Griffin Police Department

“We’ve got a body. He hasn’t been here for too long, and it’s cold, so it doesn’t smell too bad.” What happens when someone dies? Who takes care of assuring the deceased was not murdered? These are the questions that become answered when completing an internship with a police department. The quote from above were the words, an officer I had been riding along with, spoke as we waited for the Crime Scene Investigation Division to appear on scene. Through the ten weeks of interning at the City of Griffin Police Department, I have been given the opportunity to learn about policing and police departments through shadowing and observing officers and detectives. The Griffin Police Department has many divisions and roles for employees. As an intern …show more content…
Griffin is a small city of only fourteen square miles and according to Investigator Beckom with the Griffin Police Department, contains approximately twenty-three thousand people. The City of Griffin Police Department has jurisdiction over all fourteen square miles of the city and handles all types of cases that happen within the city limits. The City of Griffin Police Department is a large department that requires a substantial amount of money in order to operate. The funding for the Police Department comes from a few places. Funding comes mainly from the city taxes, but also comes from state and federal grants, revenue from speeding tickets, seat belt tickets, parking tickets, and more. Funding can come from asset forfeiture, when cars or other personal belongings are taken from the owner for varying reasons, and then sold, but the way the funds can be used that come through asset forfeiture are acquired to meet certain requirements that other forms of funding are not. Asset forfeiture cannot be used to pay officers salaries or to the personal benefit individuals in the department or city. When funds come from asset forfeiture they can be used to purchase a certain item that the department may need, such as a finger print machine or the purchase of more patrol cars. The last way that Griffin Police Department acquires funding is through donations. Donations to …show more content…
According to Investigator Beckom, in the past there was a Chief who stayed with the Griffin Police Department for seven to eight years and then left in 2014. After that Chief resigned, Chef Heaton filed the position with the City of Griffin Police Department for only one year, leaving at the end of 2015 for a better job. The department has a history for being a high turn over agency with many employees coming and going. I have been told by multiple officers at the department, of different rank, that Griffin is a good city to start policing with, but is best to leave in a year or two, after good training. Why such a high turn over rate? The officers attribute the high turn over in the agency to the high crime rate in the community of Griffin and the low paying salary of only fifteen dollars and three cents an hour, averaging about twenty nine thousand dollars a year, about thirteen dollars less than the national average of twenty eight dollars and sixty four cents per hour (Bureau of Labor Statistics). When I asked Investigator Beckom about the crime rate he replied that it was very high and comparable to that of the Atlanta Police Department (S. Beckom, personal communication, February 1, 2016). According to the officers in Griffin, the high crime rate is attributed to the “types of people” who live in