CRJ 1010 Police Transcript PDF

SPEAKER 0 Greetings all. Today we're going to conclude our discussion of the police. And, uh, lecture is going to cover, um, police departments size specialization. We're going to take, um, a close look at DPD. Um, we're going to talk about federal and special jurisdiction recruiting and hiring, an...

SPEAKER 0 Greetings all. Today we're going to conclude our discussion of the police. And, uh, lecture is going to cover, um, police departments size specialization. We're going to take, um, a close look at DPD. Um, we're going to talk about federal and special jurisdiction recruiting and hiring, and then conclude discussing the police role. When talking about police in the United States, we need to understand that there are about 15,000 law enforcement agencies that operate simultaneously across the country in any given day. Uh, this table came from the Bureau of Justice Statistics from 2020. So, uh, more contemporary, um, accounting might show slightly different numbers, but this is the most up to date data that I can find. And so what we can see here is that as of 2020, there were 14,726 agencies. But keep in mind here we're only looking at local, state and sheriff. So we're not talking about special jurisdiction or federal agencies, uh, accounting for this table. Uh, so we can see that there are just the sheer volume of, of agencies is is quite large. Now, interestingly, most agencies operate at the local level, right? So of those 14,000, uh, 11,788 are operating at the local level. So here we're talking about agencies like the Detroit Police Department, Southfield Police Department, Troy Police Department, Grosse Pointe Park Police Department, Wayne State University Police Department, etc. the next largest group is County Sheriff's Department. In here, again, we're talking about things such as Wayne County, Washtenaw County, Oakland County and so on, and sheriff's offices in 2020 accounted for 2889 agencies. Sheriff's department also usually have correctional um responsibilities too. There are also federal agencies and law enforcement with law enforcement functions. Um, again, they're not represented in this table. And then we have the, um, state police agencies. Um, that we'll discuss momentarily. And you'll notice here that only 49, um, states are accounted for. And that's because at this time, uh, Hawaii did not have a formal, uh, state police agency in 2022. I believe the governor, um, signed a bill, uh, authorizing a state police force, and it was supposed to, um, come online in 2024. I'm not sure if that, um, actually happened or not. So the total number of law enforcement officers again, working in local sheriff and state police agencies in 2020 was just over 1 million. Um, but again, we're omitting some federal and special jurisdiction officers out of out of the, uh, out of the mix. When it comes to agency size, they vary wildly. So New York Police Department is the largest police department in the country, um, with over 30,000 full time police officers. Um, this is a screenshot from their, um, website that I took, uh, in July of 2023. At that time, they had 3582 uh, uniformed police officers. I think the book presents a general accounting of more than 30,000. NYPD is considered the gold standard of policing. Uh, we'll talk about it a little bit more in detail momentarily, but they have, pardon me, special divisions for virtually everything. Um, comparatively, we can look at the Detroit Police Department, which roughly has, you know, 2200 full time police officers. So we can see that even among major urban areas, the size of, uh, police force can, uh, vary drastically. Um, let's let's look at these in a little bit more nuanced fashion in terms of size. And this is only looking at local police departments now. And we can see that again. Agencies of all sizes there are 11,788, we start breaking it down by a number of officers, full time officers. Um, we can see that there's some serious variation. So there are only 45, or at least in 2020, uh, there were only 45 police agencies across the country that hired, um, or employed a thousand or more full time sworn officers. Okay. And then go down 500 to 999. We have 52. So on and so forth. So literally, agencies range in size from one full time sworn officer, uh, for which there were 500 and uh, 29, uh, in 2020 to over 30,000 um, police officers again, uh, that's NYPD that's the largest, uh, the next largest police agency is Chicago, with roughly 12,000 sworn, um, police officers. So it's interesting to note that um, 94.2% of police agencies in the United States have fewer than 100 full time sworn officers. Okay, so that's pretty, um, pretty insane. And we can break it down even further. Um, about 46%, 45.4% have fewer than ten, uh, full time sworn officers. So we can see again that size, um, size varies drastically across these 11,788 police forces. And when we think about major Metropolitan police forces such as New York or Chicago or Detroit or Miami, they don't really fit the normal. And when I say normal, I mean average police agency again. I'm talking about, um, 45%, 46% having fewer than ten, 94% having fewer than 100. So when we look at big agencies, uh, it's, it's, um, inaccurate to think that they reflect the average police agency, uh, across the country. The NYPD, again, is considered the flagship, uh, police agency in the world. They have officers stationed all over the world and provide training