Week 6

Intro to Police I

This week we looked at the organization and management of police agencies.
We discussed the importance of communication through the ranks of a police agency, and for the assignment I wrote a report on the differences between the two main chief executive officers in law enforcement, the police chief and the sheriff. The police chiefs are usually selected from within the department as opposed to county sheriff's who are elected and usually have a much more political role. Chief's are more likely to have a college education and started out as patrol officer's and worked their way up through the ranks of the organization.


Intro to Criminal Justice I

We begin to see a crossover between the two courses this week. We go back to the beginning of Intro to Police I and look at the history of police from English roots, and Sir Robert Peeler, so we won't get into that all over again.

Then we learn about what was called the Kansas City experiment, I'm sure most any officer out there has heard about this. Conducted in the early 1970's in a year long experiment the city was broken up into 15 areas. Five were patrolled in the usual traditional way, in another 5 areas patrols were doubled over normal coverage, and the last 5 areas were not patrolled at ALL, police only coming into the area to respond to calls for service, the public was unaware of this experiment at the time. The results showed that crimes like burglary,robbery,auto theft,larceny and vandalism showed no differences in rate of occurrence in any of the three patrol areas,proving that the though of increased patrol is a deterrent to crime.

Then we look at types of law enforcement agencies from local to federal, again a crossover with the other course. Finally we look at the effects of private security and the effects they have on law enforcement. More than 80% of property in the US is said to be under private control, and the business is a growing one, with officer's receiving on average eight hours of training. The relationship between between public and private services has not always been a good one, but there defiantly needs to be some level of cooperation between the two in understanding their roles in defending the homeland. Their certainly is not enough police officers to do it alone, it takes a lot of cooperation with the public.

In discussion we talked about the relationship between public and private security.For the assignment I watched a video on the use of 50,000 volt stun belts by police and court officials to detain potentially dangerous suspects in the event they get out of control. I did not agree with it, the demonstration looked very brutal, I think 50,000 volts is way to much voltage. The news story was from the early 1990's so I'm not sure that it even applies today, the belt had been banned in some states, today it could be replaced by the taser.