While I was gathering data from my dissertation (a qualitative analysis of patrol officer behavior and decision making), during the analysis coding of officer statements, I saw the formation of what could be best described as a beat management philosophy. Twenty-nine percent of the officers I interviewed mentioned the term “beat integrity” as an ideal of how to manage your area of responsibility. That coding process teased out some of the details in how this philosophy is regarded and constructed as well as a related concept of “jumping calls”. Below, drawing on content from my dissertation, including quotes from officers, is a discussion of the characteristics of “beat integrity, and how it was viewed and used in the study department. Full of quotes from officers, it provides a sense of how patrol officers think beats can and should be managed to both the public benefit and in service to their fellow officers. Hopefully this will lead to future research and, in our current context and forum, to discussion on what other departments and officers experience and utilize.
Introduction
In asking patrol officers whether they held any particular philosophy regarding how patrol should be conducted or their beat managed, most officers expressed general ideas about conducting patrol but nothing really akin to a philosophy. However, a beat management philosophy became evident in the exploration and discussion of the beat integrity concept and in the practice of jumping calls. A review of the literature did not reference this term in the context of a beat management philosophy. However, some components of the concept have been discussed in the literature. Mazerolle, Adams, Budz, Cockerill, and Vance (2003) mentioned the concept of beat ownership as a component of beat policing and Paoline III, Myers, and Worden, (2000) stated that beat knowledge, generated from stable beat assignments, was a component of community oriented policing. In a similar vein, researchers have examined the use and adherence to informal work rules (Ricksheim and Chermak, 1993; Paulson, 2004; Cope, 2004; Stroshine, Alpert, and Dunham, 2008; Worrall, 2013), unwritten expectations of officer workplace behaviors dictated by the behaviors and expectations of co-workers as well as workplace conditions. Beat integrity incorporates some of these components into an articulable philosophy that guides officer attitude and behavior. It also provides an understanding of what officers value in their own, and other officers, work performance and provides a guide for further research in analyzing the way officers manage their beat.
Defining Beat Integrity
Two concepts regarding officers’ management of their area of responsibility emerged during the interviews that, while both could be considered positive, may also at times be at odds with one another; the concept of beat integrity, and the concept of being a team player by jumping calls, that is taking a dispatch call not specifically assigned to the officer. Neither of these concepts were known to me prior to data collection and the interview guide did not contain any questions pertaining to the concepts. Both concepts and their interrelatedness came about through the transcript analysis process; as the terms and definitions became apparent, additional coding and analysis was conducted to develop the concepts and their relationship.
While some officers referred to the concept that came to be defined as beat integrity as beat ownership, examination of the concept revealed that beat ownership is a dimension of beat integrity. Beat integrity is a mindset; a way of approaching and understanding your own beat that’s in concert with other officers in the department.
Seventeen officers (29%) made reference to the concept of beat integrity. From officers’ descriptions and mentions of beat integrity three characteristics of the concept were identified; beat knowledge, beat ownership, and beat work ethic. While they are distinct, these characteristics are also inter-related. If officers have a sense of ownership, then it should stand to reason they should have or want to develop knowledge about their beat and serve their beat through a good work ethic. Wanting to, and being able to, handle your calls effectively and efficiently (good work ethic) is driven by a sense of ownership and facilitated by beat knowledge. Developing beat knowledge is contingent on being involved with and having that sense of ownership and experiencing and handling the types of calls present on the officer’s beat.
The first characteristic, beat knowledge, was having knowledge of your beat and a focus—the geographic layout of the beat, who the “problem people” are and where the hotspot and high call volume (“problem”) areas are, and what activities the officer should be or can be engaging in. For example, Officer 66 spoke about the beat knowledge component relating to geographic layout, “For the most part I know the short cuts, that kind of stuff. It is one of the fastest growing beats, a lot on the edges I don’t know necessarily by the name or the address. You give me a name and address, if it’s a named street some of those I’m not real familiar with however we got the map system which is nice. Other than that, I’m comfortable with business and residential sections. But that’s part of beat integrity, you learn it and especially if you’re sent there once or twice you’re gonna remember it then.” Officer 72 spoke about the aspect of understanding the problems on the beat and what officers should focus on, “I think a lot of it is that beat ownership, beat integrity, beat ownership, all that kind of stuff. This is a problem and if I don’t find a way to take care of this problem or issue, I’ll have a supervisor telling me this is a problem, let’s fix it. So if I can nip it in the bud before it becomes a problem, or gets to the attention of my supervisor, I think I’ve accomplished my job.”
