What are some of the ideal structures that are currently in use today? Conduct a web search on four types of departments. Choose one department that is very large (more than 1000 sworn police officers); choose one that is considered large sized (more than 150 but less than 1000); choose a medium sized department (between 50 to 149 sworn officers) and finally a small department (less than 50 sworn officers). Go to each department’s website and find their Year-end Report. If one doesn’t exist for the department you choose, try to find another agency in the same category that has one or a similar report. Look in each agency’s Year-end Report (or similar document) for the department’s organizational chart. What are some of the similarities that you find among the departments structure regardless of size? What about the significant differences? Why do you suppose a given department set its organizational structure the way it does? Choose one department and decide if the organization’s structure for the department is consistent with a logical configuration. What are some of the positive and negative aspects you observed and why? What determines what structures are best used?
Most of the ideal police department structures that are currently in use today consist of the chief of police as the head of the department. However, from the hierarchy of the chief of the department follows different structures from all the departments (McGuire, E. 2003). This is because of the number of workers in the department. In the small department, such as the Taylor Mill Police Department contains less than fifty police officers. Their chief of police is Steve Knauf, who is followed by the Administration division Lt. Ron Wilson. From the Administration division, it is broken down to the Patrol Division led by Sgt. Karen Spanyer and Criminal Investigation Division by Sgt. Pat Reis (Bailey, 2015). An example of the medium police department is the Irving police department. The structure of the department indicates that the police chief is the one in charge. The chief of police works closely with the office of administration, professional standards, emergency management, legal advisor and animal service. After the police chief the hierarchy descends with officials in the Field Operations Bureau, Investigation Service Bureau and Administration Service Bureau. It is under these fields where police officers get their orders.
An example of a large police department is the Virginia Beach Police Department. The chain of hierarchy in the department indicates that the chief of police is the head and is named as James A. Cervera. He is closely followed by the deputy chief Anthony F. Zucaro, Jr., Support Division Manager Thomas C. Mitchell, Investigative Division Deputy chief William T. Dean, Jr., and Professional Standards Division Deputy Chief Patrick L. Gallagher. From this commanders there are other high ranking officers that come under them, who are in charge of their respective field of work.
The very large police department chosen for this research is the Los Angeles police department. This department caters for a large area with a lot of people. The crime rate of this region is very high. Therefore, there is a need for more law enforcement officers. The board of commissioners are the ones who are in charge of hiring the chief of police an example is the current head called Charles Beck. After the chief of police there is a long hierarchy of workers under him. Most of these people are the heads of certain fields in the police department.
The similarities between the department structures has to do with them being led by the chief of police. It can be observed from the charts that all the four categories of departments were being headed by the chief of police. It can also be observed that the chain of command from all the departments is in a hierarchical format. Hence, the officers have a chain of command that they need to follow and not bypass the other.
The differences of the department structure occur, due to the number of officers working in that department (Lannone & Lannone, 2001, p.35). Therefore, with large numbers of workers there is a need for many people to be deployed in the chain of command who will follow after the chief of police. This is the reason why some of the structures are broken down in order to accommodate all the workers. In the small department, the structure has been simplified and broken down to the major important functions of the police officers.
The significant difference between the structures of the police department is based on the size and scope of the department. In a large and very large departments, the area in which, the police are situated is usually very large. Therefore, there is a need for extra attention to all criminal activities that might take place. Thereby, the structure is broken down to specific fields that need their own leaders.
The Los Angeles Police Department has set its organizational structure in the manner that it does because of the large number of people and the high rates of criminal activities in the region. Therefore, there is a need for department to formulate new fields that will perform certain functions in order to aid in public safety.
