Police Officers - why does your department allow one-man cars to go out there?

Question

I watch police videos whenever I can.
It always appears that an officer gets shot or injured when they are working solo.
Why does your department allow one-man units to go out on the streets.
Especially the Troopers where it takes forever to get a back-up.
Is 'money' the only reason?

Yes..."Hexburger".
I know one-man means they work 'solo'. That is the whole question. Why...is this allowed??

Answer 1

So far, the answers have all been about money, and are at least partly correct. The departments are always fighting for their budgets and running short of money.

But at least part of the reason is also efficiency and how police work really is. In reality, most of the work a cop does is taking reports. It only takes one cop on the scene where a crime occurred to handle the report. To send a two man car is a waste of the taxpayers money on the salary of the second officer. For the significantly smaller percentage of calls that do require two officers, the departments will usually just send two cars. This way, the department gets the best use of its manpower for each dollar spent.

The bad part to this is that it means sometimes a cop is handling a call that was supposed to only need one person when something happens and it needs two. Consider when a town is really busy and all of the officers are tied up on calls. The one man car lets the police handle many more calls at once, but it places officers in some extra danger. If a solo cop ends up at a call where a second officer should have been sent, either he handles it after all, or he gets hurt trying.

We all know this and we accept it as part of the job. As you get older, you learn to recognize the danger signals and are much more willing to call for another officer or ten, and you learn how to wait things out until someone else can come help. It doesn't always work, but most of the time it does.

Answer 2

In my DH's small city department there are only six full time officers and one part time - that includes the chief, cid, & the school resource officer. So basically they have three full time and one part-time officer to cover all the night and grave yard shifts. CID & the chief do what patrols get done during the day.

Why does the department allow it? The almighty Dollar. They have to fight for every penny they get. The city council is much more interested in pouring money into the water department and the parks department than how safe their officers and citizens are.

Police officers in the rural south are at much greater risk than a NYC cop. Why? Because they operate without back up or their back up can be an hour or more away.

Answer 3

Working a "solo" unit is not recommended by many police departments, but are a reality due to man power shortages, lack of funding, lack of citizen support, etc... In many cases of officer involved deaths or injuries an officer working solo became distracted or complacent and allowed their situational awareness to wain and problems to develop before he/she could get back up or respond properly to a bad situation. Or responding back up units were delayed due to more "important" emergency calls or distance from the scene and an officer is forced to deal with a situation to the best of his/her abilities and training and gets "overwhelmed". In a perfect world all Police units would be double maned for the safety of both the public and police officers, but as long as there are more criminal attempts than police officers to combat the criminals there will be single man units.

Answer 4

Money, plain and simple, I used to work in a little place called Bell City Mo, my closest back up was about 40 miles away, I was the only city police officer in town ( small town)

Some years ago I worked in Atlanta GA, I was off duty and caught a person who had just broke into a car and stolen a purse. Well he hit me in the face a couple of times till I got his full attention and got him down on the blacktop of a parking area. Well my wife called for a police unit ( I didnot have any cuffs with me at the time) well after 45 minutes I finally discussed his actions with him and explained the error of his ways and turned him loose. ( they had a shooting in the area and did not have an officer to send to help me)

Our local sheriff office recently said that any officer who could not handle any situtation by hisself needed to be fired.

But in basic, most departments barely keep enough cars on the road the way it is, So tax payers don't want to pay enough taxes to allow police officers to have two man cars.
And in most cases they don't need two man cars, but do need enough cars to be close enough in an area to provide back up.

With one department in Atlatna I worked with the average time to get back up was about 3 min. But having caught some wanted felons before, those can be the longest 3 minutes you ever lived though

Answer 5

Yes. The answer to all your questions, for your whole life, is "money".

In addition, the police videos that are passed around most are ones where dramatic things happen. Thousands of police officers operate solo every day without having any injuries, shootings or any problems at all.

Answer 6

I just retired. Our Department uses one man patrols almost exclusively. We have large area's to patrol. If we used two man cars we'd only cover half of the area, or worse take twice as long to get to a call. It was a rural department and when I say big area, I mean big. Backup was sometimes hours away. Glad to say....I made it out alive.

Answer 7

If that bothers you how about this, In most cities there is 1-2 officers per 1000 people

Answer 8

A cop working solo does not work anymore.

Answer 9

Because here, 2 man units mean there is rookie on board.

Answer 10

It is mostly due to the lack of personnel in a large area.