The police system comprises of many agencies some of which are highly specialized like the FBI and the Secret Service. The common ones are the federal law enforcement agencies, state police departments, and sheriff’s departments. The federal, state, local, and sheriff’s departments have various hierarchies among them, but the police service has a widespread organizational structure. At the top is the Chief of Police/Police Commissioner/ Superintendent who oversees the entire police service in the operational and management sense, is in charge of promoting, directs the demoting and placement of officers, develops and implements policies, and reports to the respective executives on various matters. The post of Assistant Chief/Commissioner/Superintendent/Sherriff follows. The next ranks are in the following order: Deputy Chief, Inspector or Commander, Colonel, Major or Deputy Inspector, Captain, Lieutenant, Sergeant, Detective or Inspector and lastly the Deputy or Officer. The reporting structure flows from the Deputy or Officer and moves all the way to the Chief of Police. The orders flow from the Chief of Police all the way down to the Deputy or Officer (Silvestri, 2007).
Most police departments borrowed the military’s organizational model of training and ranking. All police officers are trained to follow orders from others of higher rank. There might be variations in the ranking and structure from one department to another. The structure is hierarchical in nature: top to down. There are many shortcomings of the system in terms of execution of strategies and reporting. Unlike the corporate world rife with constant restructuring and vibrant democracy, the hierarchical structure of the police service is very rigid and bureaucratic (Punch, 2009).
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The police service structure is meant to allow for control-oriented supervision and enforcement of professionalism order, discipline, and honor through the ranks. The disadvantage is that the structure is rigid and does not allow for creativity and optimum talent employment among the officers. What an officer does is to receive orders from and report to the senior. It does not allow for participative methodologies that improve empowerment and job involvement among officers, especially those of lower ranks. Since officers are promoted, they are keen to keep the system intact; it is a culture. Concurrent administrations have shown little effort in reorganizing the service because the system as it is enforces responsibility and conformity. There are fears that a little autonomy on the part of the officers will permit corruption, inequity, indiscipline, and general lawlessness (Paoline, 2014).
The control of police discretion is another problem; authority flows from the top to the bottom. Each officer in all the ranks has discretionary authority with most of it at the bottom. The problem is that officers in touch with the public tend to apply the laws to unsuitable situations just because they have the discretion to do so. They are far removed from direct supervision while they are at work. As such, the only authority is there when they report to the office. Complications arise when police have too much power without supervision (Silvestri, 2007).
Another big problem is disjoint between the hierarchical police management and the condition for effective community policing. The service is unable to do proper community policing because the police departments are vastly centralized in decision-making aspect of management, heavily regulated and governed, vertical, and stuck with power and order. Even though most departments have decentralized to accommodate community policing, most still push power and decision-making down the ranks. The problem is also apparent in intelligence gathering and sharing. Resistance to change is another prevalent problem in the police chain of command. The structure as it is does not respond fittingly to new technologies and crime as education, knowledge, and sophistication improve from generation to the next (Paoline, 2014).
References
Paoline III, E. A. (2014). Police culture. In Encyclopedia of criminology and criminal justice (pp. 3577-3586). New York: Springer.
Punch, M. (2009). Police corruption: Deviance, accountability and reform in policing . New York: Routledge.
Silvestri, M. (2007). Doing” Police Leadership: Enter the “New Smart Macho. Policing & society , 17 (1), 38-58.
