Case study methodology and applications

Virtual County Police Department

The intention of this paper is to give a report on the operations of the Virtual police department. This is a police department in the county of Virtual that provides fundamental policing services to residents in this area. This paper will report on the issues that face this police department, and give recommendations at the end. The report will address six major sections including the historical issues, demographic issues, the organization and management of the department, the agency's culture, an analysis of the crime statistics, and recommendations for possible solutions to address issues in the case study.

From the background information of the department, it is clear that its history contributed a lot to the many issues that the department is facing. On its inception, the police department was under the leadership of officers who had no training on security matters, they were farmers by trade. To aggravate the situation further, the department discouraged the issue of formal education for its officers. On the other hand, in order to meet the luxurious benefits of the police union, and keep up with the recent economic hardships, the department has had to cut down on the finances that it could have used to offer effective training to the officers. This is a setback to the police department because training is an essential aspect of identifying and curbing crime. There is a need for formal training, and the acquisition of a higher education is an added advantage. According to Dominey, and Hill (2010), training, especially in higher education, is useful in enabling criminal justice practitioners to be more effectual in using the tact with which the society has entrusted them. These authors argue that this could be because the academic studies provide support for the questioning and analyzing of assumptions. The criminal justice officers will also have an opportunity to challenge texts, and will be able to recognize that there is a possibility of a range of solutions to issues. For instance, students may write assignments that have a basis on case studies in which they are supposed to discuss other options that they may have applied at the place of work considering the challenges and the discretion that is present. In the same way, student police officers may take part in role-play assignments with members of the community who volunteer from the local communities. After the role-play, the student police officers will write reflectively and critically regarding their performance in the role-plays. After assessment of their use of discretion, the trainers will give the students tips on how to improve their performance.

Another aspect of the police department's history is that the county executives have a lot of influence on the appointment of police chiefs. The executives appointed the chiefs, from without the department, who had little knowledge of the operations of the department. This practice hinders the independence of the chiefs as appointments by county executives force them to have political affiliations. They owe political allegiance to the people who appoint them. On the other hand, a time framework, within which the chiefs operate, does not exist, and they have had to rely on the tenure period of the county executives who appointed them to decide their fate. This makes difficult to retain a regular pool of leadership that has adequate experience on the management of the police department. The police department has also abandoned the practice of community policing, which is a policing method that ensures members of the have confidence in the system by allowing them to participate in some roles. This has led to isolation by the members of the public from the operations of the department.

To address the historical issues, the management needs to devise a policy that will tackle the inconsistencies in the current system. The policy should highlight the amount of funding that the police union gets, and it should not be at the expense of other important operations such as training. The management should develop a clear guideline that governs the in-service training of all officers in the department to keep them informed with the current information. The management should also encourage the community policing philosophy in order to manage properly the department's public relations (Kappeler, and Gaines, 2012).

A Chief, who is the overall manager of all the administrative and operational functions, heads the agency. The agency is divided into two main commands namely the Operations command, and the Administration command and a deputy chief heads each of these commands. From the background information, the Operations Command is an extremely large organ, making the sharing of work and responsibility irregular. This is even problematic because the elements within the Operations Command are functional in nature and cannot fit into the Administration Organ of the department. In the operations command, there are Bureaus and Divisions, with the Captains leading the Bureaus and the Lieutenants leading the Divisions. Much of the current management in the police department is young and has less than 15 years of experience in the supervisory positions. This poses a major challenge to the agency because these new leaders lack the required experience that will enable run the agency in an efficient manner. The police union is an important aspect of the agency's leadership, but it has caused major problems due to its exaggerated salaries. The union and the upper ranking commanders receive very competitive recompense package making them among the highest paid police departments in the area, able to draw and employ excellent applicants, but this has not been possible. Instead, there have been budget cuts to meet these high remunerations. These budget cuts have greatly restricted management and leadership training for the newly promoted leaders. In addition, the Education and Training Division has not been able to keep up with law updates, changes, and recent court rulings. To address this issue, there is a necessity for reorganization of the management structure, especially the Operational Command, in order to make its unit smaller and manageable to allow for equal distribution of work (Stojkovic, Kalinich, and Klofas, 2012). In addition, there has to be a policy that guides the remuneration of all officers to avoid allocating compensations packages beyond the stipulated amount.

The demographics for the Virtual Police Department indicate disparities, which hinder its effectiveness in making the system more reflective of the society. From the background information, it is eminent that are fewer women than there are men in all the units and divisions of the agency. This means that the department is male dominated despite women making the largest percentage of Virtual county population. In addition, minority groups lack or have inadequate representation in the department as indicated in the demographic information. For example, in most posts there is inadequate representation of Asians, Hispanics and other minority races in the police department. There is a need for the leadership of the police department to ensure adequate representation of the minority groups to reflect the actual composition of the community that they are serving. This is especially important because the minority racial and ethnic groups may view themselves as targets of offensive handling at the hands of the police (Weitzer, Tuch, and Skogan, 2008). The demographic information indicates that there is a challenge with regard to the overall population of the county in comparison to the number of officers to serve this large population. Although there is a consistent increase in the size of the population over the four years, the number of police officers remains quite constant. The large ratio creates an operation challenge because there are only a few police officers to serve a very large population.

