Patrol Work

Patrol work is the job of those officers who are least specialized in a general-purpose police department. Patrol officers are the point of first response for most of the work done by the agency, and as such, they are key decision makers about what the agency knows about matters of interest to the police. They [Page 320]also exert tremendous influence, if they do not outright determine, what the police are likely to do about matters brought to the agency's attention. Often called the backbone of the police department, the patrol division is invariably the largest unit in local agencies. A 2000 census of local police departments showed that 68% of all police were assigned to answer calls for service from the public, which is one of the central responsibilities of patrol officers. In departments serving communities of 50,000 or more residents, typically 6 out of 10 officers served this function; in departments serving less than 2,500 residents, more than 9 out of 10 officers were assigned this duty.

Egon Bittner's (1974) characterization of patrol work is apt: tending to “something-that-ought-not-to-be-happening-and-about-which-someone-had-better-do-something-now!” (p. 30). The core patrol task in these situations is restoring order or preventing disorder that might arise from the immediate circumstances of the situation. This is, and has long been, the defining feature about which the policies, procedures, and practices of patrol work have been structured. The police department's specialists have narrowly constructed missions. Detectives investigate cases where a crime has been alleged or seems possible; vice and narcotics units focus on detecting and repressing specific types of crime; juvenile officers focus on the problems that young people create; gang units attempt to develop intelligence on gang membership and activities; and tactics units, bomb squads, and other special operations units focus on how to respond to particular kinds of crises. Much of the work of these specialist units is structured around “cases” or crisis events, the character of which has already been well-defined before the specialist receives the assignment. On the other hand, patrol officers are expected to detect or respond to reports of things that are or might be awry, but the police do not know for sure that something is wrong or what is amiss. From an organizational workload perspective, patrol officers’ primary task as first responders is to figure out (a) whether it is police business, and if so, (b) whether it can be handled solely by the officer or whether it will be referred to another part of the organization, and if it is not police business, (c) whether and to whom the problem will be referred outside the police organization. Often, then, the first order of the patrol officer's business when he or she encounters a potentially troublesome situation is to determine whether it is a problem and the nature of that problem.

Patrol officers’ work has traditionally been divided into two parts: (a) watching and waiting for something that deserves their intervention, and (b) the interventions themselves. Police organizations structure patrol both geographically and temporally, assigning officers to patrol specific beats during specific work shifts. Police departments vary considerably in the ratio of their patrol staffing to their workloads, but a large body of research suggests that patrol officers typically spend much more time watching and waiting than intervening in the affairs of citizens. A 1996–1997 study of Indianapolis and St. Petersburg found that only one fourth of the typical patrol work shift was given to encounters with the general public, and the remainder was spent on watching and waiting (general patrol), driving en route to a specific destination, conducting some activity targeted at a particular problem (e.g., traffic surveillance), gathering information, administrative activities, and personal activities. This is not necessarily a recent phenomenon; a series of studies in the 1970s and 1980s also showed that the considerable majority of patrol officers’ time is typically spent uncommitted to doing specific assigned work from dispatchers and supervisors.

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