Traditional Police Culture Analysis

A considerable number of research has been conducted over the past 40 years to understand police culture. A variety of terms have been used in reference to it including: ‘cop culture’ (Reiner, 2010:118), the ‘working personality’ of the police (Skolnick, 1966, 2010:15), the ‘police mind’ (Fielding & Fielding, 1991) and, ‘police sub-culture’ (Waddington, 1999). Research has shown that police culture influences officer’s attitudes, behaviors’ and work ethics (Scaramella et al., 2011); and the way officers perceive society and their role within it (Reiner, 2000). Schein (2004: 17) defines police culture as ‘A pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and,

Kappeler, Sluder, & Alpert (1998) explain that through the police subculture deviance enters into law enforcement. The police character that is developed can be attributed to several paradigms such as psychological, sociological, and anthropological. The individual personalities of an officer and the authoritarian personality, characterized by cynicism, aggression, and conservatism, is that the psychological paradigm analyzes (p. 85). The socialization process which officers experience when they go through the academy, training, and field experience, contrast that dispositional model of the police personality, and this is the focus of the sociological paradigm. When officers internalize these norms and values that are learned, this professionalization occurs. The occupational culture of policing and the -beliefs, attitudes, and values that make up the subculture is seen as the anthropological paradigm or the culturalization perspective (Kappeler, Sluder, & Alpert, 1998, p. 87-88).

Subculture: Pattern’s that distinguishes a certain group of individuals from the general population. An example being that officers tend to act in certain ways that differ from the larger culture, they could be considered a subculture.

Every culture is composed of four elements: “values, norms, beliefs, and expressive symbols” (Peterson, 1979, p. 137). Each police officer is influenced by the police organizational culture during training. After graduation fro the police academy, the officer is influenced by the more experienced officers of the department. Research conducted by several authors has found that peer influence never ceases even after years of experience in the field.

Police subculture undermines ethics and has a constant influence on officers’ decision-making process, which ultimately leads to misconduct. Police, like most professions, have a secretive yet unique type subculture because the lifestyles of its members are significantly different. Law enforcement officers tend to befriend other officers or people with similar roles within the criminal justice system. Many times, friendships extend to firefighters and other civil service personnel to include military members.

Results from this study suggest that when people, such as police officers, are given the authority to use whatever force deemed necessary by an authority such as the police department, they feel justified using their “power” however they feel. David Lester conducted a study in which he found police officers attain an “expectation of harm” through their schooling at police academies (Lester 186). Lester found “shifts in…attitudes during both academy training and the period of working” (Lester 186) to officers being less willing to admit to the existence of police brutality. It seems that the departments do not see the occurrences as brutal, but as self-defense.

Law enforcement (police) subcultures have specific set of moral values and a certain mentality exhibited by those in law enforcement. It’s always the public against the police so they form an alliance for supportive reasons. However, people may believe police subculture is breaking down. Police subculture is breaking down because it is inconsistent with the formal morals and values related to the culture and that police are not the same as each other in their qualities and attributes. Examining ethics and its relation to the police subculture is important to help delineate not only the grey area of ethics but also the grey area within which the police operate (McCartney and Parent, 2015). For example, police officers are known to defend their own whether its something right or wrong. However, if another officer feels that the situation interferes with their morals, then it becomes inconsistent with the other officer’s

Among police, there are stark differences between male and female officers. Cara E. Rabe-Hemp researched these sex differences by conducting a series of interviews with policewomen. These interviews reveal how policewomen cope with the seemingly impossible task to find a balance between feminine values that they were raised to uphold and masculine values that their male-dominated field demands. According to the individual perspective, employees’ performance is more shaped by their unique personal experiences as opposed to standardized formal training (Britt 185). Since neither police officers’ formal training nor their subculture reduce or eliminate the differences between policemen and policewomen, sex differences have a much more significant

