Effective and Accountable Policing

What does your police department need to be doing to be effective at controlling crime? Do they treat people right or does the department need to be "reformed?" These are critical questions for today's citizens and city leaders. Retired Chief Marlin Price provides readers with the specific questions to ask your department and what the answers should be.  Police departments are accountable to their city councils and city leadership, and these city leaders not only have the authority to ask these questions, they have the obligation to do so. But many citizens and city leaders lack sufficient knowledge about policing to ask the right questions.

Based on current law enforcement research and over 50 years of law enforcement service, Chief Price provides citizens and city leaders with what we know works and what doesn't work in policing to make departments effective in reducing crime. He provides detailed information on methods to determine how many officers are needed and the difficulties and problems encountered when a department is not staffed appropriately. Clear information on the training necessary for today's police officers allows evaluation of your own agency's training program.

Determining whether your department needs to be reformed or just a few officers require a clear understanding of how police departments operate and control their officers' activities. Chapters on methods to identify and assess the results include critical questions that need to be answered. The use of early intervention systems combined with seldom discussed detailed analysis of racial profiling data can identify officers that may be at risk of future problems with community members.

           Chapters include:

*        A brief history of Policing in the United States

*        Policing Options and Costs

*        Policing - what does and does not work

*        The Police Organization

*        Strategic Planning

*        Police Staffing Levels

*        Control and Supervision

*        Accountability and Reform

Police departments often make monthly reports to city leadership providing a count of department activities over the past month. These are usually the number of calls answered and the number of arrests made, etc. These are just activities, not progress toward desired goals of lowering the crime rate or maintaining public trust. Discussion outlining the differences and how city leadership can build periodic reports as well as requiring certain audits and inspections will allow cities to keep their police agency on the right track.