Intro to Law Enforcement Exam 2

Terms and Key Percentages from Ch. 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10

Reality Shock

The astonishment of a new police officer experiences when encountering the unpleasant aspects of dealing with the public, the criminal justice system, and the department during the first weeks and months on the job.

Hostility from citizens

Anger or disrespect about the police or a police officer expressed by one or more residents.

Criminal Justice system Insiders

Professionals who regularly make important decisions about criminal cases such as police, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges.

Seniority System

A personnel process in which offenders with more years on the job have first priority in requesting assignments.

Police Subculture

The major social norms among rank and file officers that govern police conduct. William Westley

Group solidarity

A strong sense of fellowship between officers derived from a common work environment.

Code of silence

Also known as the "blue curtain", a code of honor among police officers whereby officers refuse to testify against corrupt colleagues, creating a veil of secrecy around police actions.

Testilying

Officers lying in court either to protect themselves or to cover for other officers.

EPIC (Ethical Policing Is Courageous)

Requires officers to intervene and stop other officers who are violating department policies or engaging in any other misconduct.

Capacity to Use Force

The Defining Feature of police.

Moderns

Male police officers who accepted policewomen relatively easily, recognized that police work rarely calls for physical strength, and accepted the idea that job opportunities should be open to everyone on the basis of individual merit.

Sexual Harassment

Unwanted sexual advances, offensive sexually related behavior, or discrimination in assignments or promotion.

Active Officers

Officers who initiate more citizen contacts, back up officers on other calls, assert control in situations with citizens, and make more arrests.

Passive Officers

Initiate few contacts with citizens; respond only to calls to which they are dispatched; and make few traffic stops, field interrogations, and arrests.

Career Development

Involves opportunities to use one’s talents and develop expertise in a particular area.

Promotion

Advancement in rank or responsibility usually based on merit, but sometimes the result of personal favoritism.

Performance Evaluations

An employment review designed to provide feedback to the officer so that he or she has an opportunity to improve.

"Coveted" Assignments

Assignments that are regarded as highly desirable by rank and file officers.

Outside Employment

A significant number of police officers supplement their income with work outside the law enforcement agency.

Job Stress

Conditions associated with one’s work environment that are mentally or physically disruptive; the major cause of job dissatisfaction.

Turnover

The number of employees hired by a company or department to replace workers who have left their jobs in a given period of time.

Decertification

The process of revoking a police officer’s license to work in a given state; addresses the problem of an officer who is fired from one department for misconduct and is then hired by another, but does not prevent the fired officer from being hired in another state.

Backbone of Policing

The backbone of policing is patrol, the central feature of police operations.

Functions of Patrol

Patrol is used to deter crime, enhance feelings of public safety, and to make officers available for service.

Police-Population Ratio

The traditional measure of the level of police protection in a community;usually calculated as the number of officers per 1,000 population.

Hot Spot

An area that receives a disproportionate number of calls for police service and/or has a very high crime rate.

84%, 4%, 5%, 5%

Percentage of US Automobile Patrol, then on foot, then on Motorcycle, then on Bicycles

Foot Patrol

Officers within a department who make neighborhood rounds on foot. While extremely expensive and able to cover only limited ground, this allows for enhanced police–community relations.

89%

percent of all patrols in municipal police departments—involve single police officers.

Officer-Initiated Activity

Includes stopping, questioning, and frisking suspicious citizens, making informal contacts with law-abiding citizens; stopping vehicles for possible violations, writing traffic tickets, checking suspicious events; and making arrests.

Watchmen Style

An organizational style used in police departments that emphasizes peacekeeping without aggressive law enforcement and few controls over rank and file officers.

Legalistic Style

An organizational style used in police departments that emphasizes aggressive crime fighting and attempts to control officer behavior through a rule-bound, “by-the-book” administrative approach.

Service Style

A style of policing that emphasizes responsiveness to community expectations and typically found in suburban communities.

Span of Control

holds that a supervisor can effectively manage only a limited number of people. In policing, the general standard is one sergeant to eight patrol officers

911 Communications Center

Receives incoming calls from citizens, makes a series of discretionary decisions about how to handle those calls, and in some cases dispatches police cars to the scene of the incident. Nerve center of PD. Operator “the key decision maker in the police bureaucracy. Also known as a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP).

Communications Center Operators

Information brokers who receive citizen calls and translate them into official bureaucratic responses.

Order Maintenance Calls

Calls for police service that involve such incidents as minor fights and disturbances, domestic and public nuisances.

