Planning in the Suffolk Police Department is a vital part of what makes our organization successful. Knowing where we want to go - both short term and long term - helps the department focus precious resources in the right directions. Short term planning usually involves preparing for the next few years, while long term planning projects a course for the next five to ten years.

Guiding the Planning

Our planning is guided by our mission and vision statements and requires the department to look at its external environment as well as its internal strengths and weaknesses to determine its needs, goals and objectives. Community members and other outside stakeholders are consulted on areas of Department functioning that require improvement.

Monitoring the Plans

Once developed, our plans are monitored for successful completion, or redirection as necessary. Plans are monitored by ongoing analysis of internal and external inputs and outputs. This analysis helps us to determine whether our strategies and efforts are impacting our goals and objectives, or whether our methodologies need to be changed.

In this way, we lay the groundwork for our future efforts. The Department currently engages in shorter term strategic planning as well as long term vision planning.