Police in America. Steven G. Brandl
police departments in Michigan.3
What do you think might be the consequences of substantial differences in pay among officers in different agencies, if any? Explain.
Figure 3.1 Annual Mean Wage of Police and Sheriff’s Patrol Officers, by State, May 2017
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2017”.
Chapter 3 provides an introduction to the nature and management of police departments and describes the characteristics of law enforcement agencies at each level of government.
Characteristics of Police Organizations
Police organizations have been described in several ways based on the characteristics they share and the means in which they operate. Specifically, police departments have been identified as being bureaucracies, quasi-military organizations, monopolies, and street-level bureaucracies. Each of these labels provides insight into the nature of police organizations and some of the challenges associated with managing them.
Police Agencies as Bureaucracies
Max Weber, a German sociologist, studied the changing nature of European society in the early 1900s and during the Industrial Revolution. Although he did not invent bureaucracies, he did identify them as the best way of structuring, managing, and operating organizations. When people hear about bureaucracies today, they often think of red tape and the runaround; however, Weber saw bureaucracies as the solution to many managerial problems. He outlined a vision of how bureaucracies should operate in the ideal world—which is not necessarily how they actually operate. Police departments are still managed and structured with the five principles outlined by Weber, explored below.4
Photo 3.1 Communicating through the departmental chain of command is expected and is an important rule for police to follow.
©iStockphoto.com/PGGutenbergUKLtd
A Division of Labor
This principle holds that no one person or office is responsible for all of the work of an organization. Instead, labor is divided among personnel and offices so that the jobs employees are responsible for are specialized. Specialization is designed to allow for the development of expertise and efficiency. Many police departments divide the work of the agency among many units or divisions, such as patrol, criminal investigation, and administration, among others. Patrol may be divided among several districts and shifts. The task of criminal investigation may be divided into the investigation of homicides, property crimes, sensitive crimes, and so forth.
The amount of specialization in the division of labor of a department is largely a function of the size of the organization, as is the number of levels in the organizational hierarchy. A primary disadvantage of specialization is that with more units and divisions, effective control and coordination of the units becomes more challenging. With more divisions there is also the increased likelihood of conflict among them.
specialization: A focus on certain responsibilities in order to develop expertise and efficiency in those tasks.
A Hierarchy of Authority
Also known as the chain of command, the hierarchy of authority principle holds that every person in the organization has a supervisor, and supervisors have more authority than their subordinates. This hierarchy has direct implications for supervision and formal communication. With a chain of command, communication follows a known path from subordinate to supervisor. If a subordinate “goes over the head” of his or her supervisor (i.e., skips a level of authority in communicating with superiors), then the proper chain of command was not followed. There is no optimal number of levels of authority in an organizational hierarchy. Generally speaking, larger police departments have more levels of hierarchy than smaller ones because with more personnel comes a need for more supervisors and managers.
chain of command: This principle holds that every person in the organization has a supervisor, and supervisors have more authority than their subordinates.
Within hierarchy of authority, there are some additional facets of the concept. First is span of control. This essentially refers to the number of people a supervisor is responsible for overseeing. Unity of command refers to the notion that each subordinate should only have one supervisor, thus eliminating the possibility of conflicting orders or instructions. Delegation of authority means that no one person in the organization is in control of everything. With delegation of authority, the chain of command is necessary.
Rules
Written rules and policies are critical to the functioning of a bureaucracy, and police departments are definitely not an exception to this. Rules outline how jobs are to be performed and what responsibilities are associated with each job. Rules also specify standards of conduct and other work processes of the organization. Police departments have written policies and procedures regarding most aspects of their operation, addressing everything from proper uniform requirements to the use of deadly force. As with the other aspects of bureaucracies, larger police departments tend to have more rules and policies than smaller ones.
bureaucracy: An organization characterized by many departments and divisions operating through a complicated structure of rules and regulations.
Impersonal Relationships
The impersonality of relationships principle indicates that decisions must be made objectively and without emotion. In a bureaucracy, informal and formal relationships among and between employees and supervisors is not a basis upon which to make organizational decisions. For example, the fact that Officer Gunz and Officer Pistal have been patrol partners for years and are good friends should not be a major consideration if one of them needs to be reassigned to a different precinct to fulfill some organizational need. The objective of decisions is to accomplish the goals of the organization.
Selection and Promotion Based on Competence
When selection and promotion decisions are based on objective criteria, it helps ensure that qualified individuals will carry out the work of the organization. In the early days of police departments in the United States, this requirement was seldom followed; as a result, police officers (and police departments) did not perform well. This principle essentially requires that political considerations and relationships not be taken into account when making personnel decisions. Today, civil service requirements in police departments mandate that standard tests be used as a basis for selection and promotion decisions.
One potential drawback with civil service mandates is that they may constrain the ability of police department leaders to diversify their departments. For example, in selecting applicants for officers, only the candidates with the very highest scores may be considered for hiring. Race and gender are not part of a test score but may be valuable characteristics in selecting officers. Of course, the alternative argument would be that only those individuals most qualified for the job, as measured by a test or series of tests, should be hired, regardless of race, sex, or any other protected characteristic. Details about the selection of police officers are discussed in Chapter 5.
The Drawbacks of Bureaucracy
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