Law Enforcement Operations, Essay Example

Abstract

The paper discusses the future of police managers. The paper asserts that hierarchical, bureaucratic, and structural principles that are characteristic of police organizational environments, will not give police managers a single chance to give up a share of their authority to their subordinates.

Law Enforcement Operations

Delegation of authority and top-down management are among the most ambiguous and controversial issues in present day police management. Throughout its history, management in police departments always relied on the top-down principles, and police managers were increasingly reluctant to delegate their authority to subordinates. Today, the police management landscape is gradually changing and is giving way to new management approaches and styles. Police managers operate in more or less flexible environments while the structure of organizational relations in policing is undergoing a profound shift. Future holds promising organizational and change opportunities for managers, but they will hardly violate their commitment to top-down management styles. One of the major obstacles to structural changes in police management is the amount and scope of authority among police managers. Even if police managers choose to delegate their authority to subordinates, they will do so do raise the overall efficiency decision-making in their departments (Stevens, 2008). However, because police managers carry legal responsibility for the quality of their subordinates’ decisions, they are and will be reluctant to give subordinates greater autonomy and decision-making power.

Police managers operate in environments, where quick and appropriate decisions predetermine the quality of the decision-making outcomes. More often than not, police managers choose to take their own decisions and require that their subordinates comply with their requirements, fulfill their orders, and report their progress. Subordination and bureaucratic structure are the critical elements of police management in the United States and in the rest of the world (Stevens, 2008). For this reason, and given these structural, bureaucratic, and hierarchical standards of police performance, police managers will hardly give up a share of their authority in the nearest time and will continue to exemplify the triumph of top-down management in policing.

References

Stevens, D.J. (2008). An introduction to American policing. Jones & Bartlett Publishers.