• Police rely on numerous operational strategies to enforce the law.Police image by Zeno from Fotolia.com
  
  Your police department employs a multitude of operational strategies in order to deal with a vast array of problems and situations in the line of duty. In some cases, policemen try to stop crimes before they happen. In other cases, they use fail-safe procedures to deal with emergencies. They also employ specialized strategies and techniques for more complex investigations over longer periods of time.
  
  

Preventative Patrol

• Preventative patrol is an attempt to stop crimes before they happen. This variety of work can be implemented through several operational strategies. The beat cop is an integral part of preventative patrol. Whether on foot, bike, horse or in a patrol car, he keeps an eye out for trouble. Variations of this strategy include aggressive patrol, in which police use roadblocks and crackdowns to arrest suspected criminals. Directed patrol involved police concentrating their patrol time in high-crime areas and neighborhoods.
  
  

Routine Incident Response

• Patrolmen often respond to routine incidents, such as a minor traffic accidents or noise complaints. Generally, the strategy in this area is to minimize response time and move on to more important work. While the success in a department is often measured by its ability to crack major cases, sociologists have argued routine incident response has received short shrift. In their famous essay, "Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety," James Q. Wilson and George Kelling claim that departments focus too much on serious crimes and view important smaller incidents as outside the scope of their duties. As a result, the atmosphere of disorder (e.g. broken windows) creates an environment in which more serious crimes will happen.
  
  

Emergency Response

• Time is of the essence in an emergency, such as a hostage rescue, act of terror or capture of a fugitive. Larger police departments employ Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to deal with major emergencies. Despite their reputation for fearlessness, brawn over brain does not necessarily lead to the best outcome in an emergency situation. Along with exotic skills such as sniper-training and rappelling, officers must become experts in areas such as criminal psychology to handle a sensitive situation like a hostage negotiation.
  
  

Criminal Investigation

• For more complex incidents, such as unsolved homicide, a police detective oversees a criminal investigation of the incident. In this area, operational strategies rely heavily on forensics, or the application of the natural sciences to criminal matters. At the outset, a crime scene investigation (CSI) team gathers physical evidence at the location of the incident. Using that information, the detective tries to reconstruct what occurred through forensic techniques such as DNA analysis, ballistics and serology. With technological advances, forensics has allowed police departments to solve a greater percentage of crimes than ever before.
  
  

Community Policing

• Community policing relies on a fairly obvious notion. If the police patrol a neighborhood where its inhabitants do not like or trust them, preventing and solving crimes will be more difficult. Abbreviated as PCR programs, "police-community relations" was a strategic approach developed in the 1960s to get people to respect the police. Common examples of PCR include "ride-alongs," where private citizens could see a typical day in the life of a cop; "open-house" events at police stations; neighborhood watch committees; and even midnight basketball games with Police Athletic Leagues.