The International Association of Chiefs of Police performs reviews of and provides guidance to police departments. Having been invited to review the Glynn County Police Department, the IACP team issued a 154 page report, which hardly anyone is likely to read in its entirety. So, I will provide excerpts on topics of community interest.
Let us start with traffic enforcement, since traffic is a constant irritant. On page 17 we are told:
“An activity, and the one that consumes the most time, is reported to be crash investigations. Traffic Unit officers are the primary responders and investigators for crashes, and they work seventeen to eighteen crashes per week, per officer. Patrol officers report that as many as half of all crashes may involve some type of impairment, but data have not been provided to support this anecdotal observation. GCPD patrol officers are not certified to perform Standardized Field Sobriety Tests (SFST) and must request traffic DUI officers (or state patrol) to respond to cases of suspected impairment to perform SFSTs. This is inefficient as it lengthens the call of the field investigation, both officers will have to write supplements, both officers will have to appear and testify in court on a single case, and it takes traffic DUI officers away from proactively seeking DUI offenses and responding to complaint driven and data driven needs for traffic enforcement.”
However, on page 115 we are informed that in one year there were 159 officer involved crashes. Since there are only 122 personnel in the GCPD, that means more than one crash per employee in a single year. Apparently, there is no requirement that police personnel actually know how to drive.
