Question

Please choose your local government agency (examples: Police Departments, water department...etc.) and write a 1-2 page paper on the importance of three things:

Why they need to stick to their budget?

Why is this agency needed/important?

Why is there only one per county/city?

Answer 1

Policing in the United States is conducted by "close to 1 federal, state, local and city departments".Every state has its own nomenclature for agencies, and their powers, responsibilities and funding vary from state to state.

At the federal level, there exists both federal police, who possess full federal authority as given to them under United States Code(U.S.C.), and federal law enforcement agencies, who are authorized to enforce various laws at the federal level. Both police and law enforcement agencies operate at the highest level and are endowed with police roles; each may maintain a small component of the other (for example, the FBI Police). The agencies have nationwide jurisdiction for enforcement of federal law. Most federal agencies are limited by the U.S. Code to investigating only matters that are explicitly within the power of the federal government. However, federal investigative powers have become very broad in practice, especially since the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act. There are also federal law enforcement agencies, such as the United States Park Police, that are granted state arrest authority off primary federal jurisdiction.

Municipal police range from one-officer agencies (sometimes still called the town marshal) to the 40,000 person-strong New York City Police Department. Most municipal agencies take the form (Municipality Name) Police Department. Most municipalities have their own police departments.

Metropolitan departments, such as the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, have jurisdiction covering multiple communities and municipalities, often over a wide area typically share geographical boundaries within one or more cities or counties. Metropolitan departments have usually been formed by a merger between local agencies, typically several local police departments and often the local sheriff's department or office, in efforts to provide greater efficiency by centralizing command and resources and to resolve jurisdictional problems, often in communities experiencing rapid population growth and urban sprawl, or in neighboring communities too small to afford individual police departments. Some county sheriff's departments, such as the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, are contracted to provide full police services to local cities within their counties.

Textbooks and scholars have identified three primary police agency functions. The following is cited from The American System of Criminal Justice, by George F. Cole and Christopher E. Smith, 2004, 10th edition, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning:

• Order maintenance. This is the broad mandate to keep the peace or otherwise prevent behaviors which might disturb others. This can deal with things ranging from a barking dog to a fist-fight. By way of description, Cole and Smith note that police are usually called-on to "handle" these situations with discretion, rather than deal with them as strict violations of law, though of course their authority to deal with these situations are based in violations of law.
• Law enforcement. Those powers are typically used only in cases where the law has been violated and a suspect must be identified and apprehended. Most obvious instances include robbery, murder, or burglary. This is the popular notion of the main police function, but the frequency of such activity is dependent on geography and season.
• Service. Services may include rendering first aid, providing tourist information, guiding the disoriented, or acting as educators (on topics such as preventing drug use). Cole and Smith cited one study which showed 80% of all calls for police assistance did not involve crimes, but this may not be the case in all parts of the country. Because police agencies are traditionally available year-round, 24 hours a day, citizens call upon police departments not only in times of trouble, but also when just inconvenienced. As a result, police services may include roadside autoassistance, providing referrals to other agencies, finding lost pets or property, or checking locks on vacationers' homes.

Three styles of policing develop from a jurisdiction's socioeconomic characteristics, government organization, and choice of police administrators. According to a study by James Q. Wilson ("Varieties of Police Behavior", 1968, 1978, Harvard University Press), there were three distinct types of policing developed in his study of eight communities. Each style emphasized different police functions, and were linked to specific characteristics of the community the department served. (Wilson's field of study was in the United States, and it is not clear if similar studies have been done for other countries with different governmental organization and laws).

• Watchman. Emphasizes maintaining order, usually found in communities with a declining industrial base, and a blue-collar, mixed ethnic/racial population. This form of policing is implicitly less pro-active than other styles, and certain offenses may be "overlooked" on a variety of social, legal, and cultural grounds, as long as the public order is maintained. Cole and Smith comment the broad discretion exercised in this style of policing can result in charges of discrimination, when it appears police treatment of different groups results in the perception that some groups get better treatment than others;
• Legalistic. Emphasizes law enforcement and professionalism. This is usually found in reform-minded cities, with mixed socioeconomic composition. Officers are expected to generate a large number of arrests and citations, and act as if there were a single community standard for conduct, rather than different standards for different groups. However, the fact that certain groups are more likely to have law enforcement contact means this strict enforcement of laws may seem overly harsh on certain groups;
• Service. Emphasizes the service functions of police work, usually found in suburban, middle-class communities where residents demand individual treatment. Police in homogeneous communities can view their work as protecting their citizens against "outsiders", with frequent but often-informal interventions against community members. The uniform make-up of the community means crimes are usually more obvious, and therefore less frequent, leaving police free to deal with service functions, and traffic control.

Wilson's study applies to police behavior for the entire department, over time. At any given time, police officers may be acting in a watchman, service, or legalistic function by nature of what they're doing at the time, or temperament, or mood. Individual officers may also be inclined to one style or another, regardless of supervisor or citizen demands.

Community-oriented policing is a shift in policing practices in the U.S. that moved away from standardization and towards a more preventative model where police actively partner with the community it serves.