C H A P T E R 7
Enforcing the Law and
Keeping the Peace: The Nature and Scope of Police Work
SUMMARY
Police have many functions. In a democratic society like the United States they serve as enforcers, investigators, and traffic controllers. In addition to these roles, police also serve a quasi-judicial function in that officers must determine if a crime has actually been committed and, if so, which response is the most appropriate for the situation. In spite of conventional beliefs, the chief function of the police is not to enforce the law but to keep the peace. As demonstrated consistently in the Uniform Crime Reports and other data, serious crimes constitute only a small fraction of all arrests in any given year. By contrast, the daily activity of most officers involves administrative work, answering routine calls, controlling traffic, testifying in court, and providing assistance to citizens.
The peacekeeping role of the police is the key factor that differentiates them from private citizens. Peacekeeping involves the mobilization of the legitimate right to use force in situations where urgency requires it.
Police departments are bureaucratically structured on a military model. All large police organizations and many smaller ones have a fixed division of labor, chains and units of command, and rules, regulations, and discipline. In essence, the militaristic nature of police organization derives from a punitive model of administrative control where deviation from the rules and regulations of the department is met with a variety of punishments designed to ensure compliance within the ranks.
Patrol is the most basic concept and technique of police work. It is through patrol that police protect public safety, enforce the law, control traffic, conduct criminal investigations, and interpret the law. In years past, foot patrols were considered the mainstay of policing. They evolved from earlier traditions of night watch systems but were displaced by motorized patrols because of criticisms characterizing foot patrols as inefficient and ineffective. Currently, they have been replaced almost universally by motor patrols, although several researchers and law enforcement professionals have expressed growing interest in putting the cop back on the beat. Those most interested in reviving foot patrol as an enforcement strategy cite the need to increase and improve contact between citizens and police.
A police department’s detective force specializes in the apprehension of offenders. Detective work includes the identification and arrest of criminal offenders, the collection and preservation of physical evidence, the locating and interviewing of witnesses, and the recovery and return of stolen property. In spite of this concentrated activity, however, for their numbers detectives make proportionately few arrests.
Most police departments also have officers assigned to specialized units designed to handle specific types of enforcement situations — surveillance, decoy operations, intelligence gathering, and other enforcement activities. In addition, many departments have highly trained officers assigned to SWAT teams to deal with such high-risk situations as hostage taking and riot control. In recent years, there has been an emphasis on community policing, which involves a variety of linkages between police officers and the communities they patrol.
Police officers, whether detectives or those in uniform, are called on to immediately judge whether a law has been violated, whether to invoke the powers of arrest, and whether to use force in invoking that power. Considerable discretion must be used in making these judgments because departmental rules and guidelines are frequently ambiguous. An outgrowth of this discretionary power is selective law enforcement.
There is the police subculture — a system of shared norms, values, goals, and style of life that is essentially different from that of the wider society within which officers function and which they are charged to protect.
In the majority of jurisdictions in the United States, legislation has mandated that male and female officers have the same professional opportunities. State and local codes require that the hiring of police recruits be based on physical standards and competitive examinations that are designed to be nondiscriminatory; that all recruits receive the same training and all officers have the same legal authority; that promotions are awarded on merit as decided by competitive procedures to determine professional knowledge and decision-making abilities; and that equal positions rate equal pay regardless of the officer’s gender. However, this was not always the case, and even now at the beginning of a new millennium, gender bias in policing remains a problem.
Finally, in recent years there has been an emphasis on community policing, which involves a variety of linkages between police officers and the communities they patrol. However, because of terrorism, this model is undergoing change.
CHAPTER TOPIC OUTLINE
1. The Functions of Police
a. Police work involves enforcing the law and keeping the peace. Police work is primarily a peacekeeping operation.
b. The peacekeeping role is the key factor that separates the functions of police from those of private citizens. This role involves the mobilization of the legitimate right to use force in situations where urgency requires it.
2. The Police Bureaucracy (See Exhibit 7.2.)
3. The Organization of Policing
a. Line services
b. Administrative services
c. Auxiliary services
d. Patrol
e. Detective work
1) Identification, location, and apprehension of criminal offenders
2) Collection and preservation of physical evidence
3) Location and interviewing of witnesses
4) Recovery and return of stolen property
f. Specialized police units
4. Community policing is a collaborative effort between the police and the community to identify the problems of crime and disorder and to develop solutions from within the community.