to officers in other countries, whether they be police officers or military officers. They have special units in the Middle East, as well as other parts of the world to gather intelligence. So an agency like NYPD has a unit for most everything, meaning homicides, sex crimes, gangs, organized crime, you name it, they probably have it because they have, the volume of officers to outfit those, those, um, those units however, agencies with only one officer and again remember there over only 500 of those. They don't have any specialized units. That officer is responsible for most everything. So the size of the organization, and this is kind of important for you to understand. The size of the organization largely determines how sophisticated it is and its level of specialization. Now, for most larger police organizations that are found in major metropolitan areas, they're going to be similar to NYPD. They're going to have a lot of different special units and divisions. They may not have stationed officers all over the world, but they're going to have a lot of specialized units. Conversely, smaller agencies are most likely found in rural areas where there are fewer or fewer people tend to live. And again, these are the agencies that are less likely to have, um, specialized units. Um, this is particularly true if you're talking about agencies that only have one full time sworn officer. Police officers in urban and urban areas have much different experiences in terms of on their job duties. Uh, crime tends to be more of a problem of urban areas. And the types of crimes differ too. Compared to more rural areas, officers who work in urban areas tend not to live there. So since I moved to Detroit in 2011, there's been a push to attract more officers to live in the city. And this is a problem in, um, New York City as well. Many officers live in the suburbs and commute to work, and the issue is that police do not get to know the people that they are protecting, right? When compared to rural police officers who generally live in the community in which they police, urban police officers do not develop the same types of relationship with citizens. Another major difference between Urban and rural agencies is the amount of resources they have available to that. Rural agencies generally have smaller budgets, fewer officers, less sophisticated equipment, and fewer staff. Compare the NYPD, who had a $4.4 billion budget in 2011 with the Bibb County Sheriff's Office in Georgia that had a meager $28 million budget for that same year. Now, $28 million is a lot of money, but not when you're thinking about it from a law enforcement budget perspective. Right? It's not that much money. It's not a lot of money at all. But New York PD, in 2011, their budget was $4.4 billion, which is an extraordinary amount of money. But I venture to say that regardless of the year, NYPD says that they need more money to do what they do if they're going to do it, um, efficiently and effectively. So the budget sizes are going to be determined, um, by size of the agency, specialization of the agency, uh, so on and so forth. Uh, the Detroit Police Department, again, hire I mean, employs roughly 22 officers who are responsible for policing Detroit's 139mi². DPT DPD jurisdiction is divided into 12 precincts as depicted here on this map. The white areas in the middle are um, Hamtramck and Highland Park. Um, both cities have their own police force, their own municipal governments, and they are completely enveloped by Detroit. Currently, the chief of Detroit Police Department is James White. He is a 24 year veteran of the department. In 2012, he was appointed as Assistant Chief and served in that position until August of 2020, when he was named the director of the Michigan Department of Civil Rights by the Michigan Civil Rights Commission, and served as a member of Governor Gretchen Whitmer's Whitmer's My goodness, uh, cabinet. When former Chief James Craig announced his retirement in May of 2021, James White was brought back as an interim chief and then appointed chief uh, on August 23rd, 2021 by mayor Mike Duggan. Now, Detroit is a tough place to police because the city has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the country, and there is a serious lack of resources. Um, it's important to note that policing in general is is a very dangerous, uh, occupation. But when compared to, you know, comparing, let's say, Detroit, uh, police officers experience to say a Troy police officer's experience to a Grosse Pointe Park, to a Grosse Pointe Farms police officer's experience. Those experiences are not monolithic. They deal with similar things. But for sure, the volume of serious violent crime in Detroit is significantly higher than in Troy, than in Grosse Pointe Park, than in Grosse Pointe Farms, as well as many other suburban agencies surrounding Detroit. So we need to keep this this in mind, that the dangerousness of the occupation, um, is not consistent across jurisdictions. It's dangerous, regardless of jurisdiction. But some jurisdictions have um, uh, elevated risk, uh, exposure to risk. Uh, this is a organizational chart, um, depicting all of the pieces of Detroit Police Department and really just throw this in to illustrate the complexity of a police department. The size of DPD, the size of NYPD. All of the moving pieces, all of the people and all of the positions. And how to illustrate how difficult, um, it would be to govern an