Consolidated Police Departments
Your county sheriff has recently come out publicly in favor of consolidating all police agencies in your county. Having caught your new police chief off-guard, your police chief asks you – the agency’s director of research, planning, and analysis – to explain in a memorandum all that would be involved in creating and maintaining a single county-wide agency, to include advantages and disadvantages of doing so. Create a memorandum mainly stating the advantages and disadvantages of this consolidation for employees, the community, and the effectiveness of policing. At the end, you will need to make a recommendation to your police chief as to whether this is a good idea or not, and why, stating reasons from your memorandum. You should format your discussion as if you were writing an actual memo.
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To: Chief Andy Griffith, Mayberry Police Department
From: Ralph
Date 06/25/2015
RE: Concerns about rumored consolidation
The recent comments from Sheriff Pyle has caused some justified concerns regarding consolidation between the two departments. The intent of this memo is to address a few of these concerns.
First of all, consolidation in our situation would likely mean that Sheriff Pyle would take over command, because the Sheriff’s Department serves the majority of the area in our county. The status for Chief Griffith would have to be defined by city and county government. This could be good or bad, depending on your personal feelings for either man.
In terms of effectiveness for the end product for our citizens, it would focus resources from county into our city, which does handle a much greater caseload as well as respond to more calls for service. The disadvantage to that would be that we would be required to respond to county calls as well. We would not be able to guarantee where you will be assigned, if the agency was broken into precincts or coverage areas.
The cost for this type of a merger would be mutually beneficial, because the shared tax base between the two departments would ideally combine resources available, leaving tax revenue for improvements and possible expansions. The bottom line for most of you would be wages, which would need to be addressed obviously. Typically the best salaries and benefits are picked when consolidations occur (Peak, 2012 pg. 99). This means that our employees would retain the same wages, but our insurance plans would likely improve, because of the county’s benefits package is slightly better. This single point would be the most expensive part of consolidation; however the savings from shared resources would eventually make up the difference. The initial investment to bring everyone to the same level would need to be approved by both county and the city.
Consolidation is a very popular option for many metropolitan areas, due to rising costs for law enforcement services. The ability to share tax base, while maintaining fewer buildings and equipment, and ensuring round the clock coverage for everyone in our county, rather than just the city would be an absolute selling point for community leaders. The increase in pay for county deputies, and improved benefits for our department could be a major selling point for us as well. However, ultimately, the main deciding factor is who will maintain leadership, and how will the two administrations merge and find unity. That question will need to be answered in the months and possibly years to come leading up to the decision to move forward with the consolidation. From a community and department standpoint, the advantages outweigh any potential downfalls. The biggest key to any successful consolidation is our attitude and humility towards accepting the additional manpower and the growing pains that would naturally come with the move.
I hope this letter has clarified a few of the main concerns with this rumor, and while this memo is not intended to notify of an impending move, it is targeted towards encouraging additional research into the topic, and open professional dialogue with our administration, as well as the community and city leaders.
Thank you
Sgt. Ralph Bennett
Mayberry Police Department
Peak, K. (2012). Policing America: Challenges and best practices (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education
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Consolidation may not be a solution to many of the problems bedeviling the department and the community. This is because most resources will be directed from county into the city, which has, a higher caseload and calls for service…
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