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Police in America

Chapter Four

Police Organizations

© 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.

McGraw-Hill

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Quasi-Military Style of Police Organizations

  • Officers wear uniforms
  • Military-style rank designations
  • Hierarchical command structure
  • Authoritarian organizational style
  • Legal authority to use deadly force and carry weapons
  • Criticisms
  • Cultivates an “us versus them” attitude
  • Encourages the idea of a “war on crime”
  • Authoritarian style contrary to democratic principles and produces low morale
  • Rigid structure leaves room for job dissatisfaction

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Police Departments as Organizations

Dominant style is as a complex bureaucracy

Characterized by

Complex organizations

Tasks assigned to “bureaus”

Hierarchy and clear division of labor

Responsibility for specific tasks delegated to lower-ranking employees

Clear chain of command

Clear unity of command

Written rules and regulations

Flow of information according to chain of command

Clear career paths

Pros and Cons of Bureaucracy in Policing

Rigid, inflexible, and unable to adapt to external changes

Communication within the organization often breaks down

Tend to be inward looking, self-serving, and isolated from the people they serve

Are accused of not using the talents of their employees and even stifling creativity

Criticisms:

Cultivates an “us versus them” attitude

Encourages the idea of a “war on crime”

Authoritarian style contrary to democratic principles and produces low morale

Rigid structure leaves room for job dissatisfaction

  • The Problems
  • The Positives
  • Informal Aspects
  • Horizontal and vertical cliques

Bureaucracy and Police Professionalism

  • Professionalism challenged by the bureaucratic nature of policing

  • Professional departments adopted a “by the book” approach to policing

  • The bureaucracy imposes formal controls over the behavior of police officers

Changing Police Organizations

  • Community Policing

Decentralizes decision making (territorial and administrative)

  • Task Forces

Officers from different ranks based on talents

Community Policing

  • Community policing attempts to modify the police organization through de-bureaucratization.

decentralize

deformalize

despecialize

delayerize

COMPSTAT: Computer Comparison Statistics

  • Clarifies the department’s mission, goals, and values
  • Holds managers accountable
  • Organizational power and authority transferred to commanders who are responsible for geographic areas
  • Resources are transferred to commanders.
  • Data used to identify problems and to evaluate success and failure.
  • Middle managers expected to use innovative problem-solving tactics

Civil Service

  • Formal and legally binding procedures governing personnel decisions
  • Nearly universal
  • Purpose: to ensure personnel make decisions objectively
  • Reinforces the hierarchy of police depts.

n Rewards hierarchy n Status hierarchy

n Seniority hierarchy n Rank hierarchy

Police Unions

Majority of police officers represented by unions

Three major police unions:

Fraternal Order of Police

International Union of Police Associations

Teamsters Law Enforcement League

Police Unions Continued

  • Collective Bargaining

“The method of determining conditions of employment through bilateral negotiations”

  • Grievance Procedures

Provides due process to employees

  • Unions and Shared Governance
  • Impasse Settlement and Strikes
  • Impact of Police Unions

Improvements in salaries and benefits

Police Organizations and Their Environment

  • Contingency Theory

Organizations are structured to achieve specific goals (crime control)

  • Institutional Theory

Organizations operate in relation to their external social and political environment

  • Resource Dependency Theory

Organizations must obtain resources to survive