Assignment:
Chapter 1:
Case Study : Seeing the World (and Subordinates) Through Rose-Colored Glasses
Sgt. Wilcox is a 10-year veteran, having worked mostly in the fraud section of detectives. She is recently assigned to day shift patrol division and assumes responsibilities for a team of mostly experienced and capable officers. Wilcox believes in a participative management style and therefore thinks that her officers should be involved in setting their work goals and objectives and should participate in the performance evaluation process. Wilcox meets with her team and outlines her approach to performance evaluations. Believing that this should be a positive experience for all, she instructs her officers to keep an individual log of their more notable achievements during the performance period. At the end of the rating period, Wilcox uses their top five accomplishments as a basis for their annual evaluation. When the first rating period is completed, Wilcox is pleased to find that her officers received some of the highest performance ratings in the department. However, she recently learns from her lieutenant that other supervisors are voicing criticisms of her evaluation methods. She is now confused about her evaluation method.
Q1. What, if any, do you perceive to be the good aspects of Wilcox's personal method of evaluation?
Q2. What problems might arise from Sgt. Wilcox's rating system?
Q3. What rater errors are being committed, if any? What might be the basis for the peer supervisors' criticisms?
Ref:
Peak, Kenneth J., Larry K. Gaines and Ronald Glensor. Police Supervision and Management for Ashford University, 3rd Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions. VitalBook file.
Chapter 2:
Case Study : An Agency at the End of Its ROP
Hill City is a relatively small community of about 80,000 people, whose police department has developed an aggressive Repeat Offender Program (ROP). Its eight hand-picked and specially trained officers engage in forced entries into apartments and houses, serving search warrants on the "worst of the worst" wanted felons. Their work is dangerous and physical, thus all of ROP's officers are in top physical condition. The supervisor overseeing the ROP team, Sgt. Lyle, was a drill instructor in the military prior to joining the force. He has developed an impressive training regimen for the ROP officers. They usually work out on their own time at least once a week, have high esprit de corps, and pride themselves on never losing a suspect or a physical confrontation. They often go out partying together to "blow off steam." They generally consider themselves to be elite and "head and shoulders above the rest." One day, while the team was attempting to serve a robbery warrant at a local motel, the suspect escaped through a rear window and led three ROP officers on a foot pursuit. After running extremely hard for about six blocks, the officers became exhausted and were unable to maintain their chase.
The following week, the same suspect robbed a fast-food establishment, and during his escape he killed a clerk and seriously wounded a police officer. Irate because the ROP team failed to catch the suspect earlier, many Hill City patrol officers begin to criticize the ROP team-whose members they consider to be overly exalted prima donnas-with one officer stating to a newspaper reporter that the entire team should be disciplined and that ROP should be disbanded. In one instance, a fight nearly ensued between two officers. The situation has now reached a boiling point, causing nearly all officers to take one side or another, fomenting a lot of stress and turmoil within the small agency, and causing officer requests for sick leave and vacation time to spike as never before. Sensing the urgency of the situation, and that his agency is being torn apart both from within and without, the chief asks all administrators (two deputy chiefs) and middle managers (four lieutenants) for input to deal with the public and the press, reduce the internal strife, and determine if any procedural or training issues require the department's attention. He further asks his six supervisors to provide input concerning means of reducing or ending the high level of hostility among patrol officers.
Q1. Should Sgt. Lyle shoulder any responsibility for the suspect situation and its aftermath (dissension within the department)? What kinds of inquiries might you make to determine whether or not this is the case?
Q2. Given that this seems to have become an agency-wide stress problem, what might the deputy chiefs, lieutenants, and sergeants recommend to the chief?
Q3. Should the ROP team be disbanded or continued under different supervision, training, and methods of operation
Ref:
Peak, Kenneth J., Larry K. Gaines and Ronald Glensor. Police Supervision and Management for Ashford University, 3rd Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions. VitalBook file.
