Police Department Of Command And The Span Of Control

I have learned that there are more than 18, 000 law enforcement agencies in the United States, most have less than 10 full time sworn police officer. The public are basically only familiar with the more visible roles in the law enforcement such as, Patrol Officer, Detectives, Investigations, Forensics, and Community Relations. In particularly, I have also learned that law enforcement agencies are paramilitary in nature, meaning they are very similar in structure to a military unit. Their jobs titles and ranks are also similar in nature to the military.

Equally important, law enforcement’s management structure like the military has two clear element: the chain of command and the span of control. The span of control refers to the number of people assigned to a supervisor. The Police Department chain of command (low-high) is as follows: Officer, Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain, and Chief. Each employee has one person that they report to within the police chain of command.

The “Broken Window Theory” is the most interesting and simplest form of policing. This theory cracks down on the quality of life crimes like, vagrancy, panhandling, graffiti, public intoxication, etc. Furthermore, when police crackdown on these types of crime, the police can take back the neighborhood and when the community notices the difference this encourages and it causes them to want to get involved.

The video with Mayor Giuliani was very clear and precise. When policing any area no matter how large or small the area may be the Broken Window Theory approach can work. However, you have to pay attention to the so called small things before they get out of control. Mayor Giuliani started crackdown on panhandling, squeegee men, street level drug dealing and prostit...

... middle of paper ...

...n law enforcement, but instead the police are shooting black men almost on a daily basis. It seems like every time I log into my computer there is an incident of a fatal shooting of a black man. Even then I try to give our officers the benefit of a doubt, but every time there is a shooting of a black man it is fatal, so that tells me that they are shooting to kill. The must stop if we are to police this nation with integrity.

“While night watch groups were established in the northern colonies, groups of white men organized into slave patrols in the southern colonies. These slave patrols were responsible for controlling, returning, and punishing runaway slaves. The slave patrols helped to maintain the economic order in the southern colonies. These slave patrols are generally considered to be the first "modern" police organizations in this country” (Walker, 1999).