organization that looks like this. You know, it's, um, hard for hard to get everyone to, to walk and, uh, in lockstep. And when you see something like this on paper, it really illustrates the issue that you have all of these moving pieces. And this doesn't even include just line level officers. These are individuals, uh, positions that have some authority over other people in the agency. Right. So let's keep that in mind that, uh, policing organizations are complex entities. And so when you know something bad happens in a police agency. Um, when I look at it, to me, it says. It's not that unexpected. Because if you have an agency of 30 something thousand officers, it's really difficult to get oversight on all 30,000 officers in a meaningful way. Even if you have a complex organizational structure like this that has a lot of, uh, potential oversight points. It's hard to get people 100% of the people to do exactly what they're supposed to do 100% of the time. So policing organizations, like any organization, um, are complex and bulky, right? And there's, uh, you know, disseminated information across an organization may not be as easy as one thinks. Um, as I mentioned at the outset, you know, the table that I showed didn't include, uh, federal agencies. So there are also federal, 30 federal agencies with law enforcement functions ranging from ones you have most likely heard of, such as FBI, DEA, and ATF to ones you might not have heard of, such as the Office of Odometer Fraud Investigation for the Department of Transportation. Lots of federal agencies, right. The Secret Service was created in 1865 and originally focused its efforts on combating counterfeit currency. It wasn't until the assassination of president McKinley in 1901 that agents began providing security for the president of the United States, other high officials, and their families. The Secret Service has 3200 special agents in Washington, D.C. and field offices throughout the United States. It also has 1300 uniformed police officers who provide security at the white House and around D.C.. Um, there are, you know, 50 state, um, Police agencies. Like I said, um, at the outset, Hawaii. Most recently, uh, authorized and I think implemented this year. Uh, it's, um, it's state police, uh, but they go by varying names. Uh, so you can see Michigan has a state police, Ohio has a state highway patrol. Um, so while they may vary by name, they all serve, um, similar functions, although functions can vary uh, as well. State police agencies primarily focus on regulating traffic on main highways, but two thirds of the states have also given their, uh state agencies general police powers, meaning they can initiate traffic stops on municipal street networks. And only about a dozen populous states such as Massachusetts, Michigan, new Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania State Police um, can can perform law enforcement tasks across the state. For the most part, they only operate in areas where no other form of police protection exists or where local officers ask for their help. In many states, the crime lab is run by the state police as a means of assisting local law enforcement agencies. There are also more than 1700 special jurisdiction law enforcement agencies that serve a special geographic jurisdiction. As an example, there are 508 four year college and university police forces with sworn officers who can make an arrest. WSU PD is an example of a special jurisdiction agency. Its primary concern is Wayne State University's campuses and the surrounding areas. But importantly, unlike many campus police, Wayne State University Police Department has citywide jurisdiction in Detroit. Wayne State University PD also has many of the bells and whistles of larger municipal agencies. And so when I came to Detroit in 2011, at that time, DPD did not have a K-9 unit, but Wayne State University did. And so they would request services from, uh, Wayne State to use the the K-9 when there was a need, which was very interesting and also very different from my experience, uh, prior to coming to Detroit, because I lived in New York, um, and was, you know, frequently seen kind of the, the, the amenities that the agency had in that area. Um, this here, we're going to kind of switch topics and talk about recruiting and hiring. Um, because obviously agencies need police officers, uh, quality police officers, to be successful. But unlike the early days that we talked about last time, uh, where, you know, you had a high school diploma, you go up and you fill out the application and you start the job the next day. Um, the recruiting and hiring process has become extremely complex for. For good reason. Right. Agencies one, two. Um, ensure or at least try to hire the most qualified, best suited applicants for the job. And so this image here just shows the the hiring roadmap for the Atlanta Police Department and all of the different steps that are required. So beginning by applying online and then they have to, uh, submit and upload an application. Then three they wait for the application to be reviewed. Then for they do a credit and criminal background check. Then five they would uh, be assigned a recruiter. Six they do an agility test. seven. They're going to, um, submit. Passing test scores from, you know, one of a variety of standardized tests. Then eight, they're going to have an evaluation. Nine there's going to be a conditional review. Ten there's going