Chapter 3:
Case Study: Redneck Causes Escalation to Black and Blue
Officer Burns is known to have extreme difficulty in relating to persons of color and others who are socially different from himself. Burns admits to his sergeant that he grew up in a prejudiced home environment and that he has little sympathy or understanding for people "who cause all the damn trouble." The officer never received any sensitivity or diversity training at the academy or within the department. The supervisor fails to understand the weight of the problem and has very little patience with Burns. So, believing it will correct the matter, the supervisor decides to assign Burns to a minority section of town so he will improve his ability to relate to diverse groups. Within a week, Burns responds to a disturbance at a housing project where residents are partying noisily and a fight is in progress. Burns immediately becomes upset, yelling at the residents to quiet down; they fail to respond, so Burns draws his baton and begins poking residents and ordering them to comply with his directions. The crowd immediately turns against Burns, who then has to call for backup assistance. After the other officers arrive, a fight ensues between residents and officers, and several officers and residents are injured and numerous arrests are made. The following day the neighborhood council meets with the mayor, demanding that Burns be fired and threatening a lawsuit.
Q1. Is there any liability or negligence present in this situation? If so, what kind?
Q2. Could the supervisor have dealt with Burns's lack of sensitivity in a better manner? If so, how?
Chapter 4:
Case Study: Getting the Job Done
Gothamville is a Midwestern city with a high crime rate and poor relations between the police and the public. The new reform mayor and police chief campaigned on a platform of cleaning up crime in the streets and ineffectiveness of government. They launched a commission to investigate what was termed a "litany of problems" within the police department. The investigation found that officers routinely lied about the probable cause for their arrests and searches, falsified search warrant applications, and basically violated rules of collecting and preserving evidence. They were also known to protect each other under a "shroud of secrecy" and to commit perjury in front of grand juries and at trials. These problems were found to be systemic throughout the agency; however, greed and corruption were not the motivating factors behind officers' giving perjured testimony. Officers believed that their false testimony and other such activities were the only means by which they could put persons they believed guilty behind bars. Worse yet, the study also found that prosecutors routinely tolerated or at least tacitly approved of such conduct. The study also found that many police officers did not consider giving false testimony to be a form of corruption, which they believed implies personal profit. Instead, they viewed testifying as just another way to "get the job done."
Q1. Do you believe that the officers' means of lying about the basis for their arrests and searches justified the end result of making arrests?
Q2. What about the prosecutors' tolerance of the officers' unethical behavior? To what ethical standards should the prosecutor's office be held?
Q3. As a supervisor, when these kinds of behaviors come to light, what punishment, if any, do you think is warranted for the persons involved?
Q4. What actions, if any, could a supervisor take to oversee officers' activities to prevent and detect such behaviors?
Ref:
Peak, Kenneth J., Larry K. Gaines and Ronald Glensor. Police Supervision and Management for Ashford University, 3rd Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions. VitalBook file.
Chapter 5:
Case Study: Downtown Sonny Brown
Officer Sonny Brown works the transport wagon downtown and has worked this assignment on day shift for several years. Because of his length of service in this assignment, he has earned the nickname "Downtown" Brown. He loves "hooking and booking" drunks and takes great pride in keeping the streets safe and clean. Local business owners appreciate his efforts, even once honoring him as the Chamber of Commerce "Officer of the Year." Sgt. Carol Jackson is recently promoted and receives her first patrol assignment to the downtown district. As it has been a while since she worked patrol, she decides to ride with Brown for a couple of days to learn about the district and its problems. She is pleased at the warm reception Brown receives from business merchants but quickly becomes concerned about some of his heavy-handed methods of dealing with drunks. When questioned about his tactics, Brown replies, "This ain't administration, Sarge, it's the streets, and our job is to sweep ‘em clean." Jackson speaks with Brown's former supervisor, who said he had received several verbal complaints against Brown from citizens, but none could be substantiated. Apparently no one was interested in the word of a drunk against a popular officer. Two days later, Sgt. Jackson is called to the county jail to meet with a booking officer, Hamstead, who wants to talk with her about a drunk who was booked a few hours earlier by Brown. Another prisoner has confided to Hamstead that the drunk was complaining that Brown had injured him by kicking him off a park bench and pushing him down a hill to the transport wagon. The drunk, complaining of pain in his side, was then taken to the hospital and treated for three broken ribs. When asked later about the incident, the drunk refused to cooperate and simply told Hamstead, "I fell down."
Q1. How should Sgt. Jackson handle this matter?
Q2. What are her options? Her responsibilities?
Q3. What types of disciplinary policy changes should the department consider to prevent these situations from occurring?
Reference:
Peak, Kenneth J., Larry K. Gaines and Ronald Glensor. Police Supervision and Management for Ashford University, 3rd Edition. Pearson Learning Solutions. VitalBook file.