Adapting Traditional Police Organizational Structure

Adapting Traditional Police Organizational Structure to Accommodate Community Oriented Policing The changing face of society is forcing many police organizations to make many changes in the way they run, organize and structure their departments. As public expectations of police change from crime fighters to public safety problem solvers, police administrators must modify their organizational structure in order to meet broader mission statements and carry out new tasks. This structural modification is not simply a matter of changes boxes on organizational charts.

To study police organization, it is necessary to first study the way in which law enforcement agencies are organized. An organizational pattern must be looked upon as a structure of authority headed by an executive possessing formal power to fulfill the department?s mission and to delegate portions of his power to his subordinates. An organization is a formal structure to facilitate tasks. When we consider the formal structure of an organization, we typically focus on two areas. The first, is the formal relationship and duties of personnel in the organization, which include the organizational chart and job descriptions. The other area is the set of formal rules, policies, or procedures, and controls that serve to guide behavior of organizational members within the framework of the formal relationships and duties (Tansik & Elliot, 1981).

The challenge for professional police managers is to devise an integrated model of organization that takes into account both traditional organization theory and more contemporary organization theories (Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990). This paper looks at this challenge as police organizations make the transition from traditional to community policing strategies.

Traditional Organizational Theory Fundamentally, classical or traditional organization theory seeks to control from the top down ( Maris, 1997). In Weber?s bureaucratic model, the organization of officers follows the principle of hierarchy, each member is specified with a division of labor, all administrative acts or decisions are recorded in writing, a centralized authority, and the organizational members do not own their means of production (Swanson, Territo, & Taylor, 1998). In traditional police organizations people and activities are arranged in a pyramid form, where the chief of police sits at the top and the patrolmen are at the bottom (Melnicoe & Menning, 1969). In the traditional police approach, administrators tell supervisors what to do, then supervisors tell officers what to do, and the officers tell the people in the community what to do (Donaldon, 1995).

Another theory closely compatible with Weber?s bureaucratic model is administrative theory. Organizations that follow Fayol?s principles of administrative theory have a specialized division of labor, emphasize discipline, have a centralized command, and gives everyone a sense of order. Bennis and Hage go on to say that this type of highly centralized and stratified bureaucracy has low adaptiveness and job satisfaction. The communication and innovative ideas are thwarted or distorted due to hierarchical divisions ( ). Police work has been called the most unprofessional profession, because traditional departments often seem to expend more energy in defining the limits of the job than in supporting autonomy and innovation (Carter, 1995). Many police officers find themselves trapped in a system where they receive little support from superiors and for taking initiative (Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990).

Organizational Theory: Community Policing Community policing is the first major reform in policing since police departments embraced scientific management principles. The emergence of community policing presents a challenge for law enforcement because it requires a fundamental shift in the longstanding philosophy of maintenance of law and order. Community policing theory is based on the concept that police officers and private citizens working together in creative ways can help solve contemporary community problems related to crime, fear of crime, social and physical disorder, and neighborhood decay (Radelet & Carter, 1994).

It is pro-active, decentralized and personalized. Community policing is also a full-service works toward the goal of removing predators from the streets and solving long-term problems by dealing with the causes, not just the symptoms. The philosophy is predicated on the belief that achieving these goals requires police departments develop a new relationship with law-abiding people in the community, allowing and involving them in efforts to improve the overall quality of life in their neighborhoods. It shifts the focus of police work from handling random calls, making arrests, writing cases, and ticket writing to problem solving (Houghtelling, 1995).

Community policing dramatically alters the relationship between police officers and the people they serve. In the community policing strategy, citizens and the police work together to identify the problems of the area and to collaborate in workable solutions of the problem (use W&S manual). This joint effort of citizens and police toward solving neighborhood problems which in turn satisfies the needs of the citizens shifts the police officer?s role as coordinator of municipal services and neighborhood security, actively seeking ways to prevent crime and better the quality of the neighborhood. There is an emphasis in designing cooperative strategies within the community that interdict criminal activity before it occurs rather than responding to the incident after it occurs. Community policing provides a new way for the police to decentralized and personalized police services that offers every law-abiding citizen an opportunity to become active in the police process.