The culture of Virtual County Police has contributed to a number of issues that the agency is facing currently. First, there have been a number of retirements, which have resulted in promotions from within the young and inadequately experienced officers, who have little knowledge about the department's operations. This is the rationale behind the exclusion of community policing philosophy making the system reactive rather than proactive. This implies that the community has little or no opportunity to contribute to the operations of the department. There is also a culture of cutting down on the budgetary allocations for training programs. This means that there is minimal or no management training for the newly promoted leaders. This makes it difficult for the young and inadequately experienced leaders to understand the basics of managing a policy agency. In addition, there is a culture of ignoring minor cases of rule bending and violations, although this was not previously the case. This could be the reason why there were minimal complaints against personnel with complaints regarding to conformance to laws were the least among the other complaints.

The crime statistics of Virtual Country are in three parts namely part I, part II and part III, as the Uniform Crime Reporting Program of Federal Bureau of Investigation distinguishes them. Part I crimes include criminal activities such as homicide, aggravated assault, theft, robbery, motor vehicle theft, burglary, and forcible sexual offenses. Part II crimes that the Uniform Crime Reporting Program identifies include an additional of 16 types of crime that range from minimal assault to disorderly conduct to vandalism. Part III crimes, on the other hand, include all the criminal activities that are beyond the scope of part I and part II criminal offences. These statistics show that there is a consistent pattern with the most and the least common offences maintaining the statuses throughout the period. From the statistics, it is apparent that from 2005 to 2008, part I offences are the most common as compared to part II and part III offences. Similarly, part II crimes are more common than part III offences in the years given. Among the part I offences, theft rates highest, throughout the four-year period while homicide has the least number of cases reported throughout the same period. For part II offences, vandalism is the leading offence with the highest number of offences reported throughout the four-year period while prostitution has the least number of reported cases during the same period. Part III cases have to do with the offences that relate to the complaints against personnel. Among them, complaints against personnel with regard to their conduct were leading throughout the period while the least number of cases relate to conformance to law. From the statistics on the arrests made, it is clear that there were more adult arrests than juvenile arrests throughout the four years. On the other hand there were more arrests for part II offences than for part I offences despite the number of part I cases reported being more than those for part II do. However, with regard to the offences reported during the four years, there is no consistent progression or reduction in the number of offences. For instance, there were 262 robbery cases in the year2005, 277 in 2006, 244 in 2007, and 257 in 2008.

It is paramount that the police department work towards ensuring a reduction of offences rather than being reactive. Crime prevention is an essential aspect that all police departments should take into account. According to Brandon, and David (2012), it stands out as a significant element of an inclusive policy to reduce crime. This could be through developmental crime reduction, in order to prevent the advancement of criminal prospective in individuals. On the other hand, using situational prevention is crucial in averting the occurrence of crimes by decreasing opportunities and increasing the risk and problems of offending (Clarke, 2009). The police department could also work with the members of the public to design a community prevention strategy that will transform the social environment and institutions that influence offence in suburban communities. There is also need for the department to work towards reducing the number of imprisonments that they make. This will help reduce the level of offences because the cost savings arising from this strategy will be helpful in enhancing hot spots policing and other valuable policing strategies that will avert crime (Braga and Weisburd, 2010).

In order to address the issues that face the Virtual police department, there a number of steps that they can take. The core of the many issues that the department faces is corruption and in order to address the issue of corruption, there is a need to put in place measures that will curb the menace. From the background information, it is clear that promotions and transfers are not on merit, but on personal relationships and corrupt ways. In addition, there is a tendency of policy officers receiving bribes from the public. In order to tackle this issue, it is paramount that the department establishes a stern approach to root out corruption by putting in place a clear channel of communication with the members of the public in order to facilitate the reporting of corrupt police behavior without apprehension of retribution. There is a requirement for an internal investigative system, with an array of internal controls that govern the system, to ensure a fair and transparent manner of carrying out investigations. If there is a need, the authority should act uncompromisingly on actionable investigation results. In addition, having a system where there is an automatic generation of postings by software for each employee after a given time interval (Agarwal, and Transparency International India, 2008). Similarly, there is need to put in place an objective criterion for promotions and transfers so that individual judgment plays a limited role. These processes will work as a powerful deterrent to corruption and give rise to renewed assurance in the department by the citizens it serves.

Once there is a method in place to discourage corruption, the department should put in place a sequence of comprehensible benchmarks that are related to performance in order to have a scheme to scrutinize and monitor improvement. By establishing a system for monitoring the performance of police officers, this will substantially increase the accountability of individual police officers. According to Agarwal and Transparency International India (2008), these benchmarks will ensure that the department's human resources have a set of firm guiding principles by which they can measure their performance. This will also ensure that the police officers' security is indisputable by the knowledge that they are achieving the expectations of the department's management. Some of the benchmarks that the department's administration might put in place include a targeted reduced crime rate, attainment of a target of positive the public feedback indicators, a given number of successfully accomplished community policing assignments, or setting up a given number of visual impacts per an individual of patrol units traversing their neighborhoods.

Lack of employee motivation is another challenge that the Virtue department of police is facing and there is a necessity to address this issue vividly. Like in any other organization, it is the duty of the supervisors and managers to motivate officers in order to attain the goals of the department (Gaines, and Worrall, 2012). It is crucial that the department develops a merit-based incentive scheme to support motivation for performance and promote improvement. The department should put in place a sophisticated criterion, which allows all employees in the department to have prospects to attain a reward because of merit. The agency should make sure that the criteria they choose have a strong link to the benchmarks of performance, as mentioned earlier. This is because a scantily administered merit scheme can result in allegations of preferential treatment, which will worsen morale.