Interview

Interview

The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office was founded in 1850, which makes it one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the State of California. The Sheriff’s Office serves the communities of Cupertino, Los Altos Hills, Saratoga and the unincorporated areas of the county. Currently, the Sheriff's Office has 635 full-time, sworn, badge staff, employs 65 Reserve Deputy Sheriffs and 223 non-sworn, civilian staff.

Deputy Randolph Murphy has been a Training Officer for the past 8 years, and has worked as a sworn officer for the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office for more than 18 years. His duties include training new deputies in everything from discretion with firearms and use of force to filling out the paperwork that’s involved with their job. After they complete his training course, Murphy writes an assessment of how the officer performed and recommends whether or not they should continue with the Sheriff’s Office.

Murphy has witnessed how his organization has changed to accommodate the needs of a more racially and ethnically diverse population, as well as the ever-evolving technology that all organizations are struggling to keep up with. He’s been confronted with ethical issues that are in many ways unique to law enforcement, but also share common ground with the ethical dilemmas that all public administrators face. For these reasons I interviewed him on the subjects of Managing Public Organizations, Organizational Behavior and Development and Ethics.

Managing Public Organizations

The classical structure perspective, as described in Cooper, was the standard for both private and public organizations in the late 1800’s through the 1950s, and is still very prevalent in most law enforcement agencies (p. 218). It’s strict standards of job classification, rigid hierarchy, and the belief that people can function within an organization, as interchangeable parts of a machine, made it seem the most effective and efficient way of structuring...