This paper will focus on a description of the initiatives and responsibilities of a Canadian Regional Police Service, and in particular one of its officer’s Luke Hogan and his role in the department. Officer Hogan has been working as a police officer for over twenty years, and has gained experience in various areas of policing. He deals with many of the same people in his everyday work, both adult and youth, both offender and citizen. Hogan had some very strong opinions about the criminal justice system in Canada which will be outlined in this paper. Finally this paper will present a subjective analysis of the issues and concerns raised during the interview. The role of Hogan's Regional Police Service is not unlike other police departments where they exercise crime control, order maintenance, and provide a wide range of non emergency services. (Griffiths and Verdun-Jones, 1994, p. 70.) Police departments predominately use the crime control strategy of victimization deterrence, however this is not always effective as a community would have to be crippled by the fear of crime to see results. Another problem is that it solely relies on the police for crime control, and the citizens will not likely be involved but rather remain with a feeling of helplessness. Regional Police have attempted a resurgence of the community policing model in recent years, to deal with various citizen concerns such as a loss of community programs and a lack of faith in mobile patrols. With the community policing approach both the police and the general public work together using their available resources to both identify and provide solutions to the problems in the community. (Griffiths and Verdun-Jones, 1994, p. 181.) A strategy involved in the community policing approach is problem oriented policing. As Hogan was discussing his role and responsibilities within the service, he spoke of the recent implementation of this approach within his district in order to evaluate its effectiveness and subsequent response by the community. The problem oriented policing approach consists of four stages. The first involves scanning, or when the police must determine whether a reported problem actually exists. The second stage involves the analysis of gathered information from the police and community, to try and understand the root causes of the problem. Next is the implementation of the solution by the police, using the help of various community members. Finally there is the assessment of the response to determine the adequacy of the solution. (Griffiths and Verdun-Jones, 1994, p. 183.) During the interview, various applications of this approach were discussed by Hogan, which are included throughout this paper. Since 1986, Officer Luke Hogan has been exercising a form of community policing doing foot patrols. This gives him a distinct advantage over his fellow officers in mobile patrol cars because he is able to become more familiar with the area, as well as with those who reside and work there. Hogan interacts with the workers, citizens and vagrants he passes on his beat, which helps him form a stronger community-police relationship. This results in people becoming increasingly willing to work together with the police in fighting crime. Hogan’s many duties in addition to foot patrol include answering calls from his station, and acting as an investigator for some local crimes. Hogan also gathers reports and analyzes them in an attempt to identify possible trends or similarities between these reports. An example Hogan provided to illustrate the advantage of doing an analysis of the reports was the discovery of a trend in early December, 1997 of high technology crimes in the downtown core. The trend of individuals posing as computer technicians who would enter businesses and secretly steal microchips was noticed.
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