to be a final review. Right. It is a complex, complex process. And as you can imagine, people are off loaded at many stages of the process for a variety of reasons. Um, so this is, um, some data that comes again from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. I'm not going to spend a great deal of time on it, but it kind of highlights some of the the things that agencies, um, use as criteria to, um, ferret people out of the system. So, you know, criminal background checks, driving record checks, background investigations, personal interviews, drug tests, um, psychological evaluations, and physical agility tests are used by a majority of agencies in the United States when hiring. So we can see, you know, these these are some of the elements that agencies use when reviewing applicants. Right. And so individuals with, you know, uh, criminal backgrounds are likely going to be excluded. Individuals who fail medical exams are likely going to be excluded, drug test excluded, etc. on the right hand side, showing the percent of state and local law enforcement officers employed by agencies, allowing the hiring of applicants with selected negative prior events, and this is for the year 2008. Um, so credit related problems. You know, a lot of agencies, um, seemingly um, allow officers with credit related problems to um to apply and work for them. Marijuana use. That might be, uh, somewhat surprising. Uh, misdemeanor convictions was very surprising. Suspended driver's license. Um, also surprising to me, uh, perhaps the most surprising was 20% of officers worked for agencies that are, pardon me, 20% of officers that were, um, employed in 2008 were with agencies that allowed for a prior gang affiliation. Right. And so I think to contextualize why these negative outcomes, um, or prior events might be acceptable is that, you know, for at least the last, uh, 15 to 20 years, fewer and fewer, um, people have been interested in going into policing, right? It's referred to as the cop crunch. Fewer people interested, meaning they have to kind of, um, reduce some of the standards. And perhaps this is one of the, um, one of the ways that they do that, that they allow more negative prior events from applicants, um, to before disqualifying them. Uh, this table here is a table that I created, um, that compares the New York police, New York City Police Department, the, uh, Detroit Police Department, and the um, Seattle Police Department in terms of these, um, requirements for applicants. So we can look across these agencies. And then the final column here is, um, all agencies based on the, uh, based on Bureau of Justice Statistics data, uh, that is compiled Periodically, so you can see that age varies across these three agencies for DPD. Uh, applicants must be 18 for Seattle, 20.5 and then NYPD 21. All three use a psychological evaluation, compared to just 72% of all agencies. Um, NYPD and Detroit PD use an oral examination process if there's a question mark in the table. Um, it's either because I was unable to conclude conclusively, um, based on publicly available data from the agency's website, if they, uh, use this particular, um, test in, in the hiring process or for something like all agencies because they vary. Um, it was impossible to put an age. Right. Uh, so DPD and NYPD again, use an oral Examination. Um, they both also use written aptitude tests. Again, it was unclear if Seattle PD does, um, personal inventory. So kind of like a psychological or, uh, uh, personality index. Um, NYPD does could not tell if DPD or or Seattle PD uses such um test. Um, all three do a medical and vision examination as you might expect. Um, residency restrictions. New York does have a residency restriction, whereas the other two don't. Uh, officers who work for the New York City Police Department must live in or in, uh, New York City or, uh, uh, neighboring county educational requirements for DPD and Seattle. It was a high school diploma or GED. And, um, NYPD requires 60 college credits or military service. All three agencies do criminal background checks on applicants. Um, NYPD and Seattle P.D. use a polygraph examination. It's unclear to me if Detroit Police Department does. And then all three use a physical agility examination. Perhaps surprisingly to some, only 60% of agencies across the country use, uh, physical agility examination. So it's kind of highlights some similarities and distinctions, even among major urban, uh, area police departments, and then allows us to compare them to what the, the norm is for, for police departments across the country. Um, you know, hiring in the 21st century has, um, been a topic of, uh, interest for the last several years. Um, for a variety of reasons. I think that we're starting to understand that the, um, the nature of policing has changed, uh, in some ways, and that the, um, characteristics that we should be looking for in police officers has certainly changed over the last few years. So this is a report written, uh, in 2017 by Kevin Morrison. Um, and on October, sorry. On September 13th, 2016, the US Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services and the Police Executive Research Forum organized a day long forum entitled hiring for the 21st Century Law Enforcement Officer. The meeting brought together approximately 50 expert practitioners, primarily in the fields of police standards, screening, and high rate. Participants discussed a range of topics related to