The Ottawa Police Patrol Division is comprised of four shifts. With the exception of one, each shift has one Sergeant, one Corporal and four Patrol Officers. The fourth shift is comprised of two Sergeants and four Patrol Officers. This is a result of a recent change in the departmental rank structure and will eventually, like the others (through attrition), balance out to one Sergeant and one Corporal on the shift. The patrol shifts are twelve hours in length. This allows for two shifts to be scheduled to work each day while two shifts are on days off.
Unlike larger agencies with more resources, the Ottawa Police patrol shifts are not split into smaller units that address different tasks such as traffic control, burglar patrol or domestic violence response. All Ottawa Police Officers working the patrol shifts handle and address all types of calls for service except those which, due to the nature of the incident, would be referred by the patrol officer taking the initial report to the Detectives or the Narcotics Division. This in mind, patrol officers do handle many investigations without having to forward them to other divisions within the department.
A Police Department Patrol Division is regarded as the backbone of the department. They are the first on the scene and the ones usually running towards the trouble as it is occurring. On the front lines, the patrol officers also develop leads on crimes that later provides assistance to Detectives or Narcotics Agents in getting their jobs done.
Much of a Patrol Officer's duties are reactive in nature, which is to say they are responding to calls for help, likely involving crimes that have already occurred. Many of the duties performed by patrol officers are also proactive, which is to say the officers are out actively looking for crimes to be committed in their presence such as traffic offenses or larger crimes such as burglaries committed by suspects caught in the act by officers on burglar patrol.
All things considered, there is no way to assess the number of crimes that have been thwarted by the mere presence of Ottawa Police Patrol Officers on the streets, or the number of lives saved through the successful enforcement of traffic laws. What is clear is the fact that the Ottawa Police Patrol Division stays very busy.
