Municipal (City) Police Department
Los Angeles, CA is a city known for well-developed entertainment, aerospace, tourism and technology industries. There are about 10,125,000 people of various nationalities living in it. Even though more that 7% of citizens are unemployed, median income is almost $56,000 (Los Angeles, 2015). A municipal (city) police department of Los Angeles, known as The Los Angeles Police Department, has about 10,000 officers and 2,773 civilian staff, including both males and females (California, 2013). Its structure is rather complex. It is headed by the board of police commissioners who work with the executive director, inspector general, police permit review panel, and chief of police. He is in charge of Sworn and Civilian Commanding Officers and works with the chief of staff commander, employee relations group commander, community relations specialist, director of the office of constitutional policing and policy police administration. On the next level are the directors of the office of operations, office of special operations, and office of administrative services. They all have assistants who help them to cooperate with the heads of bureaus. Then the power goes to ASST. CO Commander and captains (Beck, 2016). The duties include “foot patrol, bicycle patrol, motorcycle patrol, horse patrol, special drug unit, court security, transport of prisoners, serving of civil process, jail operations, SWAT operations, search and rescue operations” (Peak, 2012). There are more than “7,600 workstations in more than 65 locations throughout the City, 80 servers; 1,200 stand-alone computers; 100 LANs; 20 WinFrame sites; over 900 printers; 29 legacy systems; access to 32 remote county, state and federal systems; Internet access; the Department’s Intranet; and a host of development projects” (ITD Organization, 2016).
I think that the law enforcement organization can meet the needs of the population it serves. The Los Angeles Police Department has many officers who are trained to perform a wide range of duties, which is critical for a large city. Moreover, the officer population is diverse, which proves that they can find an approach to different individuals and their actions are not biased.
Sheriff’s Department
The department headed by Sheriff Jim McDonnell has less complex structure. The sheriff works with the strategic communications director, chief of staff and executive officer. Except for that, he has an access to the professional standards division. The executive officer is in charge of public information office, professional standards division, and four assistant sheriffs, who work with different divisions and bureaus (Sheriff’s Department, 2015). The duties of the sheriff’s office:
- “Maintaining and operating the county correctional institutions;
- Serving civil processes (protective orders, liens, evictions, garnishments, and attachments) and performing other civil duties, such as extradition and transportation of prisoners;
- Collecting certain taxes and conducting real estate sales (usually for nonpayment of taxes) for the county;
- Performing routine order-maintenance duties by enforcing state statutes and county ordinances, arresting offenders, and performing traffic and criminal investigations;
- Serving as bailiff of the courts” (Peak, 2012).
State Police Agency
The California state police agency that is now known as California Highway Patrol is headed by the Commissioner (offices of employee relations, inspector general and special representative). One is receiving information from the Deputy Commissioner (offices of community outreach and media relations, internal affairs, legal affairs, employment opportunity, risk management and accreditation). Then the power goes to the Assistant Commissioner, Field and the Assistant Commissioner, Staff (CHP Organization, 2016). The state police duties:
- “Perform a variety of non-traffic functions (SWAT, drug units, etc.);
- Patrol methods include car patrol, bicycle patrol, foot patrol, marine patrol, motorcycle patrol;
- Special purpose state agencies
- Limited-purpose units to enforce (alcoholic beverage laws, agricultural laws, etc.);
- Data collection for the purpose of identifying, reducing, preventing bias-based policing” (Peak, 2012).
References
Beck, C. (2016). Los Angeles Police Department organization chart. Web.
California. (2013). Web.
ITD Organization. (2016). Web.
Los Angeles. (2015). Web.
Peak, K., (2012). Policing America : Challenges and best practices. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Sheriff’s Department. (2015). Web.