Supervision Routine Supervision A newspaper report described the midnight shift in the Suffolk County, NY, Police Department as the “lost battalion.” It found that officers “can go for hours without speaking to a supervisor, or weeks without having contact with their precinct’s top managers.”13 The department was failing to provide routine supervision—the kind recommended in police management textbooks since the 1940s—to officers working between midnight and 8 a.m. The report was prompted by a series of allegations that male officers in the department had stopped, harassed, and even abused young, single, female drivers. Routine super vision is one of the central tasks of police management, and this responsibility primarily falls on sergeants. A Police Foundation survey of police offic- ers found that almost 90 percent agree that “good first-line supervisors can help pre- vent police officers from abusing their authority.”14 The Span of Control In the mid-1990s, the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department experienced a number of officer-involved shooting incidents by officers assigned to the Century Station. An investigation by Special Counsel Merrick Bobb—the department’s citi- zen oversight—found that the source of the problem was not a few “bad apples” but bad management practices. Most serious, Bobb found that at times each sergeant was supervising 20 to 25 officers, a ratio that far exceeded the department’s own standard of 8 to 1.15 The ratio of sergeants to officers is referred to as the span of control. The the- ory of span of control assumes that any supervisor can effectively supervise a limited number of people.16 In policing, the recommended span of control is between 8 and 10 patrol officers for each sergeant. When the recommended span of control is ex- ceeded, supervision may deteriorate; as a result, officer performance may also decline. What Sergeants Do Darrel Stephens, former chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, notes that sergeants and other front-line supervisors are largely responsible for set- ting departmental expectations and “translating the department’s mission, vision, values, policies, rules and regulations into operational practice.” They are the ones who have the most contact with patrol officers and the public and determine what is acceptable practice and what is not.17 Supervision by sergeants involves a number of different activities. First, they are expected to monitor officers under their command on a regular basis, either through face-to-face meetings or over the police radio. In the case of potentially seri- ous incidents, sergeants are expected to appear at the scene, provide advice if needed, and if necessary take command of the situation. Second, sergeants review and approve officers’ reports. Typically, sergeants review and sign off on arrest reports. Third, sergeants are expected to advise officers under their command whenever their performance is less than satisfactory and to instruct them on proper procedure. Fourth, if a sergeant becomes aware that an officer has violated a department policy or committed some act of misconduct, he or she is expected to file a report with the internal affairs unit or the office of professional standards, which would then investi- gate the allegation.18 Engel’s analysis of supervisors’ styles found different approaches to supervision and discipline. “Supportive” supervisors define their role in term of protecting officers under their command “from criticism and discipline” by upper management. “Tradi- tional” supervisors, on the other hand, “are more likely to punish patrol officers” than are other categories of supervisors.19 In short, in addition to different organizational cultures between departments, there are different styles of supervision within par- ticular departments. Sergeants often develop close personal ties with the officers under their com- mand. This can affect their ability to supervise properly. They may become unwilling to criticize those officers and exercise the proper level of control and discipline. These relationships represent an important part of the police subculture (see Chapter 6). Departments that allow personal ties to affect supervision and discipline do not have high standards of accountability. Close Supervision The commanders in the Forty-Second and Forty-Fourth precincts in the New York City Police Department took a hands-on approach to supervision. They personally spoke to officers who received a high number of citizen complaints, communicating a message that improper behavior toward citizens would not be tolerated. And when some of those officers received more complaints, they were reassigned from patrol to desk duty. A Vera Institute study found that this approach to close supervision helped reduce complaints and improve relations with the community.20 Close supervision goes beyond routine performance appraisal. It involves focusing on specific problems and taking extra steps to correct them. Both of the precinct commanders in the Vera study communicated to their officers that reducing citizen complaints was a high priority, both personally spoke at roll call sessions, and both paired younger officers with more experienced veterans. Most important, they spoke personally to officers who received citizen complaints in an effort to both help them correct their behavior and warn them about the consequences if there were more complaints or other problems. Both reassigned or passed over for promotion officers who continued to receive citizen complaints. These actions communicated to all officers in each precinct that they would be held accountable for unacceptable performance. The Vera Institute study found that citizen complaints fell in both precincts, while complaints rose for the department as a whole. Coaching, Mentoring, Leading The role of supervisors in holding officers accountable includes more than imposing formal discipline. The Standard Operating Procedure of the Madison, Wisconsin, Police Department explains that: “Some of the primary tasks of supervisors are en- couraging, counseling and, if necessary, disciplining or correcting the behavior of employees. The purpose of this is to direct individual effort into effective and produc- tive action.” The department further explains that some on-the-job performance problems “may be related to alcoholism, other drug dependency, emotional disorders, or other personal problems.”21 Like many departments, it maintains an employee assistance program (EAP) through which officers can receive professional coun- seling related to the specific problem. Participation in EAP programs is confidential. Informal corrective action to improve performance problems is also the key element of early intervention systems (see pp. 473–479). The Impact of Organizational Culture The Los Angeles Police Department delivered a devastating criticism of its own per- sonnel evaluation system: “Our personnel evaluations have little or no credibility at any level in the organization.” This criticism was delivered by the LAPD’s internal Board of Inquiry report on the Rampart scandal in 2000.The report’s chapter on the department’s integrity systems, meanwhile, identified