Police agencies must decide whether their patrol officers will perform most of these tasks, or if specially trained officers will concentrate on only one or two of these tasks.
Some departments, especially smaller ones, rely upon generalists; their regular patrol officers perform most of the agency's tasks. For example, officers will patrol their beats, respond to crime scenes where they will collect and preserve physical evidence, counsel juveniles who may be getting into trouble, and attend neighborhood meetings.
Other departments choose to assign their officers as specialists. Thus, some of their officers also patrol a beat. However, if there is a crime scene, it is another officer's responsibility to collect and preserve the evidence. Another officer may work with juveniles in the community.
And a fourth officer may work as a community liaison who attends community meetings. This difference between specialist and generalist officers has important implications for those considering a career in law enforcement. Generalists get to do a wide range of tasks, but some occur very infrequently. Specialists get to work at one or two specific tasks, but often do little else.
For example every patrol officer would be expected to write speeding tickets in an agency without a special traffic enforcement unit. On the other hand, an agency with a special unit will assign some officers to focus on enforcing of traffic laws. These officers will spend the majority of their day writing traffic tickets, but doing little else. Not only does specialization dictate what officers will do during their average work day, it also structures the chances for changing one's job and for promotion.
Some special units have a lot of prestige, freedom, or rewards attached to them. For example, officers in SWAT teams, K-9 units, or working as homicide detectives are often revered by other officers and the public, may have greater flexibility in the hours they can work, and may be better paid; these are prestigious assignments. Of course, some special assignments are not, such as working at the police impound yard, checking evidence into the property locker, or working as a dispatcher.
This is not to say that such jobs are not important, nor that everyone dislikes them. However, there are pros and cons to working as a specialist or as a generalist.
Employment of civilians. Law enforcement agencies often hire people to work as non-sworn employees called civilian employees or civilians. Nationally, about 25 percent of the employees of local, state, and special police agencies are civilians. Of course, because civilian employees are not trained as peace officers, they do not carry guns and do not have arrest powers. However, civilians perform a wide range of important duties for police agencies, and those seeking employment in policing should not overlook these opportunities.
As with the other aspects of policing in America, the jobs and responsibilities performed by civilian employees vary from one agency to the next. The most common duties performed by civilians are answering emergency switchboards and dispatching patrol officers, performing clerical or secretarial duties, maintaining police vehicles, or doing custodial chores around police buildings.
Some agencies also hire civilians to perform very specialized tasks. The CID has the same rank structure as the uniformed branch. Officers are known as detective constable, detective sergeants and so on. CID officers do not work the shift system and they are often required to work long and irregular hours. A major inquiry can demand of CID officers working every hour of the day. The work is often slow and requires great patience as well as good memory and attention to detail. The pay structure is identical to that of the uniformed police, with an additional plain-clothes allowance.
It's a fact that many police constables apply to join CID, but few are selected. CID requires certain qualities and commitment and officers will need to show an aptitude for this kind of work. To aid selection a constable can request a temporary attachment to a particular squad. Their stated aim is to prevent and detect serious organised crime and to contribute to its reduction in other ways.
Their work often involves very extensive and time consuming operations. Operations include undercover work, physical or technical surveillance, witness protection and financial investigation. It effectively replaced the National Crime Squad with a remit to tackle all forms of organised crime. It comprises four functions — investigation, enforcement, intervention and corporate services.
SOCA main activities are fighting drugs trafficking, organised immigration crime, individual and private sector fraud — almost any crime where there is an organised element.
Where the SOCA tackles the large-scale drug trafficking, local forces have squads to deal with drug offences in their area. They will be involved in surveillance of local drug dealers, raids on premises and making arrests and will often work closely with their national counterparts. Established in and run by the Metropolitan Police in cooperation with the City of London Police, this unit also operates within the Serious Fraud Office. The SFO is a government department established to investigate large-scale fraud.
Some regional forces also have specialist units dealing primarily with fraud. Each force has its own Special Branch dealing with terrorism. Its work covers investigations into firearms or explosives, which may be linked with threats to national security. This involves surveillance work and also keeping regular officers informed of any threats. Established over a century ago to tackle the threat posed by the Irish nationalists who took to terrorism tactics, its post-war remit expanded to other perceived threats to national security.
Generally, recruitment is via the CID. However, in the Metropolitan Police its members are generally recruited from the uniformed officers directly. Each Force has a number of officers in a specialist team who are trained and equipped to participate in operations that require firearms. Extremely thorough training is part of becoming a specialist firearms officer, while qualities of calmness and quick thinking are essential.
A traffic officer is concerned with all aspects of road safety, while still getting involved in policing all kinds of non-traffic incidents. The work of traffic officers is much more complex and multi-layered — here's a sample of some of the duties:. Drivers of traffic cars and motorcycles operate independently and are based in special premises.
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