Service Calls

Responds to incidents including medical emergencies, welfare checks, and general assistance.

Response Time

The total amount of time between the commission of a crime and the moment a police officer arrives on the scene.

Discovery Time

The interval between the commission of the crime and its discovery.

Discovery Time, Reporting Time, Processing Time, Travel Time

The total amount of time between the commission of a crime and the moment a police officer arrives on the scene includes separate parts

Reporting Time

The interval between discovery and when the citizen calls the police.

Processing Time

The interval between the call and the dispatch of a patrol car.

Travel Time

The length of time it takes patrol officers to reach the scene.

97%

Percentage of Police departments that attempt to control pursuits through written policies.

Discretionary Policies

About 13 percent of all police departments have these policies that give officers broad discretion about whether to engage in pursuits.

Discouraging Policies

About 3% of police departments have these policies that advise officers against pursuits in certain situations but are not as limiting as prohibitive policies.

Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment

conducted from 1972 to 1973, the experiment measured the impact of different levels of patrol on criminal activity, community perceptions, police officer behavior, and police department practices, while being the first independent and objective experiment (that met the minimum standards of scientific research) to test the effectiveness of patrol.

Findings of the Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment

Variations in the level of patrol had no significant impact on crime.

Variations in the level of patrol had no significant impact on citizen feelings of safety.

There were no significant changes in behavior or lifestyle because of perceived changes in police protection.

Variations in the level of patrol did not affect attitudes toward the police.

Residual Deterrence

Also called the phantom effect, involves assuming that the police are patrolling an area from their having been seen in the area or nearby at another time, leading to the presumption that the police are present when there is no patrol in the area.

Newark Foot Patrol Experiment

Conducted from 1978 to 1979 to test the effect of foot patrol on crime and public perception; the Newark experiment concluded that added foot patrol did not affect serious crime, but did have a positive impact on public perception of the police.

Differential Response

The screening of 911 calls by the police to provide responses appropriate to the nature and severity of the calls

Police Aides

Nonsworn personnel used by police departments to handle low-priority calls and routine assignments, freeing sworn officers for more critical tasks.

Directed Patrol

Instruction to patrol to look for specific persons or types of crimes, or to patrol certain areas intensively.

Order Maintenance

The policing of minor fights and disturbances, domestic incidents, public nuisances.

Crime Prophylactic Model

Holds that police intervention can defuse potentially violent situations and prevent them from escalating into criminal violence.

Police Knowledge Model

Holds that noncrime calls give officers a broader exposure to the community, with the result they have more knowledge that will help them solve crimes.

Social Work Model

Holds that the latent coercive power of the police can help to steer potential lawbreakers into law-abiding behavior.

Community Cooperation Model

Holds that effective responses to non-crime calls can help the police establish greater credibility with the public.

Citizen Reasons for calling police in noncrime situations

To maintain a social boundary, to relieve unpleasant situations, counterpunching, to obtain an emergency service

Counterpunching

Occurs when someone calls the police about another person to divert attention from his or her own behavior.

Traffic Enforcement

Most common type of order maintenance police carry out

Traffic stop percentages

Of those drivers stopped by the police, about 41 percent are for speeding, 12 percent for a vehicle defect, 10 percent for a record check, 7 percent for a stop sign or light violation, 7 percent for illegal turn or lane change, and the remaining were for seat belt or cell phone violations as well as other reasons.

Disturbances

These include bar fights, arguments between neighbors, and many other kinds of problems.

Domestic Disturbance

A dispute between two people who are in an intimate relationship, married or not married, requiring a police response in order to restore order and, if necessary, to make an arrest.

Violence

Usually an assault. 33% of domestic disturbances include this

Intimate Partner Violence

A disturbance between two or more people in an intimate relationship that has escalated to the level of actual or threatened violence. IPV

Responses to Domestic Disturbances

Arrest, Mediation, Separating the parties, referral to a social agency, no action at all. Arrest most common

Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment

A study conducted from 1981 to 1982 to determine the relative deterrent effect of arrest, mediation, and separation in misdemeanor domestic violence incidents; it found that arrests produced lower rates of repeat violence than separation or mediation.

Lautenberg Amendment

A federal law passed in 1996 prohibiting anyone with a conviction for domestic violence from owning a firearm.

Streetwalker

One who represents the lower end of the social and economic scale of prostitution by soliciting on the streets, thus being highly visible to both the police and the general public.

