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THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN CULTURE AND USE OF FORCE:
AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS OF PATROL OFFICERS

By

J eﬂ‘rey Michael Cancino

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF SCIENCE

School of Criminal Justice

1998

ABSTRACT

THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN CULTURE AND USE OF FORCE:
AN EXPLORATORY ANALYSIS OF PATROL OFFICERS

By

Jeffrey Michael Cancino

This paper provides a descriptive assessment of the inﬂuence of cultural factors on
police use of force. These data were collected by surveying and interviewing patrol
oﬂicers from a large Southwestern police department. The framework driving this
analysis focuses on the formal organization’s inﬂuence on patrol culture, the social
indoctrination and construction of culture via observing and communicating, and previous
literature that has highlighted cultural themes. The ﬁndings show that patrol officers tend
to exercise physical force according to preconceived criterion. For example, ofﬁcers were
more likely to use force when another officer was assaulted or was at risk of assault.

These criteria for the use of physical force are embedded in the patrol ofﬁcers’ culture.

This thesis is dedicated to my mother and father whose support is inﬁnite. To my brother
Brandon, my love and hope is extended that his sincere effort of public service stay true.
It is for him that I embarked on this research. Lastly to Brandi, thank you for the recesses

in order to enjoy life.

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Dr. Peter Manning for his insight and exchange of ideas on
this academic endeavor. Dr. Manning’s inﬂuential and seminal knowledge on policing has
served a ﬁ'uitful purpose in this project. His rich experience, wisdom, and familiarity on
the delicate nature of policing has made accomplishing this thesis rewarding.

I extend my sincere gratitude and appreciation to Dr. Michael Reisig for his
support, guidance, and friendship. His continuous motivation and assistance on this
project is greatly acknowledged. I would like to thank him for the periodic exchange of
ideas, his professional sacriﬁces, and the development of my intellectual faculty.

I want to thank Dr. Homer Hawkins for his time and effort in seeing that this
research become a success.

Finally, I must thank Louis J. Cubellis Jr. for his sacriﬁces, keen insight, coffee
shop discussions, and much more. It is his beliefs, values, and moral obligations that have
made me realize the importance to think critically about academics and life. His diverse
aspects of knowledge acquisition, insight, and friendship are priceless, and the only

payment that I can extend him is that he ﬁnd happiness.

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES ....................................................... vii

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION ........................................................ 1
Research Statement and Justiﬁcation ..................................... 3
Direction of Thesis and Theory .......................................... 4
Organizational Factors ................................................. 5
Social Factors of Organization .......................................... 6
Organizational Patrol Culture ........................................... 7
Police Use of Force ................................................... 7
Research Direction .................................................... 8

CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ......................................... 10
Organizational Factors ................................................ 11
The Social Organization ............................................... 16
Cultural Factors ..................................................... 23
Themes of Culture ................................................... 26
Patrol Culture Factors in Urban Environments ............................. 30

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY ...................................................... 33
Data Collection ...................................................... 33
Unit of Analysis ..................................................... 36
Measurement ....................................................... 37
Analytic Technique ................................................... 38

CHAPTER 4

RESEARCH FINDINGS ................................................. 41
Survey Findings ..................................................... 42
Focus Group Findings ................................................ 48

CHAPTER 5

DISCUSSION AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS .............................. 65

Policy Implications ................................................... 68
APPENDICES .......................................................... 74
ENDNOTES .......................................................... 125
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................... 135

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Reasons Oﬂicers Used Excessive Force .............................. 43
Table 2: Learning Techniques for Applying Excessive Force .................... 44
Table 3: Sanctions for Violating Informal Norms .............................. 45

Table 4: Favorite Tool in the Distribution of Force

vii

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Various names are given to the aberrant and immoral practice of inﬂicting physical
punishment on the public by police, using the hands or other instruments. Police use of
force is the most coercive and powerful measure of their domain, and no other persons
besides other police may interrupt forceful intervention once applied by ofﬁcers (whether
its use is legitimate or illegitimate). Historically, the use of force has been commonplace
in our society.

Given the attributes of police use of force in our social structure, Kelling
(1987 :97) writes on the roles of police in society that are “characterized by both a
relatively monolithic formal legal system and informal social control system that
complement and compete with the formal system.” Kelling’s description parallels that of
the patrol culture that involves competing aspects between larger formal controls (i.e.,
departmental regulations and laws) and smaller informal controls (i.e., patrol oﬂicer
behavior). If this is true, it suggests that in some way culture lends itself to all aspects of
life, including economic, social, and political aspects. Within every formal structure there
lies an informal structure (Barnard, 1968; Blau and Scott, 1962). This provides a starting

point for the orientation of patrol culture and its evolution through an exploratory analysis

2
concerning physical force. Before moving forward, it is important to illuminate that for

the purposes of this study, unless otherwise indicated, culture represents patrol culture.

Why police use force is a phenomenon with many explanations. One explanation is
the patrol culture. Patrol culture and its conducive climate to force is an important topic
because physical force, justiﬁed or unjustiﬁed, lies at the heart of individual and
community freedom. Although corrective measures to improve and guide police
performance have increased in recent decades (see Caiden, 1977), the sporadic use of
excessive force remains.

For the most part, few understand what goes on from the perspectives and
experiences of police culture. Physical behaviors and methods of forceful intervention are
unknown because police culture is arcane. Because of its invisible nature, few understand
the intricacies of police culture and its methods of learned behavior. In other words, it is
not a communication of symbolically or socially established set of structures shared with
the public.

As a result of such cultural obscurities, Trice and Beyer (1993:2; in Hatch,
19971205) provide a comprehensive deﬁnition of culture:

Cultures are collective phenomena that embody people’s responses to the

uncertainties and chaos that are inevitable in human experience. These

responses fall into two major categories. The ﬁrst is the substance of the

culture-shared, emotionally charged belief systems that we call ideologies.

The second is cultural forms-observable entities, including actions through

which members of a culture express, affirm, and communicate the

substance of their culture to one another.

Taking a more practical appeal, Schein’s (1985:6; in Hatch, 1997:205) deﬁnition of

culture corresponds with situational patrol circumstances:

3
The pattern of basic assumptions that a given group has invented,

discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external

adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to

be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the

correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to these problems.‘

Patrol culture (used interchangeably with subculture) acts as a vehicle that drives habitual
police routines, methods, and behaviors. These behaviors are made up of socially
constructed realities. I postulate that patrol culture derives from some larger organization
involving socially constructed realities by its members, which are made up of assumptions,
beliefs, norms, values, and behaviors used in situational climates. These situational
climates are never stable and differ from previous situations (i.e., situations are never the
same). Therefore, patrol officers are summoned and encounter diverse situations and use
the cultural resources and structures (i.e., values and methods of physical force) to resolve
situational problems.

Coupled with formal and social organizational structures, we must not dismiss an
important assumption. This assumption is that culture originates within some larger
organization (Barnard, 1968; Blau and Scott, 1962). As a result, Veblen (1909:245)
writes, “not only is the individual’s conduct hedged about and directed by his habitual

relations to his fellows in the group, but these relations, being of an institutional character,

vary as the institutional scene varies.”

Research Statement and Justiﬁcation
What is to follow is an exploratory thesis that coalesces the ﬂow of ofﬁcers social
discourse by interpreting and assigning meaning to such interaction (Geertz, 1973).

Analysis of such discourse will enable us to: 1) make sense of situated groups (patrol

4
ofﬁcers), ascertain their social cohesiveness and structure, and 2) empirically show the

extent of culture-force emergence and formation. Such contributions help to develop
policy directed toward a more humanistic overture guiding police behavior.

Justiﬁcation for this research is based on the premise that the citizenry does not
ﬁrlly understand the intimate everyday epochs and eclectic behaviors of patrol ofﬁcers.2
The goal is to present ofﬁcer cultural behaviors of force in a descriptive fashion. These
ﬁndings will lend beneﬁcial results to the Sunnyville Police Department located in the
Southwest. This department has over 1,830 sworn ofﬁcers. It serves a city of more than
1,115,600 residents and has a Hispanic population of over 50 percent.

“Learning the organizational ropes in most organizations is chieﬂy learning who’s
who, what’s what, why’s why, of its informal society. One could not determine very
closely how the government of the United States works from reading its Constitution, its
court decisions, its statutes, or its administrative regulations” (Barnard, 1968: 121). We
can become more cognizant of patrol behaviors by taking a closer step toward researching

its culture.

Direction of Thesis and Theory

The direction of this thesis entertains patrol ofﬁcer social-organizational culture
and underlying viable themes associated with routines and methods of force. The
intention is not to provide a deﬁnitive theoretical framework, but to present an overview
of inﬂuencing organizational factors, concentrating on socialization, and then closing with
speciﬁc cultural themes. Rather than present a plethora of relevant theory and research,

the aim here is to identify the social principles that provide an analytic argument for such

5
cultural methods of force. This approach yields policy implications at both the

organizational and individual level. Moreover, utilizing this framework allows for the
exploration of cognitive and behavioral boundaries where the learning and inﬂuence
processes evolve and operate (Scott, 1995).

This research will identify how the gradual transition of police culture-to-patrol
culture helps channel such interplay of some larger to smaller culture that Trice and Beyer
(1993) identify as culture-ideology and form. This understanding helps reveal descriptive
characteristics of culture in effort to learn why police resort to force. Currently, no
discipline, empirical study, nor literature base provides a comprehensive explanation of
police culture; it is too dense. As a result, including an up-and-down integrative
theoretical review engages in different aspects of the same phenomenon, allowing for a
more complete picture that incorporates a more powerful theoretical framework (Vold,
Bernard, and Snipes, 1998:300). Again, patrol culture is a vague concept and presenting

an integrated theoretical review helps give it some life conceptually (Liska et al., 1989).

Organizational Factors

Viewed from a broader organizational perspective, bureaucratic components lend
to the development of patrol culture because formal mandates at the top of the
organization create informal mandates at the bottom (see Barnard, 1968). Administrators
of police organizations set standards where ofﬁcers must abide by laws, rules, and
procedures (frontstage-polished and ﬁnished set of goals presented to the audience), while
the patrol culture facilitates methods of violence in fulﬁlling its mission of legitimacy

(backstage-hidden informal routines, methods, and customs in accomplishing an

6
appearance of polished goals) (Goﬁinari, 1959 frontstage/backstage, in Manning, 1997).

These divergent characteristics result in oﬁicers either conforming to departmental

standards or deviating via cultural semantics.3

Social Factors of Organization

The social components of culture exit by sharing beliefs and methods on the way
things should be done within the organization. In its raw and abstract form police culture
is intrinsically lined with beliefs and values; however, importance rests with its extrinsic
methods, routines, behaviors and symbols of learned physical force in a didactic sense.4
Social aspects of culture constitute some form of interaction either verbal or visual with
members of the organization. These situational circumstances are ripe for peer inﬂuences
that pattern certain behavior. Capturing such social elements enriches culture by adding
useful categories of interaction, including the language-behavior nuance.

Under the auspices of socialization, Manning (1997) points out that dramaturgical
sociology refers to symbolic communication and how it is interpreted, exchanged, and
sustained as social control, including routines and actions in the social order of policing.
Drarnaturgical analysis is expressive behavior bound in time and situation; the sender and
receiver exchange “special features” of information and make general conclusions either
symbolically or explicitly (Manning, 1997). Avenues of learning cultural methods of force
include social cooperation (Barnard, 1968) and afﬁrmation (Manning, 1997 :37). Since
patrol ofﬁcers are viewed as a unique group in the department, cooperation is important

for surviving (Barnard, 1968) and achieving (Manning, 1997) situationally justiﬁed

7
actions. Therefore, the social niche acts as a catalyst in the passing of culture with others

in the organization.

Organizational Patrol Culture

Can it be the indoctrination and socialization of patrol culture that inﬂuences some
ofﬁcers to exhibit violence? This question cannot be easily dismissed and is the focus of
this thesis. The extent that ofﬁcers are inﬂuenced by peers and social associations within
the organization has not been clearly assessed. Some scholars agree that social beliefs and
environments (e. g., work groups) of an organization inﬂuence behavior (Barnard, 1968;
Blau and Scott, 1962; Cooley, 1956; Geertz, 1973; Hughes, 1958; Manning, 1997; Scott,
1995). In the wake of this, oﬁicers’ choices and behaviors are scarcely structured by
departmental guidelines and serve as cosmetic features of liability. The coupling of scarce
structures and informal incentives in the ofﬁcers’ working environment are conducive to

certain values distinctive to a specialized patrol group, thus creating a patrol-culture.5

Police Use of Force

In effort to associate patrol culture inﬂuences with physical force, a holistic
approach will be considered concerning theoretical etiologies. Past studies fall short
investigating roots (micro levels) of force. Respectfully, these shortcomings overlook
ofﬁcer social and inﬂuential surroundings of culture. Empirical evidence showing how
patrol ofﬁcers’ indoctrination and construction of culture guiding their behavior is
inconclusive. Examining culture attachment, commitment, and involvement will help

understand physical force debatesé

8
Another difficult task is for researchers’ to convince police executives that

inappropriate uses of force are practiced in their departments and remain concealed under
the auspices of patrol culture. “In fact, more often than not those with ample experience
(oﬁicials and executives of all sorts of formal organizations) will deny or neglect the
existence of informal organizations within their “own” formal organizations” (Barnard,
1968: 121 ). However, the debate on physical force centers around whether conditions
escalating the probability of using force develop through a combination of situations and
characteristics.’

Bittner (1970246) argues that police display non-negotiable, coercive force under
situational contingencies. Effort geared toward placing “precise” deﬁnition on physical
force is difﬁcult because it involves unpredictable human behavior and situations. As a
result, deﬁnitions are neither empirically right nor wrong, they simply help guide our
observations with consistent meaning and understanding of events studied. Van Maanen
(1980: 156) notes that “...it must be remembered that for the police ofﬁcer, such theory
will have no essential application for it will always be superﬁcial to the contextually
embedded phenomenon it attempts to understand.” However, both oﬂicers and
administrators must understand that connecting theory to practice helps explain the

phenomenon in question.

Research Direction
The scope of this research examines beliefs, norms, values, and behaviors (i.e.,
patrol world-views) associated with police use of force. The focus is on questions of why

force is used instead of peaceful and passive compliance, why patrol officers tend to

9
depart ﬁom formal regulations, identify the factors conducive to force practices, and

delineate the construction of cultural norms and behaviors that bind patrol culture.8
Finally, questions surrounding patrol culture alliances conceming condonable weaponry
are examined.

The aim of this thesis is to disentangle critical elements that show how patrol
ofﬁcers symbolically develop, shape, and channel physical force through cultural
experiences involving socialization. For example, when peers use excessive force, those
ofﬁcers that behave in a professional manner are often judged as “bad cops.” A more
profound effect is experienced by the department'that employs that officer, because the
department becomes the target of criticism and scrutiny when ofﬁcers’ use force
inappropriately. From these pageantries of excessive force come accusations of an
overzealous police department by the community. The wave of ﬁ'ustration and displeasure
of illegitimate police practices is stretched across and absorbed by the public, and all

commendable police services are often overlooked.

CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Past research has identiﬁed the police organization as the causal factor of forceﬁrl
practices (Bittner, 1970; Chatterton, 1983; Skolnick, 1966). Other classic studies link the
use of force to work group experiences (Friedrich, 1980; Manning; 1980; Neiderhoffer,
1967; Westley, 1953) and police cultural norms (Binder and Scharf, 1980; Dodd, 1967;
Manning, 1993; Muir Ker, 1980; Reiss, 1968; Stoddard, 1968; Toch, 1965). Moreover,
other research points out that when force was used, police only make inquiries about who,
when, where, and how much force was used (Reiss, 1971). However, even the most
promising empirical studies that made signiﬁcant contributions to the ﬁeld (see Westley,
1959) are dated and subject to critique.

Conversely, not all police activities involve physical force. Bayley and Garofalo
(1989) make reference that ofﬁcers avoid using force as a means of compliance, and
violence is seldom used with the public. Given these factors of physical force, sorting
through the breadth of explanation lies much deeper than what previous literature shows.

A comprehensive literature review is preferred given the rather visible position of
scholars who have put forth a substantial body of literature linking police use of force to
many factors. This method of theoretical assessment is not trivial, it suggests that

preceding theory complements succeeding theory. It is necessary for a coherent

10

11
understanding of the ebb and ﬂow of patrol culture. In an effort to accomplish these

objectives, the following literature review will shed light on the potential blind devotion to
patrol culture so that we may illuminate what is hidden in the shadows of this

phenomenon.

Organizational Factors

Research shows that certain organizational characteristics augment police use of
force (Bittner, 1970). In some ways, organizations are notorious common denominators
of culture tailored by forces of bureaucracy (Wilson, 1967). For purposes here, an
organization is described as a “system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of
two or more persons,” with “willingness to cooperate, the ability to communicate, the
existence and acceptance of purpose” (Barnard, 19682vii).

Scholars and practitioners of policing can appreciate common ﬁ'ustrations that
patrol ofﬁcers undergo within organizational environments. These ﬁ'ustrations mirror that
of military congruence (Kraska and Kappeler, 1997): chain of command, restrictive
behavior, uniformity, dress, oﬁicial and unofﬁcial conduct, and crescents (symbols) that
are clothed in meaning. Bayley (1994) refers to patrol ofﬁcers as the buck of privates in
policing. Viewed in this way, Bittner (1970) writes that police departments mirror that of
military hierarchical model of organizations; both institutions use threat of force and can
use force unpredictably to complete their objectives. As a result, “sacred symbols thus
relate an ontology and a cosmology to an aesthetics and a morality: their peculiar power
comes ﬁ'om their presumed ability to identify fact with value at the most fundamental

level, to give what is otherwise merely actual, a comprehensive normative import”

12
(Geertz, 1973: 127; see also Jacobs l969:414--symbolic bureaucracy; Barnard,

l968:75--symbolization of organizations).

Police organizations careﬁrlly and repetitiously prepare in exercising physical force
with military prowess. More importantly, emphasis is placed on physical training rather
than departmental procedures and rules. The result is that ofﬁcers are trained more
intensely for ﬁeld combat. One feature of patrol culture is that rules and regulations
become moot when an ofﬁcer struggles to survive on the street. Consequently, Pﬁfﬁrer
(1970:7) observed that military attributes within an organization are indicators of high
dependence upon members of the organization. Skolnick (1966211) suggests that
militaristic organizations require strict adherence to rules and regulation and allow minimal
discretion to exceed those bounds, but what occurs is the exact opposite (i.e., wide
discretion; see Chatterton, 1983). Strict rules of organizational structure places strong
emphasis on crime control ideologies allowing for aggressive methods of policing, at the
same time urging high productivity (Cain, 1979). The result is a ﬁrndamental
contradiction.

Police departments seek autonomy and protection for their members. Such
autonomy ﬂourishes through power, control, recruitment, sanctioning systems, and a
predisposed authoritative and coercive practice of force. Manning (1997 :95) contends
that police embody the potential of coercive force, routinely supported by government and
state politics of conventional structures that reﬂect “the interest of those who control and
deﬁne situations requiring the application of authority” (see also Ross, 1958:58-61).

Talcott Parsons (1959, in Geertz, 1973 :217) ﬁttingly provides a metaphoric combination

13
of organizational, social, and cultural systems that are integrative in the sense that

information is transmitted back and forth from superior to subordinate levels.9

Police are viewed by others and view themselves as strong coercive polities; their
purpose in society is to monitor, keep stable, solve, and if necessary eradicate problems.
According to Bittner (1970:52-62), bureaucratic organizations that practice crime control
orientation lead to aggressive police work (see also Manning, 1977:193-7). These crime
control perceptions illustrate misgivings about the functions of patrol work. However,
police work involves ten to ﬁfteen percent of law enforcement (crime ﬁghting) while order
maintenance occupies the rest. Depending on an ofﬁcer’s role identiﬁcation and the
organizational climate, behavior of an individual can mirror that of the formal organization
or of some smaller informal organization. What surfaces is an imbalance of the
organization’s inability to deﬁne an ofﬁcer’s duty.

Complicating these problems, department size is claimed to be a factor that molds
police behavior. Accordingly, Etzioni (1975) recognizes that large departments have the
propensity to center their work using coercive, threatening, and retaliatory tactics toward
the public. “As the complex of formal organization becomes more extensive and more
intricate, the choice of the individual becomes enlarged” (Barnard, 1968: 100) and often
the individual chooses an informal organization.

As the formal-informal chasm becomes more apparent, Slovak (1986) observed
that supervisors (managerial culture) did not provide patrol ofﬁcers with adequate
guidance, thus allowing for a wide range of discretion. In other words, these
large-department attributes cause role conﬂicts for subordinates. Speciﬁcally embedded in

conﬂicting organizational goals are street ofﬁcer (patrol culture) responsibilities which

14
clash with quantitative, administratively driven, law-enforcement, number-crunching

demands. Viewed in this way, patrol ofﬁcers convey a sense of conﬁrsion and tend to
challenge situations that are not deﬁned (see also Bayley, 1979).

With rigid rules, rituals of ceremony, standard operating procedures, speciﬁc
governing operations, and obedience (Bordua and Reiss, 1966), police departments do not
provide sufﬁcient boundaries of behavior (Alprin and Wilson, 1974). What occurs is
street behavior that is loosely deﬁned. Moreover, Barnard (1968) adds that as a whole,
formal structures compete with subordinate structures for individual compliance and
contributions. Punch (1983) suggests that police pledge more devotion and commitment
to the occupation and peer afﬁliation, rather than departmental infrastructures. Overall,
this competition leads to dissension and allegiance with smaller segments (cultures) in the
organization.

Although deeply engulﬁng bureaucratic qualities, Manning (1997 :96) argues that
“critical aspects of police organization and practice might be called situationally justiﬁed
action rather than bureaucratically mobilized and controlled paramilitary responses.” In
other words, more interests should be placed in organizational socialization, interactional
processes, shared assumptions, emergent deﬁnitions, and interactive arenas (Manning,
1997:129-30 which will be alluded to in socialization factors). It is the interpersonal form
of hierarchical control existing in the bureaucratic model that enhances tension, perplexity,
anxiety, and a self protection of one’s actions. Smith (1984) ﬁnds disadvantages in
increasing levels of bureaucracy in police departments because operational directives
become unbalanced with high disciplinary responses in settling interpersonal disputes.

After all, bureaucracy self perpetuates itself for survival and growth and at times neglects

15
its responsibilities (Weber, 1975). As a result, strict departmental codes versus wide

discretionary practices by individual ofﬁcers arouses confusion when determining
appropriate actions for solving social dilemmas (Selznick, 1966; Goulder, 1959). This
conﬁrsion by ofﬁcers’ allows for personal and powerful discretionary privileges to exist in
the cultural setting.

Chatterton (1983) found that when ofﬁcers become uncertain of their department’s
mission and objectives they protect themselves and often engage in defensive techniques
to justify police deviance.10 McNamara (1967) writes that ambiguity, uncertainty, and
indecisiveness of what an ofﬁcer’s actions should entail produce hostile actions directed
toward citizens. He also notes as officers become experienced they become more
frustrated with the justice system and feel their legal authority is gradually diminishing.

From an institutional perspective, organizational theory and its underlying
inﬂuencing factors seem most convincing in crystallizing culture and force. Geertz
(1973244) cogently writes that culture is not a pattern of behavior, “but a set of control
mechanisms-plans, recipes, rules, instructions, programs for the governing of behavior.”
He later posits that man/woman is desperately dependent upon control mechanisms for
classifying his/her behavior. These control mechanisms surface from patrol officer
topologies of force predisposed by cultural recipes (methods) in conducting daily
encounters with suspects. In combination with the organization, “police accomplishments
work in concert with constraints: legal, interactional and external or social structural
limits” (Manning, 1997210).

Controlling police use of force and managing culture is beyond implementing strict

bureaucratic regulations and policy directives. Manning (1997: 130) writes that

16
“rational/legal models of police operation do not sufﬁciently reﬂect the range of behaviors

and procedures that can be uncovered through careﬁrl ﬁeld observation.” He later adds,
“organizational conduct must be rationalized, but the rationales are situationally justiﬁed”
(19972132). In other words, the task of alleviating physical force cannot be fully
addressed without examining ofﬁcer situational, structural, and interactive behaviors in a
social context.

Some scholars put forth that police observers must address social factors within
work groups to curb uses of force, but this too is a level (lowest) of the organization (i.e.,
patrol culture) and is the level on which is favored. According to Hatch (19972200), “the
most immediate source of outside inﬂuence on the organizational culture is found within
the organization--its employees.” It is here in the socialization process of the organization
that culture is developed and seen as a common rite of passage involving oiﬁcers’

temperaments where the informal application of physical force is learned.

The Social Organization

Police organizations are social units that require internal and external fratemizing
to perform their ﬁrnctions. Barnard (19682xi) sees organizations as social units
circumscribing formal and informal tenets dealing with communication, equilibrium,
decisive process, and cooperation. Barnard (1968211) refers to the interaction and
meaning of two humans as a series of responses that convert to behavior; also known as
social factors and social relationships. These social relationships are interactional in nature

and branch into situational and structural manifestations.

l7
Inﬂuenced by Bamard’s principle that every formal organization has as informal

organization, Blau and Scott (1962) moved one step further by looking at how human
conduct becomes socially organized. Blau and Scott (1962, in Shaﬁitz and Ott,
19962214) deﬁned social organizations as “the observed regularities in the behavior of
people that are due to the social conditions which they ﬁnd themselves rather than to their
physiological or psychological characteristics as individuals.” The authors identify two
facets of the social organization: 1) the structure of social relations in a group or larger
collectivity of people, and 2) shared beliefs and orientation that unite the members of the
collectivity and guide their conduct.

In addition to Blau and Scott (1962), Manning’s (1997:129-79) general theory of
“situationally justiﬁed action” strives to sharpen the complex behavior of ofﬁcers’ social
niche by highlighting aspects of the interactive process, including its structure (see also
DiMaggio and Powell, 1991 “theory of practical action”--social constructionist view).
Manning’s theory is germane for police organizations because “systems of cooperation are
never stable” given the ﬂuxes of environment and purpose (Barnard, 1968237). Fligstein
(19902303 in Scott, 19952102) further extends socialization theory by arguing that “all
markets are socially constructed: All markets are comprised of a social structure or set of
rules which preserve the power and interests of the larger organization. When the rules no
longer produce positive results for those in control, the rules are changed.”

Under the auspices of organizational socialization members develop, adopt, and
mold behavior in a negotiated, deﬁned, and meaningful way that stimulates information
with other members. What follows are Manning’s four categories of police socialization:

1) interactional processes looks at the shared assumption of consolidation and separation

18
of organizational structures; 2) shared assumptions signify the proﬁciency of grasping and

retaining information by members; 3) emerging deﬁnitions are frequent situational
struggles that are solved by referring to what was learned by others; the utility of what is
applied to the situation is dependent upon the admiration of organization (policies) or
lower level justiﬁcation by members; and 4) interactive arenas are a series of negotiated,
“meaning of rules” that “construct the ongoing organizational program.” Putting forth
such rubrics forges a clearer understanding by deﬁning “the organizational situation and
thus what they [ofﬁcers] consider to be the boundaries of organizational reality” (Manning
additionally cites Weick, 1989, 1995).

