
observer noted that “wages and salary are not just money. They are indicators
of progress, worth, and status. And they are equity measures, too, telling us
whether our treatment relative to others and to our own performance is right
and proper.”5
The issue of equity is an important determinant of work motivation. Workers
are interested in being treated fairly.6 They compare themselves to others in terms
of how they are treated by management and the organization. If an employee per-
ceives their own treatment as unfair in comparison to the treatment of others, sat-
isfaction and productivity may be negatively affected. Interestingly, some studies
have found that inequity works both ways; that is, both individuals who perceive
themselves as undercompensated and those who think they are overcompensated
reduce their work effort and commitment to the organization.7
When choosing specific actions and their overall level of work effort, employ-
ees are also guided by what they see as the probabilities of their actions leading to
desired outcomes. This is termed expectancy theory.8 A police officer deciding
whether to attend night college classes, for example, might weigh the following
considerations:
1. The probability of successfully completing the classes;

2. The probability of obtaining a degree;
3. The probability that completing the classes or a degree would benefit their
police career.
The combination of these probabilities or expectancies would strongly influ-

ence the officer’s decision whether to enroll in the college classes. In addition, the
value of the outcomes would be considered. If the probabilities were low but the
officer highly valued the college degree or the possible career benefit, they might
enroll despite the odds. On the other hand, some officers might decide against
enrolling, even though their probabilities of success were high, because they placed
little value on college education and career advancement.
The growth model of motivation emphasizes the factors of attitudes, roles,
self-concept, and human growth to be considered in attempting to achieve organi-
zational goals and objectives. This model holds that human beings are neither ma-
chines to be directed and controlled nor totally free decision makers operating in a
vacuum. The model maintains that behavior in work settings is a result of complex
and interrelated motives. Essentially, it recognizes that both behavior and moti-
vation for behavior are open systems. As open systems, behavior and motivation
have inputs, outputs, processes, and feedback, all of which are very personal to the
individual and all of which are influenced by outside environmental factors.
A Modest Theory of Motivation

In discussing attitudes, roles, self-concept, perception, communication,
and motivation in this chapter and the previous one, we have been seeking a
better understanding of human behavior, especially in organized work settings.
Such an understanding is elusive and difficult to conceptualize, because each
person’s behavior is unique and complicated. It is relatively easy to develop the-
ories and models that explain behavior in a general sense, but these models of-
ten break down when applied to particular individuals. For example, although
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a useful theory to explain much of the behavior
that occurs in organizations, there are people with more money and status than
they could ever possibly exhaust who are still highly motivated to attain more
of each.
Athos and Coffey described what we will call a modest theory of human moti-
vation, which allows for a wide latitude of conscious and unconscious perceptions
of self and situation and that seems almost universal in its applicability.9 This the-
ory makes no attempt to be as prescriptive as a mathematical formula or, indeed,
as definitive as the other models discussed; it is nonetheless helpful in providing
insights into behavior that otherwise seems inexplicable through the application
of other models. The three elements that make up this theory can be summarized
as follows:
1. A person’s self-concept is determined by self-perception, which is influenced

by both conscious and subconscious factors.
2. A person’s individual frame of reference is predicated on the way they per-
ceive the world at any given time (including people, places, and things in the
immediate environment) in combination with self-perception in a particular
setting.
3. A person behaves in order to protect or enhance their feelings of security or
adequacy in any given situation.
If one uses this theory as a model, all behavior is logical, and motivation can
be explained. It provides a rationale for the contention that all behavior is logical
and that individuals who are behaving in particular ways are doing so according to
what they think is best for them in specific situations, as they see those situations.
A person’s behavior may seem irrational or even s elf-destructive, but for the person
exhibiting it, that behavior makes sense.
In particular, the theory helps us understand why some police officers might
be motivated primarily by money, whereas others in the same department might
seem more motivated by a desire for acceptance within the group, a desire for
public recognition of their accomplishments, or a desire to be treated equitably

in comparison to others. These officers would be motivated differently because
they have different objective circumstances (including families, or debts), different
subjective perspectives (based on perception, including self-perception), different
attitudes and values, and different relationships with other officers, the police sub-
culture, and management. Each officer is individually motivated to achieve what
they believe will protect or enhance personal feelings of security and adequacy in
the situation.
The police supervisor’s challenge is to figure this out for each subordinate. If a
supervisor can discover what makes an employee tick, they then have a big advan-
tage in motivating the employee. If a supervisor can show a subordinate how they
can satisfy their current needs through productive work, and even begin to satisfy
the next higher level of needs, that employee is likely to work hard, making the
supervisor look good and making the organization more successful.
At a higher level of management, the police executive’s responsibility is at least
threefold: (1) identifying common sources of motivation for many employees and
working to make them as positive as possible (e.g., increasing public recognition
for individual officers and for the whole department); (2) identifying impediments
to motivation and minimizing them (e.g., reducing the length of time that officers
have to spend at the jail when delivering prisoners, or reducing the amount of
paperwork that they have to complete when they make an arrest); and (3) empow-
ering individual supervisors so that they have the training and authority they need
to meet the motivational needs of their immediate subordinates (e.g., permitting
supervisors to grant leave time or flex time so officers can take college courses).
Any police manager’s job is to get their subordinates to do the right thing,
whether that is to work hard, make smart decisions, or resist improper tempta-
tions. An important part of that challenge is to get employees to want to do the
right thing and try to do the right thing. That is really where motivation comes
into play. To be sure, motivation is not the entire story—employees also need to
know what to do, and they need to be capable of actually doing it, which bring
into play direction, control, supervision, training and a variety of other manage-
ment responsibilities. Thus, motivation is not the only key to organizational suc-
cess, but it is a crucial ingredient and therefore it should always be one of the
conditions to which supervisors, managers, and top executives pay close attention.
Human Development
As noted previously, the Hawthorne studies of the 1920s introduced the con-
cept that the worker is something more than a human machine. These studies pro-
vided a foundation for what eventually became the human relations movement,
which characterized the worker as a social being with human needs and demanded
that management treat its employees more humanely. An overview of human de-
velopment approaches is given in Table 9.1.
TABLE 9.1 Human Development Approaches

Approach Key Theorist Summary
Human relations Roethlisberger et al. Hawthorne studies;

recognition of the social
needs of workers
Theory X and Theory Y McGregor Need hierarchy; worker s elf-

direction and self-control
Management by objectives Drucker Goals and objectives for

direction and control
Job enrichment Herzberg Importance of the work

itself; motivation from work
Participative management Likert Democratic management;

supportive and advisory
supervision
Organization development Bennis Organizational improvement

as change; integrated
strategies
Traditional theorists considered the human relations movement to be permis-

sive, branding it as an abdication of discipline and managerial authority, which
had previously been considered the glue that held organizations together. Other
theorists came to view the human relations movement as a cosmetic public re-
lations gimmick and claimed that it involved no real changes in the patterns of
organizational authority.
While not a panacea, the human relations movement can be credited with
improving the workplace considerably and with contributing to the improvement
of employee compensation and other work benefits. Most importantly, the move-
ment was the first step toward recognizing that the human element in an organ-
ization is not comparable to inert resources such as money, machinery, and raw
materials. Organizational productivity is now widely recognized as being depend-
ent on treating workers with dignity and respect. The human relations movement
was here to stay.
Theory X and Theory Y

Douglas McGregor was one of the first observers to suggest that the human
relations movement and the debate about the relative merits of hard and soft man-
agement were missing the point.10 He argued that the basic assumptions of man-
agement had not changed, and he contended that these basic assumptions were
invalid.
McGregor called the conventional view of management’s task Theory X. The

assumptions behind Theory X are as follows:
1. People do not like to work and will avoid work whenever possible.
2. People must be forced to work.
3. People are inherently unambitious and irresponsible, seek security, and expect
to be directed in their work.11
McGregor conceded that most workers behaved just as the Theory X assump-
tions indicated, but he argued that the organizational climate created by Theory X
managers caused workers’ b ehavior—in other words, it was a self-fulfilling proph-
ecy. He believed that management’s view of workers as lazy, stupid, and irrespon-
sible, and management’s treatment of workers on the basis of that view, made it all
but impossible for workers to display interest, intelligence, and energy.
In arguing that the assumptions of Theory X did not accurately characterize
the motivation and basic nature of organizational employees, McGregor drew on
Maslow’s findings and his hierarchy of needs.12 Maslow contended that a satisfied
need ceased to have any motivational value. The human need for oxygen, for ex-
ample, is basic, but it does not motivate behavior except in circumstances in which
a person’s supply of oxygen is withdrawn.
McGregor saw that Theory X assumptions and management were based on
the belief that workers are still motivated primarily by basic and security needs.
Because Theory X assumptions were incorrect, managers became frustrated when
regular improvements in salary, fringe benefits, and job security did not result in
increased productivity and higher morale. McGregor pointed out that for almost
all workers, by the latter half of the twentieth century, basic and security needs
were satisfied. The major motivational needs of most workers, therefore, are at the
higher levels of Maslow’s hierarchy: social, esteem, and self-actualization needs.
McGregor also pointed out that for needs to have a motivating effect at work,
the opportunity must be present to satisfy these needs at work. Although an indi-
vidual’s after-hours activities might satisfy certain needs, they have no motivating
effect in the workplace. A man may be president of the Little League, director of
the Junior Chamber of Commerce, and a 32nd Degree Mason, and thereby satisfy
some of his needs on the top side of the need hierarchy, but such satisfaction plays
no role whatsoever in motivating him to do his job; needs must be satisfied where
he works if those needs are to motivate him to do his job well.
Armed with Maslow’s findings on motivation, McGregor proposed Theory
Y as an alternative to Theory X. The general assumptions on which Theory Y is
based are as follows:
1. It is natural for workers to expend energy in work that they enjoy.

2. If work is satisfying, it will be performed well; if it is not satisfying, it will be
looked on as punishment and will be avoided.
3. Control and punishment are not the only methods to motivate work.
4. Workers are totally capable of directing themselves toward the accomplish-
ment of goals and objectives to which they are personally committed.
5. There is a direct relationship between worker commitment and the rewards
associated with the achievement of goals and objectives.
6. Rewards emanate from the satisfaction of motivational needs as these relate to
the effort expended on the achievement of goals and objectives.
7. If conditions are right, workers will not only accept responsibility but also seek it.
8. Laziness and disinterest in work are the result of bad experiences, not innate
human behavior.
9. Most people are ambitious and are capable of working innovatively and pro-
ductively in organizational settings.
10. Modern management uses human potential to an extraordinarily limited degree.13
The essential difference between the two theories is that Theory X emphasizes
external control of worker behavior, whereas Theory Y emphasizes worker self-
control and self-direction. Theory X proponents treat employees like children;
Theory Y proponents treat them like mature adults. Considering the fact that
management had been treating employees like children for many generations,
McGregor conceded that it would take time for both managers and workers to
grow accustomed to Theory Y. He concluded that Theory X “fails because direc-
tion and control are useless methods of motivating people whose physiological and
safety needs are reasonably satisfied and whose social, egoistic, and self-fulfillment
needs are predominant.”14
The applicability of Theory X/Theory Y to police organizations is obvious.
The traditional hierarchical structure, proliferation of rules, and punishment-
oriented management traditionally found in many police agencies clearly epit-
omize Theory X assumptions. According to McGregor’s thesis, it is only natural
for police officers to respond with w ork-avoidance behavior. The irony is that, in
spite of Theory X management, the street-level performance of police work is left
largely to the discretion of individual police officers, even though they are assumed
to be lazy, irresponsible, and in need of direct supervision. Police administration is
characterized by Theory X assumptions and the appearance of strict, tightly con-
trolled management; but in reality, worker behavior is loosely controlled.15 Police
administration would benefit greatly from the adoption of Theory Y assumptions
and a management system more honestly adapted to the realities of police work.
Management by Objectives
Another approach to management that differed sharply from Theory X was
developed by Peter Drucker. He called his approach management by objectives
(MBO), which, like Theory Y, is based more on worker self-control than on con-
trol imposed by management. Drucker saw his approach as a means of obtaining
higher work standards and greater productivity, along with stricter accountability.16
Management by objectives is based on Drucker’s observation that people work
hardest when they have a clear goal in mind and when they can see a direct re-
lationship between their efforts and the accomplishment of that goal. Moreover,
Drucker argued, when employees have a clear understanding of the goals of the
organization and when they see how their own work contributes to achieving
those goals, they can then be counted on to establish objectives for their own work
accomplishment. The task itself provides substantial direction and control, and
employees will strive to achieve their objectives and hold themselves accountable
to such objectives.
Drucker noted that the modern organization is characterized by factors that
encourage misdirection. Specialization, as one example, tends to divert employee
loyalty and effort away from the organization as a whole and toward particular
specialized areas (suboptimization). Instituting MBO, Drucker argued, can over-
come factors of misdirection by emphasizing the goals of the organization as a
whole, as well as ways in which subunits contribute to the achievements of the
entire organization.
Drucker pointed out that in order for employees to exercise self-control and
self-direction, they need information on a regular basis by which to measure
their progress. A semi-annual or annual performance evaluation will not suffice.
Employees need such information much more frequently, and it should be avail-
able to them without having to go to an immediate superior for it. In short, the
employee’s job should be systematically structured so that direct feedback is peri-
odically available to the employee for progress measurement.
Drucker also contended that there is nothing soft about MBO. With its
emphasis on self-direction and self-control and its aim for higher standards and
greater productivity with stricter accountability, it requires much more from em-
ployees than they had previously been expected to give. Like McGregor, Drucker
is convinced that, in general, people like to work, want to work, want a feeling of
accomplishment, and are capable of intelligent direction. Drucker sees manage-
ment’s task as being more one of removing organizational impediments to motiva-
tion than one of providing motivation.
In principle, MBO is as applicable to police agencies as to other organizations.
The application is made difficult, however, by the problem of specifying mean-
ingful, measurable goals and objectives for police officers and police units. Broad
goals, such as protecting life and property and maintaining order, are meaningful
but relatively vague and difficult to measure. More specific objectives, such as
“improve the Part I crime clearance rate from 20 percent to 30 percent” (one
possible objective for a detective division) are more measurable but raise other
difficulties. The clearance rate, for example, is affected by patrol officer activity,
witness availability, the nature of crimes committed, and other factors beyond the
control of the detective division. Moreover, the clearance rate statistic is susceptible
to manipulation through practices such as convincing suspects to confess to nu-

merous crimes in return for promises of immunity from prosecution.
A contemporary police program that exhibits some of the characteristics of
MBO is Compstat.17 The main purpose of Compstat is to get police department
commanders, and through them the rest of the organization, focused on the goal
of reducing crime. Commanders are given real-time information about crime in
their districts, and they are expected to use that information to target hotspots
and solve crime problems. Evidence indicates that this approach to “managing
by objectives” has had some success.18 However, evidence also shows that when
the pressure to reduce crime becomes too intense, some police commanders re-
sort to “jukin’ the stats,” that is, manipulating the crime data in order to make
themselves and their districts look better.19 This is probably an inevitable result
when police executives use information and data in a top-down manner as a
means of applying pressure to try to increase productivity. In fact, this approach
is not really consistent with Drucker’s model of MBO, which argues instead that
when workers have a hand in setting objectives, and then are given accurate and
timely information that allows them to track their own achievement of objec-
tives, their self-motivation increases, and they will exercise more self-direction
and self-control.
Problems such as those sometimes associated with Compstat and “jukin’ the
stats” do not negate the value of MBO for police administration; they simply
illustrate some of the challenges that are likely to be encountered. MBO can help
a police organization focus its efforts on goal accomplishment as long as the goals
are perceived as meaningful by police officers and police managers, and especially
if the goals and the MBO process are not forced on the organization in a top-down
manner. However, if the goals and the MBO program come to be perceived as
meaningless or oppressive, then the entire process can become an empty paper-
work exercise or, even worse, a cynical game of manipulating statistics in which
looking good becomes more important than actually doing good.
Job Enrichment
A third approach to management and organizational improvement that
springs from motivational theory is job enrichment. The principal theorist for
this approach is Frederick Herzberg.20 He studied a number of techniques for mo-
tivating workers, such as increased wages, human relations training, and employee
counseling, and found that they served only as short-term motivators and that
some even seemed counterproductive. He also studied work behavior and isolated
two sets of workplace factors that bear on employee satisfaction and dissatisfac-
tion. The dissatisfiers included company policy and administration, supervision,
work conditions, salary, personal life, status, security, and work relationships with
supervisors, subordinates, and peers. These he called hygiene factors. A separate
set of factors, satisfiers, included achievement, recognition, the work itself, re-
sponsibility, advancement, and growth. These he called motivators. He found
that alleviating the dissatisfiers (the hygiene factors) tended to make employees
happier but no more motivated. He concluded that motivation comes only from
the satisfiers.
The implications of Herzberg’s studies should be clear. Through salary in-
creases and employee counseling, management may be able to decrease employee
dissatisfaction; however, this does not increase motivation. Motivation can be
achieved, according to Herzberg, only through those factors he calls motivators.
Job enrichment is the restructuring of work itself in terms of motivators. It is
very different from job enlargement, which merely gives each worker more work
to do, and it is different from job rotation, which simply shuttles the worker from
one job to another. Job enrichment can be accomplished, according to Herzberg,
by taking the following steps:
1. Reduce controls but increase accountability;

2. Assign workers to established, definitive work units or projects;
3. Provide sufficient authority for workers to accomplish tasks within a milieu of
freedom;
4. Furnish workers with productivity reports, directly and on a periodic basis,
without involving supervisors as intermediaries;
5. Give workers tasks that are more difficult and challenging than tasks previ-
ously assigned;
6. Allow workers to become experts by giving them specialized tasks.21
Central to the job enrichment approach is the concept that needs that moti-
vate work behavior should be satisfiable at the workplace. Townsend, in agreeing
with this approach over 40 years ago, asked employers to “look at the rewards we’re
offering our people today: higher wages, medical benefits, vacations, pensions,
profit sharing, bowling and basketball teams. Not one can be enjoyed on the job.
You’ve got to leave work, get sick or retire first.”22
One major effort toward job enrichment in the police service is the return of
the investigative function to patrol personnel.23 This change in role allows patrol
officers to follow preliminary investigations through to their ultimate conclusion
rather than having to refer such investigations to detectives for follow-up. In job
enrichment terms, such a procedure provides officers assigned to the patrol divi-
sion a complete rather than a partial unit of work with which to become involved.
Most police officers welcome this; there has always been a strong general resent-
ment to surrendering interesting cases to detectives.
Other job enrichment efforts that satisfy h igh-level needs and increase au-
thority and accountability at the lowest operating levels of the organization are
community policing and p roblem-oriented policing. Community policing, for
example, views patrol officers as generalists who are responsible for “managing
Box 9.2 The Need to Make Fuller Use of Rank-and-File

Police Officers
The police field can be the beneficiary of a flood of new ideas, new energy, enthusiasm, and
commitment by modifying some of the constraints under which rank-and-file police officers
now function. This means, quite simply, making it legitimate for rank-and-file officers to
think and be creative in their daily work; and making it legitimate for them to develop better
ways for their agency to deal with community problems. It means giving officers much more
freedom, within appropriate restraints, in carrying out their job. The potential benefits are of
two kinds. The most important is the improvement that this could produce in the quality of
the responses that the police make to oft-recurring community problems. In addition, such
a change would be directly responsive to some critical needs in the police o rganization—the
need to treat rank-and-file officers as mature men and women; to demonstrate more trust
and confidence in them; to give them more responsibility and a stake in the outcome of their
efforts; and to give them a greater sense of fulfillment and job satisfaction.
Source: Herman Goldstein. 1990. Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: M

cGraw-Hill,
p. 28.
their beats.” Problem-oriented policing encourages employees at all levels to work

smarter by carefully identifying and analyzing problems and then designing and
implementing systematic, tailor-
made solutions. The originator of problem-
o riented policing, Herman Goldstein, emphasized the advantages that could be
gained when police departments learn to make greater use of the talents and expe-
rience of all their employees, especially ordinary patrol officers (see “The Need to
Make Fuller Use of Rank-and-File Police Officers,” Box 9.2).24
Job enrichment is achieved only through the realization and satisfaction of
needs at the upper levels of the motivation hierarchy. Police work is, for the most
part, fascinating work. That police administrators have sometimes succeeded in
making it humdrum, mundane, and lacking in rewards and recognition is a signal
that something is terribly wrong. As a former LAPD police chief put it, “We give
too little thought to the work itself. Work must be more than congenial; it must
be absorbing, meaningful and challenging. There just isn’t any ‘work’ as inherently
rich in these qualities as police work.”25 Capable police administrators, anxious to
achieve organizational goals and objectives, should look hard for ways to enrich
the jobs of all those who work with them.
Participative Management
Another human development approach to organizational improvement that
has received generous praise is participative management. This approach is based
on including non-managerial employees in the management process.
The extent to which employees of an organization are involved in the man-
agement process varies widely around the world. In some countries, for example,
factories are run by councils made up entirely of elected representatives of the

employees. In other organizations, some members of the boards of directors are
elected by employees, and supervisors are either appointed by employees, or em-
ployees have veto authority over their appointment.
Although the degree of involvement may vary and rarely be as democratic as
these examples, there are numerous opportunities for employee participation in
management. To many traditional managers, this idea of employees participating
in the management process has seemed radical, even revolutionary. Looking at the
idea objectively, however, it is no more revolutionary than having citizens partic-
ipate in their own governments, an idea that was also considered revolutionary
when it was first advanced.
In studying a number of organizations, Likert found that a consensus ex-
isted among managers that the most effective organizations they had known were
open, democratic ones.26 He identified three key factors in participative man-
agement. The first was that the relationship between supervisor and subordinate
should be a supportive type of relationship, with the supervisor emphasizing the
helpful, rather than authoritarian, aspects of their role. The second factor was
that decision making in organizations should be democratic and group-centered
and that decisions made by groups under these circumstances should be for-
warded to management by the democratically chosen group leader. The third and
most important factor in participative management was the advisory role played
by the supervisor in devising work goals and norms and in acting as a liaison be-
tween employees and management in attempting to accommodate the objectives
of each.
There are two outstanding and practical reasons why management should in-
volve its employees in the process of running the organization. One is that partic-
ipation gives employees a greater feeling of belonging and a stronger commitment
to their work. The second is that the involvement of employees in management
tends to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization. Boyd noted
that “businessmen have … known that workers can achieve extraordinary pro-
ductivity increases by finding ways to do their jobs better or faster or cheaper.”27
The manager who wants to take advantage of employee ingenuity, initiative, and
talent does so by involving employees as much as possible in the management of
the organization.28
Participative management is not really new or foreign to policing. The Police
Foundation reported in the 1970s, for example, that the Kansas City (Missouri)
Police Department, in connection with patrol strategy experiments, discovered
great interest in the development of participative management models.29 The
California Highway Patrol implemented a participative management effort some
40 years ago, in conjunction with a m anagement-by-results program. When the
program was introduced, the commissioner of that organization, pointing to the
need for job satisfaction, stated: “Participative management recognizes that the
greatest amount of untapped talent and ability is probably in the lower ranks in
any organization. Traditional police authoritative methods of management tend
to waste this potential.”30 As noted before, Herman Goldstein, the inventor of

problem-oriented policing, made similar arguments two decades later.31 Today,
participative management is a common element of community policing.32 It
seems that progressive and thoughtful police leaders easily recognize the value of
engaging police employees in the process of running the police o rganization—
following through on this common-sense recognition and actually implementing
participative police management is the harder part.
Organization Development
The most b road-based approach to organizational improvement is called
organization development (OD). This approach incorporates modern views
of work motivation, human relations, contemporary management, and profes-
sional development. Bennis described it as “an educational strategy employing
the widest possible means of experience-based behavior in order to achieve more
and better organizational choices in a highly turbulent world.”33 Organization
development is not actually a separate and distinct approach to human develop-
ment in organizations, but rather includes, in whole or in part, Theory Y, MBO,
job enrichment, and participative management. Consider the following set of
OD assumptions, for example, in light of the other approaches we have already
discussed:
1. People need to grow in their jobs and to realize their potential.

2. Once people’s basic needs have been satisfied, they will work energetically,
seeking challenge and assuming responsibility.
3. Effectiveness and efficiency in organizations may be enhanced through the
organization of work designed to meet human needs.
4. The more open organizational communications are, the greater the degree of
personal and professional growth experienced by employees.
5. Open confrontation as a means of resolving conflict achieves employee growth
and the accomplishment of organizational goals far better than does unilateral
conflict resolution.
6. As people begin to care for one another openly and honestly within group
frameworks, it becomes easier to handle organizational problems in construc-
tive rather than destructive fashion.
7. The structure of an organization and the kinds of job requirements within it
can be changed to better meet individual, group, and organizational needs,
goals, and objectives.
8. Problems relating to the design of organizations are directly responsible for
personality problems within them.34
An important ingredient of OD is its treatment of growth and development

as change. It takes note of the fact that many organizational employees are quite
comfortable with the way things are presently done and therefore are resistant to
changes, no matter how logically they are presented or how obviously advanta-
geous they are to employee welfare.
A key figure in the OD process is the so-called change agent. Usually an
objective and impartial outside consultant, the change agent is hired by the organ-
ization to oversee OD. Unlike the ordinary consultant, who is hired for a limited
period to study organizational problems, the change agent (or OD consultant)
contributes expertise on an ongoing basis, acting as a resource person and ad-
visor to management and suggesting programs and strategies for organizational
improvement, while at the same time developing the organization’s own capacity
to grow and to manage change. The OD consultant seeks to become fully aware
of the organization’s particular culture and to adapt development assumptions and
principles to the realities of the organization.
Police Organizational Development
Within policing, the two mainstays of professional development for the past
50 years have been education and training. Most police agencies hire college grad-
uates when they can, although few require a college degree.35 Many officers who
are hired without a degree eventually go back to school, perhaps to improve their
chances for promotion, or to prepare for a second career, or in some cases just to
keep up with their children. On the training side, it is now nearly universal that
newly hired police recruits go through an academy of 16–30 weeks before becom-
ing fully authorized to carry out police duties. Additional training throughout the
police career is common and, in some cases, quite extensive.
Additional approaches to police organizational improvement consistent with
the human development approach presented in this section of the text include
civilianization, cultural diversity, and organizational health. These are discussed
briefly in the final sections of the chapter.
Police Education
One of the first popular avenues to police organizational improvement, and
one that directly focused on professional development, was higher education for
police officers.36 With the establishment of the Office of Law Enforcement Assis-
tance in 1966 and later the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration within
the US Department of Justice, some strong impetus was given to making the need
for police education a reality. The leading figure in the movement was Patrick V.
Murphy, then the assistant director of the Office of Law Enforcement Assistance.
Murphy prodded and guided a grant panel established by the Attorney General to
provide seed money for various police educational efforts throughout the country.
As a result, numerous regional and local training and educational programs were
started with federal government money. Even on the grant panel, there was some
strong opposition to sending police officers to college, a reflection of the time-
honored assumption that only police officers should train police officers. Murphy
won, however, and started what has become a massive influx of police officers to
colleges and universities.
At about the same time, James Stinchcomb, a staff member of the Interna-
tional Association of Chiefs of Police, and Congressman William R. Anderson
of Tennessee collaborated on a House bill that, for the first time, introduced the
possibility of providing scholarships and government-supported loans to police
officers interested in pursuing academic degrees. Anderson was successful in con-
vincing the Johnson administration of the value of his proposal, and the Law
Enforcement Education Program (LEEP) became incorporated into the Safe
Streets Act. During the 1970s and early 1980s, thousands of police officers who
otherwise never would have had a chance to go to college were given the opportu-
nity to be exposed to ideas and techniques that were, for the most part, foreign to
the previously isolated police subculture.
The evidence relating education directly to police performance and police
organizational improvement is inconclusive.37 There is some evidence that officers
with higher levels of education have fewer citizen complaints made against them38
and are less likely to use force.39 Also, research on higher education in general
indicates that college graduates tend to have better communication and p roblem-
solving skills than non-graduates, and tend to be more open and tolerant of other
cultures and other kinds of people.40 Perhaps the strongest argument is one of
representativeness. From 1970 to 2015, the portion of US adults with a f our-year
college degree increased from 10% to 33%; presumably police should keep pace
in order to reflect the public served.41 Besides, failing to do so would not be in the
interests of maintaining the professional status of policing.
It is estimated today that less than 1% of police agencies require their officers
to have a four-year college degree, and yet over one-third of the officers in the
country do have at least a bachelor’s degree.42 One recent survey found that 78%t
of chiefs and sheriffs would prefer to hire new officers with college degrees.43 A few
states and many individual police departments offer some kind of educational in-
centive, including extra pay, tuition reimbursement, and eligibility for promotion
to higher ranks. CALEA, the police agency accreditation program, recently added
a standard that strongly encourages agencies to require college degrees, although
it stops short of being a mandatory standard.44 About 50 years ago it was very un-
usual to encounter a police officer with a college degree, whereas today it is quite
common.
Police Training
One standard approach to professional development in organizations, includ-
ing police agencies, has been training. Police departments have relied heavily on
e ntry-level (recruit) training, field training, refresher training, remedial training,

advanced training, and management training to make sure that employees know
how to do their jobs. In the past, however, police have tended to see training as too
much of a panacea for curing all kinds of organizational ills.45 Instead of recogniz-
ing the need to change organizational structures, reward systems, or management
practices, police agencies have had a tendency to over-rely on training.

Learning Community Policing Outside the Academy
August 18, 2017
This bulletin from the Police Foundation reports the experiences of 29 recruits in New
Haven, Connecticut who were required to participate in 40 hours of community engagement
during their basic police academy. Most rated it positively, especially those not from the city,
saying they gained a more accurate and sympathetic understanding of the neighborhoods and
people they would soon be policing.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2017/08/18/learning-cop-outside-the-academy. The

hyperlink at “This bulletin” links to https://www.policinginstitute.org/publication/outside-the-academy-learning-
community-policing-through-community-engagement/.
This is not to say that police training might not be improved and therefore
become more effective than it has been in the past. Perhaps the most significant
police training development in recent years has been the shift toward more of
an adult-learning approach.46 This new approach puts the onus for learning on
the student more than on the instructor, which is particularly appropriate for
a field claiming professional status. In-class sessions are more interactive, fea-
turing group activities and individual research more often than lectures by the
instructor, who is seen primarily as a facilitator. This new training style also fits
nicely with community policing, as students spend much of their training time
practicing how to solve realistic community problems instead of listening to
lectures on laws and procedures.47 The experience so far seems to indicate that
when trainees learn about law and procedure in the context of solving commu-
nity problems, they learn it better and come away prepared to apply what they
know to a greater degree than recruits trained in the traditional lecture style.
This type of approach has also been incorporated into field training, with FTOs
acting more as coaches and with greater attention to the recruit’s development
of problem-solving skills.
This adult-learning approach to training also encourages us to recognize that
learning can take place in settings other than the formal classroom, with an in-
structor standing in front and students seated in uncomfortable hardback chairs.
For example, police trainees might learn best about the work of social service and
victim advocate agencies if they spent some time observing in those agencies. In
addition, some police topics might be w ell-suited for delivery using c omputer-
based training in which trainees interact individually with scenarios and lessons
presented via the Internet.48 Simulation training using computers, video, virtual
reality, and augmented reality is becoming more popular and accessible, allow-
ing students to “virtually” drive automobiles, shoot weapons, and practice critical
decision making in seemingly “real-life” situations.49 Another type of scenario-
based training, such as that found in Hogan’s Alley at the FBI Academy, allows
students to interact with role players in r eal-life investigative and tactical activities.
Through the use of a little imagination and creativity, the field of police training
has experienced some dramatic changes in recent years.
Police Professionalization
Education and training have been at the heart of the police approach to pro-
fessionalization. The notion of professionalization means many things to many
people. Unfortunately, it has too frequently been merely a catchphrase for police
requests for more respect, higher salaries, and better equipment, and for public
demands for higher standards, more devotion to duty, and the elimination of cor-
ruption. As Steinman and Eskridge pointed out, “police departments rhetorically
promote their preferred image of objective, highly rationalized professional opera-
tions while diluting it in their actual operating norms.”50
To the extent that the police dream of professional status equal to that of
doctors and lawyers, their dreams may be unrealistic. In a free society with a dem-
ocratic form of government, the police are necessarily subjected to multiple checks
and balances, and they must be subservient to the law and to elected leaders, no
matter how much they might like to be more independent. James Q. Wilson
noted that professional people have a tendency
to govern themselves through collegial bodies, to restrict the authority of

their nominal superiors, to take seriously their reputation among fellow
professionals and to encourage some of their kind to devote themselves to
adding systematically to the knowledge of the profession through writing
and research.51
Although the police may hone their discretionary capabilities, develop job
skills, adopt standards, and achieve higher educational levels (all of which are
professional criteria), the very nature of their work in the public sector makes
it extremely challenging for the police to completely meet the characteristics
of the traditional professions. In part to address this fundamental obstacle,
Stone and Travis recently recommended a “new professionalism” for policing
based on four key elements: accountability, legitimacy, innovation, and national
coherence.52
One avenue toward “new professionalism” would be a more serious commit-
ment to evidence-based policing.53 Much like in medicine and other professional
fields, police organizations should, as much as possible, base their programs, pol-
icies, and decisions on the best available scientific evidence about what works
best.54 This does not eliminate the importance of experience and judgment, since
each situation is different and often the available scientific evidence is not compel-
ling. But it does make it clear that doing things a certain way just because “we’ve
always done it that way” or because a certain program is popular and trendy is not
the mark of a professional. Few of us would stick with a doctor who chose our
medical treatments that way.
Another weakness in efforts to make policing more professional is the shallow
nature of police education. Over the last 50 years, while police training has gotten
more systematic and more sophisticated, higher education focused on policing has
actually withered away.55 This has happened gradually and gone somewhat unno-
ticed. What happened was that police education was subsumed under criminal
justice education starting in the 1970s, mainly to add academic rigor and respect-
ability to it. Unfortunately, as criminal justice education has developed since then,
its focus on policing has shrunk more and more. Consequently, while it is true
today that one-third or more of police have college degrees, most have not gotten
an in-depth education in their own profession of policing.
To some extent, executive development programs like the FBI National Acad-
emy, PERF’s Senior Management Institute for Police, and the Southern Police
Institute’s Administrative Officers Course have filled this police education gap.
These programs are generally short-term, however, and unable to accomplish
the in-depth education needed in a professional field. Recognizing the need for
something more substantial, the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing
recommended “the establishment of a top quality graduate institute of policing
to provide ongoing leadership training, education, and research programs which
will enhance the quality of law enforcement culture, knowledge, skills, practices
and policies.”56 Perhaps someday the field will be served by a National Police Uni-
versity in the same way that the National Defense University helps prepare senior
military leaders.57
Civilianization
Yet another human development approach to police organizational develop-
ment is civilianization. On one level, civilianization can simply be an efficiency
technique—replace relatively expensive sworn police officers with less costly civil-
ian employees whenever possible. Some police agencies have successfully civilian-
ized a wide range of positions, including front desk personnel, communications
personnel, evidence technicians, telephone report takers, and numerous adminis-
trative jobs, saving substantial resources in the process.
Another benefit of civilianization, though, is that it brings different kinds
of people into the police organization. Traditionally, civilian positions were the
only police employment options for women. Today, women continue to hold the
majority (60%) of lower-paid civilian jobs within US law enforcement agencies,
many of which offer little chance of promotion, but represent only about 12%
of sworn officers.58 Civilian positions, however, may be of particular interest to
workers who simply are not interested in, or qualified for, sworn police positions,
including people with disabilities and older citizens. Bringing all kinds of people
into police departments has the obvious and distinct advantage of making the
membership of police organizations more like the rest of society.
Diversity
As America becomes increasingly diverse ethnically and racially, it is critically
important that police organizations both reflect that diversity and employ indi-
viduals who are skilled in dealing with a diverse clientele.59 Diverse communities
present major challenges to the police, including differences in language, culture,
and historical experiences with police authority. The need for police officers to be
educated and trained about different cultures has been widely recognized since
at least the 1960s, but today’s society is even more diverse and complex than
anything we imagined a few decades ago. Quite a few police departments now
serve communities in which the dominant spoken language is Spanish. Others
routinely encounter citizens who speak Russian, Czech, Korean, or Vietnamese.

Working Hard to Diversify in Nebraska
March 29, 2022
The police chief in Bellevue, Nebraska, a suburb of Omaha, has made significant strides to
diversify the 100-officer department over the last 2 years in spite of w idely-noted national
recruiting challenges, as reported here. In a short time, the agency has gone from 4 to 15
women officers and from 1 to 5 Spanish speakers. Besides targeted recruiting, the chief has
done away with several grooming standards, such as a ban on dyed hair and multiple ear
piercings, has eliminated a rule that limited extended medical leave, and has relaxed a hiring
standard tied to applicants’ credit rating. The latter has a disproportionate impact on minority
and lower-income applicants, according to the chief—
At 18 years old, they don’t have a safety net of family that has money to throw at them
to help them get their first apartment or their first car. So are they going to struggle with
credit? I would argue, yes, probably at a much higher rate.
To fellow chiefs who say he is lowering standards, he says “I was exactly where you are five
years ago. We’re not lowering a standard. We’re thinking differently about the standard. We’re
inviting people that didn’t believe that there was a pathway.”
Source: Modern Policing Blog, gcordner.wordpress.com/2022/03/29/working-hard-to-diversify-in-nebraska/. The hyperlink

at “as reported here” links to https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/interactive/2022/women-police-nebraska/.
Other than raising obvious education and training issues, this growing diver-
sity has implications for police recruitment and selection. Police departments must
seek applicants who already have experience dealing with diversity, as well as appli-
cants who are representative of various racial and ethnic groups in the community.
It is not always possible or practical to have a police workforce that is precisely
representative of every racial and ethnic group in the community, but it is vitally
important that: (1) no group see itself as barred from police employment; (2) the
police department make an honest effort to recruit throughout the community;
and (3) every group perceives the police department as responsive to its legitimate
needs and problems.
Diversity by sex and gender orientation is another important issue for police
organizations. Because policing was traditionally a m ale-dominated occupation,
police departments have not always been welcoming and supportive of women
or LGBTQ officers.60 As noted above, only 12% of sworn police in the United
States are women, and the percentages in higher ranks are even lower. Many police
academies are operated like military boot camps with a strong “macho” emphasis
that puts women recruits at an immediate disadvantage. A woman officer in a
small department is often the only one; similarly, in a larger department a woman
might be the only one on her patrol shift, and the likelihood of her working for
a female sergeant is slim. To be sure, many women police over the last 40 years
have overcome these challenges and gone on to have successful careers, but a lot of
other women abandoned their police careers, and even more never applied because
police organizations did not look very interested in people like them.
Organizational Health
One project of the National Institute of Justice and the Office of Commu-
nity Oriented Policing Services was the “Measuring What Matters” initiative. In
turn, one of the products of that initiative is a description of six attributes of the
“healthy police organization.”61 As you can see below, these attributes include sev-
eral of the human development concerns discussed in this chapter.
1. The healthy police organization knows what it wants to accomplish. It has ar-
ticulated goals that can be expressed in an operational form. The goals can be
assessed, meaning that there are measures, indices, of things that are reflective
of the goals.
2. The healthy police organization needs to know its citizens. Are they getting
what they want?
3. The healthy police organization knows its business and the demands that are
placed upon it.
4. The healthy police organization knows what it is doing about the demands of
business. It has the ability to monitor resource allocations and officer activities.
5. A healthy police organization knows its people. Things that would tell us what
people get from their jobs, what they are looking for from their jobs, what
motivates them about their work, and what demoralizes them.
6. The healthy police organization feeds back information to people and groups
who need to know.
These descriptions of a healthy police organization are very consistent with

many of the topics discussed in this chapter. They emphasize the importance of
the human element in police administration. To be successful, police managers
need to be aware of the human needs of the people working for them and they
need to embrace techniques that help their subordinates and the entire organiza-
tion grow and develop.
Organizational Justice
The concept of organizational justice has begun to get substantial attention
from those who study police administration.62 The basic idea is that when mem-
bers of an organization believe they are treated justly, they are more likely to be
satisfied and committed to working hard. Conversely, if organization members
feel that they are treated unjustly, they may leave altogether, or at the very least
contribute far less than they are capable toward the achievement of organizational
goals and objectives.
The concept of organizational justice has special resonance for police in light
of procedural justice, which is a standard component of police reform. In regard
to procedural justice, police have been taught that the key factor in p olice-public
interactions is whether the member of the public feels that they were treated fairly,
including whether the officer listened to them, explained what they were doing
and why, and was transparent and trustworthy. It has not been lost on officers
that, inside their own police organization, in their dealings with supervisors and
managers, they are not always treated that way.
One of the key principles underlying procedural justice is that people do not
always get the outcome they want—they might get stopped, get a ticket, get ar-
rested, or if they are a crime victim, their case might not get solved. If they are
dealt with fairly, however, their trust and confidence in police does not necessarily
suffer, even though the outcome was not the best. The same can be true in regard
to organizational justice—officers might not get the assignment or promotion
they want, or they might get disciplined for something that they did not consider
very serious, but if they were treated fairly, their commitment to the organization’s
mission might not suffer.
This emphasis on organizational justice is similar to what was called the
“inside-out” strategy in the Madison, Wisconsin Police Department in the 1990s.63
In that case, the police chief was putting strong pressure on his officers to imple-
ment community policing, wanting them to be more open and respectful toward
the public. When he met resistance, he eventually realized that he was being some-
what hypocritical. He was managing the police agency in a rather autocratic and
heavy-handed manner. He was telling his officers to treat the public respectfully,
but that was not the way he was treating the officers. When he realized the discon-
nect, he called a timeout and first worked on changing the way he managed the
police department. Only when he achieved a more open and participative climate
within the organization did he renew his expectation that officers would engage
with citizens more positively and openly.
Summary
Since at least the 1950s, managers have been learning that they must take
individuals and groups into account as they determine how best to run their or-
ganizations. This is just as true of police departments as of factories, schools, and
hospitals—people are the greatest asset and resource in most organizations, and
the successful manager is one who learns to recognize what motivates different
individuals and then tailors supervision, rewards, and work processes to best fit
individual needs. Many modern management systems are now available and have
been successfully used within police organizations, including job enrichment, par-
ticipative management, and organizational justice. Police administrators should
develop a sound understanding of these human development approaches to organ-
izational improvement, take a long look at their own organizations, and attempt to
tailor programs to fit the unique characteristics of their departments.
1. Using Maslow’s hierarchy, what would you say are the needs most important to you in your present
situation? Would your answer have been different five or 10 years ago? How do you think you would
answer this question 10 years from now?
2. Do you agree that the basic physical and security needs of most Americans are satisfied? If you
agree, how would you explain labor strikes and demands for higher wages?
3. Do you find that the presence of goals and objectives motivates you to work harder? Is there a differ-
ence between goals that someone else has set for you and goals that you have set?
4. Why do you think that we support democracy in government but question its usefulness in other
types of organizations?
5. How do you react to change? Do you welcome it or dread it?
6. What do you think would be the ideal educational level for police officers? What do you think is a
realistic level? In what ways do you think college education helps or hurts a police officer?
Cases
One of the cases in the back of the text, Case 3, Strategic Planning in Spokane,
Washington, provides an example of the approaches to organizational improve-
ment presented in C
hapter 9. You should compare the discussion in the text to the
Spokane case study, and then contrast both of those with Case 4, Gaining Outside
Commitment in Lowell, Massachusetts. You should also examine Case 5, Leading
Change in Riverside, California, from the standpoint of the various approaches to
organization development discussed in Chapter 9.
Suggested Reading
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and Communities Working Together for Education, Training, and Program Implementation. Boca
Raton, FL: CRC Press (Routledge).
Latham, G.P. 2012. Work Motivation: History, Theory, Research, and Practice, second edition. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Police Training Officer (PTO): An Overview and Introduction. 2004. Washington, DC: Office of
Notes
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3 F.J. Roethlisberger, and W.J. Dickson. 1939. Management and the Worker: An Account of
a Research Program Conducted by the Western Electric Company, Hawthorne Works, Chicago.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4 A.H. Maslow. 1954. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Organizations. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 182.
6 E.E. Lawler III. 1973. Motivation in Work Organizations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/ Cole,
pp. 17–18.
7 J.S. Adams. 1975. “Inequity in Social Exchange.” In R.M. Steers, and L.W. Porter (eds), Moti-
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8 D.A. Nadler, J.R. Hackman, and E.E. Lawler III. 1979. Managing Organizational Behavior.
Boston, MA: Little, Brown, pp. 31–38.
9 A.G. Athos, and R.E. Coffey. 1968. Behavior in Organizations: A Multidimensional View. Eng-
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10 D. McGregor. 1957. “The Human Side of Enterprise.” Management Review 46, no. 11: 22–28.
11 D. McGregor. 1960. The Human Side of Enterprise. New York: McGraw-Hill.
12 Maslow. 1954. Motivation and Personality.
13 McGregor. 1960. The Human Side of Enterprise.
14 McGregor. 1960. The Human Side of Enterprise, pp. 14–15.
15 G.W. Sykes. 1985. “The Functional Nature of Police Reform: The ‘Myth’ of Controlling the
Police.” Justice Quarterly 2, no. 1: 51–65.
16 P. Drucker. 1954. The Practice of Management. New York: Harper.

17 V. Henry. 2002. The Compstat Paradigm: Management Accountability in Policing, Business, and
the Public Sector. Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Law Publications.
18 H. Jang, L.T. Hoover, and H.J. Joo. 2010. “An Evaluation of Compstat’s Effect on Crime: The
Fort Worth Experience.” Police Quarterly 13, no. 4: 3 87–412.
19 J.A. Eterno, and E.B. Silverman. 2012. The Crime Numbers Game: Management by Manipula-
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20 F. Herzberg. 1968. “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Harvard Business
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21 Herzberg. 1968. “One More Time.” p . 59.
22 R. Townsend. 1970. Up the Organization. New York: Knopf, p. 140.
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Criminal Investigations: Houston’s Investigative First Responder Project.” Police Quarterly 13,
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24 H. Goldstein. 1990. Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 148–175.
25 T. Reddin. 1966. “Are You Oriented to Hold Them? A Searching Look at Police Management.”
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26 R. Likert. 1967. The Human Organization: Its Management and Value. New York:
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27 M. Boyd. 1974. “How We Can Bring Back Quality: Sharing a Piece of the Action.” Washington
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28 K. Blanchard, and S. Bowles. 1998. Gung Ho! New York: William Morrow.
29 Police Foundation. 1972. Experiments in Police Improvement: A Progress Report. Washington,
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30 W. Pudinski. 1973. “Managing for Results.” The Police Chief 40, no. 1: 39.
31 Goldstein. 1990. Problem-Oriented Policing.
32 G. Cordner. 2010. “Community Policing: Elements and Effects.” In R.G. Dunham, and G.P.
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33 W.G. Bennis. 1969. Organization Development: Its Nature, Origins, and Prospects. Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, p. 17.
34 Huse and Bowditch. 1977. Behavior in Organizations, pp. 386–387.
35 B.A. Reaves. 2015. Local Police Departments, 2013: Personnel, Policies, and Practices. Wash-
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36 D.L. Carter, A.D. Sapp, and D.W. Stephens. 1989. The State of Police Education: Policy Direc-
tion for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
37 W. Skogan, and K. Frydl (eds). 2004. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Wash-
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38 V.E. Kappeler, A.D. Sapp, and D.L. Carter. 1992. “Police Officer Higher Education, Citizen
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40 E.T. Pascarella, and P.T. Terenzini. 2005. How College Affects Students: A Third Decade of
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41 C.L. Ryan, and K. Bauman. 2016. Educational Attainment in the United States: 2015.
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43 G. Cordner, and A. Cordner. 2014. “Human Resource Issues Faced by Small and Large Agen-
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45 G. Cordner. 2022. “Education, Training, and Police Reform.” In J.A. Schafer and R.W. Myers
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CHAPTER 10 Leadership in the
Police Organization
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify the three basic leadership functions.

• Cite the findings of studies that attempted to identify the personality traits and other per-
sonal characteristics that separate good leaders from bad ones.
• Characterize Fiedler’s situational model of effective leadership.
• Distinguish between the managerial grid and Hersey and Blanchard’s situational theory of
leadership.
• Explain the inside-out approach to quality police leadership.
Leadership is a difficult concept to define. To some, leadership is a science

that can be mastered through study and practice. Others regard it as an art and
maintain that leaders are born, not made. Some believe that leaders are respected
and admired by their followers. Others believe that they are feared. It is not un-
common for people to believe that real leaders can be identified by their ability to
take charge in all situations. Others believe that leadership is situational and that
different group members will emerge in leadership roles in different situations
depending upon formal credentials, expertise, charisma, and connections.
None of these perceptions of leadership is completely right or completely
wrong. Because leadership involves a complex combination of activities and be-
haviors, it is not easily defined, described, or categorized, which is one reason why
dozens of new books on leadership are published every year. One author who has
carefully studied the subject came up with this definition:
Leadership is showing the way and helping or inducing others to pursue

it. This entails envisioning a desirable future, promoting a clear purpose
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-13
or mission, supportive values and intelligent strategies, and empowering

and engaging all those concerned.1
Leadership is an extremely important concept for the police administrator

to understand. In the police field, leadership is crucial. As new organizational
patterns emerge, the police must attempt to adjust to rapid social, political, and
technological change, and they are required to handle an ever-increasing and di-
verse range of social problems within the constraints of tight budgets and intense
political and media scrutiny. Current controversies related to police use of force,
body-worn cameras, and responses to violent crime illustrate ongoing challenges.
The Police Foundation argued some years ago that “progressive police leadership is
essential both in terms of sensing the need for change and in managing the process
of change.”2 In that same era, Germann argued that police leaders were not always
up to the task:
Police leadership decisions … tend to preserve the status quo and en-
shrine the archaic. Somehow, in the police establishment, leadership must
be developed that is open, willing to listen, willing to change even the
most revered attitude or practice. Most current police leadership does not
have the breadth of vision, perspective, or motivation to do what must
be done.3
Since Germann’s time, police leadership has improved considerably. In

oldstein’s view, during the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, many police leaders
G
showed more vision and sensitivity than did their mayors and other government
administrators.4 Evidence of the existence of sophisticated police leadership in the
United States was demonstrated in the 1980s book Police Leadership in America,
written largely by police chiefs.5 More recently, police executives have often pro-
vided leadership in their communities when dealing with difficult issues such as
terrorism, illegal immigration, and political protest. However, the overall state of
leadership in this country’s 18,000 police departments remains much less than
satisfactory. One observer in the 1990s concluded that “executive leadership has
been ‘structured’ out of police administration,”6 because top executives are so
consumed with day-to-day management routines and crises. In today’s complex
world, though, leadership is what is needed most: “Modern policing organizations
need to recognize the importance of the leader as an enabler of … learning, inno-
vation and adaptation … rather than the t op-down bureaucratic administrator of
technical fixes to w
ell-known problems.”7
Over the last two decades, the development of police leadership has begun
to receive more sustained attention. Existing leadership development programs
offered by the FBI’s National Academy,8 PERF’s Senior Management Institute for
Police,9 Northwestern University’s Center for Public Safety,10 and the University
of Louisville’s Southern Police Institute11 have been augmented by state-level pro-
grams in California, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Kentucky, and elsewhere.12
10 Leadership in the Police Organization 259
Also, the federal COPS Office and Bureau of Justice Assistance have supported na-
tional police leadership initiatives, and the IACP has established the Leadership in
Police Organizations program.13 Several individual law enforcement agencies have
initiated their own leadership development programs, including the Los Angeles
Police Department and Delaware State Police.14
In recent years, police executives have become particularly concerned about
developing leadership throughout their organizations. It has become more widely
recognized that “every officer is a leader”—beat officers need to exercise leadership
in the community just as sergeants, lieutenants, and captains need to exercise lead-
ership within the police organization. In addition, chiefs and sheriffs are more con-
scious of the need to develop future leaders to carry on after they retire. IACP past
president Mary Ann Viverette, police chief in Gaithersburg, Maryland, put it well:
Unfortunately, in our desire to address the immediate needs of our agen-

cies and communities, we sometimes fail to plan for the future leader-
ship needs of our departments and our noble profession. This is a critical
oversight, because we must realize that our success as police chiefs will be
judged not only by what we accomplish today but also by how we prepare
our agencies to confront the challenges of the future.15
The Police Leader as a Subsystem
One of the most important factors to consider in discussing leadership is that

the leader is an individual whose behavior is influenced by numerous variables.
Thus, as individuals, police leaders’ behaviors are influenced by their own atti-
tudes, roles, self-concept, motivation, perception, and communication abilities, as
discussed in C hapter 8.
A leader, like other individuals, participates in more than one group. So
one may be a leader of some groups, but also be a non-leading member of other
groups. A chief of police, for example, might be president of her local school’s
parent/teacher association, president of the state association of chiefs of police,
a member of the Rotary Club, and a member of the IACP. Also as discussed in
Chapter 8, aspects of group behavior and interaction, including conformity, cohe-
siveness, output limitation, cooperation, competition, and conflict, all have their
influence on the leader.
A police chief is, by definition, a formal leader; that is, the chief has been
designated as the person in charge and has been granted authority to command
the people assigned to the police department. All other police managers are formal
leaders, too. The sergeant has formal authority with respect to commanding a
squad or platoon, the shift commander has formal authority with respect to all the
patrol officers and patrol sergeants working during a given tour of duty, and the
director of the planning and research division has formal authority with respect to
the members assigned to that division.
Box 10.1 Police Managers and Police Leaders

[A] police administrator must be fully aware of the sensitive and delicate nature of the po-
lice function … he must attach a high value to protecting constitutional guarantees of free
speech, due process, and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. He must fully
appreciate the need for various systems to assure accountability on the part of the police
to the body politic. He must be knowledgeable regarding the legislative process, the func-
tioning of the criminal justice system and the operation of the various other systems which
the police employ. He must be well informed about different categories of deviant conduct,
the range of behavioral problems of concern to the police and the dynamics of the various
political and social movements in our society. He must be conversant with the major issues
of current public interest that involve the police and be articulate in discussing them in the
public forum.
Beyond these basic requirements, a leader in the police field is often expected to rescue
an agency that has been drifting without clear objectives and principles for years. He is the
central figure in any attempts to effect significant changes in the organization and staffing
of the agency and in the form of services it provides. This requires a great deal more than
traditional managerial skill. He must be aware of the need for change and committed to
achieving it. He must be open, challenging, curious, and innovative. He must be sufficiently
confident of his capacity and sufficiently secure in his position to take risks and to conduct
experiments. He must be unflagging in his determination. He must have a masterful capacity
to relate well to the various elements that comprise his community so as to win support for
his programs, as well as an equally effective ability to relate to his own personnel, eliciting
their best performance and coordinating their efforts toward his pre-established goals.
Source: Herman Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger,
pp. 227–228.
The terms “formal leader” and “manager” mean essentially the same thing.
However, a formal leader/manager is not necessarily a complete leader or effective
leader. There is considerably more to leadership than simply being given authority
and being designated as the person in charge (see “Police Managers and Police
Leaders,” Box 10.1).
The Functions of Leadership
The terms “leader” and “manager” are not synonymous. Bennis argues that
the difference between leadership and management is “the difference between
those who master the context and those who surrender to it.”16 Gill provides a
side-by-side contrast (Table 10.1), while noting that the descriptions are obviously
biased in favor of the leader and against the manager.17
Needless to say, leadership and management overlap to some degree and both
are important for organizational success. But this contrast helps illustrate that the
functions of the leader and the police manager are not identical. In C hapter 6, we
TABLE 10.1 Comparison of Managers and Leaders

The Manager The Leader
Administers Innovates
Is a “copy” Is an “original”
Maintains Develops
Focuses on systems and structure Focuses on people
Focuses on control Inspires trust
Takes a short-range view Has a long-range perspective
Asks how and when Asks what and why
Imitates Originates
Accepts the status quo Challenges the status quo
Is a classic “good soldier” Is their own person
Does things right Does the right thing
grouped the basic functions of police management into the categories of system
building, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. Here we will
discuss leadership in terms of the following three functions:
1. Definition of structure;
2. Coordination control;
3. Goal and norm clarification.
Definition of Structure
This leadership function is similar to the management functions of system
building, planning, organizing, and staffing, and is a prime example of the overlap
between leadership and management. One of the principal tasks of a leader is to
arrange people and jobs for the accomplishment of the organization’s goals and
objectives or, more simply, for the purpose of getting things done.
In a sandlot baseball game, for example, the team leader will assign the play-
ers their positions in the field and their places in the batting order. Similarly,
the leader of a crime scene search will indicate the types of evidence to look for,
the search method to be used, and the particular assignments of the personnel
involved. In both instances, the leaders define the structures of the tasks to be
performed so that the members of their groups will have a better idea of what to
do and how to do it.
A police patrol sergeant regularly exercises definition of structure when as-

signing officers to patrol areas. The investigative supervisor performs the same
function when assigning cases to detectives. These examples are relatively minor
in scope, however, when compared with the definition of structure responsibility
of command-level police managers, especially the chief of police.
Upper-level managers make the basic organizing, staffing, and s ystem-building
decisions that establish limits on the definition-of-structure decisions of lower-
level managers. In terms of patrol personnel allocation, for example, the upper-
level managers determine how many officers there will be in the patrol division,
how they will be distributed by shifts and squads, what methods and techniques
of patrol will be utilized, and how the patrol areas will be drawn. Although lower-
level patrol managers normally assign individual officers to their patrol areas, they
perform their definition-of-structure function with less authority and on a much
smaller scale than do upper-level managers.
Coordination Control
This second leadership function includes the management functions of di-
recting and controlling and involves most of the leader’s routine decision making.
Relations with other groups, coordination of the efforts of the people in the group,
and supervision of the work of the group members are all part of coordination
control.
Leaders of musical groups, for example, are responsible for seeing to it that
the music of the individual musicians harmonizes into good group sounds. They
will also decide what music to play and what engagements to accept. In mak-
ing these and other day-today decisions, the leaders are providing coordination
control.
As another example, the leader of a police union is expected to schedule and
run the organization’s meetings, make routine decisions that cannot be delayed
until a meeting is held, maintain contact with other police unions, and represent
the union in dealings with management. No matter how democratically this or
any other group may be structured, someone will always be needed to provide
coordination control.
Coordination control is exercised by police managers at all levels but, to a
significant extent, lower-level managers determine how effectively this leadership
function is carried out. In theory, upper-level managers issue most of the direc-
tives and are responsible for controlling the organization. However, because they
are few in number and cannot be everywhere at once, u pper-level police manag-
ers depend on lieutenants and particularly sergeants to implement organizational
direction and control. Sergeants interpret directives for their squads and largely
determine what control measures will be initiated. Sergeants perform most of the
supervision in the organization, represent their squads in relations with other or-
ganizational subunits, and are also responsible for coordinating the efforts of the
individuals in their groups. So, in contrast to the leadership function of definition
of structure, coordination control is more closely associated with lower-level police

managers than with upper-level ones.
Goal and Norm Clarification

This third function of leadership is both the most important and the most
difficult to provide. It is through this function that the leader assists the group in
defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior and developing the objectives of
group activity. The leader must articulate and reinforce the group’s mission and
key values, convince others (group members and outsiders) of the legitimacy and
importance of the mission, and impart to group members a vision that they can
understand and believe in. The leader goes beyond the manager’s concerns for pro-
ductivity and efficiency and tries to gain employee commitment and dedication
to the ideals of the organization. Leaders are concerned as much with determining
what their organizations should do as with overseeing how it is done. Their focus
is as much on charting the group’s course as on simply following it (see “Shaping
Organizational Values,” Box 10.2).
In performing this function, the leader often cannot simply impose personal de-
sires on the group, but must be sensitive to the goals and norms of individual group
members and attempt to clarify and synthesize them into group goals and norms.
Box 10.2 Shaping Organizational Values

An effective leader must be the master of two ends of the spectrum: ideas at the highest
level of abstraction and actions at the most mundane level of detail. The value-shaping
leader is concerned, on the one hand, with soaring, lofty visions that will generate excitement
and enthusiasm for tens or hundreds of thousands of people. That’s where the pathfinding
role is critically important. On the other hand, it seems the only way to instill enthusiasm is
through scores of daily events, with the v alue-shaping manager becoming an implementer
par excellence. In this role, the leader is a bug for detail and directly instills values through
deeds rather than words: no opportunity is too small. So it is at once attention to ideas and
attention to detail.
Attention to ideas (pathfinding and soaring visions) would seem to suggest rare, impos-
ing men writing on stone tablets. But, our colleagues Phillips and Kennedy, who looked at
how leaders shape values, imply that this is not the case:
Success in instilling values appears to have had little to do with charismatic personality.
Rather, it derived from obvious, sincere, sustained personal commitment to the values
the leaders sought to implant, coupled with extraordinary persistence in reinforcing
those values. None of the men we studied relied on personal magnetism. All made
themselves into effective leaders (emphasis in original).
Source: Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. 1982. In Search of Excellence:
Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. New York: Harper & Row, pp. 287–288.
This is a difficult function to perform; sometimes the most effective method avail-
able to leaders is to demonstrate through their own behavior the goals and norms
they perceive to be, or think should be, the goals and norms of the group. This is
generally referred to as leading by example. When US President John F. Kennedy
wanted Americans to become more conscious of physical fitness, for example, he
was photographed swimming and playing touch football. Through his own behav-
ior he attempted to influence the physical exercise norms of the American people.
Sometimes goal and norm clarification is required for organizations to overcome
debilitating conflicts. For some years in San Jose, California, racial conflict seemed
to be the police department’s most serious problem.18 Community leaders criticized
the police department’s insensitivity and lack of minority employees. The police
department, in turn, complained about lack of cooperation in the minority commu-
nity and resisted affirmative action programs on the grounds of maintaining high
personnel standards. The conflict, which dragged on for years, was defined as law
enforcement and professionalism versus minority rights. A new police chief, how-
ever, was slowly able to transform the debate. He reminded all parties of the greater
mission of the police agency—protecting life and property and maintaining order.
He convinced them that this mission required high professional standards and a po-
lice department both representative of, and working closely with, its community. He
helped them see that their conflict was detrimental to the police department and the
community, whereas cooperation might make it possible to satisfy both groups. The
chief essentially redefined the situation in such a way that the disputants were able to
recognize their mutual interests instead of focusing on their differences.
This is a good example of transformational leadership—inspiring others to
pursue lofty objectives by influencing their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation.19
The leader tries to transform the situation rather than merely settling for a trans-
actional approach aimed more at satisfying modest expectations within established
parameters. This notion of transformation, closely associated with goal and norm
clarification, seems to coincide with what people usually mean when they say that
someone is a real leader, or when they say that what their situation really needs is
more or better leadership.
In Chapters 8 and 9, we pointed out that the way police officers view their
jobs and their responsibilities is not always based on organizational policy. Instead,
police officers are often left on their own to define their roles, which they may
do individually or with the assistance of peers and established cultures and sub-
cultures. Role expectations developed in this manner may or may not agree with
those held by the chief and other police managers.
When role expectations are developed by individual police officers, man-
agement has defaulted on its leadership role. It may still be managing by pro-
viding definition of structure and coordination control, but it is not leading. It
has turned over the important leadership function of goal and norm clarifica-
tion to individual officers; in essence, the organization has told its members to
lead themselves.

