When was the last time your department changed its beats around (geographically)? Are your beats generally arranged to reduce response times to the worst-case scenario within each zone? Or are they arranged to minimize response times to the most common call locations?
Are you aware of any department that uses different beats for different shifts (so as to better cover the population as they shift around the city from sleeping at home to going to work to going out for the evening)?
I've been with my current department a touch over 15 years. There have been 3 major overhauls of beats in that time, and a very occasional minor adjustment.Originally Posted by 0ddl0t
Our system is individual beats make up a zone and zones make up districts. Beats and zones repeat, so every district has a 10's and and a 20's, etc. Each zone is usually either 3 or 4 beats, but some are 2. So my first beat was 21 on North. My 'beat partners' were the 22 and 23 cars.
When we merged with the sheriff's dept and went countywide, the beats were set up based on total 911 calls and major geological features. You don't want a beat split by a river or interstate, for example. Some minor adjustments were made as district lines shifted a bit, but those stayed put until we played the shell game of zone policing. Individual beats were eliminated and the zones they had made up stayed roughly the same. There were various explanations for this, but the simple truth was the media got ahold of the fact we had empty beats on many shifts, ran a story that they had 'no police coverage' in those beats, and zones came out shortly afterward. 3 officers and 1 empty beat in a zone became 3 officers in a zone, ta-dah, no more empty beats. Street officers largely hated it. I went inside just as that happened and never had to deal with zone policing.
They went back to beats and the beats were redrawn based on total 911 calls and total violent crimes, but no consideration for major geographical features. It 10% of a beat needed to be on the other side of an interstate with no good way to get over there without a 10 minute drive around, oh well. Two sides of a river with no bridge nearby? Figure it out. Districts are on different radio channels and a beat like that on the edge was difficult to get back up to in a timely fashion as well, since the officers wouldn't be able to directly communicate without one district taking the time to switch channels or, if it was a big enough emergency, for Control to patch the channels. That locks them together, though, and is only done when routine traffic isn't allowed due to the emergency.
Officers really didn't care for that, and it was legitimately pressed as a safety concern for both officers and citizens due to the delays in responding to part of the beat. So they redrew them again with more care about how easy it was to traverse the entire beat. That was maybe 2 years ago or so. They have not altered them again.
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
We don't even assign officers to the five districts we have. When you catch a job, you go do it. If someone is closer, and a team player, they may take it for you. Minimum staffing is 4 officers, unless someone is out with covid. Then we can roll with three.
My last agency, on my first shift we had 6 districts and four officers. We were assigned districts by the senior sergeants. About 2 years before I left we bid for our shifts and districts. That was much better. There were usually 1-2 officers per district, until the shift overlap where you could have 4-5 officers per district.
pat
Forty years ago, my former department divided the city into three zones based on geography. There wasn't much reasoning behind it. The east zone was bordered a major multi-lane surface street. The middle zone was bordered on the west by an interstate highway. It wasn't all that difficult to navigate from one zone to the next. Apparently, one had to take meal breaks in one's zone which left the officer assigned to the western zone few alternatives to eat as the zone was almost all residential. (That latter may have been cop-whining versus than actual policy though I wouldn't put that thinking past some of the nimrod supervisors there when I became an officer.)
There was slightly more reason to split beats when the Metro system was being built adjacent to the multi-lane surface street. That thinking was ended after a reopened bridge allowed even more ability to cross the train tracks,
When staffed, the city has long had four beats divided in quadrants by two major state roadways. I'd guess the beats are sort of equally busy, though not with the same calls at the same time of the day.
Off hand, I don't recall any changes in county beat structure that weren't associated with changes in district station borders. If they have changed beat alignments, it hasn't been often.
Maybe once every ten-ish years. Of the few that happened during my time, it was moving a boundary line a half mile to a mile more oft than not. And that's in a 1700 sq mi county.
We've had the same beat structure for probably 60 years or so now with some slight boundary shifts occasionally.
How we deploy cops has changed over time, but has pretty much been the same since about 2000.
We had "community policing sub-beats" (not a terrible idea) from the mid-1990's until 2009 when they got nixed in the economic crisis.
Truth be told, my former department did have two geographic teams that covered specific areas. One was the Lincoln Park Task Force. This was a joint city/county endeavor that worked primarily evenings in an African-American community historically plagued by drug trafficking and disorderly conduct type crimes. We received numerous complaints from the largely law-abided community members. (Noi surprise to LEO's reading this.) The problems stemmed from a townhouse housing project and a block of low-rise apartments. While it would be nice to say that we ended the problems of Lincoln Park, I suspect the housing project being demolished coupled with a draconian apartment manager (who insisted to me that a banned subject's dog was also guilty of trespassing) had more to do with it that law enforcement did. I'm not sure when that task force actually shut down due to lack of problems and lack of interest,
The other task force was a city-only Town Center Unit that patrolled our "downtown".The City had high hopes, but great fears, for the reconstituted town center. I suspect high rents and prices for commercial and residential properties ended that. I don't believe that unit exists anymore, The hoped-for multi-cultural town center is becoming more a part of the city's Asian and Latin community. No problem with that though I am glad the Irish pub remains open and thriving.
My former agency has had the same beat structure for close to 70 years. City is just under 8 square miles and divided into 4 beats that are roughly equal in size.
The first indication a bad guy should have that I'm dangerous is when his
disembodied soul is looking down at his own corpse wondering what happened.
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