The second characteristic was having a sense of beat ownership—that the area “belongs” to the officer, they are responsible for what goes on within their beat and are responsible to the citizens and businesses on the beat, as well as wanting to be on their beat and not elsewhere. The concept of beat ownership was mentioned by Mazerolle, Adams, Budz, Cockerill, and Vance (2003) when they examined “beat policing” in Queensland, Australia. They defined “beat policing” as relying “on an intelligence-driven, proactive police response” where officers “are assigned to a defined geographical location and are encouraged to take ownership of that area by responding in a proactive manner to problems within their beat” (p. 1). Officers in the current study also had that sense of beat ownership. For example, Officer 57 said, “I drive my beat and try to keep an eye out for whatever I can and be around so if we do get a call I’m near usually. I usually don’t stray far from my beat, it’s kinda my responsibility to be around here.” Officer 34 also noted, “I try and stay within my district, I don’t usually go to other districts, I just try to work my beat the most, obviously, ‘cause it’s my beat and I take pride in my beat.” A couple officers said that having assigned beats increased the sense of beat ownership. For example, Officer 66 said, “Talking about beat integrity, it used to be when you didn’t know what beat you were gonna be on, you didn’t really care about your beat. You’d come to work, take your calls, and that was it. Now you try and be more pro-active, being visible…” This accords with Kane’s (2000) study of permanent beats within the context of community oriented policing; he found that officers with permanent beats engaged in more proactive activity, suggesting a sense of increased beat ownership. Some officers also felt that the sense of ownership in beat integrity should extend to district integrity. For example, Officer 50 said,
This isn’t my beat but it sure the hell is my district. So talking about responsibility, I’m responsible to my beat and then I’m responsible to my district. I’m not responsible for this other district… I think efficiency for patrol and effectiveness comes down to district ownership. I own my district. We have a lieutenant, three sergeants, and nine police officers. We own that district. Yes, I will go off my district for a short duty, for an assault, something that’s a type one call or activity, that’s not what I’m talking about. Ninety-five percent of the day to day we cover, I don’t go off my district, I stay within my district, it’s my responsibility to make sure—you can call it power shift, power-aid for officers, call it whatever you want but we’re meeting the requirement for whatever happens in that district. So we can handle all our calls, all our traffic. The way I see it, we should be a police department within our district.
The third characteristic, beat work ethic, was being able to handle your calls for service— being able to finish your calls and move on to the next without getting overwhelmed with calls and requiring other officers to come over to your beat and take some of your calls. Officer 33 explained, “Also having that beat integrity, having some ownership of what’s going on in your area, your calls are your calls, make sure you resolve them, don’t push them off on other people. So having that ownership and work ethic.”. Officer 62 also mentioned that desire to handle their own calls, “… at Fargo PD every officer is good at beat integrity. If it’s a call on your beat, you might not be the first one there but it’s your report, you’re taking it. And everybody cares about their beat. If I was busy on something and someone on [Beat] X gets sent to a shoplifter on [officer’s beat] Y, I’m like ‘crap, crap, crap’, I wanna take that, it’s my responsibility.” Officer 34 also addressed the importance of handling calls on beat and in your district, “Other officers do this as well, if you hear on the radio when people from other districts are getting sent to your district, you try to cancel them because when you start crossing like that, and we’re traveling further distances, and then it backs up everybody, ‘cause then our response time is slower, so now you clear that up and you try to go to a call in your district where now you’re way out in another district, so that slows us down. So that’s an inefficiency issue also.”
