Virtual Police Department (Final project ccj340)

Virtual Police Department
Name
University
Date of Submission
Virtual Police Department
Introduction
The paper is going to start by giving a brief reflection on the agency and its administration. Here the paper will give a background of the administration and the police department. It will discuss the general issues surrounding the agency. The paper will then describe the history of the virtual police agency and a bit about its current situation. The problems and issues facing the agency, it will look at how the department is organized and managed and what changes should be made to address the selected issues and problems. This is important as it will help understand the progress made by the department from its inception. The paper will then focus on the demographic differences in the agency and the department, and what strategies could be implemented to make the agency more reflective of the community. It is important for the understanding of the best way in which the organization will benefit the community. The paper will also look at discuss how the agency culture has contributed to any of the selected issues and problems and describe how to create change in this area and also provide an analysis of the crime statistics and identify strategies and tactics to reduce crime and/ or increase closure. In the end, the paper will focus on the discussion on possible solutions to any of the other issues and problems selected from the case study (Crank, 2004).
A brief reflection on the agency and its administration
The agency, instituted by the council 63 years back, has done considerably well given the circumstances and challenges it is facing. With 150 sworn police officers and 70 civilian employees, the agency is becoming a fully-fledged unit. It has a low tenure force with over 30% of its officers having less than five years' experience. The members of the council hired their friends which in a way may lower the qualification level of unit at large. With its inception, the agency has experienced and is still experiencing a couple of problems. Foremost is the rising population which is not in synch with the expansion of agency. Worse still the rising population is majorly composed of a poor population. Theoretically, which happens in most if not all of the cases, poor population constitutes more crime than a well of population. This means that the level of crime in within the state is bound to marginally increase with no increase in police to operate within the area. The rise of the population will also reduce the police to civilian ratio which will put pressure on the police. This pressure may lead to poor service like low response time (Dempsey, 2013).
The agency is divided into four Commands; Patrol, Investigations, Special Operations and Support Services. These commands are led by a Commander and dramatically range in the scope and scale of responsibility. Patrol is the largest unit. The other departmental elements are clustered under their respective commands based primarily in the personal skills, talents, background d and personal preferences of the commanders. Reorganization to a small or large extent occurs with the appointment of each chief and/or commander promotion. The organization structure of this organization of the unit is typical to many other police units with the chief of police at the top of the command followed by the internal affairs department and the deputy chief of police. The agency then has auxiliary police and administrative services director and divide into four departments namely Patrol Commander, Investigative Commander, Special Operations Commander and Support Services Commander. Other smaller departments fall into these four major departments where the officers fall into (Wilson, 1978).
Describe how the history of the agency has contributed to any of these issues/problems
The history of the agency has seen it retire about 30% of its experienced staff after every five years replacing them with less experienced officers. This loss of experience including within the higher ranks who get promoted even though they lack the experience has led to a tremendous loss in experience within the organization. This can be said to have led to the increase in the “code of silence” within the police department. To aver this situation, the agency should focus on ensuring the success of the Deferred Retirement in Police Administration (DROP) plans.
Discuss how the department is organized and managed, and what changes should be made to address the selected issues/problems.
The agency is divided into four Commands; Patrol, Investigations, Special Operations and Support Services. These commands are led by a Commander and dramatically range in the scope and scale of responsibility. Patrol is the largest unit. The other departmental elements are clustered under their respective commands based primarily in the personal skills, talents, background d and personal preferences of the commanders.
A financial unit should be formed and strengthened. This unit will then be responsible for soliciting for funds for the agency within the required channels. This is important as it may lead to an increase in funds which will in turn lead to a lot of increases in the services being rendered by the agency (Schroeder & Lambardo, 2005).Discuss the demographic differences in the agency and the department, and what strategies could be implemented to make the agency more reflective of the community.
Among the sworn personnel, the men seem to be more dominating than the female going by the general demographics of the city. The population of females among the sworn officers is about 10% while they form about 51% of the population. This is a huge margin and the city should develop ways to encourage the females to take up more roles within the agency. Females will bring in a lot of knowledge and instincts to the agency and the diversity will help in understanding the population better given that majority of the population is female. To achieve this, the city should have separate recruitments for the males and the female officers. The female recruitment should be advertised and more women encouraged to taking the job. This might even help reduce the number of prostitutes in the city (Miur, 1977).
The number of women however is high among the civilian personnel. It is not clear though on the job description of the civilian personnel, however, more women should still be encouraged to take up position among the sworn personnel.
In terms of race, the Caucasians are occupying more positions in the agency than their true reflection of the population. They form about 60% of the population but then have 67% representation within the force. This means that they are eating up space for the other races. The Hispanics especially have a lower representation in the agency, about (1.2 or <1)%, while form about 7% of the population. This is not a good representation and may make the Hispanics feel as though they are not part of the system a fact that may drive them to crime. However, this might be due to lack of proper documentation. Hispanics genera...