Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology

Volume 63 | Issue 1 Article 10

1972

Police Personality: Fact or Fiction, TheRobert W. Balch

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Recommended CitationRobert W. Balch, Police Personality: Fact or Fiction, The, 63 J. Crim. L. Criminology & Police Sci. 106 (1972)

TnB JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL LAw, CRnI 12NoLoGy AND POLICE SCIENCE Vol. 63, No. 1Copyright a 1972 by Northwestern University School of Law Printed in U.S.A.

THE POLICE PERSONALITY: FACT OR FICTION?*

ROBERT W. BALCH

Robert W. Balch is Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Montana, Missoula. Much ofthe work on his present paper was prepared while he was a graduate student at the University ofOregon.

In the last few years a great deal has beenwritten about the police mentality. If we canbelieve everything we read in magazines, journals,and sociology books, the typical policeman iscynical, suspicious, conservative, and thoroughlybigoted. This is not a flattering picture to be sure,but it recurs again and again in the popular and"scientific" literature on the police'. Perhaps thereis something about the police system itself thatgenerates a suspicious, conservative world-view.Or perhaps certain personality types are inad-vertently recruited' for police work. Either ex-planation is plausible, and both may be correct.Unfortunately only a few writers have botheredwith the most basic question of all: Is there reallya modal police personality? At one time mostwhite Americans thought blacks were superstitibustap dancers who preferred watermelon to work.Could it be that we have stereotyped policemenin the same way? The following pages will examinethe controversy over the police mentality andsuggest a sociological alternative to current specu-lation about the nature of police personalities.

THE POLICE PERSONALITY As IT

APPEARS IN THE LITERATURE

Although authors vary in emphasis, there isremarkable agreement on the characteristics be-lieved to make up the police mentality. Thecluster of traits that consistently emerges includessuspicion, conventionality, cynicism, prejudice,and distrust of the unusual. The traits are poorlydefined and the names vary, but the syndromeis always the same.

Policemen are supposed to be very suspiciouscharacters. A good policeman is always on thelookout for the unusual: persons visibly rattledin the presence of policemen, people wearing coatson hot days, cars with mismatched hubcaps, and

* I would like to thank Fredrick B. Lindstrom,Marvin J. Cummins, and Richard D. Vandiver fortheir comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

so on.' A good policeman presumably suspectsevil wherever he goes. As Buckner put it, "Oncethe commonplace is suspect, no aspect of inter-action is safe, on or off duty." 2

According to Colin Maclnness, suspicion issimply a manifestation of deep-seated politicaland emotional conservatism.

The true copper's dominant characteristic, if thetruth be known, is neither those daring nor viciousqualities that are sometimes attributed to him byfriend or enemy, but an ingrained conservatism, analmost desperate love of the conventional. It isuntidiness, disorder, the unusual, that a copperdisapproves of most of all: far more, even than ofcrime which is merely a professional matter. Hencehis profound dislike of people loitering in streets,dressing extravagantly, speaking with exotic ac-cents, being strange, weak, eccentric, or simplyany rare minority--of their doing, in fact, any-thing that cannot be safely predicted.3

Furthermore, policemen supposedly have nofaith in their fellow man. Most are firmly con-vinced that only the police stand between atenuous social order and utter chaos.

The people I see in the streets and in trouble arethe same people who just a little while before thatwere in their nice homes and not involved introuble. You can't fool me. I see people in the raw,the way they really are. Underneath their fine,civilized manners and clothes they're animals.4

If people in general are no good, then "coons"and "spics" are worse. All they like to do is drink,make love, and collect their welfare checks:

1Adams, Fidd Interrogation, Po.ICE 28 (Mar.-Apr. 1963).

2 H. T. Buckner, The Police: The Culture of aSocial Control Agency, 1967, at 190 (unpublishedPh.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley).

3 Quoted in J. SKOLNICK, JUSTICE WITHOUT TRIAL:LAW ENTORCEMENT IN DEmocRATIc SocIrTY 48 (1967).

'A. BLACK, THE PEOPLE AND THE POLIcE 6-7(1968).

