Tampa Police Department Analysis

Running head: ANALYSIS TAMPA FLORIDA POLICE DEPARTMENT 1

Analysis of Tampa, Florida’s Police Department

Kira A Karboski

Marywood University

ANALYSIS TAMPA FLORIDA POLICE DEPARTMENT 2

Abstract

This paper explores the process and experience of attempting to and actually obtaining a job as a

police officer for the Tampa Police Department. It also includes facts and information about the

organization as a whole, experience and training an applicant will need to be considered and

other information that may be needed. This paper also explains what could get an applicant

disqualified from getting a job
Now, the Tampa Police Department, or the TPD, serves over 350,000 people in the

Tampa, Florida area. The mission statement of the TPD reads as follows, “The mission of the

Tampa Police Department is to reduce crime and enhance the quality of life through a

cooperative partnership with all citizens.” (“Police Information Resources”, n.d, Para 1) The

TPD has a patch on their uniform that shows an older ship on water (Index 1). The meaning of

this patch could be because of the well known Tampa Bay and the shipping industry wealth it

brought in the 1800’s up until present day. By reading the reviews on their website, I would say

that certain citizens do not think they are doing a very good job keeping true to that statement.

Upon deeper digging, I found that most of the complaints were about one incident. It appears that

incident involved a young skateboarder getting harassed by police and sparked outrage, and
The URL for the Tampa Police

Department’s website is as follows ( https://www.tampagov.net/police.). I mainly found the

information through this website and a few others I will list in paragraphs below.

ANALYSIS TAMPA FLORIDA POLICE DEPARTMENT 4

Organizational Structure

The headquarters of the Tampa Police Department is located at 411 North Franklin Street in

Tampa, Florida. There are 3 main divisions in the Tampa Police Department. Those include the

Criminal Investigations Division, the Special Operations Division and the Special Support

Division. The largest one seems to be the Criminal Investigations Division, because it has 2

boroughs inside of it. Those 2 boroughs are the Major crimes borough, which deals with sex

crimes, murders and more serious crimes of that nature, and the Strategic Investigations

Borough. This borough deals more with gang and drug enforcement and undercover operations.

The department also has 3 other districts, district 1 being the largest. It covers from the area of

the Tampa International Airport all the way down to the MacDill Airfare Base. All 3