Strategic Change in Police Organizations Police strategies are evolving, as the role of today?s police officers include improving the quality of life in the neighborhood. Community policing is not only a renewed emphasis on community and neighborhood, but also demands a change in police organization and leadership. When a law enforcement agency embraces community policing, all department members are expected to become oriented to provide customer service and work toward a community-wide effort to prevent crime. Community policing requires both a philosophical shift in the way that police departments think about their mission, as well as a commitment to the structural changes this new form of policing demands. The community policing philosophy embodies a new organizational strategy that allows police departments to decentralize police service, with a new breed of police officer as the department?s direct link to the average citizen (Trojanowicz & Bucqueroux, 1990).

Problem solving and exercising leadership in intergovernmental cooperation are critical elements of the community policing strategy. Community policing involve new strategies that call for individual judgement and skills in problems that are both criminal and noncriminal in nature. These community officers must be given both the responsibility and the authority to identify local priorities and to explore and institute creative, short and long term solutions (Trojanowicz, 1996). The community officers should also be allowed to make decisions, take risks and then have management stand behind the decisions that they make.

Elements of Police Organization Organizational analysis of public sector service agencies such as municipal police departments has benefitted from corporate strategy concepts of the private sector (Kelly and Moore, 1991). The organizational element of this approach addresses the following categories: Structure, Human Resources, Management Processes, and Culture.

Structure The structure of an organization concerns the various ways it can be organized. A municipal police department, for example, can be organized functionally or geographically, centralized or decentralized, on a military or quasi military model, and so on.

Human Relations. An organization must have the number of people with the appropriate skills, training and capabilities sufficient to carry out its goals.

Management Processes.

An organization must have a system of planning, budgeting, motivating and disciplining, and accounting appropriate to meet its goals.

Culture.

Organizations with human resources will have informal communication systems. The culture of an organization involves the attitudes and beliefs of its employees as to how and why things happen within the organization and by the organization.

Elements of Police Organization: The Transition from Traditional to Community It is generally accepted that police strategies in the United States are changing to embrace community policing over traditional models (***********). In Policing a Free Society, Goldstein pointed out that safeguarding the constitutional rights and privileges in American society may be incompatible under the traditional policing model and called for a closer link between the police and the community (Goldstein, 1998). As police departments adopt the philosophy and goals of community policing, they will necessarily have to confront transitions from traditional to community policing models of organization. It is instructive to describe this transition in terms of Kelly and Moore?s four categories of organizational analysis.

Structure In traditional police organizations, command is centralized. In large departments with geographic divisions and precincts, functional control of patrol and investigations are typically under a central command. The control hierarchy resembles a pyramid with the pinnacle of authority being the chief at the top and the workers of the patrol force at the bottom.

This type of organization is based of principles of unity of control and division of labor. Decision making within the organization is from the top down, with little or no participation in management or policy matters by patrol officers or even middle and line-level managers. Discretion in police functions by patrol officers is limited and discouraged. Recurring problems such as domestic violence, juvenile gangs, drugs or vice are typically address by creating a specialized units rather than having patrol officers responsible for them.

The formal system of communication within this traditional organization system is for instructions to flow from the top levels of command down, and for information on activities and impact to flow from the lowest level upward. This type of centralized command and control model typically requires a formal system of reporting and record keeping through various levels of management.

With the community policing model, the strategic philosophy involves police as problem solvers. That requires more functional involvement of patrol officers and line supervisors in diagnosing and responding to neighborhood problems. The necessary organization response is to push operational decision making authority to lower levels within the organization. Perhaps then the most obvious organizational change from the traditional toward the community policing models is decentralization of tactical decision making to line managers and patrol officers.

