Public safety consolidation of police and fire departments has long existed, but there are no quantitative measures of its implementation. Previous research has suggested a typology ranging from nominal to full consolidation. Our research explores how public safety departments may vary by both command consolidation and cross-training of personnel. Considering both these dimensions is essential to measuring the form and extent of implementation of this service model. To develop a scale for consolidation, we surveyed all known U.S. public safety departments, asking each about its services, administrative structure, and training requirements. Altogether, 74 of the 130 (57%) departments we were able to identify responded to a mail survey with phone follow-up, providing us information on their levels of structural integration and cross-training, among other characteristics. The results showed both some concentration at lower and higher levels of measured consolidation as well as some variation among departments with identical scores. Although our research is limited by a relatively small number of departments, preventing development of more sophisticated measures, use of this additive scale can still yield insights on what influences consolidation, the problems consolidation may ameliorate or produce, and operational characteristics by extent of consolidation.

中文翻译：

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公共安全整治的测度与变化

警察和消防部门的公共安全整合由来已久，但没有具体的实施措施。先前的研究提出了一种从名义合并到完全合并的类型。我们的研究探讨了公共安全部门如何因指挥整合和人员交叉培训而有所不同。考虑这两个维度对于衡量该服务模型的实施形式和程度至关重要。为了制定整合规模，我们调查了所有已知的美国公共安全部门，询问每个部门的服务、管理结构和培训要求。总的来说，在我们能够确定的 130 个 (57%) 部门中，有 74 个部门通过电话跟进回复了邮件调查，向我们提供了有关其结构整合和交叉培训水平的信息，除其他特征外。结果表明，在较低和较高的测量整合水平上都有一些集中，并且在分数相同的部门之间也有一些差异。虽然我们的研究受限于相对较少的部门，阻碍了更复杂措施的发展，但使用这种累加量表仍然可以洞察影响合并的因素，合并可能会改善或产生的问题，以及合并程度的操作特征。