5. Women in Policing
a. The emergence of women police
b. Equal opportunity movement for women in policing
c. Current status of women in policing
6. Police Discretion and Selective Law Enforcement
a. Discretion exists whenever a police officer or agency is free to choose among various alternatives:
b. Selective law enforcement
7. The Police Subculture
Other Topics of Interest:
Critical Thinking in Criminal Justice: Rudy Giuliani and the “Spin Doctors”
Careers in Criminal Justice: Police Officer
Famous Criminals: David Berkowitz,“Son of Sam”
KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS
clearance rate police cynicism
community policing police discretion
full enforcement police subculture
patrol working personality
peacekeeping role
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After a thorough study of Chapter 7, students should be able to answer the following questions:
1. What are the functions of police?
2. What is the “peacekeeping role” of the police?
3. What is police discretion? Does it refer only to selective law enforcement?
4. In what ways are police agencies paramilitary organizations?
5. What gives police the right to use force?
6. How is the police bureaucracy organized?
7. What are some components of the police subculture?
8. What is the relative importance of patrol units, detective forces, and specialized squads to big-city policing?
9. What is community policing?
10. What is the status of women in American policing?
SUPPLEMENTARY LECTURE MATERIALS
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND POLICE DISCRETION
The June 1994 murder of Nicole Simpson sparked considerable debate among criminal justice scholars, politicians, women’s rights organizations, and the general public about the nature and extent of police discretion and its relationship to domestic violence. According to the findings of the National Violence Against Women Survey, an estimated 1.5 million women are raped or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States. Overall, intimate partner violence made up 20 percent of violent crime against women in 2001. Over the past several years, about 33 percent of female murder victims were killed by an intimate partner. Moreover, 2 million women, or one woman every 16 seconds, are beaten annually, and domestic violence is the leading cause of injury among women ages 15 to 44.
Police response to domestic abuse has been ambiguous at best. Even in those states with mandatory arrest laws for domestic abuse calls, police are notoriously hesitant to make an official arrest. Jurisdictions without pro-arrest policies tend to produce arrest rates of just 4 to 12 percent, while arrest rates within legislated pro-arrest jurisdictions typically range from 15 to 30 percent. However, arrest rates can vary by location. In New York State, for example, although only one out of every five incidents falls under the mandatory arrest legislation, officers make high rates of arrests (70 to 85 percent) for these cases. But within the state, the percent arrested ranged widely, from approximately 30 to 80 percent, with domestic abuse offenders getting arrested, on average, approximately half of the time.
There appear to be a number of factors that influence police response in domestic abuse scenarios. Most notable are the historic legality of domestic abuse and the often ambiguous character of the domestic situation. The phrase “rule of thumb,” for example, dates back to English common law, which stated that a man could hit his wife with a stick no wider than his thumb. The legality of wife beating was formally established in the 1824 Mississippi Supreme Court decision that codified a version of the rule of thumb from English common law. From that time on, police, legislators, judges, prosecutors, offenders, and even victims have been reluctant to view such behavior as illegal. Subsequently, many police have responded to domestic dispute calls by simply talking to participants and allowing them to work it out on their own. Surveys of police attitudes toward domestic abuse have found that the majority of police surveyed believe that the best course of action should be to refer an offender to counseling.
In addition, police action in domestic abuse settings is inhibited by risk of physical harm to officers. Formal police action is also inhibited by the situational contexts of domestic abuse scenarios. In many cases, victims are often unwilling to initiate formal charges against their abusers. Victims may fail to do so for a variety of reasons, some of which may include feelings of shame, humiliation, confusion, or fear of retaliation from the abuser. Further, police may use discretion to handle domestic violence calls when they have reason to believe that an arrest will bring further harm to the victim. In these cases, police may refer the victim to a battered women’s shelter in order that she escape the situation without risking additional harm. See also Exhibit 7.6, Gender Perspectives on Crime and Justice: Domestic Violence and Police Discretion.
Recent research suggests that police presence in domestic violence situations might have a deterring effect on offenders from committing another assault. Researchers analyzed 2,564 assaults committed by spouses, ex-spouses, partners, and ex-partners, as reported to the National Crime Victimization Survey (1992–2002), to determine the patterns of repeat offenders. The results suggested that offenders were much less likely to repeat their offense when an incident is reported to the police; not reporting an incident increased the odds of a repeated offense by 89 percent. However, the results did not demonstrate a deterrent effect for arrest, suggesting that just reporting the incident to police deters offenders from committing another assault whether or not the police make an arrest.
