Organizational Behavior 1

Organizational Behavior in the Police Department

Ron D. Young

Organizational Behavior in the Police Department

Organizational behavior is the advancement of structure and formatting of the Police department. Some of the areas include legal, training, social and home life that help the police department get along. It is impromptu that the organizational structure of the Police department is configured properly. Most likely questions about the processes and people involved in them will occur. In hindsight, many Police departments need to hire good officers with skills that far oversee the past recruits that have been retired. This is called progression positively moving ahead instead of backwards. When hiring good police officers they must first look at their well-being. Is this recruit going to fit in with the rest of the Police force or do they have hang ups. Do the new recruits have the abilities needed to go forward in the police force and continue to move up ranks from the bottom to the top? Are the police officers quick on their feet or do they need to be helped continuously? How well can the recruits adapt to what is happening around them. Are they skilled drivers or do they need specialized training.

Some very surprising patterns in supervisory styles and patrol officer

Behavior have been found over the last couple of years. The US Department of Justice has found four supervisory styles from recent research. The best-known style identified as active was found it to be more than likely to influence officer behavior. This influence can possibly be either positive or negative, it can inspire subordinates to engage in more problem solving activities, or it can result in more frequent use of force. An active supervisory style was also best received by the while implementation was easier than most management styles.

Traditional supervisors expect immediate enforcement from subordinates, engagement in community oriented activities or policing of minor disorders are not closely looked at in the total picture. More than less  likely  other types of supervisors demonstrate decision making  while encounters with citizens  are being handled. Officers need to be trained on how to handle incidents that are personalized to citizens or reducing valance. Traditional sergeants and lieutenants are usually task oriented, they expect subordinates to produce great achievements particularly arrest and citations—along with paper work and documentation. Less inclined toward developing relationships, traditional supervisors give more instruction to subordinates and are less likely to reward and more likely to punish patrol officers. The traditional supervisor’s ultimate concern is to control subordinate behavior by discipline. Traditional supervisors are more likely to support new policing initiatives if they are consistent with aggressive law enforcement.

The Innovative supervisor is characterized by an acquired skill to build relationships, they tend to make officers friend and construct higher moral because of it.  A innovative supervisor  is task orientation, they tend to be have very positive views of their subordinates. These supervisors are considered innovative because they conventionally   encourage officers to accept new philosophies and methods of policing. Innovative supervisors are hold high expectations that induce community policing and efficient problem solving skills by subordinates. Many innovated supervisors agree strongly that a good patrol officer will research thus investigating what residents complain about to resolve neighborhood problems. Traditional supervisors do not conduct investigations to find out issues and within the community. Supportive supervisors believe more in active police work than preparing reports that give an overall outlook of what is plausible in the community. The main goal of the innovative supervisors is to actively assist and innovate subordinates with the implementation of community policing and problem-solving strategies structuring the police officers with coaching, mentoring, and facilitating. Enforcing the law is one of the paramount activities patrol officers are responsibility for.

Supervisory styles influenced all officers but they especially innovate the ones that have behaviors that are very difficult to keep track of measuring their skill level by monitoring such problems as unusual use of force, problem solving, and productivity. Furthermore , supervisory styles induce a significant interaction  between the officer behaviors  relatively  making it  easier to keep track, monitor and measure, such making arrests and issuing citations. One reason may be that supervisors have more influence on problem solving of difficult situations. Patrol officers have the most discretion when dealing with subordinates of suspects that are unruly under innovative supervisory. When supervisors are uncertain about tasks and monitoring performance they depend on the more reliable police officers to help them identify problematic issues, This problem solving allows the sergeant to define the duties of subordinates thus clarifying the roles of police officers and their position in the force.

One organization  core altercations that induces  police intimidation during traffic stops of citizens is constitutionality of the practice. Is the reasoning of the police stop of citizens established upon race or ethnicity, rather than reasonable suspicion that can be articulated? Is the practice of stopping citizens placed upon racial or ethnic profiling? The consequences of the practice of crime control  for police legitimacy and police-minority community relations (Tyler, 2006). Departmental  control can also be litigated through the officers’ decision making processes police initiated stops of citizens for many reason they are not all embraced by citizens because they all include profiling thus finding the bad guy by the way they look or their actions is not good enough for the public to verify reasoning for a traffic stop. Preventing your officers from engaging in racially biased policing is a major behavior problem. Officer street behavior is generally balanced by their training making them well rounded officers rather than bullies that search for a specific type of person to arrest. 

