Police Subculture Analysis

Lack of training and policing standards are closely linked to the myriad problems bedeviling police work, especially in small departments (Brodeur, 2010). All over the country, police departments report cases of officers being caught in uncompromising and unprofessional situations, resulting in disciplinary actions such as redeployment, suspension or sacking. These cases of unprofessionalism have led to questions being asked about policing, occasioned by recurring series of questionable and controversial encounters with police officers (Brodeur, 2010). The consequence of such encounters is increasing public distrust in law enforcement agencies.

As each new member of a police department officially becomes a sworn member, friends, family and other members of the public gather as they speak an oath. The oath these officers take, promises their commitment to ensure the safety of the public they serve. This means more than protecting civilians from individuals who may stray from the law, but to also ensure the protection of basic human rights. Police and other public servants are given a great deal of trust and power, what they do with it is based on the ethics they choose to uphold. In this paper we will look at why it is important for these justice professionals to study ethics.

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

Law enforcement officers are constantly bombarded with different types of situations that they need to make split second decisions on. Their decisions in any given situation can fall under scrutiny from the citizens, the news media, and even the courts. This makes the jobs of all law enforcement personnel extremely complex. Policing is a difficult and challenging occupation. A law enforcement officers’ duties are plenty, but the main focus is protecting people and property. To do this, they patrol specific areas assigned, respond to calls for service, enforce laws according to their state, make arrests, issue citations, conduct traffic stops, and appear in court to testify. Law enforcement officers do this knowing full well that their actions,

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).

Ethics in the criminal justice system is of great importance. Unlike other professions the individuals working within the criminal justice field have to work with individuals who violate laws and social values. This paper will focus on normative ethics, which basically means what individuals ought to do in a given situation. Out of all of the professions within the criminal justice system ethical behavior within the police force is arguably the most important.

Even though some people see police as power abusers, police are good because try to help their communities despite all the danger they can get themselves into. When we hear the term police officer, we automatically picture a person wearing a navy blue uniform, holding about twenty-three pounds of equipment and have an air of authority surrounding them. We look to them for protection against all the negative people and influences that are out in our world. Officers have to be smart and tough enough to withstand the constant threats that put their lives on the line. Jerome Skolnick argued that police culture rises from the common tensions that are associated with being a police officer.

The study of ethics in policing has expanded considerably over the past few years as cases of police brutality and corruption have surfaced in the media and in the courtroom. Commentators agree that three issues have shaped the role of ethics in policing: styles of policing, the police as an institution, and police culture. Banks, C. (2013). Criminal justice ethics: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. One of the few things that is really dividing the country is the attitude towards the police due to the killings of African Americans in of some cases unarmed or cases that the suspects could have been subdued in a non-lethal way; by the police over the past years, there have been many complaints from African American that

        I agree with your descriptions that you have given for your positive and negative aspects of police subculture. As I was reading them I notice there could be other meanings to those aspects as well. So I am just giving my opinion on your aspects that you have listed. When you speak about territorial, that could also mean that an officer is more protective of his area that he is assigned too. He/she is more likely to want to do as much as possible for his community, and protective of it too. I really did not think that danger was an positive aspect, but as I thought about the definition, I guess it could. I guess maybe danger would make all police officers a little more closer to one another because of the danger they all can relate

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.

Police “officers work and live in a constantly changing environment in which they are exposed to a myriad of ethical conflicts. When either unprepared or unaware, police officers are more likely to “go with the flow” than they would be if they were adequately prepared to face potentially ethical risks.” (Gilmartin & Harris, 1998) Most ethical violations are committed because the officer is exposed to a situation in which he was inadequately prepared. The lack of time to think about the situation before committing an ethical violation has detrimental life changing consequences. Police work can be very exciting and very rewarding but if not properly prepared and trained an officer can easily find himself involved in an ethical violation. Understanding the issues and being mentally prepared will help police officers become more responsible and make better

The police department faces a few difficulties with how they internally define cop culture. In this reading the Ferguson and the Ferguson police department practice “more tickets” and that means more than the two tickets which is how many they need a day to meet their quota system. In doing so the data sources on police crimes/corruptions falls into a different meaning than what it meant when they first joined the police department, which was to protect and serve the community. The purpose of being a police officer is to be fair and help other individual in need, but policing becomes a form of social inequities because it is used to be unfair and unequal and view others as numbers. According to Stamper (2016) due to the pressure from police

Police sub-cultures are defined as a blue wall so to speak. It is an unspoken rule between law enforcement officers and their loyalty to each other. It is a bond that law enforcement officers form after working together for a long period of time. When the bond has been formed between law enforcement officers, their loyalty to each other is stronger than the sworn oath taken to become a police officer. This does not affect their agency’s code of ethics, but it affects their own morals.

As described by the textbook in relation to the police subculture, the components of the police subculture include Control, Territoriality, Use of Force, Danger, Unpredictability, Suspicion, and Solidarity (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2009). While knowing that each piece is essential to the make up of the police subculture, to me the most important component would have to be the suspicion part of the subculture. Since it’s the polices priority to protect the area they are responsible for, officers develop a keen sense, which is developed through training and experience, allows them to gain a “six sense” about their area’s an instinctively know that there is something amiss (Schmalleger & Worrall, 2009). While developing suspicion, police officers

Pro-officers were more liable to use force, and con officers were significantly less likely to use force. These findings suggest that the use of force over citizens is a role for officers’ varying obligation to the traditional culture of policing. This result drives those officers who reject the traditional notion of culture (i.e. the non-cultural group). The present analysis also demonstrates that officer’s attitudinal changes toward the traditional view of police culture produce a difference in coercive actions over suspects. Officers who represent the values of the traditional police culture, or have mixed views towards the culture, were more likely to use coercion compared with officers with nontraditional cultural attitudes.