Other research has examined the “second-responder” programs that send social workers to homes following a police report of domestic violence. These programs have become increasingly popular as police agencies no longer assume they can cope with domestic abuse by themselves. However, such programs are controversial, and some have even suggested that they may lead to further violence.
To examine the current lack of consensus among researchers as to whether second-responder programs are actually reducing domestic violence, the Police Foundation joined efforts of this multidisciplinary approach with the Second Responder Program of Richmond, VA, a collaborative effort by the Richmond Department of Social Services (DSS) and the Richmond Police Department (RPD). A recent study looked at the program’s practice of sending social workers to scenes of domestic violence while the officers who responded to the incident were still there (the “treatment” group) and compared the satisfaction of the victim’s experience with police and follow-up rates of violence with those of a control group who did not receive second-responder intervention.
The findings suggested that the treatment group received more social services than the control group and rated the second responders highly on major measures of satisfaction. The treatment group also received more services from police than the control group and were more satisfied with how officers handled their situation. Furthermore, the treatment group reported that they experienced less abuse than the control group during the six months after intervention, suggesting that second-responder-type programs have the potential to be very effective. (See Police Foundation Reports, Richmond’s Second Responders: Partnering with Police Against Domestic Violence, March 2005, available on the Police Foundation’s Web site at http://www.policefoundation.org/.)
How should police handle domestic violence calls? Is mandatory arrest warranted? Or mandatory counseling for the offender? What about the victim? Should victims also be mandated to receive counseling? Should second-responder programs be more widely implemented?
POLICE RESPONSE TIME
There seems to be the feeling among the general public that you can never find a cop when you need one and that if police would respond sooner, more crimes would be solved. In this behalf, police researcher Carl B. Klockars has suggested that police make on-scene arrests in about 3 percent of the serious crimes reported to them. If they traveled faster than a speeding bullet to all reports of serious crimes, on-scene arrests would rise no higher than 5 percent. Klockar’s comment was based not on casual observation or professional intuition but on a body of empirical data that focused on the relationship between police response time and arrest.
There is no national standard for police response times to priority calls. In Washington, D.C., for example, the average response time for the highest-priority calls — Priority 1, which are for life-threatening situations, such as armed robberies, assaults, and shootings in progress — was 8 minutes 25 seconds in 2003, ranking it among the slowest in the metropolitan region. In comparison, nearby Prince George's County police respond in an average of 5 minutes 46 seconds to emergency calls based on the same standard. Washington, D.C., measures responses to Priority 1 calls on the basis of the time from when a dispatcher notifies a police officer about an emergency to when the officer arrives at the scene of the emergency, not including the time it takes for the operators to collect information from the callers.
Washington, D.C., has more officers per capita than any other city with a population of at least 500,000. The city has 629 officers per 100,000 residents, with 3,800 officers for its 572,000 citizens. Boston, which has a size and population similar to that of D.C. but has a police force of 2,164 officers, in 2003 showed an average police response time of 8 minutes to Priority 1 calls, but this is measured from the time police dispatchers answer the call for help to the time of the officer’s arrival. San Francisco police, who also measure response times as Boston does, took 10 minutes to respond to priority calls in 2003. That city’s population of 776,733 has 2,449 police officers.
A previous research study that conducted interviews with more than 4,000 victims, witnesses, and bystanders in some 3,300 serious crimes in the cities of Jacksonville, Peoria, Rochester, and San Diego found that the traditional practice of immediate response to all reports of serious crimes led to on-scene arrests in only 29 of every 1,000 cases. The study concluded, moreover, that even by implementing innovative programs, police may be able to increase the response-related arrest rate to no more than 50 or 60 per 1,000. [See Thinking About Police (Washington, D.C.: The Police Foundation, 1981), 160–166].
What are the reasons for this? Why are response-related arrest rates so low? Is it due to lack of personnel or efficiency on the part of law enforcement agencies? The reasons found by the Police Foundation were related more to the nature of crime and crime reporting by victims and witnesses than any other factors. More specifically, some 75 percent of all serious crimes reported to the police are discovery crimes, those that are discovered well after they have been committed. Thus, the offenders had ample time to escape without police interference. The remaining 25 percent are what might be called involvement crimes, those in which the victim is personally confronted by the offender. The Police Foundation found that for discovery crimes, citizen reporting time was about 10 minutes — enough time for even the least adroit of offenders to disappear. For involvement crimes, citizens’ reporting time averaged about 5 minutes; even here, offender getaway time was significant.
