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Doug Drummond
About the Long Beach
Police Department The Long Beach Police Department is a large full-service law enforcement agency with over 1,500 personnel and a $200
million dollar budget. The department has a fairly typical organization structure with the uniformed and
investigative functions separated. According to the Long Beach Police Department, “The Patrol Bureau
is the department's largest bureau encompassing over 40% of the organization's budget and more than 50% of its personnel.
The bureau's focus is to support the department's vision through community policing accomplished by police officers
and civilians in all five patrol divisions. The City of Long Beach is organized into quadrants. The Patrol Bureau includes
one specialized and four geographical divisions: North, South, East, West and Field Support. Officer deployment occurs annually.
Supporting the "beat integrity" concept to develop trust and ownership, officers are assigned to a beat for a minimum
of one year.
The Investigations Bureau is comprised
of four divisions: Detective Division, Gang and Violent Crimes Division, Youth Services Division and Forensic Science Services
Division. The detectives and civilian staff working in the many specialized details within these divisions are dedicated to
investigating crimes, analyzing evidence, apprehending suspects, preventing abuse and promoting positive relations between
officers and youth.
The Bureau includes six 24-hour on-call
teams: The Sexual Assault Response Team, Homicide Investigations Team, Domestic Abuse Response Team, Crime Lab Response Team,
the Child Abuse Response Team, and the Gang Investigation Team for gang related crimes.
The Long Beach Police Department has a number of specialized units, such as an
Air Support Unit, Marine Patrol Unit and Negotiations Team. According to the Long Beach Police Department,
“The SWAT Negotiation Team is a cadre of 9 negotiators including a sergeant. The negotiation team responds on all SWAT
callouts and is responsible to the SWAT Commander. They negotiate with barricaded suspects and gather intelligence related
to the incident. The team is made up of officers and detectives working in various areas in the Department. The
Negotiation Team trains one or two times per month and frequently attends seminars on negotiation techniques, criminal trends
and psychological profiling. The Negotiation Team has recently acquired 2 new negotiator response
vehicles (NRV's), a state of the art telecommunication suite and computer system.”
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