Beat integrity acts as a set of informal work rules for officers as to how they should manage their area of responsibility. It is an expectation for officers themselves that they feel a sense of ownership and have knowledge of their beat, and are determined to “work” their beat the best way they can. It is the way they believe a patrol officer should manage their work environment. It requires them to be self-sufficient, motivated, and knowledgeable and officers have that expectation of themselves as well as expecting it from other officers.
Challenges to Beat Integrity
While the concept of beat integrity seemed important and useful to officers, they also faced challenges to that beat integrity. Situations and circumstances could make keeping and establishing beat integrity difficult, including having to engage in assigned tasks, changing beat assignments (exacerbated by short staffing on the shift), and heavy call volume.
While one officer mentioned that assigned tasks, for example CSI (crime scene investigation), take away from officers’ beat integrity, eight of the 17 officers that spoke of beat integrity mentioned feeling a loss of beat integrity when being called to or assigned to a different beat. Officer 50 mentioned how during a time in the department without assigned beats, beat integrity suffered, “When I first got here we weren’t doing COPs and you got assigned a different beat every day, you were all over the place. They had no ownership, no real knowledge of that beat, or that area ‘cause they’re all over hell. It’s totally ineffective but because I work in the same area every day, it’s nice to have those communications, it’s nice to have the crime reporting statistics thing but the biggest thing is I’m out here.”
Situations, however, would arise where officers are assigned or dispatched off their normal beat. Some officers noted the rotating shift structure allowed for officers to occasionally be assigned to other beats. Beats that are not assigned an officer must be covered by other officers and officers can be moved off their beat to cover an open one. Officer 36 explained, “Generally speaking, on each shift there’s two officers assigned to each beat but you’re generally opposite of each other so on my Monday and Friday [Officer Y] and I work [our same beat], so if were short, I’m gonna get bumped [moved] off my beat [to cover an open beat] so you lose that sense of ownership. It’s like that’s my area, that’s where I work, I don’t wanna go over there, I wanna be over here.” As one officer noted, “[Officer X] and I are responsible for taking calls on our beats as well as [Beat Y]. And there’s also no [Beat X] car so that’s left open, and that’s the beat we’re close to, so it’s going to be—dispatch will…the right answer would be is to send us. The problem is it’s not our district and it’s not our area of responsibility, it’s not an area we focus patrol on, things like that so when we get sent over there to work it frustrates us when we have to go over to focus on issues that aren’t related to our area.”. While noting that staffing problems contributed to a loss of beat integrity, this officer recognized that having to assign or dispatch officers to a different beat was necessary to serve the public need, “And the whole idea of patrolling your own beat and your own sector just goes out the window ‘cause you’re just getting pulled over to help other people on their beats. But, that’s what you gotta do when you don’t have enough people. You can’t keep people waiting forever. I know if I call the cops I don’t wanna wait an hour and a half for them to get there. And I see that happens pretty frequently.”
Calls for service volume may also dictate that officers are pulled away from their beats to assist other officers or to focus on problem areas on other beats. One officer explained,
Beat X is a humongous beat. Beat X is on the [direction] edge of town and I’m constantly getting sucked downtown, they need staffing downtown, they got problems downtown. Last night I spent—I think I did one traffic stop on my beat last night and the rest I was pretty much downtown… my former lieutenant, you could say he was pretty much willing to take a hit on crime increase on Beat X if by me spending all my time during the first half of the shift, on Friday nights and Saturday nights downtown, to help them reduce crime on Beat 11 which is downtown. Sooo, that’s what he wanted, so that’s what we did. I don’t always feel an obligation that my beat is my beat and (inaudible) than downtown.
While officers had to contend with assigned tasks, short staffing, and call volume as a challenge to establishing and keeping beat integrity, another factor existed, the desire to engage in, and practice of, jumping calls, which could influence officers’ perception and understanding of beat integrity.