Interview with Retiring Minneapolis Chief
February 2, 2022
Minneapolis PD chief Arradondo retired January 15 after 32 years in the agency, the last 4+
years as chief, which included the George Floyd murder, ensuing civil disorder, and a failed
attempt to replace the police department with some kind of public safety entity. An interview
with the chief is available here. Despite the operational, leadership, and political challenges
he faced, overall he sees some positives.
I think the landscape of being a police chief has changed in this country—some of it for
the good. There is a lot more transparency measures put in place. There is a lot more
balance put on the leadership of the police chief. And I think there is also a lot more ac-
countability than there has ever been for police chiefs, both internal and in terms of who
the police chief reports to, elected officials and a lot more to the communities.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2022/02/02/interview-with-retiring-minneapolis-chief/.

The hyperlink at “available here” links to https://www.twincities.com/2022/01/23/minneapolis-police-chief-medaria-
arradondo-qa/.
It is no wonder, then, that police officers often turn to their colleagues for goal
and norm clarification. The police culture (or its subcultures) takes up the func-
tion of defining role expectations. Its leaders effectively become the organization’s
leaders, at least with respect to this one leadership function.
This process has occurred not only in police organizations but in many other
organizations as well. It illustrates that effective managing is relatively common, as
compared with effective leading, which is relatively uncommon. The function of
goal and norm clarification separates the leaders from the managers.
In hierarchical organizations, the relative importance of the three leadership
functions varies according to level. That is, the most important function for the
leader of the entire organization will differ from the most important function for
the leader of an organizational unit consisting of only a few people. In general, the
function of definition of structure becomes more important as one goes up in the
organization, whereas coordination control becomes more important as one goes
down in the organization. The importance of goal and norm clarification does not
vary as widely—it is a vital function for leaders at all levels.
Sources of Influence
Leadership involves influencing the behavior of others. It is through the use

of influence that a leader attempts to coordinate and control, define structure,
and clarify goals and norms. The sources of this influence, which leaders use
to affect the behavior of others, will be discussed in terms of the following five
categories:
1. Position power;
2. Coercion;
3. Rewards;
4. Expertise;
5. Charisma.20
Position Power
Position power is a source of influence that is completely independent of the
individual leader. It flows directly from the position held by the leader and accrues
to any person who occupies the leadership position. When a person vacates the
position, the influence is left behind for the successor.
The authority of police officers to regulate human behavior in certain situa-
tions is an example of position power. When they are sworn in, police officers are
granted powers not held by other citizens. When they leave the job, they lose these
powers; they have them only as long as they remain police officers.
Within organizations, position power is delegated to all kinds of positions in
the form of authority. Position power is a basic source of authority and influence
for police managers. Through such administrative principles as division of labor
and delegation of authority, police management positions inherit power. Thus, the
patrol sergeant’s authority to assign squad members to patrol areas originates in the
position, not the person. Similarly, the authority of the operations commander to
coordinate the activities of the patrol, investigations, and traffic divisions comes
from the position, not the person.
It should immediately be recognized that position power is an important
source of influence for formal leaders/managers. Position power relates pri-
marily to the leadership functions of definition of structure and coordination
control. Position power in the form of organizational authority enables police
managers to carry out their management functions of system building, plan-
ning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. However, position power
by itself does not make police managers into complete leaders, because the ef-
fective accomplishment of goal and norm clarification (convincing others not
just to do their jobs right, but convincing them to do the right job) requires
more than just formal authority. Position power helps give a manager the op-
portunity to successfully carry out the key leadership function of goal and
norm clarification, but it takes more than just formal authority to accomplish
this crucial aspect of leadership.
Coercion
The power of coercion is based on the threat or actual delivery of punishment.
This source of influence may be vested in the position held by the leader, or it may
be a personal attribute of the leader.
Police managers acquire coercion power through their control functions.
Patrol sergeants coerce their subordinates by assigning unpopular patrol areas as
punishment for behavior they do not appreciate, and they can also recommend
more severe punishments. U pper-level managers, although further removed from
the basic operations of the organization, have greater coercion power, in the form
of harsher punishments. In theory at least, the police chief has the most coercion
power, inasmuch as only the chief has the authority to punish everyone else.
Coercion in police organizations can also be personal in origin. Some police
managers are feared because of their size, temper, scathing tongue, or political
connections, although they might rarely use the coercion power of their position.
Non-managerial personnel may also exercise coercion within the police organiza-
tion. Such use may be for personal gain or retribution, but it may also be exercised
on behalf of the organization, the dominant culture, or a subculture. It may be
used on behalf of the o rganization—for example, to bring into line a fellow of-
ficer who is giving the department a bad name by taking bribes, lying in court, or
roughing up suspects. Coercion power may also be used on behalf of the dominant
subculture to coerce an officer who refuses to participate in corrupt, dishonest, or
brutal activities.21
Rewards
The power of rewards is based on the ability of the leader to bestow rewards
on other group members. As with coercion, the opportunity to distribute rewards
may be an inherent characteristic of the position held by the leader. To a lesser
degree, it may simply be a device developed by the leader to influence others in
the organization.
The leader of a political machine, for example, traditionally wields influence
in the form of government jobs and contracts to reward supporters; although
the morality and ethics of such rewards are often questioned, the fact remains
that jobs and contracts are used as a source of power by many political leaders.
Political leaders who are independently wealthy or who have financial support
from large numbers of contributors might choose to pay supporters for their
services and thus reward them for their loyalty and their assistance. Similarly, an
employer who gives employees bonuses or salary increments is using rewards as
a source of influence.
One of the difficulties of police management, and of public administration
generally, is the relative unavailability of tangible rewards, especially financial ones.
Police managers ordinarily cannot reward good performance with bonuses, salary
increases, or even promotions. Civil service regulations and the realities of public
finance prohibit such gestures, for the most part. For rewards, police managers can
usually offer little more than a handshake and a pat on the back.
These kinds of rewards are not without value, however. Most people appre-
ciate recognition and like being told that they have done a good job. In addition,
modest benefits such as desirable assignments, enrollment in career-enhancing
training programs, days off, first choice of vacation times, recognition awards, and
new equipment and supplies may sometimes be used by the police manager to
reward good performance.
Expertise
Expertise is a source of influence that derives from the skill, knowledge, and
experience of the leader. It is based on the leader’s ability to accomplish difficult
tasks that others would be either unable or unwilling to perform. Although the
position held by the leader might serve to identify the expert, the influence the
leader has comes directly from their innate and learned talents.
At the scene where an explosive device has been found, for example, bomb
disposal technicians will very likely assume leadership because of their special
training and skill. Even if they are the lowest-ranking officers at the scene, their
expertise will give them considerable influence over everyone else present, regard-
less of their ranks or positions.
When officers or managers in staff positions want to exert influence on line
operations, they often have to rely on the power of expertise. Analysts who have
discovered a pattern of criminal activity, for example, would rely on their exper-
tise to try to convince the chief, the operations commander, patrol sergeants, and
patrol officers to base future activities on their findings. The extent to which these
line personnel altered their work behavior as a result of this criminal activity pat-
tern would depend on how much expertise they believed the analysts possessed.
An important consideration in this judgment would be the success or failure of
previous operational activities that were based on the findings and directions of
the crime analysts.22 If their discovery turned out to be inaccurate or false, their
expert power would diminish. On the other hand, if criminal apprehensions were
made and crimes cleared as a result of their findings, their expert power would be
strongly enhanced.
Some managers and leaders are able to accrue expert power over the course of
their careers as a result of successful experiences. A new police chief, for example,
who had successfully helped a previous agency become accredited, might benefit
from expert power in the new position, especially if no one else in the agency
was particularly knowledgeable about the accreditation standards and process.
Similarly, a new squad sergeant or commander might benefit from expertise if it
was perceived that they had been particularly successful in a comparable previous
position. A police legal advisor enjoys expert power as a result of completing law
school. A new human resources director might have the benefit of expertise based
specifically on technical knowledge and experience gained through education and

previous positions.
Charisma
Charisma is influence drawn from the leader’s personality, reputation, integ-
rity, attractiveness, values, and general reputation. Some leaders have influence
over other people because of an almost ethereal quality about them that makes
others want to believe in them and follow them.
Among the outstanding examples of charismatic leaders in modern history
were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Both developed tremendous
influence over millions of people even though their source of influence was re-
stricted solely to their charisma. They had no significant position power, no sub-
stantial claims to expertise, and no capabilities to coerce or reward their followers;
yet there was something about them as individuals that caused literally millions of
people to believe in them and to follow them.
There can be little doubt that many leaders, in policing and in other fields,
exhibit charismatic qualities. However, two very important points about charis-
matic leadership should be recognized. First, the qualities and behaviors that are
perceived as charismatic are apparently not universal. That is, what followers react
to as attractive or influential in a leader’s personality or demeanor seems to vary be-
tween cultures, changes over time, and can be quite perplexing. Some charismatic
leaders are spellbinding speakers, but others are not. Some are physically attractive,
but others are not. Some charismatic leaders are forceful and demanding, but
others seem to attract equal adoration and influence through a quieter and more
collaborative approach.
Second, not all successful and influential leaders exhibit charisma. It may be
the case that in some cultures, or at some points in history, or just in certain situ-
ations, a leader who relies on other sources of power (position, coercion, rewards,
expertise) can be just as effective, or even more effective, in influencing the behav-
ior of others. While charismatic leadership tends to get our attention, we should
not make the mistake of thinking that it is the only form of leadership or source
of influence, or even necessarily the most important one.
Styles of Leadership
The manner in which the leader exercises power and influence in order to
carry out leadership functions is often referred to as leadership style. Certainly
every leader’s style is unique; it may even differ from situation to situation. For
purposes of discussion here, we will describe five general styles of leadership:
1. Autocratic;
2. Bureaucratic;
3. Diplomatic;
4. Participative;
5. Free-rein.23
Autocratic Style
The autocratic, or authoritarian, leader makes decisions and carries them out
according to their own personal beliefs, without regard to precedent, rules and
regulations, or the opinions of others. Autocratic leadership has the advantage of
speedy decision making. It works well if most group members attempt to avoid
responsibilities. It has the disadvantage of being associated with one-way commu-
nication and its attendant shortcomings. Inasmuch as the leader makes all deci-
sions personally, this style will be unsuccessful if the leader is not an expert in a
wide range of areas. The autocratic leader is almost always resented by those in the
group who believe that they have something to contribute and who think that they
should be consulted in decision making. The autocratic leader is generally seen as
a liability.24
Bureaucratic Style
Bureaucratic leaders operate by the book, basing every move on a careful
examination of the policies, procedures, rules and regulations, general orders, and
other directives in effect in the organization. If they have any doubt as to the
proper course of action, bureaucratic-style leaders will first consult their superiors
or someone else likely to know the correct way to proceed. Bureaucratic leadership
is consistent and fair; similar situations will be treated similarly.
The basic shortcoming of this leadership style is that it is not flexible. Opera-
tion by the book limits the leader’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances and
to react to the nuances and mitigating factors present in all situations. This kind
of inflexibility often leads to resentment, because the people involved dislike not
being treated as individuals.
Diplomatic Style
Diplomatic leaders make most of their decisions without consulting anyone,
but they attempt to soft-sell them to the group, using gentle methods of persua-
sion and appeals to reason. By explaining to a group the reasoning behind a deci-
sion, a diplomatic leader often gets the group’s cooperation in the execution of the
decision. The group is likely to interpret the leader’s efforts as a show of respect
for its membership and abide by the decision as an expression of appreciation. On
the other hand, if the leader does a poor job of selling the decision to the group,
their efforts may seem to be an insincere gesture and will probably be resented.
Diplomatic leaders also run the risk that some group members may view their
efforts to explain their decisions as signs of weakness and insecurity.
Participative Style
The participative leader consults group members before decisions are made;
in some cases group members may even be given the opportunity to make the de-
cisions themselves. In either instance, the members’ inputs influence the d ecision-
making process. As a result, there is ordinarily more support for the decision
among the group members. There is also more information available for those
making the decision, including information from the grassroots level, where the
decision will probably be carried out. Additionally, participation by group mem-
bers contributes to their own personal and professional growth, making them
better suited for future d ecision-making positions. This leadership style coincides
closely with participative management, discussed in Chapter 9, as well as many
of the other modern approaches to individual and organizational development
discussed in that chapter.
This style has the disadvantage of being time-consuming, however. It is also
likely to establish cliques within groups, which can cause morale problems and
even hinder the d ecision-making process. Furthermore, it provides leaders with a
device by which they can avoid their own responsibilities. Finally, group members
who are consulted and have their ideas rejected can become resentful of the leader
and eventually cause their downfall.
F
ree-Rein Style
Free-rein leaders exercise a minimum of direction and control over their
groups; they attempt to avoid making decisions whenever possible. Some group
members are comfortable and productive in this kind of laissez-faire environment.
Because individual group members are called on to make many of their own de-
cisions, significant individual growth is possible. Professional people usually work
well within this kind of setting. On the other hand, some people cannot operate
effectively in such an unstructured situation. Because the free-rein style of leader-
ship provides for little direction or control over the activities of group members,
the risks involved are high.
Leadership Styles in Policing

One research study of police leadership surveyed all members of a police
department in an attempt to identify the most preferred style of leadership and
management.25 The choices available to respondents on each item of the survey
represented the full range of leadership styles. The study found that the preferred
choice of all ranks was a diplomatic/participative style of leadership. This style
was characterized by supportive (helping) relationships, substantial trust, del-

egated decision-making authority, and moderate interaction up and down the
hierarchy.
Another study focused on 64 police agencies in Illinois.26 When asked what
management philosophy was currently in use in their police departments, an over-
whelming majority (81%) of operational police officers identified the autocratic
style. Administrators from the same police departments, however, thought that
the participative style was most commonly used. This kind of disconnect between
how leaders/managers think they are behaving, and how their behavior is perceived
by employees, is probably common in all kinds of organizations, not just police
departments. Significantly, though, when asked to select the philosophy that they
would prefer in their departments, both operational personnel and administrators
identified the participative style. A study of police departments in Ohio produced
similar findings.27
Theories of Leadership
Which kind of leader is likely to be most successful? This question has drawn
the attention of a large number of behavioral researchers and theorists. Early ef-
forts to answer the question tended to focus on leader traits, such as personality,
charisma, or physical characteristics. These studies compared the effectiveness of
attractive and unattractive leaders, tall and short leaders, introverted and extro-
verted leaders, friendly and distant leaders, and leaders with similarly contrasting
traits. Jennings summed up these research efforts by stating that “fifty years of
study have failed to produce one personality trait or set of qualities that can be
used to discriminate between leaders and nonleaders.”28
Once leader traits were ruled out as the primary factor in leadership effective-
ness, attention turned to leader behavior. This avenue of study sought to iden-
tify the most successful leadership style. Initial efforts focused on two contrasting
styles: task-oriented leadership versus relationship-oriented leadership. The task-
oriented leader emphasizes task performance by setting production quotas, su-
pervising and correcting workers, and generally ignoring all other considerations.
The r elationship-oriented leader, on the other hand, shows concern for the needs
of workers, checks on their welfare, and generally tries to motivate through satis-
faction of higher-level needs.
Research comparing the effectiveness of task- oriented and relationship-
oriented leadership was inconclusive. Some studies supported the use of the task-
oriented style, while others recommended the relationship-oriented style. Still
others found no differences in the effectiveness of the two styles. As a result of
this confusion, researchers were obliged to proceed in two directions: (1) a more
careful elaboration of leadership styles; and (2) consideration that leader success
might be contingent on situational factors.
Fiedler’s Situational Theory

One of the first situational theories of leadership effectiveness was advanced
by Fred Fiedler.29 He sought to determine the kinds of situations in which task-
oriented leadership would be most successful and those in which a relationship-
oriented style would be most effective. His research led him to identify three
critical situational factors:
1. Leader–member relations;
2. Task structure;
3. Position power.
Fiedler characterized situations in terms of whether leader–member relations

were good or bad, whether task structure was clear or vague, and whether the po-
sition power of the leader was strong or weak. He found that when all factors were
positive (when leader–member relations were good, task structures were clear, and
position power was strong), the task-oriented leader was more successful. Interest-
ingly, when all factors were negative (when leader–member relations were poor,
task structures vague, and position power was weak), the task-oriented style again
was more successful. However, when the factors were mixed, the relationship-
oriented leader was more likely to be successful.
Fiedler recommended that leaders use his theory to analyze their own unique
situations and then to choose the more effective leadership style. He also suggested
that, within an organization, leaders could be appointed to positions based on the
suitability of their styles for the situations at hand. Whether these practical appli-
cations of his theory are completely justified is debatable, but his research does
demonstrate that the answer to the question “Which kind of leader is likely to be
the most successful?” is clear. It depends on the situation.
The Leadership Grid

While Fiedler was examining the kinds of situations in which task-oriented or
r elationship-oriented leadership would be most successful, Robert Blake and Jane
Mouton were challenging the task-versus-relationship dichotomy itself.30 They
pointed out that in the traditional dichotomy, more task orientation by the leader
necessitated less relationship orientation and vice versa. They devised the novel
and startling argument that task and relationship orientation might be two inde-
pendent behaviors that interact to form a managerial style, rather than competing
behaviors, as posited by the traditional approach. That is, they turned the tradi-
tional, one-dimensional concept of leadership behavior into a two-dimensional
concept. In their view, a leader’s behavior could vary from strong task orienta-
tion to weak task orientation and could also vary, independently, from strong
relationship orientation to weak relationship orientation. Their theory is graphi-

cally represented by the Leadership Grid shown in Figure 10.1.
The grid identifies five leadership styles. The 1,9 style, which incorporates
strong relationship orientation and weak task orientation, is identical to Fiedler’s
relationship-oriented style and similar to the diplomatic style discussed earlier in
the chapter. The opposing 9,1 style, which emphasizes tasks over relationships, is
identical to Fiedler’s task-oriented leadership style and similar to the autocratic
style previously described.
In addition to these two styles, which match Fiedler’s, three additional leader-
ship styles are identified in the figure. The 1,1 style is characterized by weak task
and relationship orientation and is similar to what we earlier termed “free-rein
Figure 10.1
The Leadership Grid® Figure
Source: From Robert R. Blake and Anne Adams McCanse (formerly the Managerial
Grid Figure by Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton). 1991. Leadership Dilemmas—Grid
Solutions. Houston, TX: Gulf Publishing Company, p. 29. Copyright © 1991, by Scientific
Methods, Inc. Reproduced by permission of the owners.
leadership.” The 5,5 style evidences moderate task and relationship orientation,
much like the bureaucratic leadership style presented earlier. The 9,9-style leader
demonstrates strong concern for both tasks and relationships and is closest to the
participative style previously discussed.
More recently, Blake and Mouton have identified two additional styles—
the paternalistic or “father knows best” style, in which rewards are promised for
compliance and punishment is threatened for noncompliance, and the oppor-
tunistic or “what’s in it for me?” style, in which the style utilized depends on
which style the leader thinks will return them the greatest benefit. The pater-
nalistic style blends what we previously identified as autocratic and bureaucratic
styles, while emphasizing the coercion and reward sources of power. The oppor-
tunistic style suggests a situational approach, which might seem commendable,
but it is used by a leader to accomplish personal goals rather than organizational
ones.
Having identified these seven leadership styles, Blake and Mouton leave no
doubt that they regard the 9,9 style as most effective. In their view, the leader
who shows a high degree of concern for employees and relationships and, at
the same time, a high degree of concern for task performance, will be the most
successful.
Situational Leadership
By arguing as they do for the 9,9 leadership style, Blake and Mouton overcome
the task/relationship dichotomy, but they end up advocating a one-best-way style
regardless of differences in leadership situations.
Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard attempted an interesting merger of the
managerial grid and situational theory,31 as depicted in Figure 10.2. Under the
grid, they added a situational dimension that they call task-related maturity.
They define this dimension as the extent to which followers (employees, subor-
dinates, group members) have mastered task-related skills and knowledge, as well
as the extent to which they are committed to the organization’s goals and values.
Followers who have mastered their tasks and are committed to the organization
score high on task-related maturity, while those who are still learning their tasks
and show little or no commitment to the organization score low on task-related
maturity.
Hersey and Blanchard argue that the most successful leadership style will be
the one that best matches the task-related maturity of the leader’s followers. Because
this factor (followers’ task-related maturity) can be expected to vary from one sit-
uation to another, the most effective leadership style will also vary, depending on
the situation. In addition, because followers’ t ask-related maturity may change over
time, such as when they become more skilled at their tasks as they gain experience,
the best leadership style to use for a particular group or individual may also change
over time.
Figure 10.2
Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Model
Source: Paul Hersey and Kenneth H. Blanchard. 1982. Management of Organizational
Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources, fourth edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,
p. 152. Adapted with permission.
According to Hersey and Blanchard, a task-oriented leadership style is most

effective when followers’ task-related maturity is very low. In this kind of situation,
the leader must supply structure, direction, and control, because followers are not
skilled at their tasks or committed to high productivity. The leader must show
followers what to do, supervise their performance, correct their mistakes, and per-
haps “crack the whip” to get their attention and spur their efforts.
As followers’ task-related maturity increases, the best leadership style becomes
less task-oriented and more r elationship-oriented. The 9,9 leadership style, with
high concern for both tasks and relationships, is recommended when followers
are low to average in task-related maturity. When followers are above average in
task-related maturity, the 1,9 style, emphasizing concern for relationships over
concern for tasks, is suggested. Finally, when followers are characterized by very
high task-related maturity, Hersey and Blanchard recommend the 1,1, or free-
rein, leadership style. In this situation, the followers are experts in task perfor-
mance and highly committed to the organization; leaders need do little more
than coordinate activities and protect followers from unnecessary distractions.
This theory has much to offer, because it incorporates situational factors and
avoids the task/relationship dichotomy. Its attractiveness is enhanced by its com-
patibility with the observations of experienced consultants and managers. For ex-
ample, Loen suggested the following guidelines:
1. Use the autocratic style if you are an expert and in all emergency situations;
2. Use the participative style only when group members are extremely capable;
3. Use the free-rein style when group members are capable of being productive
when working independently.32
Most current thinking, whether in the general field of management or specif-

ically in police administration,33 supports a contingency or situational model of
managerial and leadership effectiveness: the kind of leadership that will be most
successful will vary from one situation to another. We think that the theory ad-
vanced by Hersey and Blanchard is the most useful and practical situational theory
of leadership presently available.
Police Leadership
Everything that has been learned about leadership styles and effectiveness
from 50-plus years of research and development in the fields of business, military
science, public administration, and government has important applications to the
police field. This work has been summarized and applied to police leadership in a
book by Maria Haberfeld. She discusses both transactional and transformational
styles of leadership. Two important factors that she emphasizes are stewardship and
the ethical component of leadership. As stewards, police leaders accept the respon-
sibility to serve and nurture both their followers and their communities. From an
ethical perspective, police leaders recognize that they must stand for something
and be guided by values and principles. Haberfeld identifies three important sets
of characteristics34:
1. Leaders nurture and serve others;

2. Leaders are just and honest and have a sense of fairness and social responsibility;
3. Leaders are committed to the common good and public interest.
A national survey of police managers conducted by Schafer found agreement

with these characteristics.35 The three highest-rated characteristics of effective po-
lice leaders were honesty and integrity, caring for needs of employees, and strong
communication skills. Conversely, the most significant characteristics of ineffec-
tive leaders were poor communication, neglecting the needs of workers, and ques-
tionable ethics and integrity.
In an earlier book, former police chief Norman Stamper studied execu-
tive leadership in large police departments. He focused primarily on barriers
within police bureaucracies and the police profession that tended to inhibit the
development and practice of leadership. In line with our earlier discussion of
TABLE 10.2 Comparing Police Management and Leadership

Police Management Police Leadership
1. Setting standards 1. Modeling expected behavior

2. Keeping promises 2. Exhibiting interest and concern
3. Maintaining technical competence 3. Serving the community
4. Thinking and behaving rationally 4. Valuing openness and diversity
5. Demonstrating fiscal responsibility
management versus leadership, and formal leaders versus complete leaders, he

identified separate key dimensions of police management and police leadership
(Table 10.2).36
The challenge of police administration is dramatically represented in these
dimensions of police management and police leadership. Any one of these nine
dimensions is difficult to implement and sustain over time, but it is the multi-
plicity and interrelatedness of the dimensions that really creates complexity. It is
not easy to set standards, especially high ones, while also demonstrating concern
for the well-being of followers (this is why the 9,9 leadership style is difficult to
adopt). It is not easy for a police executive to keep promises in an environment
in which political leaders hold the final authority. It is extremely difficult to
“walk the tightrope” between exhibiting concern for police subordinates and
also serving the community, because the perceived needs and interests of police
officers and the public often seem in conflict.37 As noted a few years ago by Jim
Isenberg:
In today’s post-9/11 society, police chiefs face many challenges, includ-

ing shifting ethnic demographics, a rise in youth violence, and internal
opposition to departmental strategies for law enforcement and commu-
nity acceptance. Though these challenges are not necessarily new, they are
complicated by organizational history and global developments. The po-
lice chief of the past, who only had to worry about the daily deployment
of officers, is long gone. Today’s chief is a community leader who must
understand the balance between enforcing the law and ensuring strong
community support for the police and their mission.38
Quality Leadership in Policing

An approach to police leadership and management that is focused primarily
on human development and incorporated aspects of Theory Y, job enrichment,
and participative management is quality leadership as implemented in Madison,
Wisconsin. This approach also drew upon the characteristics of excellent organ-
izations presented in Chapter 7 and on Total Quality Management.39 As men-
tioned in Chapter 9, the philosophical basis for the approach, and why it was
termed an “inside-out” approach, derived from Chief David Couper’s experience
that he could not reasonably ask Madison police officers to dramatically improve
the way they dealt with the public until after he and his fellow police department
managers improved the way they dealt with officers. In other words: (1) first
modernize and humanize police management, so that officers are treated as ma-
ture adults; (2) then require officers to treat the public in a more humane and
mature manner.40 The principles of quality leadership, as adopted in Madison,
were as follows41:
1. Believe in, foster, and support teamwork.

2. Be committed to the problem-solving process; use it, and let data, not emo-
tions, drive decisions.
3. Seek employees’ input before you make key decisions.
4. Believe that the best way to improve the quality of work or service is to ask and
listen to employees who are doing the work.
5. Strive to develop mutual respect and trust among employees.
6. Have a customer orientation and focus toward employees and citizens.
7. Manage on the behavior of 95% of employees, and not on the 5% who cause
problems. Deal with the 5% promptly and fairly.
8. Improve systems and examine processes before placing blame on people.
9. Avoid “top-down,” power-oriented decision making whenever possible.
10. Encourage creativity through risk taking, and be tolerant of honest
mistakes.
11. Be a facilitator and coach. Develop an open atmosphere that encourages pro-
viding and accepting feedback.
12. With teamwork, develop with employees agreed-upon goals and a plan to
achieve them.
In our view, these principles of quality leadership provide sound direction

for improving police performance. They are solidly based on the latest studies of
motivation and leadership, they recognize the need to harness both the hearts and
minds of police employees, and they are very flexible. These principles are quite
compatible with the overall approach to police administration advocated in this
text and with the various styles and theories of leadership presented in this chapter.
See “Future Police Leaders,” Box 10.3.
Box 10.3 Future Police Leaders

Given the many challenges facing contemporary police managers, the style and leadership
philosophy of the effective police leader will have a significant role in future successes in
police organizations. The police leader of the future is one who provides the organizational
framework and context, and keeps the information flowing through a networked police or-
ganization …. Defining the boundaries of both behavior and the mission, and setting the
example of living the values of the entire organization are critical tasks of a future police
leader … employees want and need to know that they are valued and cared for, and they
seek inspiration from their leaders.
Similarly, it is difficult for a police chief or sheriff to meet the requirement of fiscal re-
sponsibility while, at the same time, satisfying subordinates that salaries and staffing are at
maximum levels and equipment and supplies are adequate for the tasks at hand. Suffice it
to say that police leaders should realize that, for all the potential accomplishments and sat-
isfaction that may lie ahead of them, they are decidedly not engaged in a popularity contest.
Source: Joseph A. Schafer, Michael E. Buerger, Richard W. Myers, Carl J. Jensen III, and
Bernard H. Levin. 2012. The Future of Policing: A Practical Guide for Police Managers and
Leaders. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, p. 299.
Preventing Organizational Failure

Our focus in Chapters 9 and 10 has been almost entirely positive—developing
the organization and leading it forward. It is important to realize, however, that
despite the best efforts of managers and leaders, “well-designed and carefully im-
plemented structures, policies and processes will produce errors as a matter of
course in any organization.”42 This is probably even more true in police organiza-
tions than in other types of organizations, because police work involves so much
discretionary decision making under conditions of uncertainty. Moreover, such
errors probably have greater consequences than in most other types of organiza-
tions, since police officers exercise broad power and authority and because police
errors are likely to be widely publicized.
O’Hara has recently studied police organizational failures, and puts them in
six categories43:
1. Normal accidents that occur because complex systems and modern technolo-
gies are not foolproof;
2. Structural failures that occur because of shortcomings or conflicts in organi-
zational design, processes, and policies;
3. Oversight failures that occur when internal or external control mechanisms
do not perform correctly;
4. Cultural deviation that occurs when individuals or groups within the or-
ganization behave according to their own standards in conflict with official
expectations;
Box 10.4 Standard 7.7 Importance of Police Administration

In addition to directing the d
ay-to-day operations of his agency, the police administrator has
the responsibility to exert leadership in seeking to improve the quality of police service and
in seeking to solve community-wide problems of concern to the police. The position of chief
should be recognized as being among the most important and most demanding positions in
the hierarchy of governmental officials.
Source: American Bar Association Project on Standards for Criminal Justice. 1973. The
Urban Police Function. New York: American Bar Association, pp. 1
4–15.
5. Institutionalization that occurs when organizations lose sight of their pur-

pose and strive mainly for their own comfort and survival;
6. Resource diversion that occurs when individual or collective greed siphons
money and energy away from the work that the organization exists to perform.
The lesson for police leadership is straightforward. Even more than manag-
ers, leaders have the responsibility of keeping an eye on the big picture. They are
the ones who have to notice when an organization’s complexity is creating new
risks, when structures have become outdated, when control systems have lost their
focus, when members’ commitment to the ideals of the organization is slipping,
when the organization itself has lost sight of its purpose, and when greed and other
basic human frailties are interfering with the organization’s effectiveness. These
kinds of organizational failures do not usually occur suddenly, but rather creep in
over time. It is the leader’s responsibility to notice these kinds of subtle changes
that others might miss or ignore and, even more importantly, to take steps to pre-
vent their development and mitigate their impact. See “Standard 7.7 Importance
of Police Administration,” Box 10.4.
The Environment of Police Leadership

Leadership, as an element of human behavior, is an open system, influenced
by and having influence on its environment. It would be much simpler to un-
derstand and easier to provide if it were exercised in a vacuum, but this is not the
case.
In performing leadership functions, police managers are constrained by exter-
nal factors. In defining the structures of their organizations, they are limited by
budgetary considerations. Moreover, political pressures often dictate their alloca-
tion of personnel and the design of patrol areas. Coordination control is greatly
restricted by the natural human desire to avoid and evade direction and control.
Goal and norm clarification has as its boundaries the goals and norms of the entire
society and, within these limits, police cultures and subcultures further constrain
the influence of the manager.

Outreach by Police Leaders
January 17, 2015
This post describes then-police chief Tom Manger from Montgomery County, Maryland
answering audience questions following a theater company’s dramatic presentations centered
on race and police violence. The blogger is very complimentary of the chief ’s candor and
openness.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/outreach-by-police-leaders. The hyperlink

at “This post” links to www.expertclick.com/NRWire/Releasedetails.aspx?id=65402.
The position power available to police managers is determined by their su-

periors and thus is susceptible to change. Even the chief has superiors (e.g., the
mayor, city manager, city council, public safety director) who can alter the power
of the chief ’s position. Coercion power, the ability and/or authority to punish,
is strictly limited by civil service regulations, due process guarantees, and the
criminal law. Reward power, as we noted earlier, is also limited by civil service
and the budget. Expertise and charisma are more clearly vested in the person
but, nevertheless, their exercise is also constrained by human, organizational, and
political factors.
These are some of the reasons why leadership is difficult to provide in police
organizations. Police leaders operate in an environment that includes the con-
straining influences of politics, law, other interdependent agencies, police fraternal
organizations and unions, budgets, and human behavior (an important point dis-
cussed earlier in Chapter 7). It is not an easy task to provide definition of structure,
coordination control, and, particularly, goal and norm clarification in such an en-
vironment. What’s more, all organizations today operate in a world that is volatile,
uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, making leadership even more challenging
and making it even more essential that police departments become learning organ-
izations,44 a topic we will explore in Chapter 15.
Summary
At the outset of this chapter, we indicated that leadership is not easily defined,
described, or categorized. There are a number of functions that leaders perform,
a number of ways they go about performing them, and a number of theories
about which ways are the best. Although it has been the subject of considerable
research over the years, leadership remains one aspect of human behavior about
which little has been proven. We think the most persuasive approach is situational
leadership, which emphasizes that the most effective leader, and leader behavior,
depends largely on the situation. Effective leaders, then, have to develop the ability
to adjust their behavior according to different circumstances, including the needs

and capabilities of followers.
Lao-Tzu, a sage in ancient China, provided an interesting framework for
gauging leadership effectiveness:
As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next
best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next,
the people hate…. When the best leader’s work is done the people say,
“We did it ourselves.”45
1. Do you think that leaders are born or made? Why? Do you think that the best leaders are loved, re-
spected, or feared?
2. What is the condition of leadership in organizations with which you are personally familiar?
3. Compare the following officials in terms of sources of influence: police officer, patrol sergeant, patrol
captain, chief of police, mayor, judge, prison warden, probation officer, a
ssembly-line supervisor, and
company president.
4. Identify some charismatic leaders. What gives them their power?
5. Analyze your present work situation according to the three critical factors in Fiedler’s theory. Which
kind of leader does the situation seem to call for? Does the present leader operate that way? Is the
present leader successful? What leadership style is suggested for your work situation according to
Hersey and Blanchard’s theory?
Cases
All of the cases in the back of the text present some opportunity to examine
leadership in police organizations. In particular, you might want to think about
how you would provide leadership in Case 2, Rixton if you were a shift sergeant
or the chief of police. You should compare Case 3, Strategic Planning in Spokane,
Washington, and Case 4, Gaining Outside Commitment in Lowell, Massachusetts, to
the “inside-out” approach that Chief David Couper used in Madison, Wisconsin.
You should also analyze the styles of management and leadership used by Chief
Fortier in Case 5, Leading Change in Riverside, California, in light of the principles
and theories of leadership presented in Chapter 10.
Suggested Reading
Geller, W.A. 1985. Police Leadership in America: Crisis and Opportunity. New York: Praeger.
Haberfeld, M.R. 2013. Police Leadership: Organizational and Managerial Decision Making Process,
second edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Isenberg, J. 2010. Police Leadership in a Democracy: Conversations with America’s Police Chiefs. Boca
Reese, R. 2005. Leadership in the LAPD: Walking the Tightrope. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic
Press.
Stamper, N.H. 1992. Removing Managerial Barriers to Effective Police Leadership. Washington, DC:
Notes
1 R. Gill. 2011. Theory and Practice of Leadership, second edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, p . 9.
2 Police Foundation. 1972. Experiments in Police Improvement: A Progress Report. Washington,
DC: Author, p. 18.
3 A.C. Germann. 1971. “Changing the Police: The Impossible Dream?” Journal of Criminal Law,
Criminology and Police Science 62: 417.
4 H. Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, p. 229.
5 W.A. Geller (ed.). 1985. Police Leadership in America: Crisis and Opportunity. New York:
Praeger.
6 N.H. Stamper. 1992. Removing Managerial Barriers to Effective Police Leadership. Washington,
DC: Police Executive Research Forum, p. x.
7 E.A. Flynn, and V. Herrington. 2015. “Toward a Profession of Police Leadership.” In New Per-
spectives in Policing. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, p . 3.
8 See www.fbi.gov/about-us/training/national-academy.
9 See www.policeforum.org/smip.
10 See http://sps.northwestern.edu/program-areas/public-safety.
11 See http://louisville.edu/spi.
12 M.T. Lazor. 2009. “Ohio’s Certified Law Enforcement Executive Program.” The Police Chief 76,
no. 5: 3 0–33; IACP. 2009. “Leadership Development around the States.” The Police Chief 76,
no. 5: 34–37.
13 See www.theiacp.org/Leadership-in-Police-Organizations-LPO.
14 S.E. Moriarty. 2009. “The Leadership in Police Organizations Program in the Delaware State
Police: Recommendations for Law Enforcement Leadership Development.” The Police Chief 76,
no. 5: 20–29.
15 M.A. Viverette. 2005. “President’s Message: Prepare Tomorrow’s Police Leaders.” The Police Chief
(November). Online at: www.policechiefmagazine.org/presidents-message-prepare-tomorrows-
police-leaders.
16 W. Bennis. 1989. On Becoming a Leader. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, p. 45.
17 Gill. 2011. Theory and Practice of Leadership, p. 16.
18 K. Betsalel. 1990. “Police Leadership and the Reconciliation of Police–Minority Relations.”
American Journal of Police 9, no. 2: 63–76.
19 J.M. Burns. 1978. Leadership. New York: Harper & Row.
20 J. French, and B. Haven. 1968. “The Basis of Social Power.” In D. Cartwright, and A. Zander
(eds), Group Dynamics: Research and Theory, third edition. New York: Harper & Row.
21 An excellent example of this is in P. Maas. 1972. Serpico. New York: Bantam Books.
22 G.W. Cordner. 1981. “The Effects of Directed Patrol: A Natural Q uasi-Experiment in Pontiac.”
In J.J. Fyfe (ed.), Contemporary Issues in Law Enforcement. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 37–58.
23 J. Owens. 1973. “The Art of Leadership.” Personnel Journal 52, no. 5: 393.
24 R.L. Parker. 1986. “Autocratic Police Administration: An Outmoded Concept.” Law and
Order34, no. 5: 33.
25 R. Reams, J. Kuykendall, and D. Burns. 1975. “Police Management Systems: What Is an
Appropriate Model?” Journal of Police Science and Administration 3, no. 4: 475–481.
26 J.H. Auten. 1985. “Police Management in Illinois, 1983.” Journal of Police Science and Admin-
istration 13, no. 4: 3 25–337.
27 J.H. Witte, L.F. Travis, and R.H. Langworthy. 1990. “Participatory Management in Law
Enforcement.” American Journal of Police 9, no. 4: 1–23.
28 E.E. Jennings. 1961. “The Anatomy of Leadership.” Management of Personnel Quarterly 1, no.
1: 2.
29 F. Fiedler. 1965. “Engineer the Job to Fit the Manager.” Harvard Business Review 43, no. 5:
115–122.
30 R.R. Blake, and A.A. McCanse. 1985. The Managerial Grid III: The Key to Leadership Excellence.
Houston, TX: Gulf.
31 P. Hersey. 1997. The Situational Leader. Escondido, CA: Center for Leadership Studies;
P. Hersey, and K.H. Blanchard. 1982. Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing
Human Resources, fourth edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
32 R.O. Loen. 1971. Manage More by Doing Less. New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 111.
33 J.L. Kuykendall. 1985. “Police Managerial Styles: A Grid Analysis.” American Journal of Police
4, no. 1: 61.
34 M.R. Haberfeld. 2006. Police Leadership. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, pp. 19–21.
35 J.A. Schafer. 2010. “Effective Leadership and Leaders in Policing: Traits, Assessment, Develop-
ment, and Expansion.” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 33,
no. 4: 644–663.
36 Stamper. 1992. Removing Managerial Barriers, pp. 150–155.
37 R. Reese. 2005. Leadership in the LAPD: Walking the Tightrope. Durham, NC: Carolina Aca-
demic Press.
38 J. Isenberg. 2010. Police Leadership in a Democracy: Conversations with America’s Police Chiefs.
Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, p . 15.
39 W.E. Deming. 1986. Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
40 M.A. Wycoff, and W.G. Skogan. 1993. Community Policing in Madison: Quality from the Inside
Out. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
ism, Corruption and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nation’s Police. Indianapolis, IN:
Dog Ear Publishing, pp. 214–219; D.C. Couper, and S.H. Lobitz. 1991. Quality Policing: The
Madison Experience. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
42 P. O’Hara. 2012. Why Law Enforcement Organizations Fail: Mapping the Organizational Fault
Lines in Policing, second edition. Durham, NC: Carolina Press, p . 25.
43 O’Hara. 2012. Why Law Enforcement Organizations Fail, pp. 18–21.
44 V. Herrington. 2017. “The Success of Failure: Can We Really Build Learning Organizations
in Policing?” Australian Institute of Police Management. Online at: www.aipm.gov.au/sites/
default/files/pictures/The%20success%20of%20failure%20-%20can%20we%20really%20
build%20learning%20organisations%20in%20policing.pdf.
45 Quoted in R. Townsend. 1970. Up the Organization. New York: Knopf, p. 99.
PART IV
The Strategic Management Perspective
The five chapters of Part IV discuss the strategic management perspective of police
administration. This perspective emphasizes work tasks, organizational interac-
tions, and outcomes, rather than structures or human behavior. It tends to look
across the organization instead of taking the top-down view of the traditional
perspective or the bottom-up view of the human perspective. The strategic man-
agement perspective is particularly focused on finding the most effective ways of
carrying out the organization’s work and accomplishing the organization’s mission.
Chapter 11 addresses communication and information in the police organiza-
tion and their relationship to decision making. Information is probably the most
important resource utilized by a police department. All sorts of management and
operational activities and decisions depend on the timely availability of pertinent
information. In order to ensure the accuracy and availability of such information,
police agencies employ several types of information systems and engage in a vari-
ety of information analysis techniques. By conceptualizing police administration
in terms of information-based decision making, new insights into the process of
directing and controlling police officers can be achieved.
Chapter 12 discusses the measurement and evaluation of police performance.
This subject is crucial; we must first be able to measure performance before we can
determine whether it is improving or deteriorating. As it turns out, measuring po-
lice performance is exceedingly difficult; a variety of measurement issues and prob-
lems are discussed. We conclude that perfection in measuring police performance
cannot be achieved, but that some reasonably accurate and informative methods
are available. Measurement and evaluation of individual-level, program-level, and
organizational-level police performance are examined.
Chapter 13 examines the most important strategies and tactics adopted by po-
lice agencies. These strategies and tactics represent the principal methods by which
the police attempt to perform their work and achieve their goals. A number of ma-
jor studies in the 1970s called into question the effectiveness of many traditional
police practices. Since then, a variety of alternative strategies and tactics have been
implemented; some of these alternative methods have been shown to be more ef-
fective than traditional methods, marking the way for improved policing. But the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-14
288 The Strategic Management Perspective
effectiveness of many police strategies, tactics, and programs remains uncertain,

either because they have not been evaluated or results have been inconclusive.
Chapter 14 provides a description of the role of the police in homeland se-
curity. This chapter examines the police role in prevention, protection, response,
and recovery as it relates to both terrorism and disasters. Considering that in-
ternational terrorism remains a serious threat, that domestic terrorism seems to
be increasing, and that climate change promises more frequent and more serious
weather-related disasters, police responsibilities in the realm of homeland security
are destined to grow in the years to come.
Chapter 15 discusses several contemporary themes and issues in modern po-
lice administration. The focus is on critical issues that are facing police organiza-
tions in the early stages of the t wenty-first century, as well as issues looming on the
horizon. We live in a fast-changing world. Police executives have the responsibility
of identifying and anticipating social, political, and technological changes that are
taking place in society, and then preparing their organizations for those changes.
Looking ahead and preparing for the future is not an exact science, of course, but
it is a very important management activity that is not always given the attention
it deserves.
CHAPTER 11 Information in the
Police Organization
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify obstacles and barriers to effective downward, upward, and lateral communications
in organizations.
• Identify six categories of decisions made in police organizations.
• Distinguish among operations, command and control, and management information sys-
tems in police organizations.
• Identify five kinds of information analysis often found in police departments.
• Explain why police decision making can never be totally rational.
In Chapter 8, we discussed communication as an important element of hu-

man behavior; we said, in effect, that communication works in concert with roles,
attitudes, self-concept, motivation, and perception to produce behavior. We fur-
ther indicated that communication is an involved and complex function for indi-
viduals to perform and that it is not often performed well.
If communication from one individual to another is a problem, consider the
possibilities for difficulty in attempting to communicate with large numbers of
people. In the organizational setting, there are countless situations in which one
person must communicate with several others, groups of people must communi-
cate with other groups, and groups must communicate with individuals. Seriously
complicating these processes of communication are the many diverse roles played
by individuals: superiors, subordinates, peers, group members, and competitors.
These roles, in turn, influence the motivations of the participants and serve to
impede good communication. Organizational communication, therefore, is even
more complex than interpersonal communication.
Communication is critical for transmitting information among people in or-
ganizations. Information is needed at all levels in organizations for coordination,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-15
Box 11.1 Communication in the Police Organization

Like other organizations, police departments depend upon communication structure and
flow for defining and meeting the goals of the organization. However, it can be argued
that information sharing among workers is even more important in police departments
than in most other bureaucracies. A police department is compelled by its very function
to maintain a high volume of communication flowing both horizontally and vertically in
the organization. The mandate of the police function is to be cognizant of and regulate
citizen behavior, particularly activities citizens typically try to keep from the eyes of the
public, or at least the eyes of the police. Thus, against the odds, the police officer is highly
dependent not only on the gathering of information from outside sources, but also on the
sharing and integration of information among workers. In addition, the police officer’s
willingness to communicate is critical for authority, for by the very nature of the patrol
officer’s task, supervisory control can often be exercised only after information has been
communicated.
Source: Chris M. Dunning and Ellen Hochstedler. 1982. “Satisfaction with Communication
in a Police Organization.” In Jack R. Greene (ed.), Managing Police Work: Issues and Analy-
sis. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, p. 142.
problem solving, planning, and decision making. Police officers need informa-
tion to make arrest decisions, supervisors need information to make scheduling
decisions, and commanders need information to allocate personnel and choose
strategies (see “Communication in the Police Organization,” Box 11.1). All organ-
izations, including police departments, need information and communications
systems that provide employees with the information they need to effectively per-
form their duties.
Organizational Communication
Organizational communication is much more than a simple compilation of
all the interpersonal communication that takes place between and among mem-
bers of an organization. It cannot be explained solely on the basis of the principles
of interpersonal communication discussed in Chapter 8. Although these have a di-
rect bearing on organizational communication, they must be considered in terms
of some other organizational concepts.
Importantly, “communication in an organization must be viewed as a
system.”1 After discussing channels, directions, and barriers related to organ-
izational communication, we will focus on communication and information
systems as they provide information for police decision making. The systems
perspective is essential because both interpersonal and organizational commu-
nications depend on feedback to ensure accuracy in the transmission and re-
ceipt of messages.
11 Information in the Police Organization 291
Communication Channels
In many organizations, the best sources of information are executive assis-
tants, clerks, and other administrative staff. They prepare memoranda and letters,
take notes at meetings, place and receive telephone calls, answer questions when
the boss is absent, and open most of the mail. They are key participants in a
number of communication processes, and they have access to a great amount of
information. People within the organization who want to get information without
going through official channels can often get the information they want if they
know the right person.
Anyone who has ever served in the armed forces knows that sergeants, not
generals, win wars. This, of course, is a facetious way of saying that much of what
is accomplished in organizations is accomplished in unofficial ways. In the mili-
tary, sergeants are the people who have the information and who are usually in a
position to act on it. Many soldiers who knew the right sergeant could find out
what was going on, have orders changed, and be sent to an exotic assignment; in-
formation unofficially obtained and put to the right use can be extremely valuable.
In similar fashion, people who work skillfully within an organization can of-
ten get their messages through to someone else in the organization in an unofficial
way. A police officer who is displeased with the sergeant, for example, can relay
that displeasure to the chief simply by talking about the sergeant in front of the
right people; the right people, in this instance, are those who have access to the
chief and are likely to spread disparaging remarks.
These are examples of how unofficial communication can affect people within
an organization. The formal organization chart establishes formal communicative
relationships between and among superiors and subordinates and between and
among peers at the same organizational levels. The organization that confines itself
solely to these official communication channels, however, will, in effect, starve its
people of information. What happens in most organizations is that an informal
organization develops for the purpose of facilitating unofficial communications
(Figure 11.1). Organization members at all levels eventually learn to get the infor-
mation they need; they learn to do this without going through official channels
and without upsetting the formal organization.
As might be expected, the unofficial communication channels that develop
are often more efficient and effective than officially established channels. Unof-
ficial communication channels are usually capable of passing information along
more quickly; they can skip entire levels of the organization and avoid the red
tape that the formal organization imposes on the communication process. In
addition, the content of messages unofficially delivered is often clearer than the
content of official messages; unofficial messages do not have to be shrouded in
official language or be designed to please readers along official communication
channels.
Although unofficial communication channels are essentially neutral structures,
their existence can exert both positive and negative influences on the organization
The Informal Organization

Figure 11.1
as a whole. They can serve to enforce o utput-limitation norms, spread rumors,

pilfer confidential information, and generally create organizational turmoil. On
the other hand, unofficial communication channels have prevented many organ-
izations from collapsing and disintegrating. They alert superiors to problems that
middle managers do not recognize, choose to ignore, or attempt to hide. They
provide information to decision makers when official communication channels
are clogged. They allow competent people with incompetent supervisors to do
their jobs, and they facilitate speedy communication in a crisis when official com-
munication channels are too slow, even if they are working.
Many police chiefs instinctively fight the informal organization, failing to rec-
ognize that it has probably developed because of the shortcomings of the formal
organization, a matter that embarrasses them and affects their self-concept as a
leader who is “in control.” But more secure and resourceful chiefs will recognize
organizational inadequacies as the reason for the development of unofficial com-
munication channels and will revise the structures and procedures of the formal
organization so that efficient unofficial communication channels are absorbed into
the formal organization. If they are unable to do this, they should at least attempt
to recognize the value of these channels for the communication of information
vital to the stability of their organizations. As Whitehead noted many years ago,
“if some department is in fact habitually obtaining information from another by
unofficial means, this rather suggests that the information is found useful, and a
few procedures for obtaining it with less trouble might be devised.”2
Communication Directions and Barriers

Communications in a formal organization can go up, down, or across
(Figure 11.2). Downward communications go from supervisor to subordinate
down the chain of command. Upward communications go from subordinate to
supervisor up the chain of command. All other communications go laterally across
the organization.
Downward is the most traditional and accepted direction of organizational
communication. Downward is the direction in which orders are given and author-
ity is exercised. It is the direction in which police chiefs, command-level personnel,
and supervisory personnel communicate with and through their subordinates.
The main barrier to effective downward communication is the chain of com-
mand. According to this principle of management, a police chief who wishes to
get a message to a patrol officer at the operational level should transmit that mes-
sage down the chain of command, through each level of management. A police
chief who wants to tell a patrol officer to dress more neatly, for example, gives
the message to the proper captain, who, in turn, gives it to the proper lieutenant,
who gives it to the proper sergeant, who gives the message to the patrol officer.
Passing as it does through so many people, the message might become distorted.
Each person within the chain of command might perceive the message differently,
interpret its meaning differently, and transmit it inaccurately. In addition, because
294
Figure 11.2
Directions of Organizational Communication
each person in the chain is in a position of authority with respect to the next re-
cipient of the message, each tends to add their own contribution. With so many
perceptions, interpretations, transmissions, and personal contributions involved,
it is the rare message that finally arrives at its destination intact.
Upward communications undergo this same distortion as they pass through levels
of the organization, but they are beset by other distorting forces as well, largely because
upward communications go directly against the grain of organizational authority. In
upward communications, employees are giving supervisors information that may
eventually be used in evaluating or otherwise managing them. Because of that, they
will probably frame the message in a way that makes them look as good as possible.
Upward communications, therefore, are likely to be distorted at their inception.
It has been noted that supervisors generally tend to think that their subordi-
nates feel free to discuss problems with them, whereas a much smaller percentage
of subordinates believe that such an open relationship actually exists.3 Employees
often believe that it is dangerous for them to express their true feelings, that to
disagree with their superiors will negatively affect their chances for promotions,
that management is not really interested in their welfare, and that they will not
be rewarded for good ideas. Typically, although supervisors regard their jobs as
positions of responsibility, subordinates view their supervisors’ jobs as positions
of power. Because of apprehension about how supervisors will use their powers,
subordinates often attempt to keep them in the dark, cover up problems, avoid
taking chances, protect one another, and generally play it safe.
Four common organizational techniques that further thwart upward commu-
nication have been identified:
1. Banishing or otherwise decimating whistle-blowers and boat rockers: employ-

ees who expose intolerable conditions, corruption, incompetence, and other
problems in the organization;
2. Placing safe and loyal employees above and below troublemakers in the organ-
ization’s hierarchy, thus effectively silencing them;
3. Asking questions, the answers to which are predetermined, giving manage-
ment an appearance of being concerned about problems without actually con-
fronting them;
4. Declining to inform management about what is actually going on because of
a belief that management would probably not understand anyway, or worse,
that management might try to become directly involved and, thus, further
complicate matters.4
Because of these tendencies, it can seem that “from an agency perspective, the
bureaucrat’s main job is not only to hide facts from the public, but also to keep
them from fellow bureaucrats up the line.”5 The very nature of organizations al-
most precludes effective upward communication.
Given the inherent limitations of upward and downward communication in

organizations, lateral communications that do not go up or down the chain of
command play an essential role in getting work done. They may be between line
and staff units, coequal units, employees within a particular unit, or even between
different organizations. Although they are extremely important elements in the
communicative process, lateral communications are often overlooked. With or-
ganizations performing more complex operations every day, managers at all levels
are less able to coordinate their subordinates via the chain of command. The more
complex an organization becomes, the greater the need for lateral communications
among subordinates, so that all involved can know exactly how their particular
work fits into the organization and where they fit on the team.
The nature of hierarchical organization is an obstacle to lateral communica-
tions. When communications flow outside the chain of command, official au-
thority is absent; its place is taken by persuasion. Moreover, hierarchies encourage
specialization, a factor that is detrimental to lateral communications, inasmuch as
specialists usually have their own frames of reference, loyalties, and terminology.
Additionally, the general division of the hierarchy into subunits is a barrier to
lateral communications, with each subunit fighting for a larger share of organi-
zational resources and a more prominent organizational position in the relative
scheme of things. The huge size of many modern organizations makes it difficult
for any unit to ascertain who has the information it needs or who needs the infor-
mation it has.
One must also consider the basic problems involved in communication be-
tween any two individuals in addition to the organizational obstacles affecting
downward, upward, and lateral communications. Most organizational commu-
nications ultimately boil down to series of interpersonal communications being
conducted within the organizational milieu and affected by organizational com-
munication channels, directions, and barriers. As we have pointed out, feedback is
the primary device used to clear the lines of interpersonal communications so that
the communicating parties can be aware of whether they understand one another
and whether messages have been received as sent. Because interpersonal communi-
cations are major factors in organizational communications, feedback is also an es-
sential element in keeping organizational communication lines unclogged. Other
recommended practices for improving communications are the use of simplified
language, active listening, and emotional control.6
The Importance of Information
The substance of communications is information. Regardless of whether the

direction of organizational communication is downward, upward, or lateral, what
is communicated is information.
Information is an extremely important resource in any organization. Accurate
information is needed at every organizational level. Without accurate information,
good decisions cannot be made, good plans cannot be formulated, and good
strategies and tactics cannot be devised; in general, no one can perform the job
satisfactorily if accurate information is unavailable. Especially with respect to gov-
ernmental service organizations, “the flow of information is the critical element.
Information must flow to the key decision points where action is taken with regard
to a service to be performed.”7
Information gets from one place to another in an organization through
communications. The messages containing the information can be written or
oral. Those that are written can be delivered in various ways, such as poli-
cies, orders, memos, e-mails, and texts. Those that are oral include in-person
conversations, meetings, telephone calls, and radio communication. Of great
importance, however, is whether the communications system carrying the
messages is o pen-loop or c losed-loop. If the communications system is o pen-
loop, not providing feedback, then people in the organization, including man-
agers, will be operating on the basis of information that could be inaccurate
or misperceived. If the communication system is closed-loop, providing for
feedback, then the organization will be run on the basis of information that is
accurate, verified, and understood. Thus, the necessity for a c losed-loop com-
munications system is obvious.
One of the most important tasks for any organizational administrator,
therefore, is the development of a good, closed-loop communications and infor-
mation system. Such a system is a fundamental and necessary factor for organi-
zational effectiveness and stability. If administrators are deprived of information
about how their organizations are running, they will be unable to run them
properly. Their communications and information systems must be designed so
that communications barriers are minimized, problems are identified quickly,
and reliable information is available to decision makers. The creation and main-
tenance of such a system can be difficult, costly, and time-consuming, but it is
necessary.
Information and Police Decision Making
Much of police work and police administration can be viewed as decision

making. At any level in the police organization, decision making involves choosing
from among alternatives. Ideally, in each case the alternative selected will be that
which promises the most complete solution of the problem at hand or the most
complete attainment of the goals and objectives of the police department. Selec-
tion of alternatives is made difficult whenever uncertainty and ambiguity charac-
terize the decision-making situation; herein lies one of the major challenges facing
police administration, because police decision making is almost always charac-
terized by some degree of uncertainty and ambiguity. The only way to minimize
these conditions is by providing information that reduces uncertainty and clarifies
goals, problems, and alternatives.
Before we examine methods of providing such information for police decision

making, we need to look more closely at the kinds of decisions involved in police
work and police administration.
S
treet-Level Decisions
The largest numbers of police officers are those assigned to patrol duties. They
are often the least experienced personnel in the agency, and they are the officers
who receive the lowest pay and are accorded the lowest status. In the performance
of their duties, patrol officers make some of the most important decisions in the
department, decisions that involve restricting freedom and, in some instances,
even the taking of life. When making decisions such as these, patrol officers op-
erate with a great amount of discretion. Supervisors are rarely present when im-
portant decisions must be made, time is usually of the essence, and policies and
procedures rarely provide strong positive guidance.
Concern for police discretion and decision making has understandably
focused primarily on the decision to arrest, because it is a frequent police
decision that has far-reaching consequences for citizens. However, street-level
police officers make a variety of other kinds of decisions in the course of their
work:
1. Upon observing suspicious circumstances, they decide whether and how

to intervene. They might ignore a situation, inquire casually, formally stop
and frisk, employ force, or adopt another of the infinite variety of possible
interventions.
2. Having intervened in a situation, police officers must choose a disposition.
One choice may be arrest, but other options may also be available, including
formal summons, referral to another agency (social service, mental health, ju-
venile services), mediation, warning, or doing nothing.8
3. Having arrested a person, police officers may have discretion in booking and
charging, including release without charge, choosing what charges to place,
deciding how thoroughly to search a person and their effects, and determining
whether the person remains in jail overnight.
4. Patrol officers and detectives have discretion when deciding how thoroughly
to investigate a reported crime and what investigative methods to employ.9
Decisions about whether to employ such methods as polygraph examina-
tions, undercover operations, or electronic surveillance have important
consequences.
5. When responding to an emergency call or pursuing a traffic or criminal vi-
olator, police officers decide how fast to drive and whether to violate nor-
mal traffic laws and safety rules. These decisions may affect the likelihood of
apprehending a violator or taking effective action at the scene of an emergency.

