Police jurisdiction

This movie really starts to confuse me. Lassard is running the police academy, their only job is training new cops right? Shouldn't the Commissioner be in charge of deployment and all the local Captains be running their own precincts? So now Harris running some precinct with Proctor. Lassard decides to create the COP program which outlines new procedures for the entire city, shouldn't that be Commissioner Hurst's job? Well Hurst says Lassard has sold it to the Mayor and now Hurst and Harris are stuck implementing it.

Now I don't entire understand the COP program. It's "more than neighborhood watch." Neighborhood Watch is pretty much people minding their own business living their own lives and if they happen to see a crime, they report it right? COP is taking civilians to the police academy, training them in police procedures, assigning them police equipment and putting them out on the streets on standard patrol routes to stop crimes. So COPs are basically the same as police officers. What's the difference? They're only part-time?

And Lassard immediately leaves for Europe to sell other nations on his COP program before he's even implemented it at home. Talk about jumping the gun. Leaving himself open for failure when Hurst elects Harris to take his place running the academy and implementing COP when both Hurst and Harris want the program to fail. Who is running Harris' precinct while he's doing all this? Is there any division between the academy and the regular police force because at times it seems like Lassard is in charge of the city's police when he shouldn't be at all. Hurst seems like a powerless middle manager who never does anything. He's the police commissioner for God's sake. He ought to act like it.

Then Mahoney is going to use COP to rehab troubled teens? Is that what it's about? And where exactly does Copeland work, some other local precinct? Every cop in town seems to know the skater punks, do they all work the same beats or what? Do Mahoney and co. work as instructors at the academy or are they local cops at this point?

PS I also noticed that even though Harris starts out as Captain of a precinct he has a police academy emblem on his arm. Is the police academy so powerful in this town that it is in charge of all other police forces or something?