Law enforcement is one of the three major components of the criminal justice system of the United States, along with courts and corrections. It operates primarily through governmental police agencies. Enforcement purposes of these agencies are the investigations to the courts, and the temporary detention of suspended criminals pending judicial action. Police officers work in partnerships with the communities they serve to maintain law and order, prevent crime, reduce the fear of crime and improve the quality of life for all citizens, and protect the members of the public and their property. The Weslaco Police Department has eleven divisions. It has a great patrol division and community policing division. One of the department’s goals is to be more involved with the community, parents, and children. Similarities that the Weslaco Police Department and the textbook “An Introduction to Policing”, are the hiring and recruiting process. Almost every police department in the United States works the same way in that process. Many police departments require that applicants be high school graduates and with a certain number of college hours. Applicants must be at least twenty-one years of age and U.S. citizens. In some departments weight and height are not important. Since most police departments fall under the civil service regulations, all applicants must pass written tests that measure their analytical skills. Applicants must also pass a physical exam. Where they must do a
The Los Angeles Police Commission, also known as the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners was originally created in the 1920s. The Board serves as the public’s voice and has their best interest in mind when creating and setting policies. The creation of the Office of the Inspector General was recommended by the Christopher Commission in 1991. It was created in 1995 by the Los Angeles City Charter as an independent unit from the Los Angeles Police Department. The 1998 Rampart scandal initiated an effort for LAPD reform and strengthened the OIG significantly (oig.lacity.org). The Board of Police Commissioners and many police reform advocates strongly supported the creation of the OIG since it was to be independent
This paper will show four different police departments that are currently hiring or recruiting for police officers. There will be a summary on the research found on the process used to recruit police officers. It will also show their current hiring trends and what hiring practices they have that are successful or not successful. The paper will also go over the different methods departments use to train their new officers and their values.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is the third largest police agency in the United States. The LAPD has approximately 9885 sworn officers and 2718 support staff. They cover approximately 500 square miles and is for the protection of over 4 million people. With that in mind, managing such a behemoth agency is a complicated and problematic endeavor. Therefore, one of the LAPD strengths is the way they manage themselves and protect citizens. Another strength of the LAPD is created many various kinds of investigation divisions, bureaus unit and special operation units. The components allow the LAPD to address a different kind of crimes, services, and investigation. Some of these components are specialized units with members that specially trained to for the unit's purpose or the specific type of crime or investigation. For an example, they have counter-terrorism bureau, background investigation unit, commercial crime division, gang and narcotic division, juvenile division, robbery homicide division and also technical investigation division. The LAPD also addresses the needs of the community by setting up many stations to handle the needs of their constituents. The LAPD also has a support unit to manage the day to day operation such as the personal division, jail division, property division and administrative section to manage massive bureaucratic tasks.
Law enforcement is a career that is both violent and rewarding in many capacities. Justice needs to be served in law enforcement and they have a responsibility to uphold the law and serve the people in the community. Law enforcement is crucial in the world today as a global realm as life continues to be more complex and law enforcement struggles to combat many aspects of crime. In order to combat these problems and have a positive future in the criminal justice system, everyone must work together on a bigger scale.
The first segment of the U.S. criminal justice system that is important to the overall flow are our law enforcement personnel. Law enforcement personnel such as police officers have the task of keeping our streets safe by arresting individuals who commit crimes. Police officers are the ones who not only arrest offenders but the do the initial investigation of the crime and when needed provide their testimony within the courts.
