NCJ Number
88956
Date Published
1983
Length
43 pages
Annotation
Police sergeants' work involves personnel brokering, institutional display and documentation, and the mobilization of effort. For their officers, sergeants provide a sense of permission to do certain things, a shield from discipline by higher-ups, and small favors.
Abstract
Personnel brokering involves assigning line officers to particular tasks. This includes activities such as beat assignment, action upon transfer requests, scheduling of days off and furlough days, ensuring that breaktimes and lunch respites are provided for all squad members, assigning and managing partnerships in a unit, and monitoring overtime work. The goals to be served by these activities vary by sergeant and often depend on where they are located in the organization. In the area of institutional display and documentation, sergeants are expected by superiors to offer tangible proof to the public that the police are internally accountable, closely supervised, and act with integrity. In the department observed, sergeants are required to monitor and hence appear on all 'sensitive calls.' Mobilization of effort involves sergeants in those symbolic tasks that have the potential for mobilizing or motivating the officers under their command. Generally, sergeants establish a relationship with their officers by conveying what is and what is not acceptable conduct (sense of permission), by a willingness and ability to back up their officers and shield them from the department's disciplinary system, and by dispensing small favors desired by the officers. As top police administrators become more preoccupied with political or environmental manipulation, more autonomy is granted to the sergeant's supervisory role, and simultaneously, the sergeants are receiving less supportive power for their role. Nineteen notes are provided.