Patrol

Military organization
Typical Units	Typical numbers	Typical Commander
Fireteam	2–4	Lance Corporal / Corporal
Squad/ Section	8–14	Corporal/ Sergeant/ Staff Sergeant
Platoon/ Troop	15–45	Second Lieutenant / First Lieutenant / Lieutenant
Company/ Battery/ Squadron	80–150	Captain / Major
Battalion / Cohort	300–800	Lieutenant Colonel
Regiment / Brigade / Legion	1,000–5,500	Colonel / Brigadier General
Division	10,000–25,000	Major General
Corps	30,000–50,000	Lieutenant General
Field Army	100,000–300,000	General
Army Group / Front	2+ field armies	Field Marshal / Five-star General
Region / Theater	4+ army groups	Six-star rank / Commander-in-chief

A patrol is commonly a group of personnel, such as law enforcement officers or military personnel, that are assigned to monitor a specific geographic area.

This is also often referred to as a beat.

History

Law enforcement has learned many things from the past on how to patrol effectively and efficiently. For example, the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment found that no matter how big the police presence crime will not change.^[1] In 1972, the Kansas City Police Department held an experiment to find how police presence effects the general public.^[2] The Police department was sent out in 15 patrol beats around the city. ^[3] A beat is just a 2-man patrol, they had 5 beats that served as Reactive, 5 were control beats and the last 5 were proactive beats.^[4] The reactive beats only responded to calls from the citizens, and the control beats was a normal patrol and the proactive beats were looking to enforce everything more strictly then normal.^[5] During these patrol findings, it was seen that no matter the police presence crime did not really change.^[6] The amount of time at which these crimes would be reported also did not change.^[7] Even though this experiment was conducted by the Kansas City Police Department there were still some problems with it. For example, the 5 reactive patrol beats still acted out on instinct and did their normal patrol enforcing the law and not just taking calls.^[8]

Military

UN Peacekeepers in Eritrea monitoring the Eritrea-Ethiopia international border.

In military tactics, a patrol is a sub-subunit or small tactical formation, sent out from a military organization by land, sea or air for the purpose of combat, reconnaissance, or a combination of both. The basic task of a patrol is to follow a known route with the purpose of investigating some feature of interest or, in the assignment of a fighting patrol (US combat patrol), to find and engage the enemy. A patrol can also mean a small cavalry or armoured unit, subordinate to a troop or platoon, usually comprising a section or squad of mounted troopers, or two AFVs (often tanks).

Law enforcement

U.S. Border Patrol agent monitoring the U.S.-Canada border in Montana. Many more agents are stationed at the US Mexico border to combat illegal immigration

In non-military law enforcement, patrol officers are law enforcement officers assigned to monitor specified geographic areas—that is, to move through their areas at regular intervals looking out for any signs of problems of any kind. They are the officers most commonly encountered by the public, as their duties include responding to calls for service, making arrests, resolving disputes, taking crime reports, and conducting traffic enforcement, and other crime prevention measures. A patrol officer is often the first to arrive on the scene of any incident; what such an officer does or fails to do at the scene can greatly influence the outcome of any subsequent investigation. The patrol officer, as the person who is in the field daily, is often closest to potential crime and may have developed contacts who can provide information.

The Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment, a randomized control trial conducted by Temple University, has shown that foot patrols reduce crime.^[9] With the resources to patrol 60 locations, researchers identified the highest violent crime corners in the city, using data from 2006 to 2008. Police commanders designed 120 foot patrol areas around these corners, and stratified randomization was used to assign pairs of foot patrols with similar crime rates as either a comparison or a target area. Officers generally patrolled in pairs with two pairs assigned to each foot patrol. After three months, relative to the comparison areas, violent crime decreased 23%.

Official records of police activities during the intervention period reveal the following in the target areas:

• Drug‐related incident detections increased 15%
• Pedestrian stops increased 64%
• Vehicle stops increased 7%
• Arrests increased 13%

An emerging trend within patrol is the supplement of basic police patrol with that of private security agencies. The privatization of police is explored in James Pastor's book The Privatization of Police in America: An Analysis and Case Study.^[10]

Law enforcement patrols don’t always just enforce the laws during the patrols. They also try and have community relations, will investigate traffic accidents and transport criminals. They will go to schools to talk about their jobs or about drugs and safe driving. In some large cities, the police chief will go around to meet and talk with business owners, residents or anyone in the city.^[11]

Etymology

From French patrouiller from Old French patouiller (“to paddle, paw about, patrol”) from patte (“a paw”)

Non-law enforcement patrols

References

External links

Look up patrol in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Patrolling.