City of Morgan Hill Public Safety Master Plan

Administrative Sergeant An administrative sergeant position reporting to the Special Operations captain was established in the department approximately 18 months ago. The intent of this position was two-fold: to provide administrative assistance to the command staff and to relieve line sergeants of some of their administrative tasks. The implementation of this position saw a slow transition, with tasks and assignments gradually added to the assigned sergeant. Along with various administrative tasks assigned by the command staff, the administrative sergeant now handles training, including the field training program, a majority of the administrative investigations, fleet management and maintenance, Lexipol policy development and maintenance, various permit approvals, and assigned special projects. The sergeant’s collateral duties include weapons training and range management, and assisting the Support Services Captain with recruiting and hiring. This is an extensive list of duties, some of which are critical functions of any police department. Critical functions include the training and field training program responsibilities, policy development and maintenance, internal affairs investigations, and employment services, to name some of the more significant. The demands of these critical functions, as well as other administrative duties expected of this position, exceed the capacity of any one person. Many of the critical functions are generally functions of a Professional Standards Unit. In the following section, we will address this issue further. Additionally, in Section 3, we discussed the need for an administrative sergeant in the Field Operations Division to allow for patrol sergeants to spend more time in the field. While this was an objective of the creation of the administrative sergeant position 18 months ago, the workload of this position clearly did not allow for sufficient administrative duties to be transferred here from the patrol sergeants, thereby freeing up their time to direct operations from the field. Therefore, as has been addressed and will be addressed in the future, we recommend that a new unit, Professional Standards, be created and staffed with a new FTE sergeant position. We also recommend that the administrative sergeant position presently assigned to Special Operations be transferred to the Field Operations Division, along with appropriate administrative tasks.

Recommendation:

 CPSM recommends that the Administrative Sergeant position be reassigned to the Field Operations Division and duties modified to provide administrative support as appropriate to enable patrol sergeants to more effectively direct patrol operations.

Professional Standards (Recommended) Law enforcement agencies have developed professional standards units to better manage department-wide essential support services that maintain high standards of ethics and professionalism in the areas of recruitment, hiring, personnel records maintenance, labor relations, human resource management, policy development, training, administrative investigations, and use-

Police Operations and Data Analysis Report, Morgan Hill, California

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