the hiring process, such as agency policies on candidate's past drug use, hiring philosophies, advancing diversity, and addressing implicit bias among officer candidates. And the report distills down all of the discussions and identifies three major themes. So first was the hiring candidates. First was hiring candidates who share values and vision of the community and the department. Theme. More agencies are using the process to hire the positive, that is, to attract and ultimately hire people who reflect the values and visions of the law enforcement agency and the community. Next was making the hiring process more efficient. Theme. This theme dealt with what some agencies are doing to shorten the hiring process and make it more efficient and user friendly to applicants. Remember, the Atlanta hiring process was extremely complex and lacked efficiency. And then finally, the advancing diversity and exclusive exclusiveness and Hiring Process team. Here, participants discussed how agencies are meeting their goals of building a workforce that reflects the diversity of the communities they serve, while also ensuring high quality candidates and a process that is fair to everyone. Hiring forum participants described new approaches to growing their own candidates through programs such as police, explorers, cadets and internships. So if you know Wayne State University, uh, perhaps, you know, has a cadet program where as a student, you can apply, you can serve as a cadet. Um, and oftentimes those cadets that I have known Anyway, um, upon graduation, uh, get hired on to Wayne State PD, go through the academy, and then they are a full time sworn, um, sworn officer shortly after graduation. So programs like that, I know several of the surrounding agencies have explorers or cadets programs. I know a lot of them like internships, um, to get people interested in policing, um, and specifically their agency prior to being fully eligible to become a police officer. Several forum participants noted that while the traditional approach to police hiring has skewed heavily toward the warrior aspects of the profession, agencies today need to focus attention on recruiting and hiring the guardian role that police officers must be prepared to play. The first step is for agencies to clearly identify what specific traits and character characteristics they are seeking in their officers. These are the qualities that go above and beyond the minimum standards that are established by many state police officer standards and training agencies. Foreign participants identified several fundamental qualities that all agencies should embrace, including integrity, service orientation, empathy, communication and human relations skills, self-control, team orientation, and problem solving skills. Forum participants generally generally agreed that there is a value in police officers having attained some level of higher education, but whether that should be a prerequisite for hiring remains a much debated topic. Song Shawn Smoot, a police labor official and task force member, said that the educational value of college comes not only from classroom instruction, but also from exposure to new people and diverse ideas and opinions. He went on to say, folks who go to college tend to get exposed to other students and professors who come from various backgrounds that they weren't exposed to in their town that they grew up in. The Miami Beach, Florida, Police Department recently added a four year degree requirement for new officers. Major Wayne Jones explained the change this way. We feel that if we're going to be calling ourselves professionals, we need to have a well-educated group of candidates to choose from. The New Orleans, Louisiana Police Department, on the other hand, in 2015 dropped its requirement that candidates have 60 college credits and reverted to requiring only a high school diploma. The change was largely an effort to attracting larger and more diverse applicant pool. While the New Orleans Police Department no longer requires two year of college at the time of hiring, the department has sent a clear signal that it values higher education. For example, it offers access to free tuition programs and reimbursements for textbooks and other expenses. Deputy Chief of Staff Jonathan Weisberg noted the change was prompted because it seemed wrong to disqualify candidates who may not have had the financial means or opportunities to go to college. So there is a clear tradeoff in terms of eligibility when it comes to imposing a degree requirement, right? It limits the pool of eligible officers further, because not many people in policing have four year degree. And so if you're going to require that of of incoming police officers, um, it only makes sense that it would limit the, uh, applicant pool of potential employees. Now, for some agencies like, um, Miami said, hey, that's important because we consider ourselves professional. We want to operate and function and look like a professional agency. And they identified the four year degree as emblematic of that. But as the New Orleans Police Department identified, um, even having a 60 credit limit, um, made their pool applicant pool smaller and it made it more difficult to um staff the agency. Foreign participants said it's important for agencies to use the hiring process proactively as a way to attract and retain those candidates who share the agency's values and who possess the key character