Introduction
A virtual police is a national policing intelligence unit which is responsible for combating crimes (Jenkins 66). The unit also investigates and addresses issues that are causing unrest to the population.
History
This policing unit is believed to have started some years back. It is suggested that, the unit has been in existence for almost 55 years. The farmers decided to come together and form a police unit that will keep a watch in the county. The unit had different departments upon which the responsibilities were allocated. These departments were organized and managed by the farmers who first gained access to the unit.
The unit had its systems of making laws where specialists in law were allocated this responsibility. The existing farmers started bringing their friends on board where they were to work as constables in the department. They were hired on the basis of whom you know basis but not on merit basis. The move was locking out competent individuals who could have filled the strategic positions in the department.
The unit had not gained acceptance from the state police until some years back when the state recognized it. The acceptance brought to an end friction which was in existence between the virtual police and the state police. It is estimated that 20 years down the line, the state police has gained confidence about the validity of the unit. They have started interacting in their operations with an aim of promoting peace and security.
Beginning of issues
According to history, some of the constables in the unit were recruited by their farmer friends. Some of these inexperienced constables were entrusted with duties of running the department. This set in a number of issues which since then had affected the department to greater heights.
To start with, the presence of these constables changed how the laws were made and implemented in the department. Before, laws were made and enforced by experienced staffs but the newly hired staffs had no experience in law making process and subsequently enforcing. This led to primitive ways of enforcing the laws. Secondly, a change on how the department was run contributed addition issues.
In general, the change ways of running the department and enforcement of laws, has created a highway for perpetrating corruption. The officers became continually corrupt especially in the cities where the unit’s police were deployed to take control. They used to harass individuals with an aim of extorting money inform of bribes. This blurred the image of the unit to an extent it was disrespected by the state.
In addition, the officers were not subjected to a formal education which could have improved their way of living. Those responsible with encouraging the formal education frustrated the move instead. This took another direction since 1990s where the constables were recommended to pursue certain courses at least to gain knowledge in that field. This was considered an effective tool suitable to transform the officers.
The history of the department has continued to bring more and more issues. Since its inception, the department has been sourcing its officials from within the unit. It is apparent that, individuals from outside the department were not recruited to the unit. This has not only denied some capable individuals a chance to the department, but also has marked unfair representation of the community.
Organization and management of the department
The whole virtue police department is headed by the chief of police. Under the chief of police, there exist subordinates such as chief of internal affairs, chief of staff and legal advisor. They are directly linked to the chief of police and work together to ensure proper execution of duties by reporting to the chief issues arising from their respective areas.
They also communicate to other subordinates any information from the chief of police. Further, the department is composed of two commands which are each headed by the deputy chief. These commands are namely the operations and administration commands. The operation command consists of many and diverse sub divisions which make it to be extremely large compared to the administration command.
Some of the operation command’s sub divisions are the northern and southern district patrols which are the patrol platoons, the criminal investigation bureau which has numerous categories compared to other areas, and the special operations bureau with its allied sections.
On the other hand, the administration command is composed of a number of layers such as human resource, management services, and the IT management bureaus. The bureaus are headed by captains. In addition, the respective bureaus are composed of divisions which are headed by the lieutenants.
The captains oversee the operations of the bureaus and also act as a link between the respective commands and the divisions. The lieutenants oversee the operations of their respective divisions and also acting as the link between the bureaus and the sections. The interrelation among the bureaus, divisions and the sections makes the operations to be decisively allocated. But, the department experiences some problems because the operations are not adequately addressed.
Changes to the department
The department has been organized in a manner that its activities are not properly and adequately executed and addressed. For example, the operation command has many layers which frustrate the allocation of resources. Further, to manage the entire operation command is cumbersome compared to the administration command which has little layers.
In order to improve the overall operation and performance of the department, reorganization can be a possible remedy. To suggest, the operation command should be split into separate entities upon which the functions should be categorically arranged in manageable proportions.
