Exam 2.2 Flashcards
What are the 3 basic police functions?
- Crime prevention
- Law enforcement
- Order maintenance
What is order maintenance?
Police maintaining the status quo using interventions that have short-term effects keeping society stable and functioning by acceptable rules
What is the Broken Windows Theory?
Neighborhood social disorder causes a decline of the overall condition of the neighborhood, which leads to criminal activity
* Degraded conditions –> serious crimes
* Combatting indicators of disorder helps prevent crime
What is Zero Tolerance Policing?
Aggressive policing strategy in which all violators are ticketed or arrested, disregarding circumstances
What are the duties and responsibilities associated with an investigation unit?
- Determining whether a crime was committed
- Searching crime scenes
- Photographing and sketching crime scenes
- Collecting and processing evidence
- Interviewing victims and witnesses
- Interrogating suspects
- Keeping field notes and reports
- Recovering stolen property
- Surveilling suspects/known criminals
- Arresting suspects
- Preparing criminal cases for court
- Testifying
What is a difference between investigation units and patrol units?
- There are much fewer employees in investigations
- Approx. 15% of police personnel are assigned to investigations; 60% assigned to patrol
What percentage makes up investigators in police agency personnel?
16%
What is forensic science?
Any branch of science used in the resolution of legal disputes
What are James Q. Wilson’s distinct types of policing?
- Watchman style
- Legalistic style
- Service style
What is the Watchman style of policing?
- Values order maintenance more than law enforcement for non-serious crimes
- Law is used more as a means of maintaining order
- Circumstances of people are considered
- Officers get tough when matters are serious
- Often occurs in departents with low-level educational requirements (often have few specialized personnel)
What is the Legalistic style of policing?
- Officers encouraged to handle commonplace situations as if they were law enforcement matters, rather than order maintenance
- Traffic tickets, detaining and arresting juveniles, and arresting for misdemeanors are common
- Take action against illegal enterprises on a regular basis
- Officers under pressure to “produce” arrests and tickets
- Administrators prefer middle-class officers w/ high school educations
- Supervisors issue orders, officers follow them
What is the Service style of policing?
- Intervene frequently yet informally
- Take all service requests seriously
- Find alternatives to arrest
- Consumer-oriented and strives to meet community needs
- Officers expected to be neat, courteous, and professional
- Less-centralized authority
- Community relations and public education viewed as important aspects of policing
- Values college education
- Rewards officers with good salaries
- Encourages specialized expertise
What outcomes can patrol units be divided into?
1) The presence of patrol officers may frighten offenders away or influence them not to commit crime
2) Patrol provides police an opportunity to determine the probabilities of criminal behavior, using preventive strategies to reduce/eliminate those probabilities
3) Patrol provides police the opportunity to respond to calls for assistance in a timely manner
What are 3 ways to determine the appropriate number of police personnel for any given jurisdiction?
- Intuitive approach
- Comparative approach
- Workload analysis
What is the Intuitive approach?
- Slightly more than an educated guess about the appropriate amount of police personnel
- Based on previous reports or experiences
- Increases in crime lead to increases in hiring officers