Another organizational change in the transition to a departmental strategy of community policing is in the flow of information. Within the strategic philosophy of community policing, the command and control pyramid is flattened and distorted. Top management officials become more involved in planning and implementation, and officers are more likely to be involved in program planning and implementation.

Organizational responses to special problems tend more to be addressed through temporary organizational units, typically ?task forces?, than more formal and permanent units such as narcotics or vice divisions. The temporary, task force approach follows the principle of tapping knowledge and experience of line supervisors and patrol officers. The organization principle is akin to a project management model that focuses on resolution of a specific project or goal. The organization gains flexibility in that when the goal is achieved and the project completed, the organizational entity can be disbanded as no longer essential.

Human Resources An organization in transition from traditional to community policing strategic models must reconsider the allocation of the employees to meet revised goals. Tasks and assignments can be reconsidered in terms of whether a sworn officer is required or can the task be performed by a civilian employee. A department?s recruiting effort must take into account the skills, education and knowledge required for officers with greater discretion in tactical decision making and problem solving responsibilities, and can be reconsidered number of people with the appropriate skills, training and capabilities sufficient to carry out its goals. Training requirements must reflect the department?s expectations of patrol officers and line supervisors to have greater direct contact with community residents, and be more responsive to needs of crime victims and those who live in fear of crime. Specialized training in problem solving and community dynamics will be part of the core training program. Training in cultural sensitivity and dealing with diversity are key components in preparing officers for the new roles in a department committed to community policing.

Management Processes The organization?s traditional system of planning, budgeting, motivating and disciplining, and accounting must be reviewed to determine whether they are appropriate to the change in organizational strategy and goals in community policing. Traditional command and control organizational structures emphasize control over workers through bureaucratic means of control. Additional layers of middle management are typically required for elaborate record keeping systems and coordination among specialized units and the patrol force. Performance evaluations of units and individual officers are based on simplistic issues of numbers of arrests, tickets issued and number of calls for service.

The community policing strategic organization requires modifying performance evaluations of virtually everyone in the department. The new performance evaluations of all employees in the department should reflect how well they are expressing the department?s community philosophy in their work. A critical issue is how can performance standards and productivity measures be structured to relate to actual job functions to realistic measures of expected job performance.

Culture The mythology of a department must be altered to reflect the shift of the department?s strategic philosophy from simply crime fighting to more complex and comprehensive goals of problem solving and public safety. The informal ideal of the role model patrol officer must reflect the change in management philosophy from viewing officers as workers who are expected to follow instructions and simply enforce the law by making arrests and writing tickets. The internal, informal image of the model police officer within an organization committed to community policing strategy can be affected by a highly visible, public commitment to the revised model of police officer as problem solver. Public measures of the entire department?s performance must be consistent with the measures for individual officers.

Elements of Police Organization: Managing the Transition The commitment to community policing must be reflected through the entire management process and rethinking some of the principles of that process is important to accommodate change. Community policing offers a strategy that departments can use to guide them in making structural changes for a smooth transition in adopting the community policing philosophy. Successfully implementing a department-wide change to community policing depends on a strong leadership from the top. The chief plays critical leadership role by setting the example of good management to police managers all the way down the chain of command. It is essential that the chief recognize that community policing is both a philosophy and an organizational strategy. Middle- management and informal leaders within an organization also play a crucial role in the strategic transition to community policing.

Effective transformation of the organization requires a simultaneous internal and external focus. For any community policing effort to be successful in both the short term and long term, top-level management must have the support from the police department, the community, elected officials, community agencies and the media (Trojanowicz, 1996). This requires an overall strategy that requires building new bridges of trust with the community, allowing average citizens a voice in the police process, in exchange for their participation and support in making their neighborhoods better and safer places in which to live and work (Trojanowicz & Pollard, 1986).