Jumping Calls
The underlying concept of beat integrity is beat and, in some instances, district management. The desire and ability to manage an area of responsibility, both for their own benefit, and for the benefit of other officers, can prompt officers to “jump calls”. Officers, based on their own awareness, or the dispatch screen in the car terminal, identify that an officer, usually on a different beat in their district, is falling behind in answering calls. Officers referred to falling behind in your calls for service with terms such as calls are “stacked”, “getting buried”, or “getting slammed”. The observing officer would then “jump” a call, that is take the call themselves, that was dispatched to the officer falling behind. The observing officer would radio in and request dispatch to assign the call to them. This officer then leaves their beat and proceeds to the location of the jumped call.
I witnessed a strong sense of solidarity amongst officers and they try to demonstrate this support by being a “team player’ and helping out other officers. For example, Officer 45 related this during the interview process:
Participant: …a lot if you’re gonna have two beats to patrol. Just remember that you’re gonna want guys to help you.
Interviewer: So you gotta show, in a sense, that you’re a team player…
Participant: Oh it’s about being a team, absolutely. You don’t wanna be the guy that’s not helping out, you don’t wanna let a district partner have three reports holding and you not help him out, it’s just not ok as a district partner. You’ll see guys who check the call logs, we got a District 2 guy down in (inaudible), we just got one call but he’s a District 2 guy so I wanna make sure he doesn’t get dogged with reports. He helps me out a lot, we go on a lot of calls together, so I try and be mindful if he’s out of the district.
Jumping calls sometimes occurs when officers are looking for action or trying to gain experience with different types of calls, though it more typically occurs because officers are trying to help their busy beat and district partners manage an area of responsibility. For example, Officer 16 said, “Basically I jump a lot of runs, might not get assigned a lot, but I jump a lot just ‘cause it’s not fair the guy downtown gets 30 calls and I get two, you know, so if I can I’ll jump calls. I probably jumped five or six yesterday.” Another officer expressed a similar view of trying to make a fair distribution of work, “On day shift, anyway, there’s a group of us who are pretty good if people are busy and getting blasted, you jump calls for service to get things done or help ‘em out or you end up with five reports and nobody [else] was doing anything all day. Maybe you take some of the reports or calls for service for them, ‘cause you know they’re working on reports.” Officers typically get behind in answering their calls because of call volume, or the complexity of calls and the time involved in handling them. One officer explained,
And it’s not just calls for service on my beat. [adjoining beat] has one of the highest calls for service, you have complex calls, a lot of domestics, fights, thefts, tons of shoplifters ‘cause of [a local mall]. Call volume kinda puts you out there. If there’s a night where he’s getting multiple shoplifters, he gets bogged down, and I’ll go and back him up just ‘cause we take care of each other in my sector [district]. If he’s getting his butt slammed, I’m gonna go up there and help him out and try to alleviate some of his work load. And he does the same thing for me.”
Conflict Between Beat Integrity and Jumping Calls
There were indications that the concept of beat integrity and the practice of jumping calls did not always mesh smoothly. Some of the responses indicated that a few officers felt certain officers exhibited what might be characterized as low beat integrity and took advantage of other officers’ willingness to jump calls. Though I did not observe this behavior, it was reported that these officers may be slow in doing their work, or slow to respond to calls they do not like, knowing that if they get too swamped with calls, other officers will help them out. Therefore, they allow other officers to jump calls on their beat, thus avoiding their own work. One officer explained,
Now on the flip side of that not every patrol officer is willing to put that effort in [establishing beat integrity]. You need to have buy-in from the patrol officers, the patrol officer has to take ownership of the problem or trying to solve the problem. And sometimes that takes a lot of effort to get that, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes you have officers who’re ‘Great, I want to do my job, I wanna work hard, I wanna do this’ and sometimes you have officers who are lazy, I’m not going to sugarcoat it. I mean there’s people who don’t wanna do this job, they wanna come here, sit and drive around in their car all day and then go home and not take a report, not take a call, and the people—and sometimes the crime statistics in their beat show because of that.