Bar Girl

A prostitute who works out of bars or other entertainment establishments.

Skeezers

A woman who trades sex for crack cocaine.

Brothel Prostitutes

Prostitutes who work for legal brothels, illegal message parlors, and escort services.

Call Girls

Sex workers who represent the upper end of the economic scale of prostitution.

Options for police dealing with mental illness

Hospitalization, Arrest, Informal Disposition. Informal Disposition Most Common

Psychiatric First Aid

This typically involves the officer using informal tactics to calm a person down. AKA Informal Disposition

Mercy Booking

Arresting a mentally ill person for a minor offense so that he or she will be booked into the county jail and receive needed mental health care.

Police-based Specialized Response

This model involves sworn officers who have extensive training in responding to problems involving the mentally ill. These officers are responsible for responding to calls for service involving mentally ill persons and serve as a liaison to mental health agencies.

Police-based Specialized Mental Health Response

This model involves utilizing mental health professionals, not sworn officers, who are employed by the police department to respond to problems involving the mentally ill. The mental health professionals provide on-location and telephone advice to officers in the field.

Mental-health-based Specialized Mental Health Response

This model involves formal agreements and arrangements between police departments and community mental health organizations. The model is based on the use of mental health crisis teams (MCTs) that are dispatched by police officers to provide field-level services to those in need.

Responsibilities of Traditional Juvenile Crime Units

Investigating Reports of Juvenile Crime, Arresting Delinquents, Preparing Cases for Court, Appearing in Court

Alternative Police Responses to Juveniles

Taking no official action (most common), Taking a juvenile into custody but releasing him or her to a parent or guardian, Taking the juvenile into custody and releasing him or her to another law enforcement or social service agency, Arresting the juvenile and referring him or her to juvenile court

Factors Influencing Domestic Violence Arrest

Some officers regard domestic violence as a private matter to be dealt

with by the family.

• Arrests are often dismissed because victims do not pursue the case.

• Victims ask police to do something other than make an arrest.

• Arrests require work.

• Police departments place low value on domestic violence arrests

Suits that mandated arrests in felonious assault

• Bruno versus Codd (19 78).

• Scott versus Hart (1979).

Impact of Mandatory Arrest Laws and Policies

• May discourage calls from people who only want the police

to calm the immediate situation.

• May deter people from calling the police for fear that they

themselves may be arrested.

Policing Prostitution Objectives

• To keep streetwalking confined to a limited area.

• To prevent related disorders from breaking out.

Sex Trafficking

Police agencies have a specialized unit or division responsible for addressing this. Responsible for enforcing these laws, linking victims to support services, and providing training and information to community groups

Problems with Juvenile Policing

• Police have a high level of contact with people under the age of

18.

• Young people express more negative attitudes toward the police

than do older people.

• Juveniles represent a significant aspect of the crime problem in

the United States

Juvenile Race Discrimination Factors

• Police departments observe minority youths more

frequently than white youths.

• Minority youths are stopped and questioned at a higher

rate than whites.

• Involvement of African Americans in serious crime is higher

than that of whites.

• Because most complainant–suspect situations are

intraracial, black juveniles are arrested at a higher rate.

Juvenile Crime Prevention Programs

• D.A.R.E. and G.R.E.A.T are the most popular current

programs.

• Attempt to prevent drug use, delinquency, and involvement

in gangs and gang crime.

Proactive Policing

Anticrime strategies initiated by the police, as opposed to a citizen request for service.

Reactive Crime Strategies

Anticrime strategies used by police when responding to a civilian’s request for service

General Crime Strategies

directed at the community at large and not at any particular crime.

Specific Crime Control Activities

are directed at particular crimes, places, offenders, or victims.

Particular Crimes

Routine patrol and the 911 system are general service activities that respond to any and all types of crimes. Other programs are directed at these. These include drunk-driving crackdowns, drug or gang crackdowns, or stakeouts designed to catch robbers.

Specific Places

Routine patrol serves the community at large with no particular geographic focus. Hot-spots programs, by contrast, are directed at these believed to be the centers of high levels of criminal activity.

Specific Offenders

Some anticrime activities are directed at these. The best examples are the repeat offender programs that target people suspected of currently committing high numbers of serious crimes.

Specific Victims

Some anticrime programs are directed at victims rather than offenders. The most important of these are the domestic violence programs and policies adopted by many police departments. Mandatory arrest policies, for example, are designed to protect victims of domestic assault from future violence.

Routine Patrol

The primary crime prevention activity of the police