Policing and the Force Control Room - Essay Example

Policing Response and recovery processes should be used by police to conduct an effective initial investigation in an emergency or incident. Response process includes reaction, rescue and retrieval and investigation phases while recovery process includes relief and remediation phases. The Force Control Room (FCR) should receive the emergency calls coming directly from the public. The Force Switchboard should try to resolve the problems raised by the caller in all possible means. It is achieved by determining whether the intended person for the call is available, assessing the message, giving advice or re-directing the caller to a new agency. The agents who have the first contact with the caller should perform a basic risk assessment and find any vulnerability before verifying whether the matter is an incident or inquiry and attempt to resolve the caller’s needs. The staff should ask questions to the caller for an effective assessment of the risk (Deal 2010, p.18). Assessment, identification and prioritization of the risks are involved for effective risk management with the onus of the dispatcher in order to take the recommendable initial response. After taking the initial risk assessment, the incident is then graded on whether it requires emergency or non-emergency response (Deal 2010, p.23). An emergency response includes situations where the reported incident is taking place, and there is or likely to be a danger to life, instant threat of using violence, serious injuries to a person or solemn damage to property. The maximum time required for the police to arrive for the emergency response in urban areas is within 15 minutes while in rural areas is within 20 minutes. The police rely on the first hand information given by the call handler for the direction to the scene where the incident has occurred. For a non-emergency incident, the immediate police response is not required and encompasses many solutions for which officer’s attendance is not required. A non-emergency incident involves priority, scheduled appointment and resolution without deployment. Priority response is required after the assessment made by police call handler has the degree of urgency or importance of police action, but not an emergency response (Hess, Orthmann & Cho 2014, p.366). Priority response incidents involve the circumstances where there is a proper concern for person’s safety, detention of an offender who does not pose risks to others, a lost witness or other evidence, the victim involved is vulnerable and a reported hate crime or incident. If the incident neither emergency nor priority, it requires a scheduled appointment where the police should attend the scene within the 48 hours after the first contact. Resolution without deployment arises where the requirements of the caller can be met through the provision of information, advice, telephone or helpdesk investigation function. Victims can experience many unfamiliar emotions including disbelief, shock, fear, anger, guilt or frustration. Most of the victims are unable to handle the feelings although considered to be normal. It is the responsibility of the Victim Service to provide both the short and long-term predicament interventions, act as referral and information source, reduce trauma from the witnesses, victims and survivors and try to eliminate additional trauma (Pepper 2009, p.123). The Victim Services should also coordinate resources as a single agency, increase recommendable interactions between the survivors, victims or witnesses with the law enforcement and provide a genuine transition into the criminal justice system especially the cases of arrest. If the incident involves an accident, the police officers should provide first aid to the injured person or people and try to prevent any further damages or injuries that may occur. The officers should also investigate the accident by identifying the causes and make a report concerning the incident. There are some instances where the criminals act with violence and harass the public. In such incidents, the officers should respond by laying instant strategies of arresting those criminals or shot them if need be in order to protect the public (Pepper 2009, p.127). Witnesses usually provide the evidence about an occurred incident. An officer should provide security to the witnesses during and after collecting evidence from them. There are some rights of survivors, victims and witnesses, which apply to every criminal court after the investigation of any incident is carried out. The names, phone contacts and addresses of the victims of sex crimes or violence are included in a statement that should be provided during the reporting of the crime. The survivors, victims or witnesses should be informed about the court proceedings and final disposition of the cases they are involved. The survivors, victims and witnesses should also be protected from any threat or harm arising from the cooperation of the prosecution efforts and law enforcement. A secure waiting locale for the victims should be provided during the court proceeding. The stolen property should be returned to them by the law enforcement agencies after the enough evidence is captured. The properties excluding currency and weapons are photographed and returned to them after the first ten days. The survivors, victims and witnesses should also be accessed with immediate medical assistance before detention. The victims and survivors should be physically present during the trials in court. The mentioned rights should be followed by everyone in the court of law for efficient proceedings to take place. The provision of security to the survivors, victims and witness should be provided by the police officers at no cost during and after court proceedings. The