Police How Would You Shape

Police How Would You Shape Police Departments to Adjust to Visual, Audio and Locational Changes in the Future? Traditional methods of police surveillance have often proved costly, for both logistical as well as legal reasons. The traditional methods of monitoring likely suspects usually require considerable manpower and time. There are four general types of surveillance: visual surveillance, audio surveillance, 'moving,' and contact surveillance. Visual surveillance requires the sustained monitoring of suspects, such as through a stakeout, and almost always involves a hidden camera.

Audio surveillance or wiretapping often requires a cooperative witness, a police undercover agent who has gained the suspect's confidence and can wear a wire, and/or a warrant to listen to the suspect's phone calls. Moving or tailing a suspect can be unreliable and difficult and vehicle surveillance can prove obtrusive. Depending on the nature of the subject it can also be dangerous (O'Connor 2007). Following the proper legal protocols when conducting these various forms of surveillance are essential for members of the force.

This is particularly important when using those forms of surveillance involving technological assistance, such as camera-based or wiretapping technology. They have extensive legal limitations as they are regarded as especially intrusive into an individual's privacy and they often involve the individual's home, where there is an expectation of privacy not assumed in an open environment.

"In 1967, the Court ruled that telephone surveillance was technically a search and by 1972, the Court was ruling that every single phone and wire tap needed prior judicial approval" and required probable cause that a crime has been or is about to be committed (O'Connor 2007). Computer surveillance often has even more onerous and specific legal restrictions.

To meet the cost challenges of the future while still complying with the safety needs of the public and the financial needs of departments, police departments, especially at smaller venues such as college campuses, are attempting to adapt the environment to more effective policing, even before crime occurs.

These strategies of CPTED (Crime prevention through environmental design) stress that rather than coping with the logistical difficulties of conventional surveillance, where a suspect can easily 'shake' an officer on foot -- provided that a likely criminal can be identified in the first place -- police departments should shifting to a philosophy of environmental design-based surveillance (Otterstatter 2008). CPTED is a crime prevention strategy and a "design concept directed primarily at keeping intruders easily observable.

[it is] Promoted by features that maximize visibility of people, parking areas and building entrances: doors and windows that look out on to streets and parking areas; pedestrian-friendly sidewalks and streets; front porches; adequate nighttime lighting" (Otterstatter 2008). Creating a sense of barriers, a system also known as territorial reinforcement according to the principles of CPTED likewise does not require new training of officers, new technology, or much of an additional cost outlay.

It is dependant upon the psychological concept of the broken window, namely that by creating barriers that define private property lines, intruders are less likely to break in -- in other words, a closed fence is less likely to be scaled than a ramshackle, broken-down fence that is easily jumped or torn away. Even landscape plantings and pavement designs can "develop a sense of territorial control while potential offenders, perceiving this control, are discouraged" (Otterstatter 2008).

A well-maintained area can create a sense that the potential criminal is being 'watched' and that the property is not friendly to criminal activity. Visible monitoring devices, such as 'blue lights' on college campuses, which enable people who are assaulted to quickly summon the police, and the presence of electronic visual monitoring devices in open areas and in public places such as shopping malls can also decrease crime.

Even if officers can not be present at every lonely corner, or even if these devices cannot be monitored 24/7, the visual reminder that some form of watchfulness is likely can be a criminal deterrent. So can what CPTED criminologists call "natural access control," or "a design concept directed primarily at decreasing crime opportunity by denying access to crime targets" such as limiting the creation of alleyways between buildings, for example, and brightly lighting as many places as possible where crimes may be committed (Otterstatter 2008).

The CPTED policy of "target hardening," or maintaining window locks, dead bolts for doors, and visible interior door hinges simply makes it more difficult for individuals to commit crimes and thus act as deterrents. It is better and more cost effective to prevent rather than prosecute crime. Of course, the ideal is to combine such environmental reforms with improved monitoring, and the active surveillance of identified potential or real criminals.

But when this is not financially feasible to the desired extent, given the difficulties of conventional modes of surveillance, modifying the environment creates essentially a 24/7 form of involved watchfulness in the 'eye' of the environment as well as in the active, monitoring.