Week 4 Paper (for Hifsa Shakaut)

EMPA 311: Micro Lecture – Session 4:

As noted previously last week, staff is an essential and a precious commodity for any productive agency, especially a LE department who directly affects the lives of individuals. LE can make the difference in community affairs, the way of life, feeling of security, and can change the life of a person with an arrest. An arrest, whether the person is convicted or not, has many times devastating implications to the person and also the community. It is a dramatic experience to be placed under arrest and lose your freedom; be booked in jail, be before a court, face a large bail amount, and deal with a system that most people are unfamiliar with, notwithstanding the effects of someone’s reputation, career, and expense. But for many communities, an arrest can also be reflective of biases from the LE members towards their community.

Therefore, a balance in managing manpower resources is vital to a successful LE agency, whether it is local, state or federal. Certainly we have seen the effects of racial biases in recent officer involved shootings, arrests and other media publications. The officer involved shooting in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014 led to the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation which found the Ferguson Police Department was conducting a “pattern or practice of unlawful conduct.” What does that mean? Basically, the statistics demonstrated that the police department in Ferguson was not racially reflective of the community it served and found biases within the department in their practices and arrests. I posit that the behavior of the department was reflective of its leaders’ decisions in hiring and the culture that was formed (and followed) by the agency. Members of LE agencies tend to form a cohesive working relationship with a high degree of influence over members actions. A strong sense of loyalty and identification is formed and can form intra-clique groups that can distract and contrast to organizational goals. We have seen this in police corruption cases such as the LAPD Rampart situation and Oakland Police Riders incident. In both these instances, a group of officers whose intentions and mission were principally right at first, were not further examined or evaluated and caused problems to their agency and the reputation of all of LE throughout. Ferguson Police did the same.

Thus, evaluating and assessing performance of staff is essential and it must be done truthfully and regularly. As Kania & Davis note in chapter 7, the “E” in LODESTAR is for evaluating (2012) and its meaning which has been termed as appraisal or assessment has taken various forms especially in a LE agency. Many times evaluating a LE member has effects for passing probationary periods or for promotional purposes, but never should a performance evaluation be a surprise. A good manager and leader should continuously be appraising their staff, whether informally or formally, so at the time of an annual evaluation, an employee should not be surprised of its content, which unfortunately is a common situation. This many times create the high stress reaction that staff has in receiving their evals (Kania & Davis, 2012). The objective of a LE agency should be to address issues before they become a systemic problem that can cause issues such as the case in Rampart and the Riders. In both these incidents supervisors lost sight of their officers’ actions and did not regularly assess their work, reports, or behavior. Kania & Davis list many other categories which should be regularly checked and should not wait for an annual evaluation in order to avoid conflict and corruption.

Furthermore, an agency should evaluate not only its members, but itself. Change is difficult for a workforce that is engrain in old methods and processes, accepted working culture, and ignorance of outside influences. An agency must look itself in the mirror and see what attitude it has in evaluating meaningful organizational improvements and it is the obligation of its leaders and managers alike in a joint effort to foster such an environment. LE line members’ actions towards the public for the most part copy the attitudes of their leaders. If we have a leader who is hateful towards homosexuals, his staff will more than likely reflect the same attitude towards the general public.

Therefore, staffing becomes a major responsibility of a criminal justice leader. It is absolutely critical to analyze the recruitment efforts of the LE department to avoid patronage hiring, develop effective personnel to improve governmental efficiency and have a diverse force that is reflective in an unbiased fashion for which its makeup reflects the diversity of a community. As the situation in Ferguson, Missouri indicated, the composition of their police force did not reflect the diversity of their community – not even close! Recruitment should also not be restricted to the area of command. It used to be that departments would not hire members if they did not live within 30 miles of their department. That has been extended and for many departments does not even apply because agencies found that they were limited to the quality of staff and faced problems due to members’ having bonds with family and friends that infringed in them executing their duties. Recruitment standards in the 1980’s dropped to bring in more members into LE that led to corruption especially as was seen in Miami-Dade county, Florida where many officers were involved in violent criminal activities. Thus, standards should not be reduced to be able to recruit able bodies to perform a LE duty that requires high ethical standards.