They certainly affect the safety of police officers, violators, other motorists,
passengers, and pedestrians.10
6. When intervening in suspicious circumstances, disorderly situations, and
crimes in progress, police officers decide whether to use force and how much
to use. The implications of these decisions are obvious.
7. While on routine patrol, police officers decide how to utilize their uncommitted
time. Some officers drive constantly, while others park. Some officers seek out
trouble spots, while others avoid trouble. Some officers emphasize traffic enforce-
ment, while others focus on burglary prevention, juveniles, or drug violations.
8. When engaged in problem-solving activity,11 police officers decide which of
various alternative responses to a problem will be implemented. They decide
whether to collaborate with community groups and other government agen-
cies, and whether to pursue such powerful responses as nuisance abatement
and civil forfeiture.
9. Police officers make a variety of other decisions that are not trivial to the peo-
ple involved: whether to ticket, warn, or ignore a parking or traffic violation;
whether to tow a vehicle in response to a parking violation; whether to contact
the media to report an arrest or accident; whether to arrest in response to a
computer “hit” that may be invalid; and whether to seize property only tan-
gentially related to a crime under investigation.
Of all the decisions made in the police organization, street-level decisions are
the most dramatic and have the most immediate impact on our lives. Decisions
made at other organizational levels, however, are important and may also have
profound effects on police performance, crime control, and the quality of services
provided to the community.
Supervisory Decisions
Patrol and investigative supervisors make a variety of important decisions in
two general categories: utilization of their subordinates to handle workload, and
management of their subordinates. In the first category, patrol supervisors assign
officers to beats, supervise the handling of major incidents, and direct activities in
response to perceived crime and public order problems. A patrol supervisor might
have to decide whether to assign an aggressive officer to a volatile neighborhood;
whether to grant or cancel leave in accordance with manpower considerations;
whether to permit a patrol officer to conduct an extended investigation of a re-
ported crime; whether to handle a tactical problem with regular patrol units or call
for specialized assistance; or whether to assign some officers to directed patrol du-
ties in response to a particular crime trend. An investigative supervisor must make
decisions about personnel utilization, case assignment, and utilization of special

investigative methods. Examples of these decisions include how many detectives
to assign to a major case; which detective to assign to a sensitive investigation;
whether to authorize payments to an informant; and whether to permit a danger-
ous undercover assignment.
Police supervisors also make more routine management decisions. They
decide which of their subordinates to recommend for promotion; whether to
initiate formal disciplinary proceedings in response to an alleged infraction of
the rules; whether any subordinates are in need of special training or retraining;
and whether to argue for more resources during the budget process. Although
not terribly dramatic when compared to a police officer’s decision whether to
arrest a citizen, these m
anagement-oriented supervisory decisions affect subor-
dinates, agency performance, and, thus, agency effectiveness. These kinds of
decisions can also affect the supervisors’ and the police department’s financial
liability, should a subordinate commit a wrongful act or fail to perform a nec-
essary act.
Allocation Decisions
A major set of decisions confronting police administrators pertains to the al-
location of police resources. This kind of decision in police departments has tradi-
tionally been conceived largely in terms of patrol allocation. The default decision
in patrol allocation is to assign equal numbers of officers to work the different days
of the week and different times of the day. Alternatively, patrol manpower can be
differentially allocated by times, days, and shifts in accordance with workload,
response time objectives, deterrence capabilities, and community engagement op-
portunities. Police administrators make these patrol allocation decisions, whether
by design or by default.
Patrol allocation decisions are actually only one subset of overall police allo-
cation decision making. The principal decision concerns the allocation of resources
among subsystems and units, of which patrol is traditionally the largest. The al-
location decision involves distributing resources among the operations, admin-
istration, and auxiliary services subsystems as well as among the many functions
subsumed within each. The police chief has to make such decisions as whether
to have a juvenile unit and, if so, how many personnel to assign to it; how many
personnel to assign to community services; and whether to have detectives on duty
around the clock or only during the day shift.
Allocation decisions have a major impact on the police department’s accom-
plishment of its goals and objectives. Consciously or implicitly, they reflect the po-
lice organization’s values and priorities. They determine the resources available to
handle different types of problems as they arise. The fact that allocation decisions
in many departments are made on the basis of politics, community pressures, and
police tradition in no way detracts from their importance.
Strategic and Tactical Decisions

Another category of decision making in police agencies concerns the tactics
and strategies employed in the performance of police operational duties. Histori-
cally, police administrators have given relatively little attention to this type of deci-
sion. Having allocated resources to patrol and investigations, police chiefs left the
design of strategies and tactics to others. In some instances, supervisors attempted
to direct the activities of their subordinates, but frequently it was left to the discre-
tion of individual patrol officers and detectives to choose their own tactics. Under
these circumstances, it was not unusual to find tremendous variation in tactics and
enforcement styles within departments and even between patrol officers working
the same beats on different shifts.
Until recently, the traditional failure of police managers to make strategic and
tactical decisions has masked the very existence of this kind of decision. With the
advent of government fiscal problems and the development of planning-oriented
police programs, however, the desirability of strategic decision making has become
evident.12 Given limited resources and a set of goals to be pursued, it is impor-
tant for police administrators to adopt strategies and tactics that make optimum
use of available resources. While the nature of police work may necessitate leav-
ing considerable discretion in the hands of police officers, that discretion need
not include total freedom in choosing tactics and strategies. Police administrators
have the responsibility for overall organizational performance and the obligation
to relate resources to the accomplishment of the organization’s primary goals. It is
therefore incumbent on them to make strategic decisions rather than deferring to
the unarticulated, improvised, and sometimes questionable decisions of individual
police officers.
Some of the strategic and tactical choices available to police administrators
are discussed in Chapter 13. The task of the police administrator is to choose a
combination of strategies and tactics that makes efficient use of resources, fits the
community’s problems and expectations, and yields the maximum amount of goal
attainment.
Policy Decisions
Another set of decisions made by police administrators involves policies.
These decisions concern written policies that guide police officer decision making,
as well as the organization’s general stance toward community issues and problems.
Both written and unwritten policies are important reflections of the police depart-
ment’s values and priorities and, as such, represent important decisions for police
administrators.
Most police departments promulgate written policies to cover a wide range of
matters, but the most important subjects for policy coverage are police officer de-
cisions that affect the lives, property, and freedom of citizens. Police administrators
must choose policies that guide officers in their decisions to arrest, to use force,
to engage in high-speed driving, or to make other street-level choices affecting life
and freedom. Despite the operational reality of discretion, “police officers need
administrative guidelines that are developed for the purpose of assisting them in
making appropriate decisions as they carry out their work.”13 Police policies, pro-
cedures, rules, and regulations were discussed in C hapter 5.
Police administrators also make decisions about the organization’s overall
stance or policy toward community problems and issues. For example, decisions
must be made about the police department’s policy toward crimes involving gam-
bling, prostitution, and drug possession. Similarly, a police department must have
policies concerning media relations, cooperation with other law enforcement
agencies, and collaboration with outside researchers. Frequently, the term “policy”
is used to describe a department’s philosophy or style, as in “it is our policy to work
closely with the community” or “it is our policy to strictly enforce the law.” These
broad forms of policy may seem so vague as to be mere platitudes, but they rep-
resent one of the most significant ways in which the police organization transmits
guidance to police officers.14 For this reason, it is extremely important for police
administrators to choose and communicate such policies carefully, rather than to
permit them to be set by custom and tradition and transmitted through the filter
of the police subculture.
Administrative Decisions
Finally, a whole host of administrative decisions are required in the course of
managing a police organization. The management functions of system building,
planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling all involve substantial
decision making. Decisions must be made about qualifications for employment,
which applicants to hire, which employees to promote, and which employees to
terminate. Decisions are required concerning the length and content of recruit
training, field training, and in-service training. Managers must make budgeting
decisions, purchasing decisions, disciplinary decisions, and scheduling decisions.
Organizational structure decisions pertaining to centralization, specialization,
grouping like functions, delegation of authority, and span of control must be made.
The street-level decisions of patrol officers and detectives have an immediate
impact on citizens; the discretionary character of such decisions frequently causes
considerable notoriety. Police supervisors and administrators also make numer-
ous decisions, as we have shown, and many of these allocation, strategic, tactical,
policy, and administrative decisions have a significant bearing on the activities of
street-level police officers and on the effectiveness of the police organization as
a whole. When police administrators make these kinds of decisions, they rarely
face the time constraints, danger, hostility, and situational unpredictability that
confront patrol officers and detectives. On the other hand, administrators are re-
quired to juggle political and organizational pressures, resource constraints, and
externally imposed policies while having to make difficult choices characterized
by uncertainty and ambiguity. Because decisions at both street and administrative

levels have important consequences and are characterized by uncertainty, it is crit-
ically important that as much correct information as possible be made available for
consideration in the decision-making process.
Police Information Systems
Due to the nature of their activities, police officers and police organizations
collect a great amount of information. The records rooms and computer systems
of large police departments contain significant amounts of information. All the
file cabinets and computers, in turn, may not contain as much information as a
few police officers have stored in their heads.
To be useful for decision making, information must be made available in a
usable form to the decision maker at the time the decision has to be made. To
achieve this, several steps must be taken:
• Data Collection—information must initially be obtained, with due concern

for its reliability and validity.
• Data Collation—information must be sifted, labeled, categorized, and other-
wise manipulated so that its relevance to problems and decisions is identified.
• Analysis/Interpretation—information must be tabulated, analyzed, and syn-
thesized to reveal patterns, trends, and generalizations.
• Dissemination—methods must be developed to communicate information
and analyses to decision makers.
• Feedback and Evaluation—a closed-loop system must be maintained to pro-
vide feedback on the validity and usefulness of the information and analyses.
The kind of information needed depends largely on the type of decision to be

made. Police officers facing an arrest decision may need information about the in-
cident that has occurred, about the people involved, about the law, and about the
alternatives that are available for dealing with the situation. A police chief facing
a patrol allocation decision, on the other hand, needs information about police
workload by time of day, day of week, and location. In the following sections, we
will discuss three general types of police information systems: operations infor-
mation systems, command and control systems, and management information
systems. While this is not an exhaustive list of information systems, it gives a broad
overview of information systems within the police organization.
Operations Information Systems

Operations information systems are systems that provide information to patrol
officers, detectives, and other employees engaged in direct service to the public. The
kinds of decisions being made by these police employees are primarily street-level de-
cisions. Information is needed to make choices about whether and how to intervene
in suspicious circumstances, what disposition to make following intervention, and
what tactics to employ during routine patrol. The specific types of information that
are required might include whether a person is wanted by the law, whether an item
of property is stolen, whether a vehicle is properly registered, whether a violator has
a prior record, whether a particular store window was previously broken, or whether
a burglary under investigation fits the pattern of previously reported burglaries.
Some of the means by which operations information is provided in police de-
partments are so routine that we are apt to overlook them when identifying infor-
mation systems. The police communications system and police records system are
key components of the operations information system. Using the radio, a patrol
officer who has noticed a broken store window can inquire as to whether the dam-
age has previously been noticed and reported. Another officer, hearing the ques-
tion over the radio, may have the information that is needed, or the information
may be found in a records log or activity summary at the communications center.
If the required information is not available from these sources, the radio dispatcher
can use the telephone to call the store owner and determine whether the patrol
officer has discovered a fresh incident or one that had previously been reported. In
this scenario, the radio system, other officers listening on the radio, the dispatcher,
the communications center records and the telephone are all part of an operations
information system that can obtain information the patrol officer needs.
Other unobtrusive components of police operations information systems are
the manuals that transmit training, policies, procedures, rules, and regulations.
These manuals contain information about proper and improper methods of han-
dling various kinds of situations. To the extent that police officers have learned the
contents of the manuals, the information has been internalized, and reference to
the manuals may not be necessary. Most police manuals are so voluminous, how-
ever, that few officers succeed in completely mastering them. To the extent that
needed information can be retrieved from the manuals quickly, they can serve as
useful information systems. However, if they are poorly organized and too bulky
to carry into the field, as is often the case, the manuals lose their value as sources
of information for street-level decision making.
Some police departments make their manuals available to officers electron-
ically, for example, by loading them into laptop computers that officers use for
report writing and other duties, by storing them in a searchable database, or by
posting them on the agency’s website. This technique not only makes the manuals
available in lighter and less bulky form, but also makes it possible for officers to
use the computer’s searching capabilities when looking for information on a par-
ticular topic, such as drug evidence processing or seizure of abandoned vehicles. In
many agencies today, officers can use their handheld devices to access policies and
other guidance even more readily. For example, officers can use tablets and smart
phones at crime scenes to refresh their knowledge about the proper procedures for
collecting and packaging different types of physical evidence.
Much of the information that police officers need for s treet-level decisions is
stored in the records of the police department, in other police departments, and in
motor vehicle registry agencies. It would be difficult for a police officer to check
by radio or telephone with all 18,000 American police departments to determine
whether a suspect was wanted or an item of property was stolen. Fortunately, the
development of computers made it feasible to link such information from all over
the country. Most states have state-wide law enforcement information systems
that receive and disseminate information on wanted persons, stolen property, and
criminal records. These systems are linked by the National Crime Information
Center (NCIC), which has been maintained by the FBI since 1967.
Traditionally, an officer following a suspicious vehicle could use the police ra-
dio to run a check on the vehicle’s license tag number, for example. Many depart-
ments have now installed computers in patrol cars so that officers can make direct
inquiries into operational information systems without having to go through a
dispatcher and v oice-radio communications. If the patrol car is equipped with a
license plate reader (LPR), the inquiry can occur automatically and almost instan-
taneously. These kinds of systems directly support street-level decision making.
Another form of information useful for street-level police officers focuses on
the nature of crime, traffic, and public order problems. When deciding how to
utilize their patrol time, officers can benefit from information about crime trends
and patterns, hot spots, repeat call locations, traffic accident patterns, and other
problems occurring on their beats. Many police departments distribute activity
bulletins to make officers aware of conditions on their beats. Ideally, the same
data should be available electronically so that an officer can access the latest infor-
mation about calls, crimes, probationers, parolees, suspects, open warrants, etc.
on their beats. The expectation is that officers will use the information when al-
locating their time and choosing their patrol tactics. These kinds of information
are also valuable for detectives whose c ase-by-case focus sometimes prevents them
from seeing geographic patterns and similarities in methods of operation among
several cases under investigation.
A common denominator for this type of information is location: systems
that assist with the collection and dissemination of location-oriented data are
termed Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Police departments today are
investing heavily in developing better GIS capacities (including, but not limited
to, computer mapping and geographic profiling) so that location-oriented in-
formation can be produced more efficiently and accurately.15 Within the context
of community policing, especially, GIS capabilities have significant promise for
making police information systems more useful for both street officers and po-
lice managers.
Command and Control Systems

Command and control systems provide information to supervisors, com-
manders, and communications personnel to aid them in decisions concerning
workload distribution, assignment of calls, and supervision of operations per-

sonnel. These systems can also provide administrators with information useful in
making allocation, strategic, and tactical decisions.
The basic component of a police command and control system is the radio, of-
ten assisted today by a computer. Via the police radio, officers respond to calls, report
their arrival, report their departure and respond to queries concerning their location
and status. Patrol supervisors can direct their subordinates to certain locations, direct
them to perform certain tasks, and question them about various matters over the
radio. Messages received over the radio provide dispatchers with information about
which patrol units are in and out of service and which units are closest to the scene of
a reported incident. During a critical incident, such as a high-speed chase or a crime
in progress, the radio system provides the mechanism for coordination and control.
A number of technological innovations have enhanced the capabilities of po-
lice command and control systems. For example, computer-aided dispatch (CAD)
systems have been introduced to systematize and speed up the flow of information
from complainant to police telephone operator to police radio dispatcher to re-
sponding patrol unit. Among the features of these systems are the following:
• Verifying reported location by determining if it is a valid address;

• Ensuring that operators obtain all necessary information from complainants;
• Determining in which patrol beat the incident is located;
• Assigning case numbers and priorities to calls;
• Reporting previous calls at the location;
• Routing calls to the appropriate dispatcher;
• Recommending patrol units for assignment to the call, based on location of
the call and status of patrol units in the area;
• Recording time of dispatch, time of arrival, and time cleared;
• Keeping track of incident status and patrol unit status.16
Another technological innovation is automatic vehicle monitoring. Modern

systems automatically and continuously report police vehicle location and status
to the communication center using GPS (Global Positioning System) technol-
ogy.17 This information can aid the dispatcher or CAD system when selecting
patrol units to respond to calls and can also help dispatchers and supervisors keep
track of patrol units. This feature can contribute significantly to officer safety if
officers get into situations where they need assistance but cannot report their loca-
tions for some reason. Automatic vehicle monitoring may also deter patrol officers
from wandering out of their assigned areas.
Advanced telephone reporting systems (911 systems) are another component
of police command and control systems. Besides providing information more
rapidly from complainants, enhanced versions of these systems can immediately
inform police telephone operators of the telephone number from which a call to
the police is being made as well as the location of the telephone. This information
can be helpful for verifying the authenticity of the report, establishing the correct
location of the incident, contacting the complainant for more information, and
quickly dispatching patrol units to the scene. With the prevalence of cell phones,
locations of incidents are not as easily and precisely identified as they were in the
days of h ard-wired land-line telephones, but triangulation and GPS can usually
identify the location of the phone within a few feet.
Police command and control systems also provide information pertinent to deci-
sions about allocation, strategies, and tactics. Basic information on total police work-
load, including numbers of incidents, types of incidents, day and time of incidents,
location of incidents, time required to handle incidents, numbers of units required
to handle incidents, and response time to incidents, is all produced through the com-
mand and control system. It may be reflected in dispatch cards and activity summa-
ries, or it may be automatically collected and tabulated by the CAD system. However
collected, this information is crucial for allocation and strategic decisions. Analysis of
this information is often termed operations analysis and is discussed in a later section
of this chapter.
Management Information Systems

Management information systems are systems that provide information
needed for supervisory, allocation, strategic, tactical, policy, and administrative
decisions. The command and control systems discussed in the last section are to
some extent management information systems, but they also serve important op-
erational functions and so are classified separately.
Some of the specific types of management information systems found in po-
lice departments include the following:
• Personnel information systems;

• Warrant control information systems;
• Equipment inventory systems;
• Evidence and property control systems;
• Booking information systems;
• Detention information systems;
• Case tracking systems;
• Financial information systems;
• Fleet maintenance information systems.
These and other police management information systems may or may not be
computerized. The issue of computerization depends primarily on the amount of
data that must be handled by the system in order to provide the manager with the
information needed for decision making. The amount of resources a police de-
partment has can also have a bearing on the type and size of system that is used. A
police department with a t wo-vehicle fleet probably does not need a computerized
fleet maintenance information system, but it does need some kind of informa-
tion system to keep track of vehicle maintenance performed, vehicle problems,
and scheduled preventive maintenance so that the manager responsible for vehicle
maintenance can make informed decisions about tune-ups, oil changes, tires, bat-
teries, minor repairs, maintenance vendors, and vehicle replacement.
The concept underlying management information systems is simple. First, it
is necessary to identify the decisions required of managers as well as the informa-
tion they need to make informed decisions. Then the task of the information sys-
tem is simply to provide the necessary information to managers when they need it.
Often, the hardest part of developing an information system is getting managers
to identify the information they need. The mechanics of getting the information
may be complex, but this can usually be accomplished once the relevant decisions
and information are identified.
The real value of a management information system is that it routinely and
continuously provides needed information. In the absence of such systems, man-
agers confronting decisions may or may not have the time and human resources
to gather the information they need. When the needed management information
systems are in place, the information is readily available.
Numerous companies sell information technology systems for police depart-
ments. These systems vary to some extent in their emphasis on operations informa-
tion, command and control, management information, and mere record keeping.
Vendors can be located at any police chiefs’ meeting or in the pages of The Police
Chief magazine. Before purchasing such systems, however, police administrators
should carefully think about the decisions they have to make and the information
they need to make those decisions wisely. These purchasing decisions should be
made carefully not only because computer systems are expensive but also because
(1) technology changes rapidly, (2) the most technologically advanced system is
not necessarily the most effective for any particular police department, and (3)
much of the available information comes from vendors, whose vested interest is in
promoting their systems more than in meeting the department’s needs.18
Analysis of Police Information
Some information useful for police decision making, such as the existence of
an arrest warrant for a certain person, need only be stored, retrievable, and c ross-
indexed. Other information, however, must be aggregated, tabulated, correlated, or
otherwise analyzed in order to be of real utility in decision making. In the sections
that follow, we discuss several of the most common forms of analysis conducted
in support of police decision making. These are by no means the only types of
analysis that are conducted, but simply the most common and most important.
Crime Analysis
Crime analysis is a type of police problem analysis. All organizations, to some
extent, analyze the problems they confront as a means of gaining a better un-
derstanding of the problems and their solutions. Because crime is the most seri-
ous problem faced by the police, it is not surprising that crime analysis occupies
a central role among the various types of police analysis. See “Crime Analysis,”
Box 11.2.
The basic purpose of crime analysis is to identify and describe crime patterns
and problems.19 Crime analysis begins with data collection and collation. Crime
reports, dispatch records, and activity summaries are scoured for specific informa-
tion about crimes reported, suspicious persons identified by patrol officers, and
suspects identified through investigation. Crime analysis particularly focuses on
precise information about location, time of occurrence, and method of operation.
This information is arranged in manual, semi-automated, or computerized files
for ease of retrieval.
The analysis of crime data primarily involves looking for patterns and trends.
Similar methods of operation may be noted in two or more crimes, a geographic
pattern may be observed, or a preponderance of certain types of crime on certain
days or at certain times may be evident. A suspect or arrestee in one case may pos-
sibly be linked by method of operation, geography, or timing to other unsolved
crimes. Some patterns may lead to predictions about the time or place of the next
occurrence, thereby allowing officers to perform in a preventive manner, instead
of waiting to react after another crime has been committed. Other patterns merely
suggest areas that should be watched.
Box 11.2 Crime Analysis

Standard 40.1.1 A written directive establishes crime analysis procedures to include, at a
minimum:
a. Identification of sources from which crime analysis data elements are extracted;
b. Evaluation of data and findings for accuracy;
c. Dissemination of analysis findings;
d. Briefing the agency’s chief executive officer on crime patterns or trends.
The dissemination of crime analysis information is typically achieved through

hot sheets, bulletins, and maps. These documents include summaries of informa-
tion and conclusions about crimes, patterns, and trends. In departments that uti-
lize the directed patrol strategy, crime analysis information is disseminated as part
of the instructions for directed assignments. In some police agencies, crime anal-
ysis personnel even design the directed patrol assignments, based on their analysis
of crime data.20
Crime analysis information can be useful at various levels in the police organ-
ization. Street-level decisions about whether to intervene in suspicious situations,
what locations to target with uncommitted patrol time, and what tactics to use
during patrol can benefit from crime analysis information. It has been observed,
however, that
crime bulletins and statistical analyses, issued without supplemental per-

sonal contact, tend to be regarded at the field level as irrelevant due to lack
of credibility, delay of receipt of the information or simple redundancy
regarding what the officers already know.21
This observation highlights the requirement that experienced police officers

be included in the crime analysis process, especially related to the interpretation of
the information, that analysis not depend completely on written reports as sources
of information, and that dissemination be timely. The dissemination of crime
analysis information to operational personnel is an example of lateral communi-
cations that must overcome the barriers typical of that direction of organizational
communication.
Police supervisors can utilize crime analysis information to better understand
crime and service demands facing their shift or district. They can use the informa-
tion when assigning personnel to beats and when deploying any special resources
that may be available. They can also use crime analysis to direct the tactics of their
subordinates.
Police administrators can benefit from crime analysis information primarily
when making allocation, strategic, and tactical decisions; when responding to out-
side requests for information; and when engaging in planning. The nature of the
community’s crime problems is obviously an important input to decisions about
the allocation of police resources among different organizational units. Similarly,
when deciding whether to utilize such strategies and tactics as directed patrol, foot
patrol, decoy squads, or sting operations, information about crime problems is
crucial. Such information is also frequently requested by political leaders, commu-
nity groups, and the media for a variety of legitimate purposes. In addition, when
police administrators are engaged in budgeting and strategic planning, informa-
tion about crime problems and crime trends is valuable.
Crime analysis units have become institutionalized in most large police de-
partments. Federal funds have been used to encourage refinements in police crime
analysis, especially in the area of computerized mapping.22 Crime analysis also
plays a big role in Compstat systems used by many police agencies to enhance
command accountability for effective crime reduction efforts.23 In many police
departments, however, crime analysis information is still underutilized. Often,
crime analysis units disseminate daily, weekly, and monthly reports without much
evidence that they are utilized by police officers, supervisors, and administrators.
In these departments, crime analysis needs to be more fully integrated with op-
erations, command and control, and management information systems. Crime
analysis must be tied to the real information needs of the department’s decision
makers.
Other Types of Problem Analysis

Crime analysis is but one type of police problem analysis. Most police depart-
ments, for example, conduct some analysis of traffic accidents in order to identify
hazardous intersections and types of violations that cause accidents. This informa-
tion can be used for designing a selective traffic enforcement program, for direct-
ing the activities of patrol units, for public education, and for traffic engineering
improvements. For state police agencies with major traffic enforcement responsi-
bilities, this type of analysis may be more important than crime analysis. However,
almost all police agencies have some traffic responsibilities and can better serve
their communities by basing traffic-related operations and decisions on analysis of
accident and violation data. See “Traffic Analysis,” Box 11.3.
Police departments should also analyze service and order- maintenance
problems in the same fashion as they analyze crime and traffic problems. Tradi-
tionally, police departments have not looked for patterns and trends in service
and public order problems as they have in crime and traffic accidents, perhaps
in the belief that the former occurred randomly or without conscious design.
However, such problems as disorderly intoxication, panhandling, vandalism,
Box 11.3 Traffic Analysis

Standard 61.1.1 A written directive governs the agency’s selective traffic enforcement ac-
tivities, to include procedures for:
a. Compilation and review of traffic collision/crash data;

b. Compilation and review of traffic enforcement activities data;
c. Comparison of collision/crash data and enforcement activities data;
d. Implementation of selective enforcement techniques and procedures;
e. Deployment of traffic enforcement personnel;
f. Documented annual review of selective traffic enforcement activities.
domestic disputes, mental health crises, and gang intimidation may very well re-
veal patterns or trends if analyzed.24 Police departments that provide ambulance
services, bank escorts, and assistance to disabled motorists may find patterns and
trends in these activities. Even discovering the locations, frequency, and magni-
tude of such services may be important information for personnel allocation or
policy decisions.
Another type of police problem analysis focuses on the problem of fear of
crime. It has long been recognized that fear of crime is not perfectly correlated
with crime itself. A geographic area with little crime may exhibit high fear, fear
may increase while crime decreases, or citizens may fear specific crimes that do not
actually threaten them. Recently, some police departments have begun to try to
reduce fear of crime, independently of their efforts to reduce crime itself. These
efforts can only proceed on the basis of information about fear: information that
police agencies have not typically collected or analyzed. In order to gather such
information, departments have had to approach citizens with surveys, question-
naires, and interviews. This information can then be used to identify particularly
fearful neighborhoods as well as the sources of their fear. In turn, tactics can be
employed to treat the sources of that fear with the hope of minimizing citizen
concern about crime.25 In similar fashion, departments are starting to use mod-
ern technology to measure public trust and then to target neighborhoods where
police—community relationships need to be improved.26

Data-Driven Policing for Public Trust
July 16, 2018
Most of the focus of data-driven and evidence-based policing has been on the goal of reducing
crime. This article reports efforts in New York and several other PDs to collect real-time data
on public sentiment toward police. Using short p op-up surveys on smartphones and other
modern techniques, g eo-based responses from thousands of people can be collected at fairly
low cost. The question then becomes what to do with the data—police commanders are still
working on that.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/data-driven-policing-for-public-trust. The

hyperlink at “This article” links to www.themarshallproject.org/2018/07/16/yelp-for-cops.
Operations Analysis
Operations analysis differs from crime analysis in that it is focused mainly on
the police department’s operations rather than on crime or any other specific com-
munity problem. It is oriented toward efficiency and effectiveness and provides
input primarily to allocation, strategic, and tactical decisions. Operations analysis
uses some of the same information as crime analysis, but for the larger purpose
of matching allocation and strategies to workload and organizational goals rather

than for the narrower purpose of directing patrol officers and detectives in accom-
plishing prevention and apprehension objectives.
The most common target of operations analysis is patrol allocation and de-
ployment. Patrol involves the largest portion of police department resources and
provides the bulk of services to the public. Among the major issues involved in
patrol allocation are:
• Determining the number of patrol units to have on duty in each of the depart-
ment’s geographic commands; this may vary by time of day, day of week, or
season of the year;
• Designing patrol beats;
• Developing policy for dispatching and redeploying of patrol units;
• Scheduling patrol personnel to match variations in the number of units needed
on duty.
In order to clarify these patrol allocation issues, operations data must be col-
lected and analyzed. First, different categories of patrol workload must be identi-
fied; these include calls for service, officer-initiated activities, and administrative
activities. For each activity, a variety of information must be collected, to include
at a minimum:
• Type of call or activity;

• Time reported;
• Time consumed;
• Day of week;
• Month;
• Location;
• Number of units assigned.
Analysis of these data will reveal patrol workload and its variations by time
of day, day of week, season, and location. The analysis can be performed manu-
ally, mechanically, partially by computer, or completely by computer, depending
on the amount of data and related to the size of the organization. The results of
the analysis can then be used to allocate patrol resources proportionally to work-
load, to minimize response times to emergency calls, to distribute directed patrol
time according to crime incidence, to maximize apprehension or prevention ca-
pabilities, or to hone the efficiency of other patrol-related techniques or activities
according to almost any other criteria. The patrol allocation analysis merely pro-
vides information about workload and perhaps about the consequences of differ-
ent allocation alternatives; the allocation decision maker uses this information in
conjunction with such other factors as union contract specifications and political
considerations in selecting the alternative that best achieves the primary goals of
the organization.
Investigative work should also be the target of operations analysis. Informa-
tion on each case assigned for follow-up investigation can be collected and ana-
lyzed, focusing on caseload size, time utilization, case clearance effectiveness, and
case variations by time and location. Determinations eventually have to be made
about the number of personnel assigned to investigations (if any), their schedul-
ing, and whether to employ formal case screening. The latter practice involves
identifying the most solvable cases and focusing investigative resources on them.
The basis for this case screening practice is analysis of the case characteristics that
predict whether a case will be solved.27
The matter of investigative case screening illustrates the applicability of
operations analysis to strategic and tactical decisions as well as to allocation
decisions. In the patrol sphere, operations analysis can identify the extent of
patrol time available for directed patrol assignments or document the current
utilization of proactive patrol tactics through analysis of officer-initiated activity.
Allocation decisions pertain to the amount of resources applied, while strategic
and tactical decisions pertain to the tasks accomplished with those resources;
both kinds of decisions demand information of the sort supplied by operations
analysis.
Intelligence Analysis
Intelligence analysis involves the collection, collation, analysis, and dissemi-
nation of information concerning organized crime and criminals, including tradi-
tional organized crime syndicates, drug traffickers, gangs, and terrorists.28 Whereas
crime analysis focuses on ordinary crime, intelligence analysis focuses on organ-
ized crime and terrorism. Crime analysis and intelligence analysis potentially over-
lap, and should definitely inform each other, although they tend to be conducted
separately in most police departments.29
The sources of intelligence information are widespread and include patrol of-
ficers, detectives, informants, undercover agents, witnesses, ordinary citizens, trial
transcripts, commission hearings, license applications, newspaper and magazine ar-
ticles, physical and electronic surveillance, social media, and police records. All this
information must be evaluated for reliability and validity, assessed for value, filed and
cross-referenced, and then analyzed for trends and patterns. Often the mere identifi-
cation of an organized network of criminals represents valuable information and the
first step toward effective enforcement. Recently, social network analysis has been
utilized as a method of identifying the connections within and between members
of criminal gangs, especially those involved in shootings and other violent crimes.30
Information from intelligence analysis is particularly useful to tactical and
investigative units with specific responsibilities for addressing organized crime,
drug trafficking, and terrorism. In addition, this information is needed by
administrators when making allocation, strategic, tactical, and policy decisions.

Often overlooked in the intelligence analysis process, however, are patrol officers.
These officers are often in possession of more information about suspicious ac-
tivity and associations among criminals than any other members of the police
department; they may also be in the best position to use intelligence information
against street-level organized crime and as “first preventers” of terrorist attacks.31
Revelations of police misconduct in intelligence gathering during the 1960s
and 1970s seriously stunted the development of the intelligence analysis function
in American policing. During that era, many police agencies collated and stored
information on people whose only “crimes” were opposition to the Vietnam War
or support for civil rights. Following the disclosure of these abuses of police au-
thority, some police departments voluntarily ceased their intelligence-gathering
activities; others were forced to curtail their activities by political leaders or by the
courts.
It was the events of September 11, 2001, that demonstrated the necessity for
police intelligence gathering and analysis, in spite of the risks to privacy and civil
liberties. Without performing such activities, police departments cannot compete
with terrorists and organized criminals. By the same token, however,
it is mandatory that a police department recognize that special care and

precaution must be taken in intelligence to avoid interfering with or im-
pairing the constitutional rights of citizens to maintain their privacy, to
speak and dissent freely, to write and to publish, and to associate privately
and publicly for any lawful purpose.32
Police intelligence gathering must be limited to genuinely dangerous crimi-

nals and never applied to mere political dissidents. As noted by one observer, “no
other aspect of a police department’s duties requires such detached and sensitive
judgments by individual police officers as does intelligence” and “in no other
kind of police work is reverence for the law more demanding and demanded.”33
The police intelligence function is discussed further in C hapter 14 in the
context of policing and homeland security.
Policy Analysis
Police agencies also need to conduct a variety of analyses of administra-
tive and management issues in order to make sure that organizational systems
are working correctly and in order to identify and solve internal organizational
problems. This type of analysis is often labeled policy analysis, although this
label is not meant to limit the focus narrowly to organizational policies. For ex-
ample, agencies should periodically analyze their employees’ traffic crashes and
other workplace accidents, as well as injuries associated with them, as a means
of identifying preventable accidents and any unsafe behaviors being exhibited
by personnel. The results of this type of analysis can then be used as feedback to
improve officer safety and overall workplace safety for both sworn and civilian
personnel in the organization.
The range of internal issues appropriate for policy analysis is quite broad. As
part of the law enforcement agency accreditation program, CALEA requires agen-
cies to undertake a number of types of policy analysis, and to review the analyses
periodically to determine whether they indicate the need for additional training,
policy revision, enhanced plans, or other organizational responses. These catego-
ries of analysis and review required by CALEA include:
• Analysis of officers’ use of force;

• Analysis of police pursuits;
• Analysis of vehicle stops and any complaints of bias-based policing;
• Analysis of both external (from the public) and internal complaints against
police employees;
• Analysis of grievances filed by police employees;
• Analysis of the demographics (race/ethnicity and sex) of sworn employees in
comparison to the characteristics of the population served by the agency;
• Analysis of the demographics of police applicants and newly hired officers;
• Analysis of the demographics of sworn employees who apply for promotion,
who pass promotional exams, and who are ultimately promoted.34
An organizational activity that is closely related to some of these types of anal-

ysis is program evaluation, which refers to formal efforts to determine how well
a particular organizational strategy, program, or other practice is w orking—that
is, whether it is effective or not. This activity, program evaluation, is discussed in
some detail in Chapter 12.
Implications of Community Policing
The widespread implementation of community policing over the past three

decades has brought some additional types of police decisions, information needs,
and analysis requirements to the forefront.35 In addition, community policing has
highlighted a new set of information users—the community. Today, as police de-
partments think about the types of information that need to be made available,
and consider the users of that information, they have to remember to include
those community residents and community groups who collaborate with police
officers in identifying, analyzing, and solving problems.
Table 11.1 illustrates some of the more important informational differences
between professional-era policing and community policing. As these differences
have become more widely recognized and institutionalized within policing, police
information systems have had to be substantially enhanced and expanded.
TABLE 11.1 ew Information Requirements for Community

N
Policing
Information Information Usage Patterns
Domains
Professional Era Community policing
Community One-way flow of incident- Two-way flow of information;

interface oriented, reactive information; proactive and p roblem-
narrow range of information o
riented information
(just the facts); mainly limited emphasized; wide range
to officers and detectives of information desired; all
gathering raw data from crime levels need both raw data
victims and other complainants and analysis; much greater
emphasis on providing
information to the community
Inter-organizational Little information sharing Substantial information

linkages among police and other sharing; crucial to effective
government agencies collaborative problem solving;
and nongovernmental information needed by
organizations; not seen as line-level problem solvers,
relevant or important partners, managers, and
executives
Work-group Not seen as very important; Problem solving and

facilitation incident-oriented policing geographic focus raise the
primarily an i ndividual-level importance of work groups;
activity officers and detectives need
information to coordinate
and collaborate with others;
supervisors need more
information to coordinate
their subordinates under
conditions of functional
diversity and temporal
complexity
Environmental Not seen as very important; Important at all levels of the

scanning primarily an executive-level organization; a wide range of
activity; generally limited to issues are seen as relevant
serious crime issues and (crime, disorder, drugs, fear,
major developments within the new technology, professional
policing profession developments, etc.); an
important area for analysis,
not just raw data
(Continued )
Information Information Usage Patterns

Domains
Professional Era Community policing
Problem orientation Focus on incidents, not Policing and partnerships

problems focus primarily on problem
solving; raw data and
analysis needed for
problem identification,
problem analysis, search for
responses, and assessment;
data and analyses needed
by police at all levels and by
external partners
Area accountability Accountability primarily Accountability primarily

temporal (by shift) or functional geographic; data and analysis
(patrol, investigations); no need to be geographically
real geographic focus or oriented; needed by police
accountability at all levels and by external
partners
Strategic Commanders and executives Police management more

management rely on a narrow range of complex; wider range of
information (crime, calls for relevant objectives (crime
service) to analyze service control, order maintenance,
demands and allocate fear reduction, public
resources; police management satisfaction, integrity,
primarily defensive, reactive, accountability); wider range
tactical of programs, policies,
tactics, and strategies seen
as viable; thus, a more
strategic approach is needed,
which requires increased
information
Source: Adapted from Terence Dunworth, Gary Cordner, Jack Greene, Timothy Bynum,
Scott Decker, Thomas Rich, Shawn Ward, and Vince Webb. 2000. Police Department
Information Systems Technology Enhancement Project (ISTEP). Washington, DC: Office of
Community Oriented Policing Services, pp. 12–13.
Rational Police Decision Making
Throughout this chapter, we have discussed the importance of information for

police decision making at various levels in the organization. We have also described
several systems for providing such information, as well as a number of types of

analysis often conducted to make information more meaningful and useful. Our
entire presentation has been based on the assumption that police managers can,
should, and will use information to make informed decisions. In effect, we have as-
sumed the existence of a significant degree of rationality in police decision making.
In this last section of the chapter, we address the issue of rational decision
making as well as the potential value of exercising police organizational control by
influencing police officer and police manager decision making.
Bounded Rationality
For several reasons, police decision making, whether at the street level or at the
level of the police chief, cannot be completely rational. To make a totally rational
decision, one would need a clear and unambiguous goal, complete familiarity with
every conceivable alternative for achieving the goal, exact information about the
consequences of each and every conceivable alternative, and a complete under-
standing of all variables involved. As soon as a goal becomes vague and multiple
goals are presented, rational decision making becomes much more difficult to
achieve. As soon as one limits the number of conceivable alternatives to be con-
sidered, because of a lack of imagination or a lack of time, the possibility of over-
looking the best alternative(s) is introduced. When knowledge about variables is
limited and when information about the consequences of alternatives is inexact or
unavailable, as is always the case, it becomes impossible to guarantee the selection
of the absolute best alternative.
Police are not alone in facing these limitations on rationality. Virtually all de-
cision making is at best subjectively rational in that “it maximizes attainment rela-
tive to the actual knowledge of the subject.”36 Police departments share with other
public agencies the absence of clear goals; in fact, “we turn to government in part
precisely because we wish to attain vague, complex, controversial, h ard-to-produce
objectives (clear, easily attained, non-controversial goals are more often than not
left to the market or to private arrangements).”37 In addition, police agencies share
with many other organizations a lack of proven methods for attaining their goals,
as well as decidedly incomplete information about the effects of current practices
and alternatives.
In addition to these fundamental limits on rational decision making, there are
what might be termed situational and dynamic limits. Street-level police decision
making is inevitably affected by situational factors such as the race, sex, social class,
culture, and demeanor of victims and suspects, whether other officers are present,
whether a crowd is forming, whether another call is waiting to be handled, and so
on. Allocation and policy decisions are affected by community pressures, budg-
etary considerations, union contracts, civil service regulations, and a variety of
other political factors that are dynamic rather than static. Most important decision
making, whether in police departments or other kinds of organizations, is affected
by such considerations.
Because of such fundamental and practical limitations on police decision

making, some observers might be inclined to dismiss the intrinsic value and im-
portance of information. To these observers, police decision making is a matter
of judgment, common sense, and politics rather than a matter of information
and analysis. They are partially correct. S treet-level police decisions will always
be affected by “situational exigencies”38 that may not conform to rational cri-
teria; similarly, allocation and policy decisions will always be affected by budg-
etary and political considerations. Yet acknowledgment of these realities does
not eliminate the need for accurate, objective, and reliable information. Police
officers will always need information about suspects, operational methodolo-
gies, and departmental rules and procedures. Police administrators will always
need information to allocate resources efficiently within budgetary and political
constraints.
Although the rationality of police decision making is inevitably limited, it is
in the public interest that such decision making be as rational as possible. One
of the principal methods for enhancing decision-making rationality is through
the provision of accurate, objective, and reliable information. Therefore, po-
lice information systems and police analysis capabilities have an important role
to play despite pragmatic real-world limitations on police decision-making
rationality.
Controlling Decision Making

In order to ensure the continuing stability of the police organization, it is
necessary to exert influence over the decision making of employees. The primary
goals of the organization will be achieved to the extent that decision makers
choose alternatives that maximize attainment of those goals. The police chief ’s
task in promoting good decision making can be seen as attempting to influence
all members of the organization in such a way that they will make the choices
that the chief would make if they could be present at the time each decision is
made.
How does a chief achieve this? First, it is necessary that all decision makers
pursue the right goals and objectives and adhere to the right organizational values.
This requires that employees be both familiar with established goals and values
and willing to pursue them. Employees are informed of goals and values through
training, socialization, and organizational policies. Employee willingness to pursue
goals and abide by values is developed through selection and socialization, inspired
and guided by leadership, encouraged through rewards, and coerced through dis-
cipline and the authority structure of the organization.
Rational police decision making also requires that employees select the best
alternatives for achieving established goals. That is, employees must not only
have good intentions, they must also choose effective methods. This requires
knowledge, information, and rational thinking. Knowledge and information are
transmitted through training, procedures, rules, regulations, and information

systems. Through classroom and field training, an attempt is made to teach em-
ployees how to use this knowledge and information logically, intelligently, and
rationally. To a large extent, police departments also rely on selection to identify
applicants who already possess these information-processing capabilities.
Police departments can influence their employees’ decision making by provid-
ing good and useful information. When employees are aware of and committed
to the organization’s goals and are intellectually capable of using information ra-
tionally, the information available to them becomes the key ingredient in decision
making. Investigative decisions about whether to follow up on reported crimes can
be made based on organizationally relevant criteria; supervisory decisions about
whether to employ directed patrol during a particular shift can be based on crime
analysis information; and patrol officer decisions about whether to arrest or refer
juvenile vandals can be made according to the juveniles’ records, established pol-
icy, and legal (rather than extralegal) factors.
This information-oriented perspective on police management direction and
control is useful to keep in mind.39 Traditionally, control in police organizations
was thought to be achieved through the formal hierarchy of authority. This view
does have some validity, but it implies the existence of direct supervisory control
over police officers that is not consistent with the reality of police operations or,
indeed, police discretion.
Another approach to direction and control in police organizations stresses the
influence that the community has over police actions. Citizens decide when to
summon the police, exert influence over police dispositions of their complaints, set
limits of acceptable police behavior, and influence police administration through
their elected political leaders.
The third view of direction and control in police organizations, based on in-
formation and decision making, is frequently not recognized and is significantly
less appreciated than the formal authority and community pressure approaches
described in the two paragraphs above. In many respects, this view provides a
closer fit with the nature of police work and police organizations that require
large amounts of good decision making on a continuing basis; and information is
the key ingredient in that decision making. This focus on information as the key
ingredient in decision making, and on decision making as the central activity of
police work, deserves wider recognition among police managers and greater atten-
tion from those involved in police research.40
Summary
Although organizational communication reflects all the complexities of in-

terpersonal communication, it is made even more complex by its organizational
context. Communications in organizations follow informal channels more
frequently than they follow the formal chain of command. Upward, down-
ward, and lateral communications are each impeded by different organizational
barriers.
Communications carry information that is needed in organizations for ef-
fective decision making. Police departments are characterized by important
street-level, supervisory, allocation, strategic, tactical, policy, and administrative
decisions. These decisions are supported by operations information systems, com-
mand and control systems, and management information systems. These systems
provide specific pieces of information for decision making in conjunction with
crime analysis, analysis of other types of problems, operations analysis, intelligence
analysis, and policy analysis. In recent years, community policing has introduced
new types of decisions, creating the need for new categories of information and
analysis, and also introducing community residents and other external partners as
new and important users of police information.
The rationality of all decision making, including police decision making, is
hindered by cognitive and practical limitations. Nevertheless, effectiveness and
productivity depend on decision making that is as rational as possible; one key
to enhancing the rationality of police decision making is careful attention to
providing decision makers (including street-level officers, not just managers)
with the accurate, objective, and reliable information they need when they
need it.
1. What roles are played by official and unofficial communications in organizations with which you are
familiar? By the formal and informal organizations?
2. Why do supervisors think that subordinates feel free to communicate upward to them, when in fact
most subordinates fear such communication?
3. Think of communications and information flow in organizations with which you are familiar. Is the flow
open-or closed-loop in nature? Do decision makers know whether their information is accurate? Do
decision makers find out about the effects of their decisions? Do order issuers know whether their
orders are understood? Do they find out whether their orders are carried out?
4. What do you think will be the long-range impact of computers and other electronic technology on
police work and police administration? What has been the impact so far?
5. What do you think are the primary methods by which police organizations actually control their em-
ployees’ decision making?
Cases
Case 6 at the back of the text, One Week in Heron City, explores issues related
to information and analysis in police organizations. You might review the case
from the perspective of the types of police information systems and categories of
analysis discussed here in Chapter 11.
Suggested Reading
Clarke, R.V., and Eck, J.E. 2005. Crime Analysis for Problem Solvers in 60 Small Steps. Washington,
DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
Groff, E., and McEwen, T. 2008. Identifying and Measuring the Effects of Information Technologies on
Law Enforcement Agencies. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
Ratcliffe, J.H. 2007. Integrated Intelligence and Crime Analysis: Enhanced Information Management
for Law Enforcement Leaders. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
Santos, R.B. 2023. Crime Analysis with Crime Mapping, fifth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Silberglitt, R., B.G. Chow, J.S. Hollywood, D. Woods, M. Zaydman, and B.A. Jackson. 2015.
Visions of Law Enforcement Technology in the Period 2 024–2034. Santa Monica, CA: RAND.
Notes
1 W. Scholz. 1962. Communication in the Business Organization. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall, p. 33.
2 T.N. Whitehead. 1936. Leadership in a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
p. 78.
3 R. Likert. 1961. New Patterns of Management. New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 46–47.
4 J. Gonzales, and J. Rothchild. 1972. “The Shriver Prescription: How the Government Can Find
Out What It’s Doing.” Washington Monthly (November): 37–39.
5 Gonzales and Rothchild. 1972. “The Shriver Prescription,” p. 36.
6 S.P. Robbins, and T.A. Judge. 2019. Organizational Behavior, eighteenth edition. Upper Saddle
7 R.A. Johnson, F.E. Kast, and J.E. Rosenzweig. 1964. “Designing Management Systems.” Busi-
ness Quarterly (Summer), as quoted in P.P. Schoderbek (ed.). 1967. Management Systems. New
York: Wiley, p . 117.
8 H. Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, pp. 94–100.
9 Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society; see also T.S. Bynum, G.W. Cordner, and J.R. Greene.
1982. “Victim and Offense Characteristics: Impact on Police Investigative Decision-Making.”
Criminology 20, no. 3–4: 301–318.
10 G.P. Alpert, D.J. Kenney, R.G. Dunham, and W.C. Smith. 2000. Police Pursuits: What We
Know. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
11 H. Goldstein. 1990. Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-Hill.
12 M.H. Moore, and D.W. Stephens. 1991. Beyond Command and Control: The Strategic Man-
agement of Police Departments. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum; M.H.
Moore, and R.C. Trojanowicz. 1988. “Corporate Strategies for Policing.” Perspectives on Policing.
Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, p. 6; C.H. Levine, 1985. “Strategic Manage-
ment.” In J.J. Fyfe (ed.), Police Management Today: Issues and Case Studies. Washington, DC:
International City Management Association.
13 L.P. Brown. 1979. “Police Use of Deadly Force: Policy Considerations.” In R.N. Brenner, and
M. Kravitz (eds), A Community Concern: Police Use of Deadly Force. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, p. 24.
Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
15 S. Chainey. 2020. Understanding Crime: Analyzing the Geography of Crime. Redlands, CA: ESRI
Press.
16 K.W. Colton, M.L. Brandeau, and J.M. Tien. 1983. A National Assessment of Police Com-
mand, Control, and Communications Systems. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice,
pp. 37–49.
17 T. Geagan, M. Raad, and E-L. Lim. 2004. “Use of GIS for Automated Vehicle Location (AVL):
Newton Police Department.” Online at: http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc04/
docs/pap2085. pdf.
18 E. Groff, and T. McEwen. 2008. Identifying and Measuring the Effects of Information Technolo-
gies on Law Enforcement Agencies. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services; T. Dunworth, G. Cordner, J. Greene, T. Bynum, S. Decker, T. Rich, S. Ward, and V.
Webb. 2000. Police Department Information Systems Technology Enhancement Project (ISTEP).
Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
19 R.B. Santos. 2023. Crime Analysis with Crime Mapping, fifth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
Publications.
20 G.W. Cordner. 1981. “The Effects of Directed Patrol: A Natural Q uasi-Experiment in Pon-
tiac.” In J.J. Fyfe (ed.), Contemporary Issues in Law Enforcement. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage,
pp. 37–58.
21 G.H. Reinier, M.R. Greenlee, M.H. Gibbens, and S.P. Marshall. 1977. Crime Analysis in Sup-
port of Patrol. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, p. 26.
22 W.L. Gorr, K.S. Kurland, and Z.M. Dodson. 2018. GIS Tutorial for Crime Analysis. Redlands,
CA: ESRI Press.
23 V.E. Henry. 2002. The Compstat Paradigm: Management Accountability in Policing, Business and
the Public Sector. New York: Looseleaf Publications.
24 W. Spelman, and J.E. Eck. 1986. “Problem-Oriented Policing.” Research in Brief (October).
25 G. Cordner. 2010. Reducing Fear of Crime: Strategies for Police. Washington, DC: Office of
26 S. Weichselbaum. 2018. “Yelp for Cops.” The Marshall Project (July 16). Online at: www.the-
marshallproject.org/2018/07/16/yelp-for-cops.
27 J.E. Eck. 1979. Managing Case Assignments: The Burglary Investigation Decision Model Replica-
tion. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
28 D.L. Carter. 2009. Law Enforcement Intelligence: A Guide for State, Local, and Tribal Law
Enforcement Agencies, second edition. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Polic-
ing Services.
29 J.H. Ratcliffe. 2007. Integrated Intelligence and Crime Analysis: Enhanced Information Manage-
ment for Law Enforcement Leaders. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
30 J.A. Johnson, J.D. Reitzel, B.F. Norwood, D.M. McCoy, D.B. Cummings, and R.R. Tate. 2013.
“Social Network Analysis: A Systematic Approach for Investigating.” FBI Law Enforcement Bul-
letin (March 5). Online at: https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/social-network-analysis-
a-systematic-approach-for-investigating.
31 G.L. Kelling, and W.J. Bratton. 2006. “Policing Terrorism.” Civic Bulletin No. 43 (September).
New York: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
32 J.B. Wolf. 1978. The Police Intelligence System, second edition. New York: John Jay Press, p . 5.
33 Wolf. 1978. The Police Intelligence System, pp. 5–6.
35 G.W. Cordner. 2014. “Community Policing.” In M.D. Reisig, and R.J. Kane (eds), The Oxford
Handbook of Police and Policing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 148–171.
36 H.A. Simon. 1976. Administrative Behavior: A Study of D ecision-Making Processes in Administra-
tive Organizations, third edition. New York: Free Press, p. 76.
Books, p. 204.
38 E. Bittner. 1972. The Functions of the Police in Modern Society. Washington, DC: U.S. Govern-
ment Printing Office.
39 E.S. Fairchild. 1978. “Organizational Structure and Control of Discretion in Police Opera-
tions.” Policy Studies Journal 7: 442–449.
40 G.W. Cordner. 2007. “Administration of Police Agencies, Theories of.” In J.R. Greene (ed.),
The Encyclopedia of Police Science, third edition. New York: Routledge, pp. 28–31.
CHAPTER 12 Evaluating Police
Performance
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Discuss the relative merits of objective and subjective measures of police performance.
• Identify three purposes served by individual performance appraisals.
• Distinguish between monitoring and evaluation.
• Identify the traditional method of evaluating overall police agency performance.
• Identify three recommended components of a comprehensive police agency performance
evaluation system.
Without methods for measuring police agency performance, we do not know

when the organization is improving or slipping; we do not know which aspects of
the organization need improvement the most; and, when we implement changes,
we do not know whether improvements have been achieved. To manage effec-
tively, one needs reliable data about current levels of performance as well as a
way to measure changes that occur following the adoption of new strategies and
programs.
The need to measure individual performance is equally important. Organi-
zations need to evaluate individual performance in order to provide feedback to
employees about their work behavior and to provide information to management
for staffing, directing, and controlling decisions.
In addition, there is growing emphasis today on so-called evidence-based
practices.1 Government agencies are expected to utilize strategies and programs
that are backed by evidence that they are effective. If government is not using the
most effective practices, then it is wasting taxpayers’ dollars. Also, if government
is not using the most effective practices, then it is falling short in accomplishing
its missions—not maximizing student learning in schools, for example. The grow-
ing requirement for police departments to adopt evidence-based practices follows
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-16
12 Evaluating Police Performance 327
the same logic.2 Police chiefs today are expected to know which strategies and
programs work best and to implement those practices, while curtailing or elimi-
nating practices that are ineffective. This can only be achieved through accurate
performance measurement and scientific evaluation of existing police strategies
and programs.3
The focus of this chapter is on measuring and evaluating police performance
as a prerequisite to police improvement. We examine performance evaluation as it
pertains to individual police officer performance, the performance of police strat-
egies and programs, and the overall performance of the entire police organization.
First, we discuss the role of performance evaluation as well as some important
issues that make the measurement of police performance particularly complex.
The Importance of Evaluating Police Performance
A number of different individuals and groups need information about the

quality of police performance. Police supervisors need it in order to accurately
complete annual or semi-annual performance appraisals of their subordinates.
Police executives need it when deciding which officers to promote, demote, assign
to special units, and terminate. The police chief needs it in order to assess the per-
formance of unit and division commanders and to evaluate strategies, tactics, and
programs. Internal management of police organizations depends heavily on infor-
mation about levels of performance. With such information, police administrators
can contribute to organizational improvement by “working smarter, not harder.”4
Other officials also need such information. Political and administrative of-
ficials, including mayors, city managers, city councils, and their counterparts
in towns, townships, boroughs, counties, and states need information on police
performance when making budget and policy decisions and when evaluating the
performance of police chiefs. These officials have an overall responsibility to their
communities to provide quality police protection at a reasonable cost; they can
meet their responsibilities only if they have accurate information about the per-
formance of their police departments. In general, “evaluating the effectiveness of
programs in meeting public objectives is an essential component of state and local
government management.”5
Police performance information is also needed by others. The federal gov-
ernment, for example, through the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the National
Institute of Justice, the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, and the
Department of Homeland Security, has sought to fund innovative police projects
as a means of improving police performance. In order to carry out this function,
funding agencies need information about the effects of these innovative strategies,
tactics, and programs; additionally, they need to measure police performance in
order to document successful efforts and organizational improvements for Con-
gress. In addition, professional associations such as the International Association
of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriff ’s Association, and the Police Executive
Research Forum need information on police performance to aid them in repre-

senting the interests of their constituents, in disseminating innovations, and in
providing advice to member police agencies.
Finally, citizens need to know how well their police departments are perform-
ing. One highly respected police chief ’s advice to the public is that “it is both your
right and your obligation as a citizen to probe your police agency, ask the questions
and decide for yourself if your community’s public safety needs are being met.”6
While most citizens may lack a great deal of expertise in performance measure-
ment and police work, they are both the consumers of police services and the final
judges of the caliber of police performance.
The following is a list of uses for information pertaining to police performance.
1. By identifying current levels of performance, measurement can indicate the

existence of particular problems.
2. When performance is measured over time, such measurement can indicate
progress or lack of progress in improving performance.
3. When collected by geographical areas within a jurisdiction, performance data
can help identify areas in particular need of attention.
4. Measurement can serve as a basis for evaluating specific activities. Measure-
ment may indicate personnel who need special attention or activities that need
to be modified, such as training or personnel selection.
5. Measurements of existing performance can provide agencies with the infor-
mation necessary to set performance targets. Actual performance can subse-
quently be compared to the targets to indicate degrees of accomplishment.
6. Performance incentives for both managerial and non-managerial employees
might be established.
7. Measurement data can be used for in-depth performance studies on ways to
improve specific aspects of performance.
8. Performance measurement information can be used as a method to account
for police operations to the public. Accountability is a growing national con-
cern and refers not only to police use of force and proper use of public finances
but also to the broader question of what is actually being accomplished by the
police.7
The importance of measuring and evaluating performance of and within gov-

ernment agencies has been strongly stressed in the discipline of public adminis-
tration for many years. As government agency administrators, police chiefs must
emphasize performance measurement in order to achieve efficiency and effective-
ness in police operations. They also need to ensure that their police departments
can effectively compete for resources, influence policy decisions, and establish
reputations for professionalism within the local government arena. Ultimately, a
police chief ’s survival in the contemporary setting as well as in the future may very
likely depend on their ability to develop meaningful systems for measuring and
evaluating police performance.8
Issues in Police Performance Measurement
We also need to clarify some of the difficult problems that are encountered in
measuring and evaluating police performance. It is not a trivial challenge, but it is
in the best interests of the public and the police that the most relevant and reliable
methods for measuring such performance be identified and developed.
In the sections that follow, the most difficult issues confronting police perfor-
mance measurement and evaluation are discussed.
Goals and Criteria

Measuring performance requires decisions about what to measure; this is espe-
cially so because it is virtually impossible to measure everything. Deciding what to
measure requires choices about what is most important among the many activities
performed. Unfortunately, there is considerable disagreement about the relative
importance of different aspects of policing; this disagreement complicates perfor-
mance measurement.9 Some citizens and police officials are satisfied to measure
arrests, case clearances, and crime rates; on the surface these would seem to repre-
sent the more important features of policing.10 Others believe that police adher-
ence to due process of law and to the constitution is what should be measured,11
because to them this represents the best indication of successful police work. Still
others suggest measuring citizen satisfaction with police s ervices—this assumption
is based on the premise that citizens are the best judges of police performance.12
These contrasting perspectives reflect at least three realities: (1) we expect po-
lice departments to achieve multiple goals and objectives, as discussed earlier in
Chapter 3; (2) some of the goals, such as maintaining order, are vague; and (3)
there is often a lack of consensus about specific police objectives and their relative
priorities. Citizens disagree about the criteria and indicators of effective or inef-
fective police performance, and therefore about what represents better or worse
police performance.
The best way to reduce this problem as it affects performance measurement is
to employ multiple measures.13 The practice in many communities of evaluating
the police department solely on the basis of increases or decreases in the crime
rate or increases or decreases in arrests and crime clearances is obviously deficient.
Evaluating the police department solely on the basis of violation of constitutional
rights would be equally inappropriate. A much more sensible and valid approach
is to identify several components of police performance (multiple measures), as
reflected in differing viewpoints on the police function, and then to measure per-
formance in each of these areas.14
Objective and Subjective Measures

Another difficult issue in police performance measurement and evaluation
concerns the relative usefulness of objective and subjective measures. Objective
measures, such as numbers of arrests or numbers of reported crimes, have the value
of precision; they are therefore easier to defend when questioned. The measure-
ment of subjective criteria, such as citizen satisfaction with the police department
or an officer’s judgment in making decisions, is generally harder and thus more
open to question and challenge.
Because of these characteristics of objective and subjective measures, some
police administrators are inclined to minimize subjective measures and rely heavily
on objective measures. This tendency should be tempered by several considera-
tions. First, many organizations fall prey to measuring what is easy to measure
rather than what is important. Police departments often do this by counting ar-
rests, citations, warnings, reported crimes, case clearances, and total calls for ser-
vice. Although such activities should be measured, it is inappropriate to measure
these activities to the exclusion of others.

Measuring What Doesn’t Matter
May 10, 2016
This article/radio report describes the ups and downs of street stops, gun seizures, and gun
crimes in Chicago over the last 20 years. Until recently, officially recorded stops had been
increasing dramatically, yet fewer guns were being recovered. The suggestion is that adminis-
trative pressure had become more about the number of contact cards than about cases solved,
crimes prevented, or intelligence gathered.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/measuring-what-doesnt-matter/. The

hyperlink at “This article/radio report” links to https://www.wbez.org/stories/police-data-cast-doubt-on-chicago-style-
stop-and-frisk/d79738c6-b5a2-494d-acaf-e659969b3e6b.
If only easily measurable objective indicators are employed, the police depart-
ment will then be evaluated on the basis of what is easy to measure, not what is
important to measure. The same will be true if such measures are used to evaluate
individual police officers. That is, individual officers will adjust their behavior
so as to conform to the measures and, in the aggregate, the entire organization
will adapt its performance to the measures being employed. Consequently, perfor-
mance criteria originally selected because they were easy to measure may become,
in effect, the goals of the police department and the drivers of individual behavior.
This tendency is captured in the phrase “what you measure is what you get.”
Clearly, police administrators need to think first about the important aspects
of police performance before selecting appropriate measures to use. It is essential
to include multiple aspects of performance as well as to employ multiple meas-

ures of performance. The choice between objective and subjective measures should
then be made on the basis of identifying the best indicators of each component
of performance. Some aspects of performance lend themselves easily to objective
measures; others can be best measured subjectively.
It is also important to recognize that a number of measures that purport to
be objective lack precision. The use of reported crimes as a measure of the ac-
tual amount of crime, for example, has serious limitations. The case clearance
rate, a seemingly objective measure of investigative performance, is susceptible
to substantial manipulation by individual detectives and by police departments
generally. Often, the presumed superiority of objective measures over subjective
measures is more illusion than reality.
Quantity Versus Quality

The issue of quantity versus quality is closely related to the objective/subjective
issue and to the tendency to measure whatever is easiest to measure. Quantity
of performance is generally easier to measure, and more susceptible to objective
measurement, than quality of performance. Quantities are also easier than quality
to summarize and communicate. Numbers of traffic tickets are readily measured,
summarized, and presented, for example, whereas it would be much more difficult
to measure and express the quality of a police officer’s or a police department’s
traffic enforcement performance.
There are, however, some excellent subjective measures of quality of perfor-
mance.15 Citizens’ evaluations of the quality of police service and supervisors’
evaluations of the quality of police officers’ reports are good examples. Also,
sometimes objective measures can be refined to reflect quality. The number of
traffic tickets issued for hazardous moving violations and the conviction rate for
traffic tickets come closer to measuring traffic enforcement quality than the mere
number of tickets issued. Similarly, the percentage of a police officer’s reports
returned for corrections is an objective measure of the quality of that officer’s
report writing.
The key consideration in evaluating performance is an initial determination
of the important factors involved in performing a particular activity, followed by
a careful choice of measures that reflect excellence in the performance of that
activity. There is also much to be said for the use of quantitative and qualitative
measures in concert, for a system of multiple measures of police performance, and
for the use of both objective and subjective measures in combination.
Reliability and Validity

Once significant components of police performance are identified and meas-
ures are selected, the task of collecting data and actually measuring performance
begins. The issues of reliability and validity of data need to be thoughtfully and
skillfully addressed. Even carefully crafted measures of police performance are of
little real value unless accurate data can be collected to determine how individuals
or organizations score on the measures.
Performance data about an activity are reliable to the extent that repeated or inde-
pendent measurement yields the same score. If all detectives in one police department
use the same rules for determining whether a case can be cleared, for example, then
case clearance rates will be reliable measures. On the other hand, if some detectives
stray from the rules and clear a case strictly on the basis of linking the method of op-
eration in that case to a subject arrested for another crime, without any other evidence
of that suspect’s involvement, then case clearance data in that department will be
unreliable for comparing the effectiveness of different detectives. Similarly, subjective
supervisory evaluations of a police officer’s judgment would be unreliable if several
supervisors rating the same officer for the same period assigned different scores.
The validity of data is the extent to which they accurately represent actual per-
formance. Data may be reliable without being valid. If all detectives in a department
cleared cases when they could link method of operation to a subject already in cus-
tody for another crime, the case clearance rates would be reliable, because each de-
tective’s decisions would be governed by the same rules. The data would not be valid,
however, because the clearance rates would be based on cases that should not have
been cleared. Likewise, if a police department used the same procedures for count-
ing crimes year after year, the reported crime rate would be a reliable measure of the
amount of recorded crime, although it would not be a valid or accurate measure of
the full amount of crime (because many crimes are never reported to the police).
Reliable measures that may not be valid are sometimes adequate for limited
purposes. Reported crimes provide a good example. It is misleading to use re-
ported crimes as a measure of the true amount of crime. It is also misleading to
compare two or more police departments in terms of reported crime; their citizens
may be differentially inclined to report crimes, or the departments may vary in
their counting practices. On the other hand, the number of reported crimes may
be one good indicator of police workload as well as a reasonable indicator of crime
changes from year to year in a particular community. Similarly, it would not be
valid to compare Supervisor A’s evaluation of Officer X’s judgment to Supervisor
B’s evaluation of Officer Y’s judgment if they were using different measuring de-
vices. However, it would be reasonable to compare Supervisor A’s evaluations of
their 10 subordinates and conclude that Officer X has the best, worst, or average
judgment among the group; in this instance, Supervisor A would be using the
same measuring device for all 10 subordinates.
In measuring police performance, every effort should be made to obtain reli-
able and valid data. When the data being employed have limitations, these should
be recognized and called to the attention of anyone who uses the performance
measures for evaluation. All data have limitations; in order to work effectively with
data and use them properly, it is necessary to be fully aware of these limitations
when taking actions predicated on the data.
Cause and Effect

Police departments have traditionally, albeit naively, been evaluated by cit-
izens, political leaders, and police administrators on the basis of shifts in crime
rates. Decreases in reported crime have often been incorrectly taken as evidence of
police effectiveness, while increases have been improperly perceived as indicating a
lack of effectiveness. This traditional approach is unreasonable because the c ause-
and-effect relationship between police performance and amount of crime is not
precisely known. We do know, however, that the crime rate is affected by a variety
of social, economic, and organizational influences, of which police performance is
but one of many. If the crime rate were to increase because of worsening economic
conditions, it would be unfair to blame the police and give them a negative evalu-
ation. Similarly, if the crime rate were to drop because of the aging of the popula-
tion, it would be unreasonable to give credit to the police for the downward trend.
When evaluating an individual, a program, or an organization in terms of
the effects of performance, it is necessary to demonstrate the connection between
performance and effects. Few police departments would consider it reasonable
to evaluate individual officers on the basis of crime rates on their beats, because
of the limited impact that one officer would have and because of the many other
situational and circumstantial factors that could affect the crime rate.
On the other hand, a police department strategy aimed at reducing specific
types of crime in specific areas might logically be evaluated on the basis of how it
affected the rate of those specific crimes in the specific area. Such an evaluation
would necessarily require the linking of performance and effects, because extra-
neous factors could still intervene. Burglaries in a targeted area might seem to go
down due to newly implemented directed patrols, for example, when in reality the
responsible burglars had been arrested the day before. Only through careful analy-
sis can alternative explanations such as these be ruled out, thus providing support
for the claim that the police action caused the observed effect.