 Organizational framework drawing an idea from a problem countering police discretion of problem solving to run an efficient department is a requirement of the supervisor. Upon what we already know about how police departments advance efficiency by using, supervisory techniques to adjust officers’ behavior in the field the supervisor can change the framework to please both the police officers and the public.

 The complexity of these issues makes it difficult to simply remove a few bad apples; it would not help adding a few well-qualified cadets. Also clearly using discretion to control framework offers numerous training lessons some including effectiveness, accountability, and strategic planning. Lessons are a focus for good training on organizational behavior. The four organizational behavioral areas are described as  recruitment and selection, administrative and selection, training, administrative policy,  and supervision, commitment, and accountability.  

The President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice in 1967 More than 40 years ago, configured recommendations for proper screening of applicants that  identify those who are not suited for the policing profession. During  the traditional recruiting application process it has been focused on “screening out” those who are mentally  ill unreliable police officers are recruited everyday though a bad selection process that  has been revolved around efforts to identify candidates with sought-after qualities. Unfit applicant should be disregarded and sent to secondary agencies that they are fit for the first application process is important,  judging  who should be screened in and left out is an age old problem that police recruiters have had since policing has been established. This dialogue over screening out (and in) job applicants has typically occurred within the context of concerns over corruption and brutality, but the lessons are equally relevant for racially biased policing.

Within the screening out process, the two different types of research being empirical research and practical experience have been determined to be very difficult to identify individuals, who are not well suited for the police profession (Mollen Commission, 1994). For example, Grant and Grant (1995) experiments found out  that “efforts to improve the quality of police officer performance by screening out those recruits who will not make good police officers have generally been unsuccessful.” Grant and Grant (1995: 152) were especially harsh psychological testing (e.g., MMPI) and personal interviews that identify applicants with “poor mental health and undesirable personality traits.”  There are certain characteristics that produce red flags for potential police officer, employment. Police departments should conduct extensive background checks and verifications to determine if applicants fall with inside the correct fundamental characteristic. Nnumerous misconduct scandals force many police leaders to leave departments and start fresh at police departments that do not know about their past history.

A large number of police officers served in departments for short periods of time and then let go because of bad background checks during the selection process, (Skolnick and Fyfe, 1993; Fyfe and Kane, 2006). Background investigations usually include a criminal history check, credit check, and interviews of family members, neighbors, and former employers this is the standard for police placement. Red flags include prior criminal records, drug use, unsatisfactory performance in prior employment, and low morale. Lying on the job application is a bad start to a new career, departments find evidence of prejudicial cases that lead to discriminatory actions by prior work opportunities. Background examinations cost lots of money and consume much needed time , recent research their importance are empirical in order to screen out poor applicants. In past studies of career-ending misconduct they have found that the selection process failed to identify past behavior and misconduct that police officers demonstrated during court cases in the NYPD, Kane and White (2009: 765) highlighted the importance of “screening out” processes.

Perhaps the most salient policy implications of the present study relate to departmental screening processes. Because of the low visibility of police work, the unique opportunities for misconduct presented to police officers, and the conflict that often exists between the police and the public in certain communities, it seems clear that police departments should continue to exclude people from policing who have demonstrated records of criminal involvement and employee disciplinary problems. These represent evidence-based policy recommendations for which criminological perspectives developed for the general population (i.e., outside of policing) produced support (e.g., control theories, opportunity theories, and perhaps even routine activities theory).

“Screening In” Processes: The second aspect of recruit selection involves the identification of qualities which “predict” good policing on the street. The interest in identifying those best-suited for police work (rather than those who are ill-suited) gained traction in the 1960s, particularly with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, amid concerns that prevailing “screening out” processes disproportionately affected minority and female applicants (Grant and Grant, 1995). Kane and White (2009: 765) highlighted this aspect of the application process as well, noting that their “findings also suggest the importance of screening in or identifying potential police.