City Emergency Management Plan

Paper Info
Page count 5
Word count 1399
Read time 5 min
Subject Art
Type Research Paper
Language 🇺🇸 US

Police Department as the Lead Organization for Disaster Management

The process of planning a city emergency management involves a complex system of interdisciplinary steps and decisions that incorporate resource estimation, prior incidence analysis, role, and responsibility distribution, as well as coordination guidelines. An emergency in a city is a dangerous occurrence that might impede citizens’ lives and safety. Given the variety of possible hazards, including natural disasters, terroristic attacks, fires, and other emergencies, the preparedness to respond to the disaster adequately and in a timely manner is a priority. Therefore, cities are actively involved in training and preparing “in order to develop … ability to handle disasters and crises” (Jackovics, 2019, p. 177). Currently, the police departments are the leading organizations involved in the primary response to disasters in the United States. Given the scope of practice of the police department as a primary law enforcement agency that does not directly address effective emergency response, police departments should not be the leading organizations in disaster management.

To validate this opinion, one should state that adequate emergency management involves evidence- and resource-based planning, implementation of preventative and responding measures, as well as providing necessary services after the emergency. These steps require meticulous work and specific competence, which might not be fully provided by the police due to their crime response conduct being their primary responsibility. Indeed, with the majority of the police workforce involved in crime control, only a small part of professionals should be expected to execute emergency responses in line with many other responsibilities of the police department. Some of the emergency situations that involve police-guided management are regarded as those lacking adequate implementation due to communication inaccuracies and authority conflicts that led to “ineffective coordination outcomes” (Karunakaran, 2019, p. 3). Indeed, as Karunakarm (2019) states that a “status-authority asymmetry” often occurs in emergency management due to the formal authority assigned to professionals of lower status (Karunakaran, 2019, p. 1). In other words, when a police department leads the emergency response actions, it manages the multi-professional system of stakeholders whose subordination might not always be in place.

In order to be effective, a police department should be given responsibility for adequate coordination of all the involved parties and make decisions based on the state and federal emergency guidelines. From an organizational perspective, police departments should function as one the stakeholders and participants in disaster response under the supervision of a specifically developed emergency management agency (Jackovics, 2019). Therefore, for the police department’s effective work in emergency response, this organization should be involved in the planning and execution of the rescuing measures with subordination to a specific leading organization.

Emergency Plan Steps and Police Department Duties

The number of significantly important steps necessary to create an effective emergency plan implies the prioritization of particular procedures, as well as the alignment of stakeholders’ duties expected to be executed when planning the disaster management procedures. Since the emergency response is only one of the many duties and responsibilities assigned to police in the USA, several of the important steps in planning an emergency response are outside of the scope of the police’s duties. In particular, the police might not be fully competent and provided the necessary means for establishing a method for utilizing resources and for obtaining additional resources during the emergency. This step requires the involvement of an in-depth informational analysis that requires allocating specific efforts and resources to ensure the effectiveness of the plan; this might be more effectively carried out by a specific disaster management agency (Jackovics, 2019). Thus, the police department’s human resources and legal duties diminish the scope of effective actions within the domain of planning for resource utilization.

Moreover, the process of providing a recognizable means of moving from normal operations into and out of the emergency mode of operation also entails a wider scope of resource- and information-oriented decision-making that might not be effectively executed by the police due to its primary involvement in crime control. According to Karunakarm (2019), the process of guiding stakeholders through the emergency experience and recovery from a disaster involves “cross-professional coordination” and inter-organizational coordination, which lie outside the primary duties of the police department (p. 1). Therefore, the identified two steps of emergency response planning might not be sufficiently implemented by the city police department as the leading disaster management organization.

Emergency Response Requirements and Organizational Authority

When planning an emergency response framework, the responsible entities must align their decision-making with the common requirements that are aimed at ensuring the effectiveness of the disaster response. Police chiefs are limited in their authority and responsibilities when executing some of the requirements due to the particularities of emergency-related information analysis, team preparation, and resource allocation. Among the many requirements, participation and approval expand beyond the police chief’s authority when assessing the threat of an emergency. The police chief might not have the authority to collect all the information and assess the scope of the emergency situation while executing some of the responsibilities related to the immediate response. A specific organization should be in charge of assessing threats by means of “mobilizing expert knowledge”, for which it must be allocated an adequate level of authority (Jackovics, 2019, p. 179). In such a manner, the response to expertly assessed threats will be adequately planned and executed.