Research in the Ranks
June 25, 2018
This article reports the recent conference of the American Society of Evidence-Based Policing,
which mainly featured current police officers presenting results from their own research. The
organization, just a few years old, mirrors similar ones in the UK, Canada, Australia/New
Zealand plus initial efforts in India and Mexico. The emphasis is on learning and applying
what works, rather than simply relying on “what we’ve always done” or copying the latest
popular idea from a neighboring agency.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/06/25/research-in-the-ranks. The hyperlink at

“This article” links to www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44293921.
Routine evaluations of a police agency’s performance are not particularly

amenable to rigorous experimental design, but some principles of research meth-
ods can be employed. Consider, for example, the criterion of citizen satisfaction
as a means of evaluating police performance. A police department could annu-
ally survey a random sample of citizens in order to measure citizen satisfaction
with the department. Survey questions could probe satisfaction with response
time to calls, actions taken by police officers, and the courtesy displayed by
officers. If, during a particular year, response time became slower and citizen
satisfaction with response time decreased, it would be reasonable to infer cause
and effect.
Scientists have established strict rules for linking cause and effect; police ad-
ministrators, however, must still make allocation decisions, formulate policies,
and implement strategies based on their best judgments of the effects of different
actions. These judgments, however, should be backed up as much as possible by
valid knowledge, which is most credible when it results from research, experimen-
tation, and careful analysis. Ultimately, the more we know about the effects of
various kinds of police performance, the better able we will be to make informed
decisions that will have a positive effect on the way police officers and organiza-
tions protect and serve.
Individual Performance Appraisal
Most police organizations periodically evaluate the performance of individual

police officers and other employees. These evaluations, or performance apprais-
als, are typically conducted once or twice a year. More frequent appraisals are
sometimes conducted during police officers’ probationary periods. Appraisals of
individual performance serve three general purposes: they provide information
for personnel research; they provide input to staffing decisions; and they provide
feedback to employees.16 See “Performance Evaluation,” Box 12.1.
In regard to personnel research, performance appraisal data are needed in or-
der to test the validity of selection and promotion methods. If employees who
scored high on selection tests later receive high performance appraisals, the validity
of the selection tests is affirmed. On the other hand, if selection test scores and
subsequent performance appraisals are not positively correlated, the validity of the
selection tests is questionable. Selection test validation is important for two rea-
sons: (1) validity ensures that the tests select the candidates who will do the best
job; and (2) validity ensures that the tests do not arbitrarily discriminate on the
basis of race, sex, or other irrelevant criteria. Valid tests are needed to guarantee
equal employment opportunity and top-quality personnel.
In regard to staffing decisions, processes relating to promotion, assignment,
demotion, and termination all depend on information about individual perfor-
mance. For example, decisions about retaining or separating new officers dur-
ing their probationary period depend on information about their performance.
Box 12.1 Performance Evaluation

Standard 35.1.1 A written directive defines the agency’s performance evaluation system and
includes, at a minimum:
a. Measurement definitions;
b. Procedures for use of forms;
c. Rater responsibilities;
d. Rater training.
Standard 35.1.2 A written directive requires a performance evaluation of each full-time em-
ployee and reserve officer be conducted and documented at least annually with the excep-
tion of the agency CEO.
Standard 35.1.3 A written directive requires a written performance evaluation report on all
entry-level employees and reserve officers at least quarterly, for a period of not less than one
year from the date the employee actually performs the duties of the position.
Similarly, departments would not want to appoint field training officers (FTOs)
whose own performance was substandard.
In addition, employees need periodic feedback on how well they are perform-
ing. Supervisors should continuously provide subordinates with this kind of infor-
mation on an informal basis, but the formal performance appraisal process ensures
that supervisors periodically take stock, assess performance, inform subordinates of
their standing, and counsel subordinates on shortcomings and ways of improving.
Many managers intensely dislike having to conduct performance appraisals.17
There are a number of reasons for this, including dissatisfaction with the particu-
lar forms and systems in use, lack of information on which to base appraisals,
uneasiness about giving negative evaluations, and lack of skill in communicating
appraisals to subordinates. Consequently, many managers conduct the appraisals
in a perfunctory manner, viewing them as a necessary but onerous chore. This
is unfortunate, because the results of performance appraisals have an important
influence on a variety of organizational decisions.
Employees also typically express dissatisfaction with performance appraisals.
While most employees say they desire information about how well they are doing,
they are generally not satisfied with the particular performance appraisal system in
use in their organization. Common employee complaints about appraisal systems
center on the arbitrariness, irrelevance, or inaccuracy of performance criteria, as
well as on supervisors’ unwillingness or inability to meaningfully discuss the re-
sults of appraisals.
There are several ways of reducing supervisor and subordinate dissatisfac-
tion with performance appraisals. One valuable approach is to focus appraisals as
much as possible on performance rather than on personality. Performance is what
really matters for organizational effectiveness; while an employee’s personality may

sometimes affect morale and have a bearing on organizational climate, personality
is not nearly as relevant as performance. Personality should be considered only as it
affects the employee’s performance, the performance of c o-workers, and relations
with individual citizens and the public at large.
A useful approach in promoting acceptance of a performance evaluation sys-
tem is to characterize the process, as much as possible, as a review or analysis
rather than an evaluation. Evaluation suggests a process of assessing good and bad
points and tends to increase the defensiveness of the person being evaluated. The
person’s value is being examined, which is threatening to most people. Analysis, on
the other hand, has a more neutral and detached connotation. All organizational
activities are routinely analyzed in order to make improvements. It is assumed that
any activity or any aspect of performance can be improved and that the purpose of
analysis is to discover areas for improvement.
Another method that can enhance satisfaction with performance appraisal is
careful training for those who do the evaluating.18 Too often, supervisors com-
plete evaluations without sufficient understanding of the rationale underlying the
process or the specific methods and criteria being used. Undergoing evaluation is
traumatic enough without adding supervisory confusion to the situation. With
careful training, a police department can ensure that each rater understands the
system and that all raters have the same understanding of evaluation criteria.
Engaging the subordinate in the process of analyzing performance also en-
courages acceptance of the performance evaluation system. Subordinates can pe-
riodically review their own performance, identify areas in need of improvement,
and suggest ways of doing better. The supervisor must still play a role in this pro-
cess, ensuring that self-analysis is candid and accurate and helping subordinates
establish goals for improvement; to the extent that subordinates can objectively
assess their own performance, though, many of the usual complaints about perfor-
mance appraisal disappear.19 Subordinates can also participate in the evaluation of
their supervisor’s performance.20
Several other considerations are important for individual performance ap-
praisal. One is the choice between absolute and relative methods of appraisal.21
Absolute methods require that each employee’s performance be measured against
an absolute standard. These standards can be objective (e.g., completes reports by
the end of the shift) or subjective (e.g., uses sound judgment when handling dis-
putes). Relative methods, by contrast, require comparisons between and among
employees. Instead of independently rating the soundness of each employee’s
judgment, for example, a relative appraisal might simply involve ranking employ-
ees from best to worst on the soundness of their judgments.
Both absolute and relative methods have their drawbacks. Supervisors are gen-
erally better able to make relative judgments (“Officer X has more initiative than
Officer Y”) than absolute appraisals (“Is Officer X’s initiative superior, good, satis-
factory, poor, or very poor?”). Thus, relative methods probably yield more reliable
information. However, relative methods make it difficult to compare individuals
in different organizational units. Officer X may have the most initiative among the
officers in Squad 1, but how they compare to the officers in Squad 2 is difficult to
determine. Although we might want to consider Officer X the equal of the officer
with the greatest initiative on Squad 2, Officer X’s initiative might actually be
average or low when considered in the context of Squad 2. Thus, relative methods
generally provide more reliable but sometimes less useful information.
Another important issue in individual performance appraisal is the choice
between objective and subjective measures. This issue was discussed earlier with
respect to performance measurement in general. Basically, objective measures
are easier to define and defend and therefore are less subject to bias by the su-
pervisor doing the rating. On the other hand, it is rare for all the principal cri-
teria of good job performance to admit of objective measurement. One expert
observed that
most supervisors would agree that the difference between good and bad
patrol officers is most apparent in the intangibles (e.g., such qualities as
initiative or attitude), which cannot be counted but must be judged by
supervisors or others familiar with the performance.22
As pointed out earlier, the best solution to the debate about objective versus
subjective measures is to employ multiple measures of job performance.
An issue that has not received much attention in police circles is the possibility
of evaluating employees on different criteria at different points in their careers.
One interesting suggestion is to adjust appraisals according to three career stages:
(1) early in their careers, employees could be evaluated primarily on whether they
have developed the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to do the job effectively;
(2) once these capabilities have been demonstrated, then evaluation could concen-
trate on whether employees are exerting appropriate effort; and (3) once capabil-
ities and effort have been demonstrated, then evaluation could focus on results.23
In this latter stage, supervisors would be most concerned with the subordinate’s
accomplishments, paying less attention to how they were achieved. This approach
to performance evaluation corresponds nicely to the situational approach to lead-
ership discussed in Chapter 10.
Another issue often overlooked concerns the selection of the person or persons
who will actually do the evaluating. In most organizations, employees are evaluated
by their immediate supervisors. Occasionally, however, several supervisors may be
familiar with an employee’s performance; in such a situation, a combined evalu-
ation by the several supervisors would be feasible. A combined evaluation would
be more accurate, because more information would be brought into the process.
Another possibility is peer evaluation. Each employee within an organizational
unit can be rated by their fellow employees. Although this approach is contro-
versial because it does not follow the hierarchy of authority and because it allows
employees who compete with one another to evaluate one another, it may provide
the most accurate appraisals in situations in which one’s fellow employees have the
most information about one’s performance. Although it is not widely used, this
method of peer ratings has been employed successfully in police departments.24
A final potential evaluator of police officer performance is the public.25 Quite
a few agencies currently conduct citizen surveys to determine satisfaction with
police service. For the most part, these surveys are used to evaluate overall agency
performance rather than individual performance. In principle, however, a police
department could evaluate an individual officer by surveying citizens who had
contact with that officer during the rating period. This approach might be contro-
versial and should be used with great care, because the role of the police inevitably
puts officers into adversarial relations with some citizens. Nevertheless, rating by
citizens has intuitive appeal, especially within the context of community policing,
because citizens often have the most direct knowledge of how police officers be-
haved in a situation and because ultimately the public must be satisfied that the
police are performing effectively.
Oettmeier and Wycoff offered 10 suggestions for police departments that are
considering revising their performance evaluation systems.26
1. Performance evaluations are not bad in and of themselves. Frustration comes

from how the process is administered and the lack of suitable performance
criteria.
2. Officers want feedback and a permanent record of their accomplishments and
performance.
3. Officers often believe they are doing more than they are receiving credit for,
given the typically narrow design of their evaluation instruments and perfor-
mance criteria.
4. The goals and structure of the organization should be decided before new
performance measurement is developed. Form follows function.
5. There should be separate forms for different assignments (unless law prohibits).
6. Administrative convenience should not be a primary criterion in the redesign.
The goal of the performance evaluation should dictate the way in which it is
conducted.
7. Any significant alteration of past practices is likely to cause some dissatisfac-
tion among supervisors. It is likely that this, too, shall pass as the new process
becomes familiar.
8. Performance evaluation should be reprioritized as a critical supervisory re-
sponsibility. Without overreacting to sergeants’ concerns, managers should be
responsive. Removing meaningless administrative duties from sergeants allows
them to spend more time verifying officer performance. In time, what was
once considered drastic will become routine, provided it is perceived as having
practical value to the supervisor.
9. Citizen involvement is central to performance evaluation. Citizens can be a

good source of information about an officer’s style and adequacy of effort,
as well as community satisfaction with results. They also can provide valua-
ble feedback about the status of neighborhood conditions. They should not,
however, be put in a position of judging the appropriateness of an officer’s
decisions.
10. The process should be as simple as reasonably possible. This will increase both
acceptance and the probability that the information will actually be utilized.
Methods of Performance Appraisal

There are a substantial number of specific devices and methods employed for
evaluating individual performance in organizations. All of the methods have pros
and cons, including how easy they are to use and understand, how susceptible they
are to rating errors, and how well they provide feedback to employees that helps
them improve their performance. Table 12.1 summarizes key information about
the most common performance appraisal methods currently in use.
Because there is such a wide variety of performance appraisal methods, each
with benefits and limitations, how should an organization proceed to establish a
viable, useful, fair, and equitable performance appraisal system? The best advice is
as follows27:
1. Determine why an appraisal system is needed. The relative need for informa-
tion to support staffing decisions, employee feedback, and personnel research
affects the desirability of different methods.
2. Determine the important components of the jobs included in the performance
appraisal system. Employees should be appraised on the most important as-
pects of their jobs, not on the least important or irrelevant aspects.
3. Evaluate the various performance appraisal methods in terms of Steps 1 and 2;
determine which methods are best suited to the types of jobs to be appraised
and to the information needs of the organization.
4. Provide opportunities for those who will do the appraising (supervisors) and
those who will be appraised (subordinates) to have input and participation in
the development of the appraisal system.
5. Employ multiple measures. Consider both quantity and quality, and employ
both objective and subjective evaluative measures. Focus on performance, not
on personality.
6. Train those who will do the appraising. Make sure they understand the process
and the measures to be used. Instruct them to hoard information to support
their appraisals.
TABLE 12.1 Methods of Performance Appraisal
Method Main Characteristics Pros & Cons
Work Quantitative measures of work output— Objective, easy to measure

340
production a
rrests, tickets, etc.; can be weighted by May miss quality
importance May miss what really matters
Rating Numerical ratings on objective and subjective Easy to create and use
scales criteria; can use behaviorally anchored rating BARS helps reduce subjectivity
scales (BARS) Susceptible to halo effect, career effect, leniency, and other common errors
Forced Ratings constrained by rules; for example, no Helps reduce leniency and other common rating errors
distribution more than 10% can be rated excellent, or no Unfair to those in h
igh-performing groups
more than 50% can be rated above average Ratings not reliable across other groups
Rank Ranks employees rather than rating them; More natural than rating
ordering can rank on one global criterion or separately Reliable within the group, but not across other groups
on various criteria May not produce clear feedback for employees
Paired Compares each employee to every other Easy to make one-to-one comparisons
comparison in the group; on one global criterion or Supervisor has to make many comparisons
separately on various criteria Does not produce clear feedback for employees
Checklists List of statements or behaviors; supervisor Easy to use and avoids common rating errors
simply checks those that apply to the May not capture job-specific dimensions that really matter
employee Supervisor is unaware of the values or weights attached to each statement, so can’t
provide feedback to employee
Forced Similar to checklists; in each set of Same pros and cons as checklists
choice statements, supervisor has to choose the Complicated to score and therefore even less useful for feedback to the employee
one that best applies to the employee
Critical Appraisal is focused on specific identified Avoids common rating errors

incidents events rather than everything that took place Focuses on most important activities
over the evaluation period Depends on the supervisor having full and accurate information
May not reflect a representative sample of all performance
7. Treat all appraisals as useful estimates of performance that include some degree
of error. Do not base staffing decisions on any one appraisal.
8. Periodically evaluate the appraisal system and make adjustments as necessary.
Monitor the field of applied personnel psychology to keep up-to-date on de-
velopments in performance appraisal.
Organizations that follow this advice should be successful in their performance

appraisals. Evaluating individual performance, especially when such evaluations
are used as input to important staffing decisions, is inevitably a source of some
conflict and dissatisfaction. It is a necessary activity, however; as long as it is based
carefully and conscientiously on performance of important activities, performance
appraisal can contribute meaningfully to organizational effectiveness.
Evaluating Programs, Strategies, and Units
Police administrators need information about the effectiveness of programs,

strategies, and units in order to make informed policy, allocation, strategic, and
tactical decisions. Formal evaluations are most often necessary to judge the effec-
tiveness of new programs and strategies, and to help decide whether they should
be continued, revised, or scrapped. However, even long-standing practices need
to be monitored and analyzed to ensure continued effectiveness and efficiency. As
noted earlier, there is a growing expectation that police departments will rely on
evidence-based strategies and programs—that is, that they will utilize those prac-
tices that have been evaluated and found to be most effective.
In addition, police executives need information about the effectiveness and
performance of organizational subunits.28 They need to know, for example,
whether the training unit is producing new officers who have the knowledge and
skills necessary to perform effectively. They need to know whether the communi-
cations unit is doing a good job of receiving and dispatching calls, and whether the
commander in District 3 is successfully utilizing their resources to meet the needs
of residents. Some of the information needed to make these unit-level assessments
may be routinely produced through the agency’s information and analysis systems
as described in Chapter 11, but in other cases more formal evaluation methods
may be needed.
In the following sections, we discuss some important considerations that af-
fect the evaluation of police programs, strategies, and units.
Input, Process, Output, and Outcome

Police programs and strategies are generally intended to have effects on com-
munity problems and conditions. For example, aggressive patrol is intended to
reduce street crime, residential target hardening is intended to reduce burglary
and theft, and crisis intervention is intended to reduce conflict and violence in
police encounters with people experiencing mental illness crises. These effects are
outcomes. They are the desired results or consequences of the program or strategy.
When a program, strategy, or unit has a desired outcome, part of its eval-
uation should include determining whether the desired outcome was achieved.
Obviously, a program or strategy could not be considered successful unless the
intended outcome was successfully met. More than simply establishing whether
the desired outcome came about, however, an evaluation must also attempt to de-
termine whether the program or strategy caused the outcome. This is far and away
the most difficult task in evaluation.
Earlier we discussed the problems encountered in trying to establish c ause-
and-effect relationships. Careful use of scientific methods, such as control groups
and experimentation, is required. These methods are well developed, but their
application to real-life situations is difficult and sometimes risky. Consider the
celebrated Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment, for example.29 In that study,
all preventive patrolling was removed from five patrol beats in the city for an en-
tire year. Had serious problems developed in those beats (they did not), the police
chief would certainly have been exposed to scathing criticism, at the least. It was
politically risky to conduct the experiment and also administratively difficult to
direct and control patrol officers in such a way that the experimental conditions
were maintained.
In order to establish cause and effect, evaluations must measure inputs, pro-
cesses, and outputs as well as outcomes. In order to successfully evaluate aggres-
sive patrol,30 for example, an evaluation would need to determine the amount of
resources devoted to the strategy, the methods employed to carry it out, and the
immediate outputs that resulted. This information is needed to document the
implementation of the strategy. This is very important because the full implemen-
tation of the strategy is a prerequisite to it having its intended effects. Evaluation
research conducted over several decades has determined that the most frequent
explanation for the failure of a program or strategy to have its intended effects is
that it was never fully implemented in the first place.
An evaluation of an aggressive patrol strategy might uncover any of the fol-
lowing circumstances:
1. Aggressive patrol was implemented, but street crime stayed the same or
increased.
2. Aggressive patrol was implemented, and street crime decreased.
3. Aggressive patrol was never implemented, and street crime stayed the same or
increased.
4. Aggressive patrol was never implemented, but street crime decreased.
The conclusions to be drawn from these four scenarios differ dramatically.31

The best case is Scenario 2, which is consistent with strategy expectations and
might indicate that aggressive patrol caused the crime decrease if experimental
conditions were carefully observed. Scenario 1 suggests that, contrary to ex-

pectations, aggressive patrol did not deter street crime. The third and fourth
scenarios are important for illustrating the importance of documenting imple-
mentation. In Scenario 3, the failure to decrease crime would have led us to
believe that the aggressive patrol strategy failed, had we not realized that the
strategy was never implemented in the first place. In Scenario 4, we would have
been inclined to declare the strategy a success, had we not observed that it was
never put into place.
Implementation failure can involve failure to invest the necessary resources
to make the strategy operational, failure to utilize the resources as intended, or
failure to obtain expected immediate outputs. In the preceding example, the im-
plementation of aggressive patrol might have been inadequate because too few
officers were assigned to carry out the strategy, because officers failed to patrol
aggressively by making frequent motor vehicle and suspicious person stops, or
because the frequent stops did not produce many arrests. For an evaluation to
establish implementation failure and to pinpoint why a strategy or program was
not fully implemented, information must be collected on inputs, processes, and
outputs.
Before leaving this aggressive patrol example, another point should be made.
Reducing crime is only one of several important outcomes of policing. A thorough
evaluation of any police strategy should always check to see whether other key
outcomes are also affected, especially when negative impacts or unintended conse-
quences might be anticipated. In the case of aggressive patrol, street crime might
go down, but at the cost of public trust and the risk of inequitable use of police
authority. This is another reason to always use multiple measures in order to get a
full picture of performance, including pros and cons.
Monitoring
Because of the need to determine as precisely as possible what causes desired
outcomes, the evaluation of programs and strategies generally requires the use of
the scientific method. However, a less scientific but nevertheless important ap-
proach to analyzing programs and strategies exists; it is called monitoring. Mon-
itoring simply involves systematic collection of information about program and
strategy inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes. Monitoring does not usually
permit managers to draw scientifically valid conclusions about cause and effect,
but it does allow them to determine whether programs and strategies are being im-
plemented as intended. Monitoring also can provide information about the status
of crime, citizen satisfaction, and other outcome indicators. Basically, monitoring
can provide all the benefits of evaluation except the discovery of cause-and-effect
relationships.
An example of the importance of program monitoring was provided during
the early stages of the Citizen-Oriented Police Enforcement (COPE) project in
Baltimore County, Maryland.32 Three squads of 15 officers each were created and
given the mission of reducing fear of crime in targeted neighborhoods. Initially, the
squads were given considerable latitude in designing their tactics. During the first
year of the COPE project, the squads tended to rely rather heavily on saturation
patrol tactics in the targeted neighborhoods. This tendency was detected by the
police department’s monitoring system, which collected information on COPE
officers’ activities and allocation of time to various tasks. Because the department’s
management expected COPE to incorporate substantial public contact into their
tactics, the monitoring system’s information indicated an implementation prob-
lem. The department reacted to the information by encouraging and guiding the
COPE units toward more citizen-oriented tactics. Thus, the monitoring system
played a crucial role in the successful evolution of the COPE project.
Ideally, monitoring can be accomplished through the utilization of the opera-
tional and management information systems described in Chapter 11. Monitoring
of some programs, strategies, and units, however, may require information not
routinely available, in which case special data collection, analysis, and information
systems may have to be created.
Inside Versus Outside Evaluation

While monitoring can generally be performed through established organiza-
tional processes, f ull-scale evaluation of programs, strategies, and units sometimes
requires outside assistance. This circumstance may arise when an evaluation re-
quires skills and expertise not available within the department. For example, the
evaluation of the COPE project in Baltimore County was focused in part on fear
of crime, because COPE’s mission was fear reduction. Although the Baltimore
County Police Department had a systematic monitoring and information system,
it had no experience in collecting or analyzing information on fear of crime. Con-
sequently, a consultant was retained to assist in developing methods for measuring
fear of crime and evaluating the project’s effects on fear.33
Outside evaluation is also recommended whenever a neutral, unbiased assess-
ment is particularly necessary. Evaluations conducted by members of the police
department can be totally objective, but there always exists the possibility of organ-
izational pressure being applied in an effort to influence findings and conclusions.
Additionally, for any type of organization, an inside assessment rarely carries the
same credibility as an outside evaluation. Thus, when an especially controversial or
expensive program is to be evaluated, it is generally better to have the evaluation
performed by specialists who are not members of the police department.
Up until the early 1970s, systematic, comprehensive evaluations of govern-
ment programs and strategies were only rarely conducted.34 Since then, however,
the value of such evaluations has become widely recognized, evaluation methods
have improved, and the number of people trained to perform evaluations has in-
creased greatly. This trend is mirrored within police administration; numerous
evaluations of all kinds of police programs and strategies have been performed in
the last 40+ years. Although not all evaluations have provided unambiguous and
useful information, overall, the increased utilization of evaluations in the police

service has provided a substantial amount of valuable information for use in police
planning and decision making. Most recently, efforts have been made to conduct
meta-evaluations that statistically combine all the individual evaluations of a par-
ticular program (e.g., hot-spots enforcement or neighborhood watch) in order to
draw the strongest possible conclusions about the program’s effectiveness.35 These
meta-evaluations are intended to help the police field make its practices and deci-
sions less haphazard and more e vidence-based.36
Evaluating Overall Organizational Performance
Police administrators, political leaders, and citizens all need to know how well
their police departments are performing. They need to know how their police
departments compare to accepted standards, how they compare to other depart-
ments, how their performance this year compares to their performance last year,
and how their performance compares to public expectations. Although these seem
like reasonable and simple needs, they are not easily met.
Traditionally, police departments were evaluated on the basis of a few statistics
collected as part of the national Uniform Crime Report (UCR) published annually
by the FBI. These statistics include the number of reported serious crimes, the serious
crime rate (the number of reported crimes per 1,000 population), the number of
arrests, the value of recovered stolen property, and the clearance rate (the proportion
of reported serious crimes that are classified as solved). Although all of these statistics
have value, their adequacy as indicators of police performance is limited. The number
of reported crimes, for example, is not a valid measure of the true amount of crime,
and it can easily be manipulated by police department reporting practices. The num-
ber of arrests provides no information about quality of arrests, about the appropri-
ateness of arrest decisions, or about whether the arrests resulted in prosecutions and
convictions. The case clearance rate is based solely on arrests. It is easily manipulated
and does not depend on conviction, recovery of property, or victim satisfaction.
During the 1960s and 1970s, several national commissions attempted to es-
tablish standards by which police agency performance could be assessed. Among
these were the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration
of Justice, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the National
Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, the President’s Commis-
sion on Campus Unrest, the American Bar Association Standards Relating to the
Urban Police Function, and the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Jus-
tice Standards and Goals. In general, the reports of these commissions argued that
“the pursuit of criminals and the obsession with the crime rate to the exclusion
of other valued aspects of policing were wrong-headed and counterproductive.”37
While acknowledging the importance of the police crime control mission, the
commissions stressed the importance of measuring police performance in terms of
service, order maintenance, and good relations with citizens.
A more recent effort to create standards is the CALEA Law Enforcement

Agency Accreditation Program.38 This program includes a large number of
standards that must be met by police agencies seeking accreditation. The stand-
ards are largely focused on inputs and processes rather than on outputs or out-
comes.39 The standards require departments to have policies concerning the use
of discretion, for example, but the detailed content of those policies is not spe-
cifically prescribed. Standards do require agencies to review and assess their own
performance in relation to important outcomes, but there are no passing scores
that departments must achieve on crime solving, citizen satisfaction, or other
outcomes in order to become accredited. Thus, the accreditation standards have
limited value for assessing the effectiveness of police agency performance; in-
stead, they provide useful guides for assessing the thoroughness of police admin-
istrative practices.40 It should be noted that CALEA is continually revising its
standards and reporting requirements over time, with one of the main objectives
being to incorporate more and more measures of outcomes and performance
quality.
An approach to police agency evaluation that stresses characteristics of the po-
lice organization rather than crime rates or response times was suggested by David
C. Couper, former chief of police of Madison, Wisconsin. In a monograph titled
How to Rate Your Local Police, and also in his more recent book Arrested Develop-
ment, Couper argued that answers to the following questions tell more about the
quality of a police department than do quantitative measures of performance. He
advised citizens to ask41:
• What kind of a person is the chief?

• What tone does the chief set for the agency?
• Does the chief articulate the policies of the agency clearly and understandably?
• Does the police agency have a clear sense of its objectives?
• Are there written policies for all operational practices?
• Does the police agency select the best-qualified individuals to be police officers?
• Does the police agency provide h
igh-quality training for its officers?
• Does the police agency reinforce the minimum requirements for a good police
officer?
• Does the police agency guide, train, and supervise police officers in the re-
straint of the use of force?
• Is the police agency willing to investigate and discipline officers engaging in
misconduct?
• Do police officers respect individual rights?
• Does the police agency address crime and order problems by using all com-
munity resources?
• Does the police agency cooperate and coordinate with neighboring law en-
forcement agencies and with other agencies in the criminal justice system?
• Does the police agency communicate well with the public?
• How does the police agency approach the media?
Performance evaluation approaches based on administrative standards and on

qualitative issues provide much useful information by which to judge police agen-
cies, but we are inevitably also interested in measures of effectiveness in solving
problems and achieving objectives. One major project that attempted to create
systems for measuring and evaluating police agency effectiveness was affiliated
with the National Commission on Productivity.42 The Commission sought to de-
velop measures of police agency productivity that would be meaningful and prac-
tical, focusing particularly on patrol performance and crime control measures. A
number of interesting performance measures were developed; three are presented
in Figure 12.1.
Performance Measure A in Figure 12.1 would indicate the proportion of all
patrol officers who were assigned to street patrol duties. This measure would be
a reflection of resource utilization and could be monitored from year to year in
one police department or used to compare two or more departments. In addition,
national averages or standards could be developed for this measure, providing a
useful guide for assessing any agency’s use of resources.
Performance Measure B would provide useful information for evaluating an
agency’s response times to different types of calls for service. It could indicate,
for example, the percentage of all emergency calls responded to in less than five
minutes (a common standard) or the percentage of low-priority calls responded
to in less than 30 minutes. By such measures, a police agency could monitor its
Figure 12.1
Measures of Police Agency Productivity
Source: Adapted from Harry P. Hatry. 1975. “Wrestling with Police Crime Control Pro-
ductivity Measurement.” In Joan L. Wolfe and John F. Heaphy (eds), Readings on Produc-
tivity in Policing. Washington, DC: Police Foundation, pp. 93–96.
response times so as to be alerted whenever a sizable proportion of calls were being

responded to more slowly than desired.
Performance Measure C provides a productivity indicator of arrest quality.
The numerator, by counting only arrests that survive initial judicial screening,
weeds out arrests that are not supported by sufficient evidence. By using a denom-
inator of “total patrol m
an-years,” the measure becomes a productivity indicator.
It reports arrests by amount of time invested rather than merely number of arrests.
Thus, arrests might increase from one year to the next; however, if more patrol
resources had been made available, the productivity measure might not increase.
Although the efforts of the Commission on Productivity can be criticized for fo-
cusing primarily on crime control measures and for relying on aspects of performance
that could be readily quantified, the productivity measures that were developed are
more refined and sensitive than such traditional and simplistic indicators as numbers
of arrests and numbers of reported crimes. In addition to comparing outputs and
results to inputs invested, some significant qualitative considerations were included
in the measures. These represented meaningful advances in measuring police agency
performance.
Some law enforcement agencies have sought to adopt these kinds of refined
performance measures. For example, the Thames Valley Police in the United King-
dom uses more than 20 indicators in its annual reports, including the following:
1. Percentage of victims of violent crimes who were satisfied with police service;
2. Percentage of emergency telephone calls answered within 10 seconds;
3. Percentage of non-emergency telephone calls answered within 20 seconds.43
Similarly, a report based on policing’s m ulti-dimensional “bottom line” in-

troduced in Chapter 3 suggests using 21 statistical indicators reflecting seven per-
formance dimensions to gauge the overall effectiveness of a police organization
(see Table 12.2).44 These indicators and dimensions reflect a broad and mature
understanding of the multiple goals and objectives of police agencies.
Reflecting a more strategic orientation, Jack Greene proposed measures of suc-
cess based on which model of policing an agency adopts, including the traditional
policing model, community policing, problem-oriented policing, hot-spots po-
licing, and homeland security policing. For traditional policing, arrest and crime
rates are used; for community policing, varied measures including calls for service,
fear reduction, use of public places, community linkages and contacts, and safer
neighborhoods; problem-oriented policing uses problems solved, minimized, or
displaced; hot-spots policing uses arrests, field stops, activity, location-specific re-
ductions in targeted activity; for homeland security, arrests, field stops, intelligence
gathering, mitigation, and preparedness. The idea is to highlight and measure ac-
tivities that are characteristic of the philosophy espoused by the organization.45
We have discussed several approaches to police agency evaluation in this sec-
tion. Consistent with our earlier admonition to utilize multiple measures whenever
TABLE 12.2 tatistical Measures of Police Organizational

S
Performance
Performance Dimensions Statistical Indicators
Reduce criminal victimization Reported crime rates

Victimization rates
Call offenders to account Clearance rates

Conviction rates
Reduce fear and enhance personal Reported changes in levels of fear

security Reported changes in self-defense measures
Guarantee safety in public spaces Traffic fatalities, injuries, and damage

Increased utilization of parks and public spaces
Increased property values
Use financial resources fairly, Cost per citizen

efficiently, and effectively Deployment efficiency/fairness
Scheduling efficiency
Budget compliance
Overtime expenditures
Civilianization
Use force and authority fairly, Citizen complaints

efficiently, and effectively Settlements in liability suits
Police shootings
Satisfy customer demands/achieve Satisfaction with police services

legitimacy with those policed Response times
Citizen perceptions of fairness
Source: Adapted from M. Moore, D. Thacher, A. Dodge, and T. Moore. 2002. Recognizing
Value in Policing: The Challenge of Measuring Police Performance. Washington, DC: Police
Executive Research Forum.
measuring and evaluating performance, our suggestion is to incorporate several

approaches into any serious attempt to assess police agency performance. In par-
ticular, three components are recommended:
1. A police department’s administrative practices can be compared to the CALEA

Law Enforcement Agency Accreditation Program standards.
2. A police department’s operational effectiveness can be assessed through the use
of some multidimensional sets of quantitative measures of performance and
productivity.
3. Qualitative considerations can be addressed by answering questions similar to
those posed by Chief Couper.
The combination of these three approaches assures a comprehensive assess-

ment that includes objective and subjective measures; quantitative and qualitative
considerations; and attention to inputs, processes, outputs, and outcomes.
Summary
Performance evaluation is crucial to police administration and police im-

provement. Unless performance is regularly evaluated, administrators, political
leaders, and citizens lack necessary information about the effectiveness of police
services in their communities. Through evaluation, all concerned parties can know
how their police departments compare to accepted standards, where problems and
shortcomings exist, and whether performance is improving or deteriorating. It is
a sad commentary on American police systems that, in most communities, this
information is available only in the form of hunches and guesses.
Police performance evaluation is needed at three levels: individual perfor-
mance appraisal; evaluation of programs and strategies; and evaluation of overall
organizational performance. At all levels, some difficult problems in measuring
police performance are encountered. Among these problems are vague and con-
flicting goals, choosing between objective and subjective measures of performance,
balancing quantity and quality, obtaining performance data that are reliable and
valid, and determining whether outcomes were caused by actions taken.
Individual performance appraisal provides information for three basic pur-
poses: for staffing decisions; for feedback to employees; and for personnel research.
Both supervisors and subordinates are typically dissatisfied with performance ap-
praisal processes, partly because of deficient and inaccurate methods of appraisal
and partly because the process in and of itself is personally threatening. Because
the variety of methods available for appraising individual performance is wide,
managers can perhaps reduce this dissatisfaction among their employees. How-
ever, managers should not expect to achieve complete satisfaction with individual
performance appraisal, regardless of the methods utilized.
Evaluating programs and strategies involves: (1) determining whether they
achieve their objectives; and (2) monitoring their implementation. Routine moni-
toring can readily be accomplished through an organization’s information systems
and chain of command, but rigorous evaluation most often requires outside as-
sistance. Only through such rigorous evaluation can the effects of strategies and
programs be determined. Accurate, reliable information about the effects of police
practices is needed continually by police administrators for allocation, policy, stra-
tegic, and tactical decision making.
Finally, citizens, political officials, and police administrators need information
with which to judge overall police agency performance. Traditional methods that
rely completely on crime and arrest statistics are inadequate. A more comprehen-
sive approach should include accepted standards of police practice; sensitive quan-
titative measures that assess quality as well as quantity; and subjective judgments
about the style, philosophy, and quality of police services, police policies, and
1. According to Chief Couper, “it is both your right and your obligation as a citizen to probe your police
agency, ask the questions and decide for yourself if your community’s public safety needs are being
met.” Do you agree with his view? By what methods can the public obtain and analyze such informa-
tion? What should the public do once it obtains answers to its questions?
2. Have you ever worked in organizations beset by the quantity-versus-quality dilemma? What meas-
ures of productivity were used? How can organizations measure the quality of their performance?
3. What methods of individual performance appraisal have been used in organizations with which you
are familiar? Were the methods liked or disliked by employees? By supervisors? Do you think the
methods achieved their purpose of accurately distinguishing among workers according to their
performance?
4. Which of the methods of individual performance appraisal do you think is best suited for use in police
departments? Why?
5. What do you think are the most appropriate indicators of overall police agency performance? Why?
Suggested Reading
Hoover, L.T. (ed.). 1998. Police Program Evaluation. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research
Forum.
Lum, C., and C.S. Koper. 2017. Evidence-Based Policing: Translating Research into Practice. Oxford:
Moore, M., D. Thacher, A. Dodge, and T. Moore. 2002. Recognizing Value in Policing: The Challenge
of Measuring Police Performance. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
Piza, E.L. and B.C. Welsh. 2022. The Globalization of Evidence-Based Policing: Innovations in Bridg-
ing the Research-Practice Divide. London: Routledge.
Shane, J.M. 2007. What Every Chief Executive Should Know: Using Data to Measure Police Perfor-
mance. Flushing, NY: Looseleaf Law Publications.
Notes
tute of Justice. Online at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/254326.pdf.
3 D. Weisburd, and P. Neyroud. 2011. “Police Science: Toward a New Paradigm.” New Perspec-
tives in Policing. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
4 J.K. Stewart. 1985. “Research and the Police Administrator: Working Smarter, Not Harder.”
In W.A. Geller (ed.), Police Leadership in America: Crisis and Opportunity. New York: Praeger,
pp. 371–382.
5 H.P. Hatry, R.E. Winnie, and D.M. Fisk. 1973. Practical Program Evaluation for State and Local
Government Officials. Washington, DC: Urban Institute, p. 1.
6 D.C. Couper. 1983. How to Rate Your Local Police. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research
Forum, p. 24.
7 Adapted from H.P. Hatry. 1975. “Wrestling with Police Crime Control Productivity Measure-
ment.” In J.L. Wolfe, and J.F. Heaphy (eds), Readings on Productivity in Policing. Washington,
DC: Police Foundation, p. 87.
8 M.H. Moore with A. Braga. 2003.“The Bottom Line of Policing: What Citizens Should Value (and
Measure!) in Police Performance. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum. Online
at: www.policeforum.org/assets/docs/Free_Online_Documents/Police_Evaluation/the%20bot-
tom%20line%20of%20policing%202003.pdf.
9 National Institute of Justice. 1997. “Measuring What Matters: Developing Measures of What
the Police Do.” Research in Action. Washington, DC: Author.
10 G.L. Kelling. 1996. “Defining the Bottom Line in Policing: Organizational Philosophy and
Accountability.” In L.T. Hoover (ed.), Quantifying Quality in Policing. Washington, DC: Police
Executive Research Forum, pp. 23–36.
11 J.R. Hepburn. 1981. “Crime Control, Due Process, and the Measurement of Police Perfor-
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12 G.P. Whitaker (ed.). 1984. Understanding Police Agency Performance. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office, pp. 111–147.
13 D.H. Bayley. 1996. “Measuring Overall Effectiveness.” In L.T. Hoover, Quantifying Quality,
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14 G.T. Marx. 1978. “Alternative Measures of Police Performance.” In R.C. Larson (ed.), Police
Accountability: Performance Measures and Unionism. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books,
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15 L.T. Hoover. 1996. “Potential Quality Measures for Law Enforcement.” In L.T. Hoover, Quan-
tifying Quality, pp. 263–273.
16 F.J. Landy. 1977. Performance Appraisal in Police Departments. Washington, DC: Police Founda-
tion, pp. 4–5.
17 D. McGregor. 1957. “An Uneasy Look at Performance Appraisal.” Harvard Business Review 35,
no. 3: 89–94; W.F. Walsh. 1990. “Performance Evaluation in Small and Medium Police Depart-
ments: A Supervisory Perspective.” American Journal of Police 9, no. 4:93–109.
18 W.C. Lawther. 1984. “Successful Training for Police Performance Evaluation Systems.” Journal
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19 McGregor. 1957. “An Uneasy Look at Performance Appraisal.”
20 G.M. McEvoy. 1987. “Using Subordinate Appraisals of Managers to Predict Performance and
Promotions: One Agency’s Experience.” Journal of Police Science and Administration 15, no. 2:
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21 W.F. Cascio. 1978. Applied Psychology in Personnel Management. Reston, VA: Reston Publishing
Co., pp. 322–336.
22 Landy. 1977. Performance Appraisal in Police Departments, p. 6.
23 T.N. Oettmeier, and M.A. Wycoff. 1997. Personnel Performance Evaluations in the Community
Policing Context. Washington, DC: Community Policing Consortium.
24 K.G. Love. 1981. “Accurate Evaluation of Police Officer Performance through the Judgment of
Fellow Officers: Fact or Fiction?” Journal of Police Science and Administration 9, no. 2: 1 43–149.
25 T.N. Oettmeier, and M.A. Wycoff. 1996. “Police Performance in the Nineties: Practitioner Per-
spectives.” In G.W. Cordner, and D.J. Kenney (eds), Managing Police Organizations. Cincinnati,
OH: Anderson, pp. 131–156.
26 Oettmeier and Wycoff. 1996. “Police Performance in the Nineties.”
27 Adapted from Landy and Goodin. 1974. “Performance Appraisal,” pp. 183–184; T. Caplow.
1983. Managing an Organization. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, pp. 136–137.
28 G. Cordner. 2014. “Measuring Police Unit Performance.” In G. Bruinsma, and D. Weisburd
(eds), Encyclopedia on Criminology and Criminal Justice. New York: Springer, pp. 3037–3047.
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31 J.E. Eck. 2002. Assessing Responses to Problems: An Introductory Guide for Police P roblem-Solvers.
Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
32 G.W. Cordner. 1985. The Baltimore County C itizen-Oriented Police Enforcement (COPE) Project:
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33 R.K. Higdon, and P.G. Huber. 1987. How to Fight Fear: The C itizen-Oriented Police Enforcement
Program Package. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
34 Hatry et al. 1973. Practical Program Evaluation, pp. 7–21.
35 L. Mazerolle, D.W. Soole, and S. Rombouts. 2007. Disrupting Street-Level Drug Markets: Crime
Prevention Research Review No. 1. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services; A. Braga. 2008. Police Enforcement Strategies to Prevent Crime in Hot Spot Areas: Crime
Prevention Research Review No. 2. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services; K. Holloway, T. Bennett, and D.P. Farrington. 2008. Does Neighborhood Watch Reduce
Crime? Crime Prevention Research Review No. 3. Washington, DC: Office of Community Ori-
ented Policing Services.
36 L.W. Sherman. 1998. “Evidence Based Policing.” Ideas in American Policing. Washington, DC:
Police Foundation.
37 G.P. Whitaker, S. Mastrofski, E. Ostrom, R.B. Parks, and S.L. Percy. 1982. Basic Issues in Police
Performance. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice, p. 4.
39 S.D. Mastrofski. 1986. “Police Agency Accreditation: The Prospects of Reform.” American Jour-
nal of Police 5, no. 2: 45–81.
40 G.W. Cordner, and G.L. Williams. 1999. “Community Policing and Police Agency Accredita-
tion.” In L.K. Gaines, and G.W. Cordner (eds), Policing Perspectives: An Anthology. Los Angeles,
CA: Roxbury, pp. 372–379.
41 Couper. 1983. How to Rate Your Local Police; D.C. Couper. 2011. Arrested Development: A Vet-
eran Police Chief Sounds Off about Protest, Racism, Corruption, and the Seven Steps Necessary to
Improve Our Nation’s Police. Indianapolis, IN: Dog Ear Publishing, pp. 220–221.
42 National Commission on Productivity. 1973. Productivity in Police Services, Report of the Advi-
sory Group on Productivity in Law Enforcement. Washington, DC: Author.
43 M. Moore, D. Thacher, A. Dodge, and T. Moore. 2002. Recognizing Value in Policing: The
Challenge of Measuring Police Performance. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum,
pp. 134–135.
44 Moore et al. 2002. Recognizing Value in Policing, p . 132.
45 J.R. Greene. 2000. “Community Policing in America: Changing the Nature, Structure, and
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and Decisions of the Criminal Justice System. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice.
CHAPTER 13 Police Strategies and
Tactics
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Summarize the findings of the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment.

• Summarize the findings of research on the effects of police response time.
• Summarize the findings of research on the effectiveness of detective follow-up investigations.
• Identify refinements made to preventive patrol, rapid response, and f ollow-up investigations.
• Explain how p roblem-oriented policing differs from traditional reactive policing.
Any analytical approach to organizations focuses naturally on the methods

used to perform the basic work of the organization. These work methods are
sometimes referred to as tasks or as organizational technology. The use of the
term “technology” in this context does not imply equipment, but simply the tech-
niques, whether simple or complex, employed to perform the organization’s work.
Assembly-line manufacturing, for example, is a basic organizational technology
in which each worker performs a single specialized task on a product as it moves
by on the assembly line, resulting in the finished product having been worked
on by many specialized employees. If, instead, each worker assembled a complete
product, performing all the various tasks necessary to finish the product, we would
recognize that a different organizational technology was in use, even though the
product was the same.
In this chapter, we look analytically at police organizational technology. In
traditional police terms, this refers to tactics and strategies, which are simply com-
binations of specific tasks and methods for achieving police organizational objec-
tives. We will identify the most commonly utilized police strategies and tactics
and assess the available evidence about their effectiveness. Since the early 1970s
there have been numerous studies aimed at evaluating and analyzing police strat-
egies and tactics. We discuss the first two or three waves of these studies that
help explain how h ot-spots policing, problem-oriented policing, and community
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-17
13 Police Strategies and Tactics 355
policing became so popular by the early 2000s, and still are widely in use. Later,
in Chapter 15, we will add more information about the latest developments in
police strategies and tactics, such as intelligence-led policing, focused deterrence,
and predictive policing.
In a rational approach to police administration, managers should carefully de-
sign work tasks and organize them into tactics and strategies in such a way that the
organization’s goals of protecting life and property and maintaining order are max-
imally attained. This chapter is intended to introduce the reader to a rational ap-
proach while, at the same time, identifying constraints that limit such an approach.
One constraint is the vagueness of the police goal of maintaining order. While all
citizens may favor orderliness in the abstract, differences of opinion emerge about
whether a particular party, outdoor concert, or adult bookstore is orderly or disor-
derly. The police goals of protecting life and property are clearer, but public conflict
is still evoked over the propriety of specific methods of protection, such as surveil-
lance cameras, aggressive patrol, or sting operations.1 Even if the goals were clearer
and there was less controversy about law enforcement methods, we still lack a great
deal of knowledge about which methods achieve which goals most effectively.
The lack of agreement in our society about the proper degree of order to be
maintained, and about proper methods for enforcing the law, poses constraints on
police administration. The situation directly impinges on what James Q. Wilson
saw as the three prerequisites for rational management:
First, the goals must be sufficiently operational so that one can make a
reasonably unambiguous judgment as to whether the desired state of af-
fairs has actually been brought into being.
Second, the organization must have the technology to achieve its goal.
Third, the organization must be reasonably free to apply a suitable tech-
nology to a given objective.2
Because police goals are vague, the effects of police strategies are not pre-
cisely known, and the police are restricted in the strategies they can employ, po-
lice administration tends to become as much survival-and constraint-oriented
as goal-and task-oriented. Police chiefs have traditionally been more concerned
about avoiding scandals than about improving services and attaining goals. This,
however, may be changing in the modern era, especially given the growing empha-
sis on evidence-based policing.3 As Wilson notes, “constraints do not uniquely de-
termine how administrators shall behave, they only reduce significantly the room
to maneuver.”4
Crime Control Strategies
Most police officers are assigned to the patrol function. At the beginning of
their 8 -, 10-, or 1 2-hour workday, they are assigned to patrol areas, often called
beats. Each officer patrols their beat until assigned a call by the police dispatcher.
The officer responds promptly to the call; it could be a crime, a traffic accident,
or a neighborhood dispute. The officer is expected to handle the call. This may
involve writing a report, conducting a preliminary investigation, giving first aid,
directing traffic, arresting or ticketing a citizen, breaking up an argument, giving
advice, providing information, or even getting a cat out of a tree. As soon as the
officer finishes handling the call, they return to patrolling until the next call. If
the call involves a crime or other serious matter, sometime later a detective may
conduct a follow-up investigation to try to identify and arrest the perpetrator or
recover stolen property.
This brief description includes the three cornerstones of traditional police
strategy for dealing with crime: preventive patrol; immediate response to calls; and
follow-up investigation. Each is examined in the sections that follow.
Preventive Patrol
Most police officers are assigned to patrol duties, with much of their time
spent on routine patrol. Typically, only about o ne-half of patrol time is consumed
by handling calls and performing administrative chores.5 The remaining portion is
spent patrolling, that is, riding around in the patrol car, sitting in the parked patrol
car, or patrolling on foot.
Patrolling has important purposes and is an operational necessity. In 1829,
Sir Robert Peel perceived the police as a preventive force, with uniformed of-
ficers on patrol as the primary mechanism of prevention. To this day, the strategy
is termed preventive patrol by many. In 1967, the President’s Commission on
Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice found that “preventive patrol
(the continued scrutiny of the community by visible and mobile policemen) is
universally thought of as the best method of controlling crime that is available to
the police.”6
Patrolling relies on visibility and unpredictability ( see “ Police Patrol,”
Box 13.1). Officers on patrol are expected to prevent crime by giving the im-
pression that they are omnipresent—that they are everywhere. Because it is not
actually possible to be omnipresent, officers are expected to patrol unpredictably
so that at any moment they might be right around the corner. This unpredictable
patrolling is often referred to as random patrol.
Another purpose of patrolling is to apprehend those who perpetrate crimes
and commit disorderly acts. Unpredictable patrol and patrol of areas of high
crime incidence improve the chances of an officer stumbling upon a crime in
progress. In addition, the apprehension of violators can be an excellent preventive
tool if other would-be violators then get the impression that the risk of capture
is great.
Police officers on patrol are also required to look for and correct any danger-
ous or threatening conditions on their beats. Historically, watching for fires was
a central purpose of nighttime patrolling. Today, patrol officers are expected to
Box 13.1 Police Patrol

Like most things, the most satisfactory method of patrol is a combination of two extremes;
combining the two, using the best of each, parts of both, depending on the situation. Thus,
for general police patrol, the best system is to patrol so that everyone knows you are on the
job, yet patrol so that no one knows where you will be next. A police chief of many years of
experience expresses this very well by telling his men to be “systematically unsystematic.”
That is, do not follow any fixed route or schedule that a criminal might observe, but at the
same time see that you cover all of your beat in such a way as to give adequate protection.
This is not easy. The easiest way to operate, of course, is to lay out a route and schedule so
that you need not think about what you are doing. Yet, remember that while this is the eas-
iest way for you, it is also the easiest way for the criminals. There is nothing they like better
than a police officer who is so systematic that they know that he visits a certain point, say
the back door of a drug store, every night at say, 11:36, 12:03, 12:49, 1:32.
Few officers have so little interest or intelligence that they will knowingly use such a
regular schedule, but far too many officers have fallen into certain regular habits without
realizing it.
Source: Richard L. Holcomb. 1948. Police Patrol. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, p
. 19.
check for damaged street signs, broken traffic signals, potholes, downed wires,
unsupervised children, flooding, and other community safety hazards.
There is another important operational necessity underlying the patrolling
strategy. In order to be ready to respond immediately to a citizen’s call for service,
a patrol officer must essentially be doing nothing at the time the call is received.7
This is referred to as the availability factor. At any given moment, there must be
officers patrolling and available to respond to calls, if rapid response is to be a
reality.
Patrol officers traditionally have enjoyed great freedom in determining how
they patrol. Each patrol officer is limited to a beat and must handle all calls that
are dispatched on that beat. Within the beat, during the hours each workday that
are not consumed by handling calls, patrol officers are given considerable leeway.
As a result, they differ tremendously in how they patrol their beats.8 Some officers
concentrate on trouble-prone areas; others hide. Some make numerous traffic
enforcement stops; others make none. Some drive only the main streets; others
patrol alleys and residential areas. Little or no instruction or direction is generally
given to patrol officers about how best to allocate their patrol time. Officers are
supposed to use what they know about their beats to determine which areas need
more attention than others, and react accordingly.
Although some in the police field have long regarded routine patrol as a waste
of time and others have strongly defended it as the backbone of modern policing, it
was not until the early 1970s that the strategy’s effectiveness was rigorously tested.
Then, during 1972 and 1973, the Kansas City Police Department and the Police
Foundation conducted a remarkable experiment to test the effects of routine pre-
ventive patrol.9 The experiment has been both influential and controversial. One
of the most interesting features of the study is that it was proposed by a task force
of Kansas City police officers and not, as might have been expected, by outside
researchers.
Experimental conditions in the Kansas City study were maintained for an
entire year. Included in the study were 15 patrol beats in the city’s South Patrol
Division. Five of these beats were assigned to a control group with no changes in
normal patrol staffing or tactics. Five other beats were chosen as reactive beats,
with all preventive patrolling eliminated. Although outside patrol units handled
calls in these reactive beats, the units left the beats once the calls were cleared. The
final five beats in the experiment were proactive beats, in which two to three times
the usual level of preventive patrolling was provided.
Prior to the outset of the experiment, researchers collected data on reported
crime, arrests, response time, citizen attitudes, and citizen and business victimi-
zation for each of the 15 beats in the study. They collected similar data after the
conclusion of the year-long experiment. During the experiment, the activities of
the police officers assigned to the beats were observed and monitored.
When the study was finished, the researchers concluded
that decreasing or increasing routine preventive patrol within the range

tested in (the) experiment had no effect on crime, citizen fear of crime,
community attitudes toward the police on the delivery of police service,
police response time or traffic accidents.10
In fact, citizens in the experimental areas did not notice that changes had been
made in the levels of patrolling.
The study did have its limitations, of course. For example, the use of patrol
beats as the unit of analysis meant that the overall analysis was based on only 15
research units. Consequently, only very substantial differences among control,
reactive, and proactive beats stood a chance of being statistically significant. In
other words, the methodological design of the study was biased in the direc-
tion of finding no differences attributable to the varying levels of patrol.11 This
probably did not matter much, though, because not only was there a lack of
statistically significant differences among the beats, there were also virtually no
patterns among the n on-significant differences that would suggest that any of the
three categories of beats was better or worse off for having more or less preventive
patrol for a year.
The actual differences in levels of patrolling among the control, reactive, and
proactive beats were not as definitive or as clear-cut as the researchers had intended
them to be. While routine patrolling was controlled and monitored, other opera-
tional units of the police department were not. Special police units, for example,
were free to roam and to operate in any of the beats as they saw fit. In addition, re-
active units responding to calls in their reactive beats were forced to drive through
their beat areas going to and from the calls; this resulted in a substantial police
presence that researchers were unable to eliminate from the reactive areas.
Additionally, there was no way to determine if reactive beat residents were

able to differentiate between patrol units they observed throughout the city and
patrol units they saw close to home. Furthermore, some critics have suggested that
Kansas City is not sufficiently representative of urban America for the results of
the study to be widely applicable, and others have criticized the study on the basis
of its limited (one-year) duration.
Despite these criticisms and limitations, the Kansas City study has become
widely respected by both researchers and police executives. While the study did
not result in the elimination of preventive patrol, as some had predicted, it did set
the stage for further experimentation with alternative patrol strategies and tactics.
The Kansas City study demonstrated convincingly that police chiefs could try
alternative patrol tactics without fearing that reduced preventive patrolling would
result in calamity. The study did not give police chiefs any final answers about
what new tactics to employ, but it did give them the opportunity to try something
new and different.
Immediate Response to Calls

Studies of the effects of police response time also gave police administrators
a license to innovate. As mentioned earlier, immediate police response to calls
has been a cornerstone of modern police strategy. Technological developments,
especially the telephone and the police radio, greatly aided police in their efforts
to reduce response time. The adoption of the 911 emergency telephone system
was aimed at making it easier for citizens to contact the police quickly. Computer
systems were developed to design beats for optimal response time and to aid dis-
patchers in assigning calls to the nearest available patrol units.
Many police departments continually monitor their average response times to
calls and, in part, base requests for additional personnel on the need to keep re-
sponse times within an acceptable range. There is a tendency on the part of police
officials, elected leaders, and citizens to make several assumptions with regard to
the advantages of rapid response:
1. It improves the odds of catching the offender at the scene or nearby;

2. It enhances the opportunity of the police to identify witnesses;
3. It provides for the immediate gathering of physical evidence;
4. It permits the police to administer lifesaving first aid quickly;
5. It enhances a police department’s image and reputation, thereby serving a
crime prevention function;
6. It creates citizen satisfaction.
Several studies have examined the extent to which rapid police response ac-
tually produces these desired outcomes; for the most part, findings have not been
very supportive of the assumptions. The earliest studies found that quick response
made an arrest more likely but emphasized that only extremely short response
times were likely to be productive.12 When police response time was one or two
minutes, a desirable outcome was likely; improvements in these response times of
even 15–30 seconds greatly improved the likelihood of a successful outcome. On
the other hand, when response time exceeded three or four minutes, success prob-
abilities dropped off sharply, and modest reductions in response time mattered
very little.
Two later studies produced even less promising findings.13 These studies
looked more carefully at response time itself and at the different types of situa-
tions that give rise to calls for police assistance. One important finding was that
citizens often delay after an incident occurs before calling the police. Sometimes
a telephone was not available, or the victim was physically prevented from calling
the police. In other instances, the victim was temporarily disoriented, frightened,
ashamed, or even apathetic. It was not unusual for crime victims to call their par-
ents, their doctor, their minister, or even their insurance company before calling
the police. For serious crimes, citizens delayed an average of 5 –10 minutes before
calling the police, according to these studies.
In previous studies and in police administration practice, response time had
always been measured from the time that the police department was notified of
the crime or incident (usually via a telephone call from a citizen) until the time the
first patrol unit arrived at the scene. The time it took the citizen to call the police
in the first place had not been part of response time measurement. However, the
likelihood of catching an offender at the scene, locating a witness, or rendering
lifesaving first aid actually depends on the length of time from occurrence to police
arrival, not on the length of time from the call to the police until police arrival.
The realization that citizens often delay for several minutes before calling the po-
lice puts response time in a different light and suggests that rapid response may not
be as significant as once thought.
An important distinction was also made in the later studies between involve-
ment crimes and discovery crimes. Involvement crimes are those experienced
by a victim or witness while they are occurring. Robberies and assaults are by
definition involvement crimes; the victim is involved and personally threatened.
Burglaries and thefts, on the other hand, are not usually discovered until after
the fact. They are not usually involvement crimes. When a victim or witness be-
comes aware of the crime only after it has occurred, it is referred to as a discovery
crime.
The distinction between involvement and discovery crimes is an important
factor in any consideration of police response time. With involvement crimes,
rapid police response might be productive if citizen delay has not been too long.
With discovery crimes, however, rapid police response is unlikely to matter, be-
cause the time of occurrence in all likelihood would have been a long time before
the call to the police. Frequently, the actual time of occurrence is hours or some-
times days earlier, making even instantaneous police arrival irrelevant.14
Given these considerations, it is not surprising that we conclude that police

response time is not usually a crucial factor in arresting offenders and gathering
evidence. In their careful study of response time in four cities, Spelman and Brown
found the following:
Rapid police response may be unnecessary for three out of every four se-
rious crimes reported to police. The traditional practice of immediate re-
sponse to all reports of serious crimes currently leads to on-scene arrests in
only 29 of every 1000 cases. By implementing innovative programs, police
may be able to increase this response-related arrest rate to 50 or even 60
per 1000, but there is little hope that further increases can be generated.15
This study found that median citizen delay in reporting involvement crimes
ranged from four to five and o ne-half minutes. Delay was about 10 minutes for
discovery crimes. Involvement crimes reported in progress had a response-related
arrest probability of 35%; those reported within a few seconds, 18%; those re-
ported one minute after the fact, 10%; and those reported within one to five min-
utes, 7%. Involvement crimes for which citizen reporting was delayed beyond five
minutes had extremely low response-related arrest likelihoods. Response-related
arrest probabilities for discovery crimes were even lower. In sum,
police response time had no effect on the chances of on-scene arrest in 70

to 85 percent of Part I crimes because they were discovered after they had
occurred and had no effect on 50 percent to 60 percent of the rest because
they were reported too slowly.16
Despite these limitations on the effectiveness of rapid police response, some

police executives are still eager to promise immediate response time because they
believe the public demands it. The research has indicated, however, that citizen
satisfaction depends not so much on rapid police response as on whether the po-
lice arrive within a reasonable amount of time.17 Moreover, citizen expectations
of reasonable response time are affected by what they are told when they call the
police. If they are told that an officer will be there immediately, then a five-minute
delay seems endless. On the other hand, if the citizen calling in about a n on-
emergency is informed that other urgent matters must be handled first and that
an officer will arrive within 30 minutes, then a response at any time within that 30
minutes is typically satisfactory to the citizen.
Certainly, when violent crimes, personal injury traffic accidents, and other
emergencies are reported immediately to the police, rapid response serves a very
important purpose. Being able to administer first aid quickly is an unquestionable
advantage of rapid response to emergency calls and serves in a significant way
in helping the police achieve their goal of protecting lives. However, for non-
emergency calls and especially for discovery crimes and when citizens themselves
delay before calling the police, rapid response serves little useful purpose. As with
the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment, the response time research demon-
strates that traditional practice is not entirely effective and suggests an opportunity
to revise and innovate. The development of new response strategies, as well as new
patrol strategies, has been a high priority in police research and planning since
these pioneering studies.
F
ollow-Up Investigations
Most police departments assign 10–20% of their personnel to the investiga-
tive or detective function. This function takes place after the initial response and
preliminary investigation conducted by patrol officers; thus, such investigations
are referred to as follow-up or reactive investigations. It should be recognized, of
course, that some detective work, especially vice-related activity (narcotics, gam-
bling, prostitution), is more proactive and instigative as opposed to follow-up in
nature.18 In such cases, a detective uses covert observation, an informant, or poses
as a customer or criminal in order to instigate criminal activity, always being care-
ful not to illegally entrap the person or persons who are the object of the inves-
tigation. Most detective work, however, involves follow-up activity, investigating
crimes after they have occurred and focusing on discovering how the crimes were
committed and who committed them.
Follow-up investigations are the third cornerstone of modern police crime con-
trol strategy. A follow-up investigation is typically conducted by a detective within a
day or, at the very most, within a few days of the patrol officer conducting a prelim-
inary investigation and filing a report. Traditionally, almost every reported serious
crime was assigned to a detective for a f ollow-up investigation. In large departments,
detectives specialize in certain kinds of cases, such as burglary, robbery, arson, or
homicide; in small agencies, detectives are generalists and work on a variety of cases.
Because detectives work in plain clothes, because they are given wide lati-
tude in handling their cases, and because they are free of the responsibility of re-
sponding to routine calls for police service, they have historically enjoyed higher
status than patrol officers. This so-called detective mystique has been reinforced
by countless short stories, novels, movies, and television programs depicting the
investigative exploits of the detective. While patrol officers are often portrayed
as the dull foot soldiers and report takers of modern police work, detectives are
characterized as smart, tough, individualistic, and even mysterious.
Studies, though, clearly demonstrate that the detective mystique is a myth and
that detectives deserve less credit for solving crimes than they are usually given (see
“Detective Work,” Box 13.2). Looking at investigative work critically, it is first
important to point out that only about one in five serious reported crimes is ever
solved. Moreover,
The single most important determinant of whether or not a case will

be solved is the information the victim supplies to the immediately
responding patrol officer. If information that uniquely identifies the per-

petrator is not presented at the time the crime is reported, the perpetrator,
by and large, will not be subsequently identified. Of those cases that are
ultimately cleared but in which the perpetrator is not identifiable at the
time of the initial police incident report, almost all are cleared as a result
of routine police procedures.19
Examination of how detectives typically spend their time also chips away at
their mystique.
Our data consistently reveal that an investigator’s time is largely consumed

in reviewing reports, documenting files, and attempting to locate and inter-
view victims on cases that experience shows will not be solved. For cases that
are solved (i.e., a suspect is identified), an investigator spends more time in
post-clearance processing than he does in identifying the perpetrator.20
In sum, detectives spend most of their time in the office reading, writing, on
the computer, and talking on the telephone. They spend relatively little time do-
ing the things that fictional detectives are famous for: searching for clues, prying
information out of informants, questioning suspects, interviewing witnesses and
Box 13.2 Detective Work

Part of the mystique of detective operations is the impression that a detective has difficult-
to-come-by qualifications and skills, that investigating crime is a real science, that a de-
tective does much more important work than other police officers, that all detective work
is exciting and that a good detective can solve any crime. It borders on heresy to point out
that, in fact, much of what detectives do consists of very routine and rather elementary
chores, including much paper processing; that a good deal of their work is not only not ex-
citing, it is downright boring; that the situations they confront are often less challenging and
less demanding than those handled by patrolling police officers; that it is arguable whether
special skills and knowledge are required for detective work; that a considerable amount
of detective work is actually undertaken on a h it-or-miss basis; and that the capacity of
detectives to solve crimes is greatly exaggerated.
This is not meant to imply that what detectives do has no value. In a large number of
cases, good detective work identifies the perpetrator and results in an apprehension. The
dogged determination and resourcefulness of some detectives in solving cases are ex-
tremely impressive. But, in the context of the totality of police operations, the cases detec-
tives solve account for a much smaller part of police business than is commonly realized.
This is so because, in case after case, there is literally nothing to go on: no physical evidence,
no description of the offender, no witness and often no cooperation, even from the victim.
Source: Herman Goldstein. 1977. Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger,
pp. 55–56.
victims, conducting surveillances, and tracking down perpetrators. For better or

for worse, modern detective work has largely been bureaucratized.21
Research also indicates that physical evidence is rarely the only basis for iden-
tifying a suspect or solving a crime, in spite of tremendous advances in forensic
science, the development of DNA evidence techniques, and improved crime scene
work. It is still true that most police departments collect much more physical evi-
dence than can be processed and analyzed, resulting in evidence backlogs at crime
labs and frustrations for victims and investigators. Forensic science may someday
take a quantum leap and become the dominant form of evidence for crime solving
and judicial decision making, but for now, eyewitnesses, informants, and suspect
confessions continue to play a larger role than physical evidence in most criminal
investigations.22
With respect to operational deficiencies, studies of detective work closely
parallel those of preventive patrol and immediate response to calls: preventive
patrol cannot be shown to prevent; immediate response is not really imme-
diate and is often unnecessary; and follow-up investigations are frequently
futile, often merely duplicating preliminary patrol investigations. Starting in
the late 1970s and continuing to the present, an important aspect of research
and development in policing has been the search for more effective crime
control strategies and tactics, including improved methods of patrolling and
investigating.
Refinements
In each traditional area— patrol, rapid response, and investigations—
significant refinements have been achieved since the landmark studies described
above. For the most part, refinements in each area have emphasized developing
more targeted strategies and tactics that focus police resources where they can
be most effective. The landmark studies have come to be interpreted as demon-
strating that: (1) spreading patrol evenly over the entire jurisdiction; (2) trying to
respond rapidly to every crime report; and (3) throwing a detective at every crime
case, simply are not very effective approaches. The studies also demonstrate that
substantial police resources can safely and responsibly be reallocated away from
strict adherence to these traditional approaches and toward other, more effective
strategies and tactics.
Patrol Refinements
One of the first programs to arise out of the “nothing works” disarray caused
by early research findings, especially those of the Kansas City study, was Manag-
ing Patrol Operations (MPO).23 It encouraged police agencies to adopt or im-
prove rational patrol allocation methods, careful workload analysis, crime analysis,
and directed patrol. Some of today’s police strategies, including Compstat and
hot-spots policing, developed out of these earlier efforts.
Directed patrol differs from routine preventive patrol in the use of un-
committed patrolling time. In directed patrol, officers are given instructions or
directions to follow when they are not busy handling calls. These instructions
are usually based on analysis of recent crime incidents and patterns and can be
fairly general (“be on the lookout for subjects loitering suspiciously in the area
of car dealerships”) or very specific (At 11:00 p.m. park in the 200 block of Vine
Street, walk across Broadway and then north one block to the Volvo/Honda deal-
erships. Approach quietly and observe from the perimeter for five minutes. If
no suspicious activity is observed, proceed to check the lot and buildings. After
completing the check, remain on the premises for ten additional minutes before
departing).
The rationale behind directed patrol is to make patrolling as targeted and
informed as possible. Directed patrol is the opposite of random patrol. Directed
patrol assignments attempt to guide patrol officers to locations where certain
kinds of activities such as crimes and accidents are likely to occur, to give them
tactics that may be used to prevent or detect target crimes, and to provide them
with suspect and method information to increase the chances of prevention or
detection. As police departments have improved their crime analysis capabilities
and gotten better at identifying “hotspots,” the credibility of directed patrol has
been enhanced.

