6.3: Police Function

Police Function

Another way to understand what law enforcement officers do is to look at some of their typical functions. In most situations encountered the officer can use their own trained professional discretion to decide what to do in that circumstance. The use of discretion is often influenced by four aspects.

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Working Environment

An individual officer’s discretion is often influenced by the particular community and the department that they work within. If they work within a department that is very community oriented and the community itself has established many programs to help youth, this would influence an officer when they encounter a youth out near curfew. In the supportive community scenario the officer would probably talk with the youth and encourage them to head home. If the officer worked in a community known for its gang violence and threats toward law enforcement when the officer encounters a youth the officer will probably question the youth, check for gang tattoos or symbols and run a background check for wants and warrants.

Personal Bias

Personal bias should not influence an officer’s discretionary decisions but officers are only human and we each have our own biases. The important thing is to be able to realize your biases and then make sure that they do not influence your decisions. In law enforcement, it can be difficult to catch an officer who is making biased decisions because it is hard to show that it is bias that influenced the decision versus other possible variables. The tendency of some officers to pull over minority individuals more often has created the situation known as “driving while black.” Yet, not all minority individuals that are pulled over are being discriminated against because, members of all races may have violations such as speeding, obstructed view, expired tabs, failure to use the turn signal, and so on.

Departmental Practices

If an officer works within a department where they are told not to arrest prostitutes because more time is spent in processing the paperwork than the time they will spend in jail anyway then despite what the officer may personally wish to do, their discretion will be limited and they probably will not arrest prostitutes under normal circumstances. If on the other hand an officer works within a department where prostitutes are treated like victims than the officer will tend to offer referrals and services to prostitutes to help get them off the streets.

Situation

While police officers have many functions depending on their specialized training and the community that they serve; we shall discuss six of the common functions.

Information Gathering

Officers tend to look at the world a little differently than most civilians. To an officer every phone call or discussion with the citizen is a type of information gathering. Within these conversations are clues about person’s level of fear and problems that may be present in the community. A lot of an officer’s time is spent taking calls, responding to complaints, talking to citizens, performing indirect investigations, and completing a lot of paperwork. All of these duties pertain to information gathering.

Service

Officers often provide many services to their community in addition to their law enforcement function. Officers are often the first to respond to the scene of an accident even if no crime was involved because they may be able to render aid until an ambulance or other services arrive. Occasionally, officers may assist people that are locked out of their homes or car or stores depending on departmental policy regarding these incidences. Police officers are also often found speaking to community groups, going into local schools, speaking at Boy Scout meetings, and doing a variety of information services and activities with the public.

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Order Maintenance

Though it may not sound exciting, officers are also in charge of basic order maintenance issues. By dealing with these issues in a prompt and professional manner, it may avoid escalation into violence between citizens. Order maintenance calls include things such as barking dogs, loud parties, and basic public disorder complaints.

Traffic Control

For most citizens, if they have encountered law enforcement personally it has typically been through the traffic control function. Law enforcement should tend to both parking and moving violations, pay attention to appropriate registration and current plates on vehicles, you often see them enforcing speed limits near school zones, and you may even see them providing crowd control services and traffic control during parades and at large football games, and so on.

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Law Enforcement

Yes, active crime-fighting is part of law enforcement functions as well. Responding to calls about crimes, actively investigating crimes, performing arrests, and even writing tickets are all considered law enforcement functions. Typically only about 17% of an officer’s time is spent on these types of functions.

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Other

The various police functions have been studied to see if these are important or can be improved. One notable study was the Minneapolis domestic violence experiment. This experiment attempted to find out what the best response would be when officers response to domestic violence situations. When a domestic violence call was not a dire emergency the experiment was to randomly offer one of four different interventions. The address of the call was then monitored for the following six months to see if repeated calls for domestic violence incidences increased or decreased. The possible interventions included giving a warning, conducting an arrest, referring the couples to counseling, or even bringing a domestic violence advocate to the scene immediately. The experimenters concluded that arrest was the most effective response. While many departments have adopted the policy of arrest if any violence is seen or seems reasonable, other studies in areas apart from Minneapolis found different results. So it seems we are still uncertain about the best way to handle domestic violence calls.

There was another experiment no one as the Kansas City preventive patrol study which attempted to see if officers’ patrolling around in their cars was an important function. To study this they created sections of Kansas City that would have increased patrol and some sections would have decreased patrol unless there was a call to respond to. The researchers concluded that increased patrol did not seem to deter criminals, that the citizens did not notice the decreased patrol since the squad cars were often driving through the area to get to another destination anyway and having cars in random locations did not seem to increase response time. However, having officers on patrol was a necessary part of many other duties such as traffic control and so on. Citizens also reported that they felt safe for and were happier in their communities when they saw and noticed police presence in general protecting them.