Taylor and Francis 2015

Self-Paced Study

Guidebook 4

Broad Function

Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. What You Will Learn 4

3. Case Study: The Problem 5

4. Examples of Broad Function 6

5. Useful Skills 10

6. Challenges and Questions 11

7. Case Study: The Solution 13

8. Summary 14

1. Introduction

This guidebook’s topic, broad function, may change the way you look at law enforcement responsibilities. Expanding the idea of what law enforcement officers do is an important part of the transition to community policing.

A police or sheriff’s department is, in most places, the only public safety operation open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That means officers must be able to respond to serious crimes immediately. Community policing certainly recognizes that.

But community policing also encourages departments to go beyond their traditional reactive role. Community concerns and problems come in all shapes and sizes, and so should a police department’s solutions. By providing full-spectrum police service, a department may improve its ability to fight current crimes and prevent future ones. It may also be more successful at satisfying a range of public needs.

What broad function means in community policing

Community policing sees law enforcement officers as having a broad function, not just a narrow crime-fighting role. Your role should go beyond answering calls and doing investigations. In the community policing model, your job is to work directly with residents to enhance neighborhood safety and security. That means getting involved with the community to resolve conflicts, help crime victims, prevent automobile crashes, solve problems, and fight fear of crime. It means not passing the buck but instead providing the necessary assistance to see that community problems get solved.

Policing is a complex government function that sometimes has to employ unusual responses to problems. This story is an example:

Police in a Kentucky town were dispatched to a neighborhood where an elderly lady complained about an odor coming from the house next door. On this very warm day, the officers found a dead dog inside. They returned to the lady and said they did not handle dead dogs; she would have to call Animal Control.

The officers left the scene, and the lady called Animal Control. They told her they could take care of a live dog but not a dead one. She should call the Sanitation Department, they said.

She did so. The Sanitation Department said they couldn’t help but the Street Department could.

The Street Department said they couldn’t help because the dog was on private property.

Desperate, the lady called City Hall and asked to speak to the mayor. The same two officers were again dispatched, and this time they helped solve the problem: They slipped on latex gloves and moved the dog to the street so it could be taken away.

Not a pretty story, but it shows that the public expects the police to do more than make arrests—and to be able to make knowledgeable referrals.

Why you should be open to broadening your function

If a department limits itself to responding to calls and directly enforcing laws, it can’t be as effective as the public wants it to be. If some situation threatens citizens’ safety and security, and you can’t solve it by driving by in a squad car, that doesn’t mean you’re off the hook. You have to broaden your range of responses.

Broadening the police function isn’t something you do simply to seem friendly. It can provide you with direct, practical benefits. By getting citizens to help themselves and improving relations so people will contact you more, a broader, fuller approach to policing ultimately helps you prevent crimes and reduce future calls.

This guidebook will help you explore the reasons for broadening the police function and will show several practical ways of doing so. The book also presents a true-life problem. After reading about the problem, you’ll be asked for a solution. Then, after working through the guidebook, you will have a chance to compare your solution with the solution that was actually used.

A reminder: Community policing is not meant to replace the style of policing you do now. Rather, it is meant to build on it. You know already that your department does more than simply arrest people. You and other officers serve as referees, nurses, consultants, crime fighters, investigators, and more. For a wholly practical purpose—improving your ability to do the job of policing—this self-study guidebook will suggest other techniques and areas of action for you to try. It’s like adding tools to your toolbox.

As you work through this guidebook, remember to consider which added roles would work best for your department.

2. What you will learn

After working through this guidebook, you should be able to answer the following questions:

Ü What does the term broad function refer to in community policing?

Ü Why should law enforcement officers broaden their function?

Ü What are some particular types of activities that police could add to their role?

Ü What skills would help officers broaden their function?

Ü What problems can be expected, and how can they be solved?

You will also be able to compare your ideas about broadening police activities with the ideas used in a real-life scenario.

This guidebook ends with a summary of key points.

3. Case study: the problem

This section describes a real problem faced by a real police department. As you read the details, think about what you would do to solve the problem.

Many problems had been occurring at Farragut Elementary School in Joliet, Illinois. The traditional police responses—random patrol in squad cars, rapid response to calls for service, and follow-up investigation—didn’t seem quite right for an elementary school setting. Officers in the Joliet Police Department were brought into the school to try to solve the problems in other ways.

The particular problems were these:

Ü Students were being disruptive.

Ü There were fights.

Ü Trespassing was becoming a problem.

If you wanted to solve those problems, what would you try in your area?

Jot down your ideas here:

______

At the end of this guidebook, we will look at what the officers in the Joliet Police Department actually did to reduce those problems at school.

4. Examples of broad function

You already have a broad function. Community policing aims to broaden it further. The purpose is not to spread you too thin—instead, it’s to help you address citizens’ problems and concerns in several different ways. That approach typically gives better results, resulting in a police force that is actually more effective at fulfilling its mission of public safety and law enforcement.

Without a doubt you are already active in some of these broad function categories. Take a look at this list:

q traffic safety

q drug use prevention

q other crime prevention

q fear reduction

q assisting victims of domestic violence and other crimes

q zoning input

Please check off the categories in which you are already active. Circle the ones you feel your department should consider expanding into.

