Comparison of car and foot patrol
Understanding the relations between car and foot utility is a crucial topic to law enforcers of any nation. The question of applicability of either foot versus car patrol depends on multiple of local elements. When state and city law enforcers create an optimal route to stop reduce or stop crime, they put into consideration of law enforcement department’s capability with the need of the whole community. Both car and foot patrol have unique weaknesses and strengths, depending on the level of crime and society’s need.
For instance, the foot patrol’s main advantage is that it strengthens the law enforcers’ relationship with the community (Ratcliffe, Taniguchi, Groff & Wood, 2011). Through foot patrol, the police can gather a lot of data concerning crime activities within an area. On the other hand, foot patrol’s main challenge is that it does not cover large distances.
Car patrol is applied when crime activities cover a large area, although it incurs a considerable fuel consumption cost. The main advantage of car petrol is that it can be able to respond quickly to crime. Food patrol requires officers to develop professional interrelationships with the citizens to prevent crime. It is inaccurate to conclude that one patrol method is superior to the other since both have their strengths and weaknesses.
The article provided in this study covers the relationship between car and foot patron on the research done in the United States known as Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experience (PFPE) in the year 2009. The effort from academia researchers, police, and Philadelphia Police Department worked together on PFPE. The research involved two hundred police officers who were to conduct foot patrol on Philadelphia’s sixty most violent corners. Since the 1980s and before the PFPE study, various criminology researchers and police believed that foot patrols led to a reduction of fear of crime enhance the public perception of the police officers. Still, foot patrol fails to stop actual crimes.
PFPE study outline that each hot spot of crime in Philadelphia was assigned two police officers and the pairs worked on two-shift during the 2009 summer. After months of foot control in the violence area, the violent crime rate reduced to twenty-three percent compared to other regions of the city without foot patrol during the period. Drugs associated with crime detection rate also increased by fifteen percent. Pedestrian stops increased by sixty-four percent while the vehicles stop increased by seven percent. Moreover, criminals arrest cases increased by thirteen percent.
PFPE research shows considerable numbers of criminals disappeared from the sixty hot spots and relocated into the nearby locations. During the 2009 summer in those two months of foot patrol, police prevented various crimes by fifty-three percent. PFPE research shows that foot patrol did not affect the conclusion of the exercise. The crime violence in the patrol beats resumed to their pre-experienced violence level upon
the PFPE exercise. The police patrol withdrew an indication PFPE effect had no long-lasting effect.
Car patrol and foot patrol must work together to ensure a deterrent, which is the most efficient mechanism to reduce crime in an area. Criminals should be aware that the cost of offense is very high as compared to its benefit. According to Beccaria, criminals should weigh between the benefit and the cost of committing an offense before executing a crime. Therefore, the need for foot and car patrol police persons to combine efforts to this effect.
PFPE data further reveals the relation between the foot and car patrol. The statistics foot patrol is more efficient in conducting drug offenses, disorders, and pedestrian stops while car patrol is appropriate in handling most reported crimes by the public. The study shows that foot patrol police did not operate in isolation with their car patrol officers counterparts. There were reports where car patrol lent a helping hand by taking criminals arrested by the foot patrol police to the police station and bringing paperwork.
The main drawback of food patrol from PFPE is that police officers are adversely affected by weather conditions such as rainy nights and cold, which prevent them from conducting their duties perfectly (Groff, Johnson, Ratcliffe & Wood, 2013). On the other hand, car patrol police officers usually resent officers from foot patrol due to their mobility limitations, minimizing the number of police officers assigned to respond to service calls.
The research indicates that the car patrol police can conduct six times and five times on the number of felony arrests and misdemeanor, respectively, than foot patrol officers. Although, foot patrol officers can perform more than twice the number investigation compared to car patrol and also able to carry research on public service activities than the car patrol (Wood, Sorg, Groff, Ratcliffe & Taylor, 2014). It is a clear indication food patrol officers are more likely to interact with the public than their foot patrol counterparts.
In conclusion, when police on patrol focus on the problems the citizens face due to crimes, the police officers can reduce crime activities while avoiding the negative perception of the public towards their patrol activities. Moreover, more research should be done that accurately measures what police officers engage while there are in the most vulnerable places of crime. Additionally, more studies should be conducted to ascertain why some reduction measures during patrol are more successful than others.
References
Groff, E. R., Johnson, L., Ratcliffe, J. H., & Wood, J. (2013). Exploring the relationship between foot and car patrol in violent crime areas. Policing: an international journal of police strategies & management.
Ratcliffe, J. H., Taniguchi, T., Groff, E. R., & Wood, J. D. (2011). The Philadelphia foot patrol experiment: A randomized controlled trial of police patrol effectiveness in violent crime hotspots. Criminology, 49(3), 795-831.
Wood, J., Sorg, E. T., Groff, E. R., Ratcliffe, J. H., & Taylor, C. J. (2014). Cops as treatment providers: Realities and ironies of police work in a foot patrol experiment. Policing and Society, 24(3), 362-379.