Evolving Strategy of Policing: Case Studies of Strategic Change

Orlando W. Wilson was the most important police leader of the 20th century. His thinking and writing singularly dominated policing from the 1940s through the 1970s. His mentor, August Vollmer, may achieve similar status in the future, since his practice, as against his later writings, was prescient of many of the late 20th century trends in policing. Vollmer’s patrol officers as “chiefs of their beats,” “college cops” (the majority of his officers were either college graduates or in college), and his “Friday crab club” meetings (meetings of off-duty officers to discuss their work with him and their peers) were the first stirrings of genuine professionalism in policing. What Vollmer practiced, however, was a road not taken by policing, at least until the 1980s with the development of community policing.

0. W. Wilson’s preeminence is based on his practical, creative, and original thinking and his ability to put that thinking into clear and precise writing. His texts on police administration and on planning became the standards of the field, used in generations of training, education, and civil service examinations. No other book on policing was as influential as Poke Administration in its various editions in shaping policing’s basic strategy.

During the era dominated by 0. W. Wilson and his colleaguesy roughly the 1920s through the 1970s, police departments shifted from being an integral part of urban political machines with a broad service mandate, to autonomous “professional” organizations narrowly focused on “serious” crime. Allied with the Progressives, reformers struggled to extricate policing at all levels from the influence of late 19th and early 20th century urban politics. In doing so, they developed a strategy of police that emphasized bureaucratic autonomy, efficiency, and internal accountability through command and control systems.

The business of police was serious crime as defined by the Uniform Crime Reports (developed by Wilson’s colleagues under the auspices of the International Association of Chief of Police). The organizational structure and administrative processes of police departments were patterned after the classical models developed by Frederick Taylor, the great organizational theorist of the early 20th Century.

The methods for dealing with serious crime included criminal investigation, random preventive patrol by automobile, and rapid response to calls for service. 0. W. Wilson emerged as the primary architect of both the administrative/organizational and tactical elements of this strategy. His administrative texts, conceived and written during the 1940s and 1950s, remained basic police lore until well into the 1980s.

READ ON
http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/198029.pdf

Practical, academic and biographical law enforcement

Police-Writers.com is a website dedicated to listing state and local police officers who have authored books. Three local police officers were added to the list: Thomas Lee, Terence Green and O.W. Wilson.

Lieutenant Thomas O. Lee, New York State Police (retired), is the author of Firearms and Weapons Laws: Gun Control in New York. According to the book description, the book is a “complete source for answers to questions about the laws governing firearms licensing and use of weapons in New York. Contains all the statutes governing weapons possession, licensing and use, with expert commentary explaining what they mean and how they really work.”

Terence Green has spent over 29 years in local law enforcement. As an Oakland Police Department (California) police officer he has worked patrol, traffic, juvenile and detectives. He retired from the Oakland Police Department at the age of 50 and began working at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Behavior Science Unit. He worked there for 11 years.

Terence Green is the author of Old School. Old School “tells the true story of a career police officer as he advances through the ranks of the Oakland Police Department from a patrolman working a one man car to the Commander of the Homicide Detail.” According to one reader/reviewer, “This is a definite recommend to those interested in reading stories about how police work used to be. The book reads as if the author is sitting back in an easy chair with a glass of scotch telling you about the good old days. Definitely enjoyable and a good read that transcends generations.”

O.W. Wilson obtained his degree in Criminology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1924. To pay for his tuition, he joined the Berkeley Police Department, serving under another famous police officer, scholar and writer, August Vollmer. O.W. Wilson went on to become influential police scholar as well as the chief of police of the Fullerton Police Department (California) and chief of police of the Wichita Police Department (Kansas); and, the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army as a public safety officer.

O.W. Wilson is the author of at least three books on policing and law enforcement: Police records: Their Installation and Use; Police Planning; and, Police Administration. O.W. Wilson’s book, Police Administration, is one of the most influential books in America on local law enforcement. Indeed, it was revised in 1996 and is used today in many colleges and universities. According to the revision description, “perhaps no other book in policing has captured more admiration and market share than O.W. Wilson's "Police Administration". Now Wilson's text has been revised by three top scholars in the field. This long awaited revision combines the nuts and bolts approach of the original with an up-to-date theoretical and policy perspective that makes it accessible to students and practitioners alike.”

Police-Writers.com now hosts 518 police officers (representing 216 police departments) and their 1099 books in six categories, there are also listings of United States federal law enforcement employees turned authors, international police officers who have written books and civilian police personnel who have written books.