traits and capabilities that the agency is looking for. At the same time, it is essential that agencies use the process to identify and screen out those candidates who do not possess the needed values and character traits, as well as those who are unethical, explicitly biased, or otherwise unfit to serve. Of all the hiring issues confronting police agencies today, one of the most complicated is the issue of past drug use among participants, in particular past marijuana use. At the time this report was written, eight states and the District of Columbia had legalized marijuana for recreational use, and another 21 had legalized it for medicinal use. So, given the changing landscape, some police agencies are confronting the issue of how to address past marijuana use among their officer candidates. Baltimore Police Commissioner Kevin Davis said at the time that past marijuana use is the number one disqualifier of police applicants in Baltimore, and is undermining efforts to grow and to diversify the agency. Several agencies commented that they rely on a recency test, wherein they prohibit the use within a specified time frame of appliance say within two years. But if it is legal, should it be disqualified? Should it be a disqualifying criterion? And that's the real question. Participants discuss screening for bias, and universally agreed that explicit bias should definitely be a disqualifying criterion. Um, however, when excuse me? When it comes to implicit bias, it's more complicated. Implicit bias refers, uh, to bias and judgment, or behavior that results from subtle attitudes and stereotypes that usually exist below the level of conscious awareness, and which the individual does not intentionally control. As I mentioned in a previous lecture, the Harvard Implicit Bias Test is a really fantastic, um, tool that you can use to kind of assess your own implicit biases. And in fact, I'll, I'll post a link to it in in canvas. But most social scientists agree that every person harbors various types of implicit bias. So finding officer candidates who are 100% bias free is an unrealistic expectation. Most participants agreed the best way to combat implicit bias is through training and awareness, to hopefully make officers think about their actions before they act. It is not uncommon for agencies to hire um experienced officers to hire experienced officers away from other agencies. Um Commander Williams spoke about um Commander Williams of of of the Detroit Police Department has spoken uh, in previous classes about this issue, how they often have officers leave for less demanding jobs and, uh, jurisdictions and they get paid more. And when this happens, there is a special concern, uh, ensuring that the officer did not leave the agency first under allegations or findings of misconduct. It's not uncommon for a problematic police officer to get hired or asked to resign from one agency and go down the road to another to help combat the problem on a national level, the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training developed a national decertification index. The NDI serves as a national registry of administrative actions by the nation's agencies related to officer misconduct, but the NDI efficacy is limited because the system is voluntary. There is no mechanism to compel others to join. At the time this report was written, only 40 states contributed to the database, but it's unclear how many agencies participate because, again, it's a voluntary system. I think it's important to reiterate that, you know, policing is obviously changing, but it's not changing in a very quick pace, but there does appear to be a changing of the guard, if you will. More and more administrators, many of whom are college educated, recognize the, uh, the once valued warrior mentality is really actually a detriment to policing. So the selection and hiring processes, uh, are slowly changing. But like most other criminal justice related issues, um, we should not expect uniformity and reform efforts because there, again, are roughly, you know, 15,000, uh, police agencies with virtually no, um, national oversight. One last thing I need to address is the difficult the agencies have in attracting, um, qualified applicants. Something that I mentioned. So this graph shows how many applicants Atlanta PD had for its 2021 recruiting class. And as you can see, the pool shrinks very quickly. So 35% of the 12,129 applicants did not fill out their application completely, so they were disqualified. Of those who did complete their application, 91.5% did not complete their waiver form. So this is the one that acknowledges their employment is contingent on a background check. So they did not agree to a background check of those who did complete the waiver form, 74.4% were disqualified by something that popped on their background check. All right, so that left 171, um, applicants who passed the background investigation, which was 1.4% of the original applicants. So we can see that having a smaller applicant pool, uh, is detrimental to policing, right, because the original 12,129 applicants who were interested in the job, of those, only, um, 1.4% were eligible for hire. So the reality is, it's not as easy as saying just increase the standards of policing and we will get better results. Because what this demonstrates is that with the current standards in policing, agencies are having a difficult time, um, finding qualified applicants to staff