Running Head: CASE STUDY: VIRTUAL POLICE 1

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Virtual Police Department Case Study
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November 6, 2016
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Introduction and Overview

The Virtual Police Department has a long and largely prestigious history, managing to

stay in existence for more than half a century with very few major negative incidents. At the

same time, the case study sheds light on some of the ways in which the Virtual Police

Department is, at best, underperforming and, at worst, could be seen as perpetuating unfair

practices that could explode into scandal in a way that is currently far too typical for American

urban policing at this time. The four biggest issues, as this report will show, include the

pervasive lack of education in and among the police department, the related nepotistic hiring

practices, the fact that the police department does not reflect the diversity or values of the

community it serves, and the fact that the department has jettisoned the proactive policing

paradigm in order to simply respond to emergencies. This report will emphasize the ways that

each of these aspects constitutes a major threat to the future of safety in Virtual, the mission of

the police department, and the relationship between the police and the community.

Lack of Education

The first major issue that needs to be addressed in the Virtual Police Department is that

the education policy has barely changed over the last 63 years. When the department was

founded, of course a high school diploma was considered a major credential. However, the times

have changed, and the field of criminal justice has expanded significantly such that people with

degrees in criminal justice are better able to work not just as police, but also as administrators

within the field of criminal justice (Bohm & Haley, 2012; Shelley, Waid, & Dobbs, 2011); an

improved focus on hiring and educating the workforce at Virtual would increase efficiency and

allow for the implementation of twenty-first century processes in what has remained a twentieth-

century-oriented police department.

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At present, the police department prizes experience above all else when it comes to hiring

and promotion within the Virtual Police Department. It has only been in the last twenty years

that the idea of college has been seen as desirable or the new hires. At the same time, the quality

of the supposedly educated officers is low, with reciprocity and nepotism defining the

agreements between the Virtual Police Department and the local community college.

Although it may not be realistic or necessary for each police officer to have a four-year

degree, several requirements should be instituted. The first is an ongoing education requirement

ensuring that people who are hired must continue their education with a series of courses, such as

one course a term at the community college or university. The second requirement is the

subsidization of four-year degrees for certain eligible and high-performing officers so that the

number of officers and others who hold higher degrees improves.

Third, the department needs to revise hiring practices and, implicitly, the ways in which it

values an education. Although this will be discussed in greater detail in the next section, the

over-emphasis on education is perhaps misguided. In an earlier era of policing, one in which

experience was critical for responses to specific situations and in which the academic field of

criminal justice was in its infancy, the “experience first” hiring policy was a good one. Yet with

the proliferation of higher education and the proliferation of different majors, it is also possible

for an individual to enter the work force with a greater understanding of conflict management,

useful administrative or record-keeping practices, or even simply of criminal justice trends,

research, and innovations.

The Virtual Police Department should not devalue experience, but nor should it devalue

the role of education as well. Experience can come from education as well as from patrol, and

the overemphasis on experience at the expense of education has impacted the police department
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to the point where it is not forming good community relationships, it is not effective at

communicating with the community or identifying major policing needs, and it overvalues

experience to the point where the union has a major, oversized sphere of influence within the city

of Virtual.

Indeed, the lack of education and the overemphasis on education is perhaps what it is

driving the powerful police union. Although police unions can be powerful, effective

organizations that protect brave officers, the one in Virtual seems to have become something of

an “old boys’ club” and, in fact, some studies have even suggested that in areas where police are

better-educated and better-trained, unions are more effective at both achieving union aims as

well as at developing positive relationships with the community (Paterson, 2011). Therefore,

education could help diversify the interests represented by the police union in Virtual and could

help the organizational culture (Morgan, 2004) from one in which hierarchies and experience

constitute prestige to one in which the organization is, perhaps, something of a learning

organization, one which values innovations and embraces new ideas, even if they depart

somewhat from cherished values of the past or threaten to upset senior members of the

organization who value seniority over virtually all other values in the profession (Giesecke &

McNeil, 2004).

Nepotistic Practices

Closely related to the uneducated police force is the practice of nepotism. The police

force is a fraternity in the sense that although it is a fairly honest and uncorrupt organization,

people who are friends or family are significantly more likely to be hired than anyone else. This,

like the snubbing of education in the police force, reflects the ways that the police force has

consolidated and become something of an echo chamber in which only the values that are prized
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are reinforced are those that see “undesirables” – who now, ironically, constitute a large portion

of the community that gives them their mandate – as impossible candidates for the police force.

The end result, of course, is a self-perpetuating organization, one in which the lack of outside

information or perspectives actively damages the organization’s ability to adapt to the changing

and more diverse times.

In essence, the nepotistic hiring practices reflect an organization that has failed at being

adaptable and nimble, which, according to many researchers, is a key component for

organizational survival in this competitive age (Gladwell, 2013). Although Virtual Police

Department is not a profit-driven organization, its inability to adapt could mean that it loses its

efficacy and even its mandate. Further, as the young community ages out of school and requires

police services, the “good old boys” club aspect of hiring will become even more toxic as it will

be increasingly difficult to draw on talented policing professionals within this diverse and

talented community.

What is the evidence for this claim? Personnel complaints are increasing, especially in

terms of performance, conduct, and use of force, which all seem to indicate decreases in

performance, along with a growing gap between public expectations for the police and the

police’s actual actions. The nepotism has meant that the police department has stayed the same,

even as the community around it has evolved, as the next section will discuss.

