chapter 5 cont.d Flashcards
Judicial support on police discretion
Police officers training and experience gives them the ability to determine or know if a certain criminal activity reveals itself as a threat to the society as a whole and when they know it does they take reasonable action to investigate or put a stop to such an activity.
Due to their job nature, police officers are very knowledgeable in both human and criminal behavior.
Elements of discretion
Nature of the criminal act, attitude of the wrongdoer towards the officer, relationship between the victim and the offender.
Factors of police discretion
Officer’s beliefs, values, personality, and background.
What is the 4th factor of discretion equation?
Departmental policy.
What is administrative leave?
Bureaucratic response to an officer-involved shooting.
Typical police department chain of command
Chief of police-deputy chief-assistant chief-captain-lieutenant-sergeant-patrol officer’s and detectives.
Delegation of authority
Is a critical component of the chain of command especially in larger departments.
The principles of command on which most police departments are based, in which personnel take orders from and are responsible to those in positions of power directly above them.
Structure of the police department
Each police department is organized according to 4 main things which are: its environment, its size of the jurisdiction, type of crimes it must deal with and demographics of the population it must police.
Main goal of the police department
Most efficient organization of its field services.
Purpose of patrol
Deterrence of crime by maintaining a visible police presence, maintenance of public order and a sense of security, 24hr provision of services that are non-crime related.
Legitimate police functions
Deterring crime and keeping order.
Controversial police functions
24hr provision of services non-crime related.
Stephen schack, william gay and theodore schell
patrol activities
Preventive patrol which is roughly 40 percent of their duties -to prevent crime from occurring, calls for service for spending their time attending to calls for emergency service or other citizen problem and complaints, administrative duties which consists of a lot of paper-work and officer-initiated activities.
What does Gary W. Cordner say about preventive patrol?
He says that administrative duties account for the largest portion not preventive patrol.
Where patrol is primarily preventive, investigation is ?
reactive
