How can cops, who can be exemplary heroes, beat people and be prepared to lie about it? Short answer: The police worldview, based in authority and danger, affects the values of cops, which can sometimes lead to misconduct.
Several factors are involved: The police culture (danger & authority) Paradoxes of coercive force Suspiciousness (cynicism/mistrust) Police view of citizens (3-fold typology) Police view of the underclass Siege mentality The Dirty Harry Syndrome Code of silence
Paradox of face: The nastier one’s reputation, the less nasty one has to be But: Police who rely on coercive force to make the world a less threatening place make it more dangerous for themselves and other cops. Why? Coercive force is limiting and cannot overcome all challenges police confront.
Cops are trained to be suspicious, and to make distinctions about what behaviors are normal and abnormal, within a particular context “Symbolic assailants” Outcome: Such thinking isolates police from the public, since most encounters have no potential for danger
Cops divide citizens into 3 groups Suspicious persons Know nothings Assholes
(1) Underclass: criminal is a bad guy perpetrating violence on a deserving poor (2) Dirty Harry syndrome: using bad means to achieve good ends (3) Siege mentality: rewards for hardnosed policing and “us vs. them” mentality (4) Code of silence
How does the paramilitary organization of police work contribute to unnecessary violence? (1) Implies a war model where police fight an “enemy” hiding amongst the citizenry (2) A “war on crime” mentality implies that this war can be won, which is highly doubtful (3) The war on crime model aggrandizes the “tough guy” mentality (4) The war mentality relegates line officers to the role of the grunt in the trenches.
(1) Elaborate rulebooks are developed to create an elaborate façade of “by-the-book” policing (2) Officers must often run afoul of the rules to do their jobs, and thus officers come to devalue all rules and find shortcuts around them. (3) Since all officer violate rules, accountability is difficult for those who rise in rank and also for those who would speak up against serious misconduct.