Labor Unions, Management Innovation and Organizational Change in Police Departments

69 Pages·2015·1.502 MB·English

by  John DeCarlo, Michael J. Jenkins (auth.)

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN CRIMINOLOGY
POLICING
John DeCarlo
Michael J. Jenkins
Labor Unions,
Management
Innovation and
Organizational
Change in Police
Departments
123
SpringerBriefs in Criminology
Policing
Series Editor
M.R. Haberfeld
City University of New York
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
New York, NY, USA
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11179
John DeCarlo · Michael J. Jenkins
Labor Unions,
Management Innovation
and Organizational Change
in Police Departments
1 3
John DeCarlo Michael J. Jenkins
Department of Law, Police Science Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice,
and CJA and Criminology
John Jay College of Criminal Justice University of Scranton
New York, NY Scranton, PA
USA USA
ISSN 2192-8533 ISSN 2192-8541 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Criminology
ISSN 2194-6213 ISSN 2194-6221 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Policing
ISBN 978-3-319-21583-9 ISBN 978-3-319-21584-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21584-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015945565
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
© The Author(s) 2015
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Preface
Television shows often portray police departments as well-oiled machines with
scores of people working closely together to solve crimes in innovative and
scientific ways, mostly in less than 60 minutes. Taciturn police chiefs and other
administrators rule with brutal effectiveness and iron fists. An order is issued and
it is followed to the letter without question. People work around the clock and no
mention is ever made of time off or any pecuniary compensation.
The reality of police departments is considerably different. As governmen-
tal agencies, most commonly parts of municipalities, police work in a structured
bureaucracy. Often it is true that police departments are as adherent to union
contracts as they are to investigative and patrol manuals. Even things that would
appear simple at their face, such as scheduling the largest number of resources to
match the highest levels of criminal activity, can be challenging at times.
There are a lot of police departments in the United States. The most recent
figures show that there are about 18,500 separate and distinct police departments,
not counting federal agencies, within the country (Reaves 2008). The vast majority
of these departments are unionized (Reaves 2010). The large number of unionized
police departments makes for some areas of complication—one being the extreme
decentralization of policing in the United States and another, the numerous police
union contracts which exist across the country.
Mostly all police departments are funded by local governments. The obvious
exclusions are departments that receive their funding from universities, transit
authorities, and quasi-public entities such as water authorities. Other than these
exceptions, municipal police departments are funded by town and city tax dollars.
Invariably, the highest cost in any department is funding personnel. The average
per capita cost for policing in 2007 in nearly 11,000 US cities with populations of
10,000 or more is $201 (SUNY 2014). That equals $62.4 billion spent on policing
every year. By comparison, the United States Marine Corps requested $40 billion
for their annual budget in 2010. By any metric, the cost of policing to the United
States is not insignificant.
How we spend money in these police departments is not simply a matter of
preventing and responding to crime. It is also the product of collective bargaining.
v
vi Preface
Items such as salaries, pensions, contributions to retirement plans, medical
benefits, sick and vacation leave, and other benefits that are derived by employ-
ees, all add up to a considerable cost. That is not to say that money spent on good
employees is not well spent. It is, however, important to note that these are often
the highest costs encountered in running police departments. It is vital that police
administrators make the most of their personnel resources and use them with the
highest efficiency. The authors of this monograph examine not only the history
and current state of unions and police departments but also gauge how unions
interact with and affect the administration of police departments and interface with
the communities in which the police departments exist.
References
Reaves, B. J. (2008). Census of state and local law enforcement agencies. Washington, DC: U.S.
Department of Justice.
Reaves, B. J. (2010). Law enforcement management and administrative statistics (LEMAS).
Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
SUNY. (2014). Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics.http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/.
Contents
Labor Unions, Management Innovation and Organizational
Change in Police Departments .................................... 1
Introduction .................................................... 1
The History of Police and Unions ................................... 3
Union Implications for Police Professionalism ........................ 5
Objectives ..................................................... 7
Police Employee Organizations .................................... 8
Structure of Labor Relations in Police Organizations ................... 10
Methodology ................................................... 13
Results ...................................................... 14
Police Union Impact on Administrative Policy ......................... 15
Police Union Impact on Innovation ................................. 34
Police Union Impact on Legitimacy and Community Relations ........... 35
Summary ...................................................... 40
References ..................................................... 42
Appendix A—Sample Grievance Procedure (Source: Chicago
Police Department) ............................................. 45
Appendix B ................................................... 53
Appendix C ................................................... 55
Index ......................................................... 59
vii
About the Authors
John DeCarlo has over 35 years of active policing experience and retired recently
as a chief of police in Connecticut. Dr. DeCarlo teaches and conducts research into
policing methodologies at John Jay College in New York. He received his Ph.D.
from The City University of New York Graduate Center.
Michael J. Jenkins is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the U niversity
of Scranton. He received his Ph.D. from Rutgers School of Criminal Justice,
completing his dissertation under the mentorship of famed “broken windows”
theorist Dr. George Kelling. He currently teaches courses and conducts research on
innovations in policing.
ix
Labor Unions, Management Innovation
and Organizational Change in Police
Departments
Introduction
Historically, change in policing on a national level has been difficult and g radual.
Kelling and Moore’s (1988) history of modern policing in the United States
divides a 150-year period into three eras (Political, Reform, and Community
Problem-Solving). They note that some of today’s police departments might
still belong to the political era of the mid-nineteenth century. Policing’s atavis-
tic stigmata (i.e., random patrol, rapid response, retroactive investigation, tall
organizational structures, a mistrust of the public, and a professional emphasis on
command and control) characterize many of today’s police departments (Kliesmet
1985; Moskos 2009). Despite the intransigence of the profession, some police
leaders have instituted rapid and drastic change within their organizations (Jenkins
and DeCarlo 2015). Research supports various facilitators of change in police
departments (e.g., the organizational structure, police culture, training, resource
availability, and strong executives) (Appelbaum et al. 1999; Kim and Mauborgne
2003; Mastrofski 2006; Moore et al. 1995; Skolnick and Bayley 1986; Zhao et al.
1999). These characteristics, when deficient, inhibit change. They also directly
relate to the role police labor unions play in organizational change and manage-
ment innovation.
In 1985, then-President of the International Union of Police Associations
Robert Kliesmet, defended police unionism, writing:
Blame for most of the problems of policing as we know it today does not belong to us,
however. Unions were late on the scene and, given the complete dominance of politicians
and police chiefs, we have had to play catch up. Twenty years from now, we will claim
some of the credit and accept our share of any blame for the shape of policing (Kliesmet
1985, pp. 283–84).
The now-entrenched position of police unionism in American policing warrants
an updated examination of the role police labor unions play in police management
© The Author(s) 2015 1
J. DeCarlo and M.J. Jenkins, Labor Unions, Management Innovation
and Organizational Change in Police Departments, SpringerBriefs in Policing,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21584-6_1