This research question will clearly address the variations of police practices over the past 5 years in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, due to the recent incidents regarding police brutality and corruption. Using Chapter 12 Politics, Power, War, and Peace, will help show the relationships between politics in law enforcement and police officers, which deals with a lot of power and peace. Chapter 12 Politics, Power, War, and Peace, Section Cultural Controls in Maintaining Order states “Every culture has various forms of cultural control to ensure that individuals or groups conduct themselves in ways that support the social order. People who challenge or disturb the order face negative consequences” (W. Haviland; pg 315). In Baltimore

The essay is based upon the analysis of case study Christine Nixon’s attempt in transforming the culture of Victoria Police. Through this essay different approaches and theories of management are discussed and incorporated to understand the concepts of change. In response, focus on the fact that how effective leadership can transform the strong management culture within a workplace. This essay would further then demonstrate that people’s psychic prison could result in creating a bad workplace culture. Psychic prison is defined “as a knack of for getting trapped in webs of our own ideas, thoughts and actions consciously or unconsciously” (Morgan 2006 pp.207). In this essay, various concepts of management has been analysed

Police officers are authorized to use force under certain circumstances, for instance; controlling a disruptive, aggressive and disturbing demonstration, undergoing arrest of an accused person or controlling a combative individual. These officers are trained properly regarding use of force while fulfilling their duties. However, the use of force by police is a subject of hot discussion amongst public, as many times law enforcement agencies, televisions, newspapers, and civil as well as criminal courts have taken serious actions against excessive use of force by police-officers under a given situation (U.S department of Justice, 1999). The aim of this paper is to study national as well as international

The pedigree of this literary review will outline some of the dimensions and elements that provide empirical research by reliable researchers using reliable methods. The purpose of this paper is threefold: The first purpose is to review the communication and organizational literature on authority in order to illustrate how police brutality assist and continues to evolve. Although the Federal government will not recognize “brutality” among law enforcement, but has classified it as “excessive force.” Excessive force is when law enforcement officers are making arrests, maintaining order, and defending life, law enforcement officers are allowed to use whatever force is “reasonably “necessary (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015). This definition of authority can be used to validate the degree of ill-treatment that descends from the individual interpretation of law enforcement. The second purpose of this review is to review if Congress is powerless in approving non-lethal weapons for law enforcement. The purpose of a non-lethal weapon is to reduce assassinations at the hand of law enforcers when they need to physically restrain a dangerous person (Andersson & McCray, 2012), and thirdly, determine why black Americans are more likely to be restrained with a lethal weapon as opposed to a non-lethal weapon. The results of this research will show

Officers are trained to use certain measures to prevent an incident from escalating to brutal or deadly force and due to the environment of most minority communities, officers frequently have to resort to use-of-force. In a study by the Center for Policing Equity, which took three years to conduct, reviewed 19,000 cases of use-of-force by officers representing 11 cities between 2010 and 2015. They found that officers only employ use-of-force in 2 percent of all the police-citizen interactions, however African Americans were subjected to use-of-force 3 times the number of Caucasians, showing a disproportionality high difference (Williams, 2016). When interviewing police officer James, I asked, “When you have to pull your gun on a subject, what race is the individual, most

The Frontline documentary, Policing the police, makes the argument that there are many problems with police departments across the United States and uses his correspondence with the Newark, New Jersey Police Department to make that point.

In the Training Day film, directed by Antoine Fuqua (2005), it depicted many cop code regarding police subculture. Subculture is "a subdivision of a national culture or an enclave within it with a distinct integrated network of behavior, beliefs, and attitudes" (Collins English Dictionary, n.d., as cited by Jones, 2005, p. 60). Although subculture has its positive impacts, the negative ideas about police subculture are more likely to garner attention. Alonzo and Jake portrayed many cop codes that include, “don't make waves,” “don’t leave work for the next tour,” “don't give up another cop,” and “protect you ass” (Pollock, 2015). These ideas contradict the code of ethics, values of the police organization, and society as whole