Sunny Grove Police

INSTITUTING BUREAUCRATIC CONTROLS

When bureaucratic-type controls are overused, they can have a tendency to weight the organization down, slowing productivity, and hindering effectiveness. Depending on the type of organization, instituting bureaucratic controls outside of the basic company policies and standard operating procedures can be quite a detriment; however, in organizations such as a Police Department, such controls are necessary to maintain good order as well as safe and effective operations. The term "bureaucratic" itself implies regulation and it's the first thing we think of when we think of a governmental agency. A Police Department is no Pixar Animation Studios—creative thinking on a whim can have serious implications to the justice system in general and so formal rules and standards must be implemented and strictly adhered to.

It’s obvious that whatever the rules, regulations, and policies are for the SGPD, they aren’t being followed to the degree they need to be. This could be attributed to a number of reasons: quality control policies don’t exist; rules, regulations, and polices are not being enforced or are not known; rules, regulations, and policies exist but are inadequate; senior management has failed to properly convey the policies as well as the importance of having them; and information reporting systems are inadequate or ineffective. Without having more detailed information from the case study, I’d have to assume only that many if not all of these attributes are causal for the current state of affairs within the department.

Rules and regulations must have been pre-existing, especially for a governmental agency. Special department created policies may also have been pre-existing but perhaps they were either insufficient or lacked the depth and scope required. In any case, I have to assume the regulations were both known by management and employee, and that there isn’t question as what those regulations are. As a...