The business of policing
When most people think of policing they envision crime fighting strategies, car chases, use-of-force or police misconduct. And these are things that police leaders grapple with every day. But the less public part of policing is the “business of policing.” Budgets, personnel issues, purchasing, staffing, equipment and facility management are all important parts of keeping police organizations running. In the military, battles are won or lost in large part because of logistics. Fighting forces depend on their soldiers to win battles but if there’s no fuel for their tanks or planes, no bullets for their guns and no food for the fighters, the war will be lost. In many ways, that describes the business of running a policing agency.
At some point in his or her career, every police, chief and sheriff, probably comes to the conclusion that they are no longer cops, but are actually leaders running a unique and complicated business. They spend a great deal of their time grappling with the day-to-day challenges of “keeping the place running.”
In this section, we examine the future of the business of policing. Strong parallels will be drawn between future-leaning private sector business practices and how those are applicable to policing.
As we maintain throughout this website, change will define the future of policing. Already, significant shifts are under way due to technological innovations, social shifts and financial constraints. Police chiefs and sheriffs will need to adapt their leadership accordingly to incorporate skills typically associated with technologists, financial planners and social scientists while remaining ethically-centered when handling emerging technologies such as AI-driven analytics, facial recognition or drones.
Future financial challenges will push these leaders toward business concepts like public-private partnerships, providing "policing as a service,” outsourcing, remote work and leaning more heavily on research and AI-driven technology. Traditional business metrics such as efficiency, effectiveness, Return on Investment (ROI) and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) will be increasingly applied to policing. Human Resource management – recruitment, training, retention and succession planning – will be managed in an equally businesslike fashion.
Police leaders will be tasked with all of these things at the same time they will need to increasingly manage the impacts of climate change, transnational and cyber crime and the increasing awareness around social justice issues.
Overall, policing will continue to evolve into a complex enterprise requiring leaders with multifaceted expertise to be effective. The police chiefs and sheriffs of tomorrow must possess both traditional policing abilities as well as modern managerial acumen to meet the many demands in an evolving landscape of policing. They will need a range of skills that span technology, social, financial challenges while adhering to public safety goals and meeting technological, social, and financial challenges.