Changing Patrol Operations

The Bad News

As a police officer if you get into your cruiser after roll-call and then drive out toward your pre-assigned patrol district to roam the streets looking for trouble and waiting for a service call then you are wrong. Additionally, I would argue, you are wasting your time, and the tax payers hard earned money, by driving in circles burning fuel. You are, as a protector of your community, ineffective. Actually, if you sat on-station during your entire tour, and never entered your patrol car until receiving a call, then really you are more effective than working the "preventative patrol" function, because at least you are saving money on gas and vehicle wear-and-tear. Why am I saying this? Law enforcement research has been telling police executives this same information for years (in some cases over three decades), but your boss is not listening. Specifically, what has research told them?

The Numbers

1. The Kansas City Preventative Patrol Experiment, 1973-1975, told police chiefs that citizens did not overtly notice whether officers were patrolling their neighborhoods aggressively, moderately or not at all. Think about it; as you read this article do you have any idea if a cruiser has just passed where you are? Common sense is confirmed by scientific longitudinal studies telling us citizens have no idea either. Whoever originally stated that citizens need to see the police on patrol in order to feel safe did a good job in creating an urban legend that even law enforcement administrators believe.
2. Further revelations by the experiment showed that the publics feeling of being safe wasn't impacted, noticeably, by high visibility patrols and the number of arrests in aggressively patrolled zones did not positively impact the community.
3. Another study compiled by the Los Angles Police Department examined whether officers on routine patrol could interdict violent crimes, in this case robberies. On average, an officer would encounter a robbery in progress once every 14 years. This makes sense too, because other research tells us that the average robbery, from start to finish, lasts less than 60 seconds. If it is a commercial establishment rip then the time is around 20 seconds.
4. Repeat service call areas are locations where an officer will be dispatched 3 or more times within one year. Problem-Oriented Policing strategists refer to this as a "Chronic Service Drain". Basically, studies tell us that 65% of calls that drain police resources are caused by 10% of the same people, places or things. Traditional police patrol operations do not eradicate these chronic service drains, it only feeds them.
5. Nationally, 70% of calls for service that police officers respond to are not incidents that law enforcement officers are required to handle. Think about it yourself, how many locked cars did you open today vs. bad guys arrested?

Like the Energizer Bunny, the facts from scientific research keeps going, and going and going, and tells us the same story: American Policing methodology is not working, hasn't worked, and is completely counter-productive. Officers drive around in circles, waste copious amounts of gas (a significant line item in any departmental budget) and have little to show for it at the end of their tour.

Why Change?

We have to or we are going to get killed, literally. Former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said it best when he testified in Congress about the threats facing America in 2002 when he stated that thousands of people wake up every morning around the world with a single motivation; How to best destroy the U.S.A. The Global War on Terror is the greatest threat facing our homeland in the history of our country. Domestic and military intelligence assets (not just ours but around the globe too) continuously warns that terrorists are seeking weapons of mass destruction to use against our civilian population. When Congress asked Tom Ridge what his #1 fear was, in terms of an attack, his immediate response was, "Nuclear". Leading scientists (those in the know, for real) predicted in 2007 that based on the threat condition information they had at the time, there exists a 50% to 70% chance that a nuclear detonation will occur in the U.S. within the next 10 - 15 years.

Nearly 4,000 dead on 9/11 changed our government, altered our economy, mobilized and deployed our military for a generational conflict. What would 20 million dead do? Need anymore convincing? Look into the eyes of your children and know for certain that when that suit case nuke goes off their lives will forever be changed for the worse. They will never have the lives that we had and it is sincerely doubtful they will ever own a home, have a job or even have a remote idea of what the American Dream was.

What Can Be Done?

Simple. Stop wasting time, money and effort doing nothing. Police Chiefs or administrators need to get their heads out of their rear ends, police unions need to stop negotiating new ways to keep cops lazy, and police agencies need to task focus on deploying officers to make a real difference for once. Listen to the researchers, because they do not just show us what we are doing wrong they also provide recommendations of what to do right and do it! Don't talk about, do it!

Every officer needs Anti-Terrorism Training to understand their adversary, known attack methods and how to develop a departmentally robust informant database so that law enforcement can get into the decision cycle of terrorists, or any criminal for that matter, and make them react to us rather than us responding to them. All officers need to understand a working definition of Community-Oriented Policing, and how to use Problem-Oriented and Intelligence-Led Policing methods to combat the 4th Generation Warfare tactics being waged against us. To have the mindset that the terrorism problem is over there and not here is fatal.

Until that time arrives in our law enforcement history where the 600,000 law enforcement officers serving the diverse communities across our nation are united toward a common cause, namely eliminating threats posed by "hyper-violent criminals" and terrorists, we are just sitting ducks. We have everything to loose. The next bomb might not be measured in pounds of TNT, but rather in kilotons and Plutonium instead. Recovery would be impossible.