their agencies. So increasing standards likely cuts more Get people out of the pool. Now we're going to switch chat tracks and quickly talk about the police role. So what is the police role? Well, we've already identified that they're supposed to protect society's rights and freedoms, which means at times restricting someone's freedom. Their ability to do this rests squarely on their ability to use force to resolve situations. Although some, such as Egon Bittner and James Reece, have suggested the central role of police is using force, we can be more precise and identify specific functions such as those outlined in the book. For example, uh, one function of police is to maintain order. Uh, James Q Wilson, a very famous policing scholar, once claimed the function of police is defined more by their responsibility for maintaining order than by their responsibility for enforcing the law. And when we talk about maintaining order, we're referring to things like directing traffic, moving panhandlers along, crowd control at games, parades and demonstrations, moving groups of people away from business fronts, etc.. You know what would happen if there were no police directing traffic in Manhattan at 5 p.m. on any given day, it would be mayhem. People would be blocking intersections, constant horn honking, and probably a lot of wrecks as a result. So really, when attempting to maintain order, the police are trying to control people's behavior without having to take official action. Again, this is because people know that police can do something about it. If they want to write, they can write a citation, they can make an arrest, they can, uh, use force. And so when police are present, typically people's behavior changes in some way for the better. Another function, um, of the police is that of crime fighter. Okay. The police are without a doubt the head of the criminal justice system. And they are the ones that deal with all of the bad stuff that goes on in society for the most part. Uh, this is probably why they're often viewed solely as crime fighters. This role, however, as a result of a self-perpetuating fallacy police have subscribed to, according to Peter Manning. So, contrary to popular belief, the police do not simply fight crime. Rather, they perform a variety of tasks, many of which are not even crime related. The crime fighter rule relegates police to depend on crime rates as a measure of success, thus seemingly rendering the role futile. Despite the fact that police have little to do with fluctuations in crime. The crime fighter rule is possibly, possibly the most popular image of police. This can largely be attributed to mass media outlets glorifying the high profile cases. Modern media outlets have served to exacerbate the crimefighter image by erroneously portraying the police occupation as one of excitement and continuous crime fighting. Police certainly respond to crime and are the most recognizable symbol of formal social control in our society. Yet several scholars have questioned the crimefighter image and claim that police take on many different roles. While it is not inaccurate to say police fight crime, I feel it short changes them quite a bit because of all of the other important responsibilities that they perform, uh, as a part of their role. Another function of the police is the delivery of non-emergency services. A recent study found that in a two year period, the Baltimore Police Department received over 500,000 calls that were not considered non, I mean, that were considered non-emergency. Citizens call the police for all sorts of reasons, most of which centered on obtaining information or matters related to other city services. In addition, police are often tasked with directing traffic finding lost children participated in neighborhood safety academies, so they provide a lot of different services. The police are the only agency open to the public 24 hours a day, seven days a week, capable of addressing a wide range of social problems. If a homeless guy has passed out on your street, you're likely to call the police. Depending on the situation, they might take the person to a shelter. In fact, when it gets really hot or cold in some jurisdictions, it's not unheard of for police to drive around looking for homeless people in an effort to get them to a shelter. If you're locked out of your car and you happen to see a police officer, you might ask him or her to unlock it. In some jurisdictions, police have gone through EMT training so they can respond to situations that might not require that might only require minor medical treatment. In some agencies, police are tasked with responding to emergencies involving mentally impaired persons. They receive special training to deal with these situations. These crisis intervention teams are popular, uh, in some jurisdictions and gaining popularity as it's becoming more, um, evident that officers who deal with um individuals suffering from mental health crises really need specialized training, um, in an effort to be successful. So there are various services police deliver that do not involve fighting crime per se. Um, and that's why some scholars have really, um, questioned the the crimefighter role as being the, the sole or even predominant image of policing when they perform so many other tasks and services. So that concludes our discussion of the police. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop them in canvas or an email.