Patrol Operations, Deployment, and Crime Reduction Strategies
This section covers patrol operations, deployment, and crime-reduction strategy. The exam tests whether you can move resources to risk, choose a strategy with evidence, and measure results rather than activity.
Core rules and concepts
- Deployment should follow risk: calls for service, violent crime, traffic crashes, and repeat locations. Hot-spot policing concentrates patrol where crime clusters.
- Directed patrol is a tactic, not a strategy. The Koper curve research suggests short, unpredictable visits of about 15 minutes to hot spots can produce deterrence without long saturation.
- Problem-oriented policing uses SARA: scanning, analysis, response, assessment. The response should address the conditions that generate calls.
- Intelligence-led policing links analysis to priorities and tasking.
- Measure displacement, diffusion of benefits, and clearance, not only response time.
Worked example
A district has 10 residential burglaries in three weeks within four blocks, mostly 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A captain assigns random saturation for entire shifts. Better reasoning: the pattern is place- and time-specific. Assign short, varied directed-patrol visits during the window, add a burglary-prevention canvass, and track burglary attempts, calls, and displacement weekly. Saturation may raise visibility but consumes overtime and is hard to sustain.
Traps that cost marks
Equating faster response with crime reduction; deploying only by officer preference; running a strategy with no baseline or assessment; and ignoring displacement or officer burnout.