Manning’s (19972130) skepticism that organizational bureaucracies are conducive
to social interaction is clearly revealed: “the symbolic imagery of policing as a
bureaucratic-professional paramilitary organization is not entirely consistent with the
actual process and patterns of social interaction that can be observed in police
departments.” Like Manning, Scott (19952xv and 40-42) also embraces a
social-constructionist view holding that “reality is constructed by the human mind
interacting in social situations,” thus giving support to the cognitive view “of how
situations are framed and social identities deﬁned” (see also Cooley, 1956; Hughes, 1958).
Selznick (1949:256-7 in Scott 1995218) adds that “because organizations are social
systems, goals or procedures tend to achieve an established, value-impregnated status”
regulated by self maintenance in preserving these inviolable values that members hold.
Implicit in the presented literature is that the social structure of a group shapes individuals’

behaviors.

19
In a sincere effort, the academy merely serves as an orientation for what is to come

on the street. Learning on the street evolves by controlling and manipulating information
and situations visually and verbally. In the beginning, learning for the new ofﬁcer is more
symbolic than explicit because initial relationships with ﬁeld training oﬂicers (F T0) are
novel and impersonal. New ofﬁcers are socialized about the dangers of police work and in
the recognition of symbolic assailants (Skolnick, 1966). For example, spoken information
occurs more frequently when ofﬁcers are within their assigned work groups. “

For the patrol ofﬁcer, reality is that “real police wor ” (Bayley and Bittner, 1989)
is learned from F TOs and street ideologies. Police possess an inventory of rules and
behaviors that predominately justify the situation, hence Manning’s situationally justiﬁed
action. Corresponding with Manning, Barnard (1968) claims that purpose is situationally
deﬁned by day-to-day events that are requisite to an organization. As a result, “the
driving force of policing is not the regulations and policies, law, politics, or public
sentiment, although all play a role. The identifying feature is the occupational culture in
interaction with these forces” (Manning, 199724).

Cultural learning is transmitted by rituals and symbols. Ofﬁcers are most
vulnerable because the shift from the bureaucratic, academy mandate to a cultural
mandate, is a big change. The change is a customary practice imbued with countless hours
spent with peers in the ﬁeld. Manning (199728) provides a brief ordering of what he
describes as the nexus of communication in a collective line of action that is ﬁltered to
manage situations. These sequential lines of communication in the management of
situations involve: l) structuralism, this involves connecting actions or utterances to a

code; 2) dramaturgy, this searches for articulating forms that link routines, patterned

20
actions, and structures; and 3) symbolic interactionism which searches for the order found

by the articulation of self and symbols. In these stages of information processing, new
recruits identify with other ofﬁcers for guidance. The outcome is an occupational
mandate in policing that sometimes dictates its own methods of law enforcement
(Manning and Van Maanen, 1978).

Upon reaching the streets to begin ﬁeld training, new ofﬁcers learn they must
substitute what was learned in the academy with more fruitﬁrl information taught by FTOs
and peers. Given these circumstances, seasoned ofﬁcers often consider academy material
superﬁcial. Cadet training provides little connection between the conﬁnes of a secured
academy and “explosive” street conditions. The novice ofﬁcer develops little tolerance for
frustrations because of the sterilized curriculum of the academy. When placed in an
uncontrolled environment (e.g., street encounters), the “behavior of the offender and the
visibility of the encounter to peers and the public emerge as signiﬁcant inﬂuences on police
use of force” (Friedrich, 1980282).

Because recruits encounter a plethora of unfamiliar situations on the streets, they
cope with their environments by using cooperative networks, which are introduced by
veteran ofﬁcers. These networks consist of two ﬁrndamental aspects: 1) the process of
interaction must be created or discovered, and 2) once employed, interaction deﬁnes and
limits subsequent cooperative engagements (Barnard, 1968260; see pg. 67-68). Given
some of the interpersonal factors (e.g., experience, peer status, rank, training, etc.)
brought into the cooperative arena by each participant, one can understand why the
cooperative efforts are directed by veteran ofﬁcers. Within this setting, cultural and

organizational norms -- particularly those involving ofﬁcers’ disposition toward violence --

21
are imposed on an “inferior” recruit who is a marginal member of the peer group. Hence,

the new recruit is conditioned by peers to gain suspects’ compliance and respect through
violence (Mendelsohn, 1970).

What occurs from these social episodes are comfortable moments of mutual
support with others in the work group (Neiderhoﬁ‘er and Blumberg, 1970). To
compensate for their perceived loss of authority (e.g., when insulted) they adopt their own
measures of physical compliance. These habitual uses of force are coercive and are often
viewed by ofﬁcers as the only solution under which they can assert themselves (see
Niederhoffer, 1967).

Moving in the direction of social and cultural aspects in policing, Westley
(1953234; 1970) found that “illegal use of violence is a consequence of their occupational
experience and the policeman’s colleague group sanctions such usage” (see also Chevigny,
1969). This seminal piece of research supports the contention that violence and secrecy
coexist and are essential attributes having a normative appeal. In some ways, patrol
oﬂicers incorporate and morally justify their unlawful application of violence through
situational accounts. Manning (19972131) describes a manner in which ofﬁcers use social
aspects to justify their actions situationally:

The legal facts may provide a version, or situational justiﬁcation, but like

other explanations for why the arrest was made (“I had to cover my ass

after the beating or the wrestling around”), the justiﬁcation is the product

of a socially patterned negotiation, and the legal facts are embedded in the

ex post facto account. Although the stated rules governing the occasion of

a sanction for discipline may have been invoked, a complex set of
relationships is always involved.

22
Manning and Van Maanen (197828) describe a uniqueness that sets the police

profession apart from other occupations in that “the more power and authority a
profession has, the better able it is to gain and maintain control over the symbolic
meanings with which it is associated in the public’s mind.” Layered in symbolic meaning,
evidence suggests an ofﬁcer’s occupation is a signiﬁcant factor that inﬂuences his/her
conduct and social identity. Consequently, physical force is an eﬁ‘ective means for solving
problems and obtaining status and self-esteem with other ofﬁcers in the department
(Sykes, 1986).

Given these conditions for surviving on the street, the intimate social-interaction
prepares the ofﬁcer for future policing practices. Whether good or bad, these practices
are determined by cultural convictions, established patterns, methods of intervention, and
motivation by peers. In broad terms, Manning (1980) views the role of socialization and
the self as the most integral combination shaping ofﬁcer behaviors.

In summary, socialization offers the ofﬁcer acceptance, approval, identity, and the
opportunity to be guided in a buddy-system fashion just as the academy prepared him/her.
However, the ofﬁcer realizes just how little the academy prepared him/her for the true
nature of patrol work. Side by side, the seasoned ofﬁcer and recruit will experience
mundane and traumatic situational encounters. For weeks, rituals of coercive power serve
as the fundamental and most elementary method of control. These methods of force
involve rudimentary and crude tactics that are often questioned by the public. Viewed in
this way, rituals of control are symbolic, repetitious, constantly reﬁned, and are considered
ceremonies; they are a celebration (Manning, 1997). However, the question remains

whether these rituals are a celebration of a distinct culture.

23
Cultural Factors

While it has been shown that organizational and social factors are associated with
uses of force, any single view point is limited and cannot explain concentric group
behaviors. Therefore, an alternative view point and the ﬁnal retiring place that is situated
under one umbrella is patrol culture (see Chan, 1996 for police culture theory). Patrol
culture is the focus because all police oﬂicers begin their careers in patrol divisions and
inveterate understandings, which are subsequently channeled upward through the ranks of
the department.12

Greene, Alpert, and Styles (1992: 183-207; see also Bittner, 1970) trace the
historical development of a symbolic police culture back to the literary and legendary King
Arthur era. These cultural identities of the past reﬂect contemporary, uniform police
values of today. Greene et al., (1992: 184) use Ott’s 1981 deﬁnition of culture: “the
values, beliefs, assumptions, perceptions, norms, artifacts, and patterns of behavior.”
Culture theory prescribes distinctive tendencies for police to act as a unique group when
processing information and responding to situations. Empirical evidence delineating a
police culture from other occupational cultures is available (Bittner, 1970; McNamara,
1967; Niederhoifer, 1967; Skolnick, 1994; Westley, 1970; Wilson, 1967).

As Manning (19972132) contends, culture plausibly advances methods that are
learned during interaction with others and are supported by “common sense theory.” In
other words, police act the way they do to maintain their position and status with others in
the group (see also Yinger, 1965274). This theory incorporates realities (i.e., what ofﬁcers
see as real police work) about policing through shared assumptions, occupational culture,

and task dependency (Manning, 19972132). Patrol culture is dependent on the larger

24
organization’s superior media, such as laws, in that ofﬁcers ostensibly justify their

behaviors via written reports. “It is for this reason that all subordinate organizations may
be described as incomplete and dependent” (Barnard, 1968298). Scott and Backman
(19902290; in Scott, 1995295) claim that professions “rule by controlling belief systems.
Their primary weapons are ideas. They exercise control by deﬁning reality -- by devising
ontological frameworks, proposing distinctions, creating typiﬁcation, and fabricating
principles or guidelines for action.”

Balch (19722115) explains that police “...are submerged in a subculture which
provides a ready made set of solutions. When police recruits leave sheltered academies,
experienced patrolmen begin to re-socialize them.” The culture unmasks a layer of
informal methods and operations in which the patrol ofﬁcer participates. Barnard
(19682114) deﬁnes informal organizations as habits, actions, customs, experiences, and
social interactions with little structure and no deﬁnite subdivision. “It may be regarded as
a shapeless mass of quite varied densities for conscious joint accomplishments”
involving limited persons that grow upon screening of members deemed qualiﬁed. Muir
Ker (19742219; see also Reiner, 1992) adds that police share common traits in their
occupation and that “those signiﬁcant moments for the policeman involve power,
retaliation, fear and severe moral stress.”

These promising aspects of culture theory formed a deﬁnitive ideology in Edgar
Schein’s (1980; in Hatch 1997:210) inﬂuential work on culture. Schein’s (1980) theory
conveys three levels characteristic of a culture-cake. “On the surface we ﬁnd artifacts,
underneath artifacts lie values and behavioral norms, and at the deepest level lies a core of

beliefs and assumptions.” Working upward from the foundation, beliefs and assumptions

25
represent truth external of consciousness that transcend all aspects of the culture. What

members “assume or believe to be real is generally not open for discussion” (Hatch,
19972210); it is non-negotiable reality. Moving toward the surface reveals values and
norms that increase the awareness of what is taking place. These values create a platform
of canons where members inherently attach standards, rules, morals, customs, and ethics in
collective membership. The second layer includes norms of unwritten rules of normalcy
and behavior (Hatch, 1997). Hatch (19972215) writes that “values deﬁne what is valued,
while norms make clear what it takes to be considered normal or abnormal. The link
between values and norms is that the behaviors that norms sanction (that is, reward or
punish) usually can be traced to outcomes that are valued.” At the visible level lies actual
concrete acts of behavior that are the most visible. These observed behaviors are traced
back to values-norms and assumptions-beliefs. Lastly, Hatch (19972216) puts forth that
“categories of artifacts include: physical objects created by the members of a culture,
verbal manifestations seen in written and spoken language, and rituals, ceremonies, and
other behavioral manifestations.” These diverse media of culture remain durable for
members because these levels push-and-pull, facilitating and creating actions of behavior
known as artifacts.

Using a different metaphor, Chan (1996:114) views police culture as a ‘tool kit’
used in the production of order, and the constant ‘telling’ of the culture accomplishes for
the ofﬁcers’ a ‘factual’ or ‘objective’ existence of this culture” (see also Swidler, 1986 for
culture-tool kit). Chan’s mystique of culture is important because a substantial portion of
the patrol culture involves passing its values and customs to new ofﬁcers to maintain its

vitality. On the other hand, Shearing and Ericson (1991) claim that culture guides

26
ofﬁcers’ actions and reactions, rather than operating as a mechanism of socialization.

Patrol culture is a hybrid of Chan’s socialization and Shearing and Ericson’s situational
and structural functions, all of which deal with the complex nature of interaction.

Talcott Parsons (195126) points out that cultural transactions are layered among
people “whose relation to their situations, including each other, is deﬁned and mediated in
terms of a system of culturally structured and shared symbols.” Skolnick (1994242; see
also Sheley and Corsino, 1994) puts forth the bridge that culture has with social
situations:

As a result of their social situation, they [police] tend to develop ways of

looking at the world that are distinctive to themselves, cognitive lenses

through which to see situations and events. The strength of the lenses may

be weaker or stronger depending on certain conditions, but they are ground

on a similar axis.
This cohesiveness engenders such themes of solidarity, informal sanctions, street justice,
informal codes, respect, lying, and danger. Culture is developed when signiﬁcant
interactions of messages are shared in a common course of experience with others (see
Schein, 1980; in Hatch, 19972214 for internal integration-common language, group

boundary deﬁnition, rewards and punishment, etc). Brieﬂy, these cultural themes are

important for discussion.

Themes of Culture

Certain unifying themes accompany the patrol occupation, these being solidarity,
informal sanctions, street justice, informal codes, respect, lying, and danger. Because of
these cultural themes, police envision a social system that pits an “us against them”

dogma. “In war stories and corridor anecdotes it emerges as a full blown us-them

27
mentality” (Bahn, 19842392; see also Manning, 1971 for war stories). These war stories

that Bahn, Manning, and Ericson et al. (1987) describe promote a unique world view of
the way police see things, including the way they behave. As culture becomes part of the
fraternal order, secrecy emerges and acts as a mechanism against external scrutiny
(Barker, 1986; Westley, 1970) which preserves police autonomy. Accordingly, culture
reﬁnes perceptions on the way ofﬁcers’ see themselves with other members in the culture,
thus creating a sense of solidarity (Ferdinand, 1980).

Once indoctrinated and socialized into the culture, ofﬁcers must be cautious not to
discuss personal feelings. Pogrebin and Poole (1991:395-403) point out that ofﬁcers who
discuss personal feelings within the culture are considered unreliable and incompetent.
These signs of weakness can lead to informal sanctions of alienation (Swanton, 1981)
with members in the culture.

Ofﬁcers that are well socialized and conditioned by the culture adhere to roles and
peers (existing group members) that have created, deﬁned, and accepted their status as
legitimate ofﬁcers. Van Maanen (1985: 151-152) notes that the authority of an ofﬁcer is
taken personally, and “to raise doubt about his legitimacy is to shake the very ground upon
which his-image and corresponding views are built.” What prospers from this strong bond
with peers leads to measures that encourage physical force as a substitute for an
ineffective judicial system.13 Such perspectives on physical force are manifested in the
form of street-justice retribution (Brooks, 1986; Sykes, 1986). Westley (1953237) writes
that “most policemen would apply no sanctions against a colleague who took the more
extreme view of the right to use violence and would openly support some milder form of

illegal coercion” (see also Sykes, 1986). Once acclimated into the culture, ofﬁcers

28
formulate assumptions that people they serve hate cops (Westley, 1970), the public does

not respect them, the judicial system is ineffective, and the only way to deter criminals is
physical punishment (see also Strecher, 1971). Coupled with Westley’s informal codes,
Reuss-Ianni’s (1983:14-6) cultural codes offer a shared understanding concerning the
structure and construction on what is acceptable by patrol culture requisite. ‘4

Embedded in these cultural anecdotes is the theme of respect (see also Becker,
1963). Balch (19722107; see also Wilson, 1968) writes that oﬂicers “respect authority and
know how to take orders. He likes to give orders too, and he demands respect from
juveniles, criminals, and minorities. If necessary he will use force to see that he gets it.”
Black (197121108-9) notes that police are venerable and view irreverence as “contempt”
against the processing system.

Hunt and Manning (1991) show that a central component to police membership is
lying. This process engulfs a socially-negotiated occupational order that is embedded in
the culture (see also Barker and Carter, 1990261; Sacks, 1972). The authors’ categorize
lies in two rubrics: 1) a moral context and 2) what an audience will accept.15

Lastly, sensationalized broadcasting by the media suggests that policing is an
assiduously dangerous and unique occupation (Barak, 1994; Lambert, 1970). From the
themes demonstrated above, one can extrapolate why policing is insulated with solidarity
and loyalty. For the police ofﬁcer “risk involves something physical, violent, and ultimate”
(Van Maanen, 19802148; see also Goldsmith, 1990:92-94).

A central component of culture is the pretentious understanding to “stand your

ground” when danger is present. '6 These images of risk and danger are magniﬁed and

29
shared through “war stories.” Intensifying the bond police exhibit, Van Maanen

(19802149) writes the following:

When police observers talk about the shared ordeal of the police life, this

occasion of penultimate responsibility is too little discussed, though among
policemen these occasions are not without frequent and attentive recall... a
bond of common experience is forged, and the lesson of the occasion is
simply the recognized ease with which such events can occur.
Furthermore, Skolnick (1966) coined the term “symbolic violence” to describe ofﬁcers’
preoccupation with the threat of confronting hostile people and violence. As a result, this
preoccupation with injury places officers in a position where their eclectic guard is forever
elevated (see also Cullen et al., 1983:457-62).l7

Concluding with these themes, it is the sometimes jaded and ambivalent culture
that brings about violence. Stouffer (19492707) describes an atmosphere where rules are
prescribed by an overbearing group that dictates these rules. Coupled with social and
behavioral interactions circulating throughout the patrol culture, a facade is erected that
acts as a barrier between police-public relations (Manning, 1971; Sherman, 1983; Westley,
1970). This barrier allows the social niche to grow and strengthen. Stoddard’s (1968)
“code” of police deviance explains that illegal uses of force are driven by socially
prescribed patterns through informal communication.

Overall, the patrol culture is a warehouse of information ready for export and
import. Few ofﬁcers pass through cultural ideologies without adopting some police
world-view serving useful for patrol work. These ideologies, codes, and behaviors are
masked by the culture and create breeding grounds for practices of physical autonomy.

To summarize, culture is a genera of assumptions, values, artifacts, and themes that

ofﬁcers use as resources (see also Binder and Scharf, 1980; Crank, 1998; Manning, 1993;

30
Muir Ker, 1980; Stoddard, 1968; Wambaugh, 1973). What begins as a rather mutual

understanding about police work unfolds into a mutual involvement in “code” activities as
problem-solving techniques impeding police-public relations (Goldstein, 1977). What is

reinforced are work conditions, behaviors, and beliefs that are invisible, that is understood
and viewed only by other ofﬁcers. As a result, a common exhortation by police ofﬁcers is,

“if you ’re not out there (on the street) you won ’t understand.”

Patrol Culture Factors in Urban Environments

This section discusses a review of existing literature in urban communities that
experience problematic patrol culture uses of force. For the most part, urban residents
tend to live within harsh surroundings that shape their behavior. Consequently, there is
little structure, standards, and guidelines in exercising their lifestyle as to what is
appropriate behavior. Unlike the urban resident, the patrol ofﬁcer determines right from
wrong through legal standards, high respect for the law, and moral convictions.
Therefore, police become irritated with people that do not conform to their cultural world
view. What occurs is an ongoing situational, structural, and spatial dilemma between the
police and urban residents who remain polar (Bayley and Mendelsohn, 1969).

In the past, ofﬁcers were assigned to control urban settings with little emphasis on
supporting urban roles (Bayley and Mendelsohn, 1969). Moreover, communities plagued
with violence and unconventional cultural norms are more likely to experience coercive or
aggressive police response (Mastrofski, 1981). Urban police violence has historical roots

stemming from wide police discretionary powers, diverse social groups, urban diversity,

3 1
and class inequalities. As a consequence, Manning (199324-5) writes that violence is

imposed on the middle class under diverse ideologies:

By “symbolic violence,” I mean the ideology acceptance of directly

deleterious costs and social patterns by those experiencing them even as

they support the dominant order. Contemporary violence arises from the

violation of public trust, the rendering asunder of civil ties and moral

obligations, especially of those in positions of trust in government and

amongst what C. Wright Mills called the “Higher Circles of Power,” as

well as against and amongst the poor.

Sykes (19862500) explains that “calling the cops meant most often a request for someone
able to forcefully intervene and solve a variety of human problems, especially when these
conﬂicts threatened others.”

Clearly, certain people are more likely to experience and suffer acts of illegal force
by police. Ethnic minorities, adolescents, and the economically disadvantaged are most
likely to endure excessive force by police (Black, 1980; Black and Reiss, 1967; Brooks,
1986; Scrivner, 1994). Manning (199221) contends that public support in urban
environments has fallen. Some generalizations about urban cities are: police are
predominately violent toward minorities, the lower-class (Banton, 1964: 186-7; Reiss,
19722305), culturally diverse communities (Adler, 1991), and groups that are
underprivileged and exposed (Brooks, 1986). Research shows that minorities and those
living in urban areas are more prone to encounter police use of force, and that police are ill
equipped at understanding lower-class situations (Banton, 1964; Manning, 1993; Reiss,
1972). Moreover, it can be petitioned that laws are enforced and tailored toward the
lower socio-economic and culturally diverse population (see Manning, 1993:1-6)

Manning (1980) declares that police are violent and deadly. He claims it is in

society’s interest to examine violent events that are traced to occupational and cultural

32
stimulation. Adding ethnic culture to the phenomenon, Strecher (1971) subsequently

writes on the stratiﬁcation between the dominant, conventional culture that police
originate from and the urban culture. Fyfe (19882193) notes that as long as urban
communities are perceived as dangerous then uses of force will occur against those who
live there. When ofﬁcers work in settings where pe0ple do not espouse laws and the
conventional social system, they attempt to bridge tensions by using force. Sykes
(19862140) writes on police-urban inequalities when employing street-justice:

The “street justice” function created widespread concern in the past (and

causes much concern in the present), especially when linked to ethnic and

racial prejudices inherent in the inequalities of the market-based urban

context.

Important in this thesis is what Reiss refers to as “situational encounters”
conducive to force. Reiss’ (1968) “situational encounters” that inﬂuence police to use
force include citizen race, class, age, and physical setting. The most prone group to
experience police use of force ranges from 18-25 years of age (Friedrich, 1980). Another
stimulus of force originates from class difference; the lower-class are more than twice as
likely to experience an episode of force by police (Friedrich, 1980; Reiss, 1967). Violence
is most probable in ghetto settings where minority residents perceive police intervention as
obtrusive and view police presence with disdain and animosity (see Fyfe, 197 8). From the
eyes of young minority males living in the ghetto, the police are seen as the enemy.
Mulvihill and Tumin (19692511) illustrate an insolent aura directed toward ofﬁcers:

The policeman is a natural and special target of aggression. He is a symbol

of all that is hated because he symbolizes all the hating the youth feels

directed against him and the punishment that will come his way if he is

caught in his attacks against the world.

Rectifying such ﬁiction is both a police organizational and societal concern.

CHAPTER 3

METHODOLOGY

Data Collection

The data collection procedure consisted of two methods: 1) survey questionnaires
distributed to officers during role call, and 2) focus group interviews based on a peer
group, snowball-sampling method. Survey questionnaires acted as a supplement to the
focus group data, which is given preference here. Group interviews with patrol ofﬁcers
focused “on discovering their ways of experiencing and interpreting their world” (Hatch,
19972221). Because of the sensitive and volatile nature of the material, a pseudonym was
assigned to the Southwestern police department that participated in this study, here after
referred to as the Sunnyville Police Department. This department was selected because of
access to personnel and other resources.

The ﬁrst method of data collection consisted of distributing surveys to patrol
ofﬁcers (see Appendix A). This 41-item survey was designed and administered with the
goal of collecting descriptive data using open-ended questions. The instrument was
distributed during ofﬁcer roll call. Three of the six substations were surveyed. These
substations were randomly selected. The three substations sampled had three shifts, A, B,

and C. Each shift had approximately 25-30 ofﬁcers.

33

34
The method of survey distribution required that the researcher prepare a brief

introduction, ﬁve minutes to be exact, as to the nature of the research and the researcher’s
background. The researcher made a brief explanation of the thesis, purpose, and design.
During roll call, the researcher attempted to attract ofﬁcers willing to participate in the
focus group interview. This phase was crucial for initial participants leading to the focus
group snowball technique.

It was made clear to the offrcers that the researcher was independent and had no
afﬁliation with the department. On a few occasions, ofﬁcers asked the researcher if he
was sent ﬁ'om the “brass” to conduct this survey or if he was ﬁom Internal Affairs.18
Subsequently, the researcher was also asked by an ofﬁcer, “when is a study going to be
conducted showing the public attacking the police?”

Upon concluding roll call, the researcher distributed the surveys along with
self-addressed, stamped envelopes for return. When officers were dismissed to begin their
shift, a few ofﬁcers were not willing to participate and returned the surveys. Over all, 200
surveys were distributed and 51 usable surveys were received. The response rate was
25.5 percent.

The principle data collection procedure were focus group interviews. Three focus
groups were conducted; A included 8 oﬁ'rcers, B had 6 oﬂicers, and C contained 4. Each
focus group interview lasted about two hours. A total of 18 ofﬁcers participated in the
focus groups. Each oﬂicer had at least three years of experience. The strategy of the
focus group was designed to maximize information by recruiting ofﬁcers who were willing
to provide group insight. Geertz (1973210) accurately depicts for the reader what the

interviewing process is about, “its a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of

3 5
them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular,

and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow ﬁrst to grasp and then to render.” It
is the researcher’s responsibility to report these convoluted, yet substantive interviews in
some coherent manner.

Using a “snowball sampling” technique, the researcher requested that randomly
selected ofﬁcers provide names of other ofﬁcers. This effort led to additional focus group
interviews. The chain referral method is partially adopted from Biemacki and Waldorf
(1981). A snowball sampling technique is required to establish a network of ofﬁcers that
can provide further information on the dynamics under inquisition. By using the snowball
sampling technique the intentions were to generate a sample of ofﬁcers willing to reveal
sensitive information. As the sample size indicates “snowball samples are only as good as
key gatekeepers on the chain” (Jacobs, 19962412).

Other relevant methods of data collection included tape recording the interviews
and then transcribing them for analysis (see Appendices). Using principles of ethnographic
data (i.e., tape recording) provides the researcher to remain personal with participants
during conversation by allowing him/her to make eye contact. The researcher afforded the
ofﬁcers with a relaxed informal setting at his residence, where ranking ofﬁcials were not
present. This method was chosen so that officers could discuss rcpics freely without the
skepticism of administrators over hearing conversation (see also Hall, 1968).

Questions asked during the focus group were designed in an open-ended manner
so that probing questions could be introduced when key topics were articulated by the
officers. The researcher conducted these interviews in a “low-moderate approach” (also

known as non-directive, see Roethlisberger and Dickson, 1938) in an unobtrusive way.

36
This method is important for goals that emphasize exploratory research (Morgan, 1988).

The low moderate approach allowed the ofﬁcers to respond with what they felt was
important to them (Rice, 19312561). Moreover, Merton and Kendall (19462541) provide
an outline on the beneﬁts of using focus groups. ‘9

Although the same questions were asked throughout the three focus group
interviews, the order in which they were asked varied. For example, when ofﬁcers
responded to questions and in the process indicated other relavant topics, the researcher
felt it was ﬁtting to probe into those topics at that particular time rather than wait and
jeopardize losing such important data. This procedure helped highlight important aspects
that ofﬁcers’ wished to discuss.

