SECURITY PLANNING AND ASSESSMENT Pro2

NAME OF THE STUDENT

COURSE

TUTOR

INSTITUTION

DATE

Critical Incident Management

An incident whose response by the police either leaves a positive or negative impact on the society in regard to their confidence is termed critical. The police should therefore strive to ensure that their response to such incidents leaves a positive impact on the victims, family as well as the community. The police unit is a governing body that has a structure that is well defined to respond to any type of incident ranging from crimes, homicides to accidents (Operational Support, Critical Incident Management Policy HTM, 2011).

Critical Incident Management recognises the importance of building trust and confidence in the community through its response to such incidents. The police force therefore has a duty to clearly define a structure of command prior to a crisis for easy and better management when it occurs. This requires proper planning, training and availability of the necessary resources. If there is no proper management of the crisis the situation is at the risk of escalating and losing the confidence of the community (Operational Support, Critical Incident Management Policy HTM, 2011).

The effectiveness of the response emancipated by the government is determined by the unity of the command and control system in any given incident. This system is required to set strategic and tactical goals as well as integrate the resources needed to complete the task. The management professionals should therefore device methods of getting resources. Over the years the force has successfully managed to get resources from other governmental levels. However, some of its major obstacles are lack of a meaningful as much as a coordinated way of directing these resources to potential and disaster stricken areas and the maintenance of the confidence of the victims. Other limitations are poor crisis management and poor methods on handling data. If the objectives and value systems of the management are not consistent and adhere to constant changes, a critical incident is prone to being mishandled. Improper planning and training leads to confusion, inadequacy and fatigue (Carlson, Critical incident management in the ultimate crisis, 2010).

In this case there is a traffic incident that involves three vehicles and a gasoline truck. Three people in each vehicle are injured, and gasoline is leaking from the truck. I am the patrol officer at the scene and my first response should be to contact a hotline or an emergency number to have the injured rushed to hospital. It is my duty to secure the area to keep off the motorists and create easy access for investigations to be carried out to determine the cause of the accident. The investigation will therefore be strictly carried out by a specific unit in the police force and that is traffic police. They will give evidence in court from the perspective of experts (Bhavesh, 2008).

On the other hand, I should have notified, on immediate effect, the Manager on duty for Critical Incident. This communication is vital for the recording of the statement, reviewing and monitoring. The Critical Manager also provides back-up if the personnel are not adequate to handle a critical incident that requires immediate action. The manager then notifies the Gold Commander on duty. He is in charge of declaring the incident critical which is based on the considerable impact of the efficacy of the response by the police on the public confidence. After receiving the report he notifies the chief officer who authorizes the pronouncement of the critical incident and the nomination of an officer who will be held accountable for a critical incident. The respective chief officer also should inform other topmost stakeholders for instance the members of the Police Authority and the Commission for Police Complaints (Operational Support, Critical Incident Management Policy HTM, 2011).

Assuming the gravity of the condition will attract the media the responsible bodies will chip in. That is the section for Corporate Communications in conjunction with Gold Commander will be in charge. They will act as the visage of the police force and give the required media response. The officer for Corporate Communications also responds to any enquiry made by the public. This ensures that the response given is positive and proactive as well as candid (Operational Support, Critical Incident Management Policy HTM, 2011).

In addition, as the patrol officer I am required to clearly record all the decisions I make and any action I take in handling the situation at hand. This is done either in a policy file or decision log. This ensures easy monitoring on the progress of such incidents besides the response from the public to determine if their confidence in the force was maintained or lost. Since the objective of the force is to retain the confidence, if they incur the loss of public confidence in their operation it is obligatory to effect ways of restoring it. The monitoring will highlight on their shortcomings for instance lack of enough resources, personnel or communication breakdown (Operational Support, Critical Incident Management Policy HTM, 2011).

I should finally be debriefed, not leaving out all the other staff that was involved in this critical incident, on the operational as well as welfare issues. This gives access to identifying the practice that might have been good or bad and making any necessary changes for future training and planning more so, risk management. Finally, counselling for the force and the public is very vital putting in mind that the incident was critical and can cause emotional or psychological damage (Operational Support, Critical Incident Management Policy HTM, 2011).

Bhavesh, R. (2008). Critical Incident Management. Retrieved June 16, 2011, from http://incident-management.blogspot.com/2009/09/incident-and-problem-management.html

Carlson, J. (2010). Critical incident management in the ultimate crisis. Retrieved June 16, 2011, from CBS Interactive: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_3_68/ai_54376709/

Operational Support. (2011). Critical Incident Management Policy HTM. Retrieved June 16, 2011, from http://www.derbyshire.police.uk/Documents/About-Us/Freedom-of-Information/Policies/CriticalIncidentManagementPolicy.pdf