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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 2:20 am
Time: 2:20 am
Results for police administration (u.s.)
1 results foundAuthor: Police Executive Research Forum Title: Violent Crime and the Economic Crisis: Police Chiefs Face a New Challenge: PART I Summary: If there is one thing that police chiefs can count on, it’s that they will constantly be faced with new challenges and problems. Less than a year ago, the issues at the top of many chiefs’ agendas had to do with recent spikes in violent crime, dealing with gang-related crime, and for some departments, the hot-button issue of immigration enforcement at the local level. But then came the 2008 economic crisis, and with it the reductions in many local jurisdictions’ tax bases. Suddenly, the most pressing issue for many chiefs was how they were going to manage 5-percent cuts in their current-year budgets, with 10- or 20-percent cuts next year, and who knows what after that. Should they cut some programs to the bone in order to avoid any reductions in sworn personnel? Or cut some sworn personnel in order to avoid devastating damage to training programs or needed technological upgrades? And what will the cuts mean to the progress that has been made in crime control and community policing? None of the choices look good, and it doesn’t help that chiefs had little or no warning of the budget calamity. But that is the world of local police executives — every day, tough decisions that cannot be avoided. This report reflects the upheavals that have occurred in recent months. It is part of PERF’s Critical Issues in Policing series, which for several years has aimed to track the issues of greatest concern to police departments. We talk to chiefs every day and hear what’s on their minds; we conduct surveys to gather information on the emerging issues; and we hold Summits where chiefs and mayors come together to talk about their problems and compare notes about the solutions they are developing. This year, we conducted our Critical Issues survey in the last week of July, and began by asking chiefs for their latest crime statistics, as we have done several times since we first noticed that violent crime levels in many cities spiked in 2005. We also asked about the factors that chiefs saw as contributing to the crime problems in their jurisdictions. But as we were writing the questions for this year’s survey, it already was becoming clear that the national economy was in serious trouble. Many of the bad headlines did not come until later — Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Washington Mutual, Wachovia, the $700-billion financial industry rescue bill, and the auto industry crisis, to name a few. But the Bear Stearns collapse and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts had already occurred, and we were already hearing anecdotal reports that police budgets were being hurt. So we added some questions to our survey about the economic crisis, and the results were startling. As detailed later in this report, nearly 40 percent of the responding agencies said they had already experienced a decrease in their operating budgets. Details: Washington, DC: PERF, 2009. 60p. Source: Internet Resource: Critical Issues in Policing Series: Accessed September 16, 2011 at: http://policeforum.org/library/critical-issues-in-policing-series/VCrime&EconomyI.pdf Year: 2009 Country: United States URL: http://policeforum.org/library/critical-issues-in-policing-series/VCrime&EconomyI.pdf Shelf Number: 122757 Keywords: Costs of Criminal JusticeEconomicsPolice Administration (U.S.)Police Agencies |