Demographic differences in the agency and the department
According to a survey conducted, it is obvious that the agency is not reflective of the community (American Community Survey 2-6). The survey discloses the population of the agency to be dominated by females at 50.9% compared to males standing at 49.1%.
From 2005 to 2008 when the survey was conducted, it is very clear that there had been violation in the way the community is represented within the department. For instance in 2005, the five races which were included in the survey shown that there was violation of community representation. The department had a number of ranks composed of either sworn personnel or non sworn personnel.
The chiefs and deputy chiefs, captains and lieutenants, sergeants and corporals, and the officers comprised the sworn personnel. Executives, professionals, technicians and clericals comprised the non sworn personnel. The survey shown that, the Caucasian had a high number of representations compared to other races. This was the case even in the subsequent years both in male and female representation. In addition, despite the percentage of females being high at 50.1%, they are not adequately represented.
In 2005, the male representation was more than 60% compared to less than 35% for females. This took the platform throughout the survey. To add on this, Asian is thinly represented in the agency with some instances recording 0%. This is both the males and the females. Notably, a regard is not paid to the Asian females when reflecting to the community.
Strategies to make the agency reflective of the community
The community needs to be adequately represented in the agency. For this to be achieved, the agency should implement some strategies directed at addressing the community representation. To start with, the agency should ensure that, the sworn personnel’s positions should are divided among the diverse races on merit basis.
The agency should avoid bringing on board the superiors from only one race because of popularity. Secondly, females are thinly accepted in the agency thus leading to their reduced figure. Since the female population is high as compared to males, they should be given at least equal opportunities with their counterparts. In addition, the non sworn personnel positions should also be fairly distributed among the races.
For example, females are dominating in clerical than in any other area. To avoid this, individuals should be encouraged to pursue diverse studies thus enhancing flexibility. The agency should also start training the officials so that they become compatible to the opportunities arising in future. Another strategy is that, the agency should prohibit transferability of positions to people of the same race as this creates an empire which is hard to break.
The agency culture
Every organization, whether public, profit or not-for-profit has distinct culture. Culture can be defined as a set of meanings and understandings shared by a particular group of people. Culture is distinct and different from one group to another. While culture is known to be different from one entity to another, some organizations have common elements. For example police forces wear uniforms and use weapons in their duties. Virtual police department has its own set of meanings or understandings shared among its people
Individuals in the armed forces have also their culture based on discipline. In addition, integrity is a well known virtue within the armed forces. For long time in its operation, high level of integrity has been integrated within Virtual police department. The citizens have many expectations from the police and at no time should the force fail the integrity test.
Currently, the public is confident with Virtual police department. This is evident in that their approval rating is at all time high compared to other law enforcement agencies. Transparency and integrity is backbone to any organization. Any organization which embraces these virtues cannot suffer credibility crisis, neither will its image be tainted.
Virtual police department has been undergoing organization change, characterized by retirement of senior commanders. Those officers left to run the organizations are young individuals who have not worked in the force long enough and have minimal managerial experience and leadership ability.
The senior department chiefs retired leaving a huge leadership gap to be filled. It does not mean that Virtual police department cannot be led by young chiefs. What is crucial is that experience in running public office such as Virtual police department is paramount. Therefore before any promotion is given to any officer in the police department, experience and training should be considered first.
Whistle blowing refers to the act of reporting offensive acts being perpetuated within a particular department to the relevant authorities so that appropriate action can be taken on the perpetrators. One police officer cannot remain silent as the fellow partner engages in unlawful behavior. The officer should take immediate action to notify the superiors regarding the act (Shermann 30).
It appears that whistle blowing has not been a practiced within the Virtual police department. Rather the officers let their partners get away with misconduct, bringing the entire police department into great disrepute. It is common for scandals to explode. Such scandals arising from code of silence severely damage the image of the police department making its credibility to be questionable. Therefore, the department should introduce reforms so as to curb the vice and to act as a deterrent against misconduct.