POLICE PERSONALITY

"These scum aren't people; they're animals ina jungle . . . Hitler had the right idea." 5 Evenmany black officers share this outlook:

There have always been jobs for Negroes, but thef- people are too stupid to go out and get aneducation. They all want the easy way out. CivilRights has gotten them nothin' they didn't havebefore. 6

Several other traits are frequently but lessconsistently used to describe the typical policeman.Police officers supposedly distrust ivory-towerintellectuals and bleeding-heart humanitarians.A good policeman is a realist who learns by ex-perience and not by reading books. He respectsauthority and knows how to take orders. He likesto give orders too, and he demands respect fromjuveniles, criminals, and minorities. If necessaryhe will use force to see that he gets it. Brutalityis perhaps the most infamous feature of the police-man's reputation:

A common thread of inhumanity runs through po-licemen in every city across the land. The potentialfor brutality is always there. Some psychologistssay that this is the character trait that draws themto police work in the first place.... In too manycops the beast still slumbers, ready to enjoy anotherbout of sadism... j

Interestingly enough, the duster of traits thatapparently make up the police personality alsodefines authoritarianism.' Consider the parallelsbetween the so-called police mentality and thefollowing dimensions of the F-Scale:

a. Conventionalism: rigid adherence to conven-tional, middle-class values.

b. Authoritarian Submission: submissive, uncriti-cal attitude toward idealized moral authoritiesof the ingroup.

c. Authoritarian Aggression: tendency to be on the.lookout for, and to condemn, reject, and punishpeople who violate conventional values.

d. Anti-intraception: opposition to the subjective,the imaginative, the tender-minded.

5 Black & Reiss, Patterns of Behavior in Police andCitizen Transactions, in 2 STuDiEs or CRnrE AND LAWENFORCEMENT IN MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS 113(1967).

Id. at 137.7 J. W. Sterling, Changes in Role Concepts of

Police Officers During Recruit Training: A ProgressReport, 1969, at 31 (mimeographed), quoting HarrietVan Home.8J. AnoRNo, E. FRENKEL-BRJNSWIcH, D. LEVEN-SON & R. SANzORD, TIIE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY255-57 (1955).

e. Superstition and Stereotypy: the belief in mysti-cal determinants of the individual's fate; thedisposition to think in rigid categories.

f. Power and "toughness": preoccupation with thedominance-submission, strong-weak, leader-fol-lower dimension; identification with powerfigures; overemphasis upon the conventionalizedattributes of the ego; exaggerated assertion ofstrength and toughness.

g. Destructiveness and Cynicism: generalized hos-tility, vilification of the human.

h. Projectivity: The disposition to believe thatwild and dangerous things go on in the world;the projection outwards of unconscious emo-tional impulses.

i. Sex: Exaggerated concern with sexual "goings-on."

Only superstition, apparently, has never beenused to describe policemen. Otherwise the dimen-sions of authoritarianism seem to describe policeofficers very well. In fact, the typical policeman,as he is portrayed in the literature, is almost aclassic example of the authoritarian personality.

Is THERE REALLY A POLICE PERSONALITY?

While many writers assume as a matter ofcourse that there is a police personality, theempirical evidence is less than convincing. Un-fortunately good data are'hard to come by. Inone study the authors compared the author-itarianism of policemen with a partially matchedsample of nonpolice students.8 Both police andnonpolice subjects were attending the John JayCollege of Criminal Justice at the time. UsingRokeach and Piven scales, they found the police-men were considerably less authoritarian thanthe other students. At a glance these results castdoubt on the so-called police personality, but infact they cannot be interpreted so easily. In thefirst place, the nonpolice students cannot beequated with the general population because asmany as 25 percent of them said they were 'com-pletely committed" to a career in police work.Second, the non-police students were still lessauthoritarian than a sample of noncollege police-men in a previous study by the same authors. 0

The preliminary results of 'a recent study"

9Smith, Locke, & Walker, Authoritarianism inPolice College Students and Non-Police College Students,J. CRm. L.C. & P.S. 440 (1968).

10 Smith, Locke, & Walker, Autloritarianism inCollege and Non-College Oriented Students, 58 J. CRIM.L.C. & P.S. 128 (1967).

