Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Week 04 Field Ops
Week 04 Field Ops
Organizational Styles
JQ Wilson: 3 Styles:
Watchman: emphasizes peacekeeping; not aggressive in law
enforcement; little control over officers
Legalistic: aggressive crime-fighting; greater control over officers
Service: responsiveness to community expectations; more
common in low-crime communities
How effective is Patrol?
Aspects of evaluating the effectiveness of police
patrol:
Response Time is the gold standard for police &
Public
Response time should increase likelihood of arrest
Should increase satisfaction with police
2) Apprehend Criminals
Requirements: a. learning of a crime
b. official recording
c. attempt to ID and arrest
Police Operations
Police Investigations
Factors influencing the reporting of crime:
Learn through reactive response most common
Citizen reporting highly discretionary (gatekeepers)
Police rarely discover crimes in progress
Victims report roughly 35% of the time
Influences on reporting: seriousness, violence, injury,
expense of loss
Reasons for not reporting: crime unimportant,
pessimistic about anything being done, crimes as private
Police Operations
Police Investigations
Myths about Detective Work: The CSI
complex: Exciting, Requires courage/skill, all
crime is solvable
Organization of Investigations: located in
different unit, size varies tremendously
Detective Position: high status, discretion,
autonomy, no uniforms, defined measures of
performance
Status varies by unit (homicide highest)
Police Operations
Police Investigations
Investigation is 2 Staged Process:
1) Preliminary Investigation (5 Steps)
- ID and arrest of suspect
- Aid to victims (medical)
- Securing crime scene
- Collecting physical evidence
- Preparing preliminary report
Patrol makes 80% of all arrests (suspect
near the scene)
Police Operations
Police Investigations
2) Follow up investigations
case is assigned to detectives for follow up
- routine activities: interviews, crime scene
- secondary activities: canvassing witnesses,
discussing case with super., collecting evidence
- tertiary activities: discussion of case with
other officers, interviewing suspects, checking
records, conducting stakeouts
Police Operations
Police Investigations
Arrest discretion: arrests occur in only about
half of the situations where sufficient
evidence exists to arrest (Black 1984)
Demand Reduction
Drug Education Programs (DARE)
Largely ineffective