The Most Glamourous Aspect of Police Work

The basic responsibility of the police is to fight crime, maintain order, and provide miscellaneous services to the public. These miscellaneous services include the operation of detention facilities, search and rescue operations, licening, supervising elections, staffing courts with administrative and security personnel, and even such completely extraneous things as chauffeuring officials. Patrol remains the basic manner in which police services are delivered to the public.

Criminal investigation is the most glamourous aspect of policing. Most police officers regard detective work as “real” police work. Detective work has a specific mission: apprehending the offender. The quality of work can also be measured in terms of the number of arrests. This contrasts sharply with patrol duty, which largely involves peace-keeping. Good detectives are believed to be able to solve most crimes, so the citizen-victim becomes angry when the police fail to solve the crime he or she suffered from.

The process of investigating a crime involves several different steps performed by at least three different units within the police department: patrol officers, detectives, criminalistics technicians. The two major stages of the investigation process are the preliminary investigation and the follow-up investigation.

The preliminary investigation is normally the responsibility of the patrol officer who is the first to arrive at the scene of the crime. The five major responsibilities include:

1. arresting any suspect or suspects;

2. providing aid to any victims;

3. securing the crime scene to prevent loss of evidence,

4. collecting all relevant physical evidence, and

5. preparing a preliminary report.

Once the responding officer has completed the preliminary investigation, the case is assigned to the detective bureau for the follow-up investigation. In all but the smallest departments, the detective unit is separate from the patrol unit. The smallest departments have no separate detective unit. Medium – sized departments have a separate detective unit but detectives handle all types of crime here. Larger departments specialize according to a type of crime (e. g. crimes against person, crimes against property).

Technical specialists in investigation are normally located in a separate administrative unit. They are available upon request to assist detectives in the follow-up investigation. Only the larger police departments are able to maintain their own criminalistics specialists.

The follow-up investigation includes the following steps:

1. interrogation of suspect or suspects, if arrested at the scene of the crime;

2. interview of witnesses;

3. search of the crime scene for physical evidence;

4. modus operandi review to determine, if the crime is similar to others under investigation or resembles crimes committed by known suspects;

5. development of additional information from informants, contacts, official records, etc.;

6. preparation of reports.

To obtain information about suspected criminal activity, the police make use of informants. Persons who are either criminals themselves or who associate with criminals are extremely valuable sources of information. Police officers seek to develop a list of informants.

Notes:

1. detention facilities – места содержания под стражей

2. rescue operations – спасательные работы

3. supervising – наблюдение

4. staff, v – укомплектовывать штаты

5. extraneous, adj. – чуждый, посторонний

6. chauffeur, v – возить

Ex. 27. Read the text again and tell us what was new for you in it.

Find the sentences:

- which are the most informative ones.

- expressing additional information.