Is Your Agency an Integrated Strategic Management System?

Many law enforcement agencies from throughout the United States have long realized some degree of divergence and inefficiency between an agency’s many administrative and operational functions. The results of this incongruence in philosophies and priorities and lack of cooperation between organizational entities—from individuals, to teams, to entire divisions—can result in a wide variety of negative influences on the agency. This large-scale, agency-wide dysfunctionality can result in internal competition; political maneuvering; a lack of interdepartmental cooperation; a lack of both short-term and long-range planning; a failure to execute plans and orders; the enactment of inept policies and procedures; and many other effects, which detract from the agency’s daily administrative functions and law enforcement operations.1 So as law enforcement realizes even greater internal and external competition for limited resources, particularly during these challenging economic times, all stakeholders and citizens alike will most certainly continue to expect the same levels and quality of service to which they have become accustomed. No one will accept limited financial resources or the further growth of the typical police bureaucracy as an excuse for less than premier law enforcement services, particularly in those jurisdictions where crime and traffic conditions continue to worsen.