Lack of Diversity

Virtual is a community that has experienced rapid and in some ways, threatening change

over the last several decades. This is because it has not ensured that the police are representative

of the community in which they are serving. For example, the police force remains largely

Caucasian and male, even though Virtual as a city is becoming much more diverse, younger, and
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poorer, according to the case study. The cultural mismatch between the social classes of “Old-

time” Virtual, when the town was predominantly blue-collar, middle class, and white and the

new reality of a diverse, working-class city will make it much more difficult to connect with the

white police force in which people see themselves as part of a separate society.

The “us vs. them” organizational culture is not only holding the police force back

because of its inherent arrogance and toxicity, but it is also actively preventing innovation and

the ability of the police force to do what it needs to do best: prevent crime and build community

capacity. This is the subject of the next section, which is the fourth major area of discussion,

although it is important to note that all of these issues are inextricably intertwined and inter-

related, pointing to the fact that Virtual Police Department is in the moments or months just

before a crisis.

Lack of Pro-Active Policing Policy

Virtual only responds to 911 calls. This is a major problem for many reasons. First and

most obvious, it is impossible to develop a meaningful relationship with the community if the

community only interacts with the police in the context of an emergency. What exactly is pro-

active policing? This method of policing, developed, of course, within the context of an

academic study of criminal justice, involves a kind of resource allocation and balance of the

policing priorities in a way that seeks to prevent future crime, rather than simply respond to

emergencies. The dictum that “a stitch in time saves nine” applies here, since this view of

proactive policing – sometimes seen as similar to broken windows policing – holds that

vigorously enforcing laws against minor crimes will eventually translate into prevention of more

serious crimes. “This policing style entails the vigorous enforcement of laws against relatively

minor offenses to prevent more serious crime” (Kubrin, Messner, Deane, Mcgeever, & Stucky,
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2010, p. 57). Seen as a practice that goes along with community-based policing (Clarke, 2006),

proactive policing is often defined as “…the strategic deployment of resources in order to target

criminally active individuals” (Stockdale et al., 1999, p. 5). There are no initiatives to create

strategy or strategically respond to exigencies in the police department.

The department is simply responsive, which leads to whack-a-mole policing that

responds to emergencies and does little else to build community relationships or to prevent more

serious crimes. The reactive, rather than pro-active, policing policy, should be a source of shame

for Virtual Police Department and it should consider the ways that this view of policing is not

helping the community and, furthermore, the ways in which it is not scalable with the growth and

change in the city.

Implementation of Changes

Implementing change is difficult, especially since the Virtual Police Department is sixty-

three years old and full of people with obsolete, strongly-held ideas and pride in their

department. At the same time, this organization is no longer fully serving the community that

needs it the most. The attitudes that were prevalent nearly three-quarters of a century ago are no

longer politically correct or effective. Moreover, the enormous growth that has occurred in the

field of criminal justice in this time is an enormous resource – one that the city has failed to

leverage due to its rather ignorant view of the field of criminal justice specifically and, therefore,

of the ways in which an educated workforce could strongly benefit Virtual Police Department.

Yet Virtual's eschewing of education is only part of the problem, because its toxic

organizational culture has meant that it is missing out on many talented people. It is also giving

people jobs who may not be the best match for this type of policing in this specific city, context,

or who otherwise may

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Conclusion

From the case study, it is clear that Virtual Police Department has to make many changes

if it is to survive and continue to be effective. The biggest change that needs to happen is in

terms of its organizational culture. The Virtual Police Department is too impressed with its own

successes to really understand how change could help it achieve a more effective community

presence and better means of responding to the needs of the community. The Virtual Police

Department needs to prioritize and reward education much more significantly than it has in the

past, and it must also acknowledge the diverse community that relies on the policing it offers.

Instead of reactively responding to “undesirables,” the organization should seek to hire talented

and passionate people who care about the community and who are able to help engage in

proactive policing before existing problems get too bad.

Virtual remains a police department that would have been effective sixty-three years ago,

but it is not ready for the early twenty-first century, given its lackluster responses to demographic

changes, crime trends, social norms, technology, and the ways in which the city itself is

changing.

The city absolutely must move forward in a way that serves the entire community, not

just the police “culture” that has informed its interactions for decades. Organizations that do not

adapt fail to survive, and in Virtual, this could mean a takeover of gangs, a complete lack of faith

in the police department, or more. Thus, change is critical and it must begin immediately with

the development of a new organizational culture that shares values with its embedded

community, not just the older men who began the police department.
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References
Bohm, R. M. and, & Haley, K. N. (2012). Introduction To Criminal Justice. Introduction to
Criminal Justice. https://doi.org/10.1016/0047-2352(80)90068-9
Clarke, C. (2006). Proactive Policing: Standing on the Shoulders of Community-Based Policing.
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Giesecke, J., & McNeil, B. (2004). Transitioning to the Learning Organization. Library Trends,
53(1), 54–67.
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Kubrin, C. E., Messner, S. F., Deane, G., Mcgeever, K., & Stucky, T. D. (2010). Proactive
policing and robbery rates across U.S. cities. Criminology, 48(1), 57–97.
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