The coupled survey and focus group design help to elucidate culture and its
behaviors. To see how the patrol culture transforms ofﬁcer behavior, it is important to
dislodge insightful and elaborate discussions with ofﬁcers. Dialogue between ofﬁcers
governs what they perceive as acceptable and unacceptable. Since humans are creatures
of habit who are constantly learning, daily patrol ﬁrnctions are marked by patterns of
learned behavior. The issue is whether these actions are truly learned by interacting with
the patrol culture. The ﬁndings show shared convictions and the discussion of

culture-force association in a didactic nature.

Unit of A nalysis
The subjects of study included patrol ofﬁcers from the Sunnyville Police
Department. Patrol ofﬁcers are those ofﬁcers that provide services to communities in the

form of foot patrol, car patrol, or any other method of patrol in which they have direct

37
contact with the public. Only patrol ofﬁcers were interviewed because they have the most

contact with the public and a majority of ofﬁcers begin their career at the patrol level.
The results are reported in a manner that ensure the conﬁdentiality of the
participating ofﬁcers. Conﬁdentiality is required to ensure the protection of human
subjects who participated in this study. Granting conﬁdentiality to participants will
hopefully increase reliability of accurate information released by patrol ofﬁcers. To ﬁrlﬁll
this conﬁdentiality requirement the researcher simply handed each oﬂicer a folded 3"x 5"
note card with a number on it. This was done as ofﬁcers arrived to the residence and a

formal introduction was made.

Measurement

Key concepts for this study included: use of force, use of excessive force, and
patrol culture. If an association between cultural factors and the use of force are to be
explained, these concepts must be operationalized. The concepts are operationalized as
the following: (a) Use of force is any physically forceful action or coercive action that is
reasonable to accomplish a “lawﬁrl” police purpose; it includes the use of weapons
(excluding verbal persuasion), (b) Excessive force is forceﬁrl action the actor uses with
the purpose of directly causing or knows to create a substantial risk of causing death or
serious bodily harm; with no distinction between injurious and non-injurious, excessive
force can be reactive in nature; it is any more force than a skilled and competent ofﬁcer
would determine necessary in that similar or particular situation where an alternative and
evasive action may have rendered appropriate, (c) Patrol culture includes patrol ofﬁcers

who subscribe to and participate in concepts, mores, and habits that exhibit particular

38
patterns that are distinguished from others; socialized individuals, synonymous police

values, norms, mannerisms, similar behavioral norms, ways of viewing things and other
traits that are distinctive to themselves; and norms that declare certain conduct toward the

pubﬁc.

Analytic Technique

Manifest and latent content analysis were used to illustrate, measure, and
characterize patrol ofﬁcer interaction by exploring their experiences, perceptions, and
attitudes. Ethnographic elements of analysis were used to provide descriptive quotes from
ofﬁcer responses. Manifest content analysis consisted of participant’s responses that
require little or no interpretation and can provide cultural themes (survey analysis).

Latent content analysis requires ﬁrrther interpretation of hidden or underlying
characteristics participants report (focus group analysis). Latent content analysis involved
the overall assessment of cultural convictions and motivations associated with police use
of force. This was done by reading and re-reading transcripts.

The content analysis process is an exploratory data driven technique which
provides an empirically encapsulating review of the results. Merton and Kendall
(19462541) note that “content analysis is a major cue for detection and later exploration of
private logic, personal symbolism, and spheres of tension. Content analysis thus gauges
the importance of the what has not been said, as well as what has been said, in successive
stages of the interview.”

The researcher is interested in developing an understanding, and learning about the

situations, structures, ceremonies, methods, routines, processes, factors, and

39
characteristics of culture and the use of force. Hatch (1997 2222) writes that “data must be

organized and reorganized until patterns suggesting speciﬁc norms and values and
symbolic themes can be found” and making ﬁnite conclusions become apparent “when you
ﬁnd that you are able to link a fair number of artifacts to several norms and values that you
can identify the convergence of some key symbols on one or more cultural themes (e.g.,
aggression, innocence)” These research ﬁndings reveal such convergence.

This process can be described as ﬁltering of the data in providing a general
preview of what is emerging for feature presentation. Hatch (19972222) subsequently
writes that this process of sorting and reorganizing leads to “deeper beliefs, assumptions,
and symbolic patterns of meaning linking the norms, values, and themes,” in a presentation
that reveal themselves. Bridging these norms, values, and themes lead to overlapping
ﬁndings that allow for such abstract cultural factors to become clear.

The research limitations ranged in the following: 1) In the survey data collection,
the researcher is unaware of the distribution of returned surveys in regard to the origin of
the substation sampled. 2) In the focus group interviews, as the study progressed the
number of ofﬁcers participating decreased. Although on one occasion several ofﬁcers
(eight) did promise to attend the session, only three showed and the session was canceled.
However, taking into consideration the nature of the sample used, the ﬁndings and
analysis of data were to be exploratory. Maintaining allegiance to an exploratory study is
to commit “essentially contestable” ﬁndings “the progress is marked less by a perfection of
consensus than by a reﬁnement of debate” (Geertz, 1973229).

What follows are the ﬁndings of patrol culture and the hazards of physical force.

The ﬁndings are exciting and reveal integrated cultural, situational, and structural

40
semantics discussed by patrol ofﬁcers. Manning (1997) notes that for themes to make

sense they must be integrated, any event described is only part of the whole and is not
representative of the collective “social enterprise.” He continues by adding that “only with
a rationalized reinterpretation of the event is it possible to view an account as an
explanatory phenomenon” (Manning, 19972278). Viewed in this way, these ﬁndings are

presented in the integrated dimension that Manning suggests.

CHAPTER 4

RESEARCH FINDINGS

The research ﬁndings are presented in two sections. The ﬁrst section describes
quantitative (frequencies) survey ﬁndings used to supplement the more important
ethnographic themes of the focus group interviews. The second section identiﬁes themes
and introduces actual excerpts that ofﬁcers’ made during focus group interviews. Before
discussing the ﬁndings it is important to disclose that if the researcher were asked to
provide a unifying theme of the ﬁndings it would be that: the patrol culture provides an
atmosphere that operates outside social norms of what ofﬁcers consciously know is wrong
by meting out physical force careﬁrlly under preconceived criterion. These behaviors of
physical force are driven by the tact of street-justice.

Patrol ofﬁcers are consciously aware of such aberrant abuses because ofﬁcers
observe their immediate audience, consider the amount of physical force applied, assess
methods of force, examine situations when using force, lie to protect their actions, and
morally and socially see such behaviors as requisite. Moreover, the issue of law becomes
irrelevant when an ofﬁcer enters premeditated thought and acts out such behaviors on that
suspect. Given this theme, once an officer has induced subjective thought of inﬂicting

physical force that is not reactive and he/she knows is wrong; then the issue of law shifts

41

42
to the issue of morality. The shift ﬁ'om law to morality occurs because ofﬁcers’ know

intellectually and consciously when and when not to use force.

Survey Findings

Although 100 percent (N=51) of the ofﬁcers responded that they make an “honest
effort to resolve situations in a peaceful and passive manner” other indicators show that
certain violations by the suspect lead to force and excessive force.20 Such data show that
30.53 percent of the officers used force on suspects that exhibited some kind of
disrespectful behavior toward the ofﬁcer, 23.16 percent used it when force was used
against an ofﬁcer, and 14.74 percent used force due to the inability of that ofﬁcer (i.e.,
lack of control, physical stature). Only 2.11 percent used force in lieu of an ineffective
court system.

When asked if it was more likely that excessive force was inﬂicted on suspects that
placed ofﬁcers in physical danger, 90 percent responded “yes.” As illustrated in Table 1,
46.67 percent of officers, who should allow the judicial process to punish offenders,
indicated that physical force was practiced to “teach the suspect a lesson.” Viewed this
way, ofﬁcers’ act out their behaviors in a premeditated manner. Clearly, these
premeditated behaviors contradict what ofﬁcers’ alluded to as honest efforts to solve
situations using peaceful means. As the results show, 34.67 percent of ofﬁcers’ responded
that the “brotherhood” (protecting our own) was a requisite for force. Of the remaining, 8
percent indicated they used force because the court system was too lenient and ineffective

on punishing criminals.

43

Table 1: Reasons Ofﬁcers Used Excessive Force

 

Freguency Percentage

Teach the Suspect a Lesson 35 46.67
Brotherhood 26 34.67
Suspects’ Disregard for Authority 8 10.67
Ineffective Court System __6_ 8.00

Total: 75 100.01'

 

' Rounding Error

The data showed that 60.40 percent responded “yes” to using informal methods of
force during certain situations. Speciﬁcally, these circumstances included that 23.91
percent used force when the “suspect ﬂees,” 21.74 percent responded that “time of
offense,” such as at night, and 19.57 percent responded that when a suspect “injures
another ofﬁcer” its use was appropriate. Adding further support to an informal mandate,
ofﬁcers’ indicted that 19.57 percent used force espousing “unwritten informal norms.” On
the other hand, not all ofﬁcers used force. Ofﬁcers indicated that it was “not” used 39.90
percent of the time. Of those ofﬁcers’ that responded “no,” 46.70 percent considered
“employee interests.” In addition, 53.30 percent indicated that “departmental regulations
prohibit” such behavior.

Furthermore, when asked about learning informal methods of force, 89.20 percent
learned from peers and 2.70 percent learned in the academy. These ﬁndings illuminate
dependence on peers and the culture in pursuit of learning. Ofﬁcers indicated the academy

prepared them little for police work.

44
Introduced above were social and situational aspects on why force is used instead

of peaceful and passive compliance. The next few ﬁndings show the construction of
culture and its learned behaviors, and the types of weapons used. Along with these
ﬁndings, indirect attributes will buttress and show a social-interaction of the patrol culture.
Surveyed ofﬁcers were asked whether they employed excessive force. F iffy-four
percent responded “yes,” while 46 percent answered “no.” Referring to the ofﬁcers who
indicated they used excessive force, learning the requisite techniques for its application
was accomplished in the following ways: 40.63 percent by observing other ofﬁcers, 25.0
percent by communicating with ofﬁcers, 21.88 percent through their own experience, and
12.5 percent at the academy (see Table 2). The 46 percent of ofﬁcers who answered “no”

indicated that they only utilized necessary force.

Table 2: Learning Techniques for Applying Excessive Force

 

Frequency Percent
Observed Ofﬁcers Behaviors 13 40.63
Communication with Ofﬁcers 8 25.00
Own Experience 7 21.88
Academy _4 £59
Total: 32 100.01’

 

’ Rounding Error

Given the construction of informal norms and culture, ofﬁcers were asked: “What
sanctions were imposed on officers who violated cultural norms?” As conveyed in Table
3, alienation was imposed 77.78 percent, loss of camaraderie 16.67 percent, and ofﬁcers’

were verbally ridiculed 5.56 percent of the time. The sanction of alienation connotes an

45
untrustworthy ofﬁcer. For the ofﬁcer, this dilemma is not good. Because trust is an

important dynamic in the culture, an officer who is not trusted is placed in physical danger

(e. g., an ofﬁcer who is not trusted tends not to receive “cover” nor “backup”).

Table 3: Sanctions for Violating Informal Norms

 

Frequency Percent
Alienation 28 77.78
Loss of Camaraderie 6 16.67
Verbally Ridiculed _2_ 5.56
Total: 36 100.01'

 

’ Rounding Error

When force was acted out, therein laid an inquiry as to the type of weapon used.
Ofﬁcers were asked: “What is your favorite tool (weapon) when using force?” As seen in
Table 4, 32.66 percent chose physical apprehension and restraint techniques (e. g., hands,
feet, joint manipulation, etc.) because it was safer for the ofﬁcer, and 26.53 percent used
nonphysical alternatives. Due to its effectiveness, the most popular intermediate weapon
chosen was the nightstick (18.37 percent).21 The most intimidating weapon of choice was
the ﬁrearm, 10.20 percent. Although 4.08 percent used the ﬂashlight, it is important to
point out that this instrument was used as a weapon in practice.

The ﬂashlight is not technically considered a weapon by the Sunnyville Police
Department, but patrol ofﬁcers’ consider it one in practice. Ofﬁcers are not trained to use
the ﬂashlight as a weapon. Again, presented is a duality between the patrol culture as to
what is pemritted as a normal weapon for “police work” and what is viewed by the

larger-formal department as violating established regulations. Because officers are

46
socialized to use the ﬂashlight as a weapon, they do not see it as wrong, but are ﬁrlly

aware that they are not trained to use it.

Table 4: Favorite Tool in the Distribution of Force

 

Frequency Percent
Apprehension and Restraint
Techniques 16 32.66
Nonphysical Alternative 13 26.53
Nightstick 9 18.37
Firearm 5 10.20
No Preference 3 6.12
Flashlight 2 4.08
Handcuffs _1 QM
Total: 49 100.00

 

Possibly a more controversial reason in using force is using it against minorities
and in urban environments. The question was asked whether ofﬁcers see more force used
against minorities and in urban areas? Fifty-three percent responded “yes.” Of these,
33.33 percent of the respondents related minorities were “uneducated,” 31.11 percent
indicated “location of the suspects residence” in the city (i.e., if the suspect lives in a bad
area he/she will likely experience more force), 22.22 percent answered minorities are at a
“socio-economic disadvantage,” and 11.11 percent responded that it depended on the
ofﬁcers’ “substation location.” For example, if the ofﬁcer was assigned to a substation in
a bad part of the city, it was more likely that physical force was used in that part of town.

Finally, it is important to provide indirect support showing cultural inﬂuences.
These indirect indicators are often overlooked by ofﬁcers’ and administrators’ in the

construction of culture. This is why highlighting such cultural factors are important.

47
Surveyed ofﬁcers were asked: “After joining the police department do you feel

your values, norms, and perceptions of the public have changed?” The data showed that
78.40 percent of the officers responded “yes.” Of the ofﬁcers who responded “yes,”

75.60 percent indicated a negative change. When ﬁrrther asked why the negative change,
44.70 percent responded they did “not trust the public,” 23.70 percent were “suspicious of
the public,” and 7.90 percent answered “the public does not understand their job.”

Because ofﬁcers’ view the public with skepticism, these responses clearly lend to
untrusting and secretive attributes that isolate ofﬁcers with other members of the culture.
When these characteristics surface, the potential for a conducive setting of violence
becomes apparent. Culture reinforces and inﬂuences ofﬁcer beliefs, values, and
perceptions on the way things should be done, socially, situationally, and structurally.
Moreover, these social and thematic interactions are commonly channeled through war
stories.

As with any other occupation, police work is not entirely tainted with episodes of
deviance. When considering responses for positive change, 24.40 percent indicated such
change. This positive change resulted in 23.70 percent having respect for the public.
However, those noteworthy indicators of cultural violence are important to illuminate.
More important, the next set of ﬁndings present an elaboration on the meaning of culture,

its themes, construction, and behavior.

48
Focus Group Findings

These ﬁndings emphasize themes and unfolding scenarios involving ofﬁcer cultural
behaviors. Coupled with thematic explanations, the sources of learned behavior are
provided. Before beginning, it is important to highlight that ofﬁcers’ referred to physical
force behaviors as the “healing hands of the law” and “on the spot justice.”

Ofﬁcers used force for many reasons, however, the use of a weapon was rare and
the most popular method of force applied was with the hands. The nature of force was of
low-order in effort not to leave physical marks on the suspect. For example, in focus
group B question 5, ofﬁcers’ used their hands, in focus group C, responses were hands
and ﬂashlights: “It’s always your hands... your hands are most accessible. Well, also your
ﬂashlight because it is in your hand, but of course your not trained with a ﬂashlight”
(focus group C, officer #1). In the same group, ofﬁcer #4 responded “I use my hands
because they really don’t leave marks on the prisoner.”22

The probing question in group C followed with: “What led you to choose this tool
over another?” All ofﬁcers’ agreed with officer #4 and #3: “They’re easy access, and
they don’t leave marks.” In focus group A, question 7--probing question 2, ofﬁcer #4
responded “if I have a prisoner and you come over here or another ofﬁcer comes over
here and beats his ass; he’s your prisoner.” Ofﬁcer #7 adds, “you mark him up and he’s
yours.” Ofﬁcer #2 responded “all that person sees is this uniform.” Ofﬁcer #8 indicated
“he sees that badge number of the ofﬁcer who’s taking him in.” Ofﬁcer #7 and ofﬁcer #2
make reference to a cultural understanding: that if another officer uses force where

injuries are visible, the ofﬁcer that produced the most injuries on that suspect is now in the

custody of that ofﬁcer who inﬂicted such injuries.23

49
As a side note, in the second probing question in group C, ofﬁcers were asked:

“Have you ever felt you used your hands or other tools that you mentioned excessively to
inﬂict serious injury on a person?” Ofﬁcer #2 responded “I wonder if anybody is gonna
say no!” Ofﬁcer #1 answered “one time I beat the tamation out of this guy, I broke his
arm among other things.” Ofﬁcer #3 replied “I’ve used it quite a bit, you had to pay the
price... that was the name of the game, when I get’ em I slap the crap out of ’em open
hand because again it don’t leave no marks.” Oﬂicer #4 responded “I make sure they get
a taste of their own. It’s your time.”24

Given these responses, the theme is that physical force is careﬁrlly applied.
Ofﬁcers’ will use force for trivial reasons, but when another ofﬁcer uses force on a suspect
that is not in their custody, the possibility of that ofﬁcer with the prisoner getting blamed
is great. Therefore, the cultural norm is that: I can use physical force on my prisoner
because I exercise it careﬁrlly in a manner not to get caught, but when other ofﬁcers start
using force I can get in trouble because the suspect is going to blame me; I am the one
taking him to jail. So, if another ofﬁcer beats some other ofﬁcer’s prisoner then the way
out is to relinquish the suspect to the ofﬁcer who did the most severe beating.

The most interesting response when meting out force and one that leads to the
theme of lying came from focus group A, question 7, ofﬁcer #2:

All the guy says is he hit me (referring to the ofﬁcer who took him to jail),

and you go wait a second I was over there talking to your wife and you

were in my car and ofﬁcer X went over there and hit you, it wasn’t me, but

your not going to say shit; your just going to say I don’t know he fell. I’m

not gonna say ofﬁcer X hit him, he punched him in the car.

As oﬁicer #2 indicated above, either he was not going to say anything or lie by saying that

the suspect fell, these are some methods how ofﬁcers’ lie to cover up practices of physical

50
force. From focus group C, question 4--probing question 2, ofﬁcer #2 explained that “one

of those unexplainable cuts over the eye or forehead is that he fell down.” Ofﬁcer #3
agreed by responding “yeah, that’s right he fell down, yes sir more than once, his head
bounced.” Another type of lying is simply to look away or turn your back. In focus group
B, question 2, ofﬁcer #1 responded that when using force “you have to watch who you do
that in front of and you have to be able to trust the guys that are with you, and if they
(Internal Affairs) ask you, you say I had my back turned and I didn’t see it, and that’s just
the way it goes.” In focus group A, question 7--probing question 1, ofﬁcer #3 responded
that “I don’t wanna have to write a report saying I didn’t see anything or my back was
turned.” Other types of lying occurred by simply not volunteering information.25 The
theme of lying reinforces the argument that ofﬁcers’ physical behaviors are premeditated
and censored using three types of lying: 1) not telling, 2) physically turning an ofﬁcers
back or head in an effort not to observe the incident, and 3) saying that the suspect fell in
order to cover up visible injuries.

Factors that led to force in focus group A were adrenaline and embarrassment.
Exploring these responses one can ﬁnd cultural themes of brotherhood, acceptance, and
protection that inﬂuence ofﬁcer behavior. For example, in group A, question 10, officer
#7 replied: I think adrenaline... because if you know he’s in trouble and I have worked
with him close... he’d be like my brother... man I’m pumped and I’m going to that call and
that leads me to using it a lot of times. Ofﬁcer #1: I think it’s to show the ofﬁcer, hey, I
mean your my boy so this is what I’m doing for you. Ofﬁcer #1 continues to give themes
of brotherhood, protection, and street justice in a premeditated fashion by responding:

When I had gotten into that wreck over some suspect... I had fellow ofﬁcers call me and

5 1
come up (to the hospital) to see me saying we got him for you #1, don’t worry we’re not

gonna let him do that again; and its just something that’s done. Moreover, focus group C
also responded that “adrenaline” was a factor. In focus group B, other ofﬁcers responded
that factors leading to force involved suspects who acted violent.

Ofﬁcers were asked: “How do you feel and what should be done to individuals
that place fellow ofﬁcers in physical danger?” This question was one of the most
provocative, yet unanimous responses. As a result, the theme here is protecting each
other in a vengeful manner. These cultural norms and behaviors included premeditated
norms of physical force to “teach as a lesson” with lying as cover stories. All three focus
groups viewed these physical actions as required. These acts of force are morally and
socially accepted, “it is simply something that is just done.”

Responses to this question ranged ﬁ'om explicitly blunt to somewhat discrete. In
focus group A, question 13, ofﬁcers’ responded with strong language. Ofﬁcer #6
indicated “they get the shit beat out of them,” ofﬁcer #3 responded “they learn that they
mess with the police they are going to pay,” Oﬂicer #4 said “we’re not here to ﬁght fair,
we’re here to win.” From focus group B, question 11, ofﬁcer #2 responded “it’s just like
if someone’s close to you... he’s gonna pay the price, your gonna wanna hurt them,
Ofﬁcer #6 replied “it should be what ever happens to the oﬁicer and then more.” Ofﬁcers’
in focus group C, question 13, indicated they would be angry, the person would get beat,
and they would travel long distances to cover the officer. Interestingly enough, ofﬁcer #3
provides a summation of the events: “If you place one of our brother ofﬁcers in danger or

you hurt him, you can believe that son of a bitch is gonna get an ass whipping, I’ll tell ya

the way it is! Especially if it is dark he’s gonna get it.” Furthermore, these beliefs of “on

52
the spot justice” tie into what ofﬁcers’ view as the lack of conﬁdence in the judicial

system.

Every oﬁcer from all focus groups recognized that norms and behaviors are
learned through social networks from other oﬂicers on the street. Brieﬂy, in focus group
A, question 13--probing question 2, ofﬁcer #1 indicated that “working with other guys
and socializing, that’s where your going to learn everything.” Ofﬁcer #4 responded that
“your gonna learn things from every ofﬁcer your around, your gonna pick up little bits and
pieces ﬁ'om every ofﬁcer your around.”

Focus group C supported these same sentiments by making reference to the social
interaction. Ofﬁcer #4 responded: It’s like what I said when you are ﬁrst out on the
street on your own, your gonna learn that real quick that everything is accepted by what
other oﬂicers say and do. Ofﬁcer #2 adds “its like what ofﬁcer #3 said, the only people
we have is ourselves. You can’t trust the community, you can’t trust the city, you can’t
trust the media, you can’t trust anybody else; you can only trust the guys you work with.”
These ﬁndings clearly reﬂect a strong social enterprise in the patrol culture.

Finally, ofﬁcer #1 provided a defensive response that is relevant (see focus group
A, question 13--probing question 2). What it shows is that if an ofﬁcer does not adhere to
the same beliefs, values, and behaviors in the collective, they should not be a cop. In his
words, “get another profession, go do something else.”

Such statements as the one above, show how members in the culture sanction
colleagues for not having the same intrinsic and extrinsic cultural norms and behaviors. As
a consequence of such sanctions, the ofﬁcer can leave the job or face alienation from his

immediate and extended work group. All ofﬁcers’ interviewed agreed that those who

53
violated cultural norms, such as snitching on other ofﬁcers faced alienation and the type of

alienation ranged from “not eating with them” to severe consequences of “no cover.” No
cover means that oﬂicers who are considered not trustworthy may not receive help or
backup when requested; and if additional ofﬁcers are dispatched to the scene they will be
slow at arriving. These featured sanctions place an ofﬁcers’ physical well-being at risk.
Ofﬁcer #3 (focus group C, question 7--probing question 1) came to the conclusion that
“as long as you don’t break that code, your all right.” As a result, these cultural norms are
not learned in the academy nor in books.

To the patrol ofﬁcer things are done and happen on the street because “that’s just
the way it is,” and no reason needs to be given. Patrol ofﬁcers ﬁnd it unsatisfactory in that
the academy does not prepare them for patrol work. Ofﬁcers’ view the academy as having
shortcomings, in that it does not have adequate training for situational street encounters.
What this shows are reasons why ofﬁcers’ use culture as a warehouse of reserved
information and behavior that can be applied to every situation during patrol ﬁrnctions.
This situational context reﬂects what Manning (1997) describes as situationally justiﬁed
action. This is one way the construction of culture is developed.

With the gradual departure from lawful restrictions, the culture, through
socialization begins to divorce its members from departmental rules and regulations. It is
reminded that this detachment from the larger-formal department is supported by peers
through informal social-interaction. As a result, an informal culture is manifested and
given life through its members’ belief-assumptions, norms-values, and artifacts. This

process of culture transmission (socialization) is circular because as patrol ofﬁcers are

54
retiring or moving to new positions, new ofﬁcers are graduating from the academy and are

indoctrinated and socialized into the culture.

When asked: “How would you describe the way some things are handled on the
street, are they by the book or informal?” Evidence shows that (focus group A, question
4) ofﬁcer #7 responded with “you can’t get through a situation strictly by the book.” He
later adds “you get on the street and you’ll ﬁnd out that as a new ofﬁcer if you go by the
book a veteran say’s hey come here, this is what your going to do and we are able to go
handle another call in a little bit.” Ofﬁcer #1: the general manual is to protect the city not
the police ofﬁcers, just the city. Ofﬁcer #4: the books are just guidelines.

From focus group B, question 4, ofﬁcers’ responded with similar beliefs, but from
a learning perspective. Ofﬁcer #6 responded “maybe ten percent is taught, the rest is
learned on the street... your learning never stops, from day one, your always gonna learn
something new.” Ofﬁcer #3 replied “you learn as much as you can get away with.”
Oﬁcer #2 responded that you learn to handle situations by working with other ofﬁcers:
“you learn it from the street, from your fellow ofﬁcers when you go out and see an officer
handle a situation like this or that, by working with other ofﬁcers you can always learn.”
Lastly, ofﬁcers from focus group C, question 4 indicated that the book does not prepare
you for people and is only covered for liability purposes. Ofﬁcer #1 responded “when you
go out on the street and start dealing with real people you ﬁnd that there is no book
because there are different people and situations, you have to compromise, be creative,
you have to stretch the law... your a good patch artist.” Ofﬁcer #2 indicated that “the

academy just goes through the motions for liability purposes.” However, ofﬁcer #4

55
entertained this question by alluding to a fact that many of these informal methods are

arcane:

There’s nothing but informal methods in handling things on the street. I

feel the informal methods and being creative in that way keep a lot of us

out of trouble and getting hurt. A lot of people can’t see it that way and

don’t see it that way and probably don’t know that it exists either.

Since the ﬁndings reveal a somewhat cynical attitude toward the larger-formal
department’s rules and regulations, it is also important to show how ofﬁcers’ view the
“formal” department’s Internal Affairs unit which investigates police use of force.