The Irving police department has formulated its organizational structure to be consistent with that of the logical configuration. This is because there is a chain of network that has been linked with one another with regards to the function of the department. At first this department looks like it has a single leadership, however, it has been created through multiple police fields. This is the reason why the chief of police is in charge and followed by the Field Operations Bureau, Investigation Service Bureau and Administration Service Bureau. Through these fields there are many officers who work underneath them. Therefore, they are able to function as one unit in order to achieve peace and order in Irving. The positive aspects of such a structure are that police officers will have an opportunity to communicate directly to their immediate seniors or commanders and discuss any problems they encounter in their field of work. Hence, there will be effective, communication and efficient work will be done. The negative aspect of such a structure is that there are times when two cases interlock. Therefore, officers will have a hard time communicating with commanders of different fields in the department.
The size of workers and location of the department will determine what structure should be formulated.
How, from an organizational standpoint, can we reconcile a situation where that officer is on patrol (necessary as part of minimum staffing) but is suddenly needed to assist in an accident investigation? Who decides whether an officer stays on patrol or acts as an investigator? How does this unity of command issue resolve itself from the perspective of the officer? a sergeant? a chief?
There is a chain of command that all the police officer follows in the police department. This is considered to be one of the key reasons why the police structure was formulated. In this case, the patrol police officer’s immediate commander is the sergeant (Hassell, 2006). Therefore, whatever duty the sergeant gives them, they have to follow it. However, there are instances when a police department is understaffed. Therefore, the sergeant under the command of the lieutenant will give a go ahead for a patrol officer to assist in an investigation (Palmiotto, 2013, p.4). This is because the patrol officers are the ones who arrive early at a crime scene than most police officers especially detectives. Therefore, a sergeant is the one that can decide whether a patrol officer can stay on patrol or act as an investigator (John Dempsey, 2010, p.85). When there is good communication from the chain of command, then the work of the field and patrol officer will be easier. This is because there are communication from the patrol officer all the way to the chief of police. Hence, investigations will be carried out efficiently.
What are the liability consequences for an organization failing to adequately supervise its manpower?
When an organization fails to adequately supervise its manpower, then there will be complete chaos and mismanagement in the department (Carpenter & Fulton, 2009). Hence, all workers or police officers in this organization will fend for themselves and look after their own interests. Therefore, resulting them into doing corruption or other scandals.
Conduct a search of some of the more infamous police corruption scandals of the past decade or two (including the Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampart Investigation, the New York Police Department’s Mollen Commission, New Orleans Police Department’s response in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to name just three; there are many more).
There have been numerous forms of scandals in American police departments. Some of the scandals are based on failure to adequately supervise its manpower. Examples of these scandals are Los Angeles Police Department’s Rampant Investigations, which occurred in 1997 (Markovitz, 2011, p.74). These infamous scandals brought about the production of a television series called the Shield (Markovitz, 2011, p.96). After this scandal, police officers working in the anti-gang squad were implicated in a number of crimes such as framing suspects by planting evidence on them, unnecessary killings and corruption.
It can be observed that in 1999, there was another scandal in the Los Angeles Police Department regarding robbery ring. This came in the wake of the rampant scandal that ruined the image of this police department (Conser et al., 2005, p.276). In this scandal, a veteran police officer named as Ruben Palomares led a group of other officers to steal large amounts of drugs and guns from drug dealers.
There was a huge scandal in the New York Police Department of the 75th precinct in Brooklyn, regarding corruption and drug dealing in 1992. One of the officers mentioned in this scandal is Michael Dowd (TREASTER, 1994). This scandal became a big issue because of the increase of complaints from concerned citizens, thereby, causing the formation of the Mollen Commission. They conducted investigations on the matter and concluded that corruption and extortion was being practiced by some of the officers. In their reports some of the police officers were living in luxury and driving expensive cars such as the convertibles or limousines. The commission also found out that some police officers were robbing the drug dealers and selling the products.
These departments lacked unity of command because the chain of command was compromised. Most of these police officers were of higher ranking and therefore, they had an advantage of using it for their own gain (McGuire, 2003, p.40). Since they were of high ranking in their field, they used the junior officers to commit crimes, hence, passing on the corrupt lifestyle. It can also be observed that the chiefs of police were not concentrating on what was happening in the department. Therefore, it can be stated that they chose to close a blind eye to what was happening in their departments.
Reference
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