Comparative Overview
Consolidated Municipalities
When a city or town decides to consolidate their policing services, they are creating an entirely new department. Policies and procedures once used before, no longer translate to a consolidated force, and subsequently must be rewritten or altered. This altering or production of regulations must be done with extreme care, as a fluid unification of departments is a crucial aspect of success. Most municipalities chose consolidation for a number of reasons ranging from decreased population, tax revenue, and/or policing efficiency. The success of the consolidation process then hinges on the successful mitigation of the previously laid out problems.
Positive Results. Consolidating public services, such as law enforcement agencies, often bring about positive outcomes for the departments and the citizens involved in the process. One of he major positive outcomes of consolidating is allocation of resources to appropriate locations. A problem often seen within most municipalities is the excess or need of patrols and units. With a consolidated force, high-level employees will distribute resources accordingly. According to Krimmel, the Northern York County Regional Police Department’s consolidation experience, “…permitted the department to receive more training opportunities, created more professional choices for the officers as well as higher salaries”. Also, the ability to create multi-jurisdictional task forces or special units would be another positive outcome from the redistribution of resources (2000).
Negative Results. The negative outcomes of consolidation are often seen in the financial and public relations aspect of consolidating. One of the most prominent and controversial as...
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The municipal restructuring in Ontario from 1996 to 1999, whether voluntary or involuntary, was the most comprehensive process of municipal reforms since the Baldwin Act of 1849 (Frisken 30). After the election of Harris’ Conservative government in 1995, municipal reform took on a life of its own as it was followed with substantial activity between 1996 and 1999 (Sancton 135-56). This research paper looks to categorize, describe and evaluate the substantial activity that took place between the province and its municipal subordinates. While other papers have argued whether the change of the fiscal relationship was to benefit the province or if the structure of local government had simply become outdated, the issues of why the reforms occurred is not the focus of this research. However, what this paper will evaluate is whether the substantial activity made any long-term changes in the system by outlining the numerous reforms and examining their impact. This paper will begin by assessing the financial reform, which was the starting point for more extensive changes, followed by functional, structural and legislative reforms during 1996 to 1999.
Municipal control or an alternative delivery method? This is the question that has intrigued all levels of local government and created intense debates between taxpayers across municipalities. The services that municipalities provide are often vital to the existence of a local area. The issues of accountability, cost savings, quality of service and democracy often arise when choosing the best options to deliver services to a municipal area. In recent years the concepts of privatization, alternative service delivery and public-private partnerships are often promoted as ways cut down on overburdened annual city budgets and promote a higher quality of service to citizens. Municipalities have historically always provided basic services such as fire protection, water purification/treatment and recreational facilities. However, would private companies or another municipality be able to better deliver the same services more efficiently or at a lower cost? The city or town often provides a political grass roots approach to most local problems. Municipalities are better positioned and have a wider scope to provide services to their constituents in order to ensure quality of service that does not erode accountability and transparency, or drive the municipality deeper into debt.
...nt to work together has increased. It has become more common place for federal law enforcement to work with local law enforcement. The monetary influence from programs administered by the Executive Branch with such programs as COPS, helps bring new technologies to local police agencies, thus impacting policing. Moreover, the federal law enforcement’s creation of new crime fighting technologies, eventually make their way into the state and local police departments. This supports the idea that both the Legislative and Executive Branches influence law enforcement; however, the Executive Branch provides a more direct and active influence.
During the seventies in New Jersey created a program that could change life in society. This program occurred only in twenty-eight cities. Government and public officials were excited about this concept. Police officials were not so much. Foot patrol made officers walk in sleet and snow. Assigned foot patrol was a way of punishment for officers. State funding of foot patrol shut the mouths of some people. Silence stopped after the “Police Foundation”(Kelling) put foot patrol to the actual test. To contrary belief this rattled some arguments in the community an...
According to Kelling, Pate, Dieckman, & Brown (1974), patrol is the “backbone” of police work. This belief is based around the premise that the mere presence of police officers on patrol prohibits criminal activity. Despite increasing budgets and the availability of more officers on the streets, crime rates still rose with the expanding metropolitan populations (Kelling et al., 1974). A one year experiment to determine the effectiveness of routine preventive patrol would be conducted, beginning on the first day of October 1972, and ending on the last day of September 1973.