According to Chan (109-134), change of culture is one of the ways through which an organization or department can improve its credibility.
With regard to this Virtual department should undertake measures aimed at changing culture in the organization. In order to attain this, the police officers with questionable integrity and those under various investigations should to step down to facilitate probes. Recruiting well learned personnel is also critical for the performance of the department. This is due to the fact that these personnel will have the necessary skills.
Crime analysis
Basing on the current crime statistics, it is evident that serious crime such as homicide is not prevalent in this county. It is also evident that murder rate in the county has been almost constant. The study showed that 17 cases of homicide have occurred between 2005 and 2008.Sexual offence related crime like rape tends to remain constant although there was a minimal surge in 2008. The most common crime in the county is theft.
This offence has been steadily increasing from 2006 and it appears that there is laxity and apathy amongst police officers in this place. There is a high probability that criminals were involved in a syndicate with the officers. Another probable reason for the alarming statistics is that the crime of this nature is taken lightly and the punishment meted on the culprits is not severe enough to discourage them.
Burglary is also one of the common crimes in this locality as depicted by the statistics. In 2008, there was sharp increase in burglary incidences. Burglary incidences rose from 1,242 to 1,617 representing a percentage increase of 30%. From these statistics, it is evident that the rate of crime in this county has been increasing steadily.
The common problems associated with the rise in crime are unemployment among county dwellers. The study further reveals that the mean income of the people has reduced. Another cause is the rapidly expanding populations probably caused by rural to urban migration. It is possible that people from other regions and places have immigrated to this community. Laxity cannot be overlooked as one of the reasons for prevalence of crime.
Regarding complaints against the Virtual police department, people complain of their conduct more than other issues such as performance and use of force. It is also clear that there are cases of complaints against use of force. This has been rising steadily. It appears that the personnel conduct themselves in a manner not befitting their status in the society.
One of the strategies that can be used to reduce crime is community policing. This is where the dwellers of the community assist the police in combating the crime. Citizens should be vigilant and alert so as to identify when such incident occurs. The actions should be reported immediately to the police officers who will then take appropriate action and arrest the culprits.
With community policing, the police and the citizens assist each other in keeping peace. Since the county is composed of a small community, there is a high probability of community policing working. Another strategy which can result into reduction of crime is to establish new police posts. The posts should be strategically located in the residential areas.
For areas which are dark, it is important to erect street lamps so as to minimize crime in dark alleys. Installing CCTV (closed circuit television) in streets, buildings and corners will also be instrumental in stemming out crime. The CCTV will provide real time 24 hours surveillance to the police operators so that whenever crime is happening, they can respond immediately and make arrests. CCTV will act as a deterrent to people who would want to engage in crime since they know they are being monitored.
Conclusion
Virtual police department is a young police department established more than half a century ago. It is a society predominated by Caucasians with other races following distantly. It is arguably a small division because it comprises of almost five hundred sworn police officers and almost 200 civilians. The main issues facing this department include surge in crime, rise in population which makes security a challenging task, changing culture and government regulations.
Recommendation
It is vital for the federal government to increase its budgetary allocation for the police department so that it can initiate changes that can result into improvement of the department’s performance. Additional financial resources should be sought so as to aid in recruiting more officers and also undertaking reforms in the department such as training the future department heads. Funding will also be crucial in boosting security of the area because the money will be used to install surveillance system for security purposes.
Works Cited
American Community Survey Bureaus. Demographic of virtual police department, USA: The U.S. census Bureau. 2000. Print.
Chan, J. Changing police culture. British Journal of Criminology,1998. Print.
Jenkins, Philip. Intimate enemies: moral panics in contemporary Great Britain, Great Britain: Transaction Publishers. 1998. Print.
Shermann, L. Scandal and reforms: Controlling police reform. Berkeley and Los
Angeles, California: University of California, 1978. Print.