Evidence Supports Place-Based Policing Strategies
April 12, 2022
A recent article in the Washington Post criticized place-based policing strategies, tying them
to the police shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville in 2020. This column by several distin-
guished police scholars argues instead that what happened in Louisville was a botched no-knock
warrant service, having nothing to do p lace-based policing. Noting that crime concentrates in a
small number of locations in any jurisdiction,
Place-focused approaches in policing bring communities a more thoughtful and high-quality

approach to policing than traditional policing approaches which are often unfocused across
communities. The science supports police adopting place-based approaches. Ignoring the
needs of these places would be irresponsible and contribute to higher victimization.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, gcordner.wordpress.com/2022/04/12/evidence-supports-place-based-policing-strategies/.

The hyperlink at “This column” links to https://www.ncja.org/crimeandjusticenews/experts-place-based-strategies-are-
effective-central-to-police-reform.
Studies of directed patrol have yielded promising results. A study in Pontiac,

Michigan, found some evidence that target crimes were reduced by directed pa-
trol; the findings indicated that the tactics employed during directed assignments,
more than merely the amount of time devoted to directed patrol, had the greater
effect on crime.24 In Minneapolis, the assignment of patrol officers to spend time

at “hotspots” failed to reduce serious crime but did have an impact on disorder. In
this case, mere visibility seemed to have caused the modest effect on disorder in
very specific locations, as the officers’ activities at the hotspots were unstructured
and not very substantial.25 Another study, in Indianapolis, found that directed
patrol focused on firearms violations was successful in reducing the incidence of
firearms-related crimes in the targeted area and that “focusing on individuals and
situations where the police have some degree of suspicion of criminal behavior was
more effective than casting a broad net over a neighborhood.”26
In addition to providing more direction to patrol, many police departments
have adopted a more active or aggressive approach to patrolling, especially in
hotspot locations.27 This essentially involves a higher degree of intervention by
patrol officers, such as stopping numerous cars for traffic violations, checking
out suspicious people, using every legal opportunity to search for drugs and
weapons, and frequently checking for outstanding warrants.28 The rationale un-
derlying aggressive patrol is that these police interventions will result in appre-
hensions, interruptions of criminal activity, and prevention of crime. The main
drawback is that aggressive patrol, if not properly and legally practiced, unneces-
sarily thrusts the police into many peoples’ lives, thereby having an intimidating
and chilling effect on the law-abiding public and causing legitimate concerns
about the abuse of police power. It has also been suggested that the tactic more
frequently places police officers into dangerous situations that could result in
injury or death.
A study in San Diego tested the effects of an element of aggressive patrol
known as field interrogation, which was defined as “a contact initiated by a patrol
officer who stops, questions and sometimes searches a citizen because the officer
has reasonable suspicion that the subject may have committed, may be commit-
ting, or may be about to commit a crime.”29 In the study, field interrogation (FI)
activity was suspended for nine months in one experimental area but maintained
at normal levels in two control areas. Suppressible crime in the experimental (no-
FI) area increased by a substantial amount, while remaining about the same in the
control areas. With the resumption of FI activity in the experimental area, the in-
cidence of suppressible crime returned to approximately its pre-experimental level.
Two studies of a cross-section of the largest American cities produced compa-
rable findings. One study used the number of traffic citations issued as a measure
of patrol aggressiveness and a sophisticated mathematical model to determine the
relationship between aggressive patrol and the robbery crime rate. The analysis
suggested that aggressive patrol contributes to a higher robbery arrest ratio which,
in turn, leads to a lower robbery crime rate.30 A similar study, which used expert
judgments (ratings by observers knowledgeable about police practices around the
country) of police departments’ “adherence to norms of efficiency and legalism” as
a measure of patrol aggressiveness, produced comparable findings.31
A study in Kansas City demonstrated the value of aggressive patrol in iden-
tifying individuals illegally carrying firearms.32 Officers saturating a target area
were successful in seizing substantially more weapons than other officers pa-
trolling routinely in a control area, and the result was a significant decrease in
gun crime in the target area. Target area residents also became less fearful of
crime and more satisfied with their neighborhood, compared to control area
residents. When the intervention was stopped in the target area, gun crime
increased.
Rapid Response Refinements

The results of the response time studies paved the way for a new approach,
often termed differential responses to calls for service.33 Stated simply, differential
responses advocates abandoning the traditional practice of immediately respond-
ing to all calls for service, substituting the principle of matching the type of re-
sponse to the call. Under this program, some calls are handled over the telephone,
by online reporting, by appointment, by delayed patrol response, or by immedi-
ate non-sworn police response, thus reducing and managing the workload of the
sworn patrol force.
Reducing and managing the patrol workload associated with call-handling
provides opportunities for alternative strategies and allocation decisions. More
time may be devoted to directed patrol, preliminary patrol investigations, or crime
prevention activities. Some patrol resources might be redistributed to investiga-
tions or other functions. In addition, more patrol officers will be available to re-
spond en masse to crimes in progress and emergencies, perhaps improving patrol
apprehension effectiveness.
Successful implementation of the differential response program requires
planning and, in particular, skilled communications personnel. Police tele-
phone operators are required to assess the nature of each incoming call and de-
termine the appropriate response mode. Categories are established in advance
(see Figure 13.1), but 911 operators must still diagnose the endless variety of
calls for police service and make decisions about seriousness and immediacy.
Operators must also explain to callers with low-priority problems why the po-
lice will not appear immediately at their doorsteps. Research has shown that
most complainants will accept such explanations if they are politely and logi-
cally presented, but experience suggests that providing such explanations goes
beyond the traditional role of police communications personnel and requires
training and supervision.
Tests of the differential responses program have yielded promising results.34
Several police departments have successfully implemented the program and di-
verted up to 50% of calls to alternative responses without suffering any reductions
in citizen satisfaction. Some difficulties are usually encountered with communica-
tions personnel early in the program, including hesitancy in choosing alternative
responses, but these dwindle with experience. The program succeeds in releasing
patrol resources for other, more productive strategies; the challenge is to identify
and implement those more productive strategies.
TYPE OF INCIDENT/TIME OF OCCURRENCE
MAJOR POTENTIAL MINOR

MAJOR PROPERTY POTENTIAL PROPERTY MINOR PROPERTY OTHER OTHER
PERSONAL DAMAGE/ PERSONAL DAMAGE/ PERSONAL DAMAGE/ MINOR MINOR
INJURY LOSS INJURY LOSS INJURY LOSS CRIME NON-CRIME
IN-PROGRESS
IN-PROGRESS
IN-PROGRESS
IN-PROGRESS
IN-PROGRESS
IN-PROGRESS
IN-PROGRESS
IN-PROGRESS
PROXIMATE
PROXIMATE
PROXIMATE
PROXIMATE
PROXIMATE
PROXIMATE
PROXIMATE
PROXIMATE
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
COLD
IMMEDIATE
SWORN
EXPEDITE
ROUTINE
RESPONSE ALTERNATIVES
APPOINTMENT
IMMEDIATE
NON-SWORN
EXPEDITE
ROUTINE
APPOINTMENT
TELEPHONE
NON-MOBILE
WALK-IN
MAIL-IN
REFERRAL
NO REFERRAL
Figure 13.1
General Differential Response Model
Source: Michael T. Farmer (ed.). 1981. Differential Police Response Strategies.
Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, p . 6.
Investigative Refinements
As MPO arose largely as a result of the Kansas City study, so Managing
Criminal Investigations (MCI) arose in response to the RAND study of crimi-
nal investigations. MCI was a federally funded program of investigative improve-
ment that included such components as solvability factors, case screening, case
enhancement, and police/prosecutor coordination.35 The first step in MCI was of-
ten the redesign of crime reports, highlighting important evidentiary items called
solvability factors. The new report form, along with special training, was in-
tended to encourage patrol officers to be investigators rather than mere report tak-
ers. When patrol reports were forwarded to the detective division, case screening
could then be based on the presence or absence of solvability factors. A supervisor
could screen out cases in which few or no solvability factors had been uncovered
by the preliminary patrol investigation, and not assign those cases for follow-up
investigation. Because many cases are characterized by little or no evidence, the
portion of cases screened out would be considerable. Detectives could then real-
locate their time to the remaining cases that are potentially solvable, as well as to
post-arrest case enhancement.
Some MCI programs use quantitative formulas to determine whether a
case should be assigned for follow-up investigation.36 Studies have identified the
solvability factors that best predict whether a case will be solved and the prob-
ability of case solution, given different amounts of evidence available following
preliminary patrol investigation. A checklist or scoring system can be applied to
each case to decide its eligibility for further investigation. Research conducted by
numerous police departments has demonstrated that scoring systems successfully
screen out low-probability cases and identify promising cases.37 Of course, some
cases are so serious in nature or so important for other reasons that they deserve
follow-up investigation regardless of their potential solvability. But many police
departments simply cannot investigate all the high-volume crimes (thefts and bur-
glaries) reported to them, so they need some kind of system to pick and choose the
ones they will investigate.
Another investigative refinement was to refocus attention on offenders rather
than offenses. This is called the repeat offender approach. The rationale behind
this approach rests on research indicating that a few very active criminal offenders
account for a disproportionate amount of criminal activity. The reactive type of
repeat offender program focuses on offenders already arrested. Prior records of
arrestees are examined to identify those who are repeat offenders, especially ones
who meet the criteria of subsequent offender laws (sometimes called three-strikes
laws) enacted in many states. When an arrestee is found who meets the criteria,
specially trained, highly skilled detectives review the arrest, enhance the prosecu-
tion through additional investigation, shepherd the case through the courts, and
collect the necessary records to document prior convictions. In this way, the case
is kept from falling through the cracks in the court system, inappropriate plea
bargaining is avoided, and the full weight of legal sanctions is brought to bear on
the repeat offender.38
Some police departments also utilize more proactive repeat offender tac-
tics, including extensive surveillance of suspected active repeaters. In general,
this is an expensive undertaking because it takes several officers to conduct a
continuing surveillance. Only very active offenders are likely to merit such an
investment. A study in Washington, DC, however, found that a proactive repeat
offender unit was successful in arresting targeted offenders and that offenders
who were apprehended had prior records that were much longer than average.
The tactics of this unit included conducting surveillances of active offenders, lo-
cating wanted serious offenders, acting on tips from informants, and employing
decoy and sting-type methods.39 A similar study conducted in Phoenix focused
on a mixed proactive/reactive model. Suspected repeat offenders were identified
to police department personnel, so that some proactive work could take place,
but the primary tactic was to seek additional evidence and conduct extensive
background checks after repeat offenders were arrested, which was usually dur-
ing the course of routine police business.40 This study found that targeted re-
peat offenders were slightly more likely to be arrested than n on-targeted ones
but, more importantly, they were more likely to get prison sentences, and their
sentences were on average 18 months longer than those given to non-targeted
repeat offenders.
P
roblem-Oriented Policing
As described above, most of the refinements to preventive patrol, rapid re-
sponse, and follow-up investigation since the 1970s have emphasized taking a
more targeted approach by concentrating police resources on specific locations,
specific types of calls and cases, and specific offenders. But the actual policing
methods had not changed very m uch—for the most part, what has been targeted
and concentrated is visible police authority and enforcement action. Since the
1980s, though, another targeted approach, called problem-oriented policing, has
gained popularity.
Simply put, problem-oriented policing (POP) posits that police should fo-
cus more attention on problems, as opposed to incidents.41 Problems may be
recognizable as collections of incidents related in some way (such as by occur-
ring at the same location) or as underlying conditions that give rise to incidents,
crimes, disorder, and other substantive community issues that people expect the
police to handle. By focusing more on problems than on incidents, police can
address causes rather than mere symptoms and, consequently, have a greater
impact. The public health analogy is often used to illustrate this difference in
conceptualizing the police role, with its emphasis on prevention and taking a
proactive approach. This analogy is useful, too, because it reminds us that even
with a strong public health approach, people still get sick and need medical
attention—that is, police still need to respond to calls and make arrests, even as
POP tries to prevent problems in the first place and reduce the overall demand
for reactive policing.
One of the most fundamental tenets of POP is that law e nforcement—using
the criminal law—should be understood as one means of policing, not the end or
goal of policing. This is much more than a subtle shift in terminology. It empha-
sizes that police pursue large and critically important societal goals—controlling
crime, protecting people, reducing fear, maintaining order. In every instance, po-
lice should choose those lawful and ethical means that yield the most efficient and
effective achievement of these ends. Sometimes this may involve enforcement of
the criminal law, and sometimes it may not. Thus, the terms “policing” and “law
enforcement” are not synonymous, and law enforcement is not the only—or even
necessarily the principal—technique of policing.
In place of overreliance on the criminal law, POP recommends a rational and
analytical approach to problem solving using a process best known in police circles
as the SARA model (scanning, analysis, response, assessment).42 According to this
approach, police should continually scan their areas of responsibility, drawing on
a variety of sources of information in order to identify apparent problems. Next,
they should carefully analyze those problems in order to verify, describe, and ex-
plain them. Only after this analysis stage should police turn their attention to
responses and, when they do, they should identify and consider a wide range of
responses before narrowing their focus down to the most promising alternatives.
After implementing these responses, they should then carefully assess impact in
order to determine whether they need to try something else, and also to document
lessons learned for the benefit of future problem-solving efforts.
Problem-oriented policing analysis and responses are often focused on the
three sides of the “crime triangle”—offenders, victims, and locations. Arguably,
all three are needed for crimes or other problems to occur. Thus, analysis of these
three factors should shed light on the nature of the problem and why it is oc-
curring when and where it is. Moreover, given the nature of a triangle, pulling
out any one side should cause it to c ollapse—this encourages problem solvers to
focus attention on responses that might affect offenders, victims, or locations.
Additionally, offenders have “handlers,” victims have “guardians,” and locations
have “managers.”43 These are people who have a stake in protecting, monitoring,
controlling, or improving offenders, victims, or locations. Problem solvers should
look for allies and partners who can contribute to the implementation of responses
and the overall effectiveness of the POP effort.
Early POP field tests were conducted in Baltimore County, Maryland,44 and
Newport News, Virginia.45 POP was then greatly popularized through two articles
in the Atlantic Monthly magazine46 and further diffused through its association
with community policing.47 There are many specific examples and Case Studies of
problem solving now available48 and a few empirical studies of POP in practice.49
The consensus of 30-plus years of experience, along with the findings of individual
studies and meta-analyses, is that problem-oriented policing is an effective strategy
for dealing with both c rime-and n on-crime-related problems at both the neigh-
borhood and citywide levels.50
Community Relations Strategies
As already described in this chapter, police strategies and tactics aimed at

reducing crime have received a great deal of research and undergone a great deal
of refinement since the early 1970s. At the same time, substantial research and
development activity has also been focused on another major concern of the
police—improving relations with the community. For the most part, develop-
ments in this area have occurred separately from crime control efforts, although
some see community policing as the logical culmination of both streams of
development.
Public Relations
In the 1950s and 1960s, many police departments established community
relations units in response to perceived problems in p
olice–community relations.
Initially, these community relations units engaged mostly in public relations by
presenting the police point of view to the community. This o ne-sided approach
was soon recognized as inadequate and expanded to provide the community with
a forum for expressing its views to the police. The two-way p olice–community
relations philosophy emphasized the importance of communication and mutual
understanding.
In the 1970s, it became apparent that p olice–community relations officers
and units were not effective in guaranteeing smooth relations between a commu-
nity and its police department. A community experiences its police department
through the actions of patrol officers and detectives more than through the pres-
entations of a few community relations specialists. Efforts were undertaken to
train patrol officers in community relations and crime prevention techniques and
to make them more knowledgeable about community characteristics and prob-
lems.51 Team policing programs were also implemented, in part as a means of
improving police responsiveness to community concerns.52
Crime Prevention
Early police efforts at public relations and community relations naturally
evolved toward crime prevention, in part because of the public’s thirst for in-
formation about how to protect themselves and their families. This was ironic
in the sense that police efforts to improve community relations led the public
to ask for information about how best to control crime. Because of this history,
crime prevention as a police strategy refers not so much to preventive patrol as to
special programs designed to make citizens, homes, and businesses more difficult
to victimize. Organizationally, crime prevention units are often combined with
community services and community relations units rather than with patrol or
investigations.
One method, called target hardening, seeks improvements in doors, win-
dows, locks, alarms, lighting, and landscaping that make illegal entry into homes
and businesses more difficult and more time-consuming. Another method is to
train citizens to avoid threatening situations and to react correctly when attacked
or threatened. Still other methods encourage citizens to watch out for their neigh-
bors’ property and even to patrol their own neighborhoods.
The effectiveness of crime prevention programs is mixed. Target hardening
and increased community participation in crime prevention certainly contribute
to some crime reduction, and evidence is available that crime prevention programs
at least make citizens feel safer and more willing to report suspicious activity.53 On
the other hand, there is a tendency to oversell community crime prevention as the
solution to every community’s crime and fear of crime problems. All communities
may not be receptive to such programs; citizen participation is frequently difficult
to maintain over extended periods, and some programs may have unintended side
effects such as increased fear among some participants.54
An increasingly popular approach to crime prevention that closely parallels
problem-oriented policing is situational crime prevention.55 This approach
emphasizes the necessity of tailoring crime prevention responses to the specific
characteristics of the crime problem being addressed—it rejects one-size-fits-all
thinking. It also focuses primarily on reducing opportunities for crime by, for ex-
ample, increasing the effort required to commit offenses, increasing the risk of be-
ing detected, reducing the reward should the offense be consummated, restricting
access to crime facilitators, and removing excuses. Situational crime prevention has
achieved substantial success when targeted at a wide variety of offenses, including
auto theft, shoplifting, thefts from vending machines, assaults at bus stops, and
robberies at convenience stores.56
Foot Patrol
Many observers now believe that the abandonment of foot patrol by most
American police departments by the m id-1900s changed the nature of police work
and negatively affected police–citizen relations. Officers assigned to large patrol car
beats do not develop the intimate understanding of and cordial relationship with
the community that foot patrol officers assigned to small beats develop. Officers
on foot are in a position to relate more intimately with citizens than officers driv-
ing by in cars.
The results of two research studies, together with the development of small
police radios, gave a boost to the resurgence of foot patrol starting in the 1980s.
Originally, the police car was needed to house the bulky two-way radio. Today,
foot patrol officers carry tiny, lightweight radios that enable them to handle calls
promptly and to request information or assistance whenever needed. They are
never out of touch and they are always available. An experimental study con-
ducted in Newark, New Jersey, was unable to demonstrate that either adding or
removing foot patrol affected crime in any way.57 This finding mirrored what
had been found in Kansas City regarding motorized patrol. However, citizens
involved in the foot patrol study were less fearful of crime and more satisfied with
police service than residents served only by motor patrol. In addition, citizens
were aware of additions to and discontinuations of foot patrol in their neighbor-
hoods, a finding that stands in stark contrast to the results of the Kansas City
study, in which citizens did not even notice changes in the levels of motorized
patrol. A second major foot patrol research program in Flint, Michigan, reported
findings that were similar to the Newark findings, except that crime decreased
as well.58
These studies were widely interpreted as demonstrating that even if foot pa-
trol did not always decrease crime, at least it made citizens feel safer and led to
improvements in police–community relations. Why the difference between mo-
torized patrol and foot patrol? In what came to be known as the “broken windows”
thesis, foot patrol officers pay more attention to disorderly behavior and minor
offenses than do motor patrol officers.59 Moreover, they are in a better position to
manage their b eats—to understand what constitutes threatening or inappropriate
behavior, to observe it, and to correct it. Foot patrol officers are likely to pay more
attention to derelicts, petty thieves, disorderly persons, vagrants, panhandlers,
noisy juveniles, and street people, who, although not committing serious crimes,
cause concern and fear among many citizens. Failure to control even the most
minor aberrant activities on the street contributes to neighborhood fears. Foot
patrol officers have more opportunity than motor patrol officers to control street
disorder and reassure ordinary citizens.
Of course, geography plays a large role in determining the viability of foot
patrol as a police strategy. The more densely populated an area, the more the
citizenry will travel on foot and the more street disorder there will be. The more
densely populated an area, the more likely that foot patrol can be effectively used
as a police strategy. While foot patrol may never again become the dominant po-
lice strategy it once was, it can play a large role in contributing police services to
many communities.
Community Policing
Starting in the 1980s, an even broader approach than community relations
and foot patrol began developing. More police departments began employing foot
patrol as a central component of their operational strategy rather than as a novelty
or an accommodation to downtown business interests. Crime prevention pro-
grams became more reliant on community involvement, such as in neighborhood
watch, community patrol, and c rime-stoppers programs. Police departments be-
gan making increased use of civilians and volunteers in various aspects of polic-
ing and made permanent geographic assignment an important element of patrol
deployment. The combination of all this came to be called community policing,
involving a substantial change in police thinking,
one where police strategy and tactics are adapted to fit the needs and
requirements of the different communities the department serves, where
there is a diversification of the kinds of programs and services on the basis
of community needs and demands for police services and where there is
considerable involvement of the community with police in reaching their
objectives.60
Research on the effectiveness of community policing has yielded mixed

results. Foot patrol seems to make citizens feel safer, but it may not have much
of an effect on the amount of crime.61 A small study in Houston, Texas, which
involved patrol officers visiting households to solicit viewpoints and informa-
tion, did report decreases in both crime and fear in the study area.62 Studies of
community policing officers in two US cities and in five UK forces, however,
found that the officers actually spent very little of their time in direct contact
with citizens, despite role expectations that emphasized community contact.63
A lengthy study of department-wide community policing in Chicago similarly
discovered some officer resistance to working closely with citizens, but nev-
ertheless yielded promising effects on public satisfaction, fear, disorder, and
crime.64
A study in Baltimore County, Maryland, provided some insight into the mixed
results from community-oriented policing.65 Three squads of 15 officers each were
created, initially for the purpose of reducing fear of crime in target neighborhoods.
These squads were designated as Citizen-Oriented Police Enforcement (COPE)
units. During the first phase of COPE evolution, the units primarily employed
preventive patrol tactics, as mentioned in C hapter 12, and based their analyses
of neighborhood problems largely on crime analysis information. This phase of
COPE was not truly c ommunity-oriented, and it was not very successful. Citizen
awareness of COPE presence and reductions in community fear were minimal at
best.
During the second phase of the COPE project, p olice–citizen contact was
substantially increased. Police officers increased their canvassing of households,
seeking information about citizen fears and concerns. COPE officers also made
widespread use of crime prevention tactics, including home security surveys and
community meetings, instead of relying so heavily on preventive patrol. With in-
creased citizen contact, COPE’s effects on fear improved, as did citizen awareness
of COPE’s presence.
Although COPE officers increased their citizen contact during this second
phase of the project, they did not make thorough use of the information they
got from the public about community concerns. That is, after gathering infor-
mation about the community’s problems, COPE officers largely ignored that in-
formation, instead routinely implementing crime prevention and patrol as their
solutions to any and all problems. Thus, this second phase of COPE, although it
incorporated substantial community contact, was not truly c ommunity-oriented
or community-responsive.
COPE became genuinely community- oriented during its third phase.
COPE officers adopted a process whereby they collected information from
community residents and other sources before deciding what tactics to adopt.
With information in hand, COPE officers analyzed the situation in a given
target neighborhood and then chose the tactics most likely to solve the prob-
lems and improve the situation. In some situations, crime prevention tactics
seemed most likely to succeed but, in other situations, different tactics, such as
surveillance, saturation patrol, a focus on repeat offenders, nuisance abatement,
better traffic control, or enhanced recreational opportunities for youths seemed
better suited to the specific problems at hand. The COPE units became increas-
ingly more adept at gathering information from community residents, analyz-
ing that information, and designing g ood-fit solutions. This style of policing
was community-oriented; citizens were heavily involved with COPE officers in
problem identification and, to a lesser degree, problem solution. Not coinciden-
tally, citizen satisfaction with the police, reductions in fear, and reductions in
reported crimes in target neighborhoods were greatest during this third phase of
the COPE project.
Besides being community-oriented, in its third phase, the Baltimore County
COPE project also provided an example of p roblem- oriented policing. As
described, the COPE units became more adept at collecting information about
situations in target communities, using that information to identify and analyze
problems, and considering a wide range of alternative responses before choosing
those most likely to succeed. One clear change in this phase of COPE was a greater
utilization of other government agencies and private resources to solve community
problems.66 If a vacant lot was at the center of neighborhood problems, COPE of-
ficers marshaled park and recreation, zoning, sanitation, and other public agencies
to address the problematic conditions or force the property’s owner to make im-
provements. If broken street lighting concerned neighborhood residents, COPE
pressured the electric company, apartment complex management, or whoever else
had the authority to correct the problem. If a particular individual or group was
terrorizing neighborhood residents, COPE adopted enforcement tactics to address
the problem behaviors directly. The important innovation in this problem-oriented
phase of COPE was the selection of methods based on analysis of problems rather
than simply falling back on comfortable, familiar methods without regard to the
nature of the specific problems being addressed.
The third phase of COPE illustrates the possible confluence of the two major
streams of development of police strategies, one focused on improving crime con-
trol and the other on improving community relations. Community policing seems
to be the most effective strategy in the arsenal for improving police relations with
the community. When combined with problem-oriented policing, it also seems to
have great merit for improving the crime control effectiveness of policing.
Specific Problems and Issues
To this point we have discussed police strategies that are relatively broad ap-
proaches to providing police services and pursuing police objectives. In our ex-
amination of some of these strategies we have noted that the available research
is sometimes inconclusive or inconsistent. This is due in part to the complexities
of the strategies themselves. It is difficult to attribute effects to a strategy that
has several components and that is implemented differently by different police
departments.
In addition to broad strategies for controlling crime and improving commu-
nity relations, police departments adopt specific strategies and tactics to deal with
specific problems. To illustrate this, in the remainder of the chapter we touch on
three examples of these specific problems and issues.
Domestic Violence
Arguments and disputes among family members, particularly between hus-
bands and wives, are a relatively common target of police intervention. Domestic
disputes are one of the most frequent types of calls assigned to patrol officers, and
one of the least desirable. These disputes can sometimes be dangerous; in most
instances they are difficult to resolve. Almost all police officers have experienced
situations in which the disputing parties turn their anger on the police or when a
husband or wife insists on the arrest of a spouse only to refuse to press charges the
following morning.
In the 1970s, police attention was directed toward developing crisis inter-
vention and conflict management skills for handling domestic disputes.67 Patrol
officers were trained in counseling techniques, and procedures were instituted to
refer disputants to appropriate social agencies for treatment of their underlying
problems. Some large departments created specialized crisis intervention units or
domestic violence units to relieve patrol officers of the burden of handling domes-
tic disputes. In general, the emphasis was on diverting family members away from
the legal system and into health, welfare, and social systems.
Later in the 1970s, concerned feminists and others who were more aware of,
and sensitive to, domestic violence began to criticize the police for not adequately
protecting women in domestic dispute situations. When domestic disputes erupt
in violence, women are usually the victims. Critics complained that the police,
whether out of their zeal to utilize referral to social agencies, their tendency to
identify with husbands, their desire to avoid the work involved in arrests, or their
apathy, were failing to provide women with equal protection of the law as provided
by the constitution.68 Battered spouse programs and shelters produced numbers
of vocal, articulate victims of domestic violence who believed that the police had
abandoned them.
In response to these criticisms, many states passed laws toughening spousal
assault penalties, empowering police officers to make misdemeanor probable
cause arrests in spousal assault situations, and mandating police protection of
spousal assault victims. Initial research supported the more legalistic approach
to dealing with domestic violence, reporting that arrest of the assailant was the
single most effective short-term method of preventing additional violence.69
Subsequent studies, however, produced mixed and sometimes conflicting
findings.70
Perhaps more promising than one-size-fits-all responses are targeted, tai-
lored problem-solving approaches. For example, when officers in Charlotte-
Mecklenburg, North Carolina, analyzed domestic violence cases, they found
several interesting factors: many abusers were on probation or parole for other
offenses; many abusers had previously committed “indicator” crimes against their
partners, such as harassment, trespassing, and vandalism; and many couples had
previously come to police attention, but it was not always discovered through
repeat call analysis of home addresses, because incidents had occurred at previous
addresses, places of work, shopping malls, etc. Based on these discoveries, officers
began compiling more complete databases on victims and assailants, targeting in-
dicator crimes in hopes of heading off more violent episodes, coordinating more
closely with social service agencies and prosecutors, and implemented a Police
Watch program to focus more attention and pressure on assailants and those en-
gaged in indicator crimes.71
Police in High Point, North Carolina similarly determined that many do-
mestic violence offenders were on probation or parole or involved in other
types of crimes besides domestic violence. They used that information to craft
a graduated and targeted focused deterrence approach to the offenders, com-
bined with enhanced services for victims. Results included substantial reduc-
tions in domestic violence calls, victim injuries, and suspect reoffending.72 In
Chula Vista, California the police department focused on non-crime domes-
tic disputes as well as domestic violence. Working with several partners, the
agency implemented a tiered response in one area of the city that included
prompt in-person follow-ups for non-crime disputes and focused deterrence,
similar to High Point, for criminal cases, including violence. Results showed
reductions in both domestic violence and non-crime domestic disputes in the
experimental area compared to its comparison area, plus improved victim satis-
faction with the services provided.73 These examples demonstrate that a crime
as challenging as domestic violence can be reduced when police use the tools of
problem-oriented policing.
Active Shooters
Few events galvanize public attention more than active shooter situations, es-
pecially when they result in mass violence. Until the end of the 1990s, the pre-
vailing police approach to a situation of an armed person threatening a group of
people was to negotiate. Police had developed experience with hostage situations
and had learned that they could usually be resolved peacefully. Time was on their
side and police negotiators became quite skilled in communication and psychol-
ogy. Often hostages would eventually be released and hostage-takers would surren-
der. Even when that did not happen, negotiating provided time for SWAT officers
to arrive, study the situation, and prepare the best possible tactical response when
negotiations failed.
That prevailing approach failed dramatically in 1999 when two students at
Columbine High School in Colorado began shooting teachers and fellow stu-
dents.74 The first responding officers stayed outside the school, waiting for negoti-
ators and SWAT to arrive. They were following accepted policy and practice, but
it was later discovered that the delay in entering the school gave the shooters time
to find more victims.
After Columbine, police tactics were significantly revised. In cases involving
active threats, usually shooters, the first arriving officers are now expected to con-
front shooters and end the threat as quickly as possible. This can be dangerous for
officers, but with modern equipment and proper training officers have the chance
to save lives when they act without delay. Besides confronting the shooter, there
may also be opportunities to provide victims with life-saving first aid.
Over the last 20+ years there have been numerous situations in which police
have successfully and courageously dealt with active shooters, saving many lives.
Sadly, there have also been two high-profile incidents in which police failed to
follow modern doctrine, one at a school in Parkland, Florida in 2018 that re-
sulted in 17 deaths,75 and another at a school in Uvalde, Texas in 2022 resulting
in 21 deaths.76 In neither case did it seem that policy or training was lacking, but
some combination of fear, confusion, indecision, and poor incident command
kept officers from implementing the proper response. These two incidents are a
powerful reminder to police departments that they cannot assume that a written
policy and occasional training will always be sufficient to ensure that officers will
know what to do and how to do it in rare but dangerous situations like active
shooters.
Protest
Historically, one of the reasons that police forces were formed in the early
1800s was in response to the challenge of handling large crowds, demonstrations,
protests, and riots. Before police departments existed, large assemblies of upset
and angry people usually either (1) got completely out of control, resulting in
significant property damage and many deaths, or (2) the military was called in,
resulting in even more deaths. Thus, crowd control and riot control have been
among the most important responsibilities of police ever since police departments
were created.
In the United States, mass demonstrations and riots have not been a con-
tinuous phenomenon over the last 190 years, but rather an occasional one. As
a result, many police departments have had the experience of being caught un-
prepared, then investing in the development of a sophisticated c rowd-control
capacity, and then going many years without having to use the capacity, only to
get caught by surprise again. The civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s, over-
lapping with the anti-war era of the 1960s and 1970s, was a sustained period
of protest during which most police departments did improve their ability to
respond more safely and effectively to masses of people. Following the 1970s,
however, a few individual cities experienced critical events, such as Los Angeles
following the 1992 Rodney King verdict and Seattle during the 1999 World
Trade Organization meetings,77 but many other cities had little or no experience
with mass protest for two or three decades, covering an entire generation of
police officers.
This situation changed dramatically in late 2011 when the “Occupy Wall
Street” movement gained nationwide and international attention. The move-
ment’s website claimed that Occupy protests against Wall Street, income inequal-
ity, and the effects of economic globalization were held in over 100 US cities and
over 1,500 cities worldwide during October and November 2011.78 As immor-
talized on television and YouTube, the protests were very difficult for the police
to control. Some protesters intentionally provoked police responses and, in many
cities, the protesters established encampments in public parks that eventually had
to be forcibly dismantled. Major city police departments adopted varied tactics,
some more confrontational and others more restrained. Police chiefs reported that

65 Nights and Counting
August 10, 2020
This interview with Portland, Oregon police chief Chuck Lovell covers his recent appoint-
ment and the challenges created by nightly protests. Appointed two months ago, he remembers
“walking over that Monday morning to be announced as chief and looking at the spray paint
on the buildings and barriers outside City Hall. Things like ‘All cops are bastards,’ ‘All cops
must die,’ and ‘F the police.’” Regarding the ongoing protests, he credits the vast majority of
protesters who are pushing for reforms, but “we do have a small faction of folks who are intent
on committing acts of destruction to police facilities, and are basically looking to lure the po-
lice into a fight on a nightly basis.” He worries about the heavy physical and psychological toll
that the protests, the defunding movement, budget cuts, and the COVID virus are having on
members of the department.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2020/08/10/65-nights-and-counting/. The hyperlink at

“This interview” links to https://www.policeforum.org/criticalissuesaugust7.
their efforts to negotiate with the protesters were sometimes fruitless because the
Occupy movement was officially leaderless, and also because the protesters were
seeking as much confrontation with the police as possible in order to gain addi-
tional political and popular support.79
In 2014 and 2015, another wave of protests swept the nation in the aftermath
of controversial incidents of police use of deadly force in New York, Ferguson, Los
Angeles, Cleveland, Baltimore, and other cities. In these cases, police had to control
crowds, demonstrations, and civil disorder that were in protest against them (the
police), always a difficult and sometimes dangerous challenge. Since then, mass
protests have frequently occurred in the aftermath of police shootings all around
the country. Then in 2020, the country, and the world, experienced a major wave
of protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Protests in some
cities were peaceful while other cities saw substantial property damage and nightly
clashes between police, protesters, and sometimes counter-protesters.
Citizens have the right to assemble and speak their minds when they are not
satisfied with their government, and few people seem satisfied with their govern-
ment these days. In addition, police accountability, transparency, discrimination,
and use of force have become prominent public and political concerns. When it
comes to protest, the police have a hugely important role to play, facilitating the ex-
ercise of constitutional rights while also protecting life and property and maintain-
ing some semblance of order in public spaces. In the near future, at least, handling
of mass protests is likely to become an even more significant criterion of police
executive leadership and effectiveness than it has been over the past few decades. It
is an important one because “the way in which police in a democracy respond to
public protest is often a defining moment for them and the community.”80
Summary
In this chapter, we have reviewed a number of police strategies and tac-

tics. Together these strategies and tactics comprise the police organizational
technology—that is, the dominant methods by which police work is performed
and police objectives are pursued. As we have seen, police strategies and tactics
have changed over the years in response to changes in society, public pressures, and
research. Police executives must continually reassess their organizational technol-
ogy and make adjustments to improve the attainment of the goals of protecting
life and property and maintaining order. Today, the knowledge base related to
what works in policing is much farther along in its development than even a dec-
ade ago, making it possible for police executives to strive toward the objective of
evidence-based policing.
The three cornerstones of traditional police crime control strategy are routine
preventive patrol, immediate response to calls, and f ollow-up investigations of re-
ported crimes. As discussed in this chapter, major research studies challenged the
effectiveness of these strategies starting in the 1970s, leading to both refinements
and new approaches, such as p roblem-oriented policing. On a parallel track, po-
lice departments also sought more effective strategies for improving their relations
with the community. Currently, community policing is seen as the most effec-
tive strategy for improved p olice–community relations and, in combination with
problem-oriented policing, as a promising approach to crime control as well. More
variation is found in police strategies and tactics for dealing with specific problems
and issues, although community policing and problem solving still often surface
as effective approaches.
In Chapter 15 we will return to the topic of police strategies and tactics
when we discuss some of the latest developments, such as intelligence-led po-
licing, predictive policing, and focused deterrence. These newest techniques
have not replaced community policing or problem-oriented policing, but they
potentially offer some additional contributions to police effectiveness.
1. What are your personal beliefs about the preventive effects of police patrol? The theory of patrol is
that it prevents crime; why doesn’t it?
2. Why aren’t detectives more successful at solving crimes? Given their relative lack of success, how do
you account for the “detective mystique”?
3. Why do you think that foot patrol is more effective than motor patrol in reassuring citizens and making
them feel safe? To what extent can we replace motor patrol with foot patrol in today’s society?
4. Aggressive patrol produces arrests and may deter crime, but it also leads to more police intrusion
into the lives of citizens. Do you favor its use? How would you balance the competing interests of civil
liberties and crime control?
5. As a police chief, what policies and procedures would you institute to guide your officers in handling
domestic violence cases? How much discretion would you leave in the officers’ hands? How would
you respond to pressure from women’s rights and men’s rights groups?
Cases
One recurring theme in Cases 3 through 5 in the back of the text is the need
to improve relations between police departments and their communities, often
involving the implementation of community policing. You should analyze these
three cases from the standpoint of this chapter’s discussion of police strategies and
tactics, including community policing.
Suggested Reading
Goldstein, H.1990. Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-Hill.

NAS. 2018. Proactive Policing: Effects on Crime and Communities. Washington, DC: National Acad-
emies Press.
PERF. 2018. The Changing Nature of Crime and Criminal Investigations. Washington, DC: Police
Skogan, W., and K. Frydl. 2004. Fairness and Effectiveness in Policing: The Evidence. Washington,
DC: National Research Council.
Weisburd, D., and A.A. Braga. 2019. Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives, second edition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Notes
1 J.Q. Wilson. 1968. “ Dilemmas of Police Administration.” Public Administration Review
(September/October): 407–417.
Books, p. 203.
4 Wilson. 1978. The Investigators, p. 204.
5 G.P. Whitaker. 1982. “What Is Patrol Work?” Police Studies 4, no. 4: 13–17.
6 President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. 1968. The Chal-
lenge of Crime in a Free Society. New York: Avon Books, p. 295.
Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 26.
8 G. Cordner. 1982. “While on Routine Patrol: What the Police Do When They’re Not Doing
Anything.” American Journal of Police 1, no. 2: 94–112.
10 Kelling et al. 1974. The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment, p. 16.
11 L.W. Sherman. 1986. “Policing Communities: What Works?” In A.J. Reiss Jr., and M. Tonry
(eds), Communities and Crime. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, p. 359.
12 H.H. Isaacs. 1967. “A Study of Communications, Crimes, and Arrests in a Metropolitan Police
Department.” In Task Force Report: Science and Technology. Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office; C. Clawson, and S.K. Chang. 1977. “The Relationship of Response Delays and
Arrest Rates.” Journal of Police Science and Administration 5: 53–68; D.P. Tarr. 1978. “Analysis of
Response Delays and Arrest Rates.” Journal of Police Science and Administration 6: 429–451.
13 W. Spelman, and D.K. Brown. 1981. Calling the Police: Citizen Reporting of Serious Crime.
Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum; Kansas City Police Department. 1978.
Response Time Analysis: Executive Summary. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
14 G.W. Cordner, J.R. Greene, and T.S. Bynum. 1983. “The Sooner the Better: Some Effects of
Police Response Time.” In R.R. Bennett (ed.), Police at Work: Policy Issues and Analysis. Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 145–164.
15 Spelman and Brown. 1981. Calling the Police, p. xix.
16 Spelman and Brown. 1981. Calling the Police, p . 72.
17 T. Pate, A. Ferrara, R.A. Bowers, and J. Lorence. 1976. Police Response Time: Its Determinants
and Effects. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
18 Wilson. 1978. The Investigators.
19 P.W. Greenwood, and J. Petersilia. 1975. The Criminal Investigation Process Volume I: Summary
and Policy Implications. Santa Monica, CA: RAND, p. vii.
20 Greenwood and Petersilia. 1975. The Criminal Investigation Process, p. vii.
21 J.L. Kuykendall. 1986. “The Municipal Police Detective: An Historical Analysis.” Criminology
24, no. 1: 175–201.
22 G. Cordner. 2013. “Science Solves Crime: Myth or Reality.” In R.M. Bohm, and J.T. Walker
(eds), Demystifying Crime and Criminal Justice, second edition. New York: Oxford, pp. 157–165.
23 D.F. Cawley, and H.J. Miron. 1977. Managing Patrol Operations: Manual. Washington, DC:
U.S. Government Printing Office.
24 G. Cordner. 1981. “The Effects of Directed Patrol: A Natural Q uasi-Experiment in Pontiac.” In
J.J. Fyfe (ed.), Contemporary Issues in Law Enforcement. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 37–58.
25 L.W. Sherman, and D. Weisburd. 1995. “General Deterrent Effects of Police Patrol in Crime
‘Hot Spots’: A Randomized, Controlled Trial.” Justice Quarterly 12, no. 4: 625–648.
26 E.F. McGarrell, S. Chermak, and A. Weiss. 1999. Targeting Firearms Violence through Directed
Police Patrol. Indianapolis, IN: Hudson Institute, p. viii.
27 A. Braga. 2008. Police Enforcement Strategies to Prevent Crime in Hot Spot Areas: Crime Prevention
Research Review No. 2. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services;
D. Weisburd, and A.A. Braga. 2006. “Hot Spots as a Model for Police Innovation.” In D.
Weisburd, and A.A. Braga (eds), Police Innovation: Contrasting Perspectives. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, pp. 225–244.
28 G. Cordner. 1996. “Evaluating Tactical Patrol.” In L.T. Hoover (ed.), Quantifying Quality in
Policing. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum, pp. 185–206.
29 J.E. Boydstun. 1975. San Diego Field Interrogation: Final Report. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
30 J.Q. Wilson, and B. Boland. 1979. The Effect of the Police on Crime. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Office.
31 J.Q. Wilson, and B. Boland. 1976. “Crime.” In W. Gorham, and N. Glazer (eds), The Urban
Predicament. Washington, DC: Urban Institute, pp. 179–230.
32 L.W. Sherman, J.W. Shaw, and D.P. Rogan. 1995. “The Kansas City Gun Experiment.” Research
in Brief. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
33 M.T. Farmer (ed.). 1981. Differential Police Response Strategies. Washington, DC: Police Execu-
tive Research Forum.
34 R.E. Worden. 1993. “Toward Equity and Efficiency in Law Enforcement: Differential Police
Response.” American Journal of Police 12, no. 1: 1 –32; M.F. Cahn, and J.M. Tien. 1981. An Alter-
native Approach in Police Response: The Wilmington Management of Demand Program. Cambridge,
MA: Public Systems Evaluation; J.T. McEwen, E.F. Connors III, and M.I. Cohen. 1986. Evaluation
of the Differential Police Responses Field Test. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
35 D.F. Cawley, H.J. Miron, W.J. Araujo, R. Wasserman, T.A. Mannello, and Y. Huffman. 1977.
Managing Criminal Investigations: Manual. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
36 B. Greenberg, C.V. Elliott, L.P. Kraft, and H.S. Proctor. 1977. Felony Investigation Decision
Model: An Analysis of Investigative Elements of Information. Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office.
37 J.E. Eck. 1979. Managing Case Assignments: The Burglary Investigation Decision Model Replica-
tion. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
38 G.W. Cordner. 1983. The Baltimore County Repeat Offender Planning Project. Towson, MD:
Baltimore County Criminal Justice Coordinator.
39 S.E. Martin, and L.W. Sherman. 1986. “Selective Apprehension: A Police Strategy for Repeat
Offenders.” Criminology 24, no. 1: 155–173.
40 A.F. Abrahamse, P.A. Ebener, P.W. Greenwood, and T.E. Kosin. 1991. “An Experimental Eval-
uation of the Phoenix Repeat Offender Program.” Justice Quarterly 8, no. 2: 141–168.
41 H. Goldstein. 1990. Problem-Oriented Policing. New York: McGraw-Hill.
42 J.E. Eck, and W. Spelman. 1987. Problem-Solving: Problem-Oriented Policing in Newport News.
43 See https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/problem-analysis-triangle-0.
44 G. Cordner. 1986. “Fear of Crime and the Police: An Evaluation of a F ear-Reduction Strat-
egy.” Journal of Police Science and Administration 14: 2 23–233; G. Cordner. 1988. “A P roblem-
O
riented Approach to Community-Oriented Policing.” In J. Greene, and S. Mastrofski (eds),
Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality. New York: Praeger, pp. 135–152.
45 Eck and Spelman. 1987. Problem-Solving.
46 J.Q. Wilson, and G.L. Kelling. 1982. “Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety.”
Atlantic Monthly (March): 2 9–38; J.Q. Wilson, and G.L. Kelling. 1989. “Making Neighbor-
hoods Safe.” Atlantic Monthly (February): 46–52.
47 H. Goldstein. 1987. “Toward Community-Oriented Policing: Potential, Basic Requirements
and Threshold Questions.” Crime & Delinquency 33, no. 1: 6–30.
48 See https://popcenter.asu.edu/content/about-goldstein-pop-awards.
49 G. Cordner, and E.P. Biebel. 2005. “Problem-Oriented Policing in Practice.” Criminology & Pub-
lic Policy 4, no. 2: 1 55–180; B. Webster, and E. Connors. 1993. “Police Methods for Identifying
Community Problems.” American Journal of Police 12, no. 1: 7 5–102; M. Buerger. 1994. “The
Problems of Problem Solving: Resistance, Interdependencies, and Conflicting Interests.” Ameri-
can Journal of Police 13, no. 3: 1 –36; G.E. Capowich, and J.A. Roehl. 1994. “Problem-Oriented
Policing: Actions and Effectiveness in San Diego.” In D. Rosenbaum (ed.), The Challenge of
Community Policing: Testing the Promises. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, pp. 127–146.
50 J.C. Hinkle, D. Weisburd, C.W. Telep, and K. Petersen. 2020. “Problem-Oriented Policing for
Reducing Crime and Disorder: An Updated Systematic Review and M eta-Analysis,” Campbell
Systematic Reviews 16: 2. Online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cl2.1089.
51 J.E. Boydstun, and M.E. Sherry. 1975. San Diego Community Profile: Final Report. Washington,
DC: Police Foundation.
52 L. Sherman, C. Milton, and T. Kelly. 1973. Team Policing: Seven Case Studies. Washington, DC:
Police Foundation; A. Schwartz, and S. Clarren. 1977. The Cincinnati Team Policing Experi-
ment: A Summary Report. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
53 K. Holloway, T. Bennett, and D.P. Farrington. 2008. Does Neighborhood Watch Reduce Crime?
Crime Prevention Research Review No. 3. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing
Services.
54 D.P. Rosenbaum. 1987. “The Theory and Research Behind Neighborhood Watch: Is It a Sound
Fear and Crime Reduction Strategy?” Crime & Delinquency 33, no. 1: 103–134.
55 R.V. Clarke (ed.). 1997. Situational Crime Prevention: Successful Case Studies, second edition.
Guilderland, NY: Harrow and Heston.
56 N. Tilley (ed.). 2005. Handbook of Crime Prevention and Community Safety. Cullompton:
Willan Publishing.
57 Police Foundation. 1981. The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment. Washington, DC: Author.
58 R.C. Trojanowicz. 1982. An Evaluation of the Neighborhood Foot Patrol Program in Flint, M ichigan.
East Lansing, MI: National Neighborhood Foot Patrol Center, Michigan State University.
59 Wilson and Kelling. 1982. “Broken Windows.”
60 A.J. Reiss Jr. 1985. “Shaping and Serving the Community: The Role of the Police Chief Execu-
tive.” In William A. Geller (ed.), Police Leadership in America: Crisis and Opportunity. New York:
Praeger, p. 63.
61 The Newark Foot Patrol Experiment. 1981.
62 M.A. Wycoff, W. Skogan, A. Pate, and L.W. Sherman. 1985. Citizen Contact Patrol: Executive
Summary. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
63 R.B. Parks, S.D. Mastrofski, C. DeJong, and M.K. Gray. 1999. “How Officers Spend Their
Time with the Community.” Justice Quarterly 16, no. 3: 4 83–518; D. Brown, and S. Iles.
1986. “Community Constables: A Study of a Policing Initiative.” NIJ International Summaries
(October). Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.
64 W.G. Skogan, and S.M. Hartnett. 1997. Community Policing, Chicago Style. New York: Oxford
University Press; W.G. Skogan. 2006. Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities.
New York: Oxford University Press.
65 G. Cordner. 1985. The Baltimore County C itizen-Oriented Police Enforcement (COPE) Project:
Final Evaluation. Baltimore, MD: Criminal Justice Department, University of Baltimore.
66 P.B. Taft, Jr. 1986. Fighting Fear: The Baltimore County COPE Project. Washington, DC: Police
67 M. Bard. 1973. Family Crisis Intervention: From Concept to Implementation. Washington, DC:
U.S. Government Printing Office.
68 J. Meier. 1987. “Battered Justice.” Washington Monthly (May): 37–45.
69 L.W. Sherman, and R.A. Berk. 1984. “The Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment.”
PoliceFoundation Reports 1: 1–8; L.W. Sherman. 1992. Policing Domestic Violence: Experiments
and Dilemmas. New York: Free Press.
70 J.D. Hirschel, I.W. Hutchison, C.W. Dean, and A.M. Mills. 1992. “Review Essay on the Law
Enforcement Response to Spouse Abuse: Past, Present and Future.” Justice Quarterly 9, no. 2:
247–283.
71 K. Bannerman. 2002. “Domestic Violence Intervention Project: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police
Department.” In Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing: The 2002 Herman Goldstein Award
Winners. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
72 National Network for Safe Communities. 2016. Intimate Partner Violence Intervention (IPVI):
High Point Police Department. New York: John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Online at:
https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/default/files/16–19_high_point.pdf.
73 Chula Vista Police Department. 2018. “Reducing Domestic Violence in Chula Vista, CA.”
Online at: https://popcenter.asu.edu/sites/default/files/18-16_chula_vista_revised.pdf.
74 Columbine Review Commission. 2001. The Governor’s Columbine Review Commission Report.
Online at: https://schoolshooters.info/sites/default/files/Columbine%20-%20Governor’s%20
Commission%20Report.pdf.
75 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission. 2019. Initial Report.
Online at: http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/MSDHS/CommissionReport.pdf.
76 Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting. 2022. Interim Report. Online at:
https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/d005cf551ad52eea13d8753ede93320c/Uvalde%20
Robb%20Shooting%20Report%20-%20Texas%20House%20Committee.pdf.
77 T. Narr, J. Toliver, J. Murphy, M. McFarland, and J. Ederheimer. 2006. Police Management of
Mass Demonstrations: Identifying Issues and Successful Approaches. Washington, DC: Police Exec-
utive Research Forum.
78 See http://occupywallst.org/about/.
79 B. Yeung. 2011. “Police vs. OWS.” The Crime Report (November 30). Online at: www.thecrim-
ereport.org/archive/2011–12-police-vs-ows.
80 D.C. Couper. 2011. Arrested Development: A Veteran Police Chief Sounds Off about Protest,
Racism, Corruption and the Seven Steps Necessary to Improve Our Nation’s Police. Indianapolis,
IN: Dog Ear Publishing, p. 181.
CHAPTER 14 Police and Homeland
Security
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Identify the four systems in which police play a major role in the context of homeland security.
• Identify the four primary phases of the preparedness cycle, including the police role in each
phase.
• Describe the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and its importance to policing today.
• Explain why information sharing is so important to the police role in homeland security.
• Distinguish between international and domestic terrorism and identify which seems to pose
the greatest immediate threats today.
The term “homeland security” was not common or familiar at the end of the
twentieth century. At that time, most experts, as well as casual observers, had no
difficulty distinguishing between the military responsibility for homeland defense
against our nation’s enemies and the police responsibility for protecting people and
property against crime and criminals. But then, on September 11, 2001, the world
changed. We learned that modern international terrorism represents both a military
threat and a crime. Today, it is commonly accepted that the police have an important
role to play in protecting both local communities and the nation against terrorism.
Additionally, it has become more widely accepted that the police role extends to “all
hazards.” The police role today within the context of homeland security includes
important responsibilities related to crime, national defense, security, and safety.
The Police Role in Homeland Security
The police occupy a central role in homeland security, which is comprised

of four important sectors or systems (see Figure 14.1). In accordance with the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-18
14 Police and Homeland Security 387
Safety
System
National Criminal
Security POLICE Justice
System System
Security
System
Figure 14.1
The Central Role of Police in Homeland Security
Box 14.1 Police and Terrorism

It has been said that 9/11 changed everything. This is certainly true for local police agencies
and their chiefs. It is increasingly clear that federal agencies, such as the FBI and the U.S.
Secret Service, can no longer work alone in protecting the United States from further attack.
Rather, they must work in partnership with other public and private agencies, and most
importantly, with local police. Local police can identify potential terrorists living or operating
in their jurisdictions, they can help protect vulnerable targets, and they can coordinate the
first response to terror attacks. These are heavy new responsibilities, but they cannot be
shrugged off, because elected officials and the public will increasingly expect their police
to be prepared.
Source: Graeme R. Newman and Ronald V. Clarke. 2008. Policing Terrorism: An Execu-
tive’s Guide. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Brief 01.
traditional view of policing, the police are the gatekeepers at the front end of the
criminal justice system. They try to prevent crime, respond when crime does
occur, and make criminal cases against suspected offenders. For the most part, the
rest of the criminal justice system depends on the police, who control the entry
point to the system and largely determine which offenders will be handled by
prosecutors, judges, and correctional officials.
What the new concept of homeland security has done is highlight several
other systems in which the police also play important roles. Since the events of
September 11, 2001, it has been recognized that the police are an important part
of the anti-terrorism effort, working in cooperation with the military, intelli-
gence agencies, and others in the national defense or national security system
(see “Police and Terrorism,” Box 14.1). America’s 18,000 state, local, and s pecial-
purpose law enforcement agencies have much more intimate connections to lo-
cal people and local communities than do the military, the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), or the FBI, and thus are a crucial resource for intelligence gathering
and information sharing. Based on their own observations as well as information
provided by the public, police can play the role of “first preventers” of terrorism.1
Also, should terrorist acts occur, state and local police will be the first responders,
not federal law enforcement agencies or the military.

