Essential Job Functions/Public Service Officer:
- Communicate effectively over law-enforcement radio channels while initiating and responding to radio communications, often under adverse conditions.
- Communicate verbally and effectively by listening to people and by giving information, directions and commands.
- Conduct visual and audio monitoring of jail for extended periods of time.
- Gather information in criminal investigations by interviewing and obtaining the statements of victims, witnesses, suspects and confidential informants.
- Manage interpersonal conflicts to maintain order.
- Operate an emergency vehicle during both the day and night, while exercising due care and caution in congested traffic and in unsafe road conditions and environmental conditions such as fog, smoke, rain, ice and snow.
- Perform law-enforcement functions while working rotating shifts and unanticipated overtime.
- Perform tasks that require lifting, carrying or dragging people or heavy objects while performing limited law-enforcement functions.
- Perform searches of persons that involve touching and feeling to detect potential weapons and contraband.
- Prepare investigative and other reports, including sketches, using appropriate grammar, symbols and mathematical computations.
- Read and comprehend rules, regulations, policies, procedures and the law for purposes of ensuring appropriate PSO behavior/response and performing activities involving the public.
- Subdue resisting subjects using hands and feet while employing defensive tactics maneuvers of approved nonlethal weapons.
Public Service Officer - Job Description:
Dispatch and Teletype System/Law Enforcement Information Network (L.E.I.N.)
This is a two-person operation. These work stations are generally manned by a Corporal with a police Cadet assisting. They monitor a four-channel radio system and the business-alarm panel, receive calls from the desk officers, dispatch police units and log the calls/incidents in the complaint log and radio log. They provide ambulance and wrecker calls upon request from field units. They make L.E.I.N. checks for patrol units, enter and cancel "wanted" persons, vehicles and warrants as well as check stolen or recovered property through the system. They sometimes must answer telephone calls from citizens because of an overload on desk officers.
Switchboard/Complaint Desk
This work station is generally manned by one or more employees, depending on demands or calls coming into the desk. There are times when the duty Lieutenant must delay his other responsibilities to answer telephone calls at the desk. The police PSO assigned to the desk could write complaints at the desk and on very limited basis over the telephone, during peak periods. Complaint copies must also be separated for the various bureaus as directed.
Much of a Public Service Officer's time will be taken up in the detention area and caring for prisoners. The booking, printing, mugging, receipt of property and paperwork involved in the intake will be assigned to one of the Public Service Officers from desk/dispatch area. The PSO will be required to maintain inventory of prisoner meals, feed prisoners (a one-hour task for each meal) and see that the cells are properly cleaned. He will make prisoner inspection every hour as required by the department of Corrections. On weekends and holidays he/she is expected to clean lobby, desk and dispatch section. A PSO has many other miscellaneous duties, including fingerprinting for citizenship papers and employment clearances.
Traffic Bureau
Periodically, a PSO from Records may be assigned to the Traffic Bureau to assist in the following:
Compile accident data.
Maintain accident/violation spot maps.
File accident reports.
Research engineering files.
Maintain abandoned auto file.
Detective Bureau (D.B.)
Periodically, a Public Service Officer may be assigned to the Detective Bureau to assist in the following:
File complaints, fingerprint cards, post clearance slips on crimes or post D.B. teletypes.
Work on D.B. crime status charts or graphs.
Photograph and print indexing.
Cross check file for intelligence data.
Youth Bureau
Periodically, a Public Service Officer may be assigned to the Youth Bureau to assist in the following:
Recording and filing of case reports.
Type appointments to parents and juveniles.
Type records of juveniles taken into custody.
Disposition of cases.
File jacket returns from court.
Case clearance slips to Records Bureau.
Support Division
The Support Division usually has two Public Service Officers assigned; their duties would include:
One PSO permanently assigned to property and evidence responsibility. The process of maintaining records, storage and disposition of property and evidence requires very precise control and is best served under the responsibility of one individual.
A PSO can be assigned to the afternoon shift to better serve the public and department. This employee will assist in the filing of complaints by sections, traffic citations and other Bureau services; he/she will assist in providing gun registrations, public vehicle operators license applications, vendor license applications.