HELICOPTERS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT
Aircraft have been a part of law enforcement since the 1920s, but because the first few generations of aircraft were all fixed-wing types, their usefulness was limited by their bulkiness and lack of maneuverability. In 1948, however, the helicopter was introduced to policing by the New York City Police Department’s Aviation Unit. By 1955, the NYPD had phased out its fixed-wing planes, finding helicopters to be more flexible and far more maneuverable. Since then, the number of law enforcement aviation units using helicopters has grown to over 250, totaling more than 2,000 helicopters worldwide.
Traditionally, the roles played by aerial units range from missing-persons searches to active pursuit to transport of special task forces. When searching for missing persons, helicopter crews have the advantage over ground crews in that they can cover far more territory in a short time, in any situation where they are used. During hot-pursuit chases, the advantages of helicopters are obvious. Helicopter crews have a high vantage point, which provides good visibility and pursuit at safe distances. In addition, ground-based police can break off from high-speed chases, making things safer for themselves and bystanders. Yet they can be kept abreast of a suspect’s whereabouts via radio contact. Alternatively, pilots can maneuver choppers to keep at fairly close distances to autos or suspects until they are apprehended by ground personnel.
Helicopters are also means for safe transportation for public figures and for medical evacuation and transport teams. They also have patrol functions. In fact, the consensus of law enforcement officials is that the very presence of a helicopter patrol and the distant sounds of chopper blades can often act as a deterrent to would-be criminals. These departments generally have at least one or two choppers in the air during the day and sometimes into the early morning hours, with one or more additional choppers available on a 24-hour on-call basis.
However, since the September 11 terrorist attacks, the role of helicopters in policing has become an increasingly important component of homeland security. For example, the deputy-pilots of the King County Sheriff's Air Support Unit in Washington State patrol the Port of Seattle, scan the Cascades for lost hikers, and assist other police agencies in tracking down suspects and gathering evidence. Now the sheriff's office is expanding its traditional law enforcement role by making its helicopters more accessible to other agencies in the county and engaging in collaborative meetings between local, state, and federal agencies. The county's new focus on homeland security and its push for greater efficiency and regional thinking is being pursued for several reasons, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s designation of the Puget Sound region as a "high-risk area" under the Urban Area Security Initiative, the increasing expenses of outfitting and maintaining an air unit, and the war in Iraq. Members from sheriff's offices in King, Snohomish, Pierce, and Kitsap Counties as well as Seattle police and fire departments, Pierce County fire districts, the State Patrol, the federally funded Department of Emergency Management in Pierce County, the state Department of Ecology, the Coast Guard, the Navy, and the National Park Service are all working together in a committee charged with coordinating the effort. The FBI and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency are also involved in talks, though neither agency has appointed an official to the committee.
The Clearwater, Florida, Air Station of the Coast Guard, the nation’s largest, has started using its helicopters in tandem with local law enforcement in new strategies as well. With potential terrorists arriving on any given ship, the guard’s involvement in homeland security duties has increased dramatically. Homeland security missions, once accounting for 1 percent of the Air Station's work, now constitute 60 percent of the station’s missions. Helicopters can deploy on a moment’s notice to the Port of Tampa's entrance when an approaching ship might have a crewmember on board who is suspected of being on a terrorism watch list. Coast Guard vessels can stop the ship before docking, and Coast Guard and law enforcement personnel will drop from helicopters onto the ship to inspect the crew and/or the vessel’s contents and either clear the ship for docking or detain and question a potential suspect.
CLASS PROJECTS AND DISCUSSION TOPICS
Burlington, VT, population 40,000, is home to about 700 African Americans, about 1,000 Asians, and nearly 1,000 Bosnian immigrants who have recently moved to the area, as well as several hundred Somali Bantu refugees who are resettling there. The city’s 95-member force has only one African American officer and one Vietnamese woman who works part-time on domestic violence cases. The force wants to diversify because of the consensus that law enforcement works better when officers work in, understand, and can relate to the residents in their own neighborhoods. Moreover, they want community members to feel comfortable in approaching the police when needed. How does your local police department break down in terms of ethnicity, and how does that compare to the overall population? Is it important to have an ethnically diverse police force? What can police departments do to attract and retain more minority applicants?
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