Traffic safety

In community policing, officers pursue traffic safety in at least three ways:

Ü Education. Traffic safety education is usually directed toward children. You can expand it to people of all ages; drivers experience different types of problems as they mature. Police in some communities promote occupant protection, motorcycle safety, and impaired driver programs.

Ü Engineering. Many law enforcement agencies work with street and highway departments to help develop safer roadways. Your experience out on the streets qualifies you to offer valuable input about street lighting, street signs, traffic control, crosswalks, sidewalks, and intersection design.

Ü Enforcement. To reduce the number of motor vehicle crashes, you have to enforce traffic laws. But that doesn’t mean enforcing all traffic laws, everywhere, all the time. Some agencies get the best crash-reduction results by focusing on crash-causing offenses at locations where most crashes occur.

Drug use prevention

Key activities here include the following:

Ü informal anti-drug talks in schools

Ü formal programs like Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE)

Ü cooperation with public and private drug treatment programs

Ü lessons for Neighborhood Watch groups on how to spot, report, and combat drug problems

Ü intervention in known drug areas by asking property owners or others to better control the spaces where drug crimes occur

Other crime prevention

The broad function concept leads some departments to help Neighborhood Watch, business, or civic groups that are trying to prevent criminal activity. That support consists of giving advice, making home or office security recommendations, or referring those groups to other sources of assistance. For example, you could take these steps to teach citizens how to avoid becoming victims:

Ü Speak to college students about the danger of walking alone at night.

Ü Advise homeowners on the appropriate use of dead bolt locks.

Ü Serve as your department’s liaison with a shopping center owner who is trying to reduce shoplifting by young loiterers.

Ü Talk to homeowners, business owners, and others about crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED). CPTED is the use of architecture, landscaping, lighting, and careful activity placement to make crime more difficult. CPTED typically increases natural surveillance of an area by law-abiding citizens and makes areas undesirable places for criminals to frequent.

Fear reduction

Fear of crime—which is quite often higher than the actual level of crime—can hurt an entire community. If the level of fear is unrealistically high, you can do your community a great favor by lowering the public’s fear of crime through education, high-interaction patrol, and problem solving. Some agencies have succeeded in reducing fear by strictly enforcing laws against nuisance crimes, such as panhandling and loitering.

Assisting victims of domestic violence and other crimes

Most police and sheriffs’ departments now offer victims of domestic violence a wide array of services, such as referrals, transportation to shelter, probable-cause arrest (when appropriate), and protection. The broad function of community policing requires more than just knowing how to obtain a warrant.

As for victims of other crimes, some departments offer formal assistance, others informal. Examples of assistance include showing empathy to crime victims, offering them transportation, making referrals to other sources of help (such as churches, government agencies, victim advocacy groups, or counselors), keeping them informed of the status of an investigation, and providing protection.

Helping crime victims is more than an add-on to your already long list of responsibilities. It actually furthers your department’s main mission in several ways:

Ü It reduces fear of crime among people who know the victim.

Ü It prevents some future crimes by helping the victim take steps to avoid becoming victimized again.

Ü It makes people more likely to turn to you for help after a crime, increasing the likelihood that you can solve the crime.

Zoning input

Some agencies take the opportunity to participate in zoning decisions and related matters that could encourage or discourage criminal activity. By getting involved in the issuance of building permits and zoning issues, you may also be able to promote crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED).

Clearly, the public wants the police to help with all kinds of issues related to neighborhood safety, not just apprehending serious criminals. Each jurisdiction sets the proper boundaries of the police function based on its own needs, resources, and traditions.

The broad function activities mentioned in this section so far are only a sample. Departments striving to do community policing can brainstorm and come up with many other possible activities that would support their mission to enforce laws and support community safety. Stretch your mind and consider whether any of the following activities are something your department should try:

Ü participating in community meetings

Ü sharing more crime information with the community

Ü working with teams to solve community problems

Ü helping community action groups get organized

Ü helping juveniles make amends for minor offenses

Ü putting together an up-to-date pamphlet on referrals for services

Ü sharing security information with homeowners and business owners

Ü recruiting and supervising volunteers

Ü targeting special groups

Ü targeting disorder

How should you choose which activities to start with? Think back to Guidebook 3, Citizen Input, which pointed out that sometimes the problems that are important to citizens are not what you would expect. Keep that in mind as you consider broadening your function. Select activities that will meet the citizens’ real needs, not what you assume their needs to be.

5. Useful skills

If you are going to broaden your function by taking on new activities, you may need some special skills. Fortunately, you already have some of those skills, and others would not be hard to develop.

Take a look at the following list of skills or abilities that you might need in order to succeed in some of the broad function activities mentioned earlier. Place a check mark next to the skills and abilities you already possess; circle the ones that would be helpful for you to develop:

q ability to communicate with citizens (Nowadays, besides traditional speaking and writing ability, this may require comfort with electronic means of communication, such as e-mail, electronic forums, and faxes.)

q interpersonal skills, with a focus on handling racial or ethnic concerns