California Highway Patrol Essay

Organizations Current State
The California Highway Patrol (CHP) is a state run government law enforcement agency who is the primary law enforcement agency for the entire state of California. The CHP’s mission is to provide the highest level of safety, service and security to the inhabitants of California. The mission of the CHP is accomplished through five departmental goals 1) Protect life and property. 2) Provide superior service to the public and assistance to allied agencies. 3) Enhance public trust through community outreach and partnerships. 4) Invest in our people. 5) Identify and respond to evolving law enforcement needs (Strategic Plan, 2015). The CHP is known and has been described as one of the elite law enforcement agencies worldwide.

With eight divisions and over7,000 uniformed employees the CHP utilizes its standards procedures and policies to adhere to a strict judicial, moral , and ethical protocol.
The organization operates from the top down in that executive management consisting of a Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Assistant Commissioner Field, and Assistant Commissioner Staff ultimately provide direction to the field supervisors and officers within the department.

The mission and goals of the department has been established by executive management and are implemented by the officers and administrative personnel who ultimately run and operate each individual office. The CHP has operated within the constraints of activity and productivity, the production of enforcement documents serve as evidence of individual and organizational competence. For years there has been an underlying assumption from the public that the CHP operates on a quota system in order to enforce the law, and while this is completely inaccurate the department does expect officers to be productive and to produce enforcement documents as a way to determine their productivity and job engagement (Walsh and Stanton, 2015). To that means the CHP is actively pursuing a culture change within the department. The Department has shifted its goals over the years and currently one of the goals of the department has changed to focus on public trust. The CHP is evolving with the rest of law enforcement; the years leading to our current state has watched this evolution affect all agencies within law enforcement. As the profession changes so must the

CHP.
The CHP as an agency has operated and maintained the organization in this manner of evaluating the quality of work from its employees based on their activity for years. The costs to operating the CHP in this current state have been minimal. The organization is funded from the general fund of the California Department of Motor Vehicles through the vehicle registration fund. Ultimately this means that the operating budget of the organization is established and maintained through registration funds and not through the revenue generated from citations, contrary to popular belief. Currently the manner in which the Department has been operating has served as a means to enforcing and establishing a judiciary protocol for the motoring public; however it has not served the image, public perception, or the public’s trust in the way in which the CHP enforces the law (Walsh and Stanton, 2015).
Organizational Processes
The issue of increasing public trust within the CHP is an issue that is immediate and relevant, but how does an agency of this size and magnitude address this issue and implement a plan that can change the public’s perception and increase public trust?

This issue must be addressed internally and the change must come from a new way of operating and thinking within the ranks of all uniformed employees. The process for which employees are evaluated in job performance must be changed to address the totality of what officers do on a daily basis. While CHP officers are required to enforce the law and issue citations, this task must not be the focus of whether or not an employee is performing their job. The system that would be affected in the goal of increasing public trust and agency legitimacy is the employee evaluation process. There must be a change to the way CHP officers think about their job and how its’ performed and ultimately the interaction officers have with the

public.
There is an internal document, a CHP Employee Evaluation Form (CHP 100 Form), which evaluates an officer and their activity on a monthly basis. This evaluation currently looks at the services and enforcement documents that each officer produces monthly. There is no consideration made for the activities that officers engage in that effects the community or the impact that officers provide to improving the public’s trust and perception of the department. This evaluation would need to be revamped and the criteria for which an employee is judged should be reconfigured to include community engagement and the intangible aspects of policing that ultimately effect the public’s perception and trust of the police. The revamping of the officer evaluation process will incur costs. In essence there is a need for training; new evaluation training, officer training as to expectations, and ultimately training to include procedural justice and implicit bias training.
Ultimately, the process of creating real change within the CHP with regards to the public’s trust and perception of the CHP’s application of procedural justice will be a process that will take time and diligence. With an agency as large as the CHP and whose jurisdiction is widespread throughout the state of California there will definitely be a slow process that will affect all employees. Attention and care must be considered in the effect these changes will have on employees and the public they serve. With an agency of this size and prestige these changes have the potential to not only effect the CHP but also the entire profession of law enforcement.