Brieﬂy, Internal Affairs (I.A.) investigates violations by police ofﬁcers, 1. A. can be
considered a department of the formal organization that polices the police. To the patrol
ofﬁcer, this unit is not viewed with much admiration nor given cooperation. In focus
group A, question 7--probing question 2, ofﬁcer #3 holds the position that:

I don’t think we should tell on each other, and I don’t think ofﬁcers should

investigate other ofﬁcers, have civilians step in and do that shit. That way

there’s no kind of ﬁiction there, but if some one is doing bad all the time,
hey you know, I don’t think its my duty to come in here and say this.

From focus group B, question 4--probing question 1, ofﬁcer #3 indicated that when a new
ofﬁcer is fresh on the street, they learn to watch each others back, “so no one volunteers
any information wait for I. A. because one day they might need the help.”26 The theme is
that patrol oﬂicers’ view the larger and formal organization as a threat in maintaining their
legitimacy, including what they see as warranted street justice. Put succinctly, the patrol
culture maintains this legitimacy by lying and not volunteering information. What this
shows is a direct lack of cooperation between formal and informal cultures. It appears
that the patrol culture conducts its own methods of law and justice, because the patrol

culture withholds information ﬁom the larger-formal culture by not cooperating with

56
Internal Affairs. In this case, it is the formal organization (I. A.) that is dependent on the

patrol culture for information. These ﬁndings correspond with what Chester Barnard
described as an organization is made of formal and informal systems that are dependent on
each other.
Ofﬁcers were asked how do they learn informal understandings or the way things
are done? Ofﬁcer #2 responded “that watching veteran ofﬁcers and their methods of
obtaining respect, another ofﬁcer would want to imitate those methods that are
successﬁrl.” He adds “whether it’s how to kick ass, talk to people, or calm situations, the
young guys learn and pick up stuff from all of us” (see focus group A, question 7). The
ﬁndings from focus group C, question 7, show the same learning process. Ofﬁcer #1 and
#4 responded that you learn it through fellow police, by observing and talking.
In the same focus group, ofﬁcer #3 provided an encapsulating account of related
and overlapping themes of the culture in response to this question:
You learn it from your brother ofﬁcers, that’s how you earn respect, that’s
how they trust you, that’s how you ﬁt into the group. In the academy they
try to break that code, they say if he does something wrong write a report
you should notify, but it can’t be done.
In other words, regardless of the wrong doing by the ofﬁcer, another ofﬁcer should not
breach the cultural norm of “telling” on other ofﬁcers. This leads to what ofﬁcers’
describe as police world-views, in that things are done and not done because it is just the
way it is.

Ofﬁcers were asked if they tend to develop ways of looking at situations that are

distinctive? Common themes from all focus groups were that the public does not

57
understand, it is a different world out there, and it is kind of your world and there world.

From focus group C, question 3, Ofﬁcer #4 responded:
It is a brotherhood that only police can ever understand and why they do
some of the things they do. We don’t trust many peOple and some of our

methods in dealing with the roaches out there is what they deserve, because
they do nothing but mess up society.

In the same focus group, question 14, ofﬁcer #1 indicated that “most deﬁnitely there exist
our world and the way we pass on things to other oﬂicers and how things should and are
done.” For the most part, these views held by ofﬁcers’ cement cultural ideologies with
cultural behaviors.

These descriptive and distinctive police world-views have a plethora of symbolic
meaning. Researchers interested in semiotic analysis would ﬁnd this data plentiful with
information. However, these ﬁndings of symbolic interaction will be discussed brieﬂy to
show how symbolic qualities reinforce and inﬂuence patrol culture.

As a result, in focus group C, question 3, ofﬁcer #3 used the words “he still puts
on a uniform and a badge, there is a strong tie there.” He continues by saying “we’re still
the same color... blue.” In focus group B, question 3, ofﬁcer #1 responded “who else puts
on a bullet proof vest when they go to work.” In this same group, ofﬁcer #2 answered, “a
lot of times you don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors, you don’t realize that a
lot of stuff that’s happening here is always happening.” The meaning behind these
expressions entail a secretive cultural bond that views the public as a threat.

Examining these symbolic contributions, an interesting metaphor was made by

ofﬁcer #1 in focus group C, question 3. The ofﬁcer reﬂected on the analogy that was

58
made in the literature review regarding the police occupation paralleling that of military

and combat. The ofﬁcer describes the situation in the following:

Ifone of us messes up we’re gonna lose our life, that’s the bottom line.

Either we’re gonna get hurt really bad, lose our life or somebody else is

gonna get hurt really bad. So I think that in itself, puts us in a whole

different category other than to somebody going to combat and having that

relationship with everybody your with, because your depending on that

person to save your life or do something together that it puts you in a

different category.

Although generalizations cannot be made, it is interesting to point out how dependent
omcers are on each other. This also shows how at times the culture is independent of the
larger-formal organization.

Given these ﬁndings so far, one must question whether patrol ofﬁcers participate in
selective law enforcement. Ofﬁcers were asked: “Do you see more force used against
minorities and in urban areas?” In focus group A, question 11, the majority of the
ofﬁcers’ responded “no.” However, when ofﬁcers’ elaborated on their answers
contradictions were revealed. Ofﬁcer #3 responded that “you don’t do things in certain
areas because everybody has a lawyer... because they have money... location also dictates
the application.” Officer #1 indicated that “there are a lot of whites at substation C and on
the east side there are blacks.” Ofﬁcer #4 adds that “you can probably do almost anything
on the east side and not get complained on.” Ofﬁcer #4, #7, #8, and #6 agreed that using
force in these communities is just a normal part of there life and the immediate
“community sees it as I’m supposed to get slapped.”

In regard to the same question, focus group B, question 9, the responses were

similar to focus group A. Officer #5 responded that it depends where you work, and

59
ofﬁcer #6, #4, and #2 replied that they have seen it more against Hispanics. Ofﬁcer #3

responded:

It depends on the location and socio-economic status. I’ve seen it happen

with a lot more minorities. If your living on the south side or west side its

just the way you grew up, you just take your licks and go on. If your on

the north side, they say hey you can’t treat me like that my dad’s a lawyer,

a doctor, or whatever... they have the resources to ﬁle complaints or follow

up and know how to do it, there is a way to do it. The people on the south

side or west side are like who are we gonna call we don’t have the

resources, so take your licks and drive on.

The majority of ofﬁcers’ in focus group C, question 10, responded that force is not
used more against minorities or in urban areas. Again, when ofﬁcers’ elaborated they
indicated other wise. Officer #1 responded “one thing that does occur is different ways
ofﬁcers’ patrol, like at different areas of town and substations like C substation... at C
there is an understanding that’s where the money is, that’s where the votes are, that’s
where the inﬂuences are and you have to treat people a lot more different.” Ofﬁcer #2
followed with “we’re a lot more aggressive with the people at B substation than they are
with the people at C substation.” omcer #3 added, “the citizens take care of the ofﬁcers
and the ofﬁcers take care of the citizens... the ofﬁcers know that you don’t write tickets,
you don’t arrest them, you do this, you don’t do that. Why? Because they got the
money.” From focus group B, question 9--probing question 1, ofﬁcer #6 responded that
at west, south, and east substations patrolling tactics are different because the people they
come in contact with are uneducated, have low income, and have no respect for anything.

Moreover, throughout the interviews ofﬁcers’ commented on how the use of force

and patrolling tactics are used differently. For example, in focus group A, question 8,

oﬂicers’ indicated that it depends on where you work. Ofﬁcer #2 responded that when

60
you work at substation C you cannot use as much force, however, at substation B he can

get away with hitting and kicking somebody and nothing is done. For instance, ofﬁcer #2
transferred to substation C form substation B, he was told to settle down, not to arrest and
he realized the norm for that area was little law enforcement. Ofﬁcer #7 acknowledged
that certain policing behaviors depend on the side of town you work and the lower income
areas.

Consequently, the theme indicates that location and socio-economic status of areas
dictate the application of force in more communities than others. Less affluent areas
experience more practices of force and selective law enforcement. More speciﬁcally,
certain substations practice more force than others because of their location in the city and
the type of residents in that speciﬁc community. Since the ﬁndings allude to types of
audiences, some of the more intriguing data are that ofﬁcers’ are cognizant of their
audience and act out premeditated acts of physical force depending whose watching.

Ofﬁcers’ made several references that physical force would be committed under
certain situations. In focus group A, question 4--probing question 2, officer #3 described
a situation where he would have beat a suspect that broke an ofﬁcer’s nose, but because
there were spectators watching he did not do anything. Ofﬁcer #3 concluded the situation
with, “if its in a public place in broad day light your gonna have to wait, there will be a
time.” In the same focus group, question 14--probing question 2, ofﬁcer #1 provided a
detailed account of oﬂicers’ stopping another officer from beating a person not because
they did not want him to beat him, but because there was an audience and it was in the day
time. He concludes the situation by noting that if the same situation would have been at

night, things would have been different.

61
In focus group B, question 2, omcer #4 responded that “it depends on who’s

watching you... there were neighbors watching and right then and there you know you
can’t do anything, but then again I’ve seen ofﬁcers even in ﬁ'ont of people hit suspects.”
From the same group, question 3--probing question 2, oﬂicer #3 revealed that these sort
of behaviors are directed and supported by peers, he replied that “I will tell a guy, look if
your gonna do it, do it over here where people aren’t watching, you know.” From focus
group C, question 1--probing question 1, ofﬁcer #3 responded that as long as there were
no witnesses force is more likely to be used. As a result, these cultural recommendations
are a prelude to physical force behaviors according to preconceived criterion.

Finally, evidence showing an absent audience reveals that officers are provided
with a conducive setting where force is used. Ofﬁcer #3 replied:

Once you put the bad guy in the car whatever happens--happens that way

there are no witnesses, we had an understanding of, yeah, you don’t do

anything until your in the car and we have our backs, then you would just

WHACK, you did what you did.
The majority of physical force acted out is at night and is supported by peers.27 The
coupling of no audience and night time make for a dangerous atmosphere where force is
most likely to be used.

The ﬁnal two themes the researcher found most stimulating were “hospitalization”
and ofﬁcers’ description of “subculture shifts.” First, “hospitalization” occurred when a
suspect violated a major cultural norm such as injuring an ofﬁcer. The second theme
emphasizes “subculture shifts” at each substation.

The theme of “hospital” served as a punitive meaning. Ofﬁcers’ held this word

and its meaning with strong emotion. From focus group A, question 4--probing question

62
2, oﬁicer #6 responded that when an oﬁicer gets jumped, other ofﬁcers’ tend to ask what

happened to the suspect. However when ofﬁcers’ ask this question they are not
concerned whether the guy went to jail; ofﬁcers are more concerned with whether the
suspect went to the hospital before going to jail. What is implied is that the suspect
should be suffering from physical injuries. Ofﬁcer #1 described a situation and mentioned
that if a suspect ever fought or hit a police ofﬁcer there were no two ways about it, “this
guy is going to the hospital.”

In focus group B, question 2, ofﬁcer #5 described an event where oﬂicers’ act out
physical aggression on suspects just to ﬁt in. He closes by responding, “if these oﬁ'rcers
show up to your call or chase or whatever, they end up whipping on the guy because they
know they’re not the one who’s gonna have to take the guy to the hospital.” In focus
group C, question 11, ofﬁcer #3 and #2 made comments that afﬁx to the theme of
hospital. Ofﬁcer #3 responded, “I look at it this way, if you hurt one of my brother
ofﬁcers you gotta pay the price. If he’s (i.e., the ofﬁcer) going to the hospital so are you,
that’s the name of the game.” Ofﬁcer #2 advocated this type of rationale by responding
that the suspect is going to stay longer in the hospital than the ofﬁcer. In other words, the
suspect will suffer more injuries than the ofﬁcer. These responses indicate that ofﬁcers’
are adamant about using physical force excessively under certain situations. An underlying
theme is that after meting out force, ofﬁcers escort the injured person to the hospital for
precautionary liability reasons to cover up their behaviors.

When considering patrol culture at the shift level, some ofﬁcers’ described that a
smaller culture may be present with even stronger bonds. Focus group A, question

4--probing question 2, ofﬁcer #7 responded that “in each substation you’ll have at least

63
three sections and each section you’ll have your groups just like in high school.” Ofﬁcer

#8 replied, “you’ll have your cliques.” Ofﬁcer #7 answered, “like in dog watch, you’ll get
out there and if I worked with him a lot I know he’s going to take care of me and I’m
going to take care of him and the other people we work with, but if we know that one guy
always talks a lot, it kind of aggravates the situation” (see also ofﬁcer #6 and #2). In
question 12--probing question 1, officer #6 responded that because the department is
growing the cohesiveness is fragmented as a department, but substation wise its together.
In focus group B, question 3--probing question 2, ofﬁcer #5 responded, “we all
have our clicks especially depending what shift you are working.” Ofﬁcer #4 described
that when he was ﬁrst on patrol there would be certain groups. These groups stayed
together and an ofﬁcer would stay with that group until someone would get transferred.
In focus group C, question 4--probing 1, ofﬁcer #2 responded, “it depends on who
you work with. When we worked dog-watch we worked close with certain people
constantly. There were a lot of illegal understandings between us, you know, any way you
wanna take it... we had understandings.” From question 6, Ofﬁcer #4 and #2 provided a
dialogue showing that ofﬁcers’ share the view of a subculture shift. Ofﬁcer #4 begins
with, “on one shift a lot of the ofﬁcers... if you wanted to be accepted and yeah you did
use excessive force to be accepted; and working on that part of town that I did it. It
happened a lot.” Ofﬁcer #2 concludes by responding “on that shift, it was a tight shift, but
you have to earn the respect of the older officers and it took a lot to earn it, you had to do
a lot; and we used a lot of excessive force.” From these ﬁndings an assumption can be
made that because each substation has three different shifts A, B, and C, it is possible to

have three different subcultures under the auspices of a single substation.28

64
To what extent these behaviors are entirely carried out in the Sunnyville Police

Department is unknown. However, what is important are the intentions and possibilities
of such behaviors and methods of force embedded in the patrol culture. The hazard is that
these behaviors have the potential to become reality and that cultural semantics do not

provide reliable sources for decision-making.

CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION AND POLICY MPLICATION S

The ﬁndings demonstrate a socially constructed reality about the censored nature
of patrol work, including the normalization of physical force. The patrol culture shows a
tendency for ofﬁcers to implement methods of street-justice. Cultural inﬂuences are so
subtle because shared understandings of brotherhood, secrecy, street justice, and trust
remain remotely aware by ofﬁcers. These subtle beliefs become behaviors (artifacts) when
ofﬁcers socialize by observing and verbally communicating with other ofﬁcers via war
stories. Moreover, these cultural subtleties are what Sathe (in Ortiz, 1994268) compared
with the breath of human life, in that “like the air people breathe its powerful effects
normally escape the attention of those it most affects.”

One of the more striking patterns in the way ofﬁcers’ responded was when asked
questions about culture, force, and other topics, ofﬁcers’ responded initially with “no.”
However, when ofﬁcers’ expanded on their answers, these same answers of “no” revealed
that force is in fact considered a customary practice in the majority of all situations, and to
an extent used excessively. Ofﬁcers do not see their actions as wrong, even though they
know it is wrong. These types of values, behaviors, and routines are considered

commonplace, it is part of their job endorsed by the culture.

65

66
Making sense of this phenomenon requires one to recognize that force coupled

with culture, make for a haunting possibility of oppressive punishment. The ﬁnding that a
unit of the police department conducts its own norms and methods of force supports the
thesis that patrol culture is associated with the use of force, and is a central way ofﬁcer
thinking and behavior is guided. These circumstances may be more pervasive given that
only a small sample of such a large department was obtained.

Physical force is used instead of peaceful and passive compliance because it is
deemed acceptable by members of the culture. These behaviors are deemed acceptable
throughout the culture’s social and interactional process. Through these processes,
culture is constructed which lends heavily to situational and structural garnbits. According
to Manning, (19972265; see also J. Douglas, 1971:Chaps. 5, 6) “abstract rules, as they
become more and more situation speciﬁc, become resources for the interpretation of
behavior.” The culture’s blessing in the exhibition of physical force and the ambit of its
application is integrated informally in ofﬁcer social relationships.

Results show that ofﬁcers are inﬂuenced by peers and are prone to commit
violence when around peers. These behaviors are meted out in order to become accepted
into the culture and peer group. Ofﬁcers’ knowingly exercise force because the culture’s
“code of silence” bans reporting of force regardless of the type and situation. This “code
of silence” reﬂects a culture devoted to allegiance, secrecy, and loyalty. Other forms of
secrecy unfold in the form of lying by invoking that the “suspect fell” and simply not
revealing information. Heck (19922269) describes the status of a snitch as being
“generally perceived as a spy who is willing to betray the most sacred tenet of the

subculture’s code. Therefore, such behavior is unquestionably dishonorable” (also see

67
Makkai and Braithwaite, 1994 for reintegrative shaming).29 As a result, ofﬁcers’ that

volunteered information were alienated, even to the point where fellow ofﬁcers did not
provide “cover” for them.

The ﬁndings entertain that ofﬁcers’ espouse low-order physical force, with the
potential for excessive force when a suspect ﬂees or injures an ofﬁcer. Furthermore,
ofﬁcers’ practiced selective law enforcement against minorities and in certain areas of the
city. Given these traits of culture, physical force is applied carefully and is not made
public. Supporting what was found, Reiss (19722305) noted that most instances of
excessive force took place in private settings. The element of teaching, not as an
educational aspect, but “teaching in a punitive or parental fashion” through street-justice is
certainly supported and encouraged by officers. Techniques of physical force are most
popular using hands and blunt objects such as ﬂashlights. These methods are inﬂicted
strategically so that physical evidence of force cannot be detected. Given the nature of
culture-force nuances, the use of low-order physical force may lead to greater violence
with the public. Lastly, such beliefs-assumption, values-norms, and behaviors are socially
and morally condoned.

What this leads to is a moral contradiction ofﬁcers are sworn to maintain. These
moral responsibilities are central to policing. Greene et a1. (19922203) write on a duality
between right and wrong that recruits undergo when seeking employment within the
police occupation, “...recruits are attracted by the promise of a place on a moral high
ground, only to ﬁnd that the very institution which advertised this advantage is expecting
compromise.” The challenge for patrol ofﬁcers’ is to understand the moral nature of their

oath. Until these values are clothed in morality, the problem of physically punishing

68
people might never end. After all, the best values are those that do not devalue human

life. However, attempting to remove physical force from the police occupation is often
met with the rebuttal that doing so is not in the interest of the public. In other words,
many of the reasons for using force are couched in the public safety doctrine.

On a pragmatic level, questions linger: 1) whether patrol culture can be managed
in effort to revitalize police organizations, and 2) at what point should intervention begin?
Reiss (1971:122-3) notes that policing qualiﬁes for professionalization because it demands
choices that require moral and technical rulings that when performed carelessly threaten
the organization. Changing these professional standards for the better requires the
promulgation of policy. As a result, these ﬁndings reveal a need for change that Elias
(19822272) describes as a person who is master of their occupation “dissimulates the bad
turns he does, smiles at his enemies, suppresses his ill-temper, disguises his passions,

disavows his heart, and acts against his feelings.”

Policy Implications

Policy implications are based on descriptive patrol culture perspectives,
experiences, methods of forceful intervention, and more important socialization. The
practical application for police department’s is to apply empirical research toward
developing policy, increasing professional standards (see Cascio, 197 7), and move toward
the re—socialization of values; thus adopting a more humanistic approach. Optirnistically,
re-socialization is intended to place faith in verbal qualiﬁers. In order to manage culture,

police administrators’ must intervene by stressing training on verbal aptitude prior to

69
physical force training. This specialized training on verbal articulation must consume

numerous training hours.

Norrnatively, some focus should be placed on how police organizations can
ameliorate academy training, including how employees’ deﬁne and view situations that
contribute to patrol behaviors. According to Manning (19972265) “these complex
meanings create a problem for the police, for it is in their interest to construct and
maintain a coherent and consistent set of rules that under girds their authority and
provide for them the tools for maintaining social order.” In other words, although this
task might be met with reluctance its results are beneﬁcial.

Another theoretical dimension necessary for alleviating this phenomenon is the
close identiﬁcation between the larger organization’s formal and the patrol culture’s
informal dynamics. Ineffective formal mandates heavily promote the culture’s allure of
autonomy in handling situations with a heightened potential for using force. This
autonomy brings with it the potential for physical abuse. It appears that tight
administrative oversight at the patrol level is not likely the standard. Interestingly enough,
have police executives taken for granted that policing on the street has always been
informal and non-regulated or have they simply glossed over such cultural problems, or
both? Regardless of the rhetoric, patrol culture has the potential in developing into a
normalized culture imbued with physical force. Executives must not underestimate the
culture’s inﬂuential nature or its strength.

Reﬁning culture and physical force is an incremental process that must ﬁrst target
part of the organization (i.e., patrol division) before affecting the whole. Rescuing these

problems requires that theory play a more active role in guiding policy. Organizational

70
infrastructures should be examined to deal with the question of where bureaucracy

(departmental regulation of behavior) ends and culture (socially constructed reality of
bureaucratic deﬁciencies) begins. This investigation can help clarify why some ofﬁcers’
divorce themselves from departmental established rules and procedures and choose other
means of guidance such as the patrol culture. Geertz (19732218) writes that culture
provides sources of information that “come most crucially into play in situations where the
particular kind of information they contain is lacking, where institutionalized guides for
behavior, thought, or feeling are weak or absent.”

Police departments vary considerably in the application of force, but an ofﬁcer is
likely to experience ﬁ'equent temptations and invocations where the use of force and the
patrol culture tug-at decisions that can jeopardize his/her and the departments’ reputation.
A competent and professional ofﬁcer is one who can perrnutate aggression by
maneuvering eloquence in a fashion--through truth or chicanery--to escape violence and
accomplish a peaceful objective. These cadre of articulate ofﬁcers must initiate and help
design training that accentuates language skills in an attempt, if any toward peaceﬁrl
tactical inﬂuences with peers in the patrol group.

One solution is to discover existing verbal qualities in which oﬂicers’ ﬁnd ways in
using other means of compliance in replace of physical force. Preferably through verbal
aptitude, training instructors can exploit those skills in some beneﬁcial way where other
ofﬁcers can learn. Through verbal compliance police can achieve higher job satisfaction
along with lowering problematic occupational stressors related to violence.

Police can also recognize and enhance their status of independence by making use

of their verbal forte and proﬁciency. After all, police are enthusiastic about autonomy.

71
Departments must choose an alternative method of training where infelicitous gestures are

inept, because it appears police have lost their patience and have become visceral with
public agitation. Hopefully by re-socializing ofﬁcers to use more verbal aptitude, they can
rededicate to public service and neutralize the us versus them mentality of the culture
dour. Beginning in the academy and continuing through in-service training, an ofﬁcer’s
patrol career is consumed by attempts to develop, establish, and enhance practical ﬁeld
skills rather than probe for keenness of intellectual and verbal abilities. It is here where
new forms of specialized training may help ofﬁcers handle potentially violent situations via
articulation. These verbal skills must be arranged in the proper scheme of the police
academy before physical force training is introduced. Therefore, what is required is for
administrators and instructors to have a working understanding of what Manning
(1997244) differentiates as tactics ﬁ'om strategies:

Tactics are the speciﬁcs of strategies, techniques for gaining control in

face-to-face encounters or issue-oriented team situations. Tactics, ploys,

or gambits enable one-upmanship (or one-downmanship) and can result in

control over the other. While strategies or rhetoric are general forms of

symbolic action, tactics (in a linguistic mode or channel) are situated

vocabularies of motives.
Tactics are viewed as cognitive and analytical processes that cultivate and lead to the type
of action chosen. Banton (19642178 in Manning, 1997: 197) refers to tactics as
interpersonal skills in that ofﬁcers acquire skills unconsciously and cannot explain how
they solved situations because ofﬁcers are “not given to examination of their reactions.”
In other words, ofﬁcers are not challenged to think or explain critically how such problems

are amended. Replicating similar approaches that involve these training suggestions, one

can refer to Bayley and Garofalo (198922-3) who “...compared the performance of patrol

72
ofﬁcers who had been designated by their peers as being especially skilled at handling

potentially violent situations with the performance of a cross section of all others.” What
can be learned are “trade secrets” if any, of effective patrol ofﬁcers.

Observers of policing must understand that police are monolithic and “real”
methods of patrol work are not established in written directives. From this reality, police
administrators’ should designate panels to record when police use force and interview
each ofﬁcer for inﬂuencing factors that led to its use. These interviews should be
conducted by independent services that provide conﬁdential measures of security for
ofﬁcers being interviewed. After carefully conducting the interviews an anatomical peer
counseling and review of violence should be enacted; similar to the one of Oakland
ofﬁcers that resulted in a decrease in violence (Toch et al., 19752322-7).

This approach provides the department with greater measures and more accurate
means to detect and rectify ofﬁcer use of force. The mission is to employ and train a
cadre of professional ofﬁcers with a department devoted to extracting the use of force in
replace of peaceful and passive compliance. As a result, education has been designated as
one quality in the campaign for a more professional ofﬁcer (Carte and Carte, 1975).
Police executives must inculcate non-physical compliance that is symbolically ubiquitous
throughout the department. It is the Chiefs responsibility to target such behaviors where
officers are more prone to commit acts of violence. To accomplish these goals,
executives, administrators, and instructors must act as sales persons to persuade ofﬁcers
to comply with proper value systems.

Amid numerous patrol problems, we should not be quick at accusing departments

and ofﬁcers in the difﬁcult task of providing public service. This exploratory study tells

73
us little in aggregate about the Sunnyville Police Department’s patrol operations.

However, it does provide descriptive ﬁndings showing shared meanings and behaviors on
force between collegiate bonds and individual ofﬁcers within the patrol culture.

The study has demonstrated that patrol culture ﬁrnctions and engages under its
own guise. The potential net-widening of patrol violence illuminates the negative
consequences associated with oﬁicers’ adhering to culture and its powerﬁrl ideologies and
behaviors. These shared beliefs of culture elicit impulsive, conscious, and habitual acts of
meting out ofﬁcers’ own methods of justice individually and en masse. Crank et al.,
(1993 :200) recognizes that these “ideological beliefs become part of the cultural tool kit
that aims at inﬂuencing and redirecting social behaviors.” After all, “there is no single
issue which stirs emotions in the police-citizen relationship so fervently as the use of
excessive force” (Radelet and Carter, 1994240).

The researcher is conﬁdent that our policing institutions have not lost the essence
and integrity of American policing. It is the result of this research that future practices of
public service can become paciﬁc. This research hopes to direct change where an ofﬁcer’s
professionalism is attracted more toward service opportunities of altruism rather than

negative patrol culture dissonance.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A

APPENDIX A

ROLL-CALL SURVEY

Listed below are questions about your perceptions and experiences concerning ofﬁcer use
of force. Your answers will help others to understand the way police view situations from
the street. Your participation is VOLUNTARY and your answers are entirely
CONFIDENTIAL. Thank you for your assistance.

 

Please write answers in the space provided or if necessary write on back. You may
give answers brieﬂy or you may elaborate extensively. Please provide answers for all
questions.

1.

After joining the police department do you feel your values, norms, and perceptions
of the public have changed? Explain.

When in a physical situation (i.e., ﬁght), does the presence of other ofﬁcers
encourage and/or escalate the use of force? Explain.