Gaughan, P. A., 2002. Mergers, Acquisitions, and Corporate restructuring. 3rd ed.New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Although, it has also been criticized for been incompatible with the community, inflexible and undermining some goals of policing, it is still acknowledged as an important organizational development in policing during the latter half of the 20th century (BJA, police executive research
Police corruption is a difficult issue cities have to deal with and one of the oldest problems in the police force. Corruption can be defined as the mistreatment of public power for personal benefit or private and the use of excessive force, either emotional or physical. In this essay I will explain in detail federal indictments of Los Angeles County Sheriff officers for mistreatment of jail inmates and visitors. Another topic I will explain is the transfer of Los Angeles County Sheriff hired officers with questionable background. Finally, I will end by analyzing the hiring of new Sheriff deputies under the “Friends of the Sheriff” program.
The Political Era of policing occurred in the early 1800’s and lasted until the 1930’s, and was under the direct influence of the local government and politicians. There were benefits of political influence; police departments began to develop intimate relationships within their communities offering a wide array of services to citizens. For example, the police worked soup kitchens and provided temporary housing for immigrants searching for work (Peak, 2015). In addition to providing an array of services to the community, officers were integrated into neighborhoods, which helped to prevent and contain riots. Typically, officers were assigned to neighborhoods where they lived or had the same ethnic background. Police departments
Walker, S., & Katz, C. (2012). Police in America: An Introduction (8th Edition ed.). New York:
A critical examination of police departments across the United States would show that while law enforcement agencies do common work, few agencies utilize the identical same strategy to tackle crime and disorder problems within their communities. Many agencies still deploy a traditional response model to address routine and emergency calls for service. The response model places a high emphasis on fast response times to calls for service and effective investigations which result in arrest and prosecution. However, more and more agencies are implementing variations of new strategies to deal with crime and disorder issues within their jurisdictions. Some of these newer strategies include community-policing, hot-spot policing and
The author focuses on the U.S. Task Force on 21st Century Policing and Police Data Initiative or PDI to determine if it helps to restore trust and the broken relationship between and communities and police officers. The Task Force made by Barack Obama recommended the analysis of department policies, incidents of misconduct, recent stops and arrests, and demographics of the officers. The PDI has tasked 21 cities to comprehend the police behavior and find out what to do to change it. Also PDI was said to have data and information on vehicle stops and shootings by police officers. The use of statistics has a purpose to help rebuild trust and the relationship between and communities and police officers.
Community oriented policing has been around for over 30 years, and promotes and supports organizational strategies to address the causes, and reduce the fear of crime and social disorder through problem solving tactics. The way community policing works is it requires the police and citizens to work together to increase safety for the public. Each community policing program is different depending on the needs of the community. There have been five consistent key elements of an effective community oriented policing program: Adopting community service as the overarching philosophy of the organization, making an institutional commitment to community policing that is internalized throughout the command structure, emphasizing geographically decentralized models of policing that stress services tailored to the needs of individual communities rather than a one-size-fits-all approach for the entire jurisdiction, empowering citizens to act in partnership with the police on issues of crime and more broadly defined social problems, for example, quality-of-life issues, and using problem-oriented or problem-solving approaches involving police personnel working with community members. Community oriented policing has improved the public’s perception of the police in a huge way. Community policing builds more relationships with the
A decrease in public control has to happen in order to increase social organization within the community. According to Groves (1989), poorer communities have higher petty crime rates due to higher police concentration (p. 776). Groves (1989) also states that the community type changes the actions taken by police (p. 776). In poorer communities, police are more likely to make an arrest, no matter the type of crime committed (Groves, 1989, p. 776). It is easy to conclude that this change in policing causes distrust of the police across the community. The distrust then leads to more social
For my interview I attended a ride along with the Goodyear Police Department with Officer Bengt Erickson and we patrolled the streets of Goodyear Arizona for the better part of my whole Friday night. Some of the things that I learned while attending this ride along and asking Officer Erickson questions are that most of the Phoenix area police department’s computer systems do not actually talk or sync up with each other to provide better coverage and information sharing. There is a for profit company called Cop Link that department’s across Phoenix can pay a monthly amount and join that allows for better information sharing but Goodyear PD does not pay to use this system. To me especially after analyzing community policing policies this seems like it is counterproductive and I feel like in a city as large as Phoenix that information sharing between department’s would be an invaluable resource. I also learned that the city of Goodyear is broken down into 3 different districts of patrol and they do not use the term beat anymore. The most interesting fact from conversation was that the officers of Goodyear PD are allotted money and allowed to buy their own firearms with only restrictions on the weapon having to be a Glock and of the .40 and .45 caliber and they get to keep them. Another thing that I learned is