Captain Edith

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* Case Study: Captain Edith Strong

* Ron Maniord

* Criminal Justice Administration 474

Managing Criminal Justice Personnel

July 26, 2015

* Lyle Martin

* Case Study: Captain Edith Strong

In this case study, we have a commander of a field operations division with the Rogerville Police Department that has almost two decades in law enforcement She has been assigned to patrol a majority of her career. Captain Strong has a morale issue, officers going out on disability claims, officers leaving the department and officer that are not satisfied with their job. Captain Strong has to change the direction the patrol division is heading.

The first thing Captain Strong has to do is develop trust among the officers. They have been disciplined for doing anything outside of their normal "definitive" job descriptions. This is not going to be an easy task. As John Jay says in an article in the Law Enforcement News, "Why is trust important? Because all good sustained relationships require trust. Think about this: Would you voluntarily follow anyone you did not trust? (2001)" That is very true.

Trust in an organization is paramount. An officer must trust those in charge to do the right thing, even if it has to do with discipline. If an officer makes a mistake for doing their job, outside of their normal "job description" and gets "written-up" for it, morale will drop. So an officer that arrests a suspect for a narcotics violation and develops information that leads to a search warrant and then makes a large drug arrest would be subject to discipline. That's just crazy. The officer getting written-up would never initiate any self-generated activity again. His morale would drop, and his interest in law enforcement would suffer.

Having experience in patrol, Captain Strong has to get the division motivated....