Search Results

This chapter examines the meanings and values explicit and implicit in officers' memories of three salient aspects of the job and the police organization: the social status of ‘the police officer’ and its intersection with what since 1945 has been the periodically quarrelsome question of police pay; the matters considered germane to learning and performing a role that assumes a venerated place at the core of this particular disposition towards English policing-namely, ‘bobbying’; and the-hierarchical, quasi-militaristic-internal authority relations that are recalled as characterizing the English police during the initial decades of the post-war period. The latter part of the chapter considers the ways in which this once seemingly settled assemblage of police practices, beliefs, and sentiments has been disrupted by processes of informalization and diversification. It explores the range of discordant voices that are struggling to determine the composition, internal cultures, and organizational ethos of the English police.

The high crime rates of the early 1990s and a string of sensational crimes from coast to coast set the stage in 1994 for the most extensive and costly federal anticrime bill ever. Bill Clinton had made crime fighting a top priority, particularly after his health care reform bill had faltered. Congress had taken the initiative, led by Democrats Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware and Representative Charles Schumer of New York. The Democrats came up with a way to put $30 billion for anticrime programs into a ‘trust fund’ created by a reduction in the federal bureaucracy. Soon it seemed that Clinton's 100,000 community police officers, a Republican demand for more prisons, and various other programs to combat violence against women and other crime problems all could be funded. Republicans backed off support of big allocations for crime prevention ideas like ‘midnight basketball’ for teens, and the National Rifle Association fought against a proposed ban on assault‐style weapons. The result was a donnybrook that kept Congress in session through most of the summer. Republicans eventually won a series of concessions on funding, although the assault weapon provision survived and the law was passed. In the process, Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill was seen as so flawed that the crime law played a significant part in the Republicans’ seizing control of the House of Representatives in the 1994 elections. Five years later, the crime law's impact on crime rates was uncertain; in fact, crime had begun to fall long before many of its provisions could have had much effect.

This chapter assesses how the accent on diversity has shaped the perspectives and practices of officers as they policed their diverse publics. It illustrates that responses to the altered policing landscape are contradictory and uneven. In the wake of the diversity emphasis, aspects of the occupational culture are being revised and unlearned. It begins the analysis with an exploration of how the informal ideologies which comprise the police identity currently interact with gender, before going on to discuss sexuality and ethnicity. The beginnings of multiple policing outlooks and styles which conform with the requirements of the diversity agenda are being witnessed. In spite of the growth of new policing identities, various problems remain with respect to how officers perceive and treat their diverse publics.

This chapter tracks the ways in which Northshire Police developed policies aimed at managing the contemporary demands of greater diversity. It explores how the extension of recognition for minority groups has shaped the police‧s interior culture through examining the ways in which such efforts resonate within the occupational ideologies of officers working inside the organization. In so doing, two broad and opposing perspectives on the working environment are presented. The first is characterized by resistance and resentment towards the institutionalization of diversity, and is articulated principally by white, heterosexual, male officers. A contrasting standpoint, held by female, minority ethnic, and gay and lesbian officers, reveals the persistence of a dominant white, heterosexist, male culture. In order to understand this tension, the chapter argues that the narratives of decline and discontent articulated by the adherents of the former operate to subordinate the spaces of representation for emerging identities and aim to preserve an increasingly endangered culture. It is clearly shown from the narratives presented that the extension of recognition for hitherto marginalized groups sits uneasily within the culture of the ordinary rank and file.

This chapter addresses the relationship between the character of the state and the constitution and the justification of harm-causing action. It takes as a starting point the author's debate with Malcolm Thorburn about the Diceyean interpretation of English constitutional law; specifically the way in which we should understand the contrasting moral positions of citizens and public officials with respect to the justifications that they may offer for their harmful actions. It suggests that a defender of the Diceyan doctrine can consistently believe that public officials, or some of them, are in a special moral position because they are officials. By considering the role of police officers in some depth, the special characteristics of official conduct and misconduct are illustrated whilst endorsing a fundamental continuity in the kinds of consideration that are relevant to assessing their conduct and the conduct of ordinary citizens. Such a discussion invites us further to reflect on what it is to be a citizen and how the criminal law should be constituted in the light of such a notion.

