The service style of policing views the officer as which of the following?

Policing style varies based on the type of community the officer serves. Highly legalized communities require “no frills” policing in which punishment is applied equally to everyone. Some communities expect officers to function with a high level of discretion, while other communities expect the officers to use a combination of discretion and law. According to a study conducted by James .Q. Wilson, only three styles of policing exist within the law enforcement organizational structure.

Varieties of Police Behavior

James Q. Wilson, author of “Varieties of Police Behavior: The Management of Law and Order in Eight Communities,” examined the behavioral patterns in eight police departments in 1968. During his observation, he found that police operate within three operational styles of policing: legalistic, watchman and service.

Legalistic Style

Police departments operating under a legalistic style operate according to the “letter of the law.” Police conduct themselves in a professional manner. Citizen contact occurs in a formal and neutral process, applying the law to everyone across the board. Procedures are “by the book” with little to no discretion because citizens in a legalistic-style community view police discretion as unethical. Departments employing this style tend to have high performance rates concerning job duties often displayed in arrest and ticketing rates. Decision making tends to occur from the top-down with little input from subordinates.

Watchman Style

Watchman style focuses on maintaining order. This type of policing generally occurs in heavily populated communities that generate a high number of calls for police assistance. Watchman style departments employ discretion as a means of keeping the peace. Officers tend to ignore minor infractions such as traffic violations and minor offense misdemeanors. Officers in this type of department try to resolve minor issues, absent of the commission of a serious crime, without involving other agencies. All police departments display some form of watchman style, but in some departments, this style is the primary operating style.

Service Style

Service style policing occurs in middle- and upper-class societies. Service police departments place a high emphasis on community opinion and public relations. Service-oriented policing places less emphasis on minor infractions and more focus on crimes that violate a citizen’s privacy, such as burglary and robbery. Officers tend to make arrests only when necessary. Police strive to keep communities safe from outsiders, while protecting the welfare of citizens within community boundaries. These types of departments run with abundant financial resources and current technological equipment due to the financial status of the citizens.

References

Writer Bio

Residing in Clarksville, Tenn., Patrice D. Wimbush has been writing since 2002, with her work appearing on various websites. Her areas of writing expertise are contract and criminal law. She holds a Master of Public Administration from Murray State University and a Master of Arts in communication from Austin Peay State University.

Chapter 6 reviews how the police are constrained in their efforts to keep order, provide services to citizens, and fight crime.

The Nature of the Police

• The police decide which laws to enforce, a process known as discretion.


• James Q. Wilson identified three styles of policing: watchman style, legalistic style, and service style.


• The watchman style distinguishes between two mandates of policing: order maintenance and law enforcement.


• The legalistic style exercises little discretion and enforces the law by writing more tickets, making more arrests, and encouraging victims to sign complaints.


• The service style shares characteristics with the other two styles but focuses primarily on service to the community and the citizens.

The Police Subculture

• Jerome Skolnick’s term policeman’s working personality explains how law enforcement officers participate in a police subculture that emphasizes different values from those of mainstream society.


• In 1971, the Knapp Commission issued a report on police corruption in New York City. The report made a distinction between meat-eaters and grass-eaters.


• Historically, illegal gambling, prostitution, prohibition, and other organized crime activities have been major sources of police corruption.

The Fourth Amendment

• The text of the Fourth Amendment states, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”


• Procedural law controlling the activities of law enforcement is derived from the Fourth Amendment, which specifies a wide range of protections from police activity.


• The court is concerned with several aspects of searches: the trespass doctrine, the privacy doctrine, the plain-view doctrine, the open-fields doctrine, public places, and abandoned property.


• Police must have a warrant to conduct a search, with four major exceptions: searches incident to arrest, consent searches, exigent circumstances searches or emergency searches, and vehicle searches.


• Special-needs searches also do not require warrants. These are inventory searches, border searches, airport searches, searches of prisoners, searches of probationers and parolees, searches of students, and employee drug testing.


• The police cannot present illegally seized evidence in court.


• Stop-and-frisk encompasses two distinct behaviors. Stops may be considered seizures and frisks as searches. For a frisk to be lawful, the stop must meet the conditions of a lawful seizure.


• An arrest involves being taken into custody, photographed, fingerprinted, interrogated, and booked.


• The court recommends four restrictions to arrest someone at their home: the crime should be a felony, the police must knock and announce, the arrest should be made in daylight, and the police must meet a stringent probable-cause requirement.


• Individual rights during interrogations stem from the Fifth Amendment self-incrimination clause, the Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel clause, and the Fourteenth Amendment due-process clause.

Which style of policing is most effective?

Which style of policing sees the police primarily as servants of the community?

What is watchman style?

How would you describe a good police officer?