1 Sterling, supra note 7.

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ROBERT W. BALCH

using the Edwards Personal Preference Scheduleindicate there are significant differences betweenpolice recruits and nonpolice college students,but the differences are not necessarily consistentwith the authoritarian stereotype of policemen.The recruits were more likely to believe in thevalue of punishment, and they received signifi-cantly higher scores or the dimensions of deferenceand orderliness. They also appeared to be far lessindependent than the college students, and theywere less likely to prefer new experiences. On theother hand, the recruits did not differ from the col-lege students on three dimensions which are closelyrelated to authoritarianism: aggression, nur-turance, and intraception. The recruits alsoscored lower on the dimension of heterosexualitywhich belies Niederhoffer's claim that policemenare preoccupied with sexual matters.12

Another study undertook extensive psyhciatricassessment of 116 applicants for the PortlandPolice Department. 3 All the applicants had passedtheir mental and physical exams, so, before theprogram of psychological testing began, theywould have become officers as vacancies occurred.The authors administered a variety of psycholog-ical tests including the Edwards Personal Pref-erence Schedule, Strong Vocational Interest Blank,and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality In-ventory. They concluded that the typical policeapplicant was very similar to the average moalecollege student. Of course it is entirely possiblethat a unique police personality develops afterrecruits have spent some time on the job. Un-fortunately there has been no follow-up study ofthe Portland recruits.

There are studies of experienced policemen inother cities, but they have not used the samepersonality scales. Bayley and Mendelsohn,'14

for example, administered an extensive ques-tionnaire to a sample of Denver policemen. Thequestionnaire included items designed to measureanomia, authoritarianism, prejudice, and socialdistance. Using Srole's five-item F-Scale as theirmeasure of authoritarianism, they found thatDenver policemen scored lower than control popu-lations sampled in previous studies. Their conclu-

12A, NIEDERHOFFER, BEHIND THE SHIELD: ThePOLICE IN URBAN SOCIETY (1967).

13 Matarazzo, Allen, Saslow & Wiens, Characteristicsof Successful Policemen and Firemen Applicants, 48J. APPLIED PSYCtOLOGY 123 (1964).

14 D. BAYLEY & H. MENDELSOHN, MINORITIES ANDTHE POLICE (1969).

sion is worth repeating. Since their sample consistedof experienced policemen, the evidence also doesnot support the belief that a particular personalitydevelops after joining the force.

In a study of the New York Police Department,McNamara used the original F-Scale to measurethe authoritarianism of recruits in the police acad-emy. 5 The recruits' mean F-score was virtuallythe same as the mean for working-class males foundby Adorno and his colleagues. If we define "work-ing class" as skilled, semi-skilled, and service work,then between 60 and 70 percent of the recruits inthe New York Police Department come fromworking-class homes.' 6 Therefore, McNamara'sfindings suggests that police recruits are typical ofthe class from which they are drawn. But sincesocio-economic status is inversely related toauthoritarianism, 7 it is also true that working-classmen, and therefore policemen, are more authori-tarian than most. The McNamara study has to betaken with a grain of salt, however, becauseMcNamara did not compare his recruits with acontemporary sample of working-class men in NewYork. Not only had many years elapsed sinceAdorno and his colleagues completed their study,but their working-class sample was selected on theWest Coast.

McNamara also found evidence of increasingauthoritarianism over time. He re-tested the re-cruits at the end of their first year and discovereda slight increase in their mean F-score. He alsocompared the recruits with men who had servedon the force for two years. The more experiencedpolicemen had the highest authoritarianism scoresof all. A very liberal interpretation of McNamara'sdata suggests the following conclusion: Police de-partments do not attract particular personalities,but instead tend to recruit members from a rela-tively authoritarian class of people. Furthermore,the police experience itself intensifies authoritarian-ism. It must be emphasized, however, that thisconclusion is tenuous, and certainly is not con-sistent with Bayley and Mendelsohn's findings.

Although not concerned with personality per se,a study by Toch and Schulte suggests that police-men may perceive violence more readily than

15 McNamara, Uncertainties in Police Work: TheRelevance of Police Recruits' Backgrounds and Training,in THE POLICE: SIx SOCIOLOGICAL EssAYs 163 (D.Bordua ed. 1967).

