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Ecology and Police Management: Increasing Efficiency in Patrol Operations

Featured Author:

Noor Razzaq

Noor Z. Razzaq, M.S. candidate, B.S., is an instructor with varied experience across the law enforcement spectrum. He has served as Special Deputy U.S. Marshal, SWAT team operator, SWAT coordinator, entry-team instructor, police training supervisor, patrol officer, military police supervisor, and protective services officer. He has worked in multiple full-time sworn positions in different regions across the country to include the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.C., Chesapeake Police Department in southeast Virginia and worldwide in the U.S. Air Force as a Security Policeman.

Razzaq’s professional experience consists of work in both counterterrorism and law enforcement and includes joint operations with multiple federal and local law enforcement agencies. He has also been responsible for the development of standard operating procedures and reference manuals for Air Force and Navy law enforcement units and SWAT teams as well as the development of grading standards for tactical entry team candidates. He holds professional certificates in Crime Scene Investigation, Legal Studies and Court Process, Juvenile and Victim Services, and Domestic Violence. He is also trained in Forensic Behavior Analysis with an emphasis on offender profiling in serial rape and serial homicide cases. Razzaq has written extensively on law enforcement topics since 2007.

More articles from this author:

• Modus Operandi Vs. Offender Signature
• An Investigator's First Step in Violent Offender Profiling
• Search and Seizure of Real Property

CSOs, or uniformed civilians dispatched to minor non-threatening calls for service (e.g., minor traffic accidents, report taking, etc), can be distributed throughout high-vigor low-crime areas to take on minor calls in lower-crime districts on a limited basis thereby freeing officers to contend with the criminogenic properties of higher crime districts. While this strategy is far more gradual than immediate, it allows for a steady increase and transfer of police resources to higher crime districts and a simultaneous influx of officers from lower-crime districts who are not yet socialized in accordance with the higher median of accepted crime subsequent to high-crime patrol district work group rules. Furthermore, this combined with targeted zero-tolerance strategies through high-crime areas (e.g., the “Gut”) could be one of many strategies to help further reduce or displace crime from a given jurisdiction.

Although Klinger’s theory takes a more ecological approach to police social science than the traditional norm, there are various practical applications of the theory which can greatly enhance police-citizen relations and departmental efficiency with relatively minor infrastructural changes in practice. Patrol districts can be rezoned to allow district work group rules to better reflect social boundaries of neighborhoods as perceived by citizens. Personnel rotation can be implemented and reallocation of personnel and resources can be accomplished to facilitate better-rounded job experience among officers and lower officer-accepted district-level criminogenic medians. Finally, personnel rotation can also be enacted in concert with zero-tolerance strategies in order to reduce the degree of criminal activity in a given skid row or ghetto area.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Though many of the studies illustrated in this article are older; more recent replications studies have produced similar results in other jurisdictions with similar social, economic, political, and criminogenic properties as cited in the studies listed. Furthermore, the studies pioneered the relevant topics considered in this article. Finally, while this article provides a limited quantity of applications of Klinger’s theory, it has the potential for varied application well beyond the scope of both this essay and the theory in and of itself.

References Bittner, E. (1967). The police on skid-row: A study of peace keeping. American Sociological Review. 32(5): 699-715.

Black, D. (1976). The Behavior of Law. New York: Academic Press.

*Goldstein, J. (1960). Police discretion not to invoke the criminal process: Low visibility decisions in the administration of justice. Yale Law Journal 69: 543-594

Goldstein, H. (1977). Categorizing and structuring discretion. Chapter 5 (pps. 93-130) in Policing a Free Society. Cambridge, MA: Ballinger Publishing Company.

Kelling, G.L. & Moore, M.H. (1988). The evolving strategy of policing. Perspective on Policing, volume 4. Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice.

Klinger, D.A. (1997). Negotiating order in patrol work: An ecological theory of police response to deviance. Criminology. 35(2): 277-306.

*Mead, G.H. (1934). Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wilson, J.Q. (1968). Police discretion. Chapter 4 (pps. 83-139) in Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of Law & Order in Eight Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• denotes references cited in Klinger (1997) as cited above