Nestled on the Gulf Coast of Florida, Citrus County is home to hundreds of thousands of people, according to the latest data from the United States Census Bureau (source). Comprised of several small towns, Citrus County spans nearly six hundred square miles, consisting of an older, predominantly white population, based on reports from the Census Bureau (source). As the dominant law enforcement agency in the area, the Citrus County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) works diligently to ensure public safety through patrolling and policing. According to latest employment report from the CCSO, the agency employs thousands of personnel, with only one hundred ninety-eight sworn patrol officers (source). The employment report from the CCSO also indicates the
The Los Angeles County Sheriff 's Department is tasked with providing health care services to all incarcerated prisoners within a jail system which at present exceeds 18,500 inmates. Correctional Treatment Center (CTC) provides care and treatment for inmates requiring inpatient medical and or psychiatric care in this 196-bed rated medical unit located in the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. The inmate population is in poor health, largely due to the lifestyle choices of the inmates which often include substance abuse, violence, and living on the streets of Los Angeles. They require the same basic medical care that all residents of Los Angeles County require, including routine illness to advanced medical issues such as tuberculosis (TB), AIDS/HIV+, heart disease, diabetes, dialysis, paraplegics, and acute mental health problems. Additionally, problems associated with aging are becoming common as the jail population increasingly includes older inmates. In the wake of chronic overcrowding in the county lockups, the Sheriff 's Department has been struggling to provide adequate care for thousands of inmates, many of whom have never been treated, with illnesses ranging from tuberculosis to AIDS to schizophrenia. Reported rates of tuberculosis in jails and prisons are more than six times higher than those for the general population. Jails and prisons concentrate individuals at high risk for TB or noncompliance with therapy, including those who are
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is composed of over eighteen thousand employees. The hiring process is a long and arduous process, consumed with numerous steps. The most pivotal aspect of the hiring process is the background investigation on applicants. Background investigations are a crucial step to deciding if an applicant will be qualified for employment. Unfortunately, even qualified applicants are overlooked, and under qualified applicants are offered employment to meet discriminating hiring quotas. These hiring quotas are a result of a policy known as Affirmative Action.
On the state level, they perform functions outside the jurisdiction of the sheriff. They help to coordinate multi-jurisdiction task force activity in serious or complicated situations, but only in states that grant full power statewide.
In order to become a police officer, individuals have to be twenty-years of age, a United States citizen, have basic law enforcement training, mental evaluation, physical evaluation and no crimes committed. This article compares to the next article listed below because it provides background information and insight into how to become a police officer and the training they must acquire. The article helps me understand a basic component of my essay, which is the training police officers receive.
Police Agencies in modern society are a part of the American fabric to serve and protect the American public. The United States currently have more than 15,000 police agencies, (Walker & Katz, 2011). Police Departments across the United States face similar critical issues policing. All police officers face dangers in the job of policing the dangers can emanate from internal and external origins. Police officers have continued to evolve to serve communities by finding better less than lethal alternatives to weapons used. In addition, police departments have continued to keep up with
Numerous police agency’s and police officials work on a distinctive local, state, and federal level and role. It has its individual area, sectors, and function, and work according to local streets parts inside policing. In order for any local, state, and federal police division to work successfully it must hire chiefs, deputy’s, and sheriffs who retain leadership and who uses creative thinking skills to teach comprehensive, and aggressive instruction to make the police division a tougher department by holding all its workers tasks for doing his or her job according to its agency’s guidelines and procedures known as code of conduct. “Municipal police work for municipalities such as towns or cities, county police and deputy sheriffs work for counties, state police work for states, and federal police work for the federal government. Some have the same duties as one another or very similar duties, and some have different or additional duties. Their jurisdiction is sometimes the main difference. For example, a municipal police officer normally has primary
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.
There are multiple approaches to engaging a police force with the community in order to most effectively prevent and respond to crime, and considering the relative strengths and weakness of each of these strategic models will demonstrate how models can impact the operation of daily policing practices and activities. The model under discussion here is called community oriented policing (COP), and focuses on building relationships and rapport between officers and the community in order to more effectively prevent crime. It is augmented by a model called problem solving policing (PSP), and depends upon rank-and-file officers identifying community problem areas through direct observation and analysis. Each model excels at slightly different things, and in practice most police agencies deploy a mix of models. By examining the Miami-Dade Police Department's handbook for school resource officers, it will be possible to view a COP/PSP policy in action in order to better understand how these models practically affect policing.
They also, of course, respond to dispatch calls of crimes in progress. Crime prevention is achieved through mere police presence. Negative interaction between the community and police is generally the norm. In communities policing, on the other hand, police officers are typically assigned to specific geographic areas in their jurisdiction and establish ties with the various community groups. These groups may include ministerial (church) associations, neighborhood associations, youth groups, etc. The idea is that when police are involved with the community they are not viewed as outsiders who are there simply to enforce the law. Crime prevention is achieved through positive interaction with police and the community. The goals of community policing are to reduce crime and disorder, promote citizens’ quality of life in communities, reduce fear of crime, and improve police–citizen relations. These goals are achieved through three essential efforts: community engagement, problem solving, and organizational transformation. In other words, the police are the public and the public are the police.