Knoxville Police Department Case Study

Because of the changing society and the rise in multiculturalism, a criminal justice administrator faces many challenges in today’s world. However, one of the biggest challenges, especially that of a police administrator, is balancing their two major responsibilities of achieving the public mission and satisfying the needs of their employees (Cronkhite, 2015). We are going through this at the Knoxville Police Department, where I am currently a lieutenant and have been employed for 18 years. There has been a recent push, especially after Ferguson, to improve the relationship with the community, but this cannot be done without attending to the needs of you your employees, which appears to be gradually occurring at my department. When a citizen complaint comes in, instead of a supervisor researching to see if a problem exists, officers are being sent out several hours at a time out of service to monitor the

This is fine with one or two, but when almost half the squad is busy with special assignment such as these, the rest of the officers become frustrated with the call load and are unable to efficiently monitor their beats. They are especially frustrated when the crime statistics come out and are told they need to work a little harder to keep crime down. It is easy to see this as a lieutenant, my current position, as a lieutenant is middle-management and can effectively observe from above and in the trenches. However, as observed from many years of experience, the command staff can find themselves behind a desk for several years and forget what is like for the other officers and employees. An easy way to achieve this balance is to attempt to spend equal time on each responsibility, such as attending squad roll calls and periodically riding with patrol officers or investigators. It lets the employees know you hears the needs and care about their welfare as much as you do the