The Change Process This paper focuses on the roles of organizational leaders within police departments in bringing about this change to a community policing strategy. Wycoff and Oettmeir analyze these ?change managers? in terms of the Change Generator, Change Conduit, Change Supervisor, and Change Mid-wife.

The Change Generator In traditional models of organization, the Change Generator is the person who originates the process or produces the idea. In traditional, top-down organizations there are very few change generators. Those that do exist, exist primarily at the top of the organizational chart. In modern agencies that are more attuned to new management philosophies, roles of the change managers are increased, more complex, and more difficult to define.

The Change Conduit The Change Conduit is the person responsible for getting the idea from the change generator to the people in the organization who are to be affected by the idea. In traditional, top-down organizations, this person is responsible is somewhere in the middle of the organization, responsible for getting the orders out from the top to bottom of the organization.

The Change Supervisor The Change Supervisor is the person in charge of making sure the people being affected are doing their job. Traditionally, sergeants are the typically responsible for the communication process through the chain of command.

In many new agencies, there are still the traditional roles of change generator, change conduit, and change supervisor but in addition, the Change Overseer and the Change Mid-wife are also part of the organizational structure.

The Change Overseer The Change Overseer is the person responsible for overseeing the change process, the person to whom others in the organization are specifically accountable for various aspects of implementing the change. The overseer is likely to be accountable to the chief and the Overseer will have the authority to hold accountable other persons responsible for the implementation.

The Change Mid-Wife The Change Mid-wife is the person responsible for encouraging and coaching other to deliver ideas. Some progressive
organizations have realized that the knowledge about the community conditions, resources and problems that are vital to new approaches to policing is found primarily at the bottom of the organization. It is the job of the supervisors and managers to encourage officer to turn this knowledge into ideas about how to better serve the community.

Elements of Police Organization in Transition The process of the organizational transition from traditional to community strategies in police organizations can be described in terms of the organizational elements discussed above.

Structure The structural transition in traditional police organizations involves command becoming less centralized, and increasing participation in management or policy matters by middle and line-level managers and even patrol officers. The control hierarchy pyramid starts to look more like a pear, with greater problem solving discretion in police functions being accorded to patrol officers. The change process must address issues of getting management and patrol officers more jointly involved in planning and implementation of policies and procedures, and altering the flow of information within the department.

The way the organizational change to a community strategy is carried out involves the first structural change in a department. Wykoff and Oettmeier suggest selection of a group of managers or an employee task force to be responsible for planning and implementation of the change process ( ***). This follows the reasoning that employee buy-in is essential to the success of such organizational change.

The history of change in policing in the last 20 years is full of stories of departments in which managers got too far ahead of their employees in terms of new ideas. Take time to lay the groundwork for the change. This may mean holding discussions with groups of employees about what need to be fixed or improved. It might mean giving them materials to read. It might mean sending some key leaders off to conferences or workshops, or to visit other departments where they will get exposed to the idea on their own. (***) This concern for employee understanding and acceptance of change in departmental policy through discussion groups, soliciting participation from key leaders throughout the organization and empowering them to influence the process would be unheard of in traditionally structured police organizations.

Human Resources It is critical that the commitment to community policing is reflected through the entire personnel management process. This requires rethinking in the selection and training process, allocation of employees, performance reviews, and job descriptions.

A department?s recruiting effort must take into account the skills, education and knowledge required for officers with greater discretion in tactical decision making and problem solving responsibilities in order to be effective in carrying out the department?s mission.. Training requirements must reflect the department?s expectations of patrol officers and line supervisors to have greater direct contact with community residents, and be more responsive to needs of crime victims and those who live in fear of crime. Community policing demands that officers make face-to-face contact with the citizens in the community. It is important to recruit officers with the ability to relate to various types of people under strained conditions and even in hostile environment. The organization must ensure that these officers have the proper communication skills necessary to do so effectively. Training in cultural sensitivity and dealing with diversity are key components in preparing officers for the new roles in a department committed to community policing. Police officers must be able to relate to diverse groups of people in many new, which makes cultural sensitivity even more critical.