Another officer expressed a similar sentiment noting how officers with low beat integrity negatively affected the other officers working, “I think taking the calls, doing what you need for the call and clearing the scene for the next call to help your—otherwise you end up screwing your beat partners. And there’s people that will milk a call, they’ll take forever and it’s like, really? You got like five calls stacked up on your beat and we’re gonna get sent to them. I’m right in the middle of [Beat X] and [Beat Y]. So if something happens on Y and I’m not doing something, and they need two cars, I’m going. If something is happening on X and they need two cars, I’ll go. So I get pulled both ways so if you milk those calls out people get pissed off at you.”
It was more common, however, for officers to state that certain officers may have very high beat integrity. These officers were characterized as tending to refrain from jumping calls on the other beats because it detracted from their beat integrity by leaving their beat open; nor did they appreciate other officers jumping calls on their beat as it suggested they were losing beat integrity. For example, one officer said, “Usually I jump around beats, when we’re busy I like to go to other districts and help out. I get bored real easy. Some people frown on that, they don’t like you going into their beats which I can understand why but I guess it’s good and bad.” Officer 66 elaborated further, “Like we were talking earlier about helping other officers out in your district. There are people that are so beat oriented that they won’t help another person in their district unless they’re dispatched to do it or (inaudible) come help. Which I can understand the beat integrity but if you’re getting your butt handed to you, you want someone to come and help. If you’re not busy on your beat you should kinda turn that beat integrity into district integrity.”
One problem mentioned by officers, and one that can occur in the dispatch process when staffing levels are low as well, is a cascading effect from jumping calls. When officers took calls on other beats, their assigned beat is then left open, which may require a different officer to cover that beat. Officer 54 commented on this cascading effect, ‘Cause inevitably what seems to happen is it creates a domino effect because they’ll pull officers from another district and then they get a call out there that needs attention right away so they’re pulling officers from other districts, it’s almost comical ‘cause you’ll see officers from other districts all over town ‘cause of this cascading effect.”
Cascading can occur on occasions where call volume is heavy or officers engage in injudicious call jumping, leaving officers engaged in activities or answering calls on unfamiliar beats, and a lack of beat integrity on this new beat reduces their effectiveness in their activities. I witnessed this cascading effect on a few occasions where officers were dispatched off their district and while engaged in the call, another call comes into the beat the officer just left, requiring someone else from a different beat to take that call. This can become frustrating for officers as not only did they feel the loss of beat integrity but it gave a sense of disorganization to their activities. This frustration was especially evident when officers were dispatched to drive a lengthy distance to a call in an unfamiliar district. The extra time involved answering that call by dispatching a distant officer, especially on a busy night, suggested to the officer that the dispatch process was unorganized and inefficient, and that it would likely result in some other officer now having to take a call on their beat. One officer half-jokingly predicted that as soon as we arrived at the call destination on the other side of town, a call would come in on his beat, and he was correct.
To ensure they do not become entangled in a jumped call that prevents them from attending to the calls on their own beat, officers must be able to negotiate and balance the expectation of being a team player with that of beat integrity, take into account other officers’ feelings regarding their beat integrity, and account for call volume. This balancing act affects how officers patrol and what activities they engage in while on patrol, to insure they are open to assist other officers quickly if need be, or whether they may even jump a call. Officers might not invest themselves too heavily in any particular activity when the potential and need for jumping calls, or being dispatched on some occasions, might require the officer to break away from that activity.
A District 2 officer noted the practicality of being available and geographically close to areas they may be called to, “Really we’re a North car, so a lot of our calls we spend on District 1. I take a lot of calls on District 1 so I’ll rarely go down to District 2, I spend a lot of time helping these guys. It would leave them short if I spent a lot of time down there, so my patrol is kinda beat specific and I won’t roam as much as probably other beats do, down south, other parts of the district [2] like [Beat X] or [Beat Y]. I won’t roam down there ‘cause downtown’s pretty busy and like you said when you get a two-car run, two cars go there and it’s too busy of a district for me to be all the way down in 21 when he needs help up north.”