NYPD Counter-Terrorism Intelligence
January 16, 2019
Here’s an interview with two top NYPD counter-terrorism intelligence officials about their
assessment of current threats to the city and the police department’s preparedness. Publicly
disclosed plots have averaged 1 –2 per year since 2001. Since 2010, lone actor plots have
become much more common than externally directed ones. Most of the threats to the city
continue to come from s alafi-jihadi inspired extremists, with only a small increase in extreme
right-wing acts. Plots often target New York as the iconic and symbolic representation of
America, but also because it is a media center, guaranteeing maximum publicity.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, gcordner.wordpress.com/2019/01/16/nypd-counter-terrorism-intelligence/. The hy-

perlink at “Here’s an interview” links to https://ctc.usma.edu/view-ct-foxhole-rebecca-weiner-assistant-commissioner-
intelligence-analysis-nypd-meghann-teubner-director-counterterrorism-intelligence-analysis-nypd.
Since the experience of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there is also greater recog-
nition of the vital role that police play within the safety system. The key players
in this system include fire protection personnel, emergency medical staff, public
health, hospitals, and emergency managers. But, often, the very first responders
to a serious natural or man-made emergency are police. Also, if a catastrophic
situation requires mandatory evacuation, the police are the ones who will have to
coordinate the evacuation and, if necessary, enforce it.2 Likewise, if a chemical,
biological, or pandemic situation creates the need for quarantine, the police will
be called upon to enforce that. In fact, through traffic safety and related functions
the police have long contributed significantly to the safety system—it just has not
been widely recognized or emphasized until recently.
Starting in 2020, this important safety role came to the forefront in response
to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many state and local governments enacted public
health mandates, including business closures, prohibitions against large gather-
ings, and mask-wearing requirements.3 For the most part the public adhered to
these mandates, but when enforcement became necessary, it generally fell to the
police to give warnings, issue citations, make arrests, and close down unauthorized
businesses and gatherings.
One more system in which police play an important part is the security sys-
tem. We traditionally think in terms of private security and expect to make a clear
distinction vis-à-vis public police. However, private security and private policing
have grown substantially in recent decades, and now often perform their duties in
quasi-public places such as schools, malls, and even downtown business districts.
Also, formal and informal p ublic–private partnerships between private security
and public police have become extremely common.4 This takes on great impor-
tance in the homeland security context because it is estimated that 85% of the
nation’s critical infrastructure is privately owned.
Among these expanded police roles, perhaps the most challenging and con-
troversial is the anti-terrorism role associated with national security. According
to Larry Hoover, a new vision of American policing’s national security role and
responsibility has emerged.5 He identifies four challenges faced by local law en-
forcement in participating in efforts addressing homeland security: technological,
logistical, political, and ethical. One of the most significant technological chal-
lenges is interoperability, which is the ability to exchange information between
organizations. Interoperability, or the lack thereof, pertains to both voice and data
communications. Organizations that should be able to exchange information in
real time, but often cannot, include not only local, state, and federal law enforce-
ment but also public health departments, emergency medical services (ambulances
and hospitals), and fire departments.
The most problematic logistical issue is getting data from written reports and
out of officers’ heads and into electronic formats that can be searched and shared.
The necessity of this function is apparent but not so easily accomplished even
with extensive computerization. Many police and national security databases are
“silos,” sometimes because information is confidential but mostly because govern-
ment agencies are just not good at cooperating with each other. Also, a lot of what
police officers see and hear never gets written down or entered into a database. It
would be helpful to have all this information that officers come across put into a
database, but police already spend a lot of their time completing reports, so asking
them to collect and document even more information might leave little time for
their other responsibilities.
Political issues take a variety of forms that focus on finances, role expectations,
secrecy, and productivity, among others. When local police have their leave can-
celled and are required to work extensive overtime in response to a national emer-
gency, an issue that comes up is who should pay the extra costs. Also, when police
take on additional duties related to homeland security, they have less time for their
more traditional responsibilities, resulting in less patrolling, fewer crime investi-
gations, less community outreach. Local elected officials are likely to question the
necessity of counterterrorism training, equipment, and assignments, understand-
ably thinking “it could never happen here.” The police chief may have classified
information that identifies a genuine local threat, but be prohibited from sharing
that information with her boss—the city manager or mayor.
Finally, all kinds of ethical challenges arise, especially issues related to ethnic
and religious profiling and invasion of privacy. In order for police and national
security agencies to prevent terror attacks, rather than waiting for them to hap-
pen and then responding, intrusive techniques have to be used—electronic sur-
veillance, undercover work, cultivating informants, setting up sting operations.
Choosing the targets of these techniques invariably raises the specter of profiling,
although it does not make any sense to choose targets randomly, of course. The
techniques themselves involve snooping, deceiving, and sometimes instigating, all

of which walk a fine line legally and ethically.
Contemporary policing themes of community engagement, collaboration,
globalization, and privatization (discussed in Chapter 15) are all associated with
the expanded homeland security mission. Community engagement highlights the
need to design and implement roles for the public to play other than as victims of
terrorism and disasters. Collaboration and coordination among so many separate
law enforcement agencies, other providers of safety and security, and multiple
levels of government is a huge challenge. In regard to community engagement
and collaboration, the adoption of community policing since the 1980s certainly
broadened the police perspective and taught the importance of partnerships, but
the homeland security mission and context present even greater demands and
difficulties.
The effect of globalization is that, increasingly, we may be dealing with is-
sues that originate in another country, but affect us locally. This was demon-
strated most dramatically by 9/11, but is also evidenced on a daily basis by
transnational crime, especially cybercrime, that can realistically be regarded as a
threat in every community in the nation. Privatization, as noted before, is not a
new trend but assumes heightened importance in the high-stakes arena of home-
land security. If one considers that airlines, chemical plants, bioengineering labs,
and nuclear power plants (just to name a few) are mainly privately owned in the
United States, and largely protected by private security and private police, the
critical nature of public–private collaboration in order to protect public safety
is obvious.
Two critical events that occurred early in the twenty-first century have had
a very significant impact on American society, including American policing and
police administration. These two events were the terrorist attacks of September 11,
2001, and Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.
September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001, 19 hijackers commandeered four airplanes leaving
from Boston, Newark, and Washington, DC, evading airport security at every
juncture.6 More than 3,000 people were killed in New York City at the World
Trade Center; in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, DC at the Penta-
gon; and in Stoney Creek Township, Pennsylvania, in an open field. Subsequently,
it was learned that several of the hijackers had come to the attention of law en-
forcement authorities in the months and years leading up to the attack, but no one
had “connected the dots.” This gave rise to considerably more emphasis on intel-
ligence analysis and information sharing. In addition, the heroic efforts of police,
firefighters, and other emergency personnel in New York and at the Pentagon were
hindered by overloaded communications networks and a lack of interoperability;
that is, the inability of first responders from different agencies to communicate
with each other across voice radio and data systems. This gave rise to technological
enhancements and, just as important, improved protocols for shared and coordi-
nated communications in emergencies.
To provide a description and analysis of the events of September 11, in-
cluding preparedness and response, a 10-member commission, the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (Public Law 107–
306) was formed. The 9/11 Commission, as it was better known, eventually
produced 41 recommendations that directed the revamping of the national
security apparatus to combat terrorism and defend the nation against weapons
of mass destruction. Several of the commissioners subsequently tracked the
implementation of the Commission’s recommendations. In a status report in
December 2005 (the last official status report), the government received only
one A grade, for making “significant strides in using terrorism finance as an
intelligence tool.”7 Categories in which the government performed most poorly
included recommendations related to airline passenger screening, critical in-
frastructure assessment, and efforts to prevent terrorists from acquiring weap-
ons of mass destruction; for 15 of the 41 recommendations, the government
received either a D or F grade. Later, on the 10th anniversary of the attacks
(in 2011), the Bipartisan Policy Center identified nine remaining unfinished
commission recommendations.8
Hurricane Katrina
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, Mississippi, Ala-
bama, Florida, and Georgia, causing more than 1,300 fatalities, with additional
people missing and many injured. Hurricane Katrina was the costliest hurricane
ever recorded in the United States, estimated at approximately $75 billion, and
the fifth deadliest. As if the hurricane itself was not enough devastation for
the city of New Orleans, a breach of the levees that surrounded the city oc-
curred, leading to flooding that left thousands homeless. While much debate
ensued about whether the federal government, Louisiana state government, or
New Orleans city government was most negligent (with particular attention
focused on FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a branch of
the Department of Homeland Security), one thing was certainly evident: “the
country was not prepared for a disaster of this magnitude, and the ensuing lack
of planning, coordination, communication and response proved to be too little,
too late.”9
A bipartisan congressional committee that investigated the problems that oc-
curred during and after Hurricane Katrina devoted one of its chapters to law en-
forcement. They made several specific findings:
• A variety of conditions led to lawlessness and violence in hurricane-stricken

areas.
• The New Orleans Police Department was ill-prepared for continuity of oper-
ations and lost almost all effectiveness.
Box 14.2 Hurricane Katrina: Breakdown in Law Enforcement

General unrest and lawlessness arose in crowded areas where people were uncertain about
their survival, or rescue, or prospects for evacuation. In some areas, the collapse or ab-
sence of law enforcement exacerbated the level of lawlessness and violence. Several police
departments lost dispatch and communication capabilities, police vehicles, administrative
functions such as booking, and jails to confine arrested suspects. Tremendous additional
burdens were imposed on the police, like search and rescue operations, that took priority
over normal police functions. The extent of crime and lawlessness is difficult to determine,
partly because of the loss of police record-keeping during the disaster and partly because of
unsubstantiated reporting by the media.
The breakdown of law enforcement was particularly notable in New Orleans. Despite the
well-known threat from flooding, the New Orleans Police Department had not taken basic
steps to protect its resources and ensure continuity of operations. For example, commu-
nications nodes, evidence rooms, and even emergency generators were housed in lower
floors susceptible to flooding. When the levees broke and the floodwaters overtook police
headquarters and district offices, the department lost its command and control and commu-
nications functions. Police vehicles believed to be moved out of harm’s way were lost to the
floodwaters. Hundreds of New Orleans Police Department officers went missing—some for
legitimate reasons and some n ot—at a time they were needed most. This left the city unable
to provide enough manpower and other resources to maintain law and order at shelters and
on the streets.
Source: Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to
Hurricane Katrina. 2006. A Failure of Initiative. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Office, p
. 241.
• Lack of a government public communications strategy and media hype of

violence exacerbated public concerns and further delayed relief.
• The Emergency Management Assistance Compact and military assistance
were critical for restoring law and order.
• Federal law enforcement agencies were also critical to restoring law and order
and coordinating activities.10
The congressional committee also found that law enforcement and public-
safety communications interoperability was once again, as it had been on S eptember
11, 2001, a serious impediment to disaster response and recovery operations. See
“Hurricane Katrina: Breakdown in Law Enforcement,” Box 14.2.
Department of Homeland Security
Since September 11, 2001, the United States has come to view terrorism and
its responses to terrorism differently. The acts that occurred that day were un-
like any we had ever seen before. While previous incidents at the World Trade
Center in 1993 and in Oklahoma City in 1995 gave us pause, we had nothing of
this magnitude—which affected so many people and p rofessions—with which to
compare these events. Similarly, Hurricane Katrina gave Americans a sober lesson
about the severity of natural disasters and the critical importance of a coordinated
and effective government response to emergency situations.
The Homeland Security Bill, enacted in 2003, mandated that 22 previously
existing federal agencies (with combined budgets of about $40 billion and em-
ploying 170,000 workers) be collapsed into one new cabinet-level department,
with additional new divisions being created to fill existing gaps. This represented
the most sweeping federal government reorganization since the creation of the
Department of Defense in 1947. The FBI and the CIA, two premier intelligence-
gathering agencies, remained independent from the new Department of Home-
land Security (DHS). However, many other agencies with law enforcement,
border protection, emergency management, and intelligence-gathering capabili-
ties became part of DHS.
The initial mission of the new department was to: (1) prevent terrorist attacks;
(2) reduce vulnerability to terrorism; and (3) minimize the damage from attacks
that do occur.11 The official mission statement was:
We will lead the unified national effort to secure America. We will prevent
and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and
hazards to the nation. We will ensure safe and secure borders, welcome
legal immigrants and visitors, and promote the f ree-flow of commerce.
Four divisions were created within the department: Border and Transportation
Security; Emergency Preparedness and Response; Chemical, Biological, Radiolog-
ical and Nuclear Countermeasures; and Information Analysis and Infrastructure
Protection. Although these divisions represented the department’s primary focus,
DHS included numerous other functions that are not directly related to homeland
security. For example, it is responsible for marine search and rescue, immigration
and naturalization, counterfeiting, and drug smuggling.
The DHS is comprised of: (1) agencies that were already in existence prior
to September 11, 2001; (2) new components that were created within the DHS,
such as Customs and Border Protection, comprising elements of the pre-existing
US Customs Service and US Border Patrol; and (3) totally new agencies, such as
the Transportation Safety Administration. Among the existing agencies that were
moved to the new Department of Homeland Security were the Air Marshals, Bor-
der Patrol, Customs Service, Coast Guard, Federal Protective Service, FEMA, and
Secret Service.
Other significant developments associated with the post-9/11 period and the
creation of DHS were the USA PATRIOT Act (Uniting and Strengthening Amer-
ica by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism,
Public Law No. 1 07–56), the development of the National Incident Manage-
ment System (NIMS), and the promulgation of a number of Homeland Security
Presidential Directives (HSPDs). Not long after the DHS was created, a Six-Point
Agenda was established to help in reaching the goals of the new federal agency.
The Six-Point Agenda included the following:
1. Increase overall preparedness, particularly for catastrophic events.

2. Create better transportation security systems to move people and cargo more
securely and efficiently.
3. Strengthen border security and border enforcement and reform immigration
processes.
4. Enhance information sharing with our partners.
5. Improve DHS financial management, human resource development, procure-
ment, and information technology.
6. Realign the DHS organization to maximize mission performance.
What did the creation of the Department of Homeland Security mean for local
law enforcement? Following the formation of the DHS in 2003, we have seen a tre-
mendous increase in the demands on federal, state, and local policing in the United
States. The FBI shifted its focus from more traditional law enforcement activities,
primarily reacting to criminal acts such as bank robberies, missing persons, corporate
fraud, and other federal offenses, to focus more on proactive investigations related to
terrorism, transnational crime, and national security. State police agencies assumed
some of the duties vacated by changing federal law enforcement priorities, and also
became important components of s tate-level homeland security bureaus and intelli-
gence fusion centers.12 As a result of these shifting priorities at the federal and state
levels, local police agencies assumed greater responsibility for traditional personal and
property crimes that once might have been referred for federal investigation, assumed
an increased responsibility for suspicious activity reporting, and became responsible
for increased duties protecting critical infrastructure, special events, and dignitaries.
Now that we are more than 20 years beyond 9/11, the veracity of the state-
ment that “nothing will ever be the same again” is not quite as clear-cut as it once
seemed. To be sure, local police have taken on some additional responsibilities,
but on a day-to-day basis local police work is probably not much different than
it was before 9/11. Intelligence gathering and information sharing are probably
more significant concerns for police chiefs than they were in 2000, but most of the
police executive’s job still revolves around managing the organization and leading
police personnel and the community in the pursuit of crime control and other
traditional police missions. The very significant threats posed by international ter-
rorism and natural disasters still loom, however. “The world as we know it” could
change again. Police executives are responsible for making sure that their organi-
zations have the enhanced capabilities that might be needed and are well prepared
for events that we hope will not occur. See “Homeland Security,” Box 14.3.
Box 14.3 Homeland Security

Standard 46.3.1 The agency provides terrorism awareness information within its service
area.
Standard 46.3.2 The agency provides awareness level training for events involving hazardous
materials.
The Preparedness Cycle
One of the best ways to think about the police role in homeland security is in
reference to the domestic preparedness cycle that includes the phases prevention,
protection, response, and recovery. Preparedness emphasizes planning, training,
and exercising to increase awareness, performance, and overall capabilities in all
four phases of the preparedness cycle. It includes such activities as developing in-
telligence collection and information-sharing protocols, developing local response
plans, training first responders, identification of critical resources, and the devel-
opment of mutual aid agreements both within and outside of jurisdictions.
Prevention
The prevention phase of the preparedness cycle applies readily to terrorism
and transnational crime, but it also applies to natural disasters. Because terrorism
and crime are intentional acts committed by people, it is well within reason to
hope to prevent some of those acts from occurring. Natural disasters, however,
such as hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes, are not preventable in the same
way (although it is certainly possible that future scientific developments might
introduce some prevention measures). For these big natural disasters, it is more
practical to think in terms of preventing or reducing harm as opposed to actually
preventing the disasters from occurring. Fewer lives might be lost and less property
destroyed if people take the proper precautions, if buildings are upgraded, and so
forth.
In some circles, this aspect of prevention is called mitigation. Regardless of
terminology, the line between real prevention and mitigation of losses is often
fuzzy. For example, we might not be able to prevent heavy rain that causes rivers
and streams to flood. But with floodwalls and dams we can sometimes prevent the
flooding, by channeling and controlling all the extra water brought by the rain.
Similarly, by discouraging building in flood-prone areas, we reduce the impact of
floods when they do occur. These activities clearly prevent flooding and/or losses
from flooding, even though they do not prevent heavy rain.

Community Policing to Counter Violent Extremism
August 5, 2017
This report provides a thorough description and assessment of an LAPD initiative to coun-
ter violent extremism by using community policing. The process evaluation concluded that
“adopting a community policing model is a necessary approach to better protect and serve
communities at risk for violent radicalization.” The study identified numerous challenges to
such an approach, including opposing narratives within communities over whether to cooper-
ate with police, but also identified practical ways to overcome differences and build resilience.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2017/08/05/community-policing-to-counter-violent-

extremism. The hyperlink at “This report” links to www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_CSTAB_CommunityPolicing-
toCounterViolentExtremism_July2017.pdf.
Another important element of “all hazards,” and one that is definitely an im-
portant target for prevention, is technological/industrial accidents.13 These kinds
of accidents have the potential to cause catastrophic losses. In the transportation
sector, plane crashes, railway crashes, and ship/ferry sinkings can each account for
hundreds of deaths per incident. Biological, chemical, and nuclear accidents have
the potential for even larger-scale consequences.
The police play a secondary role in prevention or mitigation of natural dis-
asters and technological catastrophes—engineers, scientists, air traffic controllers,
airplane pilots, ship captains, risk managers, and government regulators play the
primary role. For prevention of terrorism and serious crime, though, the police
role is pivotal. Specific activities include border control, regulation of weapons and
tools, patrol, investigation, surveillance, information and intelligence sharing, and
community engagement. Involving the community in preventive activity is noth-
ing new to the police. Citizens have historically provided the police with valuable
information which, in some cases, has become actionable intelligence.
Additionally, in a more formal role, the intelligence community (IC) ideally aids
the police with the provision of information and intelligence. The IC is primarily
composed of agencies of the national government, such as the CIA, FBI, National
Security Agency, and military. Historically, however, the IC has emphasized sharing
information and intelligence horizontally (across federal agencies), not vertically with
state and local agencies, and this was a major criticism of the intelligence community
following September 11, 2001. The government was graded low in the intelligence
category, and still has not resolved many crucial issues concerning information shar-
ing, especially vertical sharing of information and intelligence so that state and local
agencies receive the same valuable information and intelligence that federal members
of the IC receive. Later in this chapter, the section titled “Information Sharing” dis-
cusses this vital aspect of terrorism prevention in more detail.
Protection
Protection is related to prevention but focused more on specific facilities, loca-
tions, and systems with the intent to make them less susceptible to attack and/or
damage from disasters and accidents. The federal government identified 17 critical
infrastructure sectors following the events of 9/11 and has focused its efforts on
improving the overall security and protection of these different sectors. This is es-
pecially evident at the state and local levels, where police agencies have been called
upon during heightened security alerts to increase patrols and presence at various
facilities in their communities.
Despite these efforts, according to a report by the Government Accountability
Office, the nation’s critical infrastructures and key resources, including cyber and
physical assets that have been designated essential to national security, national
economic security, and national public health and safety, continue to be vulnerable
to a wide variety of threats.14 These post-9/11 vulnerabilities were again magnified
following the damage from Hurricane Katrina, when the Gulf Coast experienced
damage to oil platforms, pipelines, and refineries; water mains; electrical power
lines; and cellular phone towers. The chaos resulting from this infrastructure dam-
age disrupted the function of government and business and produced cascading
effects beyond the Gulf Coast.
Damage or threats to critical infrastructure can be varied in method and ex-
tensiveness. The 9/11 attacks had a crippling effect on the airline industry. In
2004, authorities discovered detailed surveillance of the New York Stock Exchange
and the Citigroup Center in the laptop computer of an Al Qaeda operative cap-
tured in Pakistan, part of a plan to target financial institutions in New York. The
bombings of London’s public transportation system in 2005 demonstrated how an
attack on a transportation system could disrupt a city’s transportation and mobile
telecommunications infrastructure. The 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India,
targeted popular hotels.
Due to the fact that the private sector owns approximately 85% of the na-
tion’s critical infrastructure—such as banking and financial institutions, telecom-
munications networks, energy production, and transmission facilities—there is
greater emphasis now on public and private sectors forming effective partnerships
in order to protect these critical infrastructures. One new feature of infrastructure
protection is a series of Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (ISAC), which
are public–private partnerships designed to provide members of specific sectors
with information about physical and cyber threats and vulnerabilities in order to
increase protection levels. The National Council of ISACs currently lists 25 mem-
bers covering sectors such as aviation, elections, financial services, information
technology, maritime transportation, and real estate.15
Private ownership of so much critical infrastructure makes the significance of
public–private partnerships readily apparent. Nowhere is this more evident than
when considering the protection of border states and states with coastlines. In
addition to terrorist threats, these states routinely deal with immigration, drug
smuggling, cargo theft, and human trafficking challenges. Seaports are particularly
challenging to protect because they are typically large, vast quantities of merchan-
dise and material pass through them, they are a combination of land and sea,
there is a mix of public and private ownership of property and facilities, and there
is overlapping local, state, and federal jurisdiction. Commander Stephen Flynn
(US Coast Guard, ret.) points to the following weaknesses of our seaports and the
challenges that face federal, state, and local law enforcement:
1. Seaports cannot be separated from the international transport system to which

they belong. Ports are in essence nodes in a network where cargo is loaded
on or unloaded from one mode—a ship—to or from other m odes—trucks,
trains, and, on occasion, planes. Therefore, seaport security must always be
pursued against the context of transportation security.
2. Port security initiatives must be developed within a regional and interna-
tional context. Unilateral efforts to tighten security within US ports without
commensurate efforts to improve security in the ports of our neighbors will
lead shipping companies and importers to “port-shop”; that is, to move their
business to other market-entry points where their goods are cleared more
quickly. Thus the result of unilateral, stepped-up security within US ports
could well be to erode the competitive position of important American ports
while the locus of the security risk simply shifts outside of our reach to Can-
ada, Mexico, or the Caribbean to ports such as Halifax, Montreal, Vancouver,
and Freeport.
3. Since US ports are among America’s most critical infrastructure, they should
not be viewed as a primary line of defense in an effort to protect the US home-
land. The last place we should be looking to intercept a ship or container that
has been c o-opted by terrorists is in a busy, congested, and commercially vital
seaport.16
Protecting critical infrastructure is a responsibility that is widely shared.

Police do not bear all the responsibility for t his—they have an important role to
play, but so do private companies, private security, and n on-police elements of
the homeland security system. This situation of shared responsibility, together
with the high degree of interdependence among various sectors of the economy
and government, calls for a much greater level of coordination and collaboration
than in the past.17
Response
Police are on duty and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a
year. Often they are the only “first responders” working, so they are charged with
responding to a wide variety of incidents, even those outside the realm of their
regular duties. Historically, police have responded to various situations that were
not necessarily law-enforcement-related, but were considered part of the safety

and service functions of policing. Despite being accustomed to this “jack of all
trades” role, things changed dramatically for police (and other first responders) on
September 11, 2001, when airplanes full of innocent people were used to assault
high-rise office buildings and h igh-profile government installations. The essen-
tial nature of close collaboration before and during emergency response, between
public agencies, as well as public–private collaboration, became obvious. This col-
lective effort requires much more planning and coordination and, probably most
importantly, communication, to operate effectively and safely in the post-9/11
world.
National Response Framework

The National Response Framework (NRF) is intended to work in concert
with the National Incident Management System (see below). It requires that
all jurisdictions establish a comprehensive, a ll-hazards approach to enhance the
ability of the United States to manage disastrous and catastrophic incidents. The
framework incorporates best practices and procedures from incident management
disciplines—homeland security, emergency management, law enforcement, fire-
fighting, public works, public health, responder and recovery worker health and
safety, emergency medical services, and the private sector—and integrates them
into a unified structure.18 It forms the basis of how the federal government coordi-
nates with state, local, and tribal governments and the private sector during major
incidents.
The NRF identifies police, fire, public health and medical, emergency man-
agement, and other personnel as responsible for incident management at the local
level. The idea is that an incident should be handled at the lowest possible or-
ganizational and jurisdictional level; however, if an incident expands beyond the
capacity of the local response then the NRF provides a “seamless” integration with
state governments and then the federal government for a timely federal response
to catastrophic incidents. These types of incidents are defined as high-impact,
low-probability events, including natural disasters and terrorist attacks that result
in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting
the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or
government functions.
National Incident Management System

The value of the Incident Command System (ICS) is very evident to most po-
lice agencies that have ever had to deal with a hostage crisis or other life-threatening
event that required a coordinated response and approach. Even before 9/11 and
Hurricane Katrina, the importance of a coordinated and multiagency command
and management system was something that fundamentally was understood at the
local, state, and federal levels. The practice of incident command was formalized
in the 1970s by a group of local, state, and federal fire agencies following the
brushfire season in Southern California. This group was referred to as Firescope
(firefighting resources of California), which is still in existence today. Initially,
ICSs were more commonly within the purview of the fire and emergency medi-
cal services, because they responded more often to major incidents with multiple
personnel and multiple units. Law enforcement work is more likely to involve just
one or two officers, so the need for formalized incident command methods arises
less often. One of the first documented and successful uses of formalized ICS for
policing was during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
It was not until 1996, when Executive Order No. 26 was signed, that a
National Interagency Incident Management S ystem–Incident Command System
was required at the state level and would be required to be used during emergency
operations. The idea was to create a common set of terms and procedures that
provided for multiagency coordination, unified command, and the identification
of equipment, resources, and common protocols for the handling of events and
dissemination of information regarding an incident.
In 2003, HSPD #5 called for the creation of a comprehensive national ap-
proach to incident management. This initiative was referred to as the National
Incident Management System (NIMS):
a systematic, proactive approach to guide departments and agencies at

all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and the private
sector to work seamlessly to prevent, protect against, respond to, recover
from, and mitigate the effects of incidents, regardless of cause, size, loca-
tion, or complexity, in order to reduce the loss of life and property and
harm to the environment. NIMS works hand in hand with the National
Response Framework (NRF). NIMS provides the template for the man-
agement of incidents, while the NRF provides the structure and mecha-
nisms for national-level policy for incident management.19
The most immediate implication for policing was the requirement to take a
number of ICS courses. The first series of courses had to be completed in 2006
and included ICS-100 (Introduction to Incident Command System) and ICS-
200 (Single Resources and Initial Action Incidents). All federal, state, territorial,
local, tribal, private sector, and nongovernmental personnel at the entry level, first-
line supervisor level, middle-management level, and command and general staff
level of emergency management operations were to complete these two courses.
There was also a requirement in 2006 for all personnel with a direct role in emer-
gency preparedness, incident management, or response to complete IS-700 and
IS-800 training. The IS-700 training is an awareness-level course that explains
NIMS components, concepts, and principles, while the IS-800 course is also an
awareness-level course and reviews the NRF. These federally mandated training
requirements were viewed as burdensome by many in the police field, although
Box 14.4 Overview of NIMS

What NIMS Is: What NIMS Is Not:
• A comprehensive, nationwide, systematic • A response plan

approach to incident management, including • Only used during large-scale
the Incident Command System, Multiagency incidents
Coordination Systems, and Public Information • A communications plan
• A set of preparedness concepts and principles • Only applicable to certain
for all hazards emergency management/
• Essential principles for a common operating incident response personnel
picture and interoperability of communications • Only the Incident Command
and information management System or an organization chart
• Standardized resource management procedures • A static system
that enable coordination among different
jurisdictions or organizations
• Scalable, so it may be used for all incidents
(from day-to-day to large-scale)
• A dynamic system that promotes ongoing
management and maintenance
Source: National Incident Management System. Washington, DC: Department of Homeland

Security, p. 6. Online at: www.fema.gov/pdf/emergency/nims/NIMS_core.pdf.
most recognized the need for better coordination of emergency responses to criti-
cal incidents (see “Overview of NIMS,” Box 14.4).
The most controversial NIMS guidance given to police agencies by the fed-
eral government was an effort to standardize the language and rules of emergency
response. Historically, local and state law enforcement officials have used “10-
codes” in their radio communications. The criticism of that system was that there
were no standard 10-codes; even neighboring police agencies sometimes used
different codes. Also, emergency responders within the same jurisdiction may not
use a common 1 0-code system, so the police code system is different from the
fire department which, in turn, uses different codes from the ambulance service.
Consequently, FEMA issued a directive in 2006 with a series of new procedures,
one of which was the phasing out of 1 0-codes (also called “brevity codes”) and
replacing them with phrases like “I’m at an accident scene” and other standard
language. FEMA insisted that the plain-language instructions apply for everyday
use as well as national emergencies and tied federal DHS funding to compliance.
Recovery
The police role in recovery from terrorism and disasters is secondary. Primary
responsibility for community and economic recovery falls on FEMA, the Red
Box 14.5 Police Role in Recovery

A large attack will place immediate demands on any police department; coping with the
permanent changes that follow the attack can be equally demanding. At the World Trade
Center disaster, police were called on for search and rescue operations. During the mitiga-
tion phase, police directed traffic, managed roadblocks, and supervised increased security
in tunnels and bridges. Still others recorded and classified body parts recovered from the
site, a job that went on for months. The aftereffects of the attack were so substantial that
they necessitated the permanent redeployment of many police. The traffic flow in downtown
Manhattan has been redesigned to cope with cleanup, reconstruction, and sightseeing.
Deployment of police to maintain surveillance of possible targets (bridges, tunnels, sub-
ways, train stations, etc.) has changed the way the New York Police Department operates,
probably permanently.
Source: Graeme R. Newman and Ronald V. Clarke. 2008. Policing Terrorism: An Executive’s
Guide. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, Brief 49.
Cross, other charitable organizations, insurance companies, private businesses,

state and local governments, and individuals. However, as noted in “Police Role
in Recovery” (Box 14.5), police may have to enforce curfews, regulate traffic, and
protect facilities for weeks or even months after a major catastrophe, until other
institutions and community dynamics return to some semblance of normalcy. The
9/11 and Katrina experiences illustrated how long it can take for this recovery pe-
riod to progress to a point where the burden on police services eases.
A very important aspect of recovery for police departments, and a specific re-
sponsibility of police executives and police planners, is continuity of operations.
The community counts on the police to provide services and protection in the days
and months following a disaster or terrorist attack—what if police headquarters is
flooded, cell phone service is knocked out, or the supply of gasoline is interrupted?
This also applies during and following a pandemic situation, when a significant
number of police personnel may be sick and quarantined.20 Police departments need
to develop contingency plans and backup systems to ensure that they can continue
to operate and protect the community during the post-disaster recovery period.
Technology and Training
Police activities in support of the all-hazards homeland security mission

may require additional and/or enhanced equipment and training. In the first
few years of the Department of Homeland Security, federal funding was made
available to law enforcement agencies and other p ublic-safety agencies, directly
from Washington and through state homeland security offices, to purchase spe-
cialized equipment. After making initial purchases of protective equipment to be
used if chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) material is encoun-
tered, many police agencies began to adopt two important principles that have
subsequently guided homeland security technology procurement: (1) as much as

possible, items should have dual purposes—that is, they should have everyday uses
as well as emergency uses; and (2) regional cooperation should guide purchasing
of the most expensive and specialized equipment. This latter point recognizes that
not every single police department needs to own, and can afford to purchase and
maintain, the most exotic and specialized technology, as long as they can get access
to it when it is needed.
A national survey distributed after 9/11 asked police officers and police admin-
istrators to identify their most critical technology needs related to the all-hazards
homeland security mission. Interestingly, neither communications technology nor
body armor was rated near the top of the most critical needs.21 Respondents indi-
cated that these technologies were very important, of course, but they also consid-
ered the equipment that was already available to be satisfactory. Among the most
critical technology needs according to the survey respondents were (1) equipment
to detect CBRN, explosives, and firearm threats and (2) personal protective equip-
ment, including biohazard protection.
These most critical technology needs seemed to reflect serious concerns
about safety and about the new and somewhat unfamiliar threats introduced by
terrorism. Pre-9/11, when the potential threat from CBRN was primarily asso-
ciated with industrial or transportation accidents, the police tended to define
it as a hazardous materials (HazMat) issue that would be handled primarily by
fire departments and emergency managers. When the same types of materials
are introduced by terrorists, however, we call them weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) and there is a greater expectation that police will need to intervene.
Police now have a heightened recognition of this responsibility, and are more
aware of their equipment and technology needs to carry out the mission safely
and successfully.
The a ll-hazards homeland security mission also raises new training require-
ments. As part of the National Preparedness Goal, DHS established a Target
Capabilities List that identifies what emergency responders and others will need
to do in the event of various types of disasters and related scenarios.22 Some of
these target capabilities, such as medical surge or public health epidemiological
investigation and laboratory testing, fall well outside the police mission. Others,
such as intelligence fusion and analysis, public safety and security response, and
citizen protection, clearly involve the police. DHS funds the development and
delivery of homeland security-related training for police and others, and has set
up a training portal at www.firstrespondertraining.gov to help meet the training
needs of the entire nation.
A national survey administered five years after 9/11 sought to identify the
most serious continuing training needs of police, other emergency responders,
health workers, and general government officials related to the a ll-hazards home-
land security mission. The survey concentrated on the degree to which respond-
ents had already received training related to each of the DHS target capabilities
versus those that still presented substantial training needs. For each of 24 of the
target capabilities, more than 50% of responding police agencies indicated that
they still needed additional training. The top five reported areas of training need
for police agencies were as follows23:
• 77%—planning for terrorism events;

• 74%—information gathering and threat recognition;
• 74%—prevention of cyber/computer crimes;
• 73%—citizen protection: evacuation and/or in-place protection;
• 71%—intelligence/information sharing and dissemination.
Other types of training with high levels of reported need included interopera-
ble emergency communications, critical infrastructure protection, responder safety
and health, intelligence analysis and production, investigation of terrorism/WMD
events, and citizen preparedness and participation. Clearly, the a ll-hazards home-
land security mission has presented police with some new and complex responsi-
bilities for which new and different types of training are needed.
Information Sharing
Effective homeland security depends heavily on information sharing. Pre-

venting terrorism requires horizontal and vertical sharing of information and
intelligence. Protection of critical infrastructure requires collaboration between
public agencies and private companies, including sharing of confidential infor-
mation. Emergency response to disasters, whether natural or m an-made, requires
coordination, including interoperable sharing of real-time information and da-
tabases. The critical importance of information sharing is difficult to overem-
phasize. Unfortunately, though, information and intelligence sharing within the
law enforcement community has traditionally been inadequate, while the flow
of information between law enforcement agencies and the intelligence commu-
nity (military and national intelligence agencies) has been nearly nonexistent.
The latter was due mainly to widely differing missions pre-9/11—police were
focused mainly on domestic crime and, to a lesser extent, transnational crime,
while IC agencies were focused mainly on threats to national security posed by
other nations.
Local police agencies are generally predisposed to share information with each
other, but several complications have historically interfered with good intentions.
The biggest is simply the fragmentation of the US police s ystem—some local police
departments have 100-plus other local police agencies within a one-or two-county
radius, making even local information sharing very complicated. A few regional
information systems have been created, for example, ARJIS (Automated Regional
Justice Information System) in San Diego and CLEAR (Citizen and Law Enforce-
ment Analysis and Reporting) in Chicago, and it has been common in some areas
to hold monthly or quarterly regional meetings of chiefs, investigators, and/or in-

telligence specialists. Still, in such a fragmented system, it is difficult to determine
who to share your information or intelligence with (who needs it) and to determine
whom to contact when in search of particular information or intelligence.
Local police have routinely shared basic information with state police, other
state agencies, and some federal agencies, especially the FBI. This is because state
agencies and the FBI maintain the official repositories and databases of finger-
prints, criminal histories, wanted persons, stolen cars, and other stolen property.
In addition, state police typically oversee registration systems for handgun per-
mits and sex offenders, while state motor vehicle agencies maintain records related
to driver licenses and vehicle registrations. Also, the Uniform Crime Reporting
(UCR) system is run by the FBI, using a process that involves local agencies sub-
mitting their reports to their state police or some other state agency, which com-
bines the information and forwards it on to the FBI.
While local police have traditionally shared these kinds of basic information
with state police and federal agencies on a routine basis, sharing of other infor-
mation and intelligence has not always been routine. Local police often complain
about a one-way flow of information in their relations with both state and federal
agencies—they provide information, but they never get anything back. Resent-
ment builds up, leading to less information sharing by local agencies.
In more recent years though (beginning well before 9/11), the FBI, Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA), and Secret Service all created local-area fed-
eral task forces on which local police routinely participated. These violent crime,
major drugs, and electronic crimes task forces enhanced operational cooperation
as well as information and intelligence sharing. Those local police agencies partic-
ipating in task forces often used them as their principal channels for information
sharing with federal law enforcement agencies. Also, more than 7,000 law enforce-
ment agencies joined six regional (multistate) intelligence networks established to
facilitate sharing of criminal intelligence.24 In addition, local, state, and federal
agencies jointly operated 31 regional and border HIDTA (High Intensity Drug
Trafficking Areas) that emphasized drug-related information sharing and intelli-
gence production.25
Since the events of September 11, 2001, a substantial number of reforms and
other changes pertinent to intelligence and information sharing have been imple-
mented. Not surprisingly, these changes and reforms have not immediately solved
all the information-and intelligence-sharing problems associated with terrorism
and homeland security. Local and state police have consistently complained that
so-called “national” plans were too often really “federal” plans—created without
state and local input, not responsive to state and local needs, often asserting federal
control, and often creating new and unfunded state and local mandates.26
While obstacles and challenges remain, it is also the case that significant
changes have occurred. Within one or two years after 9/11, local and state po-
lice were reporting increased responsibilities related to homeland security, in-
creased contacts with a range of federal agencies, better relationships with federal
authorities, and more open and effective information sharing.27 More Joint Terror-
ism Task Forces were created (increasing from 35 to 100) with more state and local
participation, and federal participation within state and local intelligence fusion
centers became common. The overall trend has undoubtedly been in the direction
of more information sharing.
The post-9/11 focus on local police has mainly been on their role as “eyes and
ears” in local communities throughout the nation. In this respect, they are seen as
very important collectors of information, of raw data, that can be fed into the intel-
ligence process in order to help analysts and others “connect the dots.” Officers have
been given training and also checklists to help them identify and report suspicious
behavior that might have some connection to terrorism.28 Community policing is
seen as an ideal local police strategy because it helps officers get to know their com-
munities and builds trust, making it more likely that residents will share important
information with the police.29 But local police need to be more than just informa-
tion collectors—they should also be “first preventers” who are most likely to be in
a position to prevent a terrorist act, both by gathering information and by taking
action, when appropriate. This first preventer role is paired with the more familiar
“first responder” role to make a logical and meaningful package that demonstrates
the synergy between effective c rime-reduction tactics and counterterrorism and en-
courages local police to take their counterterrorism role more seriously.30
Important “linking pins” in the new information-sharing environment are
state and regional fusion centers. These are designed to connect the hundreds
of local agencies in each state with DHS and other federal components of the
intelligence community, such as the National Counterterrorism Center and the
Interagency Threat Assessment Coordination Group. Each of these fusion centers
is designed to receive, collate, and analyze intelligence from throughout its state,
creating useful state-wide intelligence products when possible, and also passing
important intelligence on to federal agencies when appropriate. The fusion centers
also serve as points of contact for federal intelligence agencies when they need
to make inquiries or disseminate information to officials within a state. Some of
these fusion centers are focused exclusively on terrorism, but most have taken an
“all-crimes” or “all-hazards” approach in order to be of greatest value to law en-
forcement agencies and others within their states.
Obviously, police executives have a much more complicated information-
sharing environment facing them today than in the past. In order to provide the
best possible protection for their communities, as well as contribute to national
security, they need to make sure that their officers are properly prepared to ful-
fill the roles of intelligence collectors, first preventers, and first responders. Also,
police executives need to build relationships and maintain open channels of com-
munication with various state and federal agencies, including fusion centers, state
police, the FBI, and DHS. Various national and state systems and plans have been
established since 9/11 to make this kind of information sharing more feasible but,
ultimately, it depends on smart policing at the local level and a spirit of collabora-
tion among all the parties involved in homeland security.
Domestic Terrorism
In the years since 2001, few acts of international terrorism have been success-
fully carried out in the United States. To be sure, the threats posed by Al Qaeda,
ISIS, and other international terrorist groups remain significant, but their deadly
attacks in recent years have mainly taken place in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Paki-
stan, Egypt, and a number of African and Asian countries.31 The few international
terror attacks carried out in the United States in the last 20 years have mainly been
of the lone-actor or lone-wolf type, often by someone who had been radicalized
from afar but who acted independently. Most of the attacks resulted in limited or
no casualties. Many planned attacks have been interrupted by law enforcement,
acting on intelligence that allowed them to discover the terrorist’s plans in advance.

National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism
June 25, 2021
The federal government recently released a National Strategy for Countering Domestic
Terrorism, available here. The authors of this column compliment the strategy, based on
their research into both international and domestic terrorism, which has included interviews
with over 700 terrorists. They note the importance of a multi-faceted approach including
information sharing, short-term and long-term prevention efforts, as well as disruption. Inter-
estingly, they have found that
hate and ideology itself do not appear to be the primary motivating factors for those who
join white supremacist groups. Relationships and identity, belonging, and being imbued
with a sense of significance, dignity, and purpose were far more important in joining.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2021/06/25/national-strategy-for-countering-domestic-

terrorism/. The hyperlink at “available here” links to https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-
Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf. The hyperlink at “this column” links to https://www.hstoday.
us/subject-matter-areas/counterterrorism/perspective-new-national-strategy-for-countering-domestic-terrorism-is-a-big-
step-in-the-right-direction/.
Lately we have seen a different trend in domestic terrorism, however. It has

been increasing and is now judged to be a greater threat than international terror-
ism.32 Domestic terrorism is carried out within the United States by US residents.
Often the attacks are motivated by racial or religious bias, political ideology, or
anti-government sentiment. Extreme far-right groups, including those associated
with neo-Nazi and white supremacist beliefs, have been most active. According to
one analysis, over three-quarters of terrorism-related deaths in the United States
between 2010 and 2019 were committed by violent far-right extremists.33
Because domestic terrorism is carried out within the country by US residents,
it is even more clearly a police responsibility than is the case with international
terrorism. Roles include intelligence gathering, prevention, mitigation, response,

and investigation. Extremist groups represent one part of the threat, but as with
international terrorism, so-called lone-wolf actors have carried out many domestic
terror attacks. Often inspired by extremist beliefs and radicalized online, these
lone-wolf actors can be difficult to identify in advance, specifically because they
are not connected with known groups.
Intelligence-Led Policing
Police attention to terrorism and homeland security has led to greater inter-
est in intelligence-led policing. Intelligence-led policing (ILP) is “a collaborative
enterprise based on improved intelligence operations and community-oriented
policing (COP) and problem-solving (POP).”34 The basic idea is straightforward:
police activity should be guided by information and intelligence.35 Patrol assign-
ments, for example, should be based on the latest information about crime and
other problems, as opposed to simply assigning patrol officers to standardized
beats and telling them to “be careful out there.” Similarly, specialized units should
be deployed based on intelligence about crime, drugs, and gang activity. Most
importantly, these deployments should be based on current information and intel-
ligence, as up-to-the-minute as possible. If intelligence gathering and intelligence
analysis are effective, then ILP has the capacity to help police work smarter (see
“Intelligence-Led Policing,” Box 14.6).
Box 14.6 Intelligence-Led Policing

Intelligence-led policing is a collaborative philosophy that starts with information, gathered
at all levels of the organization, that is analyzed to create useful intelligence and an improved
understanding of the operational environment. This will assist leadership in making the best
possible decisions with respect to crime control strategies, allocation of resources, and tacti-
cal operations. The adoption of ILP processes requires a concerted effort by all parties, includ-
ing analysts, operators, and senior leaders. For analysts, the key components of this process
include the creation of tactical, operational, and strategic intelligence products that support
immediate needs, promote situational awareness, and provide the foundation for longer-term
planning. For operators, it requires becoming both better data collectors and better consum-
ers of intelligence-related products. This means shifting from emphasizing post-event evi-
dence collection to constantly gathering all relevant data and ensuring it is provided for entry
into appropriate databases, as well as drawing from the intelligence analysts and relevant
databases all the information that is needed to support ongoing operations. Finally, adopting
the ILP process requires senior leadership to actively engage the analysts and the operators to
ensure the leadership has a sufficient picture of the operating environment and that it can act
to distribute resources according to conclusions and priorities drawn from this understanding.
Source: Joseph R. Fuentes. 2006. New Jersey State Police Practical Guide to Intelligence-
Led Policing. New York: Manhattan Institute, p. 3. Online at: www.njsp.org/divorg/invest/
pdf/njsp_ilpguide.pdf.
Thus far, it seems that more US police agencies are exploring intelligence-led
policing than actually implementing it on a wide scale. One stumbling block is
that some agencies think of ILP simply in terms of terrorism and homeland se-
curity, not recognizing its applicability to crime control. Also, full-scale adoption
of ILP requires an effective intelligence collection system (including collection of
community intelligence), a robust capacity for intelligence analysis, and a strong
command and management system capable of using intelligence products on a
day-to-day basis to drive resource deployment and operational tactics. As this de-
scription indicates, ILP requires full integration of crime analysis and problem
analysis with intelligence analysis.36 In addition, it requires a sophisticated under-
standing of how community engagement and problem solving fit into I LP—too
often, police executives seem to think they have to choose between COP, POP, and
ILP when, in reality, they should be thinking about how best to integrate these
strategies into the most effective overall approach for their agency and their com-
munity.37 It will be interesting to see how these misunderstandings and challenges
are sorted out over the next few years.
Balancing Safety and Liberty
The events of 9/11 demonstrated dramatically the kinds of threats and risks
that we face in the modern world. Understandably, the United States reacted with
several measures designed to reduce the chances that a similar attack could succeed
again, including the USA PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Department of
Homeland Security. Among other things, security measures at airports are stricter
and more intrusive, intelligence gathering is more robust, and information sharing
among law enforcement and intelligence agencies has increased. Quite a few at-
tempted terrorist acts have been interrupted before they could be completed, and
a number of would-be terrorists have been captured in sting operations within the
United States or killed in staging areas overseas.
The other side of the coin is the impact of these measures on citizens’ privacy
and civil rights. Intelligence gathering is an inexact science and always results in
information pertaining to innocent people and innocent acts being collected and
stored. Similarly, more aggressive security and policing measures always result in
more innocent people being stopped, questioned, searched, and sometimes de-
tained. Moreover, even when intelligence gathering, security measures, and police
actions are targeted at suspicious behaviors, they almost always affect poor people
and members of minority groups the most, resulting in allegations of discrimina-
tion or, in modern parlance, “profiling.” The farther we get from the events of 9/11,
the more these intrusions on people’s rights and privacy seem oppressive and unfair.
Earlier in the text we emphasized that police in a free society are always en-
gaged in a delicate balancing act between order and liberty. They are “in the arena,”
squarely where the action is, not just participants in some philosophical or academic
debate. Policing to prevent and control terrorism brings these issues even more to
the forefront, since the potential threats to safety are so significant. We do not have
a simple equation to offer to police executives to help them navigate this difficult
territory. It can only be emphasized that police chiefs and sheriffs have a very critical
leadership role to play, both in leading their employees and leading the community.
When times get really tough and the public and their political leaders are tempted
to trade freedom for security, police executives may need to be the ones who demon-
strate true grit,38 calm reassurance, and the wisdom of the ages, reminding everyone
of Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote from 1759, “Those who would give up essen-
tial liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”39
Summary
This chapter has outlined the modern police role in light of the events of
September 11, 2001, the subsequent creation of the Department of Homeland
Security, and the devastating experience of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The federal
government, police departments, and the rest of the emergency response commu-
nity still have a lot of hard work to do to become more prepared and more adept
at all-hazards prevention, protection, response, and recovery. The new homeland
security mission presents extra workload for police agencies, significant new re-
sponsibilities, and major challenges. The crucial significance of information shar-
ing has come to the forefront, and a new police strategy, intelligence-led policing,
has emerged. Most recently, domestic terrorism has been identified as possibly a
greater threat than international terrorism, with obvious ramifications for local
and state police, in addition to federal law enforcement.
1. Do you agree that the police role has changed significantly since September 11, 2001? If not, why
not? If you agree, identify and describe three ways in which it has changed.
2. Why is vertical information sharing so much more challenging than horizontal information sharing in
the counterterrorism/domestic security context?
3. Who (agencies, levels of government, others) do you think should have had primary responsibility for
recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina?
4. Why is interoperability so important? Why do you think it hasn’t already been achieved?
5. Do you think intelligence-led policing or community policing is the best model to use to achieve
homeland security? To what degree are these two police strategies compatible or in conflict?
6. In the aftermath of 9/11, do you think we have given up too much freedom in return for greater safety?
How would you strike the balance between freedom and safety? If you were a police chief, where
would you draw the lines on intelligence gathering, eavesdropping, and aggressive policing?
Suggested Reading
Crenshaw, M., and G. LaFree. 2017. Countering Terrorism. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
Newman, G.R., and R.V. Clarke. 2008. Policing Terrorism: An Executive’s Guide. Washington, DC:
Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
PERF. 2021. Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic: What Police Learned from One of the Most Challeng-
ing Periods of Our Lives. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
Ratcliffe, J.H. 2008. Intelligence-Led Policing. Cullompton: Willan Publishing.
Richards, E.P., K.C. Rathbun, C.S. Brito, and A. Luna. 2006. The Role of Law Enforcement in P
ublic
Health Emergencies: Special Considerations for an All-Hazards Approach. Washington, DC:
Bureau of Justice Assistance.
Notes
1 G.L. Kelling, and W.J. Bratton. 2006. “Policing Terrorism.” Civic Bulletin No. 43 (September).
New York: Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
2 L. Bonkiewicz, and R.B. Ruback. 2012. “The Role of the Police in Evacuations: Responding to
the Societal Impact of a Disaster.” Police Quarterly 15, no. 2: 137–156.
3 F. Elkins. 2021. “Policing in the Pandemic: Ideas from the Field.” Community Policing Dispatch
14, no. 4. Online at: https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/04–2021/policing_in_the_pandemic.
html.
4 COPS Office. 2005. National Policy Summit: Building Private Security/Public Policing Partner-
ships to Prevent and Respond to Terrorism and Public Disorder. Washington, DC: Office of Com-
munity Oriented Policing Services.
5 L.T. Hoover. 2002. “The Challenges to Local Police Participation in the Homeland Security
Effort.” Subject to Debate 16, no. 10: 1, 2, 4, 8 –11.
6 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. 2004. The 9/11 Commission
Report. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.
7 9/11 Public Discourse Project. 2005. “Final Report on 9/11 Commission Recommendations.”
Online at: www.c-span.org/video/?190186-1/911-public-discourse-project-report.
8 National Security Preparedness Group. 2011. Tenth Anniversary Report Card: The Status of
the 9/11 Commission Recommendations. Washington, DC: Bipartisan Policy Center. Online
at: http://bipartisan-policy.org/library/tenth-anniversary-report-card-status-911-commission-
r ecommendations.
9 R.H. Ward, K.L. Kiernan, and D. Mabrey. 2006. Homeland Security: An Introduction. Newark,
NJ: LexisNexis/Matthew Bender, p . 232.
10 Select Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to Hurricane
Katrina. 2006. A Failure of Initiative. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office,
pp. 241–266.
11 Information on DHS in this section is drawn from R. White and K. Collins (eds). 2006. The
United States Department of Homeland Security: An Overview. Boston, MA: Pearson Custom
Publishing.
12 C. Foster, and G. Cordner. 2005. The Impact of Terrorism on State Law Enforcement: Adjusting to
New Roles and Changing Conditions. Lexington, KY: Council of State Governments. Online at:
www.csg.org/knowledgecenter/docs/Misc0504Terrorism.pdf.
13 W.M. Evan, and M. Manion. 2002. Minding the Machines: Preventing Technological Disasters.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
14 Government Accounting Office. 2007. Critical Infrastructure: Challenges Remain in Protecting
Key Sectors, GAO-07–626T. Washington, DC: author, March 20.
15 See https://www.nationalisacs.org/member-isacs-3.
16 See www.cfr.org/transnational-crime/potential-impact-homeland-security-reorganization-federal-
law-enforcement-activities/p4625.
17 K.A. Brown. 2006. Critical Path: A Brief History of Critical Infrastructure Protection in the United
States. Fairfax, VA: Spectrum Publishing.
18 See www.fema.gov/pdf/emergency/nrf/nrf-core.pdf.
19 National Incident Management System. 2008. Washington, DC: Department of Homeland

Security, p. 1. Online at: www.fema.gov/pdf/emergency/nims/NIMS_core.pdf.
20 E.P. Richards, K.C. Rathbun, C.S. Brito, and A. Luna. 2006. The Role of Law Enforcement in
Public Health Emergencies: Special Considerations for an A ll-Hazards Approach. Washington, DC:
Bureau of Justice Assistance, p. 5.
21 G. Cordner. 2006. Homeland Security Technology Survey Report. Washington, DC: Public Safety
and Security Institute for Technology.
22 See www.fas.org/irp/ofdocs/nspd/hspd-8.html.
23 G. Cordner, A. Cordner, and L. Mayberry. 2007. Assessing the Needs of Rural Emergency Respond-
ers: National Training Needs Assessment 2006. Richmond, KY: Rural Domestic Preparedness
Consortium.
24 See www.riss.net.
25 Office of National Drug Control Policy. 2008. High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas. Washing-
ton, DC: Author. Online at: www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/high-intensity-drug-trafficking-areas-
program.
26 G.R. Murphy, M.R. Plotkin, E.A. Flynn, J. Perlov, K. Stafford, and D.W. Stephens. 2003. Pro-
tecting Your Community from Terrorism: Vol. 1. Improving Local-Federal Partnerships. Washington,
DC: Police Executive Research Forum; IACP. 2005. From Hometown Security to Homeland Secu-
rity. Alexandria, VA: International Association of Chiefs of Police.
27 Foster and Cordner. 2005. The Impact of Terrorism on State Law Enforcement; S.A. Loyka, D.A.
Faggiani, C. Karchmer, M. Baginski, D. Bibel, M. Carraway, S. Kirby, R.A. Martinez, S. Sellers,
and J. Sullivan. 2003. Protecting Your Community from Terrorism: Vol. 4. The Production and
Sharing of Intelligence. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
28 J. Meyer. 2008. “LAPD Leads the Way in Local C ounter-Terrorism.” Los Angeles Times (April
14); Bureau of Justice Assistance. 2008. State and Local A nti-Terrorism Training Program.
Washington, DC: Author. Online at: www.slatt.org/Default.aspx.
29 Local Law Enforcement’s Role in Preventing and Responding to Terrorism. 2001. Washington, DC:
Police Executive Research Forum; M. Scheider, and R. Chapman. 2003. “Community Policing
and Terrorism.” Journal of Homeland Security (April): 4–8.
30 Kelling and Bratton. 2006. “Policing Terrorism.”
31 Global Terrorism Index. 2022. Online at: https:// www.visionofhumanity.org/ maps/
global-
terrorism-index/#/.
32 National Security Council. 2021. National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. Washington,
DC: The White House. Online at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/
06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf.
33 B. Hoffman and J. Ware. 2021. “Terrorism and Counterterrorism Challenges for the Biden
Administration,” CTC Sentinel 14, no. 1. Online at: https://ctc.usma.edu/terrorism-and-
counterterrorism-challenges-for-the-biden-administration/.
34 M. Peterson. 2005. Intelligence-Led Policing: The New Intelligence Architecture. Washington, DC:
Bureau of Justice Assistance, p. vii.
35 J. Fuentes. 2006. New Jersey State Police Practical Guide to Intelligence-Led Policing. New York:
Manhattan Institute. Online at: www.njsp.org/divorg/invest/pdf/njsp_ilpguide.pdf.
36 J.H. Ratcliffe. 2007. Integrated Intelligence and Crime Analysis: Enhanced Information Manage-
ment for Law Enforcement Leaders. Washington, DC: Police Foundation.
37 J.V. Lee. 2010. “Policing After 9/11: Community Policing in an Age of Homeland Security.”
Police Quarterly 13, no. 4: 347–366.
38 B.M. Jenkins. 2006. “True Grit: To Conquer Terrorism, We Must Conquer Our Own Fear.”
RAND Review 30, no. 2: 10–19. Online at: www.rand.org/publications/randreview/issues/
summer2006/truegrit1.html.
39 The Quotations Page. Online at: www.quotationspage.com/quote/1381.html.
CHAPTER 15 Contemporary
Issues in Police
Administration
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Explain why community engagement, collaboration, privatization, and globalization are con-
temporary themes of modern policing.
• Explain what makes police legitimacy, police diversity, predictive policing, and police tech-
nology contemporary issues in modern policing.
• Explain what is meant by evidence-based policing.
• Explain what is meant by the learning organization concept.
• Explain what is meant by servant leadership.
This chapter presents information on several important themes and issues

in contemporary police administration. These themes and issues attempt to
capture p resent-day trends as well as future considerations affecting the police
field. Four overarching themes are highlighted: community engagement, col-
laboration, privatization, and globalization. Together, these themes emphasize
the growing interdependence of modern p olicing—police are increasingly more
connected to communities, other agencies, and even to events around the world.
Four contemporary issues are then discussed: police legitimacy (including racial
profiling and other forms of discrimination), police diversity, predictive polic-
ing, and police technology. These issues present serious challenges to police de-
partments today and promise to remain prominent issues well into the future.
Finally, we discuss several modern perspectives on management as they apply to
police organizations.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003283287-19
Four Contemporary Themes
Community Engagement
It is generally accepted that many police departments had grown far too iso-
lated from their communities by the 1960s and 1970s. Most officers patrolled
in cars and had limited informal contact with the public. Calls for service and
reported crimes were handled as quickly as possible; the “just the facts” approach
was preferred. Police departments emphasized their crime-fighting role and ad-
vised the public to leave crime control to the police. The police expected to achieve
crime control with the three-part strategy of preventive patrol, rapid response, and
follow-up investigations.
Although we now realize that this model of “stranger policing” and the police-
centered approach to crime control was fatally flawed, it developed for under-
standable reasons. Limiting police–public contact was expected to reduce police
corruption and other abuses of authority. The professional model was also a
method for administering the same level and quality of policing throughout the
community—it showed no favorites. In addition, prior to research in the 1970s,
preventive patrol, rapid response, and follow-up investigations were believed to be
effective, especially in comparison to such antiquated techniques as foot patrol,
call boxes, and the sheriff ’s posse.
Police began to rediscover the value of community involvement in the 1980s.
The forms of community involvement that have developed vary widely, from rel-
atively passive participation in neighborhood watch groups to more aggressive ac-
tion, such as confronting drug dealers and prostitutes, and from individual-level
efforts to more organized activities, such as citizen patrols. Community crime pre-
vention programs have become commonplace, as has community policing. One
survey conducted in the early 2000s found that each of the following 12 activities
had been implemented by at least 75% of the responding police agencies:
• Citizens attend police–community meetings.

• Citizens participate in neighborhood watch.
• Citizens help police identify and resolve problems.
• Citizens serve as volunteers within the police agency.
• Citizens attend citizen police academies.
• Police hold regularly scheduled meetings with community groups.
• Police have youth programs.
• Police have victim assistance programs.
• Agencies use fixed assignments to specific beats or areas.
• Agencies give special recognition for good community policing work by
employees.
15 Contemporary Issues in Police Administration 415
• Agencies do geographically based crime analysis.

• Agencies use permanent neighborhood-based offices or stations.1
More important than any particular programs, however, has been a funda-
mental change in policing philosophy and strategy. Individual police departments
may or may not support foot patrol, citizens on patrol, or citizen review boards,
but it is now universally recognized that police and citizens need to work together
to be successful. Both police chiefs and beat patrol officers recognize this.
Community engagement in policing and crime control takes many forms at
several different levels. For example, the Seattle Police Department conducted a
community-wide survey to identify “friction points” between the police depart-
ment and the community.2 The department then worked with the community
to address the issues of greatest concern to Seattle’s citizens. This is an example of
seeking c ommunity-wide input in order to improve police–community relations.
Many police agencies today utilize some form of civilian review of complaints
against the police.3 Appointed citizens may simply review the police department’s
internal investigations and decisions, they may serve as an appeals body, or they
may even serve as the actual decision makers in meting out discipline to police
officers. Many agencies also utilize community representatives on interview boards
in the police officer hiring and promotion processes. These are examples of com-
munity involvement in the actual administration of the police agency.
Direct citizen participation in policing has also become more common. Some
cities, such as Fort Worth, Texas, have extensive citizen patrol programs.4 Many
jurisdictions also utilize police auxiliaries or r eserves—these are generally citizens
who have other jobs but who donate some of their spare time to the police or
sheriff ’s department.5 In some places, these reserves are sworn and armed and
perform regular police duties; in others they are n on-sworn and assist in traffic
control, youth programs, school programs, and similar supporting roles. These are
examples of community involvement in police field operations.

Volunteer Police
April 25, 2018
Practices and statutes vary around the country in regard to the use of reserves and auxiliaries,
including whether they have police authority, can work alone, and can be armed. This article
reports on Colorado, which recently established a state-funded program to train and certify
Rangers who volunteer their time, mainly in smaller towns and rural areas. Sheriffs retain
the power to appoint members of a posse, although there is some debate over contradictory
language in state law.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/04/25/volunteer-police. The hyperlink at “This

article” links to www.denverpost.com/2018/04/24/colorado-reserve-volunteer-officers-training.
Citizen participation in crime prevention activities is also quite common to-

day. Perhaps the most powerful trend in this respect is toward community-based
problem solving. When police officers and neighborhood residents work together
to identify, analyze, and resolve persistent crime and disorder problems, stunning
improvements are possible.6 Clearly, citizens are in the best position to identify
the chronic problems that really affect their lives—police are often surprised that
speeding cars and rowdy kids are of greater concern to neighborhood residents
than burglaries and thefts. Engaging citizens in the p roblem-solving stages beyond
problem identification (i.e., analysis and response) is more challenging but very
rewarding.7 This is the ultimate form of community involvement because it en-
gages ordinary citizens in tackling the most serious problems in the neighborhoods
where they live and work.
The importance of citizen involvement and community engagement for pub-
lic safety has been reinforced since the events of September 11, 2001. Police, fire-
fighters, and emergency medical service (EMS) personnel were assisted in their
response to the World Trade Center by numerous citizen volunteers. Subsequently,
law enforcement officials have recognized that they need the public’s help in emer-
gency response and recovery, as well as in identifying suspicious activity that might
be connected to terrorism.
The principle underlying all this is that ours is supposed to be a government
of the people, by the people, and for the people. Because “we the people” are very
busy these days, there are limits on our willingness and ability to participate in
policing, crime prevention, and homeland security. Then too, we have profession-
als who are trained and paid to perform much of the work associated with public
safety. It should also not be forgotten that our history teaches us that citizens will
sometimes go too far and want to take the law into their own hands,8 and that vol-
unteers and reserves should be limited to duties for which they are properly trained
and authorized.9 Thus, there must be limits on the public’s role in policing, and we
must be careful to strike the proper balance between the roles of paid professionals
and volunteer citizens. Nevertheless, what we have learned is that it is essential for
effective policing, and for the control of crime and disorder, that the police truly
engage the community as partners.
Collaboration
The importance and necessity of collaboration has similarly become evident
in recent years. Just as police departments are more effective when they work
closely with the community, so too are they more effective when they collaborate
with other public and private organizations.
Inter-organizational collaboration is particularly crucial for American polic-
ing because of the extreme fragmentation of government resources and authority.
Within a typical local community, the police department and fire department
are separate agencies, and the ambulance service may also be a separate entity.
Emergency communications (the 911 center) may be operated by the county or
by a regional board. The county sheriff ’s department is a separate agency that usu-
ally has jurisdiction within the local community, as do the state police. Probation
and parole may be one agency or two and may be operated by the county or the
state. The same is true of juvenile services. Prosecutors may be employed locally,
although it is more common for them to be county or state officials. Then there is
the entire additional layer of federal law enforcement, federal probation, and US
attorneys arrayed on top of the local and state systems. In times of serious emer-
gency, the National Guard and the military may also be deployed.
Because of the existence of all of these local, state, and federal public safety and
criminal justice agencies with overlapping jurisdictions, coordination and cooper-
ation are essential to avoid waste, interference, and conflict. The need goes even
further today. Actual collaboration—working together to be more successful—is
necessary. This involves sharing resources, expertise, and authority. Evidence of
collaboration can often be found in everyday investigations and problem solving,
in the formation of multijurisdictional task forces, and in joint training exercises.
Good examples of collaboration can be found today in the investigation of
computer crime. Few small departments have the necessary in-house expertise to
address serious cybercrime cases, so it is often provided by state or federal agencies
or by a multiagency task force. If a local agency becomes aware of a computer
crime or seizes digital equipment that might contain evidence, it may request as-
sistance from one of these sources or just “hand off ” the case to an agency that is
better equipped to deal with the case.