Do you feel police ofﬁcers tend to develop ways of looking at situations that only
police oﬁcers can understand? Explain.

Does there exist an informal understanding (i.e., ways things should be handled) or
code (i.e., acceptable behavior by your peers; lawﬁrl or unlawful) when force and
excessive force is used and when it should be used? Explain.

What is your favorite tool (weapon) when using force? What led you to choose this
tool over another tool? Have you ever used it inappropriately? Explain.

Throughout your experience do you feel you have evolved, developed, and adopted
force/excessive force practices by learning or interacting with fellow police ofﬁcers?

How did you learn informal understanding or the way things are on the street? What
happens to somebody that violates the norms? Explain.

What are some factors you feel lead to the use of force and excessive force? Explain.

From your experience, do you see more force used against minorities and in urban
areas? Why do you think this occurs? Explain.

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10.

ll.

12.

13.

75

As a police ofﬁcer, from your perception and experience, what characteristics
escalate uses of force toward the excessive force continuum? Explain.

Do you make an honest effort to resolve situations in a peaceful and passive
manner? Based on your experience, would you say that excessive use of force is
frequently practiced in your police department? Explain.

Is it more likely that excessive force will be inﬂicted on individuals that physically
hurt or have placed fellow police ofﬁcers in physical danger? Explain.

Do you perceive there to exist a police subculture that socially inﬂuences similar
patterns of beliefs and behaviors within the police occupation? Do you feel these
similar patterns of beliefs and behaviors contribute to the overall use of force or
excessive force?

APPENDIX B

APPENDIX B

FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW A: EIGHT PATROL OFFICERS
Patrol Culture Questions

Question 1: After joining the police department do you feel your values, norms, and
perceptions have changed?

Ofﬁcer #2: Mine haven’t. Even though the ofﬁcers that have come out ﬁom the
academy have talked about theirs changing. I don’t really feel mine have, because I feel I
have a lot of experience. I came on the police department when I was thirty so I think the
younger ofﬁcers are more apt to change with more negative feelings toward the public.
So when I train these younger ofﬁcers when they do something they pretty much tend to
pick it up and stick to the same methods in handling situations.

Ofﬁcer #4: I disagree with #4, not to say that he is wrong, but from my point of view
when you come out you come out like a ball of ﬁre. You wanna save the world, you
wanna get to every call fast, you wanna be the person ﬁrst on the scene and as time goes
on you tend to notice that the more you try to do the more shit you ﬁnd yourself getting
into and you ﬁnd that sometimes the brass don’t back you up and it makes you to
sometimes be more cautious of the things you do because... well it just changes over the
years, my values have changed since I‘ve been on, more so toward the public, at least for
me.

Probing Question 1: Do you think the public perceives you differently?

Officer #4: I think its both, because when I ﬁrst came out I wanted to help each and
every person to the ﬁrllest extent that I could but as time went on especially if you have a
district you get to know certain people and situations and you respond by trying to pacify
people and there are times when you go out of your way to help elderly, but there are
other times when those troubling calls that are repeated you just want to beat the shit out
of them and you end up taking them to jail.

Ofﬁcer #7: I agree with you (referring to #4), that when you ﬁrst come out of the
academy that your a ball of ﬁre, your ready to go and when you actually hit the street you
don’t have time as a patrol ofﬁcer, you have to make your calls from here to here to here
and when you actually ﬁnd out that happens you forget about the people, or at least that is
the way I see it. When ever I go to a disturbance I have to get in and out and have to get

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as many calls as I can under my belt so that the next person or person next to my district
doesn’t have to come in my district and take care of my area and that is when I tend to
forget about the people.

Ofﬁcer #1: I remember when I was younger I met a lot of cops that didn’t give a shit
about anything. They would push you around, hit you, and as a cop I wanted to help
people and I said to my self, that was something I totally didn’t want to be. However, I
came out an asshole and became just as those that I didn’t want to be, I pushed people
around, I became what I said I didn’t want to be. I was mean to people, mean to guys I
was arresting. I think it starts with the F TO (ﬁeld training ofﬁcer) and they are the ones
who mold you and I think right now and every body knows there are some FTOs who
shouldn’t be FTOs. We have some FTOs that don’t give a crap, who should say look we
need to spend a little more time, but what they say is we can’t and say this is what you
have to do to the new ofﬁcers. There are some ofﬁcers out there that do not give a shit,
they will take you to jail and beat the shit out of you, but its not the ofﬁcers fault its the
F TO’s fault. The F TOs play a real big part in how the direction of this ofﬁcer is going to

go.

Officer #6: When I came on 14 years ago it was an us against them mentality. It was a
get in, get it done, and get out deal.

Officer #3: I agree with #1, that when you go to apply as a police oﬁicer you have a
mind set that you are going to save the world and change the world. It is true, after the
academy your ﬁeld training ofﬁcers are the most important because they are the ones who
are going to mold you so to speak. If ofﬁcers can hide it and get away with it then that is
when this behavior comes out. But another important factor is the upbringing of the
ofﬁcer, I feel that some ofﬁcer just have bad attitudes before entering the police
department. I feel its the same, that a lot of ofﬁcers think “I am going to kick ass and take
names.”

Ofﬁcer #7: Another thing about FTOs is that when you don’t have an effective F TO its
the veterans who help out, and you go up to a veteran, he’s the one who tells you that you
need to calm it down or says, “hey you cant do this at this time because there is a time and
place for everything.” To me its both, when you get out on the street, the veterans and
the people around you (fellow ofﬁcers) are the people that mold you.

Ofﬁcer #1: You can go into a scene and everyone knows that your going to juice (rough)
them up a little bit. There are young guys who want to get into ﬁghts and there are
veterans out there who feel it is not worth getting hurt over this guy; and yeah wise cracks
are made over getting into ﬁghts and kicking ass.

Question 2: When in a physical situation (ﬁghting) does the presence of other
ofﬁcers encourage the use of force/excessive force?

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Officer #4: I feel it discourages cause you‘ll always have ofﬁcers who will have cooler
heads depending on the situation, if this guy just busted you up side your head you want to
whip his ass. Every ofﬁcer here at this table has probably crossed the line or almost
crossed the line in whipping ass, but ofﬁcers that are present have kept them from crossing
that line by pulling him back and telling them that hey this is not the time or place.

Officer #2: Once that ofﬁcer goes and attacks the rest of the ofﬁcers aren’t going to just
watch. It’s going to be I would say like ants on a dying insect. You look at Fiesta
(ofﬁcer made physical gestures of punishment) that’s the way it should be, that‘s the way
we were taught. If someone attacks an ofﬁcer, that guy is gonna get punished.

Officer #4: Yeah, everybody’s gonna get their licks in.

Ofﬁcer #2: Yeah, I’ve stood and watched because there’s been like 25 ofﬁcers on one
guy, everybody’s looking at me like why don’t you jump on. I’ve only said; its OK but it
won’t happen here because it would be too many ofﬁcers on that one guy just like Rodney
King.

Officer #6: I ﬁgure it this way, you get punished all the way, you jump an officer you
know, you’re going to get punished all the way; you got a badge, a night stick. He wants
to ﬁght you, that man’s crazy you got to take him out quick.

Probing question 1: Do the presence of other ofﬁcers escalate the force?
Officer #6: It’s a reaction, I’m going to go after them.

Officer #2: There are some ofﬁcer who won’t start anything until they know ofﬁcers are
right behind them. As soon as you show up, boom the whole situation explodes, its kind
of like big brother is there. (All ofﬁcer reply in agreement with whispers of “exactly” and
6‘yeah39).

Officer #7 : I have seen that where I work, during dog watch, I have seen that quite
frequently, where we would go to certain areas and an ofﬁcer would call for assistance
and we would get there and the ofﬁcer is looking at the bad guy or whatever you want to
call him on the other side of the street, and when we got there and the ofﬁcer would see
our car coming around the corner, the ofﬁcer would run toward the other side of the street
and start pushing and hitting the bad guy trying to cuff him.

Officer #1: These little crooks know that if they ﬁght back with the police they won’t get
charged with anything. We as ofﬁcers need to get out of worrying about getting in
trouble from the brass and getting sued because our safety matters to. Some ofﬁcers think
that we should take it easy with the force because we can get in trouble or sued, so they
are less likely to use force. We should get away from that frame of mind because if
someone hurts a police ofﬁcer they should get hurt three times more.

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Officer #5: I feel it discourages the use of force.

Question 3: Do you feel police ofﬁcer tend to develop ways of looking at situations
that are distinctive to themselves?

Officer #4: I feel we don’t develop ways of looking at things, but the public develops
them for us. They believe everything they see on television, if they see a choke hold being
used by an ofﬁcer on TV. right away they think its illegal and your not supposed to use
it. Well if he is justiﬁed in using it and they don’t know all the little rules of engagement
here. If he is justiﬁed in putting a gun to the guys head and blowing his brain out then he
is justiﬁed in using a choke hold on him; but they don’t see that, they see oh the police
used the choke hold, he is automatically wrong he should go to prison and ﬂy and be ﬁred
and that’s the way they view things. They don’t quite understand our job, and when the
police officer is exonerated then the public thinks the police are corrupt and covering each
other up.

Officer #1: It’s a misunderstanding they don’t know why we do these things out here.
This is why the ofﬁcers handle it this way because these are the steps they have to take its
not like they want to go out there and beat some one up or choke someone. We only have
certain options. Which ones are we going to have to pick.

Ofﬁcer #7 : I think that’s what is helping us out quite a bit, but some of the programs
(community policing). Even some citizens who participate in some of the community
policing programs and who ride along with the ofﬁcers and ﬁnd out what we do and they
learn what we do. They say we should beat them more, and I’ve heard that many times
you should take more action and beat that guy more. Whenever the public doesn’t
understand what we do they stereotype us automatically.

Officer #6: So we went from black jacks to night sticks to asps to pepper spray so the
physical punishment won’t look so bad.

Question 4: How would you describe the way some things are handled on the '
street? Are they by the book or informal methods?

Officer #4: The books, they are just guidelines.
Officer #7 : You can’t get through a situation strictly by the book.

Officer #1: The general manual is to protect the city not the police ofﬁcers just the city.
Now if we had a book to protect us...

Ofﬁcer #6: It would take you forever to make one call.

Probing question 1: So how are they on the street?

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Officer #7 : You get on the streets and you’ll ﬁnd out that as a new ofﬁcer if you go by
the book a veteran say’s hey come here this is what your going to do and we are able to
go handle another call in a little bit.

Ofﬁcer #4: And as you get time on you’ll have good instincts and you’ll gamble.
Ofﬁcer #3: In the book there is no human factor. There is no compassion.

Probing question 2: Is there an informal understanding among police ofﬁcers and
how things should be done concerning the use of force?

Officer #6: Yeah, ﬁrst thing an officer gets jumped right, other ofﬁcers ask what
happened to the suspect, 0’ they booked him. They booked him? Nobody called EMS?
He should have gone to the hospital ﬁrst.

Officer #2: If there is any kind of code now it would be more of mini-codes at each
substation, a group of ofﬁcers. They would have a code amongst themselves and there
might be three or four codes at each substation. I don’t think its in the department. It is
more at the shift level.

Officer #7 : In each substation you’ll have at least three shifts and each section you’ll
have your groups just like in high school.

Ofﬁcer #8: You’ll have your certain cliques in each shift.

Officer #7 : Like in dog watch, you’ll get out there and if I worked with him a lot I know
he’s going to take care of me and I’m going to take care of him and the other people we
work with, its in the shifts, but if we know that one guy always talks a lot, kind of
aggravates the situations, well, we’re going to be like we’re still going to get there, but we
are going to take our time. We’re not going to get there as fast.

Officer #1: We aren’t gonna give him back up because he talks. Where I work, there are
about eight to nine of us that pretty much when ever something would happen that if this
guy ever fought one of us or hit a police ofﬁcer there are no two ways about it, this guy is
going to the hospital. Now that I have transferred to another substation, if something like
this happens, I had a call where a guy kicked a police ofﬁcer, I get there I’m waiting for
ofﬁcers to beat this guy and I’m ready, but I hold back because none of the ofﬁcers do
anything and I’m thinking in the back of my mind that this guy knows that he just got
away with popping an ofﬁcer and nothings done. I think in the back of my mind damn,
this guy should have got hit. So I asked why nobody did anything and veterans said
because I don’t trust anybody, I don’t trust you, I don’t trust anyone. Its true, one of the
ﬁrst questions is why didn’t he go to the hospital before he got booked. You ﬁght an
ofﬁcer, your going to get some broken or dislocated body parts, there are no two ways
about it.

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Officer #7: I think the department is getting to big now. I mean, its getting so big you
don’t know who you can trust, because I’ m sure when you came on you knew everybody
(referring to ofﬁcer #6 with fourteen years of experience). That is probably why, because
the department is getting too big so you don’t know who you can trust so that is why you
deal with your little cliques on the shift that you work.

Probing question 3: Do you think there is an informal understanding?

Officer #2: I think there are some ofﬁcers we work with who go to a call and kind of say
if I come back your going to jail when if fact the situation called for the ofﬁcer taking the
guy to jail. So, when I have to go out and make that call this guy wants to take a swing at
me because the ﬁrst ofﬁcer didn’t handle the situation right the ﬁrst time. There was an
incident where two young ofﬁcers didn’t handle a call right and an older ofﬁcer wound up
shooting and killing the guy because the younger ones didn’t handle it right, and that
always stands out in my mine because I was there when he shot this guy, when you kill
somebody its never going to leave (all ofﬁcers agree with yeah, yes, and that’s right).

Officer #3: I was in a situation where an ofﬁcer got assaulted bad, nose broken the whole
thing but there was nothing I could of done because there were a hundred spectators.
This guy hit this ofﬁcer, he was about 235 and 6-3 and I’m chasing him and he turns
around to ﬁght and I take my asp out and this guy gives up and he is screaming to
everybody, “he’s gonna hit me” and he just gives up and he puts his wrists together and
you look around and you know your in a public place and there’s nothing you can do
about it. It crosses your mind to do it, “beat him” but you know the minute you do, the
minute you do especially since the suspect is a minority, he was a black man, forget it, as
it is, people came out at trial and said that we used racial slurs and we mistreated him
when nothing of the sort happened to him. So it all depends, a lot more happens behind
closed doors. If the guy likes to ﬁght things are gonna happen, but if its in a public place
in broad day light your just gonna have to wait, there will be a time.

Probing question 4: So is there an understanding among ofﬁcers of location, when,
where, and how which might influence police to use force.

Ofﬁcer #3: Exactly.

Officer #6: You bet it does.

Officer #8: Big time.

Ofﬁcer #1,2,4,5,7: Nod there heads in agreement.

Ofﬁcer #7 : That’s why I think at nights I’ve seen a lot; Rodney King looked good
compared to some of the things we’ve did.

Ofﬁcer #1: Oooooh. (All ofﬁcer laugh)

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Officer #7 : No, I’m serious there is a lot of stuff I saw, and that’s what happens.

Ofﬁcer #1: And when that guy comes back again, he knows that he won’t do that crap
never again.

Ofﬁcer #7: Yeah, that’s right.

Officer #2: The guys gonna say OK I did it and your gonna turn around and everybody
there’s gonna have less trouble. We’re not gonna go to court, we’re not gonna got to
trial, board advisors won’t come see me, and we’re not gonna have to do all that stuff
because he’s been taken care of properly the ﬁrst time; and the guy can remember faces. I
have guys in my area that won’t run from me because I’ll chase them. There are other
guys who if they know that ofﬁcer will not take off because they know that ofﬁcer won’t
chase him.

Probing question 5: When this happens say in the dark ally concerning when,
where, how, and why would you say the actions among ofﬁcers are excessive?

Officer #7 : It depends on how far you go, I think, most of it is excessive. (All ofﬁcers
agree on excessive)

Ofﬁcer #2: Some ofﬁcers are enforcers some ofﬁcers are talkers.

Probing question 6: Would another ofﬁcer come up to you and say look man, I
don’t think you should of done this?

Ofﬁcer #1: I don’t think so, I don’t think a younger ofﬁcer would do this. A veteran
might.

Ofﬁcer #7 : I don’t think so.

Ofﬁcer #2: A veteran might, but I don’t think younger guys will tell another ofﬁcer. No
one’s gonna tell #6 anything (with fourteen years of experience).

Officer #6: No ones gonna tell you anything, but if you run I will catch you some other
time and I’ll teach you not to run from me.

Officer #1: It depends sometimes on the severity of what happens to the ofﬁcer, I think
for most ofﬁcers its expected (all ofﬁcers agree with yeah or that’s right), and if it doesn’t
then that’s when those questions come up, “What happened why didn’t you do anything?”

Ofﬁcer #7 : Time and place is everything, and like we said, if he deserves it, or its gonna
help the situation; cause I would hate, for me being a younger ofﬁcer, and another ofﬁcer
got hurt because I didn’t do anything; and if another ofﬁcer comes up in a cofﬁn that’s
worst than me shooting somebody.

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Officer #6: Its worst for the actors who get hurt the most when there is a chase whether
on foot or vehicle.

Ofﬁcer #1: What #7 said is perfect (referring to the statement above).

Question 5: What is your favorite tool (weapon) when using force?

Ofﬁcer #4: Verbal judo.

Officer #5: Hands.

Ofﬁcer #1: Flashlight, but I use my hands a lot.

Officer #7: Hands and I like using my ﬂashlight.

Officer #8: Hands and the ﬂashlight cause its always in your hands.

Officer #3: Hands.

Officer #2: Talking and hands, sometimes ﬂashlight.

Officer #6: Hands and ﬂashlight

Officer #7 : A lot of ofﬁcers just want to make it home.

Question 6: Throughout your experience do you feel you have evolved, developed,
and adopted force/excessive force practices by interacting with fellow police officers,

whether they are learned or viewed by you and your peers?

Officer #2: Every once and a while there’s somebody to look up to and kind of maybe
adopt a way they go about themselves, the way they handle themselves, but...

Ofﬁcer #3: Depending on the ofﬁcers strengths, because you see one instance where the
guy got the crap beat out of him and you have to kind of decide on your own what is

going to work for you.

Ofﬁcer #2: And what type of stress you want to be under, because if you hit somebody
then you know your going to LA.

Ofﬁcer #3: Sometimes you don’t think.

Officer #2: But if you can put up with that then you go ahead and do it (rest of the
ofﬁcers agree).

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Ofﬁcer #6: That’s why I say, the chase is on, whether its on foot whatever, it don’t
matter; the guys gonna get it.

Officer #2: To much adrenaline.

Ofﬁcer #6: Too much is going through your head, your not thinking, you stop, your
there, you catch him, you know, ﬁrck him what are you gonna do.

Question 7: Does there exist an informal understanding of the way things are done?
How would you say you have Ieamed it?

Officer #1: It’s what you see on the street by other ofﬁcers. (All agree with physical
movements and some with yep and yeah)

Ofﬁcer #2: You see a veteran ofﬁcer do something and you see that he gets more respect
ﬁom ofﬁcers and the people he deals with, well then you wanna kind of, you want to
emulate or imitate what he does in order to get that same respect. Whether its how to
kick ass, talk to people, or calm situations, the young guys that learn and pick up stuff
from all of us, even I’m still learning with seven years of experience.

Probing question 1: What happens to somebody who violates the norm, how do you
feel toward those officers that snitch (tell) on other ofﬁcers about inappropriate
behavior?

Ofﬁcer #2: I have worked around one or two who have done it, and you usually ﬁnd that
the ofﬁcer doesn’t get any cover, he’s pretty much usually alone all the time, eats lunch by
him self because you really don’t wanna do anything around him, because you know he
will tell on you or report on you. I’ve had where an ofﬁcer would go tell the person that
another ofﬁcer beat on, hey this violates our professional standards, you shouldn’t be
treated like that... uh and that ofﬁcer did wrong, but you need to go get this guy in trouble
and have actually taken people over to complaints.

Ofﬁcer #7 : Yeah, they are considered out casts.

Officer #4: I think when an ofﬁcer crosses the line, you know, as a veteran ofﬁcer or
whatever, you ought to pull him to the side and talk to him and let him know hey, you
know these are the rules, you shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t do that... if your gonna do
this...

Officer #3: Don’t do it in front of me...

Officer #4: Don’t do it in front of me or any body else, and if he continues to do what he
wants to do and act, then he’s on his own. As #2 said.

Officer #6: That’s right.

85

Officer #3: I don’t wanna have to write a report saying I didn’t see anything or my back
was turned.

Officer #1: You have veteran ofﬁcers tell you, I mean, they have said, hey this guy has
gone out there and ratted on other ofﬁcers and stuff, if you ﬁght with somebody and put
an extra hit on someone and the ofﬁcer goes and tells the sergeant, he’s gonna start
getting zeroed out and stuff and he’s gonna start being out on his own. Your not gonna
trust him, your not gonna be able to arrest this guy, hell, your gonna not be able to do
anything. Your gonna be wondering if he’s gonna tell, if I’m doing this right or doing this
right. He’s gonna start doing things by himself. Veteran ofﬁcers will tell you if you get a
call with this guy watch out what your doing because this guy talks. He’s on his own.
This guy should if anything lie for you.

Officer #4: If I have a prisoner and you come over here or another ofﬁcer comes over
here and beats his ass; he’s your prisoner. (Instantly, all oﬁicers agree with 0 ’yeah and
exactly; emphasis added)

Probing question 2: Is there some kind of informal understanding of don’t mark up
my prisoner?

All oﬂicers are rather extremely assertive as trying to say something at the same time
wanting to be heard to express their feelings about this question (emphasis added).

Ofﬁcer #4: He’s mine, and he’s handcuffed, and he’s in my custody. He’s my
responsibility.

Ofﬁcer #7 : You mark him up and he’s yours.

Officer #2: All that person sees is this uniform. You take him and .....

Officer #8: All he sees is that badge number of the ofﬁcer who’s taking him in.
Officer #2: All the guy says is he hit me (referring to the ofﬁcer who took him in), and
you go wait a second I was over there talking to your wife and you were in my car and
ofﬁcer x went over there and hit you, it wasn’t me, but your not going to say shit; your
just gonna say I don’t know he fell. I’m not gonna go say ofﬁcer x hit him, he punched

him in the car.

Ofﬁcer #1: You have to think as a team, but then again you can’t go crap on somebody
else’s call or on their prisoner and have them get in trouble.

Officer #7 : It gets back to the thing, you have to try and take care of your own; and you
try to take care of that the best you can and if somebody crosses the line to far... uh...

Ofﬁcer #8: You get in your car and go.

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Officer #7 : Yeah, you get in your car and go, and its not to the point that you will ever
turn them in its just that when ever some kind of report comes down... you go with what
basically you saw.

Officer #3: I don’t think we should tell on each other, and I don’t think ofﬁcers should
investigate other ofﬁcers. I go, hey, you want to investigate other ofﬁcers have civilians
step in and do that shit. That way there’s no kind of ﬁiction there, but if someone is doing
bad all the time, hey you know, I don’t think its my duty to come in here and say this...
because he’s a brother police ofﬁcer, but just stop hanging out with him and its gonna
catch up with him one way or another.

Officer #7 : Take your self away from the problem.

Question 8: How far along in your career have you come to accept an informal
understanding of the way some things are handled on the street by fellow police
officer?

Officer #1: I don’t think we can answer that cause we’re still learning.

Ofﬁcer #2: I think right when you hit the streets.

Ofﬁcer #8: Right when you hit the street.

Ofﬁcer #3: Yeah.

Ofﬁcer #5: When you hit the street.

Ofﬁcer #6: Yep.

Officer #4: It’s a continuous process, your always learning.

Ofﬁcer #2: Like, I work C substation and if I were to go to B substation, and I wish I
did, it changes. You can’t use as much force, if you even look at someone wrong over
there you get complained on. Where at B substation I can get away with hitting or
kicking somebody and nothing is done, but working at C substation it could be a major

deal. I could be on the front page.

Ofﬁcer #7: It’s all about society. It’s about what side of town you work at, on the west
and south you work with the lower in come families.

Ofﬁcer #2: When I went to C substation I was told, hey settle down don’t work that
hard, you don’t arrest that much, whatever, and so its just kind of a different area, but

once you get on you start learning what the norm is for that area that your working.

Officer #6: Yeah they just look at you, every substation is different.

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Officer #7 : Yeah I think its a big eye opener cause right when you get out of the
academy I think, its a big eye opener cause some of the things that we do is ugh... right
when you get out of the academy your used to going by the book; hey driver let me see
your hands to the point of when running up to the car and dragging people out of the car
through the window, so I think its like you said, you learn right away, it starts kicking real
quick and like you said it depends on the area or where your at.

Officer #8: It’s continuous, you learn a lot right form the beginning and as you go along,
change comes slower.

Ofﬁcer #6: It’s a whole different world, working in the lower class and bad areas, you
get hurt, you really get hurt and the people get hurt.

Question 9: How do perceived dangers and risks of the police occupation make you
feel?

Officer #1: It depends on where you work at, at C where I work at I get made ﬁrn of
because the substation where I came ﬁom they say to me hey #1 , “Mr. Brutality are you
gonna take your gun to work this time,” and I’m not gonna lie, I’m embarrassed now
when they ask me, I’m really embarrassed because where I’m at now, I really don’t think
my job is dangerous compared to where I came from.

Officer #4: But when your relaxed like that, that’s when the shits gonna hit the fan.

Ofﬁcer #1: Where I work at rarely do I see anyone wearing their vests, not like B where
I came from, and sometimes I say to myself why am I gonna wear it, nothings gonna
happen.

Ofﬁcer #2: At least for me, once I start getting ready its a whole different transformation,
like a football player, you go into a different mind set. Once I come to work its a whole
different attitude. I have to watch my back, watch my gun, watch my probationary
ofﬁcer, its just a whole different set and attitude you have to take with you. There’s
always that chance where your gonna run into that someone who’s badder than you are.
(All ofﬁcer agree with yeah)

Ofﬁcer #3: The only thing that matters is going home where ever you work. If the guy is
a bigger and badder guy, I’m gonna take whatever measure I have to take to get home and
it’s just like what #2 said. Your here to do a job and your not Billy bad ass.

Probing question 1: Do you think these attributes create a sense of secrecy where
ofﬁcers can relate and build a cohesive understanding which attempts to justify
your actions?

Officer #4: I don’t think its a secrecy, its more of a miscommunication or lack of
communication. (All ofﬁcer respond with not feeling there is a sense of secrecy)

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Officer #3: We want the public to know, we want the cellular on patrol, so they can see
what we go through. When they ride with us and see the crap we put up with.

Sometimes the public even says you know what, I would have wound up hitting them even
more.

Ofﬁcer Use of Force Questions
Question 10: What are some factors you feel lead to the application of force?
All officers mention." Adrenaline and embarrassment.

Ofﬁcer #2: Your embarrassed by somebody and there are other ofﬁcers there and this
guy said something about your wife or mom or spit on you.

Officer #7: I think adrenaline, a lot, because if I know he’s in trouble and I have worked
with him close and I’m.... he’d be like my brother if I’m going out there really worrying
about him, man I’m pumped and I’m going to that call and that leads me to using it a lot
of times.

Officer #1: I think it’s to show the other ofﬁcer, hey, I mean your my boy so this is what
I’m doing for you; that’s what always happens.

