Perspectives and Practical Solutions for Implementing Change, Making Reforms, and Handling Crises for Managers and Union Leader

The purpose of this project was to create a practitioner’s guide for police managers and police unions that seeks to unravel the mysteries surrounding the two sides of policing, and offer some principled and practical solutions to surviving in the 21st century world of policing that is becoming more and more complex and complicated. The basic goals of the project were the following:

Survey police unions and police management on the current state of labor-management relations in their agencies with an emphasis on implementing change in the direction and operations of the law enforcement agency or reform in the agency

Analyze the survey data to determine those aspects of the labor-management relationship that would appear to be the most cooperative and those aspects that would appear to be the least cooperative when the law enforcement agency is desirous of change or reform, i.e., what is working and what is not

Create a model police labor-management process to implement change and reform the law enforcement agency

Develop an educational and training program for police union leaders and police management in how to implement change in a law enforcement agency in a cooperative manner

Establish methods to encourage police unions and police management to work together to make the reduction of crime a part of their relationship (with or without the right to collective bargaining) and to develop a shared vision of a safer community.

This project was not designed to be a “how to” book on collective bargaining, grievance handling, arbitration, or bargaining impasse resolutions. Change or reform of a law enforcement agency would include, but not be limited to such traditional change agents as the use of force by police, corruption in the agency, ineffectiveness or inefficiency of the agency, racial profiling and other minority complaints, diversity in promotions and in hiring, and mismanagement of agency personnel and resources. The project was to include information on how to gain the cooperative implementation of community-oriented policing concepts by creating ownership in the program for the police union and police management. The most serious problem facing the police profession in the 21st century is how to implement change or reform in a law enforcement agency in the most cooperative manner with the least amount of disruption to the operations of the agency.

The police are one of the most powerful and visible arm of the government.

Individual police officers are empowered to detain, arrest, subdue, and under justifiable circumstances, injure or kill a citizen in order to perform their duties. Police officers are reluctant and resistant to change or reform, especially when the officers perceive the change or reform as politically motivated. A case in point is that despite an obvious hue and cry for citizen control of the police by elected officials, the media, and the public, the few existing citizen review boards in the United States generally are powerless to investigate or charge individual police officers with misconduct or implement reforms in a police department.

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http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/files/ric/Publications/e07063417.pdf