Police Department Strategic Funding

Public Strategic Finance

When one sees talk or analysis about strategic finance scenarios and tactics, this talk usually centers on private or publicly trade corporations in the private sector as opposed to agencies and power structures in the public sector. While it is certainly worthwhile to extend that focus, there are a lot of public agencies that have to make use of strategic finance tactics as well. Indeed, public finance strategy is probably more complex given that public agencies are often at the mercy of the amount of tax money that does (or does not) come in and the money that is allocated towards their work by the people holding the purse strings. The author of this report shall focus on police agencies in particular because the financing and execution of their work has been something that much more people are focusing on nowadays given the recent surge in violent crime and incidents between police officers and unarmed and/or minority citizens. While one would think that police agencies would be among the last to have to justify their funding and structures, this is far from being the case right now.

Analysis

Violent crime has always been a fairly major concern. However, it has tailed off in recent years. However, race relations are very strained right now because of some recent events in the public eye. An obvious example of the events that can and have led to problems would be the Rodney King beating in the 1990's and the massive riots that ensued in Los Angeles when the officers involved were acquitted even though there was rather convincing video evidence that their tactics were completely and obviously excessive. However, the more recent cycle was ostensibly started by what happened to Trayvon Martin and there have been other incidents since then involving police and/or the justice system including Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others.

What this has to do with strategic financing and police is fairly obvious. For example, some police departments have taken to doling out a lot of fines and citations but there are those that complain that blacks and other vulnerable groups like the poor are excessively targeted. Also, adding more cops to the street just roils those that are anti-cop and say that their presence is either over the top or is rendered in the wrong way. Of course, the overall headcount of the police force and the actions they engage in are not directly related but that is the opposite of the narrative that is pushed by many in the community and the media. What many police departments and such have to endure is justifying funding and what that funding is used for while at the same time keeping away accusations of allowing for or encouraging police brutality, overreach, racism or other activities that many hold should not be funded by the money of taxpayers. To state the obvious, there are many threats to the reputation and perceived legitimacy of the police departments of the nation and this can lead to the disruption or reallocation of funding in a way that actually makes things worse in terms of crime rates, prosecution success and so forth. Even so, police departments need to have an adept and accomplished chief finance officer (Casey & Seay, 2010). They need to have both short- and long-term plans in place that make sense (Brittain, 2006). The financing needs to be based on prior and expected results given what is planned for and what is going to be put in place (Moynihan, 2006; Moynihan, 2012).