Ofﬁcer #7 : Yeah right.

Officer #3: And I expect it back. If you do something for one ofﬁcer where its gonna
may be cost you going to LA. and the same situation comes up where that ofﬁcer is put in
that situation and if kind of backs down, your not probably gonna do that for that ofﬁcer
again.

Ofﬁcer #1: When I had gotten in that wreck over some suspects, I mean, wrecked where
I had to go to the hospital... I had fellow ofﬁcers call me and come up to me saying we got
him for you #1, don’t wony we’re not gonna let him do that again; and its just something
that’s done. (All officers agree).

Question 11: From your experience, do you see more force used against minorities
and in urban areas?

Officer #3,6,4,8,5,2: No.
Ofﬁcer #7 : I think attitude dictates on everybody.

Officer #8: I don’t think it really matters who you are.

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Officer #3: You don’t do things in certain areas because everybody has a lawyer like #2
says, because they have money, like he was saying location also dictates the application of
force. At substation C and D your not going to do certain things.

Ofﬁcer #1: Predominately at substation C there are a lot of whites who live there, look at
the east side, there are predominately blacks and they get arrested a lot but because there
are nothing but blacks who live in that area. So, I think Sunnyville is segregated by
location. In the East you have blacks, in the West Hispanic, in downtown Hispanic, in
North whites.

Officer #4: You can probably do almost anything on the east side and not get complained
on.

Officer #7 : The community just goes on with that’s just there life.
Officer #8: The community sees it like that’s the way it’s been.
Officer #6: It’s a normal part of there life.

Officer #7 : The community sees it as I’m supposed to get slapped, or I’m supposed to
get this, I’m supposed to get that...

Officer #4: I broke out on the east side and they say, “Aren’t you gonna hit me? Why
haven’t you hit me yet?”

Question 12: Do you make an honest effort to resolve situations in a peaceful and
passive manner?

Ofﬁcer #2: That’s always your ﬁrst, cause your always thinking of liability because that’s
what they teach you in the academy, liability, liability, cause the city is no longer gonna
back you. There gonna turn you over and let the individual go out and sue you
personally. The city’s gonna say OK, here’s 50,000 if you want any more here’s the
ofﬁcer he was trained. That’s why everything we get we sign off on, I mean the use of
force continuum and things like that.

Ofﬁcer #3: He’s right, liability is a big factor (All oﬁicers agree).

Probing Question 1: Based on your experience is excessive use of force frequently
practiced in your department?

Officer #6: Like everywhere else, you have a bad apple. Anytime you make a call with
an ofﬁcer you know who they are. (All ofﬁcers replied with “you know who they are”)
But since I’ve been on its gotten better. The cohesiveness is apart as a department, but
substation wise its together, because the department is getting big.

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Ofﬁcer #4: Our department has been real bad about taking care of problem ofﬁcers,
because we have had a few, but the one’s we have keep coming back, they hide them then
when everything blows over they come back. (All ofﬁcers agree on above statement by
#4)

Question 13: How do you feel toward individuals who inﬂict physical injury or have
placed fellow ofﬁcers in physical danger? What should be done to them?

Ofﬁcer #6: They get the shit beat out of them.
Ofﬁcer #3: They learn that they mess with the police they are going to pay.

Officer #1: Just like we said earlier, we have to show them that your not supposed to hit
a cop, so they really get it, he’s gonna get roughed up.

Ofﬁcer #7 and #8: They get their ass whipped.

Officer #4: We’re not here to ﬁght fair, we’re here to win.

Officer #2: They pay.

Probing Question 1: Do you feel teaching them a lesson is in order?

All officers agree that they wouldn ’t consider it a lesson, but they have to be taught that
your not supposed to hit a cop and If you do your gonna pay with pain.

Probing Question 2: Do you think this is morally and socially acceptable by
officers?

(All oﬁicers agree that it is morally and socially acceptable, with replies of yeah, yes,
and 0 ’yeah)

Officer #1: Working with other guys and socializing, that’s where your going to learn
everything.

Ofﬁcer #4: Your gonna learn things from every ofﬁcer your around, your gonna pick up
little bits and pieces from every ofﬁcer your around.

Officer #2: I tell my guys when your with me you do things like me, after that your on
your own, if you want to do them like me then great, if not, then ﬁne.

Ofﬁcer #1: There are ofﬁcers who have the mind set who would argue with us that what
we do is wrong, they shouldn’t be ofﬁcers, there’s no to ways about it. I mean, for them
to sit here literally and argue with us that we shouldn’t be doing that, they’re human
beings this and that; get another profession go do something else. I mean, your gonna

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have some one giving ﬁiction, I mean, if you think about it, no one here talks ugly to
them, we don’t beat them for anything, I mean there is always something behind the
beating. I don’t think there has been a huge story in this department of use beating
anybody for no reason at all, there has always been something behind it. I’m sure that
there’s police ofﬁcers out there right now who think that we’re doing wrong or our
training is wrong, and we’re to mean to people; maybe you shouldn’t be a police ofﬁcer
then.

Final question 14: Do you think there exists synonymous socially prescribed
patterns (i.e., attitudes, beliefs, norms, values, etc.) within the police occupation?

Ofﬁcer #1: I think so, I mean look at it, you got someone over here with 14 years on...

Ofﬁcer #6: Look at all of us, we’re all ﬁ'om different substations and we’re saying the
same things and agree on practically everything.

Officer #4: Yeah, we all say the same thing.

Officer #1: There hasn’t been that much debating, in fact I don’t think there’s been any
debating, unless some ofﬁcers have not been truthﬁrl.

Ofﬁcer #3: I mean, look we all agree on the things we said.

Officer #7, 8, 5 and 6: Yeah.

Ofﬁcer #2: Your gonna have some ofﬁcers that are gonna be off in left ﬁeld, they just
have a whole different attitude, and their not gonna change, and their values are

completely different.

Officer #3: Each department is gonna have a bad apple, that’s why like he said, this
department has to put an end to it, they know about it... put an end to it.

Probing question 1: So your saying the department’s fully aware of the bad apples?
(A 11 officers agree with replies of... yeah, yup, and yes)

Officer #4: The department’s afraid, that’s what it is, the departments afraid.

Officer #1: The department’s afraid of disciplining anyone who needs it.

Officer #7 : Because of law suits.

Officer #2: I’ve been told by sergeants, you need to watch that guy, and I tell them that’s
not my job; that’s your job.

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Officer #5: It’s true, there are a few bad apples.

Officer #1: When I go out there, I’ve always looked up to the veterans, I’m always
asking questions left and right, just to see what they expect because I don’t want to be an
ofﬁcer... because they have a disliking for something I want them to tell me, hey #1 stop
doing that or whatever the case may be. I mean they will explain to you what should and
shouldn’t be done.

Ofﬁcer #5: I’m gonna be wanting to take advise from veteran ofﬁcers, that’s where it’s
at.

Probing question 2: Do you feel these shared understandings and patterns
contribute to the overall use of when, where, how, and why police use force?

Ofﬁcer #2: It all boils down to that right there. (All oﬂicers agree)

Officer #1: It’s just like #3 said with that situation he bad, if it would have been night
time, who knows what would have happened. I mean, but, if it’s in the day and everybody
is looking, you can have an oﬁicer that zeros in on the guy and starts going at him, I mean
your gonna have ofﬁcers pulling him back and there not pulling him back because they
don’t want him to beat the shit out of him but it’s cause you have people looking during
the day time, most of the time its gonna be in the night time, during B shift or C shift.

Officer #6: I think that much pretty sums it up, adrenaline has a lot to do with it.

Ofﬁcer #4: Everybody was wondering after that guy killed that cop, why we didn’t kill
that guy when we caught him. I mean, that guy comes out with his hands up and ofﬁcers
are saying why didn’t you... Boom.

Officer #3: It’s just like what happened to me, I should have taken over that call when
that oﬂicer got his nose broken, cause he wasn’t handling it right, I should have said, hey
I’m taking over this call; but you just don’t do that... that is not done, even if the ofﬁcer is
a veteran. (A 11 officers agree)

Officer #7 : Especially if your a younger ofﬁcer... you better not do it.
Officer #3: The things you incorporate from other ofﬁcers, that’s the most important
thing, but there is a limit on the amount of force, but I ﬁnd that’s very difﬁcult to accept,

that there’s a limit.

Probing question 3: What measures would you take to decrease the use of force and
excessive force?

Ofﬁcer #4: I wouldn’t want to curb the use of force, because this is my opinion, I think
the high proﬁle use of force cases that your hearing about that the public gets all pumped

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and in an up roar about are justiﬁed uses of force, and it’s gonna happen, your a police
ofﬁcer, its gonna happen, your going to a hostile situation. The public needs to be made
aware of the whole situation. The departments scared about civil service protection, that’s
what they are scared about, sure the guy gets suspended but then he’s back on the street...
I don’t know, I really don’t know what should be done, if they need to change the by-laws
or what, but then that leaves us good guys out in the open also.

Ofﬁcer #2: But once that ofﬁcer gets away with whatever he did and knows he’s back
on the department, he knows he can do it again.

Officer #4: A lot of these bad apples that we’re talking about, a lot of them don’t hit the
media, you or the general public don’t know...

Ofﬁcer #2: Right, right, yeah.

Ofﬁcer #4: Us knowing about it, it’s like your family what goes on in your house your
neighbor don’t know about it; but you know what’s going on here, you know this, that,
and the other. Same thing with us, we know about the bad apples and you and the media
don’t know about it. What I’m talking about is you looking from the outside in. OK, if
the chief can’t ﬁre you, which he can’t do, he can only suspend you for each infraction, he
can transfer you to anywhere in the department which he can do with any excuse, just get
him off the street, where he gets a desk job and weekends off...

Officer #1: He gets practically rewarded for doing bad.

Probing question 4: Since you say its like a family, but don’t you want to get rid of
these bad apples?

Ofﬁcer #1: But what can we do, can you imagine...

Probing question 5: Can you write a memo saying X officer is doing this...?

(A 11 ofﬁcers respond by saying No with emphasis, you can ’t do that)

Officer #2: Cause then that goes back to being like a rat (telling). Even though you
know and everybody else knows that he’s a bad guy and you write a memo and you go to
the sergeant, hey this guy sucks don’t put me with him, he’s not gonna do anything.
Officer #1: All the ofﬁcers come back on the force; there saying damn, I can almost get
away with murder, and you know what, you can’t blame us, you blame the department

cause they should of dealt with it the ﬁrst time it happened.

Officer #3: You know what, it’s a race issue because the city gives them back their job
because of their race. The city is afraid...

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Ofﬁcer #1: The city’s afraid.

Officer #3: The city is afraid of a lawsuit from the ofﬁcer, you know what, as soon as he
mentions because of my race and I’m gonna prove it, the city backs off.

Officer #4: We have already had an ofﬁcer go lawsuit crazy on the city and won... one
point something million.

APPENDIX C

APPENDIX C

FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW B: SIX PATROL OFFICERS

Patrol Culture Questions

Question 1: After joining the police department do you feel your values, norms, and
perceptions have changed? How have your perception of the public changed?

Officer #3: I don’t look at the public differently, but I know I’m perceived differently
because I’m a police oﬁicer especially in uniform, but my perception of the public hasn’t
changed much, you see the same kind of stuff everyday. It depends on the person, there is
a lot of people out there that have a lot of respect for cops, and there’s a lot that just hate
police. I had a situation yesterday when I went to this call and a guy just came up to me
and said I hate cops and I said why, what’s the deal, and he said because you all think you
can kick every ones ass and get away with it and I said hey, wait a minute we’re not all the
same so don’t judge me. Then he threatened me, and he kept saying that he hates ﬁrckin
cops and I don’t like you and this and that... and then I didn’t want to hear it any more and
I turned my back to leave and he said I’ll see you in the shadows bro; then I took my
glasses off and said what the ﬁrck do you mean, you know... as a police ofﬁcer the public
deﬁnitely treats you different.

Officer #6: My values haven’t changed.

Ofﬁcer #5: I get a lot of positive feed back from the public and the people I come in
contact with, but then again you have certain people who just don’t like police ofﬁcers. It
might have been because they were in a situation that didn’t go there way and they take it
out on police ofﬁcers, you know, from there on they think all ofﬁcers are bad. There are
some bad ofﬁcers, you know.

Officer #1: I agree with #5, it all depends on the situation and the person and the time
your working, there’s gonna be a lot more aggression toward police ofﬁcers at night that
is aimed toward us, but ugh...

Probing question 1: Do you feel a lot of police ofﬁcers look at the police occupation
as an us-against-them mentality?

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Officer #6: Yeah, I think that it has always been like that and a majority of police feel
that way.

Ofﬁcer #5: Yes, its hard for police to see the nice people as not a threat, so we see every
one as bad and that us where that us versus them mentality comes in.

Officer #2: Well, sometimes its like that and others its not, but I feel that its like that.

Ofﬁcer #3: The ofﬁcers you hang out with kind of reinforce that police mentality of us
versus them. Sometimes the public does not help or even care about the things that we
experience, so that does not help any.

Officer #4: That mentality has been around for a long time and I don’t think that is gonna
go away.

Officer #2: My perception as far as ugh... I guess in growing up I have come to accept
and become more sensitive of the public and why some people do the things they do... as
far as positive feed back not really.

Officer #4: When I put on a uniform, it’s like right away, when I step out of the house,
it’s like I feel like a target. I know the neighbors look at me different, and say, hey there’s
a police oﬁicer there.

Question 2: When in a physical situation (i.e., ﬁght) does the presence of other
ofﬁcers encourage and or escalate the use of force/excessive force?

Ofﬁcer #6: You have those ofﬁcers that have already decided what there gonna do, and
there are others that feel they have to join in and be apart of it in order to feel accepted
and just so they can ﬁt in so, that way the other ofﬁcers will know, hey he’s cool.

Officer #3: I got a situation where I had to go before I.A. (Internal Affairs), for
excessive use of force, and here is the deal: I chased this kid, I knocked him down, he fell,
he eats a bunch of rocks, I never struck him, bite him, pull his hair, kick him, nothing...
and I never grabbed his nuts like they say I did. When an ofﬁcer’s safety is in jeopardy,
your blood starts to boil, especially a police ofﬁcer someone you work with everyday. So
I get this guy handcuffed, and I’m catching my breath and two or three ofﬁcers pull him
away; and I get a letter two weeks later from LA. saying, you know... well someone had
grabbed his nuts and slammed him against the car. I had to go before the board for that,
but what I think happened was that other ofﬁcers saw me chasing the kid that the ofﬁcers
did that... kind of like what are you doing running from a cop. Yes, I mean, the force was
excessive, but I didn’t do it.

Officer #6: I had pretty much the same thing, but I had another ofﬁcer stop another
ofﬁcer. I chase this guy, get him hand cuffed, and get him under control; I didn’t touch
him at all. As soon as another oﬁicer gets there he starts kicking him, and I’m just

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watching instead of pulling him away, because he’s my prisoner, he’s my prisoner, if he
hurts him its gonna be his prisoner, but its mine because I’m the one who started the
chase, I’m the one who’s gonna have to write the report. He starts kicking him, yelling at
him, you know, why did you run, why did you run? I’m just watching and another omcer
comes in and stops him, picks him up and takes him to my car... some ofﬁcers don’t
realize that we’re in the same uniform, who’s ever name tag they can actually read that’s
who they are gonna complain on. Any time I see anyone trying to read my badge and my
name, I start turning away. I mean that’s the way it is, no really I swear to God, I do that
all the time. When I see another ofﬁcer slap someone, I’m not gonna watch it. (Officer
#6 makes physical gestures as moving his right shoulder as to conceal or hide the side
where badge and name are positioned)

Ofﬁcer #5: I think it has a lot to do with peer-pressure, wanting to ﬁt in, cause when I
came out; someone ran or something like that you paid, I mean some of the older guys or
the guys who have been on longer than me, they wallop guys, they let them know, hey
your running from us your gonna pay. I’ve gotten into chases and stuff, and other ofﬁcers
will show up and they’ll let them have it. You know, and I’ve done it before also, I
wouldn’t go over board where the guy is laid out, and just to let them know and a couple
of times I’ve gotten hurt when I tried to inﬂict pain on the prisoner and wound up at the
hospital my self. And that’s another thing, if these ofﬁcers show up to your call or chase
or whatever, they end up whipping on the guy because they know there not the ones
who’s gonna have to take the guy to the hospital. I think it has a lot to do with
peer-pressure and wanting to ﬁt in.

Ofﬁcer #2: Yeah, like with these old timers it’s probably more acceptable. I like to call
it, “applying the healing hands of the law, ”you know, cause if somebody runs or
something like that, your doing it because hopefully he won’t do it again.

Officer #5: But I think lately its out down a lot because they’ve been giving out
suspensions, and especially with the new chief who’s big on public relations.

Ofﬁcer #4: It depends on who’s watching you, cause one time I had this one guy who I
was chasing, I got him handcuffed and there were neighbors watching and right then and
there you know you can’t do anything, but then again I’ve seen oﬁicers even in front of
people hit suspects, they just get so focused on what they are doing or the thing they want
to do.

Officer #2: Yeah, you just focus on that one thing and key in on it, and you don’t see
what’s going on around you.

Ofﬁcer #3: Plus a number of ofﬁcers, I’ve probably have seen a lot of oﬁicers because
the suspect has made them mad they will stomp on them a little bit more; but the more the
ofﬁcers then I might get my sneaky shot in or whatever, but I don’t wanna hurt the guy
real bad, just to get his attention; look don’t run, we’re the police. If it was somebody I
could trust he’s gonna get it.

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Ofﬁcer #1: We used to call it “street justice, ” there gonna pay to a certain extent. I
mean, you don’t want to cripple the guy, but you wanna make sure that he knows next
time that... you know. Its like gang tackling, your chasing somebody, you get them and
the rest of the gang gets there and their pumped up; they wanna do something. What are
they gonna do with their adrenaline; kick the tires of the car out. Hey, they gotta get their
little shot or something in and its over you know. You have to watch who you do that in
front of and you have to be able to trust the guys that are with you. If they ask you, you
say I had my back turned and I didn’t see it, and that’s just the way it goes.

Question 3: Do you feel police ofﬁcer tend to develop ways of looking at situations
that are distinctive to themselves?

Ofﬁcer #6: O’ the public will never understand.

Officer #1: Well it’s a different world out there from your regular job, who else puts a
bulletproof vest when they go to work, you know we do. So we go into situations that
are far more difﬁcult than sitting behind the desk and typing and pushing papers. They
may have respectable jobs, but at any one time or instance or circumstance something can
go wrong that’s why we wear these vests, so things are different when we are out there.

Ofﬁcer #5: I think, I think they think we’re just out there, I hear comments that you are
just worrying about going to eat, you get free food, you get away with a lot of stuff, you
speed, you run red lights and everything like that, but they don’t want to realize the fact
that we’re, making calls, but... I don’t think people understand what’s going out there, not
at all, they just want to see it one sided. It’s kind of your world and there world.

Ofﬁcer #2: I mean, even growing up you don’t know what’s going on around you. A lot
of times you don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors, you don’t realize that a lot
of stuﬁ‘ that’s happening here is always happening. I can see why it would be difﬁcult to
understand, unless you go out there and do it.

Probing question 1: As police officers do you trust the public? Do you trust your
peers?

Ofﬁcer #3: There are some ofﬁcers you trust and others you don’t. Like my partner, I
can trust him, if I mess up I know he won’t say anything. There are certain people who I
can’t trust even police ofﬁcers. There have been times where ofﬁcers have gotten in
trouble because what certain ofﬁcers said. Just like that time with that kid, none of the
ofﬁcers told or said what really happened and I know there was about six or seven of them
who I know saw what happened because when I looked up I saw who did it and nobody
said anything. There are some ofﬁcers who will not wanna say anything, but under
pressure and it’s a serious incident then they might come forward and say something.

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Officer #6: And you gotta understand too that you do something about ratting on
somebody or you do give some information up on force that was used, you better get
ready to start making calls on your own, your gonna be singled out.

Probing question 2: Do you think there is a silence of not telling about certain
things among police ofﬁcers?

Officer #3: Yeah, cops don’t tell on other cops.

Officer #6: I think we all know that officer should not tell on other ofﬁcers, for any
reason.

Officer #2: He’s right, we should not tell.

Officer #4: Regardless of the situation, we should not say anything because all we have
to trust are other ofﬁcers.

Officer #5: We have to maintain trust with each other, we are on the same team.

Officer #3: Ifyou say something, and it gets out that your a rat deﬁnitely your gonna
make calls on your own, they will be slow to cover you or something like that.

Officer #6: Your cover’s gonna be saying he’s a long way off all the time (All ofﬁcers
agree with yeah), it’s sad but it happens.

Officer #3: I will tell a guy, look, if your gonna do it do it over here where people aren’t
watching, you know. I’ve had county guys back me up with... there are some ofﬁcers you
can trust and others you can’t.

Ofﬁcer #5: We all have our clicks especially depending on what shift you are working.

Officer #2: I think if the situation is real serious that another ofﬁcer beat the shit out of
some guy and your job is on the line I think it would be different and some might tell.

Officer #4: When I ﬁrst got on, you can tell, there would be like certain people and
certain groups that would just hang out together, and Ijust interpreted it as that’s just the
way it is, you know you just have your little buddy here and somebody else you know, and
you just stay with that group until someone gets transferred or something. To me that’s
the way it is.

Officer #3: Not everybody likes it up there, there are some people you don’t want to
make calls with because you know just the way they handle it that its not right.

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Officer #6: There are some officer who handle situations where, when they approach the
situation they are screaming and yelling and that pisses the other parties off then you have
a shouting match; and then you gotta get involved.

Question 4: How would you describe the way some things are handled on the
street? Are they by the book or informal?

Officer #6: Some of its taught, may be ten percent is taught the rest is learned on the
street.

Officer #5: Yeah right, the book doesn’t help for crap.
Officer #4: Stuff that is taught in the academy doesn’t help, its just for liability.

Officer #3: We learn more from the streets and hem other ofﬁcers, that’s where all the
other stuff is at.

Officer #2: Things are handled on the street in ways that the public does not know about.
Officer #1: Things are done the way we see as right.

Officer #3: You learn as much as you can get away with.

Officer #2: You learn it from the street, from your fellow ofﬁcers when you go out and
you see an ofﬁcer handle a situation like this or that. By working with other ofﬁcers you
can always learn.

Ofﬁcer #1: Your peers and something to the learning process.

Officer #6: Your learning never stops from day one, your always gonna learn something
new.

Probing question 1: Does there exists an understanding in the way things should be
handled, when force and excessive force is used?

Ofﬁcer #6: Yeah, when force is used we don’t tell on each other.

Officer #1: If that person runs or hits another ofﬁcer, watch out cause that guy is gonna
get it.

Officer #5: We all know what happens on the street when force is used.

Officer #4: Yeah.

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Officer #2: The code is like, it’s like a family member these people are close to you, you
know, if you go to a ﬁght and one is a stranger and the other is someone close to you. I
would say the one who’s a stranger you wanna go to their defense, when its someone
close to you your not only want to go to their defense, you wanna hurt the person that
hurt you or your close ﬁiend or family member whatever the case maybe. These ofﬁcers
that you work with and you work with everyday, and your just more passionate about
doing harm to others that hurt other ofﬁcers.

Officer #3: It’s sort of a general rule, once you come out, you learn, your gonna want
them to be there for you when you need help... so no one volunteers any information...
wait for LA. I’ll wait till someone calls me and then put what you wanna put. You know
you learn, when you come on a scene and something is up, just turn your head, because
one of these days your the one who’s gonna need help. So, there is a code of silence, you
do your job, and whatever he does-he does.

Question 5: What is you favorite tool (weapon) when using force?

Ofﬁcer #5: My hands and feet. I just feel comfortable with my hands and feet.
Officer #2: In my years I have yet to use my asp, I use my hands most of the time.
Officer #4: My hands and feet.

Ofﬁcer #3: My hands.

Ofﬁcer #6: My hands and feet. I personally don’t like pulling out my asp, cause if you
lose it then they can use it on you.

Probing question 1: What led you to choose this tool (weapon) over another tool?
Have you ever used it excessively?

Officer #3: It depends on how many your dealing with, who your dealing with, how
afraid you are, if] feel really threatened, the gestures, how fast my hearts beating.

Officer #1: The asp is a good door knocker.
Officer #5: 0’ yeah, I’ve crossed that line where my actions have been excessive.

Officer #3: You get so made sometimes, I’ve knocked somebody across the head with a
ﬂashlight, but because I hurt my shoulder. We had him kind of under control and he was
still wrestling with us to get his attention... POP, and kind of assault him so he will stop,
but we had to take him to the hospital. I’ve used my ﬂashlight but not my asp, cause
that’s what I had in my hand at the time.

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Officer #4: I think it’s more like an adrenaline thing, your gonna put your two cents in
there and when it does happen and plus its like when everybody shows up your gonna
want to be part of that, you may over do it a little bit; that’s just the way it is and that’s
the way it goes sometimes.

Officer #5: It’s like what #4 is saying, its about being pumped up. Because I remember
we were on a big car chase, these two pecker woods stole a van. Every one was on this
chase, you had guys on the other side of town involved. So these guys bail out and I’m
chasing these guys on foot, and one of the guys falls down and he tries to get back up and
I have my night stick and I just CLOCK him on the back of his head and he just dropped
and he started getting back up again and I kicked him in the face and he dropped again,
and I try to jump on him again and everybody bum rushes me so they can get their shots
and I go ﬂying in the air. I’ve gone over board, I’ve thrown my ﬂashlight at people when
I’ve been chasing them.

Ofﬁcer #3: When its dark and the guy’s running, he’s going to the hospital or he’s really
getting hurt. If the opportunities there a lot of these ofﬁcers will take it.

Officer #6: I would say I haven’t used excessive force, well, at least not yet, it’s more
what I’ve used is understood they’ve deserved it. I haven’t used a close hand yet, mainly
open hand because it pisses them off even more, yeah, I just bitch slap’ em... (All ofﬁcers
agree and laugh)... yeah it doesn’t leave a mark, yeah, they say what; you just slapped the
shit out of me, and they get pissed off even more and it’s great cause you see it in their
face, get a little justice in... a little WHAP, WHAP!

Officer #5 and #3: Yeah, slap’ em.

Question 6: What happens to somebody that violates the norm? What are your
impressions of other officers who report other officers?

Ofﬁcer #5: The ofﬁcers who tell, they’re looked at differently, in some cases I
understand cause there was that trafﬁc ofﬁcer who got burned, now he don’t care who
you are, now he’ll give you a ticket; and I don’t blame him for that. He tried to help a cop
out and he got burned, and some ofﬁcer told on the ofﬁcer and he got burned, he got days
for it (suspended).

Officer #3: If I were to see him I’d probably say hey man your a dick, why are you gonna
tell on your own! Yeah, the guy is gonna be looked at differently. Personally, I wouldn’t
hate the guy, but I wouldn’t want to make a call with the guy.

Officer #2: No cover.

Ofﬁcer #4: Yeah, no cover.

Ofﬁcer #1: That’s the word, no body wants to back him up or give him cover.

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Officer #6: Or else he’ll get real slow backup.

All oﬂicers reply with: back stabbers, tattletale, not trust worthy.
Officer #4: If it happened to me I’d be really upset. I can’t believe this guy did it.