Another pivotal requirement that lies beyond the police chief’s authority is the identification of resources and equipping the crisis center. As a professional primarily involved in manpower coordination and law enforcement, the police chief might be a secondary stakeholder in possessing the information on available resources and the distribution of them to the crisis center. The knowledge and objective vision of the availability of resources might be more relevant to communities and community-based emergency agencies that are capable of recognizing the needs of a city in a crisis (Koch et al., 2019). In addition, a separate organization specializing in emergency management might be directly involved in governmental financial resource distribution and community capabilities when tackling the issues of resources identification and crisis center equipping.

Finally, the requirement of testing contingency plans and emergency procedures deems to impose a risk of inadequate implementation on the police chief’s part due to the necessity of specific inter-organizational interventions for this task. First responders must be involved in the testing of the developed plans to identify potential weaknesses and report on their adequate elimination (Koch et al., 2017). The responsibility and authority of the police chief do not allow him or her to execute professional testing. This responsibility should be allocated to a body that is capable of coordinating the inter-organizational cooperation of experts for informed and evidence-based decision-making for emergency planning.

Critical and Unimportant Requirements in Emergency Response

The list of requirements for effective planning and implementation of the emergency response contains a variety of elements that differ in the level of their importance to the crisis management process. The ones that are considered to be critical to effective disaster management include deciding policy, equipping the crisis center, and training crisis team personnel. These three steps are pivotal to effective preparedness for an emergency. Firstly, the identification and implementation of a well-designed and expert-informed policy that would guide all the involved stakeholders throughout the process of pre-, inter-, and post-disaster actions will ensure the success of the overall operations. Secondly, when the crisis centers are properly equipped, given that the allocated resources are sufficient, the crises will be effectively managed. Thirdly, according to Jacobs (2019), the “enhancement of the operational and coordinative cooperation amongst the intervention teams” is one of the critical elements of emergency preparedness that allows for timely and professional response and effective rescue operations (p. 180). Therefore, a well-trained team of responders that will perform its duties according to the decided policy and my means of provided equipment will guarantee effective emergency management.

As for the least important requirements, one might state that the requirement of locating a crisis management center is relatively less important than other steps. This opinion is validated by the assumption that if a specifically designed organization is created, it will have special facilities such as crisis centers. However, the location of these centers is of lesser importance to the development and implementation of emergency response due to the possibility of arranging them on demand. Nonetheless, the outlined requirements must be followed to ensure that the city is well-prepared for a disaster.

References

Jackovics, P. (2019). Evaluation a city emergency management exercise for organizational learning. Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems, 17(1-B), 177–186.

Karunakaran, A. (2019). Navigating status-authority asymmetry between professions: The case of 911 emergency management. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2019(1), 1–6.

Koch, H., Franco, Z. E., O’Sullivan, T., DeFino, M. C., & Ahmed, S. (2017). Community views of the federal emergency management agency’s “whole community” strategy in a complex US City: Re-envisioning societal resilience. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 121, 31–38.

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Reference

EduRaven. (2022, June 14). City Emergency Management Plan. Retrieved from https://eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/

Reference

EduRaven. (2022, June 14). City Emergency Management Plan. https://eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/

Work Cited

"City Emergency Management Plan." EduRaven, 14 June 2022, eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/.

References

EduRaven. (2022) 'City Emergency Management Plan'. 14 June.

References

EduRaven. 2022. "City Emergency Management Plan." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/.

1. EduRaven. "City Emergency Management Plan." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/.


Bibliography


EduRaven. "City Emergency Management Plan." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/.

References

EduRaven. 2022. "City Emergency Management Plan." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/.

1. EduRaven. "City Emergency Management Plan." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/.


Bibliography


EduRaven. "City Emergency Management Plan." June 14, 2022. https://eduraven.com/city-emergency-management-plan/.