A Special Last Night By Diane Sawyer

The Virginia State Police has experienced a rise in staffing issues which include staffing shortages because of poor recruitment, an increase in retirements, poor salaries, and retention issues. However, these issues also occur in other counties around the country. Many local police officers execute their duties, along with the duties of the state police officers. Beyond the low salaries of police officers, the department lacks the proper equipment it needs to perform the jobs well. The lack of money, equipment, and resources has caused low employee morale, which resulted in many police officers quitting or retiring.

This first major concern within the department is the fear of embarrassment and conflict. I completed an internship with department in 2011 under Chief Robert Bingham. The department seemed to run smoothly, employees seem to love coming to work and most of all Chief Bingham was very involved with each Officer and their well-being. The way the department was structured and the policies that were in place, kept the caseload numbers down to less than 80 per Officer and allowed Officers to spend more time with the clients. Also, all officers did not have to be certified for drug and alcohol evaluations because there was a team who specialized in that area. Under the current Chief Christine Kerl, a lot of those practices and policies were removed and new ones were implemented immediately. The department turnover rates have spiked since these changes have occurred. Chief Kerl has been resistant in reverting back to the old policies due to the fear of embarrassment and conflict within the Officers. Several Officers have complained and shared ideas, but most of the time those ideas are

It also forms part of good business ethics and is good practice to keep people up to date at all times when things change or need to be changed. Failing to do so can result in other peoples work plans being out of sync.

The major problem with the Toronto Police’s budget cuts are that they plan to freeze hiring for three years. This has caused major burnout rates and a reduction in moral in many officers (Fox, 2017). The plan initiated by the Toronto Police this January is one looking at a change to police culture as well as budget reduction. The hiring freeze is a product of the budget, the Toronto Police Service has hit the 1 billion mark as of this year, exceeding any budget ever had in the past (Powell, 2016). The Toronto police have made it their goal to not go over this cap and are doing everything in their power to cut costs. One of the ways they plan on doing this is through a 3-year hiring freeze of all civilian and new cadets (Lee-Shanok,

I would begin by providing change management training to assist current employees to work through the changes. Depending on the size and budget of the organization, I would consider implementing shared services meaning sharing dispatch and training with another agency. This would free up part of the budget to ensure we had enough patrol officers to carry out the new policing strategies. I would also create a partnership with the community to ensure their participation and buy in.

The Department of Public Safety struggles to successfully recruit and train new cadets to keep up with vacant sworn positions. There are several contributing factors to this growing problem including the downturn in the economy and the freezing of state employee pay, increased attacks on law enforcement nationwide, and city and county entities providing higher wages to officers to attract officers away. The Department has been losing offers to retirement and to other law enforcement entities at a rate of about 100 officers per year.

more with less. Many police departments have had to lay off officers, and some have eliminated

Over the last several years, most police departments have been facing numerous financial challenges. The main reason is law enforcement agencies are expected to do more with less and the stagnant economy. The combination of these factors has been placing pressure on many departments to begin imposing budget cuts. Evidence of this can be seen with a survey that was conducted by the University of North Carolina. They found that 67% of police departments made some kind of budget cuts for 2011. The most severe reductions were occurring in large police departments such as Los Angeles, Atlanta and Detroit. (Delfem, 2011, pp. 199 - 205) This is illustrating one of the most pressing issues affecting a wide variety of police departments across the country. To fully understand what is happening requires: examining the situation, how they are able to interact with other agencies (i.e. state / federal) and recommending the way this relationship can be improved. Together, these elements will offer specific insights about how police departments can effectively address this problem.

An implementation plan consist of a broad list of items, such as incidentals, goals, organizational issues and agendas required to complete a company’s key objectives. This type of plan demands a large amount of planning and examining before it can be implemented. However, when developing an implementation plan business do not have to “re-invent the wheel when creating a business plan” (Ashe-Edmunds, 2016).

Realize that good plans are never finished. Rather than wait until all issues are resolved and a long-term plan in place, resolve the immediate issues, get started, and follow an approach that enables you to do short- and intermediate-term planning while completing the tasks at hand.

4. Action: List and describe 4-5 action steps to turn your plan into reality and implement the plan

Police Reform should be one of the many issues handled in the first one-hundred days of our new President’s term. The unrest and corruption are actions that do not belong in our police force. The criminal justice system needs revised. Since 1791 Americans have lost 20,789 officers killed in the line of duty (Law Enforcement Facts 1). To modernize this statistic, from 2004-2013 an average of 151 officers have died in the line of duty (Deaths,

In Detroit for instance, 4200 patrol officers weree on the street in 1998, by 2015 the number was down to 1600. There was not, however, a proportional drop in the supervisory ranks. So let’s look at the job from an officers’ perspective,

Planning is not only about knowing what to do, when to do and who will do it, but it is also about defining the path towards attaining the

When you have open and honest communication in your company, it will remove any ambiguity and allow your employees to trust the plan, trust the process and most importantly trust the