Officer #2: If I was uncomfortable with it I would go up to the ofﬁcer and say I don’t
appreciate it or hey don’t do this in front of me.

Probing question 1: How far in your career would you say you have come to accept
an informal understanding of the way some things are handled on the street by
fellow police officers?

Officer #5: A matter of fact my ﬁrst week out of the academy, my FTO and I were
chasing this one guy down town, next thing you know I end up catching the guy and four
or ﬁve bike patrol ofﬁcers come to the scene, there like, have you searched him yet? and I
say no, they say can we search him for you; I’m like yeah go ahead. Next thing you know
there picking up this guy by his balls and he’s screaming... and I’m like 0000... shocked,
damn are they doing this and from that point on I was like well OK, that’s the way they do
things around here, they make’ em pay.

Officer #3: You just go with it, whether its right or wrong, you have to work with these
guys.

Probing question 2: What if you question or say something to the officer?

Officer #3: If you were to question your FTO or a veteran ofﬁcer with why did you have
to do that? They’ll be like you don’t know what your talking about, wait until you get hurt
once or twice and wait until you make certain calls. When you ﬁrst come out, it’s like 0’
this is how it is.

Officer #2: But you have to understand that nobody has ever actually told me hey look
you have to get your licks in. Its more or less that you see it go on and then you do it or
not. If some ones gonna do it there gonna do it, whether its your prisoner or their
prisoner.

Question 7: How does the dangers and risks of the police occupation make you feel?

Ofﬁcer #6: There part of the job, I think there is more of a perception of threat and
danger because of television.

Officer #2: I don’t think we are a target.

Officer #3: Personally I don’t think every call I go to that I’m in danger.

104
Officer #4: But If you keep doing that it will hurt you a lot.

Ofﬁcer #5: When I came out I was stressed, pumped up, getting ready to go; when I get
in my patrol car ready to go I say a prayer. You get used to it, sometimes you feel you
have more control of the way things are gonna go that day.

Ofﬁcer #3: You are more conﬁdent, the more your out there and you really don’t worry
about getting hurt or being in danger. You learn from the ofﬁcers that are around you and
you know its OK, cause they’ve done it a hundred times.

Officer #6: People are always asking aren’t you afraid, aren’t you scared, your risking
your life? Not everyday. Some days you don’t encounter any type of threat and then
there are others where you might encounter one, but it’s part of the job.

Officer #3: The threat is there but its not immediate, but it could be.

Officer Use of Force Questions

Question 8: What are some factors you feel lead to the application of force?

Ofﬁcer #3: Drunks, people on drugs, I mean your ready, and when he makes his move
then your ready to go at it.

Ofﬁcer #4: I agree with #3, if the guy wants to be violent then I’m gonna be violent too.
Ofﬁcer #5: My main reason for using force is to get the situation under control.

Officer #1: I agree with #5.

Officer #6: Guys who run. There are guys who have strong verbal skills and those who
don’t, so they’ll use what’s ever best for them. If they can’t use their mouth they’ll use

force.

Question 9: From your experience, do you see more force used against minorities
and in urban areas?

Officer #5: It depends on where you work, I work on the south side, all I see are
minorities... Hispanics and blacks.

Officer #6: I’ve see it occur more against Hispanics.
Officer #4: Yeah.

Ofﬁcer #2: I agree.

105

Officer #3: It depends on the location and socioeconomic status. I’ve seen it happen
with a lot more minorities. If your living on the South side or West side its just the way
you grew up, you just take your licks and go on. If your on the north side, they say hey
you can’t treat me like that my dad’s a lawyer, a doctor, or whatever.

Officer #5: Yeah that’s the way it is.
Officer #4: The people with money make a big deal about it
Officer #2: Yeah, it depends on where you work that says what you can do.

Ofﬁcer #3: They have the resources to ﬁle complaints or follow up and know how to do
it and there is a way to do it. The people on the south side or west side are like who are
we gonna call we don’t have the resources, so take your licks and drive on.

Probing question 1: What about patrolling tactics, are they more aggressive or less
aggressive in certain areas?

Ofﬁcer #6: Most deﬁnitely, at substation B, D, and B there gonna be a lot more
aggressive because your dealing with mainly an uneducated area, low income, no respect
for anything, I mean they don’t give a shit. You have to be more aggressive, as soon as
they see your guard down or they see they can take advantage of you they’re gonna work
you; they’re gonna try and push your buttons as far as they can push you.

Officer #3: Yeah, you work different in different areas.

Officer #5: Well, actually when we’re sent out on bike patrol and we go clean it up, they
told us zero tolerance, and this came from the Captain of the substation. So we go out
there writing tickets for everything. Once these people started calling and complaining to
the substation about their tickets; and there some guys on bike patrol who are big time
ticket writers and their like hey you told us zero tolerance, cause the captain came down
on the sergeant and told him to tell us not to write anymore tickets. They told the
sergeant, hey we’re not trying to get you in trouble, but we’re just trying to do our job.
So yeah, there are different tactics, yeah, yeah I would say it happens, it happens.

Officer #2: There are a lot of people out there who don’t have the money and I’m pretty
sure it’s a lot different then lets say the north side.

Question 10: Do you make an honest effort to resolve situations in a peaceful and
passive manner?

Officer #5: Yeah, I do my best because if I don’t solve the matter then I’m sure I’m
gonna be back there later on.

Officer #1, #4, #6, #2: Agree with #5.

106

Officer #3: Sometimes there’s no resolving it, and you have to use force to solve the
problem by taking the person to jail.

Probing question 1: Based on your experience is excessive use of force frequently
practiced in your department?

Ofﬁcer #6: Not frequently, but it does exist and it has happened.

Officer #5: I think its cut down, because of liability.

Ofﬁcer #4: Liability is an issue and has may be it has decreased.

Ofﬁcer #3: I think it’s being changed because of the chiefs community policing efforts
and his trying to establish good community relation and he wants the community to like

US.

Officer #1: I equate excessive use of force to like broken bones. What do you mean by
excessive? Like I said, to me its like breaking bones, not lick the kicking or hitting.

Researcher: Excessive force can be considered the extra kick, the extra slap, the
grabbing by the groin, etc.

Officer #6: Well, a lot of us would not call it excessive force, he deserves it (All oﬂicer
agree with replies of yeah its what he deserves).

Officer #1: Well I would not call that excessive.

Question 11: How do you feel toward individuals who inﬂict physical injuries or
have placed fellow officer in physical danger, what should be done to them?

Ofﬁcer #6: From what I heard, when one of our ofﬁcers got stabbed, one of the
supervisors asked why isn’t the guy dead. If you think about it, yeah he shouldn’t be
living, but its just one of those things that the ofﬁcer got stabbed.

Ofﬁcer #2: Its just like if someone’s close to you.

Officer #1: (This officer makes gestures of rubbing his hands together and says): You
gotta pay, you gotta pay gentlemen!

Officer #4: I agree with #6 that the penalty should be a lot more stiffer.
Officer #6: It should be whatever happens to the ofﬁcer and then more.

Ofﬁcer #2: He’s gonna pay the price, your gonna wanna hurt them.

107
Officer #3: He’s gonna get it.

Probing question 1: Do you feel teaching them a lesson is in order?

Ofﬁcer #2: I wouldn’t necessarily call it a lesson, it’s kind a hard to explain. It’s not as if
you wanna do it, but it ’5 your gonna do it (emphasis added) .

Officer #5: I think it’s like this, it’s like having a baby or a kid, you do something wrong,
let them know they did something wrong; if your not gonna let this person know, what are

they gonna think next time; 0’ I got away with it the ﬁrst time well next time I can get
away with it again.

Probing question 2: Do you think the judicial system should take care of that?
Officer #5: After we’re done with them.

Officer #2: But right then and there when it’s happening you have to do what you gotta
do to enforce your justice.

Officer #3: Explaining it is like explaining what someone would go through like if having
a brother. You have that same feeling as if the oﬁicer was a brother, you go through the
same things everyday. So you build something and share things... and if someone jumps
on one of my brothers backs, then I’m gonna jump on them back, I’m not gonna kill them,
I just wanna say “BOOM,” this is what my brother felt, so here take some of your own
medicine.

Probing question 3: Do you think it is morally and socially accepted by other
officers?

(All oﬂicers agree that it is morally and socially acceptable)
Officer #5: Yeah I think it is, or at least with the ofﬁcers I work with.

Officer #3: I think so.

Officer #4: It’s just like going back to the brother thing, your gonna want to do
something about it.

Officer #2: Yeah, I agree.
Officer #6: They pretty much said it.

Final Question 12: Do you think there exists synonymous socially prescribed
patterns (i.e., attitudes, beliefs, norms, values, etc.) within the police occupation?

108

Ofﬁcer #3: I think because of what we do, and we all do almost the same thing, yeah I
think there exists a shared understanding of the way some things are done; but then again
each individual ofﬁcer is different. They’re probably not identical but they are pretty
close.

Officer #5: Yeah.
Officer #6: There shared.

Officer #2: It’s kind of like the attitude that we’re in charge, when ever we get called out
for something we’re in charge. We’re called out to solve and handle any situation and we
need to let the people know that we’re in charge.

Ofﬁcer #4: Yeah, I think there are shared understandings on the way we do things and
that we are separated from other people and the public, separate from the civilian life, I

guess.

Probing question 1: Do you feel these shared understandings and patterns
contribute to the overall use of when, where, how and why police use force?

Officer #3: Yeah, cause I might think the same way he does on certain situations and
when to use force, for instance in dark areas without being visible.

Officer #5: 0’ Yeah (with emphasis).
Officer #4: It’s understood if its at night he’s gonna get it.

Ofﬁcer #3: If the ofﬁcer can get away with it he’s gonna get his licks in if he wants too;
I’ve seen it especially if he is chasing the guy say through the woods and its dark.

Ofﬁcer #2: I think a lot of ofﬁcers and society has that an eye for an eye mentality, a lot
of them; you do the crime and you have to pay for it, you know.

Officer #6: Yeah.
Probing question 2: What do you think should be done to decrease the use of force?

Officer #3: I don’t know but a lot of smaller guys are quick to show their force to other
ofﬁcers. You can’t teach a dog new tricks. It has to begin in the hiring practices.

Ofﬁcer #2: A lot of these guys are idiots, there is no way you can talk to these guys. I
don’t think there is something that you could do that would actually help decrease use of
force cause your just dealing with such an array of people.

109

Ofﬁcer #3: We have a document on sensitivity training which is short lived. (All ofﬁcers
agree). The person you are is the person you are. It’s just like the people on the street,
your not gonna change them by counseling them. Once a car thief always a car thief. You
can’t counsel a policeman, unless he goes to sessions after session, but I don’t know...

Officer #6: Verbal skills would be probably the best thing, but if you can’t do it your
gonna resort to force.

Officer #3: But few ofﬁcers have a silver tongue.

APPENDIX D

APPENDIX D

FOCUS GROUP INTERVIEW C: FOUR PATROL OFFICERS

Patrol Culture Questions

Question 1: After joining the police department do you feel your values, norms, and
perceptions have changed?

Ofﬁcer #3: I would say they have because I guess before you became a police ofﬁcer you
didn’t worry about a lot and then once you joined everybody was looking at you, before
that nobody cared what you did, now they care what you do. Your the main person they
look at. They expect more from you.

Ofﬁcer #1: The public holds you at a higher standard, especially in the uniform they just
perceive you as being above the average person so of course your whole attitude has to be
different and you can’t do certain things that normal people do, you can’t goof off and
your supposed to act in certain ways and manners.

Ofﬁcer #2: And just to add along with that too, the way people think, they forget that

we’re human too, and that makes us have to change the way we are and the way we do
things.

Officer #1: Also the public is saying that when we’re in civilian clothes we probably look
at life differently too, we may not take it so serious like civilians do because we probably
deal with that situation maybe a couple of times a week maybe on calls and actually its
probably something unimportant, but we probably have felt like that when we were
civilians, but now we don’t let that effect our lives.

Probing question 1: How have your perceptions toward the public changed?
Officer #3: When I ﬁrst came on I looked at the public as them-and-us, there was a line
between them-and-us. Now with all these years of experience and dealing and working

more with the public, its no longer them-and-us, its together. The old days are gone, the
new generation with younger ofﬁcer seems to be a better relationship with the public.

110

111

Officer #2: I have to disagree with you on that though because when we ﬁrst got on and
when we ﬁrst got out there we had the same thing where it was them-and-us, till they
started training and getting into the community policing thing that’s when that line sort of
got erased. Because when we ﬁrst got on, I think you would agree with me (gestures to
ofﬁcer #1) that it was us-and-them because we only dealt with the bad element, now there
showing or stressing a little more compassion toward the community, its changed a little,
but not much.

Officer #1: Also what your gonna see different is what shift you work on because if you
work dogwatch your gonna see things totally more different than what daylight will see.
When I was on dogwatch there we’re no ﬁiendly people out there and everybody was a
bad guy and if there was a decent person out there you were just trying to trap me or
video tape me. It was just bad guys and cops, and that’s the way I perceived everybody
and the public to be for a lot of years, until the shift changed and I started dealing with
pe0ple in the daylight. During the night time it was just a bad element and you just got
used to it, everybody is a bad element, everybody is one; bad. During the day you can’t
treat people like that and you have to change your ways.

Ofﬁcer #3: It also depends on where you work at, if you work at North substation and A
substation ofﬁcers treat those people with much more respect. Where I work at, I know
I’m dealing with nothing but cockroaches, we used to compete at who would get the
most. Now when I worked at North substation it was totally different... yes sir, no sir, yes
mam, no mam.

Officer #4: What I’ve noticed people in general, it doesn’t matter your race or color
people are the same, yeah some are roaches but some are also good who would give the
shirt off their back for you. I used to work at A substation and their were people with a
lot of money who were also bad they have the money to hide their stuff, but I do look at
the public with a negative attitude.

Ofﬁcer #3: 25 years ago the roaches, the drug dealers, burglars, prostitutes etc. would
always say yes sir, no sir to you when you stopped them or caught them. Now they call
you asshole; its these little gangbangers they have no respect for you.

Ofﬁcer #2: But 25 years ago you could do a whole lot more then and get away with it
than you can now.

Officer #3: You can still do it, but you just can’t get caught.

Ofﬁcer #2: But if you get caught now it’s gonna be a whole lot worse now than it was
then.

Officer #1: You can’t shoot a burglar running now.

Ofﬁcer #2: But you can take a guy behind a grocery store and rough him up a little.

112
Officer #3: Like I say, as long as there are no witnesses. I’m still ﬁom the old school.

Probing question 2: How do you feel the public perceives you?

Officer #3: You have the our generation, say 25-30 and above who do give us respect,
they will stand behind us, but you have the younger generations that will give us problems.

Officer #1: Bad guys are gonna be bad guys. If you’ve had a bad experience with any
kind of law enforcement then your gonna view anyone in law enforcement the same way.
We are viewed by the public as one and when some incident happens all police ofﬁcers are
shot down big time because the public perceives that one person as a whole and we’re not
a whole, and it takes a lot to work back to that level where the public accepts everything
we do.

Officer #3: That’s the old days where one police ofﬁcer would do something wrong and
all police would pay. Now days I think it’s different.

Officer #1: No, but the jokes and the persona are still there. I think its a lot better these
days, people are more educated and saying OK its only one person, but as a vast majority
your still gonna have it. Your still gonna see everybody the same... a pig is a pig.

Ofﬁcer #2: I agree with #1, one thing that has changed with what your saying is a lot of
it has to do with the training of community policing because people from the community
start to understand more about police ofﬁcers and how they do things and how the system
works and there is more context there for the public to work with. But you still have it
where people don’t get involved or stay in their little world and see it as this cop did this
bad thing and all cops are dirty, except those who are getting educated who can
understand.

Ofﬁcer #1: The media also makes us look bad.

Question 2: When in physical situation (i.e., ﬁght) does the presence of other
officers encourage and/or escalate the use of force/excessive force?

Officer #3: I don’t think it does, I think a lot of times when ever ofﬁcers show up it kind
of cools down, every now and then your adrenaline is ﬂowing cause your running a code
three... lights and siren you wanna get there fast and every now and then an ofﬁcer tends
to slip. I think it kind of settled down a little bit, again I go back to the old days because
I’ve been on 25 years. Back in the days if someone ran and who ever caught them had
ﬁrst shot at them and everybody after that had a shot at him.

Officer #1: I think it depends on the incident, adrenaline...

Ofﬁcer #2: And who’s there.

113

Officer #1: Yeah, and who’s there, myself and #2, we did the same thing as probably #3
for a couple of years. If you catch him and you start thinking of all the violations they
committed and all the people they could of hurt and the people they could of killed, and all
that runs through your mind in a split second and all that anger is building up at once so
your ﬁrst instinct once you grab’ cm is to knock the tar out of them. Its like disciplining a
kid except your disciplining an adult. (All oﬂicer laugh). Of course you don’t use the
same level of violence on the adult as you would the kid...

Officer #2: But you make it hurt a heck of a lot more.

Officer #1: Yeah you make it hurt. You just want to beat the tar out of this guy because
of what he’s done, your also thinking once this guy gets out because you know he’s not
gonna do time and whenever he thinks about doing whatever he does, hey; he’s gonna say
I remember last time the cops beat the tar out of me for this.

Officer #2: And guys have said that to us, that the reason they didn’t commit a crime was
because the cops beat the crap out of me.

Officer #1: Yeah they have.

Ofﬁcer #3: I remember when a fellow police ofﬁcer got shot and I arrived on the scene, I
knew that if I had seen the guy that I would have killed the guy right there. There was no
doubt in my mind that I would have killed him. Unfortunately, someone else found him
and took him away ﬁom the scene because he knew what was gonna happen, he knew that
there was no containing the ofﬁcers that were working with him.

Officer #2: Same thing with Ofﬁcer X, an ofﬁcer who was killed in the line of duty a few
years ago (All ofﬁcer agree).

Officer #1: And I don’t mind sharing it with you cause if I would have caught the guy
who shot and killed officer X, there isn’t no doubt in my mind I would have deﬁnitely
killed the guy dead.

Officer #2: If an ofﬁcer gets jumped or something who ever shows up, I guarantee who
ever shows up every single ofﬁcer got a piece of that guy.

Ofﬁcer #4: For me I think the presence of other ofﬁcers escalates the use of force when
an officer is involved in a struggle or whatever the case may be. Out of my class we lost
two guys in two years and two more have gotten shot since. The bond that we develop
even though I may not work with them or these guys all the time. Every day you go to
work you depend on these guys and you want them to depend on you. I protect my
fellow police ofﬁcers before any one else. Once you start putting on that uniform to go to
work you start feeling something and I’m sure they can tell you the same. I mean your
going to work with a gun and a vest. The way the people see us and the way they talk
about us you have to put on a whole different mind set.

114

Question 3: Do you feel police officer tend to develop ways of looking at situations
that are distinctive to themselves?

(A 11 officers reply with yes or yeah)

Ofﬁcer #3: It’s because we’re a brotherhood where the other people are not. We take
care of each other where the civilians don’t take care of themselves. We depend on each
other, where the civilians don’t depend each other.

Ofﬁcer #2: It’s like #4 said when you lose one of your brothers especially in the line of
duty, the hurt is really bad you depend on each other. You get strong... even if you don’t
know him that well, he still puts on a uniform and a badge. There is a strong tie there...
people just won’t understand.

Ofﬁcer #1: I think when your dealing with the job of life and death lets say with a
doctor... say he messes up he’s not gonna lose his license, he might get sued but he’s not
gonna lose his license. If one of us messes up we’re gonna lose our life, that’s the bottom
line. Either we’re gonna get hurt really bad, lose our life or somebody else is gonna get
hurt really bad. So I think that alone puts us in a whole different category other than to
somebody going to combat and having that relationship with everybody your with because
your depending on that person to save you or do something together that it puts you in a
diﬁ‘erent category. I may not know this ofﬁcer and we may work on different sides of
town or I may know an ofﬁcer and not like him, but that bond still exists. For some
reason if something were to happen to him I will feel that hurt.

Officer #3: I agree with what #1 said, we’re still the same color... blue and we’re gonna
stay together regardless of what our feelings are. We will be there for each other, where
the other people will not be there for each other, we depend on each other; that’s the
brotherhood. The brotherhood is a lot stronger (emphasis added).

Officer #1: We’re all afraid, but you just don’t think about it.

Officer #2: There is no thinking about it (being aﬁ'aid), it’s not involved.

Officer #4: It is a brotherhood that only police can ever understand and why they do
some of the things they do. We don’t trust many people and some of our methods in
dealing with the roaches out there is what they deserve because they do nothing, but mess

up society.

Question 4: How would you describe the way some things are handled on the
street? Are they by the book or informal?

Officer #2: Do you want them done right? (All oﬁicers laugh).

115

Ofﬁcer #1: Everything done on the street there’s not a book to follow. We are trained in
the academy to do everything in a certain way... doing it by the book. When you go out
on the street and start dealing with the real people you ﬁnd that there is no book because
there are different people and situations, you have to compromise, be creative, you have to
stretch the law... your a good patch artist.

Officer #4: I train on the streets and I tell the new recruits from the academy... what you
learned from the academy is just very basic it was long and you probably think you know a
lot, but you still don’t know anything, every thing they teach you is just something to get
by on.

Ofﬁcer #3: There is no book.

Officer #2: Sometimes things that are stated in the book to be done you don’t have time
to do them; so what you do is do what’s best for you in order to make it easier for you.
The academy just goes through the motions for liability purposes. (All ofﬁcers agree).

Officer #4: There’s nothing but informal methods in handling things on the street (all
officers agree with o ’ yeah and yes). I feel the informal methods and being creative in
that way keep a lot of us out of trouble and getting hurt. A lot of people can’t see it that
way and don’t see it that way and probably don’t know that it exists either.

Ofﬁcer #1: If we were to follow what the book says and what procedure say... we would
be like miniature robo-cops or Judge Dreads and every body goes to jail regardless of
what you do, and that’s not gonna happen. I mean look at the problem we’re having now.

Probing question 1: Does there exist an informal understanding in the way things
should be handled (i.e., acceptable behavior by your peers lawful or unlawful) when
force or excessive force is used and when it should be used.

Oﬂicer #1: There are certain things that are just done that way and are just acceptable to
every body else, like when to use force and on whom.

Officer #2: It also depends who you work with. When we worked dogwatch we worked
close with certain people constantly. There were a lot of illegal understandings between

us, you know, any way you wanna take it... we had some understandings (emphasis
added).

Oﬂicer #1: We had a couple of subjects laying on the ground and they started acting
stupid and mouthing off and I went over behind one of them and jacked him on the back
of the head... well that is and was an acceptable thing, its an understanding that the
ofﬁcers that I worked with had.

Officer #2: Yeah its an understanding.

116

Officer #1: I’ll give you one more use of force incident where I was with another ofﬁcer
that I didn’t know. We had this prisoner in custody and the other ofﬁcer slapped this guy
around because he was acting really stupid, so the bad guy calls me over there and says,
“Sir, sir, did you see what he did to me? So I take my hand and start slapping him
around... you mean this; no I didn’t see it and I walked off. They were just informal things
that were acceptable to every body.

Officer #3: Once you put the bad guy in the car whatever happens-happens that way
there were no witnesses, we had an understanding of, yeah, you don’t do anything until
your in the car and we have our backs... then you would just WHACK, you did what you
did.

Officer #2: One of those unexplainable cuts over the eye or forehead is that he fell down.

Officer #3: Yeah, that’s right he fell down, yes sir more than once (all ofﬁcers laugh), his
head bounced.

Officer #1: We know that there gonna be right back out and the only lesson there gonna
get is right here and now (all ofﬁcers agree).

Officer #3: On the spot justice.
Ofﬁcer #2: Which doesn’t have to justiﬁed.

Probing question 2: So, is there an understanding of when inappropriate force or
excessive force is used?

All oﬂicers agree with yes.

Question 5: What is your favorite tool (weapon) when using force?

Officer #3: I like the open hand.

Ofﬁcer #1: I agree with him (refening to ofﬁcer #3), you know they train you in all this
stuff even new stuff and your supposed to be an expert in whatever you use and you
always fall back to your hands. It’s always your hands other than using deadly force
where you have to use your gun. Your hands are most accessible. Well, also your ﬂash
light because its in your hand, but of course your not trained with a ﬂashlight.

Officer #2: I use my ﬂashlight a lot, but I also use my hands.

Officer #4: I use my hands because they really don’t leave marks on the prisoner.

Probing question 1: What led you to use these tools (weapons) over another?

117
Officer #3: They’re easy access, and they don’t leave marks. (All oﬂicer agree).

Ofﬁcer #1: They are the best way not to get caught and they only leave temporary
marks.

Officer #2: It is the best way to handle situations.
Ofﬁcer #4: They don’t leave marks and are safer for me.

Probing question 2: Have you ever felt you used your hands or other tools that you
mentioned excessively where in inﬂicted serious injury to a person?

Ofﬁcer #2: I wonder if any body is gonna say no! (All ofﬁcers laugh).

Officer #1: One time I beat the tarnation out of this guy, I broke his arm among other
things and there must of been at least a hundred people watching me.

Officer #3: I’ve used it quite a bit, you had to pay the price... that was the name of the
game. When I get’ em I slap the crap out of ‘em open hand because then again it don’t
leave no marks. I slap them around.

Officer #1: It cover’s more territory...
Officer #2: You don’t break ﬁngers... (All ofﬁcers laugh... yeah).
Ofﬁcer #4: 0’ when I get’ em I make sure they get a taste of their own. It’s your time.

Question 6: Throughout your experience do you feel you have evolved, developed,
and adopted force/excessive force practices by interacting with fellow police officers,
whether they are Ieamed or viewed?

Officer #1: Maybe at ﬁrst when your brand new, but then you develop your own, but you
still keep in mind the way some other ofﬁcers handle situations and how they used force
interventions.

Ofﬁcer #4: On one shift a lot of the ofﬁcers... if you wanted to be accepted and yeah you
did use excessive force to be accepted and working on the part of town that I did it
happened a lot.

Officer #2: Yeah, when you ﬁrst start out I had to prove myself, and even old ofﬁcers
and new ofﬁcers today still try to prove themselves. You have to prove yourself before
you’re accepted. Same as ofﬁcer #1, on that shift, it was a tight shift, but you have to
earn the respect of the older ofﬁcers and it took a lot to earn it, you had to do a lot; and
we used a lot of excessive force.

118

Ofﬁcer #3: There was an incident, where this one ofﬁcer loved using his ﬂashlight. We
had a handcuffed prisoner and this ofﬁcer started hitting this guy and so I grabbed the
ofﬁcers arm to tell him OK that’s enough... and the ofﬁcer turned to me and said don’t
you ever stop me cause then I’ll turn on you. That ofﬁcer enjoyed hitting people... so I
kind of looked at him and backed off and said if you cut him he’s your prisoner, you take
him to the hospital. That guy loved to inﬂict pain on a guy after he was handcuffed. We
sat down and I asked what got into you... and he said I don’t like to be stopped doing
something I enjoy. After that I just backed away ﬁom him. I was afraid of him.
Needless to say he made rank.

Question 7: How do you learn informal things or the way things are done?

