We All Need To Change

Much has been written about why police do what they do. And asking that question does not occur more frequently than when there is police abuse and violence. Nominees that explain why police officers abuse people from an article in The Atlantic include the few bad apples theory, there are systemic problems, and police culture (click here for the article). As the article pointed out, all three nominees share the award.

I would like to focus on how police culture can contribute to police abuse and violence. But before I do, I think it is both fair and necessary to get some feedback from police officers regarding what they experience and how they see their jobs. A glimpse into how police officers can been in a Pew Research Center article (click here for the article).

In that article, part of a police officer's reality includes the following:

• Seeing themselves themselves as protectors and/or enforcers
• Having to worry about one's physical safety
• Having to report violent encounters
• Having to use one's gun
• Having a public that doesn't understand the risks of the job
• Receiving positive and/or negative verbal feedback from the public
• Choosing to participate in community events
• How police officers feel about their job
• Having to choose between doing what is right or following department rules

There are other realities and all of them are expressed by poll statistics. But there is a human side to those realities as well. And personally, being a police officer is a job I could have never done. But that isn't the point here. The point here is that if we want to say something intelligent about what is involved with being a police officer, we must start by listening to what police officers say about their jobs.

But let's get into the police culture issue. We can do that by looking at the values and norms taught to police officers both in their training and in how they in their units perform their jobs.

But another way we can do that is to assume that police officers carry with them at least some of the cultural values they have embraced as civilians in society. So we should look at those values and norms to see if they help explain some of the abusive behaviors of some police officers. Then finally, we need to address how we in society can change those values so as to facilitate change in police culture.

Here we should first note the observation of police culture in the previously cited article from The Atlantic. That article said the following:

The problem lies in the organizational cultures of some police forces. In the forces with an us-versus-the-world siege mentality. In the ones with the we-strap-on-the-armor-and-fight culture, the ones who depersonalize the human beings out on the street. All cruelty begins with dehumanization—not seeing the face of the other, not seeing the whole humanity of the other.  A cultural regime of dehumanization has been constructed in many police departments.

Here we should notice some similarities between some of the culture of our society and the organizational police culture described above. The beliefs in an us vs. them world, a siege mentality, a cultural expectation of fighting and defending, along with depersonalizing and dehumanizing those from other groups does not describe the culture of some police forces alone, it describes what many religiously conservative Christians call 'the Culture War.'  And though liberals and leftists might not think in terms of a culture war, ideological and/or political tribalism has already planted the seeds of similar organizational cultural values found in some police departments.

Initially we heard the us-versus-them themes on conservative talk radio starting in the 1980s and 1990s. Conservative pop media stars constantly described themselves and their followers as true patriotic Americans while liberals and leftists were conflated into one group as those were either mentally ill or enemies of America. And though liberals and leftists did not start that game of demonizing and depersonalizing the other side, they soon joined in. Tribalism, that is a high degree of loyalty to the group, kicked in and soon we had an us-versus-them cultural value in segments of conservatives, liberals, and leftists.

So the siege mentality, the us-versus-them attitude, and the tendency to so berate those who think differently have been well-established values in society that are also showing up in some police departments. Therefore, if we want to change police culture, especially in those police departments where we have a pattern of abuse and violence, we need to start with the culture outside of police organizations.

If we are to change the culture outside of police organization, we need to realize that our own ideological and/or political tribes can learn from others. That assumes that one's own tribe doesn't assume to have the ability to bring about either an absolute or relative utopia. That one's own ideological and/or political tribe doesn't have all of the answers. That we need to listen to each other to see how others can contribute to us and to the world we want to live in. We need to see the need for conservatives, liberals, and leftists to collaborate as much as possible and to be willing to listen to each other and not use differences as a reason to look down on others.

Currently, our society has the kind of cultural values that contaminates the organizational cultural values that helps increase abusive police practices. And when you add that to the hardships and stress of the job of being a police officer, then you are beginning to create a perfect storm of bad policing.

Do we want good changes in our police departments. Then we need to address the cultural values of our society while calling for reform and change in our police departments.