Strategic Plan
Introduction
The Police Department aims to strategize how to tackle the growing problem of violent crime in the neighbourhood. Six key divisions/units will be involved to facilitate successful implementation of the strategic plan: The Emergency Preparedness, The Patrol Unit, The Criminal Investigations, The Vice and Narcotics, Family Crimes and Sexual Assault, and the Special Operations Divisions. Four divisions will be excluded from this plan: Education & Training, Support Services, Animal Control, and Automated Enforcement divisions.
The Emergency Preparedness Department
This unit is responsible for planning for any emergencies, thus handles matters relating to intelligence information and analysis of crime. The division has operational and administrative personnel responsible for planning the deployment of officers and other resources for both prevention and suppression of criminal-related activities (Dempsey & Forst, 2011). As such, this division would provide primary operation for all the other police departments by defining the four phases of all emergency management: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.
The Patrol Unit
This unit is responsible for preventative patrol activities, discovery of public hazards, delinquency causing situations, and initial distress calls for police, assistance and fire. The patrol officers undertake preliminary investigation into crimes, DWI detection & apprehension traffic enforcement and drug interdiction (Dempsey & Forst, 2011).
Foot and car patrols would create the feeling of widespread presence of police and in turn help in deterring crime (preventive patrol). Proactive operations shall entail using decoys, relying on informants, raiding, stopping and frisking suspects, maintaining police presence repeat-complaint places, shadowing repeat offenders, and saturating a location with police to maintain constant order.
The Criminal Investigations Division
The division undertakes investigations requiring special expertise, or those unable to be finalized by the Patrol department handling the preliminary report. This unit will liaison with the Patrol Unit by conducting follow-up investigations to all criminal cases.
Specialized gang intelligence would undertake routine assessment of information relating to gangs and their associates, ensuring the police department database is up to date and channelled to all departments especially the Special Operations Unit. The division would also apply for and implement search warrants, run forensic tests, maintain photograph and fingerprint files, besides preparing cases for prosecution.
The Vice and Narcotics Division
This division is tasked with collecting, archiving and relaying vice- and narcotics-related intelligence to enable successful investigations and prosecutions of suppliers and pushers of drugs. This unit shall work with the Patrol, CID, Family Crime and Sexual Assaults divisions to develop and implement strategies to address street level drug sales and purchase). Success shall be accomplished through precise informant networks, surveillances, undercover investigations, efficient processing of criminal intelligence information, and timely arrests of drug dealers and buyers (Dempsey & Forst, 2011.
Family Crimes and Sexual Assault Division
This unit employs an innovative multidisciplinary team strategy to prosecute family violence and sexual assault cases such as physical sexual abuse of children and adult sexual assault, severe domestic violence, murders of children and/or other family members, child pornography, and prosecution of sexual offenders. The division would conduct detailed and thorough follow-up investigations of family and sexual assaults as initiated by the patrol and CID departments. A winning collaborative team strategy would be to pull together the entire police department divisions as well as external medical and health services.
Special Operations Division
The tactical, traffic enforcement and victim assistance sections of this division would be instrumental. The Tactical section provide specially trained officers and equipment to respond to emergency situations such as managing barricades, hostage rescues, counter terrorism, and high risk felony. The traffic section would handle drunk-driver checkpoints and programs related to intoxicated drivers. The unit would enforce drug laws by engaging in police crackdowns to make drug arrests and check street dealing by employing undercover, buy-and-burst operations, raids on apartments, sweeps, asset forfeiture, and reverse stings.
Exempted Divisions/Units
Education & Training Division
This division provides high quality law enforcement training to all police officers and keeps them up to date with changes in laws, procedures, and department policies. it will not be highly necessary to include this division in our strategy to curb increasing violent crime in the area because our officers are already skilled enough and sufficient in number to effectively address the issue. Besides, education and training would take a lot of time which is not our luxury at the moment.
Support Services Division
This division basically provides support to the other departments through processing of reports and records to the follow up investigations carried out by detectives and forensic specialists. The property and Evidence section collects and processes property retrieved as evidence, found property, or for safe-keeping. The Youth section deals with issues relating to youth and crime. This division is excluded from this plan because most of its functions are supportive and in nature, meaning that the six major departments would sufficiently handle the responsibilities as applicable.
Animal Control Division
This division serves to enlighten the public about responsible pet ownership along with enforcement of city animal ordinances. Officers rescue injured or sick animals, capture and impound stray and potentially dangerous animals at large, and remove stray dead animals from both public and private property. As such, it would not be ideal to include it in this strategic plan to compound growing violent crime in the neighbourhood.
Automated Enforcement division
This division serves to reduce the false alarms and enforce red light law in the area by registering alarm companies and users, relaying notification of false alarms, and exacting fines for excessive false alarms. This division is excluded from the task force because the department would have to maintain constant surveillance and respond to all distress calls owing to the gravity of the violent crime leading to intensified demand for action from the public.
Non-police departments included
The State Attorney’s Office
The office would assist with criminal investigations and prosecution following request of local officials. Furthermore, it would coordinate and cooperate with all inter-jurisdictional efforts and other specialized technical issues such as complex financial investigations, computer forensics, and capital murder. The office would also help in victim assistance training in crime victim’s compensation and victim’s rights.
The State Probation Department
This department is the community corrections arm of the federal court system. The department would help the task force in investigating and supervising violent crime offenders conditionally released by the courts into the community on parole, probation, or supervised release. It would help ensure that individually previously convicted of violent crime would obey the law and not abstain from subsequent crimes. Probation forcers will work with federal judges, other court personnel, state attorneys, defence attorneys, prisons, treatment providers, community leaders, and our law enforcement agents.
References:
Dempsey, S. J. & Forst, S. L. (2011). An Introduction to Policing. Connecticut: Cengage Learning.
