Various Methods Used to Introduce and Incorporate Change Into Police Organizations

¶ … Police Organizations

This report asks the author of this report to offer ways and methods that police and other law enforcement agencies can use to bring about and implement changes to the organization's policies, practices and habits. Several such methods will be given with an accompanying explanation of why the change would or should work and how exactly that will come about. While change movements and undertakings are similar in all sorts of organizations, change efforts take on a special significance in a public safety-involved agency for quite obvious reasons.

Change Methods

One way that change can be engaged in with private sector employers is to elicit feedback from the customers. While police departments do not have customers in the strictest sense of the word, one can certainly look at the public residing in or around the area the police departments covers as being the customers of the police department, or at least stakeholders. As such, it would behoove police departments to keep an ear to the ground, so to speak, and listen to what the populace wants. Obviously, this will lead to nonsense suggestions like curtailing DUI checkpoints because it portends a police state but other options such police outreach opportunities, areas of the jurisdiction that are being neglected and reports of cops that are not being civil and polite would all be easily collectible through an anonymous and/or non-anonymous feedback mechanism. It could be used as an extension of the neighborhood watch program as well as a suggestion box for helping the police department run in a more low-cost and efficient way.

Another change method that police departments and law enforcement agencies would engage in is to make sure that the return on investment and the "need" for an item are as justified and proper as they actually are. Upgrading computers that were just upgraded two years ago, for example, would be foolish but doing so for computers running Microsoft Windows XP, a twelve-year-old operating system, would be much easy to explain and justify. Similarly, if the cars in the police fleet are falling apart, then it would make sense to buy new ones but not if the cars could be easily repaired and kept up and/or used for other purposes. In short, no money should be spent unless it's clear that the need exists.

Even though the barrier to proving that is much higher and more entrenched in the public sphere than it is in the private sphere, simply because taxpayer money is involved, it is not terribly hard to justify what should be spent and what should not. If a headquarters building is plenty big enough but needs to be updated technologically, then a new building would not be necessary. However, if the existing building is ridden with asbestos and is has decades-old writing, a new building may actually be a healthier and better alternative (Hutchinson, 2013). Obviously, anything that would be a benefit to the public such as a better/new dispatch system or faster data speeds would not be a hard sell to the public or the police higher-ups. Essentially, the gist is that either the change is justifiable from a time or effort standpoint or it is not and any planning process should happen before the change process begins so that the precursors and needs for the change can be explained to the stakeholders thus allowing for people the chance to "buy in" to the change rather than resist it or outright rebel against it (Burroughs, 2009).

Finally, another method and action that should be common within the change management process relative to police departments and other law enforcement agencies is gaining the feedback and participation of all levels of management and even the rank and file. Pushing change initiatives in a top-down way can rankle the regular workers because the changes can be viewed as ill-informed, as being pushed too fast and/or in ignorance of the facts and figures as they truly exist and not based on what the change architects are actually going off of (Robertson, 2003). The traits and the facts surrounding the change and/or the affected departments could be off-base and thus the change might be ineffectual. This is why the involvement of all the proper parties is vital (Burroughs, 2009).