"6 Id.; NEDERHOFFER, supra note 12.'7 R. BROWN, SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY (1965).

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POLICE PERSO.XALITY

others.i s They compared a group of advanced policeadministration students with two control groups-one consisting of introductory psychology studentsand the other of first year police administrationstudents. All subjects were shown nine stereogramsfor a half second each. One figure in each stereo-gram depicted an act of violence or crime, while theother, matched in size and outline, showed somenonviolent "neutral" activity. The average num-ber of violent percepts was the same for the twocontrol groups, but the advanced police adminis-tration students perceived roughly twice as manyviolent scenes. Because the first year police ad-ministration students did not differ significantlyfrom the psychology students, the authors con-cluded that police training increases one's readinessto perceive violence.

It is widely believed that policemen are preju-diced against minority groups. For example, Blackand Reiss concluded 9 that 72 percent of the police-men they observed in Boston, Chicago, andWashington, D. C., were prejudiced against Ne-groes. Observers rode or walked with officers foreight hours a day, six days a week, for seven weeksin 1966. Officers were classified as "highly preju-diced" when they "referred to Negroes as sub-human, suggested an extreme solution to the'Negro problem,' expressed dislike to the point ofhatred, or used very pejorative nicknames whenspeaking of Negroes." 20 Officers were classified as"prejudiced" if they "simply showed general dis-like for Negroes as a group." On the other hand,Black and Reiss did not find that verbal expressionsof prejudice were translated into discriminatorybehavior. Police behavior was "obviously preju-diced" in only 2 percent of the cases and showed"some signs" of prejudice in only 6 percent. More-over, whites were targets of police discriminationmore often than blacks. Apparently, aggressive dis-criminatory police behavior was a response to thecitiien's demeanor rather than his race. Skolnickncame to a similar conclusion when he observed thebehavior of warrant officers on the Oakland policeforce.

The Black and Reiss data are not easy to inter-pret, however. Their "highly prejudiced" categorycould have been inflated by including officers who

IsToch & Schulte, Readiness to Perceive Violence asa Result of Police Training, 52 BR. J. Psvcor.ooY 389(1961).

"I Black & Reiss, supra note 5.20 Id. at 133.21 SKOLMICK, supra note 3.

used "pejorative nicknames." As Skolnick pointsout, many officers use derogatory nicknames evenwhen they are not extremely prejudiced:

The policeman's culture is that of the masculineworkingman. It is of the docks, the barracks, theballfield-Joe Di Maggio was a helluva good 'wop'centerfielder, not an athlete of 'Italian extraction,'and similarly, the black man is a 'nigger,' not amember of an 'underprivileged minority.' 2

Black and Reiss also failed to employ a controlgroup, so there is no way of assessing what theirpercentages mean. Skolnick, for instance, admitsthat policemen are prejudiced, but he does notbelieve they are any more so than the averagewhite workingman.

In their study of the Denver Police Department,Bayley and Mendelsohn" also concluded thatpolicemen simply share the prejudices of the com-munity as a whole. Responses to simple prejudiceand social distance scales were not greatly differentfrom those given by. a sample of white Denver citi-zens. In fact, neither the police nor the citizensscored highly on either scale. Similarly, Preiss andEhrlich2l found that 71 percent of their respondentsin a Midwestern state police department were un-prejudiced and tolerant oii Srole's "anti-minorities"scale. However, there was no control group in theirstudy.

The picture that emerges from these studies isnot easy to interpret. Portland police applicantsare like ordinary college males. Recruits in NewYork are somewhat authoritarian, but not as muchas experienced policemen. Denver police are lessauthoritarian than the general public. In Boston,Chicago, and Washington police are prejudicedagainst Negroes, but their prejudice is not reflectedin their behavior. In Denver and a Midwesterndepartment, the police do not even appear to beprejudiced.

