Decision Making in Policing

Operations and Management

Pierre Aepli, Olivier Ribaux, Everett Summerfield

• Publisher: EPFL PRESS
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9782940222544
• eBook ISBN:
  9782889143283
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Theory & Practice

Decision making in the police environment must take advantage of the latest advances in business and military management, but at the same time remain aware of the challenges associated with maintaining and restoring order on a day-to-day basis. The framework proposed here has been elaborated from the diverse experiences of the authors as managers, police officers and crime analysts, and from some formalized models and methods taken from the literature. It concerns questions such as how to process and interpret information, how to effectively use intelligence for making decisions, which rules to respect when deploying resources, and how to assess and monitor the impact of measures taken. The global context is generic, but its adaptation when dealing with specific recurrent types of problems will be proposed and illustrated through a series of examples. Although addressed mainly to managers and trainers in police environments, every police officer will discover a methodology that will help him or her to deal with the complex situations faced daily. In addition, those in academia who study the police or develop methods and technologies for law enforcement will use this book to frame current and future topics of research.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• About the Authors
• About DCAF
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 Fundamentals
• 2 The Operational Chain
• 3 Structures
• 4 Power and Leadership
• 5 Command in Operations
• 6 Training
• 7 Conclusions
• Bibliography
• List of Tables and Figures