Officer 36 mentioned this practicality aspect as well as the expectations of other officers, “I think patrol feeds off of what everyone else is doing now, so we have a lot of cars tied up on stuff right now so I’ll stay closer to downtown ‘cause it doesn’t make sense for me to go all the way up in my beat just to get sent all the way back down again. Especially when you’re down to just two or three [officers], you’re not all looking for traffic stops, you’re staying available. ‘Cause you don’t be that guy, who’s out busting T-stops while everybody else is humping calls.”
Officer 44 also referenced the expectation of other officers, and the public, that officers be available to help answer calls, “If every beat is busy, and I’m not getting a single call and I’m out running traffic, that’s probably not-it’s going to be frowned upon, if I’m running traffic and everybody’s getting slammed with reports, ‘cause I should be helping them out. ‘Cause those are priorities, helping other community members who are calling for our help. We have to help them.” Negotiating this balance may be difficult at times and for some officers there might be a steep learning curve which can change their view or approach to patrol. Officer 67 related how negotiating this balance affected his outlook.
Some officers have extreme beat integrity, extreme district integrity. I’m not really one of those officers where no matter what I’m not letting another officer take a call on my beat if I can help it. Or if a call comes out to my area or district and I’m free, I’ll help out as I can but I have more of a team wide mentality and the districts and beats have more of a district mentality which is department wide for the most part. I was reassigned to District 2 one night and I’m used to my beat where I patrol and a call came out on the next district over but only a couple blocks away so I went and helped out. Well another call came on my beat and I was asked to clear that call [I was on] in the middle of an interview and afterwards I took a little bit of flak for that. Someone drove past that call [on my beat] to take that [call], the one I was on, because it was their beat and I didn’t really understand all that, so it changed a little how I patrol, help out less in different districts in the areas so I can be available for calls that come out on mine. I don’t really agree with that; I would rather work more team wide but officers from different districts are coming across to help me take calls so I understand why they feel the way they do. But I don’t necessarily agree with it so that changed a little bit of how I approach it.
Officers incorporate the concept of beat integrity, and its three characteristics, beat knowledge, beat ownership and beat work ethic, into how they believe proper management of their area of responsibility should be performed. Officers expressed wanting to have beat integrity, and an understanding that officers expect it of them and they expected it of other officers. However, the degree that officers invest in the concept of beat integrity could vary and beat integrity may run afoul of another concept, the shared responsibility and teamwork that prompts officers to jump calls. Both of these concepts take on the form of informal work rules, which influence officer behavior and are viewed as effective and meaningful, as suggested by Stroshine and colleagues (2008); there was an expectation among the patrol officers that the concepts were accepted and engaged in, and officers who failed to understand or participate in these work concepts were viewed negatively, as they did not demonstrate self-reliance or a desire to be a team player.
Conclusion
The definition and adherence to the concept of beat integrity forms a set of personal and inter-officer informal work rules that dictate how beats should be managed and how officers should behave. Beat integrity, and the inter-related practice of jumping calls, sets out the desirable qualities of officers and beat management in that officers are responsible for their beat, have good beat knowledge, incorporate a good work ethic by handling their calls independently, and willing to function as a team player in the process of managing their beat. While informal work rules are meant to guide behaviors, especially in situations without official mandates or direction, officers in the study indicated that adherence and acceptance of beat integrity were not universal. However, officers who failed to abide by the beat management philosophy were perceived negatively.
When asked specifically, most officers had no articulable beat management philosophy. However, the results of the current study indicate that officers do in fact operate under a beat management philosophy in the form of informal work rules. These results revealed beat integrity, as a beat management philosophy, a concept which was derived from officers’ behavior and statements, may be a unique discovery in policing literature. It is possible that, given the description and utility of the components, that officers in other police departments may use a similar beat management philosophy that takes the form of informal work rules, and may not be recognizable to officers, police departments, or researchers as a specific beat management philosophy.
Given that, lets have some discussion. Have you noticed in your department or agency, a “catch-word” or an overall adherence to a philosophy, regarding the way a district, sector, or beat should be managed or patrolled, one that was developed, practiced, and accepted by officers? Do you, or other officers you know, have an articulable set of informal work rules or guidelines that are followed as a sort of “best practices” in terms of beat management? Let me know your thoughts and send me some feedback.