attorney should also make proper justice concerning the survivors, victims and witnesses according to the rule of law. There various models that present investigations concerning physical crime scene have various common steps including preservation, preparation, documentation, package, report, transport and evaluation of the scene. The first model is the Scientific Crime Investigation Model. The model focuses on methodological and systematic way of making an investigation about physical crime scene. Four stages are consisted in the model. Recognition is the first stage where the items or patterns found during the crime scene are regarded as potential evidence. Identification is the second stage where objects found in the crime scene are acknowledged as evidence and categorized into chemical, physical, biological or other forms of evidence. Individualization is the third stage where the distinctiveness of the possible evidence is inspected in order to give link evidence to an individual or event (Tong, Bryant & Horvath 2009, p. 22). Reconstruction is the final stage where the outputs of the preceding stages and assessment of other relevant information gives a detailed report about the actions and events at the crime scene. The second model is the Digital Forensic Research Workshop involving seven steps. The first step is to identify the crime through crime or event detection, profile detection, resolve signature, anomalous detection, audit analysis, complaints and system monitoring. Presentation stage involves chain of custody, case management, time synch and imaging technologies. Collection stage involves sampling, preservation, recovery techniques, data reduction among other techniques. Examination stage includes preservation, filtering techniques, traceability and pattern matching. The fifth stage is making analysis through statistical, data mining, link, special and timeline methods (Tong, Bryant & Horvath 2009, p. 27). Presentation stage involves statistical interpretation, documentation, clarification, expert testimony and recommended countermeasure. The final stage is making decision. The model was aimed to set the basis for the upcoming work. The model cannot be applied directly in a real investigation because it lacks an inclusive explanation of the actions to be executed in each step, but only the overlapping techniques. A digital investigation process was later suggested by Carrier and Spafford, which included both the digital and physical evidence investigation in an integrated process. The model consists of 17 phases classified into five groups. Readiness phases include the infrastructure and operations readiness phases referring to the actions made before the investigation including training of the lab analysts and respondents (Li 2013, p.163). Deployment phases consist two phases including confirmation and authorization phase and detection and notification phase. The main objective is to detect and confirm the occurrence of the incident. Physical crime incident investigation group consist preservation, document, survey, reconstruction, document and search and collection phases. The aim of the phases is to gather and scrutinize physical evidence and identify the persons responsible for such incidents. Digital crime incident investigation phases aim at searching the digital evidence after collecting the physical digital objects as physical evidence. The final phase involves evaluating in order to identify regions of improvement. Extended Model of Cybercrime Investigation comprises the combination of all the models involving thirteen steps. Awareness is a step that concerns the notification of the need of an investigation. The investigation is essential because the type of investigation required depends on the events causing the investigation (Li 2013, p.167). Authorization is the next step where the formal authorization is obtained in order to proceed to the investigation. Planning is where the problems required for extra authorization. Notification step involves informing the concerned parties when the investigation is taking place. Searching and identifying evidence is the activity that involves location of items and recognizes them as potential evidence. Collection of the evidence is another step that the investigator gathers all evidence ready to be preserved and analyzed. Transport of evidence is another important task where the packaging and transportation require much integrity. Storage of evidence is another step where integrity should also be noticed. Examination of the evidence is a step that requires application of specialized techniques in order to find and interpret the essential data. Hypothesis is another step where an investigator gives the information on what happened at the crime scene and later presents the hypothesis (Li 2013, p.171). The investigator has to proof or defend his or her hypothesis before jury. The final stage is dissemination of the information the knowledge gained from the investigation are used in the future cases. Other models include computer forensic field triangle model and systematic digital forensic investigation model. References List Deal, T. (2010). Beyond initial response: using the National Incident Management Systems Incident Command System. Bloomington, In, AuthorHouse. Hess, K. M., Orthmann, C. M. H., & Cho, H. L. (2014). Police operations: theory and practice. Clifton Park, N.Y., Delmar. Li, C.-T. (2013). Emerging digital forensics applications for crime detection, prevention, and security. Hershey, PA, Information Science Reference. Pepper, I. K., & Pepper, H. (2009). Keywords in policing. Maidenhead, England, McGraw-Hill/Open University Press. Tong, S., Bryant, R., & Horvath, M. (2009). Understanding criminal investigation. Chichester, UK, Wiley-Blackwell. Read More