Embedded Social Worker
March 29, 2017
This article describes the Alexandria, Kentucky police department’s decision to employ a
social worker to help provide better services to victims and persons in need. In the chief ’s
view, “We’ve spent decades trying to make social workers out of cops, and it does not work.”
The new position has “reduced our repeating calls for service because she’s taking these cases
and running with them … So, as a city, we are not just responding, we are helping people and
getting results.”
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2017/03/29/embedded-social-worker. The hyperlink at

“This article” links to www.klemagazine.com/home/2017/3/27/bridging-the-gap.
Some effective problem-solving collaboration has recently begun to take place

between police and probation, parole, and juvenile services agencies.10 For too
long, many police departments and individual police officers did not work closely
with these agencies. Police have found, however, that adult and juvenile probation
officers, for example, have detailed information about their clients, as well as au-
thority over them that, in many instances, exceeds police authority. Thus, police
and probation officers working together may be able to address a gang problem,
an after-hours nightclub problem, or a drug house problem more effectively than
either group working alone.
An excellent example of collaboration to improve police and p ublic-safety
response was implemented in a 40-county region in Eastern Kentucky.11 More
than 100 local law enforcement agencies, plus the state police and other state law
enforcement agencies, worked together to implement a wireless data and voice
communication system. Fire, ambulance, and other p ublic-safety agencies were
also added to the system in later phases.
This project was designed to address what is referred to as the “interoperability”
problem, caused by different agencies having separate communications and data sys-
tems that cannot “talk” to each other. Lack of communications interoperability among
public-safety agencies was demonstrated most dramatically in New York and at the
Pentagon on 9/11, when responding agencies could not communicate effectively with
each other. Lack of data interoperability was uncovered in the subsequent investiga-
tion into how the terrorists were able to enter the United States to plan and carry out
their attacks—different federal agencies had pieces of information, but no one had the
whole picture. It is now obvious that communications and data interoperability are
essential prerequisites to effective collaboration to combat both crime and terrorism.
This discussion has centered on collaboration among police, public-safety, and
criminal justice agencies, but of course the police also need to collaborate with
many other public and private agencies in order to address crime and disorder
problems. Police departments have demonstrated the value of collaboration with
schools, social services, mental health agencies, private security, and a wide variety
of other activities in recent years. The survey cited earlier in this chapter found that
more than 75% of agencies had implemented three specific forms of collaboration:
• Police have interagency involvement in problem solving.

• Police use regulatory codes in problem solving.
• Police work with building code enforcement.12
Similarly, a study of problem solving by individual patrol officers in San Diego

found that it was common for officers to draw on resources from outside the de-
partment when responding to specific problems. Also, the types of collaborations
that were developed varied substantially from one problem to another, as they
should, because problem-oriented policing aims to apply tailor-made responses to
each particular problem. The figures below indicate how often officers reported
using different resources in the 227 problem-solving projects that were identified:
• 26% private sector;

• 18% other city agencies;
• 17% code compliance;
• 6% other police including federal;

• 6% county, state, or federal agencies (non-police);
• 4% social services.13
It makes good sense for police agencies to engage in widespread collaboration

with other public and private organizations.14 Collaboration can help the police
be more effective in addressing crime and disorder problems. It can also contribute
greatly to efficiency, through coordination of effort and elimination of redundancy
and duplication. Collaboration is particularly crucial in a situation as fragmented
as the American governmental system, and in an economic climate in which local
and state governments simply cannot afford inefficiencies or redundancies.
Privatization
The maxim to “do more with less” is not particularly new. Government
agencies, including police departments, have faced regular cycles of budget belt-
tightening over the past few decades. In some states, tax limitation ballot initiatives
and state laws began adding extra pressure to the normal level of fiscal conservatism
in America as early as the 1970s. Nationally, the 2008 recession forced additional
reductions of services, hiring freezes, and even layoffs in many state and local gov-
ernment agencies, including police departments.15 In 2020, many jurisdictions
stopped all hiring while they figured out how to adjust to the public health and
financial consequences of the C OVID-19 pandemic.
These kinds of fiscal conditions certainly present headaches and challenges to
police executives. Police chiefs have a harder time arguing for their annual budgets
before mayors and city councils. The need for federal grants to supplement an
agency’s budget grows greater, but so does the competition for those grants from
other police agencies in equally desperate straits. Many police agencies have had to
trim their overtime budgets, which reduces operational flexibility and also hurts
individual officers’ pocketbooks. Popular programs such as McGruff and DARE
have been cut back or eliminated in some departments. Agencies have closed mini-
stations, storefront offices, and other components of their community policing
strategies. Police departments have examined the services they provide and, in
some cases, opted to eliminate services such as funeral escorts, taking reports at
minor traffic accidents, and responding to residential burglar alarms (unless there
is verification that it is not a false alarm). In a few extreme cases, such as Pontiac,
Michigan, agencies have simply given up and gone out of business for lack of ad-
equate funding to continue in operation.16
In such difficult financial circumstances, and in line with trends in other sec-
tors of American government, local governments have increasingly looked toward
privatization of policing services, generally as a cost-cutting measure. One ap-
proach is to privatize or “outsource” administrative and specialized functions, such
as maintenance, purchasing, payroll, and analysis of digital and DNA evidence.
Some police agencies have even taken a page from the military and begun hiring
private security to guard their own facilities. The financial advantage in these kinds
of arrangements usually comes from lower personnel costs (wages and benefits),
but competitive bidding and economies of scale may also contribute to cost sav-
ings. A large private lab, for example, may be able to acquire automated equip-
ment that enables much faster processing of DNA samples, a purchase that most
local or state crime labs might not be able to afford.

Corporate Investigators Target Organized Retail Crime
June 1, 2022
Large retailers like Target and CVS are undertaking their own investigations in an effort to
solve organized theft cases, as reported here. Techniques include interviewing and trailing
shoplifters to discover who they work for, and conducting surveillance of people and places
involved in trafficking of stolen goods. According to a CVS official, “We only follow someone
if we think they are part of a ring worth $1 million or more. We don’t do small cases.” When
investigations are successful, the information is turned over to police and prosecutors. “They
often give us evidence. They give us leads. We don’t ever use them as a surrogate for our own
investigation. But they can be incredibly valuable partners,” said a U.S. Attorney.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2022/06/01/corporate-investigators-

target-organized-retail-crime/. The hyperlink at “as reported here” links to https://www.nbcnews.
com/news/investigations/secret-surveillance-mining-customer-data-retailers-help-bag-shopliftin-rcna22259.
It is more controversial to consider whether police operational functions can

be privatized. Privately employed security officers already operate in many q uasi-
public places, such as shopping malls and downtown business districts, often
handling incidents, conducting investigations, and even making arrests. Private
residential communities have employed their own private police for decades, but
some traditional municipalities have also considered contracting with security
companies, either to supplement public police services or replace them.17 As with
more limited forms of privatization, the motivation for broad forms of police
privatization is usually financial. In the future, we can expect to see even more
pressure to reduce the costs of policing, more interest in privatization, and a heated
debate over the degree to which the awesome responsibility for exercising police
powers can and should be delegated to private companies.
Globalization
The fourth theme that increasingly runs through modern policing is globali-
zation. Trends in business, finance, trade, travel, communications, and computers
really have “shrunk the world” in the last few decades. It is far more likely now
than 30 years ago that a local criminal investigation might involve international
transactions and foreign individuals. These foreign individuals might have traveled
to the local jurisdiction, or they might have played their roles (as witnesses, vic-
tims, or suspects) from afar.
Many traditional crimes such as drug distribution and theft can have interna-
tional features today. Much has also been made in recent years of international or-
ganized crime involving Russians, Nigerians, and others. Crimes committed with
computers, including fraud, theft, vandalism, and hacking, know no boundaries.
Then there are newer crimes (or perhaps crimes that are simply receiving more
attention today) such as human trafficking of women and children and illegal
trafficking of immigrants, weapons, and even nuclear material. The term trans-
national crime has been coined to describe the increasingly international nature
of crime.
As discussed in Chapter 14, international terrorism has become a huge con-
cern for local, state, and federal law enforcement since the events of September
11, 2001. Americans and people all around the world witnessed the death and de-
struction that could be caused by a relatively small group of terrorists. These were
far from the first acts of international terrorism committed against the United
States, of course, and in fact other countries had for a long time been more seri-
ously plagued by these kinds of attacks than had the United States. The attacks of
9/11 galvanized national and world attention, however, and drove home the new
reality that crime and terrorism emanating from halfway around the globe could
threaten American communities and American citizens.
Another aspect of globalization that has affected American policing has been
the participation of local and state police in international policing missions in
places like Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq, and Afghanistan.18 As the United States,
the United Nations, the European Union, and other bodies have accepted peace-
keeping roles in war-torn countries around the world, it has become evident that
a key element in the restoration of order and civil society is effective policing.
Typically, police and military forces in these countries were previously aligned
with repressive regimes. Once the initial military phase of peacekeeping has been
accomplished, the country needs reliable, professional policing to maintain order
and reassure the citizenry of their safety. While a policing system is being rebuilt
along democratic lines, police officers are sometimes brought in from around the
world to provide police service and help train the country’s new police.
Many American police officers have now had the experience of serving in
such international missions, and many American police departments believe that
part of their responsibility is to support the development of more professional
and democratic policing in other countries. This is a relatively new awareness for
American police and contributes to their sense of being part of a global police
community. It is also a fairly new realization for those in the US government
responsible for foreign relations “that security is important to the development of
democracy and police are important to the character of that security. Assisting in
the democratic reform of foreign police systems has become a front-burner issue
in American foreign policy.”19

Going Overseas Builds Capacity at Home Too
January 19, 2018
This column highlights two international police partnerships, Portland (Oregon) PD with
Bangladesh and several Minnesota departments with Somalia, each sponsored by the US State
Department. In both cases, tangible benefits have been recognized by police in the US and in
the other country.
Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/01/19/going-overseas-builds-capacity-at-home-

too. The hyperlink at “This column” links to https://blogs.state.gov/stories/2018/01/18/en/us-communities-benefit-
building-partner-counterterrorism-capacity.
It is difficult to predict all the future ramifications for policing of this trend
toward globalization. Clearly, international issues and considerations that were
once thought to be irrelevant for local American policing have become relevant
and even significant. This trend can only continue.
Four Contemporary Issues
Police Legitimacy
When officers were absolved of criminal responsibility following several inci-
dents in 2014 and 2015 that involved police use of deadly force against African
Americans in controversial and/or questionable circumstances (most notably in
Ferguson, Missouri), public clamor arose about the need for greater police ac-
countability. On the heels of these incidents were others in which police use of
force seemed clearly excessive, fueling the concern that police cannot be trusted
to treat people fairly, especially people of color, people with mental illness, and
others not lucky enough to belong to privileged classes. These incidents spurred
a huge and emotional ongoing debate reaching as far as National Football League
sidelines and the White House. Heightened awareness revealed the surprising fact
that official statistics on the number of people killed by police were seriously un-
reliable. News media organizations stepped up, subsequently documenting some
1,000 deaths per year in police custody.20
The police murder of George Floyd in 2020 in Minneapolis had an especially
big impact on the public’s trust and confidence in the police. According to annual
Gallup polls, overall confidence in police dipped to 48% in 2020, the first time it
had gone below 50%, and well below its peak of 64% in 2004. Only 18% of Black
Americans reported having confidence in the police in 2020.21 By 2021 public
confidence levels had somewhat recovered, but White adults continued to express
much more confidence in police than did Black adults.
Due to this situation, it is now common to say that police in America are fac-
ing a crisis of legitimacy, that is, many people questioning whether the institution
of policing is worthy of their trust and confidence. In a free society, policing is dif-
ficult, if not impossible, without public consent and cooperation. The President’s
Task Force on 21st Century Policing issued its report in May 2015; with regard to
legitimacy, it noted:22
Building trust and nurturing legitimacy on both sides of the police/citizen

divide is the foundational principle underlying the nature of relations
between law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve. Dec-
ades of research and practice support the premise that people are more
likely to obey the law when they believe that those who are enforcing it
have authority that is perceived as legitimate by those subject to the au-
thority. The public confers legitimacy only on those whom they believe
are acting in procedurally just ways. In addition, law enforcement cannot
build community trust if it is seen as an occupying force coming in from
outside to impose control on the community.
Under the heading “Building Trust & Legitimacy” the President’s Task Force
presented nine recommendations (see Box 15.1) along with 19 action items. These
recommendations and action items received broad support from law enforcement
leaders and have subsequently been adopted by many police agencies around the
country.
It should be emphasized that police legitimacy did not suddenly become a new
issue in 2014 or in 2020. Questioning whether police use their authority fairly is
a constant refrain in a free society and has long been a topic of public and political
interest in the United States, as illustrated by the Wickersham Commission in its
1931 report that exposed widespread corruption and coerced confessions.23 Con-
cerns about deteriorating police–community relations in American cities became
common in the 1950s, and police handling of civil rights and anti-war protests in
the 1960s and 1970s was widely criticized.
Racial profiling, or “driving while black,” emerged in the 1990s as perhaps the
most serious and sensitive issue facing police departments at that time.24 It was the
subject of lawsuits, civil rights investigations, and consent decrees. It was discussed
and debated in the US Congress and in the 2000 presidential election. Many states
mandated new police policies and data collection systems, and even more local
communities began collecting vehicle stop data. However the events of 9/11 in
2001 deflected attention away from racial profiling for a decade or so, and when
the issue re-emerged, it was focused more on profiling of potential terrorists and
the effects this might have on the rights of Middle Eastern and Islamic persons.
Most recently, though, racial profiling of African Americans has resur-
faced as a critical issue, especially in relation to police use of force and fatal
police–citizen encounters. Given the emphasis on community policing since
the 1980s, with its focus on community engagement and the improvement of
olice–community relations, it might have been expected that police–minority

p
relations would have been greatly improved. Early in the community policing
era, however, three well-publicized abuses of police use of f orce—the 1991 Rod-
ney King incident in Los Angeles, and the 1997 Abner Louima and 1999 Ama-
dou Diallo incidents in New York—and many other instances of questioned
police use of force against people of color occurred in the United States. Under-
standably, uneasiness and suspicion continued to characterize the relationship
between race and policing, as illustrated by a nationally publicized 2009 inci-
dent involving Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cam-
bridge police sergeant James Crowley.25 That was soon followed by controversies
in New York regarding alleged discrimination in the use of s top-and-frisk tactics,
leading to a 2013 federal court ruling that the New York Police Department’s
practices were unconstitutional.26
The racial profiling issue clearly strikes a strong chord in minority commu-
nities and among those most concerned about civil rights and civil liberties in
America.27 While most police ardently deny that they use, or support the use of,
any such profiles, 40% of African Americans believe they have been profiled by
police, and a majority of whites believe the problem is widespread.28 As racial-
profiling-inspired data collection has taken place around the country, it has fre-
quently been discovered that minority drivers are overrepresented, in comparison
to the total population, in vehicle stops by the police.29 They are also typically
more likely to have their persons and vehicles searched subsequent to vehicle
stops.30 Whether this overrepresentation of minorities in stops and searches is
the result of police profiling (discrimination), or alternatively, a reflection of po-
lice deployment in lower-income neighborhoods, police efforts to address crime-
and g ang-related problems, or even differential driving habits, is something that
cannot be determined from the vehicle stop data.31 It is the subject of much
discussion and debate, however. In the most promising scenario, police and citi-
zens work together to collect and analyze these data, interpret the results, discuss
implications, and fashion appropriate responses.32 This approach employs the
themes of community engagement and collaboration within the framework of
community policing to encourage open conversation about a thorny and com-
plex issue—something that has not happened often enough with respect to race
and policing in America.
Police Diversity
One approach to achieving greater police legitimacy is to strive toward hav-
ing officers who are representative of the communities they serve. Certainly, how
police behave is more important than what they look like, but it is also true that
if community members look at their police and do not see people like them, they
are less likely to believe that their police department is really committed to serving
everyone equally. As noted in the recommendations in Box 15.1, “Law enforce-
ment agencies should strive to create a workforce that contains a broad range of
Box 15.1
Building Trust and Legitimacy: President’s Task
Force Recommendations
1. Law enforcement culture should embrace a guardian mindset to build public trust and
legitimacy. Toward that end, police and sheriffs’ departments should adopt procedural
justice as the guiding principle for internal and external policies and practices to guide
their interactions with the citizens they serve.
2. Law enforcement agencies should acknowledge the role of policing in past and present
injustice and discrimination and how it is a hurdle to the promotion of community trust.
3. Law enforcement agencies should establish a culture of transparency and accountabil-
ity in order to build public trust and legitimacy. This will help ensure decision making is
understood and in accord with stated policy.
4. Law enforcement agencies should promote legitimacy internally within the organization
by applying the principles of procedural justice.
5. Law enforcement agencies should proactively promote public trust by initiating positive
nonenforcement activities to engage communities that typically have high rates of in-
vestigative and enforcement involvement with government agencies.
6. Law enforcement agencies should consider the potential damage to public trust when
implementing crime fighting strategies.
7. Law enforcement agencies should track the level of trust in police by their communities
just as they measure changes in crime. Annual community surveys, ideally standard-
ized across jurisdictions and with accepted sampling protocols, can measure how po-
licing in that community affects public trust.
8. Law enforcement agencies should strive to create a workforce that contains a broad
range of diversity including race, gender, language, life experience, and cultural back-
ground to improve understanding and effectiveness in dealing with all communities.
9. Law enforcement agencies should build relationships based on trust with immigrant
communities. This is central to overall public safety.
Source: President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the
President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community
Oriented Policing Services, pp. 11–18. Online at: www.theiacp.org/Portals/0/taskforce_
finalreport.pdf.
diversity including race, gender, language, life experience, and cultural background
to improve understanding and effectiveness in dealing with all communities.”33
Many police departments engage in targeted recruiting specifically designed
to achieve a representative workforce, often with substantial success. Nationally,
the proportion of sworn police who are African American increased from 9% in
1987 to 12% in 2016, the most recent year for which reliable statistics are availa-
ble.34 Over the same time period, Hispanic/Latino representation increased from
4% to 12%. These figures approach current US Census estimates for Blacks and
Hispanics in the national population, which are 13.6% and 18.9%, respectively.35
Not surprisingly, jurisdictions with over 100,000 residents, often having a higher
proportion of non-white residents, tend to have significantly higher proportions
of police officers from racial and ethnic minority groups than is the case in smaller
cities and towns.
The dimension of police diversity that has been hardest to achieve is em-
ployment of women officers. As of the year 2000 about 11% of sworn US police
were women, increasing only slightly to 12% in 2016.36 By comparison, women
comprise 2 0–30% of sworn police in Australia, Canada, Ireland, Netherlands,
Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom,37 while in 2018 New Zealand and
Norway reported over 50% women among police recruits.38 Several factors are
usually cited to explain the relatively low levels of women police in the United
States, including physical fitness testing that emphasizes u pper-body strength,
male-dominated cultures in police academies and police departments, inadequate
mentoring, and lack of family-friendly policies to accommodate women during
pregnancy and child-rearing.39
Because women are biologically different from men, their suitability for police
work is sometimes debated. Since the 1980s, numerous studies have demonstrated
that male and female performance is largely the same when judged against stand-
ard criteria typically used in police officer assessments, such as arrest and use-of-
force decision making.40 There is some evidence that women officers are less likely
to use weapons and extreme force in citizen encounters, including deadly force,
and that fewer complaints are filed against women officers.41 Also, it is generally
argued that women tend to be better communicators than men, making them
more adept at de-escalation in tense situations, and that women officers are often
better equipped to interview crime victims, especially victims who are women or
children.
Another important consideration is diversity at the command and executive
levels in law enforcement organizations. Because police promotion systems often
include subjective elements such as interviews by senior staff, and because mi-
nority and women officers may lack supportive mentors helping them navigate
agency personnel and civil service systems, equal opportunity in advancement to
higher ranks is not always achieved. An additional hurdle for women police is
that promotion is often accompanied by a change in assignment and working
hours, which can be troublesome for those who have young children at home.
Consequently, it is not uncommon for women officers to decline promotional
opportunities in order to avoid disrupting their family situations. Obviously this
is admirable but it also puts a lower ceiling on their chances for future career
advancement.
Despite potential obstacles and barriers, however, it is no longer rare to en-
counter an African American, Hispanic, or woman police chief. As of July 2022,
in the 10 largest US cities there were five African American chiefs (two men and
three women), two Hispanic chiefs (men), and three white men. The proportion
of minority and women chiefs across all 18,000 of our law enforcement agencies
is not regularly measured and certainly is far lower than today’s 70% figure for the
10 largest cities, but also certainly greater than it would have been 10, 20, or more
years ago.
Predictive Policing
A third contemporary issue centers on predictive policing and the in-
creasing reliance on video surveillance, “big data,” algorithms, and artificial
intelligence (AI) to target hotspots, hot offenders, and even “hot victims.”42
This trend is new and controversial. On one hand, it seems obvious that police
should use the best available information and the latest technology in order to
direct patrols, protect us from threats, and focus their attention on the most
active serious offenders. Taken to an extreme, however, we might not want po-
lice tracking our every move or using a smartphone app to decide whether we
should be arrested.
The main issue with surveillance is, of course, privacy. Since 9/11, national
security agencies have had expanded powers to review telephone, e -mail, and other
electronic forms of communication. In addition, a large proportion of people are
now “on the grid” almost continuously, making it easier to trace their activity and
travel through cell phone data and social media posts. Surveillance cameras, some
publicly operated and others privately owned, have multiplied tremendously.
Looming on the horizon is facial recognition, which will enable those surveillance
cameras to identify specific people walking along the sidewalk or entering the
mall. L icense-plate readers have already become common, making it possible to
trace the movement of cars and trucks. Privacy and civil liberty advocates worry
about the consequences of all this information in the hands of the police, and by
extension, the government.
Big data is another dimension of surveillance, since it potentially reveals things
about our private lives, but it also intersects with the use of algorithms (equations),
machine-learning, and AI. One concern is the impersonal and secretive nature of
these tools when they are used to make decisions about where police are deployed,
which locations and people the police will watch most closely, and whether a
particular suspect should be detained or released. Careful tests across various disci-
plines typically show that d ata-driven decision making is superior to letting people
make the choices, but still it is fallible. Importantly, the algorithms and software
“crunching the data” are often proprietary, leaving users and others in the dark
about how they work. This makes it difficult to get answers about why certain de-
cisions were made, reducing transparency and effectively blocking accountability.
In essence, we are asked to trust the machine, which is not something that many
people are comfortable with.
The other main concern relates back to discrimination. Ironically, predictive
policing based on data and algorithms tends to reproduce past behavior and past
decisions. When police target people based on previous arrests and gang affili-
ations, they are more likely to catch them in some kind of violation, even if it
is minor. Similarly, when police are sent to hotspots based on crime and call for
service data, and if they are expected to produce “activity,” they will generate cita-
tions and arrests. Thus, people living in these neighborhoods will be more likely
to accumulate criminal records, reducing their employment prospects. The whole
enterprise can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, one that often disproportionately
affects members of minority groups.
The main c ounter-argument in favor of predictive and d ata-driven policing is
that police officers and police departments always have made these kinds of deci-
sions, based on subjective criteria and without much data, with results that have
often been inefficient and disproportionate. Ideally, b etter-informed and more
objective decisions will lead to better outcomes. It seems necessary, though, that
the variables and equations used to aid decision making be made transparent and
that disparate impact be minimized. Otherwise public trust is likely to be irrepa-
rably damaged.
Police Technology
It seems that nothing changes more, and faster, than technology. While it
remains true that police officers rely heavily on human skills when dealing with
individuals and maintaining order in neighborhoods, much of the information
that they use today is constructed and provided technologically, and much of
their day-to-day work involves new technologies, from body armor and less-lethal
weapons to smartphones and body-worn cameras.43 Beyond policing itself, tech-
nological developments have a big impact on society and the kinds of situations
and problems that police have to deal with—think computer crime, social media,
cell phone cameras, texting while driving, drones, and so on. S elf-driving cars and
trucks (autonomous vehicles) are already on the road and predicted to become
commonplace in the near future. In addition to the obvious challenges that these
new technologies present for police, they are mainly comprised of digital elec-
tronic equipment that can be hacked and manipulated from afar. The ramifica-
tions are mind-boggling.
Modern technology has been widely adopted within various police func-
tions, as illustrated in Table 15.1. For example, patrol officers are now protected
by body armor that meets federally validated standards, they use global position-
ing (GPS) to mark their locations in case they need backup or rescue, and they
have access to all kinds of detailed information via smartphones and computer
tablets. Automated fingerprint systems and DNA analysis have become power-
ful tools in criminal investigation, as has social media monitoring. Radar and
other speed measurement devices have become safer and more accurate, fixed
and vehicle-mounted license-plate readers greatly enhance identification of vehi-
cles that are stolen or that have registration violations, and accident investigators
now use drones to document serious crash scenes more quickly and more safely.
Special operations (SWAT) personnel have a wide variety of h igh-tech gear at
their disposal to protect them in risky situations and to help them locate, iden-
tify, and neutralize armed offenders and save hostages. Police departments use
TABLE 15.1 xamples of Police Technology Related to

E
Police Functions
Police Functions Police Technology
Patrol Body armor

Global positioning systems (GPS) Smartphones & tablets
Investigations DNA
Automated fingerprint systems
Social media monitoring
Traffic Speed cameras and red-light cameras

icense-plate readers
L
Drones for documenting crash scenes
Special Operations Personal protective equipment (PPE) Robotic devices

Advanced audio & imaging
Command & Control C

omputer-aided dispatch (CAD)
Gunshot detection systems
R eal-time crime centers
Administration Compstat
arly-intervention systems (EIS)
E
Virtual reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in training
computers, surveillance cameras, and other kinds of sensors to manage their staff
in the field and to respond more quickly and effectively to crimes in progress.
Administratively, police organizations also use technology more and more, such
as in training and in flagging officers whose behavior and performance might
deserve closer scrutiny and, if necessary, some intervention before it rises to a
more serious level.
Another way to examine technology in policing is in relation to important
outcomes, in other words, how technology might contribute to achieving the po-
lice mission, goals, and objectives. Table 15.2 presents one technology example for
each of the seven dimensions of police performance discussed earlier in Chapters 3
and 12. Faster ballistics identification using the National Integrated Ballistics In-
formation Network (NIBIN) system helps police use cartridges or bullets found at
shooting scenes to track down guns and shooters, not just to solve cases but also
to prevent near-future violent crimes, including retaliation or revenge shootings.
Similarly, Rapid DNA analysis makes it possible to identify suspects, or rule out
suspects, much more quickly than in the past. Police departments now regularly
use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to notify the public about
emergency situations and also to correct misinformation in order to reassure resi-
dents about crimes and incidents that may have been in the news or circulating in
the rumor mill. Speed cameras and red-light cameras have been shown to improve
TABLE 15.2 xamples of Police Technology Related to

E
Policing Outcomes
Policing Outcomes Police Technology
Reduce serious crime National Integrated Ballistics

Information Network (NIBIN)
Solve crimes & enforce laws Rapid DNA
Reduce fear & enhance personal security Social media notifications
Guarantee safety in public spaces Automated traffic enforcement
Enhance public trust & legitimacy Body-worn cameras (BWC)
Use force and authority fairly & effectively Less-lethal weapons
Use financial resources efficiently & Online crime reporting

effectively
traffic safety, although they remain somewhat controversial. Body-worn cameras

have been an extremely popular response to the police legitimacy crisis, seeming
to offer greater transparency and accountability. In regard to police use of force,
research and development has long been focused on improved less-lethal weapons
that would help police handle combative and resisting subjects without having to
resort to deadly force, leading to better batons, pepper spray, and the conducted
energy device (Taser). Finally, technology can sometimes help police agencies “do
more with less,” such as by enabling citizens to file their minor crime and incident
reports online, saving patrol officer time.
Managing technology has become an important aspect of police administra-
tion. Most chiefs and sheriffs are not technology experts, but they are the ones who
have to make final decisions about what to purchase, and they are also responsible
for ensuring that officers and other employees utilize the technology properly. This
is obviously a very technical sphere of police administration, but fundamentally
what is needed is a systems approach, careful planning, and then thorough direc-
tion and control to make sure that everyone in the organization understands the
technology available to them, knows how to use it correctly, and is monitored to
ensure proper utilization.
The ever-evolving nature of technology means that you can never get it right
and then ignore it. One assessment of current and emerging law enforcement
technology needs identified four main themes and five high-priority areas44:
• Agencies need help accessing trusted information about new technologies and
how to use them.
• Agencies need help with technologies that might improve police–community
relations.
• Agencies need help with information sharing and with avoiding information
overload.
• Agencies need help improving forensic capabilities and reducing evidence
backlogs.
• High priority needs include officer personal equipment, guidelines for us-
ing unmanned aerial systems (drones), improved dispatch operations, active
shooter detection and response, and technologies to enhance officer physical
and mental health.
Modern Perspectives on Management
The Police organization as we know it today is very different from the organi-
zation of 1950, when the traditional perspective on police administration reigned
supreme. This is understandable. The fact that organizations are open systems
means that they are affected by changing environmental influences. Organizations
must necessarily change if they are to be responsive to changing societal demands.
In this section, we briefly discuss some organizational improvement method-
ologies and applications that have been advanced in recent years and that apply
to police management. Some of these approaches to improvement are embodied
in specific police programs, while others are adapted from general management
practices. Four approaches are presented: e vidence-based policing, learning organ-
izations, emotional intelligence, and servant leadership.
E
vidence-Based Policing
An influential development in recent years has been evidence-based manage-
ment and evidence-based decision making. The rationale is simple—when mak-
ing decisions, organizations should choose the alternatives that are best supported
by scientific evidence, rather than merely relying on opinion, folklore, or past
practice. To take it one step farther, organizations should develop the capacity to
monitor and evaluate relevant scientific evidence, so they are prepared with the
best possible knowledge when decisions arise. In addition, organizations should
routinely assess their policies, programs, and practices to see if they are achieving
the outcomes expected of them, making periodic adjustments to assure maximum
effectiveness.
This evidence-based approach has been applied to policing and police admin-
istration using the exact same rationale, that police practices should be based on the
best available evidence about what works.45 This would have been largely impossi-
ble 50 years ago, since at that time little if any research had been done to measure
and test the effectiveness of various police tactics, strategies, and programs. As
reviewed in Chapter 13, however, a considerable amount of e ffectiveness-oriented
policing research has been conducted since the 1970s, to the point where we now
have systematic reviews of multiple experiments and q uasi-experiments testing the

same police and crime-reduction practices. We even have an American Society of
Evidence-Based Policing (ASEBP), founded by police practitioners committed to
rigorous testing to determine what works best.46
Despite these developments, it should be noted that implementing evidence-
based policing is considerably harder than describing it. On a personal level, we
all tend to weigh our own experience more heavily than it usually deserves, plus
we tend to discount or dismiss studies if the results clash with our experience
or our view of how things really work. At the aggregate level, organizations are
affected by these individual tendencies, and in addition tend toward inertia and
resistance to change. Also, the people in charge of organizations tend to have a lot
of experience, which sometimes makes it even less likely that they will be swayed
by the results of one or more studies, especially if the research was conducted
somewhere else.
While progress might be slow, it seems inevitable that police organizations
will be expected to become more evidence-based in the years to come. In the face
of solid evidence that some practice is not very effective, most police chiefs would
want to find something that works better, and even those wedded to tradition are
likely to be pressured by political leaders to spend the people’s tax dollars more
wisely. Just as nearly every position announcement for a police executive now
emphasizes experience implementing community policing, it is already becom-
ing common to emphasize a commitment to adopting e vidence-based practices.
Moreover, taking an evidence-based approach to policing is logically consist-
ent with the long-term pursuit of police p rofessionalization—becoming more
evidence-based is precisely how medicine and various other fields successfully
pursued professional status.
Learning Organizations
Evidence-based management fits nicely within the concept of learning organ-
izations popularized by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline.47 Learning
organizations are those “where people continually expand their capacity to create
the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are
nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually
learning how to learn together.”48 The fifth discipline that is necessary for the cre-
ation of learning organizations is systems thinking. Only when systems thinking
is accompanied by building shared vision, mental models, team learning, and per-
sonal mastery, however, will it work to create a learning organization.
As we discussed earlier, systems thinking, or the systems approach, emphasizes
the interrelatedness among different parts of the organization in working toward
the unified goals and objectives of the organization. Systems thinking (the fifth
discipline) is the framework for the learning organization. Shared vision is neces-
sary for people to work toward common goals and objectives while learning and
excelling at what they do. Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions and
generalizations through which individuals develop perspective and consequently

view the world. Team learning is necessary because these are the fundamental learn-
ing units in organizations; without them, nothing can be accomplished. Finally,
personal mastery is the cornerstone of the learning organization. It is the process of
continually clarifying personal vision by maintaining patience and focusing one’s
energies in order to see reality objectively.
Geller suggests that applying the learning organization model to policing
would be no easy task. Among obstacles he identifies are skepticism about re-
search, unwillingness to encourage critical thinking among all members of the
organization, and the belief that too much “thinking” prevents action. However,
he maintains that while obstacles do exist, benefits from adopting a learning or-
ganization model outweigh the costs. Geller identified 13 suggestions for fostering
a learning police organization:49
1. Create a Research and Development Unit that is well supported, actually does
research, and is run by someone who actually understands policing.
2. Use geographical crime analysis that spans work units.
3. Involve senior police administrators in the process so as not to create turf bat-
tles; encourage collaboration.
4. Inventory the wealth of talent of all sworn and civilian employees.
5. Inventory the wealth of talent of citizens and groups in the community.
6. Use the SARA model for problem solving [Scanning, Analysis, Response,
Assessment].
7. Encourage critical thinking and discourage groupthink.
8. Use middle managers to facilitate critical thinking.
9. Hold units accountable, measured against industry (CALEA) standards.
10. Institutionalize bottom-up evaluation of organizational performance.
11. Demonstrate practical results of previous police research.
12. Expand police–researcher partnerships.
13. Hire a “research broker” to enable the organization to become a better con-
sumer of research.
Of course, not all of these suggestions would be practical in every police organ-
ization. For example, in a small police organization there may be little need or few
resources to create a Research and Development Unit. However, encouragement of
critical thinking of all personnel is reasonable and would probably be very useful.
Alarid examined the applicability of the learning organization to police agen-
cies implementing community-oriented policing.50 She maintained that, because
Box 15.2 Organizational Learning and Police Leadership

The development of learning organizations rests on a shared approach to leadership and a
commitment to ongoing organizational learning. Supporting this starts with developing lead-
ers and their individual skill sets, but it does not end there; consideration needs to be taken
of the organizational settings required for leadership to flourish and organizations to thrive.
If we want true leadership in policing, then we need to support it within police organizations.
And that means we need to better understand that leadership is about creating a climate in
which innovation, experimentation and collaboration can flourish, valuing this, and accept-
ing that this may be challenging.
Source: Edward A. Flynn and Victoria Herrington. 2015. “Toward a Profession of Police
Leadership.” In New Perspectives in Policing. Washington, DC: National Institute of
Justice, p. 13.
an essential element of community policing is organizational change, the learn-

ing organization framework could support the sometimes monumental changes
involved in community-policing implementation. Going from a traditional law
enforcement organizational structure to one that embodies tenets such as decen-
tralization and individual empowerment can be quite overwhelming for a man-
ager. By employing some of the principles of the learning organization, such as
shared vision and personal mastery, managers may find the task of organizational
change not quite so daunting (see Box 15.2, “Organizational Learning and Police
Leadership”).
Emotional Intelligence
A concept that has become widely accepted as fundamental for managers and
leaders is emotional intelligence. Daniel Goleman first proposed that while tech-
nical skills and high IQ are important qualities in leaders, emotional intelligence
(EQ) is imperative for quality leadership.51 His research indicates that most effec-
tive leaders have high degrees of emotional intelligence. In related research, David
McClelland found that a correlation exists between EQ and high performance.52
In other words, leaders who had high degrees of emotional intelligence outper-
formed others who were similarly situated.
Emotional intelligence consists of five components that culminate in the key-
stone of the concept, which is “awareness of one’s own feelings as they occur.”53 The
five components that make up EQ are self-awareness, s elf-regulation, motivation,
empathy, and social skill. S elf-awareness is a critical awareness of one’s emotions,
strengths, weaknesses, needs, and drives, with an acute understanding of how
these affect self-perception, others’ perceptions, and one’s own job performance.
Self-regulation is being in control of one’s feelings and impulses—mastering one’s
emotions. Motivation is the want and desire to achieve simply for the satisfaction
of achievement versus some external reward such as notoriety. Empathy, often
easily recognized, is the thoughtful consideration of others’ feelings in decision
making. Finally, social skill is “friendliness with a purpose” that enables leaders to
direct people in ways they desire.54
Can emotional intelligence be learned? Goleman indicates that while there
is a genetic component to EQ, nurture plays a significant role as well since EQ
increases with age and maturity, plus an individual’s sincere desire and concerted
effort are more important than innate characteristics. While EQ may not have
been considered a crucial element of traditional police leadership, it is worthy of
consideration for managers not only for their own s elf-improvement, but also for
developing leadership skills in their employees.
In a later work, Primal Leadership, Goleman and colleagues describe what
they call a “resonant leader.”55 A resonant leader is one who has not only acute
self-awareness and social awareness, but also the ability to use these in dealing with
their employees. Empathy, which is achieved through self-awareness and social
awareness, is of extreme importance to the leader in dealing with employees. By
being empathetic, leaders are able to motivate people and spread enthusiasm about
the work of the organization. According to the authors, leaders who exhibit empa-
thy can be especially effective in service occupations or those that require extensive
dealings with the public, such as policing.
Goleman et al. also stress the importance of leaders letting employees see who
they really are—letting emotions show. For example, they advocate the use of
humor in the workplace (under appropriate circumstances), to engage people and
to contribute to a calming work environment. In policing, gallows humor has
long been a common device for relieving stress, but humor has not been widely
recognized as a leadership technique. Nor has “letting emotions show.” While the
macho nature of the traditional police culture may have worked against open dis-
plays of emotion and humor by leaders and managers, it seems highly likely that
police leader effectiveness has always been enhanced by EQ. Finding better ways
to incorporate EQ into police promotional testing and leadership training should
probably be a high priority.
Servant Leadership
The final topic to be considered is servant leadership.56 In Chapter 7, we
mentioned four police executive styles: the administrator, the top cop, the pol-
itician, and the statesman. In Chapter 10, we discussed the autocratic, bureau-
cratic, diplomatic, participative, and free-rein styles of leadership, and suggested
that situational styles may be most effective. Earlier in this chapter, we added an-
other consideration, emotional intelligence, which likely contributes to successful
managing and leading. One final perspective is servant leadership—the idea that
leaders should see their role as serving their organizations, including both employ-
ees and customers. Their role is to create a winning team and, as in sports, they
need not generally seek the limelight and may not get the credit if their team is
successful. The earlier quote from ancient Chinese philosophy sums it up: “When
the best leaders’ work is done the people say, we did it ourselves.”57
Servant leadership deserves attention because there seems to be some tendency

toward rampant egoism among contemporary police executives. Schafer and his
colleagues identified several characteristics of police chiefs who perhaps have de-
veloped inflated egos58:
• Traveling everywhere with an entourage;

• An obsession with media attention;
• Extreme concern that subordinates always salute them and adopt other overt
demonstrations of respect;
• Taking personal credit for everything and emphasizing “I” over “we”;
• Frequent name-dropping;
• Ignoring or demeaning employees below a certain level in the organization.
The Greeks established long ago that pride (hubris) is perhaps the greatest hu-
man failing of all. It is an understandable trait of leaders, especially senior leaders,
since they have obviously made it to the top. But, ultimately, it is a fatal flaw. Those
who aspire to be truly successful police leaders realize that the organization’s needs
and their community’s needs come before their own. They work tirelessly and, hope-
fully, smartly, and they have a knack for introspection and reflection that helps keep
them well grounded. In the end, they are recognizable mainly by their humility.
Summary
Four themes that run through modern policing at the start of the t wenty-first
century were discussed in this chapter. The community engagement theme refers
to the importance of police working closely with individual citizens and neighbor-
hood groups. The collaboration theme is similar: police need to collaborate with
other organizations and agencies. These two themes, community engagement and
collaboration, are not simply feel-good programs, nor are they important merely
because they tend to enhance public satisfaction with the police. Rather, research
and the experience of recent decades demonstrate that they are central to effective
policing—to controlling crime and disorder and solving community problems.
The third theme, privatization, is related to efficiency and the ongoing pressure
on governments to find more c ost-effective ways to provide services, including police
protection. Nearly all police departments today are fighting the budget battle while
learning to do more with less or, in some cases, less with less. Privatizing, outsourc-
ing, and contracting are likely to become more and more common in the years to
come. The fourth theme is globalization. While most policing is still local, the rest
of the world is slowly creeping into local police work, thanks to immigration, travel,
free trade, modern telecommunications, computers, and related social and economic
trends. Today’s police executives must become more knowledgeable about global
issues and international relations than their predecessors ever had to be.
Four contemporary issues were also discussed: police legitimacy, police diver-
sity, predictive policing, and police technology. The range of these issues illustrates
the growing complexity of police administration. Because of these contemporary
issues as well as the endemic issues discussed throughout the text, modern po-
lice administration continues to need and deserve the best efforts of the best and
brightest people who can be attracted to such an honorable calling.
This final chapter also discussed e vidence-based policing, learning organiza-
tions, emotional intelligence, and servant leadership. These are among the most
important developments in modern police administration and modern manage-
ment. Serious students of police administration should be familiar with these
concepts and should continue to scan the police and organizational literature for
similar developments that are likely to arise in coming years.
1. What role do you think the United S tates—and US police—should play in international police mis-
sions in places such as, Kosovo, Liberia and Somalia?
2. When vehicle stop data are analyzed in a jurisdiction and it is found that African American and His-
panic drivers are overrepresented in stops and searches, what steps do you think should be taken?
3. The percentage of US police who are women has hit a plateau at 12%, well below many other coun-
tries to which we tend to compare ourselves. Why do you think we are stuck at 12%? Is that our
ceiling, or will we break through it?
4. A lot of modern technology has been introduced into policing in the past decade or two. Which new
technologies do you think have had the biggest impact on police work? On the effectiveness of po-
lice? Which do you think have had the least impact?
5. How high is your EQ (emotional intelligence)? Looking around in organizations that you have be-
longed to, have you noticed managers and leaders with high or low EQ? What can you do to raise
your EQ in order to become a more effective leader, now or in the future?
Cases
Cases 3 through 6 at the back of the text all describe efforts to implement or-
ganizational change and improvement in police departments. You should analyze
these four cases from the perspective of the contemporary management models
presented in Chapter 15 as well as other approaches to police organizational im-
provement presented throughout the text. You should draw upon everything you
have learned to (1) analyze and explain the events and practices described in the
cases, and (2) make recommendations about how these organizations could be
managed even more effectively.
Suggested Reading
Cordner, G. 2020. Evidence-Based Policing in 45 Small Bytes. Washington, DC: National Institute
of Justice.
Ferguson, A.G. 2017. The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforce-
ment. New York: New York University Press.
Katz, C.M. and E.R. Maguire (eds). 2020. Transforming the Police: Thirteen Key Reforms. Long
Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. 2015. Final Report of the President’s Task Force on
21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
Sparrow, M. 2016. Handcuffed: What Holds Policing Back, and the Keys to Reform. Washington, DC:
Brookings Institution.
Notes
1 L. Fridell, and M.A. Wycoff. 2003. The Future of Community Policing. Washington, DC: Police
2 Request for Proposal: Police–Public Contact Survey. 2002. City of Seattle, WA: Office of Policy
and Management.
3 P. Finn. 2001. Citizen Review of Police: Approaches and Implementation. Washington, DC:
National Institute of Justice.
4 See https://police.fortworthtexas.gov/Get-Involved/citizens-on-patrol.
5 J.F. Albrecht (ed.). 2017. Police Reserves and Volunteers: Enhancing Organizational Effectiveness
and Public Trust. Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis/CRC Press.
6 M. Scott and R. Clarke (eds). 2020. Problem-Oriented Policing: Successful Case Studies. New
York: Routledge.
7 W.G. Skogan, and S.M. Hartnett. 1997. Community Policing, Chicago Style. New York: Oxford
University Press; M.E. Correia. 2000. Citizen Involvement: How Community Factors Affect Pro-
gressive Policing. Washington, DC: Police Executive Research Forum.
8 P. Walters. 2009. “Philly Case Rekindles Debate on Vigilante Justice.” Associated Press (June
10). Online at: www.nbcnews.com/id/31214450/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/philly-case-
r ekindles-debate-vigilante-justice/#.Vlh9_TZFDcs.
9 J. Bacon, and W.M. Welch. 2015. “Tulsa Reserve Deputy Charged with Manslaughter.” USA Today
(April 2). Online at: www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/oklahoma-shooting-video/
25702233.
10 D. Presman, R. Chapman, and L. Rosen. 2002. Creative Partnerships: Supporting Youth, Building
Communities. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
11 G. Cordner, and A. Cordner. 2008. “Law Enforcement Technology Program: Evaluation
Report.” Richmond, KY: Justice & Safety Center. Report submitted to the National Institute of
Justice, Office of Science and Technology.
12 Fridell and Wycoff. 2003. The Future of Community Policing.
13 G. Cordner, and E.P. Biebel. 2005. “Problem-Oriented Policing in Practice.” Criminology &
Public Policy 4, no. 2: 155–180.
14 M.S. Scott, and H. Goldstein. 2005. Shifting and Sharing Responsibility for Public Safety Prob-
lems. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services; S. Chamard. 2006.
Partnering with Businesses to Address Public Safety Problems. Washington, DC: Office of Com-
munity Oriented Policing Services.
15 B.K. Melekian. 2012. “Policing in the New Economy: A New Report on the Emerging Trends
from the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.” The Police Chief 79: 16–19;
PERF. 2009. Violent Crime and the Economic Crisis: Police Chiefs Face a New Challenge, Part II.
16 J. Oosting. 2011. “So Long: Pontiac Police Department Closes Doors.” MLive (August 1, 2011).
Online at: www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2011/08/so_long_pontiac_police_departm.
html; A. Greenblatt. 2008. “Squeezing the Cops: You Thought Police Were Safe from Budget
Cuts? So Did They.” Governing (June). Online at: www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-
safety/89056607.html; K. Johnson. 2009. “Economy Limiting Services of Local Police.” USA
Today (May 18). Online at: www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-05-17-police-closure_N.htm.
17 K. Petrie, and K. Marohn. 2001. “Minn. Town to Replace Police with Private Security Force.”
USA Today ( November 17). Online at: www.afscmeinfocenter.org/ privatizationupdate/
tag/
minnesota/page/6#.XAfoyGhKiM8.
18 R.M. Perito. 2002. The American Experience with Police in Peace Operations. Clementsport:
Canadian Peacekeeping Press.
19 D.H. Bayley. 2001. Democratizing the Police Abroad: What to Do and How to Do It. Washington,
DC: National Institute of Justice, p. 5.
20 S. Somashekhar, and S. Rich. 2016. “Final Tally: Police Shot and Killed 986 People in 2015.” The
Washington Post (January 6). Online at: www.washingtonpost.com/national/final-tally-police-
shot-and-killed-984-people-in-2015/2016/01/05/3ec7a404-b3c5–11e5-a76a-0b5145e8679a_
story.html.
21 J.M. Jones. 2021. “In U.S., Black Confidence in Police Recovers from 2020 Low,” Gallup (July
14). Online at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/352304/black-confidence-police-recovers-2020-
l ow.aspx.
on 21st Century Policing. Washington, DC: Office of Community Oriented Policing Services,
p. 1.
23 National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement. 1931/1968. Wickersham Commis-
sion Reports, No. 14: Report on Police. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith.
24 M. Buerger, and A. Farrell. 2002. “The Evidence of Racial Profiling: Interpreting Documented
and Unofficial Sources.” Police Quarterly 5, no. 3: 272–305.
25 A. Goodnough. 2009. “Harvard Professor Jailed; Officer Is Accused of Bias.” New York Times
(July 20). Online at: www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/us/21gates.html.
26 J. Goldstein. 2013. “Judge Rejects New York’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy.” New York Times (August
12). Online at: www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-practice-violated-rights-
judge-rules.html.
27 M. Alexander et al. 2002. Driving While Black or Brown: The California DWB Report. San Fran-
cisco: American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California.
28 F. Newport. 1999. Racial Profiling Is Seen as Widespread, Particularly Among Young Black Men.
Princeton, NJ: The Gallup Organization.
29 See, for example, G. Cordner, B. Williams, and A. Velasco. 2002. “Vehicle Stops in San Diego:
2001.” Report to the San Diego Police Department.
30 E.L. Schmitt, P.A. Langan, and M.R. Durose. 2002. “Characteristics of Drivers Stopped by
Police, 1999.” Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
31 E. Westervelt. 2018. “In Oakland, More Data Hasn’t Meant Less Disparity During Police
Stops.” National Public Radio (August 8). Online at: www.npr.org/2018/08/08/636319870/
in-oakland-more-data-hasnt-meant-less-racial-disparity-during-police-stops; R.S. Engel, J.M.
Calnon, and T.J. Bernard. 2002. “Theory and Racial Profiling: Shortcomings and Future Direc-
tions in Research.” Justice Quarterly 19, no. 2: 249–273.
32 A. Farrell, J. McDevitt, and M. Buerger. 2002. “Moving Police and Community Dialogues
Forward through Data Collection Task Forces.” Police Quarterly 5, no. 3: 3 59–379.
on 21st Century Policing, p. 16.
34 S.S. Hyland and E. Davis. 2021. Local Police Departments, 2016: Personnel. Washington, DC:
Bureau of Justice Statistics. Online at: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/lpd16p.pdf.
35 U.S. Census. 2022. Quick Facts. Online at: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/
PST045221.
36 Hyland and Davis. 2021. Local Police Departments, 2016.
37 Statista. 2018. “Share of Female Police Officers for Selected Countries in 2012.” Online at:
www.statista.com/statistics/436353/share-of-female-police-officers-for-selected-countries;
T. Prenzler, and G. Sinclair. 2013. “The Status of Women Police Officers: An International
Review.” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 41, no. 2: 115–131. Online at: https://
pdfs.semanticscholar.org/7074/bea3789e2fae84614a8f6841f9fadd9bba03.pdf.
38 B. Williams. 2018. “Women Police Recruits: Half the Battle.” Norway Today (March 7). Online
at: http://norwaytoday.info/education/women-police-recruits-half-battle; New Zealand Police.
2018. “42 Women Recruits Starting Police Training in Porirua.” Online at: http://wellington.
scoop.co.nz/?p=107737.
40 K.J. Novak, R.A. Brown, and J. Frank. 2011. “Women on Patrol: An Analysis of Difference in
Officer Arrest Behavior.” Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management
34, no. 4: 566–587.
41 L.E. Porter, and T. Prenzler. 2017. “Police Officer Gender and Excessive Force Complaints: An
Australian Study.” Policing and Society 27, no. 8: 865–883; T.D. Bazeley, K.M. Lersch, and T.
Mieczkowski. 2007. “Officer Force versus Suspect Resistance: A Gendered Analysis of Patrol
Officers in an Urban Police Department.” Journal of Criminal Justice 35: 183–192.
42 A.G. Ferguson. 2017. The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law
Enforcement. New York: New York University Press.
43 A. Cordner, and G. Cordner. 2017. “Overview of Law Enforcement Technology.” In L.J. Mori-
arty (ed.), Criminal Justice Technology in the 21st Century, third edition. Springfield, IL: Charles
C Thomas, pp. 39–68.
44 J.S. Hollywood, D. Woods, S.E. Goodison, A. Lauland, L. Wagner, T.J. Wilson, and B.A. Jack-
son. 2017. Fostering Innovation in U.S. Law Enforcement. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corpora-
tion. Online at: www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1814.html.
tute of Justice. Online at: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/254326.pdf; C. Lum, and C.S.
Koper. 2017. Evidence-Based Policing: Translating Research into Practice. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
46 See https://www.americansebp.org/.
47 P.M. Senge. 1990. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New
York: Doubleday.
48 Senge. 1990. The Fifth Discipline, p. 3.
49 W.A. Geller. 1997. “Suppose We Were Really Serious about Police Departments Becoming
Learning Organizations?” National Institute of Justice Journal 234: 2–8.
50 L. Alarid. 1999. “Law Enforcement Departments as Learning Organizations: Argyris’s Theory
as a Framework for Implementing Community-Oriented Policing.” Police Quarterly 2, no. 3:
321–337.
51 D. Goleman. 1995. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam.
52 Quoted in D. Goleman. 1998. “What Makes a Leader?” Harvard Business Review (November–
December): 93–102.
53 Goleman. 1995. Emotional Intelligence, p. 46.
54 Goleman. 1998. “What Makes a Leader?” p . 101.
55 D. Goleman, R. Boyatzis, and A. McKee. 2002. Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emo-
tional Intelligence. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
56 R.K. Greenleaf, and L.C. Spears. 2002. Servant Leadership: A Journey into the Nature of Legiti-
mate Power and Greatness. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.
57 Quoted in R. Townsend. 1970. Up the Organization. New York: Knopf, p. 99.
58 J.A. Schafer, M.E. Buerger, R.W. Myers, C.J. Jensen III, and B.H. Levin. 2012. The Future
of Policing: A Practical Guide for Police Managers and Leaders. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press,
pp. 300–301.
CASE STUDIES
Case 1 Cod Bay
Cod Bay is a summer resort community; its winter population of 19,000

expands to 60,000 in the summer. The Cod Bay Police Department has many
problems controlling summer visitors. One persistent problem is illegal parking.
Because there are numerous complaints from y ear-round residents about park-
ing, the Cod Bay police chief arranged with several towing companies to tow all
illegally parked cars to the police station parking lot. The towing companies did
a brisk business, particularly on weekends, when the town was inundated with
visitors. P
art-time police officers, who were not professionally trained, were hired
by the department to work weekends and were assigned to the downtown area
specifically to enforce parking laws. All violators were towed; no one escaped the
watchful eyes of the p art-time downtown patrol officers, who were occasionally
over-zealous in their enforcement activities and who perceived some of the parking
violators as wanton criminals. In their desire to carry out departmental policy and
to compete for tows with fellow officers assigned to the same task, they occasion-
ally made mistakes and towed cars that were not illegally parked.
Having one’s car towed can be a traumatic experience, particularly if the car is
not illegally parked. On one such occasion, an irate young man came to the police
station to reclaim his car, a matter that involved paying the towing company a mod-
est fee. Refusing to pay the fee, the young man asked to see the sergeant in charge.
The burly sergeant was predisposed to dislike irate young men. At first, the sergeant
attempted to determine the facts, and he summoned the p art-time patrol officer back
to the station to get his side of the story. After listening to the stories of the patrol
officer and the young man, the sergeant realized that the young man’s car had been
legally parked. But even so, the sergeant sided with the patrol officer and informed the
young man that if he wanted his car back, he would have to pay the towing charge.
The man refused, and a shouting match, precipitated by the sergeant, devel-
oped. When the man was told to leave the station, he demanded what he knew
were his rights. He was told that if he did not leave the station, he would be
arrested. Finally, he was taken bodily from the station by the patrol officer, who
pushed him down a flight of steps to the sidewalk. The man regained his equi-
librium and quietly walked off into the night, beaten by the system. He returned
later, paid the fee, and reclaimed his car.
442 Case Studies
1. If you were the sergeant in this situation, what would you have done?
2. If you were the chief of police of this police department and this situation came to your attention, what
would you do?
3. In your opinion, what caused the Cod Bay Police Department to get into this situation of having a
dominant police subculture that supports such actions by officers and supervisors?
4. How widespread do you think this kind of behavior and police subculture are today?
Case 2 Rixton
Rixton is a small community of 16,000 people and has a police force of 36

officers. Police Chief Walton Eager came up through the ranks and is a pleasant
man, but he has little administrative ability. He promulgates all policy and proce-
dures by tacking notices to a bulletin board already overcrowded with memorabilia
dating back several years. He makes no effort to determine whether his officers
understand his policies and procedures, and officers feel no need to pay any atten-
tion to them.
The department has many excellent officers who, despite poor leadership,
conduct themselves in exemplary fashion. A small minority of six, however,
causes some severe problems. These six officers, 17% of the force, have their
own police subculture and peculiar role expectations. The dominant police
culture in Rixton, although not predicated on officially established rules and
regulations, is generally accepted by most of the police officers and dictates
role expectations that are consistent with democratic processes. The minority
subculture is in conflict with the dominant culture; each group thinks that the
other is ineffective.
The officers in Rixton refer to the two groups as cliques. Each clique operates
according to its own role expectations, with neither clique particularly constrained by
Chief Eager’s policies and procedures. The minority clique perceives the police role as
being largely militaristic. The following situations, involving minority clique mem-
bers, provide some interesting data on how role expectations and perceptions affect
behavior.
1. Patrol Officer Luigi Pasternak, a former marine who collects guns and believes
that most people are criminals, received a radio call to mediate an argument
at a gas station. On receiving the call, Pasternak said, “Good. Maybe I’ll get a
chance to crack someone’s head.”
2. Patrol Officer Brodie Fishbaum, when asked what changes he would recom-
mend to make the Rixton Police Department more professional, remarked,
“I’d make it more military, have them all get haircuts, and have them wear
combat boots.” Commenting on his role, he said, “I like this [police work].
This is just like being in the military. At least I think so. Pasternak and I think
we are.”
Case Studies 443
3. Patrol Officer Moody Mickehaus, commenting on the fact that Brodie Fishbaum
and Luigi Pasternak had been transferred to his shift, said, “Now that Fishbaum
and Pasternak are back, you’ll see a lot of arrests. We try to outdo each other.”
These three conversations were typical of the way minority clique members
felt about themselves. Their attitudes and behavior were dictated by their own
subcultural role expectations and were reinforced by the members of their small,
but influential, peer group. The fact that the dominant police culture behaved dif-
ferently based on different role expectations had very little effect on what they did.
Members of the minority clique were disturbed, however, that their group
consisted of so few officers. Moody Mickehaus, for example, was forever compar-
ing his own professionalism with that of other members of the department; he was
terribly disturbed that they were not as professional as he perceived himself to be.
He once remarked that he gets so upset about societal degeneration and his de-
partment’s inability to deal with it that he sometimes has to drink himself to sleep.
Although Mickehaus considered himself to be professional, he was looked on by
officers subscribing to the dominant police culture as being dangerous.
The Rixton Police Department, with its two cliques of patrol officers, illus-
trates a department in which there is more than one set of role expectations. The
fact that the dominant police culture in Rixton was s ervice-oriented and not mili-
taristic was a fortunate quirk of fate. The minority clique, however, caused tremen-
dous problems for the chief and a great amount of internal disharmony within the
ranks of those officers who were trying their best to do their jobs properly.
1. How (and why) does a minority police subculture develop in a police organization?
2. How can two such different cliques (the dominant culture and the minority subculture) coexist within
one small police organization?
3. In your opinion, why has Rixton been so fortunate in developing a fairly positive dominant police
culture?
4. If you were an officer in this police department and got assigned to the same patrol shift as Pasternak,
Fishbaum, and Mickehaus, what would you do?
5. If you were a sergeant in charge of the patrol shift to which Pasternak, Fishbaum, and Mickehaus
were assigned, what would you do to direct and control their behavior?
6. If Chief Eager retired and you were appointed police chief in Rixton, what would you do to reduce the
size and influence of the minority police subculture?
Case 3 Strategic Planning in Spokane, Washington
Spokane, a city of approximately 190,000 residents, is nestled in a valley on

ashington’s western border with Idaho. The largest city between Minneapolis
W
and Seattle, the greater Spokane area is home to almost 1 million people.
This case study describes some of the key features of the strategic planning
process used by Chief Terry Mangan to accomplish positive change in the Spokane
444 Case Studies
Police Department (SPD). When Mangan became Spokane’s Chief of Police he

did not have, nor did he ever create, a long-term “master plan” which spelled out,
step-by-step, how the department would move to community policing. Instead,
he sought to create an environment in which many different players—both inside
and outside the d epartment—could bring different ideas and plans to the table.
While Mangan wanted to move the department closer to the community, as an
outsider who needed to win the trust and respect of the department, his first goal
was to improve the department’s morale by upgrading equipment.
It became very evident to me that we weren’t going to go anyplace in this
department with any kind of community efforts unless we addressed some real
fundamental needs. When I came here … people were working out of a basement
with steampipes overhead, World War II surplus lockers … and old, smelly towels
hanging over them. No exercise or work-out rooms, broken toilets, radios that
didn’t work. Crummy equipment and not enough people. Lowest staff level in the
state for a city of this size. You can’t tell people their job is important unless you ad-
dress their [basic] needs. So we focused internally on getting them the stuff and the
equipment and the working conditions that would say, “You really are important.”
During his first year in Spokane, Mangan attended more than 400 commu-
nity meetings. At these meetings, Mangan spoke about the need for a new partner-
ship with the community. Mangan told Spokane’s citizens that
this is a good police department, but it’s a police department that has
severe restrictions in terms of the number of people we have. Here’s what
we want to do as a police department…. we are the lowest staffed police
department in the state, that’s an officer safety issue. We need to build
this department up and we need your help to do it. More importantly, we
need partnerships with the community. We need people to come in and
be volunteers.
Within two years he was ready to turn his attention to changing the depart-
ment itself. While Mangan was open about his goal of opening up the SPD to the
community, and adopting a more c ommunity-based, proactive approach to polic-
ing, he needed to transmit this mission throughout all levels of the organization.
As a chief from outside the department, Mangan also needed to gain support and
trust from its members. After accepting the position, Mangan began speaking with
numerous individuals inside the department and in the community in an attempt
to identify the natural leaders, from all sworn ranks and civilian titles, whose sup-
port would be critical if change was going to occur. Before taking command, Man-
gan wrote these leaders and invited them to a series of open discussions about the
organization. Soon after Mangan took command, he gathered these individuals
into an informal advisory group that met several evenings each week to discuss the
organization’s strengths and weaknesses and make recommendations for improving
the department. This group was a vehicle for Mangan to both send his ideas to the
department, and to receive feedback about how the organization perceived itself.
Case Studies 445
“They were not going to be making decisions,” Mangan explained. “The purpose
of this [was] to brainstorm where we are, where we are trying to go, how we’re go-
ing to get there, and what do we need to do it.” Equally important, by bringing in
all levels of the department into this “think tank,” Mangan gained support for his
change efforts and was not seriously challenged by old-guard personnel.
Soon after these meetings began, Mangan formally turned the group into a
strategic planning committee, and increased its membership. Committee mem-
bers described a process that improved communication throughout the depart-
ment. “Everybody had an opportunity to talk without fear of repercussions, and
there were a lot of things said in those meetings that just needed to be said so that
people could air them out,” a committee member explained. A patrol officer who
participated said that he enjoyed the opportunity to hash out ideas with members
of other units in the department, and gain a broader perspective about the organi-
zation. Knowing that the chief was actually listening to their ideas was very impor-
tant to committee members, most of whom had never previously been given such
an opportunity. Mangan, who ensured that the group’s decisions were consistent
with his broader visions, described his role in the group as the “sounding board”
or the “mirror.” “I would tweak it and push it a little bit here and little bit there,
and incorporate the best of this group’s ideas and that group’s ideas,” Mangan said.
While the planning committee discussed numerous issues facing the depart-
ment, Mangan tasked them with a critical project: defining the department’s val-
ues. “Every agency has a unique culture, an organizational culture that is part of
its history and its traditions,” Mangan said.
I felt it was really important to take that organizational culture and ex-
amine it, and that history, and say who were are and what we stand for
and why. To make that work, people have to have ownership of it, and to
have ownership of it means that everybody in the department … has to
have a crack at it.
Mangan first gathered several values statements from other police departments
and presented them to the strategic planning committee. The committee drafted a
values statement that was presented to the rest of the department for feedback and
revised. After a final draft was approved, Mangan assigned the committee to create
a “hook” for the two-page values statement. When devising the hook, Mangan
told his committee to use the FBI as a model. “Anybody that works in that Hoover
building, from the janitor on up, will tell you that FBI stands not just for Federal
Bureau of Investigation, but it stands for Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity, the three
values of the FBI,” Mangan said. Using the initials SPD as a starting point, the
planning committee decided on “Service, Pride, and Dedication,” from which all
of the department’s values would flow.
The strategic planning committee also designed a patrol manual that helped
operationalize community policing into concrete responsibilities within the pa-
trol division. While the stated purpose of the plan was to provide “direction and
446 Case Studies
purpose for the management” of the patrol division, it explicitly encouraged “all
personnel to take risks and innovative approaches to problem solving.” Working
closely with the community was another expressed goal for the patrol division.
“The Patrol Division exists to … improve police/community relations through the
quality and quantity of contacts between citizens and members of the division.”
This model fit Mangan’s goal of encouraging innovation at all levels of the depart-
ment. “We said to the [patrol officers and supervisors] the best ideas come from
you folks, so you figure out what’s going to work and what’s not going to work,”
Mangan said.
As a manager, Mangan was described by many in the department as an “idea
guy.” He was receptive to new ideas, and would sometimes give his staff the broad
vision for a program, without filling in many details. While Mangan was the source
of some new ideas, and final d ecision-making authority still rested with the chief
and his command staff, he wanted to empower supervisors and line officers to
develop ideas and programs on their own. As was previously discussed, the newly
developed patrol manual expressly encouraged this b ottom-up development of
new programs, by assigning the patrol division commander, shift lieutenants, and
sergeants to develop programs that identified and addressed long-term problems
within their sectors. In order to facilitate this, all shift commanders were required
to work with sergeants and patrol officers and create yearly management plans that
identified and analyzed problem areas and proposed solutions. (These goals and
objectives became the basis for a new annual report that the department submitted
to the city manager and city council.) The patrol managers were also directed to
“develop and maintain communication” with citizen groups and neighborhoods.
These new tasks were added to the supervisors’ standard set of oversight and
personnel management responsibilities. While Mangan expanded the managerial
duties, because civil service regulations controlled promotion throughout all levels
of the department except for the assistant chief and chief positions, he had little
authority to replace supervisors who were not up to these new roles. As a result,
Mangan identified individuals in the department who were innovators and gave
them authority to design new programs, regardless of their rank.
Some supervisors welcomed this new ability to innovate and experiment. Yet,
according to some department members, this model of empowerment created
some tension within the organization.
That really kind of disturbed the table or organization…. We had ser-

geants that were given responsibilities and … the captains and lieuten-
ants … sometimes weren’t even aware of things that were going on in their
units…. Some management people realized that they had been kind of …
identified … as maybe non-producers or road-blocks … and they were
simply being bypassed,
a department member said. And, while some supervisors thrived in this new
environment, because supervisors were not given much explicit training about
Case Studies 447
their new role, others were unsure how to do their jobs in this new era. This
created a situation in which some officers were receiving dual messages from the
organization: the chief wants me to work more closely with the community, but
my sergeant wants me to collect stats.
Source: Adapted from Peter M. Sheingold. n.d. “National COPS Evaluation:
Organizational Change Case Study—Spokane, Washington.” Online at: www.nc-
jrs.gov/nij/cops_casestudy/spokane.html.
1. Chief Mangan’s approach to organizational change in Spokane relied on developing departmental

values and a vision statement. Compare the values that were developed in Spokane to the sample
missions, goals, objectives, and values presented in Chapter 3. In what ways are these various ex-
pressions of organizational purpose different? Why do they differ? Which are most important, and
why?
2. This case study begins by describing how a new chief took an “inside-out” approach to changing
the police department (see “The Inside-Out Approach to Quality Policing” in Chapter 10). Com-
pare Chief Mangan’s approach in Spokane to Chief Couper’s approach described in Chapter 10.
What are the circumstances in which such an inside-out approach might be recommended, or not
recommended?
3. Compare Chief Mangan’s management and leadership styles to those discussed in Chapters 9 and
10. Which styles and techniques did he most exemplify? In your opinion, how well did his style fit the
needs of the situation in the Spokane Police Department at the time?
4. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the approach that Chief Mangan used to improve the
Spokane Police Department?
Case 4 Gaining Outside Commitment in Lowell,