This chapter chronicles patterns of racialized and gendered interracial police brutality in Washington, D.C. and the efforts of black women and men to end this violence. Between 1928 and 1938 white police officers in the city shot and killed forty black men in the city. While white officers did not shoot and kill black women and girls, but subjected at least twenty nine to a range of violent behaviors, including street harassment, racial epithets, physical assaults, and intrusions into their homes. In addition to these abusive encounters, white officers employed a double standard by refusing to conduct investigates when black women were abused, raped, or murdered; this was a form of negligence. Black women who were the victims of police violence resisted interracial policy brutality by fighting back, alerting the press, and pleading innocence in police court. Black women activists joined with men to stem the crisis of interracial police violence through protest parades, mock trials, mass meetings, and congressional lobbying.

This chapter explores how black women's problematic encounters with police officers became the catalyst that inflamed existing tensions between black and white Tenderloin residents. The objective here is to facilitate a more nuanced understanding of how working-class women and men relied on the language of respectability to reconfigure their relationship to the state, particularly its legal arm, to challenge myopic portrayals of the black urban body politic as innately criminal, and to enhance their life chances and experiences in a racially repressive society. A central theme of this chapter emphasizes the ways in which black working women's defense of their civil and human rights put them at odds with the state, white society, the black elite, and black working men.

Police officers have higher rates of cardiovascular disease (CVD) than the general population. While officers have an increased prevalence of some conventional CVD risk factors, the increased CVD is not solely explained by these risk factors. Thus, characteristics of the profession likely contribute to CVD. Job-related stress is frequently suggested as an underlying factor. In this chapter, the evidence for and against stress contributing to CVD risk in law enforcement officers is discussed. While the majority of officers are not markedly stressed, stressed officers do have a higher risk for developing CVD. In general, organizational stress appears more burdensome than operational stress for officers, although the nature and severity of stressors varies by law enforcement department. Mechanisms underlying the stress-CVD relationship remain uncertain, indicating a need for more research to identify these mechanisms. Finally, the chapter concludes with suggestions for improving officer health.

This chapter continues to chart the history of the first Black Police Association (BPA), especially how its first executive articulated the experience of ethnic-minority officers and police support staff within the Metropolitan Police. BPAs developed within two, changing frameworks of race relations in the police. The process of change from ethnic categorization to an ethnic network, to an ethnic association thus combined the purposes of ethnic-minority staff and of chief officers responding to government. Macpherson persuaded the government to back the development of BPAs and to use a notion central to his understanding of institutional racism, unwittingly instigating a framework for ethnic politics within the police.

The chapter examines the nature of the relationships between police and crime commissioners and the chief police officer teams. The confidential views of both sides are examined and juxtaposed. There is evidence to suggest that an accommodation is being reached between the two sides and this is particularly the case in terms of joint responses to budgetary stringency. The role of the old Police Authorities, which PCCs replaced, is also examined in the round.

This chapter examines Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison's reorganization of the Chicago Police Department to increase its legitimacy and usefulness during the first half of the 1880s. The events of the 1870s set the stage for an unprecedented strengthening of the police department in the first half of the 1880s. At the beginning of the decade, the police force was undermanned and lacked legitimacy among the majority of Chicago's population. The police were chastised by elite observers for corruption and inefficiency and viewed by the working class as little more than servants of the rich. This chapter discusses the measures adopted by Harrison to rehabilitate the police department's image, such as improving police technology; maintaining police neutrality in strikes; initiating civil service reform; giving the department a new set of social-service responsibilities; giving the police new incentives; and hiring a more ethnically representative group of police officers.

