The most visible and largest section of the Muskogee Police Department is the Patrol Division. Patrol includes the officers assigned to uniformed patrol, the K-9 unit, the traffic unit, and the vast majority of the Special Operations Team. The patrol officers are often the only members of the Muskogee Police Department with whom the public interacts. As the first to respond to dispatched calls, the officers represent not only patrol, but the Muskogee Police Department as a whole. These officers on average handle 50,000 incidents per year and include a variety of situations, including criminal and non-criminal incidents. Examples of criminal incidents can range from homicide to assaults and larcenies, with non-criminal categories being neighbor disputes, motor vehicle accidents, and youth complaints. These incidents are either dispatched calls received by communications from citizens calling in, or generated by an officer on patrol who observes an incident requiring Police attention.

The Patrol Division operates twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week and is divided into three ten hour shifts.

• Morning Shift 0700 to 1700 hours.
• Afternoon Shift 1500 to 0100 hours.
• Night Shift 2100 to 0700 hours.

Patrol Supervisors are assigned to each shift, with a Captain and Lieutenants being the primary commanding officers. The Supervisors are directly responsible for the patrol officers under their command as well as the enforcement of department policies, procedures, regulations, orders and discipline. Supervisors also monitor on going calls being handled by patrol officers, review reports, and offer guidance to officers when needed. When patrol officers are not answering dispatched calls, they are encouraged to conduct proactive patrols, looking for traffic/parking violations, suspicious persons/situations, executing arrest warrants, and checking for any other incidents needing police attention. As you can see, the Patrol Division is a diverse and varied portion of the Police Department. Its Officers are always ready and able to handle a wide range of situations as well as serve the citizens of the Muskogee community on an every day basis.