Response to DQB

Respond by considering the outcomes of increased police professionalism discussed in the post. Suggest additional recommendations and/or strategies that were not brought up in the post.

Police professionalism is a conceptual framework that allows police officers, chiefs, and members of the public to shape the work of police departments today and in the years ahead.  For most of the 20th century, efforts to reform American law enforcement were dominated by the ideal of police professionalism.  Furthermore, there was always a degree of uncertainty about that ideal; by the late 1960s almost every effort to improve policing was called professionalization.  According to Sklansky (2011), “At its core, police professionalism had three elements: police departments should focus on crime suppression; they should do so objectively and scientifically, free from political influence; and authority within the department should be centralized and rationalized” (p.1).  On the other hand, by the 1980s, the ideal of police professionalism was increasingly under attack, and it had been displaced as the reigning orthodoxy of police reform by the end of the decade.  Moreover, the new ideal was community policing.

In contrast, police in America changed dramatically during the 20^th century.  There are three principle forces that underline this change: the police professionalism movement, modern technologies, and the civil rights movement (Net Industries, 2016).   Some researchers suggest that police reform was the result of investigative commissions, reform initiated by police administrators, and political reform in general.  In the early 1900s, progressivism was bringing attention to and demanding reform across a broad spectrum of social problems.  Furthermore, progressives believed it was the government's responsibility to improve the living conditions of citizens.  According to Net Industries (2016), “The professionalization movement sought to reform the inefficient and corrupt police agencies that had developed during the nineteenth century” (p.1).  During this reform era, there was a total restructuring of police departments and a redefinition of the police role due to the perceived failure of police to enforce the law.  Reformers sought to eliminate political influences, hire qualified leaders, and raise personnel standards.  Several well-known police reforms had a major influence on policing during this time period.  The reform of police agencies during the first part of the twentieth century was very slow to develop, and in some cities the impact of early reform efforts was absent (Net Industries, 2016). The professional era brought several advantages over its political-minded precursor.  For example, police chief executives became selected on merit, and patrol officer recruiting, testing, and training improved in many ways.

According to Peek and Barthe (2016), “But the emphasis of the professional era on quantity cannot be overlooked. Police officers were expected to remain in their “rolling fortresses,” going from one call to the next with all due haste; officers were often judged on how many miles they drove, how many tickets they wrote, or how many arrests they made during a tour of duty” (p.3).

Problems with the professional model of policing began to arise during the late 1960s: Crime began to rise, fear rose, minorities did not perceive their treatment by police as equitable or adequate, some of the myths on which the professional era was founded could no longer be sustained, police began to acquire competition, and changing wisdom of policing.

In the early 1970s, it was suggested that the performance of patrol officers would improve by redesigning their job based on motivators.  However, in the end, team policing failed being that most of the experiments were poorly planned and hastily implemented.  During the late 1970s and early 1980s, foot patrol became more popular, and many jurisdictions even demanded it (Peek & Barthe, 2016).  As a result, the complementary concepts of community-oriented policing and problem solving (COPPS) were combined that is now the culture of many police organizations.  The problem-oriented approach to policing was tested in several areas. Studies there found that police officers had the capacity to do problem solving successfully and could work well with citizens and other agencies (Peek & Barthe, 2016).  On the other hand, the adoption of the SARA model required law enforcement agencies to invest in new data collection tools and to explore the benefits of data driven operations.

Thus, CompStat is a relatively new crime management tool used in the problem-solving process.  Furthermore, it is a strategic control system designed for the collection and feedback of information on crime and related quality-of-life issues.   Peek and Barthe (2016) “since CompStat was introduced by the New York City Police Department in 1994, it has been widely adopted; indeed, by 2005 a national survey found that 58 percent of large agencies (those with 100 or more sworn officers) had either adopted or were planning to implement a CompStat-like program” (p.6).  CompStat pushes all precincts to create weekly crime activity reports so that they can be held responsible for the achievement of several objectives.

            Police professionalism requires four commitments: to accountability, to legitimacy to innovation, and to national, and global coherence.  Police must be accountable for the cost of policing, the level of crime, and the conduct of the police themselves (Sklansky, 2011).  They need to attend to the legality of their actions and to the public perceptions of those actions as legitimate.  On the other hand, they should cultivate innovation and learning throughout their agencies.  Policing is nurtured coherently in national, regional, and global networks.

References:

Net Industries. (2016). Police: History – policing twentieth – century America: The reform era.

            Retrieved from,

http://law.jrank.org/pages/1643/Police-History-Policing-twentieth-century-America-reform-era.html

Peek, K. & Barthe, E. P. (2016). Community policing and compstat: Merged, or mutually

            exclusive. Retrieved from,

http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=1968&issue_id=122009

Sklansky, D. A. (2011). The persistent pull of police professionalism. Retrieved from,

            https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/232676.pdf