‘Institutional racism’ had reference points for relationships between the police and ethnic-minority communities and between ethnic-minority and ethnic-majority members of the police workforce, between black and white police officers. This book is about the development of Black Police Associations (BPAs); their role within constabularies; their understanding of race and its articulation within constabularies; and related subjects. In particular, this chapter describes the context and perspective of BPAs. In addition, a discussion on race and ethnicity, as well as the ethnic-minority officers is provided. Ethnic-minority officers have mostly found their own way to address prejudice and discrimination without assistance or learning from their more experienced peers. The development of BPAs is also shown.

This chapter explores the trials in the magistrates' courts. It also focuses upon the decision-making of magistrates in cases in which defendants contest their guilt. If the prosecution case is focused around the evidence of police officers, evidence of the defence heavily relies upon the testimony of defendants themselves. In addition, it evaluates other systemic features which are influential in terms of outcome. Cases supported by police evidence tend to be well-constructed prosecutions which are resistant to attack even from well-coordinated defence witnesses. In magistrates' courts, the principal strength of prosecution cases lies in their heavy reliance upon evidence from the police. Even a conviction at trial may be ‘successful’ at some level for defendants. So far as conviction or acquittal is concerned, however, any success defence solicitors have at trials themselves, tends to be a product of what they can achieve ‘on their feet’ in court and whatever ‘turns up’ on the day.

Chapter 1 examines exiting research on policing pluralization, community policing, and police culture. Early studies of police occupational culture found that community policing and other types of ‘soft’ policing methods (such as partnership work) were not highly valued within the organization. However, this method was to revolutionize policing in the twenty-first century. In addition, ever more aspects of ‘police’ work are now undertaken by other actors in both the public and the private sectors. Consequently, what was once an insular and guarded organization is now more open to collaboration with outsiders, and it seems to appreciate better the ‘soft’ side of policing. However, as Police Community Support Officers are employees of police forces with a police-like mandate, these staff have been seen to present a greater danger to job security and the ‘purity’ of the police officer’s role.

This chapter provides a reflexive discussion about the ethnographic experience with Northshire police officers. It is explained that while all individual officers would have strict anonymity, to omit a disclosure from any final conclusions would be to overlook a central part of the research framework; namely to examine officers' feelings towards greater social diversity in the internal and external policing environment. The gender of the author may have presented initial problems with accessing the covert aspects of police life, but being a young female researcher in a male-dominated environment had its advantages. It also describes the recording and interpretation of the field.

This chapter reports some preliminary points that are made about change within constabularies. The discussion then moves to consider specific changes that might be attributed to the Black Police Association's (BPA) work. The primary questions discussed are ‘Have BPAs changed anything within constabularies?’ and ‘What, if any, type of change have they created?’ A further unconventional aspect of BPAs was the status of support staff as full members alongside police officers. Even when there are relatively large numbers of ethnic-minority staff in an organization, the pressure to conform is obviously still present, and will limit change. The extent of change within constabularies was therefore questioned in many BPA officials' minds.

This chapter examines how the Eight-hour strikes of 1886 and the Haymarket bombing transformed the Chicago Police Department into a much stronger institution. It begins with a discussion of the Haymarket affair and how it led to massive strikes for the eight-hour workday that began on May 1, 1886. It then considers how the Haymarket bombing changed what it meant to be a member of the Chicago Police Department as well as the relationship between the police, the press, and the city government. It shows that the Haymarket and its aftermath consolidated a positive image of the Chicago Police Department in the eyes of the respectable citizens of the city. This shift facilitated some institutional changes that favored police officers, such as the allocation of funds for a pension, improvements in police buildings, and expansion of the force. But most of all, only citizens willing to risk being identified with the anarchists would criticize the institution itself.

The current focus on restoring order in our cities arises against a backdrop of a century-long debate about when, how, and if local governments generally—and police officers in particular—should address the constellation of problems now known as “urban disorder.” This chapter briefly outlines that debate in an effort to place contemporary disorder-suppression efforts in their legal and historical context.