St. Louis County Police Department - Case Study Example

Number] St. Louis County Police Department The region of St. Louis County s back to 1812 at the time of its establishment as a result of proclamation by the Governor, William Clark. The density of its population although increased after the closure of World War II. The population settlement went up making it almost 725,000 by the year of 1960. As a result of this hike in population density in county and city, the citizens of the St. Louis County decided to establish and maintain professional police force by voting. The St. Louis County Police department was officially established in the year of 1955. This was done by eliminating the control office that preceded it, St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office (Turner Publishing Company 5) At the time of its initial establishment the St. Louis County Police department had a total of 95 officers as well as 18 employees who were civilians. There were/are four divisions; the first was Patrol, the second Operational support, third special operations and lastly Criminal investigation. The St. Louis county police department is third largest agency of local police in the whole state and Missouri’s single county police department. It is one of the few in the whole of United States (St. Louis County Missouri). The St. Louis County police department has a hierarchy of positions starting from Probationary Police officer, Police officer, Detective, Sergeant, Lieutenant, and Captain, lieutenant Colonel who is also the assistant chief of police and than the colonel who is the chief of police force. Apart from these sworn positions there are some civilian non sworn positions too which include that of a supervisor, Director and Executive Director. Apart from these major positions there are minor ones too like Police records clerk, Police report clerk etc. the department of police at St. Louis county also offers Police internships for which there is application forms available on their website. There are different divisions of patrol that maintain a round the clock; 24 hours uniform presence. They respond to any emergency call for the service, the officers are highly trained in their jobs. The officers of St. Louis County use the neighbourhood policing concept in their activities on daily basis. The officers from the drug abuse resistance education also known as DARE work alongside to complement the patrol officers. These officers from DARE instruct the children and reach out to them at larger scale than any other state program. The school resource officers not only monitor the reports that are received through safe school hotline but also serve the students, families and the teachers by solving the problem or intervening at an early stage (Turner Publishing Company 13). The patrol division has seven different precincts in strategic locations around the country for serving the citizens including North County precinct, Central County precinct, Affton Southwest precinct, South County precinct, Fenton precinct, Wildwood precinct and West County precinct All these precincts have a captain assigned to them for commanding the force of over 400 officers in uniform for each of the divisions (St. Louis County Missouri). The patrol divisions maintain 285 completely marked cars for patrol. These are fully equipped to meet the all emergency and communications needs with radios, guns, digital video cameras, radar and wireless in car computers as well as the GPS locaters. A large number of these cars are used in the resident officer program; this allows officers on duty to take the patrol car alongside to their home in their neighbourhoods. Throughout the day at every point during the 24 hours there almost 80 up to 100 patrol cars with officers on duty around in the neighbourhoods and the business areas, to respond to close calls and spot any criminal activity. There are different departments aside from the division of patrol in the St. Louis County police. These include the Criminal investigation department which has subdivisions to ensure effective investigation. These include Bureau of Crimes against Persons, Bureau of Crimes against Property, Arson and Explosives Unit, Bureau of Drug Enforcement, Bureau of Criminal Identification and Crime Scene Unit Another department is that of Special operations, this division has officers that are specially trained to respond in the unusual situations. This too has subdivisions that are Tactical Operations Unit, Canine Unit, Highway Safety Unit, Metro Air Support Unit, and Metro Air Support Unit. The third department is the Operational support division which includes Planning and Analysis Unit and Personnel Services Unit The last division is the Office of the chief of Police department. This comprises of divisions like Intelligence Unit and Municipal Services Unit (St. Louis County Missouri). There have been various scandals involving the St. Louis county police department. The most recent one involves a woman who was said to be suffering from mental disease called the bipolar disorder shooting her self with a police officers gun. 20 year old Stephanie Hicks killed herself while getting into a squad car to get to the hospital. Just before the shooting she got in a struggle with officer over his weapon. The St. Louis County police department also has had corruption charges again some officers over the years. One of such scandals arose back in 2009 when Bobby Garrett a 49 year old police officer plead guilty against the charges of felony of embezzlement in the government property, a felony of conspiring to commit a wire fraud, a felony of committing a wire fraud, two felonies of stating false information and one of misapplying the funds of government. The co-defendants also pled guilty. One of them 47 year old Vincent Carr pled guilty to one felony of conspiring to commit fraud, one felony of committing a wire fraud, two of making statements that were false and one of justice obstruction. The other co-defendant 35 years old Leo Liston pled guilty for misapplying the funds of government. In 2008 the police department of St. Louis County also faced a scandal that involved some of the police officers using the cars that were seized by the police department during different investigations. These cars were being illegally kept and even sold by the guilty officers. This scandal resulted in the retirement of chief of Police at that time. The number of female officers has been extraordinarily less compared to males in St. Louis county police department. A woman claimed to be the only female police officer there from 2001-2011 and later sued for sexual harassment. Work Cited Turner Publishing Company. St Louis County, Mo Police, US: Turner Publishing Company, 2002. Print St. Louis County Missouri. Law and Public Safety. 2010. Retrieved online from http://www.stlouisco.com/LawandPublicSafety/PoliceDepartment Read More