Chief Mangan's Strategic Planning In Spokane, Washington

Over the past few decades, society has changed. As a result, approaches to policing have had to adapt to this modern era (Cordner, 2023). Community policing is a more recent approach implemented in police departments across the country. The idea of community policing is that police officers and the public work together to prevent crime and maintain order. With the community policing approach, police and the community have an interactive relationship and sense of trust in each other. The belief is that if the community and police have a strong relationship, they will be more likely to cooperate with police, work together to solve problems within the community and help reduce crime (Prono, 2023). Community policing has been the most effective

Instead of establishing a step-by-step plan of action on how the department would move toward a community policing approach, Mangan wanted to open the floor to all individuals within the department and allow them to bring their ideas and plans forward (Cordner, 2023). Mangan prioritized the officers of his department by providing new equipment and better working conditions. He attended 400 community meetings in his first year. By year two, Mangan was prepared to change the department. He hosted a series of open discussions that included individuals of all ranks and titles. The purpose of these discussions was to figure out where the department was, where they were trying to go, and how they were going to get there (Cordner, 2023). They discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the department, and how to improve it. This group was soon named to the strategic planning committee. This committee established the department's set of values, as well as a patrol manual for officers. While this approach worked for some, many began to get confused about their roles and responsibilities (Cordner, 2023). I believe that Chief Mangan was successful in some ways, and could have done things differently in some ways. For example, prioritizing the officers was a great first step in the right direction. It is hard to expect so much from an officer when they are understaffed, and not given their basic needs on the job. I do think Mangan had great intentions. However, I believe his approach would have been more successful if it had been more structured. I do not think the open discussion was wrong. I believe allowing all individuals in the department to be of all ranks provides many different perspectives that could drive change. If things were structured, higher ranking individuals would be aware of what is going on, individuals