Managing Criminal Justice Organizations

Creating Policy

Read the following scenario:

You are a patrol lieutenant for the Dome City Police Department, a medium-sized agency of 40 sworn officers. As the patrol lieutenant, you act as one of the shift supervisors and watch commanders, supervising about 10 officers. All patrol shifts rotate every 4 months.

Recently, a new police chief was hired from outside the department after a nationwide search. The new police chief wrote a grant proposal to receive funding for new state-of-the-art soft body armor vests for all officers. The department’s previous attempts to purchase and implement wearing of soft body armor by officers had been unsuccessful.

The new police chief has received the grant funding and has selected you to research and draft a policy for mandatory wear of soft body armor by officers in the department, because of your firearms instructor background.

However there will, or may, be obstacles to implementing this policy. The department's unionized line officers is a major obstacle, along with possible complaints of medical issues like rashes that prevent the wearing of the vests, heat-related factors, freedom of movement, freedom of choice, and everything in between.

For this Assignment, write a 700–1,050-word analysis of the actions you would take to create and implement the soft body armor mandatory wear policy outlined in the scenario. Include the following in your analysis:

• Discuss the organizational theories that apply to law enforcement and criminal justice agencies.
• Address arguments that can be raised against the policy to illustrate typical organizational behavior.
• Suggest solutions to the arguments against the mandatory wear policy that take into account and describe law enforcement culture and this agency's unionized law enforcement culture.
• Include a title and reference page.
• Cite a minimum of two sources within the body of your paper using in-text citations where appropriate.

NOTE: This Assignment is to write a paper about organizational theory, organizational behavior, and organizational culture, specifically within a law enforcement agency, and within the context of implementing a mandatory-wear policy for body armor.

This Assignment will require outside research. Use at least two credible sources beyond the text material and discuss how you evaluated the credibility of the resources used.