Officer #3: There is deﬁnitely a code and that code you learn ﬁ'om brother ofﬁcers. You
learn it from your brother officers, that’s how you earn respect, that’s how they trust you,
that’s how you ﬁt into the group. In the academy they try to break that code, they say if
he does something wrong write a report you should notify, but it can’t be done.

Officer #2: But after you get on the street they learn differently.

Officer #3: They learn after they watch us, they learn about the brotherhood. If you
mess up and you burn one of your brother ofﬁcers for any little thing... guess what your
gonna be out there on your own by yourself hoping and praying that you do get cover.
That happened with one ofﬁcer here, where he arrested another ofﬁcer; every body turned
on him because this ofﬁcer was liked by a lot of people. He broke the code, he turned
against one of his own. This ofﬁcer who burned that other officer had a call out for
officer in trouble, his E-tone went off (when an ofﬁcer’s E-tone button on his radio is
pressed this usually means the officer needs assistance immediately because his life may be
in danger or other emergency circumstances), what happened was that when ofﬁcers
showed up they saw him and just took off and left him on his own.

Officer #1: You learn it by fellow police, by observing and talking to them and each
other. If an ofﬁcer that did wrong and violated our understanding or code... I think we all
agree that whatever punishment he gets is just and that’s ﬁne. There are other codes that
when we cover for other ofﬁcers, when they are gonna go see fellow police ofﬁcer’s
girlﬁiends of wives (all oﬂicers laugh).

Ofﬁcer #4: The learning process is both verbal and visual.
Officer #2: There are certain ways of doing things that wouldn’t be done in other parts of
the town. If you have a new guy down there especially if he’s a boot (new ofﬁcer) or

something you tell him what’s expected of him and how things are done.

Probing question 1: What happens to some who violates some of the informal
norms that you have spoken about?

119

Ofﬁcer #3: He’s an outcast, you don’t trust him, you don’t associate, you don’t eat with
them because if you say something wrong he might go report you.

Ofﬁcer #2: After a call you go opposite directions.

Officer #1: And the only reason you make the call with him is because if you don’t make
the call he could probably burn you for not making it. They can say, well you violated the
general manual, you all ready know he’s untrustworthy, so you know he’s gonna tell on
you any way; he’s gonna go squeal. So when you make the call you just don’t say
anything and just stand there and not say anything. It might just be as far as standing by
your car while he’s making contact with the subject.

Officer #4: If the ofﬁcer tells on another ofﬁcer that’s it, he’s ostracized.
Ofﬁcer #3: As long as you don’t break that code, your all right.

Probing question 2: How far along in your career would you say you have come to
accept an informal understanding of the way some things are handled on the street?

Officer #4: Right out of the academy.

Officer #3: It just hits you in the face real quick, it’s what life is really about on the
street. You learn the way things are done and the way your suppose to do things right out
from the academy.

Officer #2: You learn the informal things from the street and nowhere else.

Ofﬁcer #1: Everything is taught and learned from the street.

Question 8: How do the dangers and risks of the police occupation make you feel?
Officer #3: The thing is you don’t know when it’s gonna hit you, I’ve been involved in
ﬁve shootouts. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen. The problem with us is that
even if we’re off duty and we see a felony being committed we’re gonna take action, you
put yourself in that position, it’s there and you really can’t say...

Officer #1: Sometimes we relax cause the so called danger isn’t staring in the face. We
have a sick sense of humor when we go to a homicide or we go to see a dead body and

ﬁve ten minutes after that we’ll go eat and joke around with each other... we have become
desensitized.

Ofﬁcer #2: We’ll talk about how much brain matter we saw.

120

Officer #1: Yeah, because we know that we can never relax, even off duty when you step
out of your house your thinking where did I put my gun or did I even bring my gun. All
these things are just little bitty things that just hit you most of the time.

Officer #3: You also scan the store to see if you recognize any of these cockroaches that
you’ve arrested of dealt with.

Officer #2: When you go to a restaurant you decide where your gonna sit...

Officer #3: With your back against the wall and facing the door to see who’s coming in.
The movies is the same way you look around...

Officer #2: Or else you just don’t go.

Officer #4: I think all of you can vouch that for a long time my wife would ask me what
are you looking at? and I would tell her that I needed to know who was around me.
We’re trained in observation skills we want to know who and what is around us and a
route out.

Officer #3: When we go out to eat my family and in-laws know where I sit and where my
place is at.

Probing question 1: Do you think these attributes create a sense of secrecy where
officers can relate and build a cohesive understanding which attempts to justify
your actions?

Officer #1: I think there is an understanding between all of us.

Officer #2: Yeah, we have reasons for doing things to people and we can only share
these things with other ofﬁcers because the people just don’t understand. That’s one
reason I got divorced, there are certain things you can talk to other ofﬁcers about, my
ex-wife would analyze everything and other ofﬁcer give you support or agree with what
you did or tell you what you should have done. When I talk to my partners at work they
understand you just keep it within the brotherhood.

Officer #4: It’s like your fellow ofﬁcers don’t ask you... then why didn’t you do this or
why did you do this. We are very secretive of what we do and if it goes beyond other
ofﬁcers we deny it or like we said earlier that ofﬁcer gets the outcast.

Officer #3: I don’t tell any one besides other ofﬁcers because it would just drive me
crazy trying to explain to people or my wife why we do the things we do.

1 2 1
Ofﬁcer Use of Force Questions

Question 9: What are some factors you feel lead to the application of force?
Officer #3: Adrenaline (all officers agree adrenaline).

Officer #4: On a Friday or Saturday night it probably takes a couple of hours to come
down from the adrenaline, you come home and your like this... (ofﬁcer physically gestures
as to be trembling), your wired.

Ofﬁcer #2: Right after a ﬁght and after you kick a little tail, it takes a while.

Officer #3: I think the worst one I had was when this one guy put a 38 snub nose to my
face and smiled and I mean I really thought he thought it was funny and I just felt like if I
was falling down and I pulled out my gun and we exchanged gun ﬁre. For three days I
couldn’t sleep... I just kept saying if he would of just pulled it, if he just would of pulled it.
That guy was high and I told that son of a bitch don’t even think about coming out cause
I’m gonna kill ya. I would of shot him in front of every body including my grandmother.
Cause I would of killed that motherfucker, right off the bat I would of killed him, and for
three days I kept saying that son of a bitch that son of a bitch.

Question 10: From your experience do you see more force used against minorities
and in urban areas?

Officer #3: Here, a Mexican family would rather see a Black oﬂicer or White ofﬁcer
respond then a Mexican police ofﬁcer because they know that a Mexican police ofﬁcer is
harder on their own then the other ofﬁcer.

Officer #1: I haven’t seen it here because a person is of color that we’re gonna beat the
tar out of him... it’s pretty even who gets beat, it really doesn’t matter who they are.

Officer #2: Sunnyville is weird you have a good mixture of blacks, whites, and Hispanics.
I don’t think it happens too much.

Officer #4: I tell the boots that we don’t tolerate that in this department because when
your getting your ass kicked and the ofﬁcer that helps you out is of color that your usually
beating on your gonna thank him... because regardless of the color as long as he’s wearing
blue, that’s all that matters.

Ofﬁcer #1: One thing that does occur is different ways ofﬁcers patrol, like at different
areas of town and substations like C substation.

Ofﬁcer #2: We’re a lot more aggressive with the people at B substation then they are
with the people at C substation.

122
Officer #3: They are a lot more aggressive you name it we’ll do it.

Officer #1: At C substation there’s an understanding that’s where the money is, that’s
where the votes are, that’s where the inﬂuences are and you have to treat people a lot
more different.

Officer #3: The citizens take care of the ofﬁcers and the ofﬁcers take care of the
citizens... the ofﬁcers know that you don’t write tickets, you don’t arrest them, you don’t
do this, you don’t do that. Why? Because they got the money.

Officer #4: They just treat people differently.

Question 11: As a police ofﬁcer from your perception and experience, what
characteristics escalate uses of force to excessive?

Officer #1: The more violations they committed the longer and harder the whipping they
get. Speciﬁcally, it would be a car chase and the more pissed off you get.

Officer #3: When an ofﬁcer is in trouble or gets hurt that person is gonna get hurt a lot.
I look at it this way, if you hurt one of my brother ofﬁcers you gotta pay the price. If he’s
going to the hospital so are you, so are you, that’s the name of the game.

Officer #2: Your just gonna stay longer than the ofﬁcer.

Officer #4: The fear factor goes out of you too (all oﬁicers agree with yeah). The guy
could be six foot four-two ﬁfty, your gonna whack him. That’s when you build that
tunnel vision.

Officer #2: It’s gonna escalate, but you have your brother ofﬁcer there to help you out.
We had this one guy running from us and my partner ﬁnally caught him and had him
handcuffed... and he thumped him a few times and when I ﬁnally got there I got a piece of
him, this guy I was gonna get a piece of. Another ofﬁcer arrived and got a piece of him
too, but he got a little carried away.

Question 12: Do you make an honest effort to resolve situations in a peaceful and
passive manner?

Ofﬁcer #4: That’s a ﬁrst priority (all ofﬁcers agree).

Officer #1: People don’t realize the restraint that we put ourselves through and it’s a lot
and a lot of people couldn’t handle it.

Probing question 1: Based on your experience would you say excessive use of force
is frequently practiced in your police department?

123
Officer #1: I would say that it does exist, but seldom.

Ofﬁcer #2, #3, #4: All agree with yeah and yes.

Question 13: How do you feel toward individuals who inﬂict physical injuries or
have placed fellow police ofﬁcers in physical danger?

Ofﬁcer #3: You have a lot of anger, a lot of anger.

Officer #2: I’d hate to be that guy.

Ofﬁcer #1: He gets his ass beat.

Ofﬁcer #3: Ifyou place one of our brother ofﬁcers in danger or you hurt him you can
believe that son of a bitch is gonna get an ass whipping, I’ll tell ya the way it is! Especially
if its dark he’s gonna get it.

Ofﬁcer #2: Just a while back I got jumped and when ever ofﬁcers from other districts
were far away that you wouldn’t think came... every ofﬁcer got a piece of him and he was
hurt bad.

Oﬂicer #1: There was an ofﬁcer in trouble call and I was far, I drove about twenty miles
to where the incident was at and believe me, before they put that guy in the car boy he got

the tar beat out of ‘em.

Officer #4: Yeah, that’s very true, you travel long ways to cover an ofﬁcer and I know
all of us will do it and we’ll always do it.

Probing question 1: Do you feel teaching them a lesson is in order?
Ofﬁcer #3: Yes, but then again it just happens, it just happens. It’s hey son of a bitch
your gonna pay the price, next time you won’t do what you did. (All oﬂicers agree with

responses of yep and yeah. . .. that’s what they get).

Probing question 2: Do you think it is morally and socially acceptable by other
officers to commit such actions of force?

Oﬂicer #4: It’s like what I said when your ﬁrst out on the street on your own, your
gonna learn that real quick that every thing is accepted by what other ofﬁcers say and do.

Ofﬁcer #3: If we don’t take care of our selves then no body will. We have to take care
of ourselves.

Ofﬁcer #1: Even if that means kicking some ass.

124

Officer #2: Like #3 said, the only people we have is ourselves. You can’t trust the
community, you can’t trust the city, you can’t trust the media, you can’t trust any body
else; you can only trust the guys you work with.

Final Question 14: Do you think there exist synonymous socially prescribed
patterns (i.e., attitudes, beliefs, norms, values etc.) within the police occupation?

Officer #3: I believe there is... yeah they exist. I think there is because we view things
the same, we view it from a blue side of the line. Again, it goes back to the brotherhood.
We view it from our eyes looking out.

Officer #1: Most deﬁnitely there exist our world and the way we pass on things to other
ofﬁcers and how things should and are done.

Officer #4: It’s from a police perspective that only police can understand.

Ofﬁcer #2: We all share probably the same beliefs about what should be done and how
its done.

Probing question 1: Do you feel these shared understandings and patterns
contribute to the overall use of when, where, how and why police use force?

(A ll oﬂicers agree with responses of yes, yeah, and I believe so).

Ofﬁcer #4: I was working an off duty job with an ofﬁcer that I had never worked with or
met and I forgot what happened and after talking to the guy about the incident we had the

same ideas of what we or other ofﬁcers should have done to that guy when they caught
him.

Officer #2: A good example was I was working an extra job and I was monitoring the
radio and an E-tone went of and I raced to that location where it was and when I got there
a ﬁiend that was also working an extra job was there too.

Ofﬁcer #1: We’re all gonna see each other basically the same way, and as you can tell I
don’t know this ofﬁcer in front of me and his beliefs are really close to mine and I can
probably say mine are the same for him.

Officer #4: Replies with yeah.
Officer #1: I think we all share the same ideas and values of our job.
Officer #3: I’m sure that all police ofﬁcers feel the same about the use of force and how,

when, where... or whatever you asked, it’s used. We’re a brotherhood and we need to
protect each other.

ENDNOTES

EN DNOTES

1. Developing key deﬁnitions of culture ﬁ'om an anthropological-sociological perspective
leading to an organizational-social perspective is provided by seminal scholars.
Geertz (1973 :4-5) uses Kluckhom’s deﬁnition of culture as “the total way of life
of people; the societal legacy the individual acquires ﬁ'om his group; a way of
thinking, feeling, and believing; an abstraction from behavior; a store house of
pooled learning; learned behavior; and a mechanism for the normative regulation of
behavior” (see also Kluckhon, 1949217; Kilrnann et al., 1985; Morgan, 1986; for
additional deﬁnitions). In his interpretation of culture Geertz (1973) describes it as
essentially semiotic, encompassing signs and symbols as elements of
communicative behavior in search for meaning (also see Manning 1997). Meryl
Reis Louis (1983239) and John Van Maanen (198823, both in Hatch, 19972205)
deﬁne culture as the following:

Louis: Organizations [are] culture bearing milieux, that is, [they are]
distinctive social units possessed of a set of common understandings for
organizing action (e.g., what we’re doing together in this particular group,
appropriate ways of doing in and among members of the group) and
languages and other symbolic vehicles for expressing common
understandings.

John Van Maanen: Culture refers to the knowledge members of a given
group are thought to more or less share; knowledge of the sort that is said
to inform, embed, shape, and account for the routine and not-so-routine

activities of the members of the culture... A culture is expressed (or
constituted) only through the actions and words of its members and must

125

126

be interpreted by, not given to, a ﬁeld worker... Culture is not itself visible,
but is made visible only through its representation.

2. The public views mundane patrol ﬁrnctions such as trafﬁc stops, trafﬁc control,
accident investigations, and calls for service, but does not see behaviors that are
embedded in the patrol culture. What this study provides are noteworthy events
associated with culture. Such events capture officers’ illegal and cultural reasons
for using force. In other words, this study looks at why ofﬁcers use force.

3. Cultural semantics include forces that turn out to serve ends that are related to what
initially were legitimate strategies promoted by the department. Periodically, the
patrol culture reins champion by legitimizing and placing the culture in higher
admiration over what is required by the institution. To buttress the culture,
ofﬁcers’ use written law simply as vague language which cloaks and gives shape to
what the patrol culture perceives as normal force (Hunt, 1985). Law, from this
perspective supports departmental and ofﬁcer interests used by those with power
to legitimize their actions. Subsequently, the impartiality of law then becomes
subjective at the ofﬁcers’ disposal.

4. Geertz (19732216) describes that symbols are “extrinsic sources of information in terms
of which human life can be patterned.” It is the social sphere that transmits these
learned behaviors. Put more generally, if we are to comprehend relevant aspects
of situated groups (e.g., patrol oﬁicers) then we must investigate their social
circumstances. To do this we must ask pertinent questions about symbols, values,

and behaviors and place them in the context of patrol culture.

127
5. Theoretically, Vold and Bernard (19862280) describe Turk’s 1966 Conﬂict Theory

associated with cultural aberrations: “cultural norms are associated with verbal
formulations of values, and social norms with actual behavior patterns. From the
point of view of the authorities, cultural norms are associated with the law as it is
written, and social norms with the law as it is enforced.” Depending on the
situation, membership provides therapeutic remedies for police experiences.

6. Bittner (1970) and Klockars (in Geller, 1985) together debate over the proliferation of
literature which attempts to deﬁne what lawful use of force means, and as they
point out, it is practically meaningless. They continue to argue that minimum use
of force is meaningless as well. Lawful use of force is simply conﬁned to physical
behaviors that shall be committed by police ofﬁcers.

7. William Westley’s, Violence and the Police (1970), focuses on an informal structure
captivated by the reins of a police culture that vindicates, promotes, and endorses
the use of force. He openly discusses the problems of police violence and a
cultural secrecy which shapes police interactions with the public. Westley makes it
clear that speciﬁc individuals are singled out for special punishment. Most social
scientists would agree that William Westley’s (1959) pioneering case study is the
most important and comprehensive research that holds promise in examining police
ofﬁcer experiences on force relating to culture; however, Westley’s research is
dated. Accordingly, given the larger social and political changes that have taken
place, coupled with advances in police practices since the late 1950's, one must
question the application of Westley’s ﬁndings to contemporary use-of-force issues.

Moreover, ofﬁcer use of force often depends on the alleged offender’s race, sex,

128
and age (Banton, 1964; Black, 1970; Black, 1980; Brooks, 1986; Friedrich, 1980;

Rossi et al., 1974; Smith and Visher, 1980; Sykes and Clark, 1975). Some police
ofﬁcers exercise aggressive behavior because the person in contact with the ofﬁcer
lacks respect (Black and Reiss, 1970; Brooks, 1986; Brown, 1981; Ericson, 1982;
Lundman, 1979). According to Cain (1971), police maintain a variety of
possibilities when an ofﬁcers’ authority is questioned, one of these powers is to
attack the offender.

8. For the most part, culture afﬁxes to socialization (social forces of beliefs and group
inﬂuences causing behavior) and selection (behavior patterns inﬂuence beliefs and
peer selections) which are subsumed in an interactional perspective (Thomberry et
al., 1994248). This interactional perspective (Thomberry, 1987) favors that social
interaction is inversely related in its functions and induces consistent conduct with
members of the culture. In other words, the interactional process induces behavior
that protects its members from external criticism. For example, if an ofﬁcer lied on
behalf of another ofﬁcer there is an understanding that such a favor will be
returned. More importantly are the dominant webs of cultural motivations (i.e.,
assumptions, norms, values, artifacts) that result in physical force. “One is to
imagine that culture is a self-contained “super-organic” reality with forces and
purposes of its own,” (Geertz, 1973211) and it is the researcher’s duty to extract
such purposes and apply meaning. As a side note, Howard Becker’s 1961, Boys in
White, used police “perspectives” in lieu of culture to associate other occupational

cultures with the police culture.

129
9. Parson describes this relationship between upper and lower aspects of the organization

as the following: The lower levels “condition,” and thus in a sense “determine” the
structures into which they enter, in the same sense that the stability of a building
depends on the properties of the materials out of which it is constructed. But the
physical properties of the materials do not determine the plan of the building; this
is a factor of another order, one of organization. And the organization controls the
relations of the materials to each other, the ways in which they are utilized in the
building by virtue of which it constitutes an ordered system of a particular
type-looking “downward” in the series, we can always investigate and discover
sets of “conditions” in which the ﬁrnction of a higher order of organization is
dependent

10. Manning (1997244) also recognizes that mission statements for police departments are
presented in two ways: 1) presentational strategies are organizational missions,
and 2) operational strategies are patrol methods of control. Schein (1980; in
Hatch, 1997:214) puts forth that external adaptations are missions, strategies,
goals, means and control systems.

11. A group is deﬁned as a number of persons plus some interrelationships, systems of
interaction, or membership to be determined (Barnard, 1968).

12. Scott (1995) alludes to classic works by Weber (1968) who attempted to understand
cultural rules of the economic system. Weber’s cultural rules have characteristics
similar to those of police culture. Weber’s (1968, in Scott, 1995211) examination
includes “cultural rules-ranging in nature from customary mores to legally deﬁned

constitutions or rule systems-deﬁne social structures and govern social behavior,

130
including economic structures and behavior.” Even more interesting, Weber’s

(also see Parson, 1960; Thompson, 1967) three topologies of administrative
systems mirror the three cultural tiers in police departments (i.e., executive,
management, and patrol culture).

13. Bittner (1975) describes police violence as a “love hate” relationship with the legal
system. He confronted this “anomaly” by characterizing these activities as
“beyond the rule of law,” in that they deny legitimacy to many routine peace
keeping practices (Bittner, 1975223). In other words, police admire their law
enforcement efforts, but do not endorse the rationale of the judicial system because
they perceive it as denying the legitimacy of crime ﬁghting efforts by releasing
suspects or giving them lenient sentences. As a consequence, physical violence is
often a customary practice which replaces judicial deﬁciencies.

14. These cultural codes that Ruess-Ianni has researched are grounded in the following:

-Don ’t give up another cop. By holding this principle sacred, the threat of
oﬂicers’ reporting other ofﬁcers for illegal behaviors is minimized.

-It you get caught oﬂ base. don ’t implicate anybody else. Ofﬁcers understand that
if caught for inappropriate behavior they are to accept the consequences and not
implicate other ofﬁcers. By not implicating others, you protect the department,
badge, and uniform.

-Latch outforyourparmerﬁrst and then the rest of the guys worlging that tag;
The theme is to watch out for your partner and others and they will watch out for
you. Ofﬁcers are indoctrinated to protect fellow ofﬁcers by any means necessary.

-Protect your ass. This position cogently inﬂuences ofﬁcers not to trust anyone
and protect themselves with physical force if necessary. However, it places
ofﬁcers in limbo where their actions must comply with work duties by escaping
administrative punishment (see also Ericson, 19892212).

131
-Don ’t trust a new guy until you have him checked out. This shows hesitation

within the culture in allowing outsiders and new ofﬁcers’ acceptance until they
have proven otherwise (see also Westley, 1956).

-Don ’t talk too little or too much; don ’t tell anybody more thﬁan they have to
know. Ofﬁcers are informed to make rational decisions on behalf of the culture.
The channel of communication must remain within the culture arena. This creates
an environment where ofﬁcers turn only to each other for guidance.

-Show balls. The idea obviously puts forth impetus to use force. Ofﬁcers must
take control of the situation. They must at times appear to assert authority, even
though they may not have control of the situation. Ofﬁcers are expected not to
show fear; they are not to back down, especially when fellow ofﬁcers are present.
If an ofﬁcer backs down, peer sanctioning may be in order, because they have
placed other ofﬁcers in physical danger and have offended, humiliated, and
embarrassed the uniform. Peer sanctioning by other ofﬁcers may make an ofﬁcer
feel as though he/she is a pariah. Most of all, when ofﬁcers back down they lose
face and appear weak, which goes against the grain of their existence.

15. “The moral context of lying is very important insofar as its deﬁnition may be relative
to membership status. In analytic terms, acceptable or normal lies become one
criteria for membership within a group, and inappropriate lying, contextually
deﬁned, sets a person on the margins of that order” (Hunt and Manning, 1991252).
Ironically, the mechanism that drives “normal lies” equals that of “normal force”
(Hunt, 1985). In effort to show that police lie to cover their actions, Hunt and
Manning (1991) note that a “cover story” lie describes an umbrella that protects
ofﬁcers’ from charges of brutality. Cover stories camouﬂage what is viewed as
normal force; they provide ofﬁcers with silently forbidding behaviors “perceived”
as legitimate. What occurs are cover stories that deposit an array of mental and
physical sets of actions applied in situations. Hunt and Manning (1991261)

describe an excitingly accurate understanding of lying and brutality in the

following:

132
Even an ofﬁcer who is believed by colleagues to use brutal force and seen

as a poor partner as a result, is expected to lie to protect himself. He or

she would be considered odd, or even untrustworthy, if he or she did not.
There is an interaction between violence and lying understood by police
standards.

For additional references on police lying see Heck (1992) for lying as a form of
deviance from the subcultural perspective and Buckner (19672413) for lying in
ofﬁcial capacity.

16. For example, before beginning their shift police engage in the meticulous ritual of
preparing for war (i.e., putting on their vest, gun, clips, intermediate weapons,
etc.) However, Manning (19972261) claims the controversy over dangerous
episodes in patrol is less than 10 percent. These risks are often superﬁcial threats
that insult their honor more than anything else (Skolnick, 1994; Manning, 1997).

17. The desire to be included in the social group and decree of the culture is in the best
interest of the ofﬁcer (Hall and Lindzey, 1970; see also Maslow, 1969; Murray and
Kluckhorn, 1966). Once conﬁrmed by members of the culture, using force is
accepted with openness and participation in the presence of other ofﬁcers (Reiss,
1967; Reiss, 1968; Westley, 1970). Culture espouses abilities to understand
without words, to grasp notions, situations, and conditions. Moreover, research
shows that ofﬁcers are more reserved and less minatory when alone than when
accompanied by one or more ofﬁcers (Banton, 1964:151-2; Wilson, 1963).

18. “Brass” is what ofﬁcers refer to as executives or administrators in the department.

19. The beneﬁt of using focus groups is that: 1) Persons interviewed are known to have

been involved in a particular concrete situation. 2) The hypothetically signiﬁcant

elements, patterns, and total structure of this situation have been previously

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

133
analyzed by the investigator, by content analysis. 3) The investigator has fashioned

an interview guide, setting forth the major areas of inquiry. 4) The interview itself
is focused on the subjective experience of persons exposed to the pre-analyzed
situation. The array of their reported responses to this situation enables the
investigator to ascertain unanticipated responses to the situation, thus giving rise
to fresh hypotheses.

Due to the nature of the open-ended survey, ofﬁcers’ responded by providing multiple
responses to certain questions. The result is that certain questions will have more
than 100 percent valid responses.

Although the nightstick was the most popular intermediate weapon chosen, it is
important to mention that the “Asp” baton was indicated as another weapon of
choice.

For additional responses on the types of weapons used see focus group A, question 5.

For additional responses regarding the themes of “not leaving physical marks on the
suspect” see focus group B, question 2, ofﬁcer #6.

For additional events see focus group B, question 5-- probing question 1, ofﬁcers #3,
#5, and #6.

For additional responses on ofﬁcer cultural lying see focus group A, question
7--probing question 2, ofﬁcer #1; focus group B, question 3--probing question 1,
officer #3.

For additional responses on I. A. resentment see focus group A question 10, ofﬁcer #

3; focus group B, question 2, oﬁicer #3.

134
27. For additional responses on physical force being used at night and supported by peers

see focus group A, question 4--probing question 4, ofﬁcer #7; focus group B,
question 12--probing question 1, ofﬁcer #3, #5, #4, #2; focus group C, question
13, ofﬁcer #3; question 1--probing question 2, officer #2.

28. The Sunnyville Police Department has six substations and each substation has three
shifts. Given these attributes, it is possible that upon further research that there
possibly could exist 18 different subculture shifts. It would be interesting to
examine and see if certain shifts use more physical force than other shifts, including
an inquiry of “shift” cultural dynamics.

29. Reintegrative shaming is the social process of expressing disapproval which draws on
invoking remorse from the person being stigmatized. The process of shaming
inﬂuences the person to commit deviant acts in return for acceptance into the
group. Vold et al., (19982305) realize that reintegrative shaming “occurs when the
violator is shamed into knowing what he or she did is wrong but is also allowed

reentry into the conforming group.”

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