Agencies are constantly facing the problem of how to recruit qualified applicants to their departments and some issues such as benefits and pay become an issue. In San Jose, their police department was required to contribute a large portion of their pay into their retirement system that was also condensed, causing many members to leave the department and not attracting new applicants. In an era where cyber and high tech crimes are at a rise, it is difficult to attract qualified LE applicants because they are taking tech jobs with high pay. The competition is tough and the bar is set high for many departments which result in less ideal hires. Recruitment should be done with a balance in mind. Not all members can be college graduates. Not all members should be paid equally. Incentive pay can create a diverse department that can attract a diverse workforce to be reflective of its community. Every department needs the worker bees, the patrolperson to be out on the street and the specialize member to investigate certain crimes. Incentive pay can be for specific skills, such as computer forensic knowledge, language skills, and investigative specialty. This would add flexibility to the leadership to reach beyond its own community with an eye to be as diverse as its community. It provides for competitive job listings to compete with the private sector and fosters good partnerships with the community.

New members should be socialized to become part of the new agency to ensure their survival, achieve conformity without losing innovation and increase members’ commitment to the agency. With proper socialization agents, such as senior leaders, role models and highly influential peers, it establishes new members to become more committed to the agency with an understanding of organizational goals, priorities and clarity of norms and practices that facilitate mutual acceptance. A new member is more likely to stay with an agency if they are happy and provided with the tools to do their job effectively and safely. Retention of good qualified members should be on every LE leaders mind. Turnover is costly and affects a department’s morale and productivity, which can influence a negative behavior by their members towards the public. Leaders and managers should also have clear policies and procedures in place for succession planning of expected retirements or departures. San Francisco Police was losing many qualified Inspectors without taking the time to use them to train new members who would take their roles. As members departed, new officers were taking their place without any guidance from experienced personnel. As a result, cases were backlogged and many not solved. The department brought back those members out of retirement and offered those that wanted to retire a program (called DROP) in which retirees could be retained for an extended period after their retirement and still receive their retirement pay in order to train new members in their positions.

Finally, a public information officer (PIO) for a LE agency is the face of that agency with the public. Some departments hire non-sworn staff who is a professional public media person or as often times is the case, the PIO is an officer or commander of the same LE department. Whoever it is, it must be someone who the public can relate to as reflective to their community. Trust in the department is often times reflective by how the PIO represents the news of their department. News is not always a critical incident but can be community relations issues, new programs or fund raisers for an NGO. The position should not be taken likely because it can cause more harm than good. A well trained PIO can build relationships not only with the media outlets, but with the private sector, NGOs and the community. What a PIO says can many times quell a situation from becoming a crisis or excite riots.

In an early morning 2009 New Year’s Day in Oakland, California, a young African-American man, Oscar Grant, was unfortunately shot in the back by a white transit police officer. The officer worked for BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) metro system who in response to a mob scene after New Year’s eve celebrations at a metro station, inadvertently used his firearm instead of his Taser and shot Grant in the back. The officer was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. The incident led to riots and unrest in the streets of Oakland and other communities. It gained national attention and resulted in the movie Fruitvale Station. The PIO for BART did a terrible job of representing and informing the media and public. The PIO appeared misinformed, lacked empathy and projected that information was being withheld. “Good PIO’s have integrity (Jones, 2014).” They need to generate trust in the community and relay information in a timely manner. They can control the information that is given to the media and how, but they must appear professional, controlled, trustworthy and consistent. As the face of a department, PIOs can help in the recruitment efforts and retention of officers. Everyone listens to the PIOs, including its own department’s members.

Assignment:

Please examine your agency’s staffing issues (or another if you want). How do you feel the issues discussed in the lesson and readings apply to your agency? What can you do to address the issue that would make for a productive and positive change in the organization?

Research Paper Outline:

Please post and email me [email protected] an outline of your intended research topic by end of this week four session. The topic should be based on issues discussed in this course. You can review the course syllabus of future sessions for topic ideas. Your final paper will be due on Saturday, week eight, midnight. The minimum paper requirement is 10 pages (maximum 15), in APA format, with cover page and references. The final paper should be posted as an attachment in the required section in the course. Thank you.