Police Consolidation and Shared Services

This report is part of an ongoing series on police consolidation and shared services developed to help those organizations exploring options for sharing, consolidating, or regionalizing public safety services with other public sector entities. Read More

This is a quick summary of a report that seeks to shed light on the implementation of various forms of police-fire consolidation, particularly emphasizing the variety of ways public safety agencies address fire suppression. Read More

These are part of a series on police consolidation and shared services developed to help those organizations exploring options for sharing, consolidating, or regionalizing public safety services with other public sector entities. Read More

The Great Recession and its aftermath had a huge impact on local policing, with agencies furloughing, laying off, or defunding positions. Given the fact that public-safety costs consume significant portions of the general-fund budget for local governments, agencies have sought ways to consolidate, merge, or share police services. Read More  

Although consolidating and sharing public safety services has received much attention in recent years, such efforts are not new. Moreover, despite the many communities that have in one way or another consolidated or shared these services, the process of doing so has not become any easier. Read More

In recent years, a growing number of communities have consolidated their police and fire agencies into a single “public-service” agency. Consolidation has appealed to communities seeking to achieve efficiency and cost-effectiveness, but resistance has arisen from organized labor and firefighters. Read More

Michigan has pioneered public safety consolidation and its public-safety departments have often served as models for other communities moving toward consolidation. Understanding how such efforts have fared in Michigan can yield insights on how they might fare elsewhere. To that end, this research surveyed public-safety personnel at three Michigan departments for their perspectives on consolidation.  

Police agencies in recent years have had increasing difficulty maintaining proper staffing levels and delivering certain functions, particularly those related to community policing and problem-solving activities. Read More

Although there is a large body of research on media coverage of crime and criminal justice issues, there is significantly less information about policing issues generally, and there has not been a study that specifically examines how the consolidation of law enforcement agencies has been presented in the news. This study fills this gap. Read More

Since the economic recession of 2008 and 2009, police agencies have found it increasingly difficult to maintain proper staffing levels, provide basic police service, and deliver certain functions, particularly community policing and problem-solving activities. Read More