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Conflict Management in New York Police Department

Conflicts are a common occurrence in organizations. It is almost impossible to prevent
their occurrence because they are inherent in human relationships. When poorly they are
managed they can lead to loss of morale and inability to get things done. Conflict management is
particularly important among police officers because they perform most of their work in teams.
This paper looks at New York Police Department (NYPD) and the way it manages conflicts
within it. It also offers suggestions that can help it to better manage conflicts in order to enhance
teamwork in the organization.
NYPD background
The New York Police Department is the law enforcement agency of New York City,
America’s biggest city. The department was formed in 1845 (NYPD, 2019). It has over 50,000
employees. These employees include both police and non-police officers. Its annual budget is
around $5.6 billion (NYPD, 2019). The large number of employees and huge budget make it the
biggest police department in the USA.
The agency is known for its large number of specialized services. These include units for
counter-terrorism, anti-organized crime, bomb squads, air support, harbor patrol, and emergency
service (NYPD, 2019). These units and others are all under the head of the police commissioner.
The police commissioner is often a civilian appointed by the mayor of New York (NYPD, 2019).
Under the police commissioner are chiefs of department, assistant chiefs of department, deputy
chiefs of department, inspectors, deputy inspectors, captains, specialists, investigators,
supervisors, and police officers (NYPD, 2019).

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Conflict management at NYPD
Like any other police department, New York Police Department is not immune to
conflicts. There many factors that lead to conflicts among officers in the department. One of
them is police culture. Police culture encourages engagements that are firm and authoritative
(Fielding, 2017). This culture not only informs police – civilian interactions but also interactions
among police officers themselves. Such culture encourages conflict because officers often feel
slighted or disrespected in such interactions.
Another cause of conflict is interactions of individuals that have very different
personalities and who are engaged in cut-throat competition for professional standing and
promotions (Prause & Mujtaba, 2015). In such an environment it is very easy to have conflicts
because everyone wants things to be done their way.
Conflict is also common between veterans and younger, often better educated police
officers. The veterans have entrenched attitudes and work habits which may not be appreciated
by new entrants (Donner et al., 2015). The young officers, on the other hand, are often eager to
apply new policing practices and concepts which many of the veterans are not in favor of
(Cordner, 2016). This clash of ideas often leads to conflict. The situation is made worse by the
fact that teams often contain personnel that have different ranks thus making this clash of ideas
common in many operations that police undertake.
Knowing that conflicts often derail teamwork, the New York Police Department has
instituted extensive conflict management training to equip its officers with skills needed to
successfully resolve conflicts among themselves and among civilians (Weisburg & Braga, 2019).
This training has largely produced positive results but there is more than can be done. There is

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also a conflict management policy that is written for easy use of officers. Such a written
document allows officers to easily internalize standard conflict management practices (Foldger et
al., 2017).
One of the conflict management policies that I propose is peer mediation program. There
are many conflicts that occur among police officer’s teams that never reach the attention of the
management. A peer mediation program would help such conflicts to be resolved successfully
without the input of the management (Sahoo & Sahoo, 2019).

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References

Cordner, G. W. (2016). Police administration. Routledge.
Donner, C., Maskaly, J., Fridell, L., & Jennings, W. G. (2015). Policing and procedural justice:
A state-of-the-art review. Policing: an international journal of police strategies &
management, 38(1), 153-172.
Fielding, N. (2017). The police and social conflict. Routledge-Cavendish.
Folger, J., Poole, M. S., & Stutman, R. K. (2017). Working through conflict: Strategies for
relationships, groups, and organizations. Routledge.
NYPD (2019). About NYPD. Retrieved on 27 th July on www1.nyc.gov
Prause, D., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2015). Conflict management practices for diverse
workplaces. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 6(3), 13.
Sahoo, R., & Sahoo, C. K. (2019). Organizational justice, conflict management and employee
relations: The mediating role of climate of trust. International Journal of Manpower.
Weisburd, D., & Braga, A. A. (Eds.). (2019). Police innovation: Contrasting perspectives.
Cambridge University Press.