The allocation of the employees to meet revised goals of community policing philosophy must reconsidered. The placement of employees on permanent police beats and deciding how many patrol officers to answer calls for service is an area of consideration when assigning tasks to police officers.

Specialized training in problem solving and community dynamics will be part of the core training program. Traditional police, trained to think that solutions lie in responding to calls and catching the bad guys, must be educated to make the shift from an agenda driven by responding to isolated incidents to one focused on solving the underlying problem in new ways. Implementation of a training program based on a ?problem-solving oriented? approach to policing such as the Scanning Analysis Response Assessment (SARA) model must be implemented in order to change the traditional way in which officers operate on daily basis. This innovative style of community policing reassesses the traditional, incident-driven response and focuses on the causes neighborhood problems rather than on discrete incidents of crime or disturbances. Attention is given to the long-term prevention of these problems and to the signs of community disorder that are associated with crime.

The shift to community police officers also requires a shift in how the department assesses performance, both the performance of the department as a whole and how it rates various jobs. Police departments face a new challenge in finding ways to measure quality not quantity. For police officers, performance evaluations are important in tool for evaluating officers and ensuring that the department and its officers are performing in accordance with the law and the community?s needs. Performance evaluations could rate employees in terms of their innovative thinking. Expectations must be changed from the traditional quantitative method of crime statics and police response times to more non-traditional subjective measures, such as reducing fear in the neighborhood, citizen?s sense of security, and preventing crime.

A modern day community policing officer plays a more demanding role. Role expectations must change as the new community policing philosophy is put into practice. Community policing officers act as Referral Specialist, Crime-Prevention Specialist and Community Relations Specialist. Officers must act as a liaison to public and private agencies, provide police services with a human touch, become known on a first-name basis to the community and be viewed as a friend who can help.

Management Processes The commitment to community policing must be reflected through the entire management process. Its important for police chiefs to understand the concept of community policing and all of its ramifications, internally and externally. They must also actively demonstrate their commitment to this new philosophy, by setting the example. It is also important that police administrators delegate some of their power and control to lower-level management, police officers and the community. Middle managers must shift to emphasizing trust as much as accountability, allowing all officers within the department the freedom and autonomy to move beyond responding to calls as isolated incidents. Police officers must be allowed to exercise discretion, take risks, and then stand behind the decisions they make. Police chiefs must also accept the inevitability of mistakes as the price of taking innovative and creative action. They must also accept and support the department as work schedules become more flexible, contacts with citizens more offhand, supervision more collegial, and working behavior less rule-oriented.

Culture Cultural change involves understanding its nature, assessing the unique culture of a particular organization, dealing with multiple subculture, understanding the different cultural forms, and using those forms to facilitate change (Perry, 1996). The informal ideal of the role model patrol officer must reflect the change in management philosophy from viewing officers as workers who are expected to follow instructions and simply enforce the law by making arrests and writing tickets. Community police officers must internalize this new philosophy of embracing the community Conclusion Community policing is a profound and revolutionary change and that requires a fundamental change in the organization that may to take 10 to 12 years to fully implement and realize the impact. Early on, the community can expect to see an impact on crime and disorder, but the organizational implementation of community policing will take time. As gradual changes in the department?s approach to the recruitment, selection, and training of officers occurs, turnover in the department will allow new employees to be oriented and committed to community policing. Other community agenies ill need to adjust their operations to accommodate community policing. Making the shift to community policing takes time and the police chief must consider using this time as an opportunity to build new bridges of trust and cooperatio both inside and outside the department.

The following From Mary Ann Wycoff and Timothy Oettmeier, Managing for Change, Training Curriculum Prepared for the United States Attorney?s Office, Southern District of Texas Law Enforcement Coordinating Committee Community Policing Education Project, 2000. (Available on Internet: www.cops2000.com)

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