more than 30 policies and pro- cedures designed to ensure integrity and accountability. Yet, it concluded that all these systems had not prevented the Rampart scandal from occurring.22 The findings of the Board of Inquiry report raised serious questions about the effectiveness of personnel evaluations and other internal accountability mechanisms. There is an important distinction between meaningful accountability, where actions have consequences, and superficial accountability, where an organization has elabo- rate policies and forms but does not use them in any meaningful way. Whether or not meaningful discipline occurs depends on the organizational culture of a police department. The Chemerinsky report on the LAPD’s Board of Inquiry report argued that “every police department has a culture—the unwritten rules, mores, customs, codes, values, and outlooks—that creates the policing environ- ment and style.” The culture of the LAPD, it concluded, involves the enforcement of “voluminous rules and regulations, some of them very petty.” While petty rules are enforced, serious misconduct is covered up. First, the code of silence results in officers being reluctant to report misconduct by other officers. Second, when they do report misconduct, officers are not only not rewarded for doing so but often punished by the department.23 And in fact, in 2000, 90 current and former LAPD officers filed suit against the department for having been demoted or otherwise punished for reporting misconduct by other officers. The informal organizational culture of a police department has a major impact on accountability. A report on the Baltimore Police Department defined organiza- tional culture as “the collection of embraced values, activities, rules, and standards that enable it to achieve its core identity.” Focus groups with 250 officers found that the positive “cultural assets” of the department included professionalism, bravery, and commitment. However, the culture also included bitterness and cynicism on the part of officers, distrust of others in the organization, and low morale. As a result, the “operating culture” of the department included “individual survival, group loyalty, frustration and resentment.”24 Corrective Action: Informal and Formal One important task for supervisors is to take corrective action to improve the perfor- mance of officers under their command. Some of these actions can be very informal. After a police–citizen encounter, for example, a sergeant might talk to an officer, pointing out that she was rude to a citizen or that the officer created a potential dan- ger for herself by the way she placed herself at the scene. A sergeant might notice that another officer appears to have a lot of things on his mind or be in a hostile mood. Like employees in other occupations, police officers are often affected by fam- ily problems. The sergeant in this case might just talk with the officer about the situ- ation or suggest referral to a counseling program.25 A number of departments have formal programs for improving officer perfor- mance. A sergeant might refer an officer for retraining on traffic stop or use of force tactics, for example. The Los Angeles sheriff ’s department has a formal peer officer support program. This consists of officers who have received 40 hours of training and are available to talk with other officers on a strictly confidential basis. Most depart- ments participate in a formal employee assistance program (EAP), where an officer can receive professional counseling related to depression, family problems, or sub- stance abuse.26 Written Policies and Reporting Requirements One of the most important tools for holding officers accountable is providing written policies governing the exercise of discretion in handling critical incidents—use of deadly force, high speed pursuits, and so forth—and then to require officers to com- plete written reports after each incident. These reports are then reviewed by com- mand officers to determine whether officers complied with departmental policy. If an officer violated policy, some form of discipline should result. The nature of written policies and the reporting requirement are explained in detail in Chapter 11. Performance Evaluations Regular performance evaluations are a standard technique for holding employees accountable. Annual (or more frequent) evaluations by an immediate supervisor are designed to provide feedback to employees by identifying areas of outstanding, ac- ceptable, or inadequate performance. Identifying areas of inadequate performance is intended to provide feedback to the officer so that he or she has an opportunity to improve. Performance evaluations can also be used when considering employees for promotion.27 Officer Michael Dowd of the New York City Police Department’s Seventy- Fifth Precinct received excellent performance evaluations. His supervisor wrote that he “has excellent street knowledge; relates well with his peers and is empathetic to the community, [and could] easily become a role model for others to emulate.” Un- fortunately, Dowd was one of the most corrupt and brutal officers in the entire NYPD, and he was eventually convicted on criminal charges.28 Dowd’s case dramatizes the fact that standard performance evaluations some- times completely fail to accurately assess an officer’s real performance. Standard per- formance evaluations in police departments have a number of serious problems. A Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) report found that “most performance evaluations currently used by police do not reflect the work officers do.”29 They also suffer from a number of technical problems. Evaluation categories and criteria often lack clarity. Many reports, for example, ask supervisors to rate officers’ “quality of work,” without specifying either the nature of the work or how quality should be measured. Reports also suffer from the “halo” effect, meaning that a high rating in one particular area of performance tends to affect the ratings in other areas. Evalua- tions are also affected by the central tendency phenomenon. That is, the ratings of all officers tend to cluster around one evaluation level (e.g., everyone receives a rating of 4 on a scale of 1 to 5). Finally, there is a problem of leniency or grade inflation: virtu- ally everyone is rated “above average,” and even a rating of “average” is considered to be highly negative.30 Another failure is that performance evaluations are often not used effectively for purposes of promotion or selection for important assignments. In short, once the evaluations are completed, they sit in a file without being used to make decisions about the quality of different officers and whether they merit an important promo- tion or assignment. The Christopher Commission, for example, identified 44 Los Angeles police officers with extremely high rates of citizen complaints. Yet, many of them received excellent performance evaluations. One officer who had been accused of striking a handcuffed suspect with the butt of a shotgun for no apparent reason was evaluated as having an “easy going manner which he used to his best advantage in the field.”31
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