Massachusetts
Lowell, Massachusetts, is an old manufacturing city with a population of
about 100,000 located 34 miles north of Boston. In the 1990s it was pushed from
the outside by state and federal policy, which influenced the department through
the grants it began to need when the city’s largely industrial economy faltered; it
was also pushed by local government itself, which pressured all Lowell agencies to
work in a more neighborhood-oriented fashion. But, most importantly, the LPD
was driven from the inside by two forces. First, and most visibly, by a talented and
articulate chief with a clear vision and effective management style; and second, by
many committed staff whose innovations were allowed to prosper (some of these
actually emerged well before the department officially tried to “transform itself,”
but they were not supported by the previous administration).
Prior to the reforms, the department suffered in the forum of public opin-
ion. Officers themselves remembered that “it was almost like we were just like
an occupying army in the city … and there was, I think, very little support for
the police department.” A management consultant who guided officers through
a strategic planning process (which in part took stock of the department’s current
448 Case Studies
state) reports that even those who tended to glorify the past admitted that the
community viewed Lowell police “dismally.”
When LPD Captain Ed Davis was appointed Acting Superintendent, he in-
itiated strategic planning and a variety of internal operational and administrative
changes. In addition, he focused considerable attention on building a coalition of
support in the outside world. Most simply, Davis began to open up the depart-
ment’s decision making to outside eyes. He explains that he
opened the doors up for the police department for the first time, and I
talked frankly about staffing issues, and I talked frankly about budget
issues. I talked frankly about the internal affairs function which is always
a matter of great concern to the community groups.
But Davis became increasingly uneasy with the essentially reactive stance that
this type of interaction with the community implied. In particular, following the
very successful implementation of a new precinct (Centralville), practically every
neighborhood in Lowell demanded something similar. Davis summarizes the feel-
ing with an aphorism: “There’s a saying in community policing, ‘You can teach
the bear to dance, but you can’t necessarily tell it when to stop.’ That was what
happened with these community groups.” For Davis, the problem was that the de-
partment lost any control over the agenda: the dialog with the community focused
exclusively on issues that the groups themselves raised. “We were always reactive.
We were always going to a community group to answer for a particular injustice
or a particular problem that was observed by that group.”
In some cases, Davis tried to win back partial control of the agenda not by
disengaging from the community-initiated dialog, but by engaging it proactively.
One often-told story in this vein concerns the siting of the Highlands precinct,
which became a focus of conflict between the department and a nearby neighbor-
hood group. The problem was simple: the LPD wanted to locate the precinct in
the largely Cambodian Lower Highlands neighborhood, and the local Boy’s Club
had offered the department space in a location that lay at the center of many of the
area’s problems. But the community group, representing the predominantly white
Cupples Square neighborhood, argued that the new precinct should be located in
their neighborhood. Well-connected in local politics, the group brought their con-
cerns to a number of city councilors, and Davis began to feel pressure to change
his mind about the location of the site.
Davis believed he was in the right in this case: “This was clearly just a small
segment of the community,” he maintains, “and [implying] it wasn’t the Cambo-
dian people who really needed the services. [But] That’s where people were actu-
ally dying.” Davis turned to consultant Linda Hart for advice. So she said:
Okay, well, it sounds to me like you have to put together a really good
presentation that examines that data. So we’ll go out and we’ll take photos
Case Studies 449
of the two locations and try to sell it to the group. And in addition to that,
I think that you have to bring a different constituency to the meeting.
So she went out and actively recruited the Cambodian community to appear
at this meeting.
So here you have this group of two hundred or so white lower-middle-

class individuals who are pretty politically savvy. And all of a sudden, 50
or 100 Cambodian people come in and sit down at the meeting. They
don’t know what to do. The people at the meeting didn’t know how to
handle this. And then we walked in and we put on a really good presenta-
tion with data and photos of what the two locations looked like.
Going into the meeting, Davis had taken a hand vote to gauge support for the
two sites, and he estimates that three-quarters of those voting preferred the Cup-
ples Square location. But after the presentation—when the department presented
crime statistics and other basic information about the two areas—sentiment had
switched, and the group overwhelmingly voted to go with the Boy’s Club site. City
Manager Richard Johnson, who attended the meeting with Davis, still remembers
the event with astonishment:
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a neighborhood group where you expect to go in
and get the shit kicked out of you and people throwing rocks at y ou—and
he went in there with such a positive approach, with statistics, and facts
and figures, that the people basically said, “He’s our expert. He’s the leader
of this thing. We’ve got to give him the support.” And they did. And that
doesn’t happen often, when people have a predetermined position. And
they definitely had a predetermined position going in, no question about it.
With his growing frustration over losing control of the agenda, Davis took the
proactive approach even further by sponsoring the department’s own massive com-
munity meeting, which focused on Lowell’s declining downtown. He remembers,
I had a meeting that was sponsored by the police department. The down-
town business district had been decimated by businesses leaving because
of the crime problem. And I invited everybody in the city that was left—I
sent police officers in uniform with invitations—and I held a meeting
at the Sheraton. And I brought the whole Command Staff of the Police
Department there and sat them in front of all the business people in the
downtown area. And I said to them, “Look, we’re going to make a dif-
ference here. If you have a problem here, you call this person. This is
Captain so and so, this is Lieutenant so and so, they’re in charge of this,
they’re in charge of that. We’re going to have a sheet of paper before you
leave that will show you how your police department works.”
450 Case Studies
The meeting was a huge success, completely filling the ballroom at Lowell’s
Sheraton hotel. As Davis sees it, the event provided a dual opportunity: “I indi-
cated not only to the people in the city, but to the command staff, that things were
going to be a little different.” Davis has maintained a strong relationship with the
downtown business community ever since.
Davis attended to the outside world in many other ways. He worked closely
with city government throughout this period, and also sought advice and sup-
port from Senator Paul Tsongas (whose permanent residence was in Lowell) on
occasion. (For example, Tsongas helped Davis come up with a mission statement
for the department, which was to create “the safest city of its size in the nation.”)
Davis worked closely with many other elements of the community as well, nota-
bly the schools department and the local university. Davis went to great lengths
to develop a supporting coalition not only inside the LPD, but also outside of it.
The community response to the LPD’s new openness was overwhelming. In the
department’s eyes; one of the most visible indicators of this was a successful fundrais-
ing drive led by a local businessman to raise some $200,000 to buy the department’s
mobile precinct. But more objective citizen surveys reveal this support as well: for
example, the highest proportion of residents who thought that the LPD was providing
protection “not well” or “not well at all” in three surveyed neighborhoods was only
18%.
Some concerns continued to exist, to be sure. Lee Winkelman, the organizing
director for Coalition for a Better Acre (a nationally known community development
corporation that focuses its attention on Lowell’s Acre neighborhood), believed that
dispatchers lack sufficient language skills, and that precinct personnel change too of-
ten (possibly as a result of the LPD’s bid system, which lets officers switch jobs every
18 months if they so desire). But, in the end, the LPD won over even Winkelman,
a committed activist who has always believed that crime ultimately stems from pov-
erty, not inadequate policing: “It’s the best in any place I’ve worked…. I often joke
around that if the other community organizers heard me saying such good things
about the police, I’d lose my community organizer’s license.” He points particularly
to the department’s active hiring of Cambodian and Latino officers, the very visi-
ble impact the LPD had on street drug dealing in the Acre, and the department’s
openness—particularly Chief Davis’s—to community concerns.
Source: Adapted from David Thacher. n.d. “National COPS Evaluation:
Organizational Change Case S tudy—Lowell, Massachusetts.” Online at: www.
ncjrs.gov/nij/cops_casestudy/lowell4.html.
1. The text emphasizes in Chapter 7 that police executives have internal and external roles. What do
you think of the approach that Chief Davis of Lowell took toward his external role? What external
constituencies did he seem most concerned about? Why?
2. One of the reasons that Chief Davis worked so hard to cultivate external groups was so that they
could then help him exert pressure within the police department to make changes. Why would he
use a change strategy like this? This seems like it might be the opposite of the “inside-out” strategy
Case Studies 451
discussed in the text in C hapter 10. In any particular situation, how would you decide whether to use
an inside-out strategy or an outside-in strategy?
3. A tenet of community policing is that police departments should be responsive to community needs
and priorities. Chief Davis, though, went to great lengths to get one community to change its views
about where to locate a new police station. Why did he do this? Was he right to do it? Did it violate
the spirit of community policing?
4. Compare Chief Davis’ management and leadership styles to those discussed in C hapters 9 and 10.
Which styles and techniques did he most exemplify? In your opinion, how well did his style fit the
needs of the situation in the Lowell Police Department at the time?
5. What were the strengths and weaknesses of the approach that Chief Davis used to improve the Low-
ell Police Department?
Case 5 Leading Change in Riverside, California
Riverside, California, is a city of 250,000 residents at the heart of California’s

Inland Empire, an agricultural powerhouse that lies to the east of Los Angeles. As
Riverside has matured and its agricultural industry has lost the power to carry the
local economy entirely, the city has shown some characteristic signs of age and
growth, such as a declining downtown and rising crime rates.
In the 1990s, the Riverside Police Department faced some significant chal-
lenges, including a lukewarm reputation in the city’s minority communities, a
series of lawsuits brought by Riverside citizens, and internal divisions over its lead-
ership and how to handle the agency’s growth, which had made traditionally in-
formal management practices increasingly problematic. Ken Fortier, the chief of
police appointed to meet these challenges, was able to revamp the RPD’s admin-
istration, helping to install modern systems for everything from budgeting to the
serving of search warrants, and he was able to lay the foundations for community
policing in the city by spearheading a system of area commands charged with
solving community problems. On the other hand, Fortier’s leadership provoked
great resistance in Riverside, and many of his reforms were embroiled in turmoil
until his departure.
One problem that preceded Chief Fortier was a lack of communication be-
tween city government and the RPD. The two groups often didn’t get together
on many issues in the first place, and city hall apparently became increasingly un-
comfortable with the way police were making decisions on their own. The RPD’s
relationship to the community was similar, in the sense that the department had a
relatively good public image with most of the community, but little direct dialog
outside of individual calls for service and newspaper reports on specific crimes.
On the other hand, some groups of Riverside residents apparently had serious
concerns about their police department: most notably, while only 25% of whites
rated the RPD’s performance as “only fair” or “poor” in the survey, 54% of blacks
did so. Also, there was clearly tension between police and at least a significant mi-
nority of Latinos. For their part, many police felt threatened by increasingly violent
gangs, and they denied the charges of both harassment and u nder-enforcement.
“Like many police departments,” one RPD veteran explained, “our attitude pretty
452 Case Studies
much was like ‘We’re the police, and we go to school for this and train, and we’re
the experts in this area.’”
Basic mechanisms for control and direction-setting were underdeveloped in
the RPD—at least that was the conclusion of a management audit commissioned
by Riverside’s city manager. The audit painted a picture of an organization strong
on basic operations but with weak administrative systems. Many of these admin-
istrative deficiencies may have been related to the department’s long-established
philosophy of management, which many people inside and outside the depart-
ment referred to as “high trust, low control.” The basic idea was apparently that
police should be treated as independent professionals who did not need much
direct supervision and structure in their work, whether directly from managers
or indirectly from the administrative systems they created and monitored. It was
not, of course, that basic organizational checks were not in place: For example,
sergeants and lieutenants were expected to make sure that patrol officers followed
established procedures, like those that governed pursuits. But, in critical areas—
notably discipline and the search warrant process—many RPD veterans report
that management took a h ands-off approach, preferring to leave matters to officers
and detectives themselves with an appeal to their sense of professional integrity.
As Chief Fortier remembers his first days in office, he took over the RPD with
a broad mandate for change that focused on implementing community policing
and carrying out the main recommendations from the audit. The audit was par-
ticularly influential in shaping his sense of the RPD’s strategic issues. “I asked for
a copy of the report before I was hired and looked it over,” he remembers, “and it
was clear to me that there were some managerial problems that needed to be dealt
with. It wasn’t really a blueprint necessarily, but it was pretty clear.” In particular,
deficiencies like the lack of an effective internal affairs unit and the lack of an or-
ganized training effort were red flags to Fortier that some basic managerial issues
needed to be addressed.
Several problems would soon emerge. First of all, the infrastructure effort
turned out to be deeply problematic for many officers in Riverside, which had an
established history of doing things informally and did not necessarily see a need to
change. For example, one of Fortier’s first initiatives as chief was an attempt to deal
with the informality of the RPD’s labor agreements, but when the department
released booklet copies of the new agreement to all employees, it had an effect
opposite to what Fortier intended. “We thought this would be popular,” he re-
members. This experience, in particular, convinced Fortier that there was a severe
division between management and the rank-and-file: “There’d just been years and
years of miscommunication and distrust and ineffective management—there’s no
other way to put it. It was really us and them.”
The second problem was the somewhat ad hoc nature of the infrastructure
effort, emerging as it did by pieces, with the result that some RPD members could
not perceive any clear vision guiding the changes that were taking place. Jerry
Carroll, who became chief after Fortier, suggests that Fortier’s role as a change
agent made it positively inadvisable for him to articulate what he was doing.
Case Studies 453
“I asked the deputy chief one time, ‘I want to see the vision,’ ” Carroll remembers.
“He said, ‘He’s not going to show you the vision’—because the vision was an
agenda and the agenda was to come in and change the culture here in this police
department.” In any case, the result was that there was little b uy-in to the reforms
Fortier had in mind. “I don’t think anybody knew what the vision was,” Carroll
maintains. “It was not articulated.”
Fortier sought to put together a management team that was committed not
just to community policing in particular, but to organizational reform in general.
To that end, he sought to quickly promote people to management positions who
were capable and committed to reform, and to speed up the retirement of those
who were not. Fortier also looked outside the department altogether for people
who had some of the qualifications that its own officers lacked. The backlash
against this effort was s evere—at best department members resented the loss of a
rare promotion opportunity, and at worst they took the move as a statement that
in Fortier’s eyes, “in-house people weren’t good enough.”
This effort and a parallel one to revise the criteria for promotion to all super-
visory and management positions also alienated many RPD members and thereby
backfired with respect to the goal of building support for reform. Most simply,
while Fortier could fill management positions using new criteria, he could not
ensure that the new managers would have the necessary influence over their rank-
file officers. Indeed, as the criteria for promotion changed, the entire process
and-
apparently lost some legitimacy in the eyes of the troops, so that many officers
became cynical about how their new superiors had made their ranks.
The basic problem was that promotions themselves did not necessarily breed
loyalty in a situation where reform stirred up many other sources of resistance.
It was not simply that the face of management was changing: its mandate was
changing as well, and in ways that exacerbated growing tensions within the RPD.
These issues, together with several cost-cutting measures (including cutting
court-related overtime and reducing the size of the patrol fleet) radicalized the Riv-
erside Police Officers Association (RPOA) and led to an all-out assault on Fortier’s
leadership, punctuated by an overwhelming vote of no confidence. Officer com-
plaints grew one-by-one, from the patrol car issue, to the complaint policy, to pro-
motion decisions, to changes to working schedules. Even reforms that did not get
implemented, like a proposal to give the chief the power to move detectives back
into patrol assignments, added to anti-Fortier sentiment. Finally, some complaints
centered not on specific policies but on Fortier’s blunt style of management, his
reputation for inflexibility, and on allegations that he played favorites and told
inconsistent stories to different audiences.
Fortier’s backers dismissed accusations that he was indifferent to officer opin-
ion, maintaining that the chief had made extraordinary efforts to express his sup-
port for the troops and include them in decision making. Fortier was, they argued,
the first chief in Riverside’s memory to include an RPOA representative in com-
mand staff meetings; he made frequent appearances at roll calls and in r ide-alongs;
and he repeatedly made statements to the press about the quality of Riverside’s
454 Case Studies
police. The chief also paid attention to small details: for example, when a crack
showed up in an officer’s 9 mm gun, Fortier ordered new guns for the entire de-
partment and asked officers what type they wanted. Finally, new policy decisions
were almost always justified in dispatches sent to the entire patrol force, so that
officers would understand why changes were being made.
But these strategies for building support never paid off inside the department.
Some argue that by the time Fortier entered his second year in Riverside, it was
already too late, for the conflict between management and the officers had become
personal. At that time, a veteran narcotics detective named Jack Palm took over
the RPOA presidency and began waging an intense battle to remove Fortier from
office. None of this turmoil, Fortier insists, had any direct bearing on his decision
to retire after five years as chief, a decision that he says was motivated by growing
medical problems. But the former chief admits that the constant stress of the
job—as well as the serious personal harassment he and his wife began facing—
contributed to those medical problems.
Source: Adapted from David Thacher. n.d. “National COPS Evaluation:
Organizational Change Case Study—Riverside, California.” Online at: www.nc-
jrs.gov/nij/cops_casestudy/riversid.html.
1. This case study describes a four-year effort by a new chief, brought in from the outside, to implement
change in the Riverside Police Department. How successful was the effort? Why wasn’t it more suc-
cessful? What would you have done differently, if anything?
2. Clearly, the Riverside Police Department had some labor/management issues. Why do labor and
management sometimes get into conflict in police departments? What could Chief Fortier have done
to try to reduce the labor/management conflict in Riverside?
3. Analyze the case from the standpoint of leadership and management styles. Which styles of leader-
ship and management did Chief Fortier represent, compared to the styles that had preceded him in
Riverside. Was his approach the most effective one? Why or why not?
4. Analyze the case in terms of the approaches to organization development discussed in C hapter 9
and the contemporary management models presented in Chapter 15. Which of these approaches did
Chief Fortier rely on the most? If you were appointed police chief in Riverside following Chief Fortier’s
retirement, which methods and models would you implement to complete the process of organiza-
tional change in the department?
Case 6 One Week in Heron City
This case study was developed as part of the “Executive Session on Policing and
Public Safety,” a joint initiative of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the Har-
vard Kennedy School of Government. NIJ’s website introduces the case as follows (see
www.nij.gov/topics/law-enforcement/administration/executive-sessions/pages/
papers.aspx#):
“One Week in Heron City” follows Chief Laura Harrison through her first
week on the job in this fictional city of 400,000. Chief Harrison enters a city:
Case Studies 455
• where the sense of safety has been shattered by the brutal, unsolved murder of
a young mother who had repeatedly told police she was being followed;
• experiencing a rash of high-end car thefts that few people are concerned about
because of excellent insurance payouts;
• whose public health department is preparing for a possible flu pandemic and
wants to know what services the police can offer.
Chief Harrison discovers that progress is slowly made despite all the department’s
problem-solving efforts—Compstat, intelligence-led and evidence-based policing,
community policing. When Nigel Jewett, a junior IT analyst with a background
in marine biology, approaches Chief Harrison and offers his fresh perspective on
data analysis, the chief realizes that breaking out of the boundaries of standard
policing practices might be the key to solving the city’s problems.
The case is not reproduced here but is available online in two parts:
• Case A: www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/227664.pdf
• Case B: www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/227665.pdf
1. What does this case reveal about the roles of data, information, science, and analysis in police
organizations?
2. What does this case reveal about modern police strategies and their implementation in police
organizations?
3. What does this case reveal about organizational behavior, management, and leadership in police
organizations?
4. If you were Chief Harrison, what would be your next move?
ALPHABETICAL LISTING OF
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INDEX
Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables and italic page numbers refer to figures.
absolute method of appraisal 336–337 artificial intelligence (AI) 427

accountability 51–52, 103–106; area 318; assignment: as continuous staffing process
blocking 427; as component of democracy 150; directed patrol 310, 314, 365; on-call
16; and job enrichment 240–241; and 14; police management functions 149–150;
management by objectives 238; and “new undercover 300
professionalism” 247; and transparency 16 Athos, A.G. 222, 233
active shooters 378–379 Atlantic Monthly magazine 371
Adams, John 87 attitudes 198–202; behavior modification and
“administration is administration” concept 23 200–201; deadly force and 200; defined 198;
administration subsystems 78–87; budget and development of 200; justification of 224; in
finance 81–82; human resources 78–79; organizational behavior 198–202; peer group
information technology (IT) 82–83; 216; personality and 201; prejudicial 199;
inspections 84–85; intelligence 86–87; race and 200; in systems 215; training and
internal affairs 85–86; legal assistance 82; 79; and transformational leadership 264
public information 83–84; training 79–80 audit: departmental 158; external 158
administrative analysis 81 authority 103–106; delegation of 106–108;
administrative decisions 302–303 and job enrichment 240–241; using 50
administrator style 187 authority-level principle 108–109
Adopt-a-School program 77 autocratic (authoritarian) leadership 270
adult-learning approach 246 Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems
African Americans 9, 11, 202, 422, 424–426 (AFIS) 91–92
Alexis, M. 207 auxiliary services subsystem 87–96;
allocation decisions 300 communications 88–89; crime scene/
Al Qaeda 397, 407 identification 92–93; detention 91–92;
American Bar Association Standards Relating to equipment and supply 95; facilities and
the Urban Police Function 345 maintenance 94; fleet services 95–96; health
American Bar Foundation 28 and wellness 93–94; laboratory 91; property
American Management Association 24 and evidence 90–91; records 88
American Society for Public Administration 24 avoiders 204
American Society of Evidence-Based Policing
(ASEBP) 432 Baltimore Police Department 124, 125, 344
analysis 308–316; administrative analysis barricaded persons 73
81; crime analysis 309–311; crime and beats 355–356
problem analysis 80–81; intelligence analysis Behan, Neil 181
314–315; operations analysis 81, 312–314; behavior modification 200
policy analysis 315–316; problem analysis Bennis, W. 235, 243, 260
311–312 Berkley, George 14
Anderson, William R. 245 bias: implicit 200; racial 407; religious 407
appealed policy 119 bias-based policing 316
area accountability 318 Bittner, Egon 33–34
ARJIS (Automated Regional Justice black Americans 10, 422
Information System), San Diego 404 Blake, Robert 273, 275
arrest: false 14; illegal 199; response-related Blanchard, Kenneth 275–277
361; warrantless 13 Boulding, Kenneth 57
Arrested Development (Couper) 346 bounded rationality 319–320
462 Index
Bowditch, J.L. 199, 222 command and control systems 305–307

Boyd, M. 242 Commission on Accreditation for Law
Brown, D.K. 361 Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) 118–119,
budget and finance task 81–82 140, 158, 245, 316
bureaucratic leadership 270 communication: channels 291, 292, 293;
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and directions and barriers 293–296, 294;
Explosives (ATF) 19 downward 293, 296; e-mail 210; lateral
Bureau of Justice Assistance 259, 327 296; nonverbal 209–210; one-way 210;
organizational 290; in police organization
CALEA Law Enforcement Agency 208–211, 290; tasks 88–89; two-way 210;
Accreditation Program 346 upward 293–296; verbal 209–210
calls: immediate response to 359–362 community: engagement 414–416; groups 10,
Carroll, Jerry 452–453 28, 165, 168, 174, 177, 184, 299, 310, 316,
case studies: Cod Bay 441–442; leading change 414, 448; -oriented police administration
in Riverside, California 451–454; Lowell, 16–19; police executive 183–185
Massachusetts 447–451; “One Week in community era 8–9
Heron City” 454–455; Rixton 442–443; community policing 28, 61, 116, 374–376; in
strategic planning in Spokane, Washington Chicago 11; to counter violent extremism
443–447 396; implications of 316, 317–318, 319;
cause and effect 333–334 new information requirements for 317–318;
Centers for Disease Control (CDC) 19 organizational dimension 18; philosophical
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 387, 393, 396 dimension 17; strategic dimension 17;
chain of command 110–112 tactical dimension 18; three strategic
Chamber of Commerce 184 elements of 17
change: agent 244; and organizational learning community relations strategies 371
138–139 community services 76
charisma 269 competition 222
charismatic leadership 269 complete leader 260
Chicago: CLEAR (Citizen and Law computer-aided dispatch (CAD) systems 89,
Enforcement Analysis and Reporting) in 306–307
404; community policing in 11 conflict 222; among groups 222–224; hostile
Churchill, Winston 16 223; management 32; management skills
Citizen-Oriented Police Enforcement (COPE) 377; personality 153; police–community
project 343–344, 375–376 136; public 355; racial 264; resolution
civilianization 248–249 techniques 30; work-family 165
civil service systems 178–179 contingency plans 143
clean-beat crime fighters 204 continuity of operations 402
CLEAR (Citizen and Law Enforcement controlling: decision making 320–321; police
Analysis and Reporting) in Chicago 404 management functions 156–159
closed-loop system 55–56, 56 cooperation 222; and competition 223; critical
closed system 56 importance of 223; defined 222; operational
coercion 229, 267 405; public/private 62; regional 403
Coffey, R.E. 222, 233 coordination control 262–263
cohesiveness 220; group 220–221; and COPS Office 146, 259
performance 221; and productivity 220–221 corporate investigators 420
Coleman, S.F. 199 Couper, David C. 346
collaboration: examples of 417–418; and COVID-19 pandemic 4, 50, 388, 419
homeland security 62; importance crime: organized 71–72; organized retail 420;
and necessity of 416; interagency 180; and problem analysis 80–81; solving 49;
inter-organizational 416–417; police transnational 421
administration 416–419; problem-solving crime analysis 309–311
417–418; public–private 390, 399 crime control 31–32
Index 463
crime control strategies: follow-up diversity 249–250; police 424–427; police

investigations 362, 364; immediate response administration 424–427
to calls 359–362; preventive patrol 356–359 DNA analysis 91, 428, 429
crime prevention 48, 73–74, 372–373 DNA evidence techniques 364
Crime Prevention Through Environmental domestic disputes 376–377
Design (CPTED) 74 domestic terrorism 407–408
crime scene/identification task 92–93 domestic violence 376–378
criminal gangs 72, 314 downward communications 293, 296
criminal intelligence procedures 86 Drucker, Peter 113, 211, 235, 237–239
criminal investigation 69–70 drug enforcement 71
criminal justice agencies 180–182 Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) 405
criminal justice system 387 drunk driving 69
Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) 122
Crowley, James 424 early police administration 4–6
cultural deviation 280 Eastman, E.M. 133
Eastman, G.D. 133
DARE program (Drug Abuse Resistance economic model 229–230
Education) 77 elaboration, and emergent system 217
data-driven policing for public trust 312 e-mail communication 210
Davis, Ed 448–450 Emergency Management Assistance
decision making: and bounded rationality Compact 392
319–320; controlling 320–321; data-driven emergent system 216; consequences of
427; evidence-based 431; rational 319; 218–220; development of 217–218;
street-level 304–305; use-of-force 426 differentiation 217–218; elaboration 217;
decisions: administrative 302–303; allocation growth 219; productivity 219; satisfaction
300; policy 301–302; strategic and tactical 219; standardization 218
301; street-level 298–299; supervisory emotional intelligence 434–435
299–300 Employee Assistance Program (EAP) 93
de-escalation training 36 ends analysis 141
delegation of authority 106–108 environment 136–137; of police leadership
democratic society, and police administration 281–282
14–16 equifinality, as principle of open systems 57
departmental audit 158 equity 51–52, 62, 128; as determinant of work
Department of Defense 393 motivation 232
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Eskridge, C.W. 247
87, 327, 391, 392–394, 402, 403, 406, ethical dilemmas 28
409, 410 evaluation 142; formal 341; “in-basket exercise”
detective work 363 151; inside vs. outside 344–345; negative
detention 91–92 333, 335; peer 337; routine 334; subjective
Diallo, Amadou 424 113
Differential Response Model 368 evidence-based policing 431–432
differential responses 367 expectancy theory 232
differentiation 217–218 expertise 268–269
diplomatic leadership 270–271 external audit 158
directed patrol assignment 310, 314, 365 externally imposed policy 120
directing 101, 133–135; and administrative external role, of police executives 174–176
decisions 302; development stage of 155;
and feedback 153–154; police management Facebook 83, 89, 429
functions 153–155 facilities and maintenance 94
Dirty Harry 31 Fair and Impartial Policing (FIP) training 200
discipline 127–128 Fair Labor Standards Act 14
DiscoverPolicing.org 146 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 19
464 Index
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 19, 149, Greene, Jack 348

223, 305, 387, 393, 394, 396, 405–406, group cohesiveness and productivity 220–221
445; National Academy 258; Uniform grouping like functions 114–117
Crime Report (UCR) 345 groups: cohesiveness 220–221; community
Federal Emergency Management Agency 10, 28, 165, 168, 174, 177, 184, 299,
(FEMA) 19, 391, 393, 401 310, 316, 414, 448; and competition
federalism 12 222; conflict among 222–224; and
Federal Law Enforcement Training Center 149 cooperation 222; ethnic 6, 250; extreme
feedback 59; in closed-loop system 55–56, far-right 407; extremist 408; grouping
56; described 55; to directing function like functions 114–117; immigrant 6;
153–154; importance of 60–61, 159; lack intergroup behavior 223; minority 8, 10,
of 59; in open-loop system 55–56, 56; 409, 426, 428; neighborhood watch 414,
periodic 335; police management functions 436; in organizations 211–212; in police
137–138; and police managers 138; process organizations 213–215; private 175;
of 55; in staffing function 145, 150; of production competition among 223–224;
supervisors 158 productivity 220–221; racial 250
Fiedler, Fred 273–274 group social system 215–217
field interrogation 366 growth, and emergent system 219
field training 79, 149 growth model of motivation 230–233
The Fifth Discipline (Senge) 432 guidelines: administrative 302; agency 119;
fleet services 95–96 behavioral 117; organizational 125–127;
Floyd, George 3, 9, 146, 166, 265, 380, 422 structured 123; written 117–119
Flynn, Stephen 398
follow-up investigations 362–364 Haberfeld, Maria 277
foot patrol 373–374 Hawthorne studies 230, 234
force, use of 50 health of police officers 93–94
forecasting 141 Hersey, Paul 275–277
formal leader 259 Herzberg, Frederick 235, 239–240
Franklin, Benjamin 410 homeland security: central role of police in
free-rein leadership 271 387; Department of Homeland Security
392–394; domestic terrorism 407–408;
Gaebler, T. 173 Hurricane Katrina 391–392; information
Gandhi, Mahatma 269 sharing 404–406; intelligence-led policing
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 424 408–409; National Incident Management
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) 305 System (ICS) 399–401; National Response
ghetto 10 Framework (NRF) 399; and police
globalization 390; economic 379; effect of 390; administration 19; police role in 386–390,
police administration 420–422; policing 387; preparedness cycle 395; prevention
themes of 390, 436 395–396; protection 397–398; recovery
goals: and criteria 329; defined 45; and norm 401–402; response 398–399; safety and
clarification 263–265 liberty 409–410; September 11, 2001 attacks
Goldstein, Herman 202, 241, 243, 258 390–391; technology and training 402–404
Goleman, Daniel 434–435 Homeland Security Bill 393
government: agencies 178–180; reinventing Homeland Security Presidential Directives
173–174 (HSPDs) 393–394
Government Accountability Office 397 homeostasis, as principle of open systems 57
Governors Highway Safety Association 68 Hoover, Larry 389
GPS (Global Positioning System) technology hostile conflict 223
306–307 Houston Police Department 47
GREAT (Gang Resistance Education and How to Rate Your Local Police (Couper) 346
Training) 77 human development 234–235; approaches 235
Great Recession 231 human perspective 58
Index 465
human relations 235 intelligence-led policing 408–409

human resources 78–79 Interagency Threat Assessment Coordination
Hurricane Katrina 19, 388, 390, 391–392, Group 406
393, 397, 399, 410 interdependence: dynamic 158; police
Huse, E.F. 199, 222 management functions 135–136; of
hygiene factors 239–240 subsystem tasks 96
intergroup behavior: competition 222; conflict
ICAT (Integrating Communications, 222–224; cooperation 222; varieties of
Assessment, and Tactics) model 36 221–224
immediate response to calls 359–362 internal affairs 85–86
implementation, planning process 142 Internal Revenue Service 72
implicit bias 200 internal role, of police executives 167–168
implied policy 120 International Association of Chiefs of Police
“in-basket exercise” 151 (IACP) 118–119, 146, 149, 158, 259, 327
incremental budgeting 81 International Association of Law Enforcement
individual performance appraisal 334–339 Planners (IALEP) 141
individuals in organizations 197–198; attitudes interoperability 389
198–202; communication 208–211; inter-organizational collaboration 416–419
perception 206–208; roles 202–204; investigative refinements 368–369
self-concept 204–206 Isenberg, Jim 278
industrialization 25 ISIS 407
informal organization 292
information: analysis of police information job enlargement 240
308–309; bounded rationality 319–320; job enrichment 235, 239–241
command and control systems 305–307; Johnson, Richard 449
communication channels 291, 292, 293; justice: organizational 251–252; police work
communication directions and barriers and meaning of 34; street 46
293–296, 294; controlling decision making juvenile operations 75
320–321; crime analysis 309–311; decision juvenile services 74–75
making and 297–303; implications of
community policing 316, 317–318, 322; Kansas City Police Department 67, 357
importance of 296–297; intelligence analysis Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment 342,
314–315; management information systems 362
307–308; operations analysis 312–314; Kennedy, John F. 264
operations information systems 303–305; King, Martin Luther, Jr. 269
organizational communication 290; police King, Rodney 9, 379, 424
information systems 303; policy analysis Kiwanis 184
315–316; problem analysis 311–312; Klockars, Carl 37
rational police decision making 318–319 Kunselman, J. 174
information sharing 404–406
Information Sharing and Analysis Centers laboratory task 91
(ISAC) 397 Lao-Tzu 283
information technology (IT) 82–83 lateral communications 296
innovation: and “new professionalism” 247; Latinos 9, 11, 451
technological 306 law enforcement: culture 248; drug 28;
inputs 55–56, 341–343 Hurricane Katrina and breakdown in 392;
in-service training 149 knowledge 248; practices and policies 248;
inside evaluation 344–345 skills 248; traffic 68–69
inspections 84–85 Law Enforcement Assistance Administration
institutionalization 281 (LEAA) 149, 175, 244
intelligence 86–87; analysis 314–315; Law Enforcement Education Program (LEEP)
emotional 434–435 149, 245
466 Index
leadership: autocratic style 270; bureaucratic mass violence 378

style 270; charisma 269; coercion 267; Mayne, Richard 5
coordination control 262–263; definition McClelland, David 434
of structure 261–262; diplomatic style McGregor, Douglas 235, 235–237, 238
270–271; environment of police leadership McLaren, R.C. 122
281–282; expertise 268–269; Fiedler’s means analysis 141
situational theory 273; free-rein style 271; “Measuring What Matters” initiative 250
functions of leadership 260–261; goal and media: police executive 182–183; relations 183
norm clarification 263–265; leadership grid Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 4
273–275, 274; leadership styles in policing Miranda decision 122
271–272; participative style 271; police mission see police mission
leader as subsystem 259–260; position power mitigation 395
266; preventing organizational failure modest theory of motivation 233–234
280–281; quality 278–280; rewards monitoring 343–344
267–268; servant 435–436; situational motivation 228–229; coercion model of 229;
leadership 275–277, 276; sources of economic model of 229–230; growth model
influence 265–266; styles in policing of 230–233; modest theory of 233–234;
271–272; styles of 269–270; theories of social model of 230; and transformational
272–273 leadership 264
leadership grid 273–275, 274 motivators 239, 240
Leadership in Police Organizations motorized police patrol 67
program 259 Mouton, Jane 273, 275
leading, and police executive 169–170 Murphy, Patrick V. 176–177, 244
learning organizations 432–434
legal assistance task 82 National Advisory Commission on Civil
legal context of police administration 13–14 Disorders 345
legality 51 National Advisory Commission on Criminal
legitimacy: building 425; as component Justice Standards and Goals 118, 345
of democracy 16; and “new National Association for the Advancement of
professionalism” 247 Colored People (NAACP) 184
Leon, Jeffrey 33, 35 national coherence 247
LGBTQ officers 250 National Commission on Productivity
liberty and safety 409–410 347–348
Likert, R. 235, 242 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Lions Clubs 184 upon the United States (Public Law
Los Angeles Police Department 51, 259 107–306) see 9/11 Commission
Louima, Abner 424 National Commission on the Causes and
Lovell, Chuck 380 Prevention of Violence 345
Lowell, Massachusetts Police Department National Counterterrorism Center 406
447–451 National Crime Information Center
(NCIC) 305
Madison Police Department 47 National Guard 180
management: implications, police work 38–40; National Incident Based Reporting System
information systems 307–308; modern (NIBRS) 88
perspectives on 431; police executive National Incident Management System
168–169, 170 (NIMS) 393, 399–401; overview of 401
management by objectives (MBO) 235, National Institute of Justice (NIJ) 250, 327, 454
237–239 National Integrated Ballistics Information
Managing Criminal Investigations (MCI) 368 Network (NIBIN) system 429
Managing Patrol Operations (MPO) 364, 368 National Labor Relations Board 127
Manger, Tom 282 National Organization of Black Law
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs 230–232 Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) 118
Index 467
National Response Framework (NRF) 399 organizational failure 280–281

National Security Agency 396 organizational guidelines 125–127
national security system 387 organizational health 250–251
National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) 118, 327 organizational justice 251–252
National Strategy for Countering Domestic organizational learning: change and 138–139;
Terrorism 407 and police leadership 434
negative entropy, as principle of open organizational tasks 66
systems 57 organizational technology 354
Neighborhood Watch programs 74 organizational values 263
New Orleans Police Department 391, 392 organization charts 110–111, 111, 115
New York City Police Department 53, 200 organization development (OD) 235, 243–244
New York Police Department (NYPD) 424; organizations: groups in 211–212; individuals
counter-terrorism intelligence 388 in 197–198; learning 432–434; management
9/11 Commission 391 functions by level in 134–135; policy
“non-negotiably coercive force” 34 119–122; principles 109–117; procedures
nonverbal communication 209–210 122–123; rules and regulations 123–125; as
normal accidents 280 systems 57–58
Northwestern University’s Center for Public organized crime 71–72
Safety 258 organized retail crime 420
organizing 66; police management functions
objective measures: performance evaluation 143–144
330–331 originated policy 119
objectives, defined 45 Osborne, D. 173
“Occupy Wall Street” movement 9, 379–380 outcome 341–343
Oettmeier, T.N. 338 output 341–343
Office of Community Oriented Policing outside evaluation 344–345; vs. inside
Services (OCOPS) 175, 250, 327 evaluation 344–345
Office of Law Enforcement Assistance 244 oversight failures 280
O’Hara, P. 280
O.J. Simpson trial 9 Paine, Thomas 87
omnipresence 26 Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) 184
on-call assignment 14 participative leaders 271
one-way communication 210 participative leadership 271
“One Week in Heron City” 454–455 participative management 235, 241–243
open-loop system 55–56, 56 patrol: allocation 300; refinements 364–367;
open systems 56; principles of 57 task 67–68
operational efficiency plans 143 Peel, Sir Robert 4–6, 28, 149, 356
operations, defined 66 peer-group pressure 216
operations analysis 81, 312–314 perception 206–208
operations information systems 303–305 performance and cohesiveness 221
operations subsystem 66–77; community performance-based budgeting 81
services 76; crime prevention 73–74; performance evaluation: cause and effect
criminal investigations 69–70; goals of 67; 333–334; goals and criteria 329; importance
juvenile services 74–75; organized crime of 327–329; individual performance
71–72; patrol 67–68; school services 76–77; appraisal 334–339; input, process, output,
special operations 72–73; traffic 68–69; vice and outcome 341–343; inside vs. outside
and drugs 71 evaluation 344–345; issues in performance
order maintenance 31–32 measurement 329–334; methods of
organizational communication 290, 294 performance appraisal 339, 340, 341;
organizational culture 212 monitoring 343–344; objective measures
organizational dimension, of community 330–331; organizational performance
policing 18 345–350, 349; programs, strategies, and
468 Index
units 341; quantity vs. quality 331; reliability political era 6; predictive policing 427–428;
and validity 331–332; statistical measures of privatization 419–420; professional era 6–8;
349; subjective measures 330–331 servant leadership 435–436; social context of
periodic feedback 335 9–11; ten guiding principles 19–20
personality conflict 153 police administrators 3–4, 9, 12–16, 51,
personal system 215–216 67, 82–84, 126, 128, 135, 149, 157,
Peters, T.J. 171 241, 300–302, 308, 310, 320, 327, 330,
Pfiffner, J.M. 114 333–334, 341, 345, 350, 403, 433; see also
philosophical dimension of community administrators
policing 17 The Police Chief magazine 308
Phoenix Police Department 181 police chiefs 164; in Bellevue, Nebraska
place-based policing strategies 365 249–250; as employee 231; external roles
planning 80–81, 139–143; administrative 167; internal roles 167
analysis 81; crime and problem analysis police–community conflict 136
80–81; operations analysis 81 police corruption 71, 216, 414
planning process 140–142; ends analysis police culture 214
141; evaluation 142; forecasting 141; police decision making 297–303;
implementation 142; means analysis 141 administrative decisions 302–303; allocation
PODSCORB (Planning, Organizing, decisions 300; policy decisions 301–302;
Directing, Staffing, Coordinating, rational 319; strategic and tactical decisions
Reporting, Budgeting) 133 301; street-level decisions 298–299;
police: equipment and supplies 95; goals and supervisory decisions 299–300; see also
objectives 45, 47–48; inputs, processes, decision making
outputs, and feedback 55–56; in larger police departments, and values 46
system 61–62; mission 45; objectives police discretion 28–31, 117–118
45; organizations as systems 57–58; and police education 244–245
people safety 49; police organization Police Executive Research Forum (PERF)
as system 58–61; preventing crime 48; 118–119, 158, 164–165, 327; Senior
professionalization 247–248; providing Management Institute for Police 258
quality services 49–50; and public spaces police executives: administrator style 187; basic
safety 49; purposes of 45–46; resources use roles of 166–167; characteristics of 164–166;
by 51; role in ghetto 10; role in homeland community 183–185; criminal justice
security 386–390, 387; solving crime 49; agencies 180–182; external role 174–176;
systems concept 53–55; and terrorism 387; internal role 167–168; leading 169–170;
types of systems 56–57; using force and managing 168–169, 170; media 182–183;
authority 50; values 51–53 other government agencies 178–180; police
police administration: collaboration executive styles 187; police unions 185–187;
416–419; community engagement 414–416; politician 188; politics 176–178; pursuit of
community era 8–9; community-oriented excellence 170–173; reinventing government
16–19; contemporary issues in 413–437; 173–174; statesman 189–190; top cop style
in democratic society 14–16; early 4–6; 187–188
emotional intelligence 434–435; police executive styles 187; administrator 187;
evidence-based policing 431–432; politician 188; statesman 189–190; top cop
four contemporary issues 422–436; style 187–188
four contemporary themes 414–422; Police Foundation 67, 242, 246, 258, 357
globalization 420–422; homeland security police information analysis: crime analysis
and 19; importance of 281; learning 309–311; intelligence analysis 314–315;
organizations 432–434; legal context of operations analysis 312–314; other types of
13–14; modern perspectives on management problem analysis 311–312; policy analysis
431; police diversity 424–427; police 315–316
legitimacy 422–424; police technology police information systems 303
428–431; political context of 11–13; Police Leadership in America 258
Index 469
police leaders/leadership 260, 261, by objectives (MBO) 237–239; modest

277–278, 278; environment of 281–282; theory of motivation 233–234; motivation
organizational learning and 434; outreach 228–229; organizational health 250–251;
by 282; as a subsystem 259–260; see also organizational justice 251–252; organization
leadership development (OD) 243–244; participative
police legitimacy 422–424 management 241–243; police education
police management functions 278; assignment 244–245; police organizational development
149–150; change and organizational learning 244; police professionalization 247–248;
138–139; controlling 156–159; directing police training 245–247; social model of
153–155; environment 136–137; feedback motivation 230; Theory X 235–237; Theory
137–138; interdependence 135–136; by Y 235–237
level in organization 134–135; organizing police organizations: accountability 103–106;
143–144; planning process 139–142; administration subsystem 78–87; attitudes
police plans, types of 142–143; promotion 198–202; authority 103–106; authority-
150–151; recruitment 145–147; selection level principle 108–109; auxiliary services
147–148; staffing 144–145; system building subsystem 87–96; chain of command
135; termination 151–153; training 110–112; communication 208–211;
148–149 communication in 290; delegation of
police managers 133, 260, 261; and authority 106–108; discipline 127–128;
feedback 138 emergent system, consequences of 218–220;
police mission 46–47; defined 45; Houston, emergent system development 217–218;
Texas 47; Madison, Wisconsin 47; Portland, group cohesiveness and productivity
Oregon 47 220–221; grouping like functions 114–117;
police officers: rank-and-file 241; safety, groups in 213–215; groups in organizations
health, and wellness of 93–94; see also police 211–212; group social system 215–217;
executives human perspective 58; individuals in
police organizational tasks 65–96; budget and 197–198; key organizational principles
finance 81–82; communications 88–89; 109–117; major subsystems of 66–96;
community services 76; crime prevention operations subsystem 66–77; organizational
73–74; crime scene/identification task guidelines 125–127; organizational policy
92–93; criminal investigation 69–70; 119–122; organizational procedures
detention 91–92; facilities and maintenance 122–123; organizational rules and regulations
94; fleet services 95–96; human resources 123–125; perception 206–208; principles
78–79; information technology (IT) 82–83; and policies in 103–130; responsibility
inspections 84–85; intelligence 86–87; 103–106; roles 202–204; self-concept
interdependence of 96; internal affairs 204–206; span of control 113–114; strategic
85–86; juvenile services 74–75; laboratory management perspective 59; as a system
91; legal assistance 82; organized crime 58–61; traditional, structural perspective
71–72; patrol 67–68; planning and analysis 58; unity of command 112–113; varieties
80–81; police equipment and supplies of intergroup behavior 221–224; written
95; police training 79–80; property and guidelines 117–119
evidence 90–91; public information 83–84; police perception and symbolic assailant 207
records 88; safety, health, and wellness of police personality 201
police officers 93–94; school services 76–77; police plans: contingency plans 143;
special operations 72–73; traffic 68–69; vice operational efficiency plans 143; reactive
regulation and drug enforcement 71 plans 142; strategic plans 143; types of
police organization development 244; 142–143
civilianization 248–249; coercion model Police Services Study 32, 35–36
229; diversity 249–250; economic model police strategies and tactics: active shooters
229–230; growth model of motivation 378–379; community policing 374–376;
230–233; human development 234–235; community relations strategies 371; crime
job enrichment 239–241; management control strategies 355–364; crime prevention
470 Index
372–373; domestic violence 376–378; prevention: crime 48, 73–74, 372–373;

follow-up investigations 362, 364; foot homeland security 395–396; situational
patrol 373–374; immediate response to calls crime 74, 372–373
359–362; investigative refinements 368–369; preventive patrol 356–359
patrol refinements 364–367; preventive Primal Leadership (Goleman) 435
patrol 356–359; problem-oriented policing priority-based budgeting 81
370–371; protest 379–380; public relations privatization 390; police administration
371–372; rapid response refinements 367, 419–420
368; refinements 364–369; specific problems proactive repeat offender tactics 369
and issues 376 problem analysis 311–312
police technology: examples of 429, 430; problem-oriented policing 28, 116, 241,
and police functions 429; and policing 370–371
outcomes 430 problem solvers 204
police unions 185–187 process 341–343
police work: core of the police role 32–35; productivity: cohesiveness and 221; emergent
crime control 31–32; evolution of 24–28; system 219
management implications 38–40; and professional era 6–8
meaning of justice 34; nature of 23–40; professionals 203
order maintenance 31–32; police discretion program evaluation 341
28–31; routine patrol 37–38; skill of programmatic/activity budgeting 81
policing 35–37; social service 31–32 Promising Strategies for Strengthening Police
policing: coercive nature of 35; community Department Wellness Programs 93
374–376; as craft or science 39; evidence- promotion, police management functions
based 431–432; in free society 18; 150–151
intelligence-led 408–409; leadership styles property: and evidence 90–91; management 90
in 271–272; predictive 427–428; problem- protection, and homeland security 397–398
oriented 370–371; quality leadership in protest, and police strategies and tactics
278–280; skill of 35–37; values in 46 379–380
policy analysis 315–316 public conflict 355
policy decisions 301–302 public information 83–84
political context of police administration 11–13 public relations 371–372
political era 6 public spaces, safety of 49
politician style 188 public trust 312
politics 176–178; and New York Police 7 pursuit of excellence: police executive 170–173
Portland Police Bureau 47, 51
position power 266 quality leadership in policing 278–280
POSTBECPIRD (Planning, Organizing, quality services, providing 49–50
Staffing, Training, Budgeting, Equipment,
Coordination, Public Information, racial bias 407
Reporting, Directing) 133 racial conflict 264
practical dilemmas 28 racial profiling 423
predictive policing 427–428 rank-and-file police officers 241
preparedness cycle 395 rapid response refinements 367, 368
President’s Commission on Campus rational police decision making 320
Unrest 345 reactive plans 142
President’s Commission on Law Enforcement reactive repeat offender program 369
and Administration of Justice 117, 345, 356 records 88
President’s Crime Commission 7, 154, 199 Records Management Systems (RMS) 88
President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing recovery 401–402; homeland security 401–402
4, 17, 423; building trust and legitimacy recruitment 147; police management functions
425; recommendations 425 145–147; and police managers 204; as
Presthus, R. 114 staffing function activity 144–145
Index 471
“recruit training” 149 “situational exigencies” 34

Red Cross 180, 401–402 situational leadership 275–277, 276
refinements: investigative 368–369; patrol situational theory 273
364–367; police strategies and tactics skill of policing 35–37
364–369; rapid response 367, 368 Smith, Bruce 7
Reinventing Government (Osborne and Gaebler) social context of police administration 9–11
173–174 social model of motivation 230
Reiss, A.J. 199 social service 31–32
relative methods of appraisal 336–337 solvability factors 368
reliability 331–332 sources of influence 265–266
religious bias 407 Southern Police Institute (University of
repeat offender approach 369 Louisville) 149
Repeat Offender Program Experiment (ROPE) span of control 113–114
project 181–182 special operations 72–73
required system 215 Spelman, W. 361
requisite variety, as principle of open systems 57 Spokane Police Department (SPD) 443–444
resource diversion 281 stabilization center 50
resources 51 staffing: assignment 149–150; controlling
response, and homeland security 398–399 156–159; and delegation of authority 134;
responsibility 103–106 directing 153–155; feedback in 145, 150;
rewards, and leadership 267–268 police management functions 144–145;
Riverside Police Department 451–454 promotion 150–151; recruitment 145–147;
Roethlisberger, F.J. 235 selection 147–148; termination 151–153;
Rotary Club 184, 259 training 148–149
routine patrol 37–38 Stamper, Norman 277
Rowan, Charles 5 standardization, emergent system 218
statesman style 189–190
Safe Streets Act 245 Steinman, M. 247
safety: balancing liberty and 409–410; and Stinchcomb, James 245
liberty 409–410; of police officers 93–94; strategic dimension of community
systems 388 policing 17
SARA model 370 strategic management perspective 59
satisfaction, and emergent system 219 strategic plans/planning 143, 443–447
School Resource Officers (SROs) 77 strategic/tactical decisions 301
school services 76–77 strategies, evaluating 341
Seattle Police Department 415 “street justice” 46
security system 388 street-level decisions 298–299
selection, police management function structural failures 280
147–148 structure, defined 261–262
selective traffic enforcement 69 subjective measures: performance evaluation
self-awareness 205 330–331
self-concept 204–206 supervisory decisions 299–300
self-confidence 205 system evolution, as principle of open
self-esteem 205 systems 57
self-regulation 434 system learning 138
Senge, Peter 432 systems: building, police management
September 11, 2001 attacks 315, 386–387, functions 135; organizations as 57–58;
390–391, 392, 396, 405, 410, 416 police in larger 61–62; police organization as
servant leadership 435–436 58–61; types of 56–57
Shearing, Clifford 33, 35 systems approach 53
Simpson, O.J. 9 systems concept 53–55
situational crime prevention 74, 372–373 systems thinking 432
472 Index
tactical dimension of community policing 18 urbanization 25

target hardening 372 USA PATRIOT Act 393, 409
task-related maturity 275 US Constitution 47
Taylor, Breonna 365 US Department of Justice 87, 244
technological innovation 306
technology: homeland security 402–404; police validity 331–332
428–431; police administration 428–431 values: in policing 46, 51–53
telecommunications 89 verbal communication 209–210
termination 151–153 vice regulation 71
terrorism: domestic 407–408; police and 387 Vietnam War 87
theories of leadership 272–273 violence: domestic 376–378; mass 378; and
Theory X 235, 235–237 symbolic assailant 207; youth 76, 278
Theory Y 235, 235–237 Violent Criminal Apprehension Program 223
time 115 violent extremism 396
top cop style 187–188 Vito, G.F. 174
tough cops 203–204 Viverette, Mary Ann 259
traditional, structural perspective 58 Vollmer, August 7
traffic analysis 311 volunteer police 415
traffic deaths 68
traffic task 68–69 “walking-around management” 155
training 79–80, 245–247; homeland security Washington, George 87
402–404; police management functions Waterman, R.H., Jr. 171
148–149; see also police training wellness of police officers 93–94
transformational leadership 264 Whitehead, T.N. 293
transnational crime 421 Wickersham Commission 7, 423
transparency 51, 53; as component of democracy Wilson, C.Z. 207
16; and Phoenix Police Department 181; Wilson, James Q. 29, 31, 39, 122, 247, 355
police vs. prosecutor on 181 Wilson, O.W. 7, 122
trust: building 425; public 312 women: and domestic dispute 377;
Twitter 83, 89, 429 employment rights of 14; human trafficking
two-way communication 210 of 421; as police officers 426
work-family conflict 165
“unarticulated improvisation” 154 World Trade Organization 379
undercover assignment 300 World War II 16, 444
Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system 88, written guidelines 117–119
345, 405 Wycoff, M.A. 338
units, evaluating 341
unity of command 112–113 youth violence 76, 278
University of Louisville’s Southern Police YouTube 35, 65, 83, 379
Institute 258
upward communications 293–296 zero-based budgeting 81

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POLICE

PART I—Basic Considerations 1

­CHAPTER 1—Introduction to Police Administration 3

­CHAPTER 2—The Nature of Police Work 23

­CHAPTER 3—Police Goals and Systems 44

Making Public Spaces Safe and Orderly 49

­CHAPTER 4—Police Organizational Tasks 65

PART II—The Traditional Perspective 101

­CHAPTER 5—Principles and Policies in the Police Organization 103

­CHAPTER 6—Functions of Police Management 133

­CHAPTER 7—The Police Executive 164

PART III—The Human Perspective 195

­CHAPTER 8—Individuals and Groups in the Police Organization 197

Groups in Organizations 211

­CHAPTER 9—Developing the Police Organization 228

­CHAPTER 10—Leadership in the Police Organization 257

Position Power 266

PART IV—The Strategic Management Perspective 287

­CHAPTER 11—Information in the Police Organization 289

Intelligence Analysis 314

­CHAPTER 12—Evaluating Police Performance 326

­CHAPTER 13—Police Strategies and Tactics 354

Specific Problems and Issues 376

­CHAPTER 14—Police and Homeland Security 386

­CHAPTER 15—Contemporary Issues in Police Administration 413

CASE STUDIES 441

Alphabetical Listing of Suggested Readings 457

­ 3.1 The Relationship between Overall Mission and Specific

4.1 Thirty Basic Organizational Tasks 66

I am very grateful for the ­long-​­standing assistance and encouragement pro-

AFIS Automated Fingerprint Identification System

GREAT Gang Resistance Education and Training

SARA Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment

The Modern Policing blog is located at https://gcordner.wordpress.com. No

Preceding each of the chapters is a list of learning objectives that identifies a

• Cite the first two fundamental principles of Peelian reform.

MODERN POLICING BLOG

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://­gcordner.wordpress.com/­2018/­06/­12/­­letter-­​­­to-­​­­young-​­cops. The hyperlink at

Early Police Administration

The development of police administration had to await the development of

1. The police should be organized along military lines.

The foundation of Peel’s approach to police administration is in his first two

The Political Era

The Professional Era

Although complaints about police abuses and inefficiency were common in

Box 1.1 Politics and the New York Police

The Community Era

The Social Context of Police Administration

Box 1.2 Police Role in the Ghetto

Box 1.3 Community Policing in Chicago

The Political Context of Police Administration

Part of the environment of police administration is the governmental and

Although the political environment of local police administration varies from

The Legal Context of Police Administration

Police Administration in a Democratic Society

MODERN POLICING BLOG

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://­gcordner.wordpress.com/­2020/­08/­18/­­tough-­​­­on-​­chiefs/. The hyperlink at “­as

­Community-​­Oriented Police Administration

very important implications for police administration. To put it quite simply, if

1. The philosophical dimension.

CHAPTER 1—Introduction to Police Administration 3

CHAPTER 2—The Nature of Police Work 23

CHAPTER 3—Police Goals and Systems 44

CHAPTER 4—Police Organizational Tasks 65

CHAPTER 5—Principles and Policies in the Police Organization 103

CHAPTER 6—Functions of Police Management 133

CHAPTER 7—The Police Executive 164

CHAPTER 8—Individuals and Groups in the Police Organization 197

CHAPTER 9—Developing the Police Organization 228

CHAPTER 10—Leadership in the Police Organization 257

CHAPTER 11—Information in the Police Organization 289

CHAPTER 12—Evaluating Police Performance 326

CHAPTER 13—Police Strategies and Tactics 354

CHAPTER 14—Police and Homeland Security 386

CHAPTER 15—Contemporary Issues in Police Administration 413

3.1 The Relationship between Overall Mission and Specific

I am very grateful for the long-standing assistance and encouragement pro-

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/06/12/letter-to-young-cops. The hyperlink at

Box 1.1 Politics and the New York Police

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2020/08/18/tough-on-chiefs/. The hyperlink at “as

Community-Oriented Police Administration

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2015/06/25/presidents-task-force-final-report. The

Box 1.4 Policing in a Free Society

ost-September 11, 2001, and subsequently in the aftermath of Hurri-

intelligence-led policing, predictive policing, or just plain good policing for a

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/06/10/policing-addiction. The hyperlink at “This article”

Box 2.1 Police Discretion

Box 2.2 Police Work and the Meaning of Justice

Box 2.3 The Coercive Nature of Policing

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/de-escalation/. The hyperlinks at “here” and

Box 3.1 Values in Policing

Source: Robert Wasserman and Mark H. Moore. 1988. “Values in Policing.” In

Portland, Oregon—The mission of the Portland Police Bureau is to reduce

Box 3.2 Goals and Objectives

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2022/01/31/stabilization-center-as-jail-hospital-

neighborhoods must be treated equally, for example—that might require officers to

Source: Modern Policing Blog, https://gcordner.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/getting-the-facts-out-quickly/. The hyper-

other words, a c losed-loop system provides for the introduction of information

Box 3.3 Principles of Open Systems

The purposes of the police—mission, goals, objectives, and other important

6 Houston Police Department. 2022. “Mission Statement.” Online at: www.houstontx.gov/

TABLE 4.1 Thirty Basic Organizational Tasks