The importance to detail in law enforcement is necessary. We need to pay close attention to everything that is going on around us. We need to listen to everything said around us. If we do not pay attention to detail it can cost us our jobs and our lives. Attention to detail in law enforcement is important because we must ensure the right person is arrested and prosecuted for the offenses they have committed. We owe this to the community to ensure their safety and well-being. Details of our environment are important to know what is going on around us at all times.
We should be able to recognize if someone is on the verge of committing a crime or is in the process of committing a crime. One mistake can be our last mistake. For example, if we receive a call from dispatch and the dispatcher is saying the suspect is armed and we hear the suspect is unarmed this can be a fatal mistake.
With this new position, I can understand how details are even more important. Details are important in every step of our job. Listening to details when conducting interviews is important in order not to violate any rights entitled to the accused.
Details are important to apply the right statue to the offense; we would not want to charge a person with manslaughter when the offense committed was murder. Details are important to us when we conduct searches and seizures; we need to ensure our warrants are written to search all areas than need to be searched and all items written that need to be seized. No matter how we may be feeling on any given day, we must always be at the top of our game. Many people rely on us to do our job to the best of our abilities.
Our department, our fellow investigators, the victims and their families, our superiors, the courts, and our own families all depend on us to do the best job we can do so that justice can be served and we can return home to our families safely. Paying close attention to details plays an important role in our communities as well. We are role models and heroes for the youth in our communities. Whether we know it or not we set examples every day we leave our homes. People are constantly watching us and judging us as law enforcement officers. Law enforcement officers can be and are held to a higher standard than the rest of the community.
The standard is higher because we know the law and enforce the law. The importance to detail in this aspect is to make sure we do not violate the law in any way as we lead our lives. I can relate to the importance of details in law enforcement with my previous position as a Corrections Officer and Sergeant. In both positions, if the details were incorrect, situations could become uncontrollable. For example, if the count on a housing unit was eighty inmates but when I took the count there were only seventy-five inmates, I had to be accountable for those inmates not on the housing unit.
If I did not have the location of the so-called missing inmates that would cause a Code-99, which means there, may be an escape in progress. As a supervisor, when I arrived at an inmate work detail I would inspect the shadow board and take note of the tools that were missing. I would cross-reference the detail’s logbook to make sure the Officer properly filled in the proper information. The Officer’s log must indicate when the tool was issued, to which inmate and were the inmate’s workstation was located.
If these things were not logged then a possible weapon was now available to the inmate population and the Officer, as well as myself, would be facing disciplinary action. As a supervisor, I also needed to pay close attention to what my superiors said to me or expected of me. These details were especially important because if I needed to relay any directives to my Officers these directives would have to be exact. I could not just assume. In my positions, both as an Officer and Sergeant, assuming can leave me in one of three places. The first place is the unemployment line, the second place is the hospital, or the third place is the morgue.
No detail is too simple or minor to over look. Details can be double-checking the equipment issued to us before we accept it and use it. Details can be as simple as checking the windshield washer fluid in the vehicle to as important as chambering a round in your weapon before holstering it. I mention these specific details because they were always ignored by fellow Corrections Officers, both when I was their partner and their supervisor, and I would always advise them to chamber the round and make sure there is washer fluid in the van.
Chambering the round because it is not as the movies were you chamber right before a gunfight. In addition, the washer fluid because once we are in service to another prison with inmates we cannot stop until we are out of service at the final destination and the inmate is in their custody. In the Basic Investigator Academy, the importance to detail teaches us the skills we will need once we graduate and start our careers as Investigator in our respective departments. Details are important everyday in the academy.
When we arrive on base and greet the security guard, making our bunks on Monday morning, wearing the proper physical training gear for both physical training and defensive tactics, and checking each other to make sure we are uniformed are just a few examples of how we must pay attention to detail as law enforcement officers. By showing, we can follow the rules, regulations, directions of our instructors and comprehending the academic material given to us, we can show we understand the importance to detail in law enforcement.