The picture is further complicated by methodo-logical problems. The studies have been conductedin different cities in different parts of the country.What is true of Portland need not be true of NewYork, and what holds for a big-city force likeChicago's need not hold for a state or rural depart-ment. Even within departments there can be 'atremendous amount of variation. Preiss and Ehr-

rId. at 82.23 BAYv=Y & M mENpELsoi, supra note 14.21J. PRmiss & H. EuaicH, An ExATNATION OF

Ror;E TnxoaY; Tim CAsx or Tm STATE PoucE (1966).

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lich, for example, found that policies, standards,and procedures varied considerably from one postto the next in the state department they studied.

Only a few studies used adequate control groupsand some did not use a control group at all. Whileit is very impressive to learn that 72 percent of thepolicemen in one study were prejudiced--or that71 percent were unprejudiced in another-thesefigures are meaningless until we know how theycompare to some nonpolice control group.

In addition, the methods of study and measuringinstruments may not be comparable. In the studiesmentioned above, three different measures ofauthoritarianism were employed. Prejudice hasbeen "measured" by the subjective accounts ofparticipant observers as well as by paper-and-penciltests. These divergent methods may account forsome of the apparently inconsistent results.

Finally, most of the results are subject to a "so-cial desirability" interpretation. Niederhoffer 25 hascommented on the policeman's transition "fromstation house to glass house." In other words,policemen are being watched and studied as neverbefore. Liberals, minorities, and intellectuals areclamoring for greater civilian control over thepolice. The public has been sensitized to policebrutality and prejudice, and police administratorsare desperately trying to upgrade the quality ofmen in their departments. Furthermore, manypolicemen have had a smattering of social sciencessomewhere along the line, so it is not surprisingthat they should know how to respond to an "anti-minorities" or authoritarianism scale in order topresent themselves in the most favorable light.

In short, the evidence-by its very inconsistency,if nothing else-does not indicate the existence ofa police personality, authoritarian or otherwise.With approximately 40,000 police departments inthe United States, the chances of finding a singledominant personality type appear to be slim, toput it mildly. Obviously, however, none of theevidence so far is good enough to draw any firmconclusions. Writers who believe in a police men-tality may not have a strong case, but they haveyet to be disproved. Therefore it may be worth-while to review some of the current hypothesesabout the origin of police authoritarianism. Popu-lar explanations generally fall into two broad cate-gories. Some writers believe that police work itselfdevelops an authoritarian world-view, while others

5 NIEDERIIOFFER, supra note 12.

believe that authoritarian personalities are selectedfor police work in the first place.

Tim CONSEQUENCES OF POLICE WORK

According to the first point of view, authori-tarianism is an unavoidable by-product of policework, i.e., the formal responsibilities, informal ex-pectations, and everyday experiences of policepatrolmen. The word "patrolmen" is used delib-erately. The police mentality, as described in theliterature, does not develop at the top of the policehierarchy and filter down to the underlings. In-stead it develops at the bottom of the ladder asmen patrol their beats and is carried to the top asthey work their way up. Since virtually all policeadministrators begin their careers as patrolmen, itwould not be surprising to find symptoms of thepolice mentality throughout the organization.26

Most writers only deal with patrolmen, however,and so will this writer.

Suspiciousness. Danger is a recurrent theme inpolice work. Stories are told of policemen shot andkilled while trying to settle a family dispute orwrite a simple speeding ticket. Danger is part ofthe folklore to be sure, but even the most bizarrelegends may have some basis in fact. Statisticallyspeaking, police work is one of the most dangerousjobs in the country,27 and policemen are aware ofthat fact. Sterling28 found that policemen weremore likely to perceive danger in 20 different situa-tions the longer they had served on the force. Noone can deny the widespread and often violent hos-tility policemen encounter in minority-group neigh-borhoods. At Christmastime the Black Pantherseven sell greeting cards featuring uniformed pigswith knives in their bellies. Skolnick coined theterm "symbolic assailant" to describe the police-man's psychological response to the continualthreat of violence.

The policeman, because his work requires him to beoccupied continually with potential violence, de-velops a perceptual shorthand to identify certainkinds of people as symbolic assailants, that is, aspersons who use gesture, language, and attire that

16 Significantly, the President's Commission on LawEnforcement and the Administration of Justice recom-mends increasing the amount of lateral entry intopolice administrative positions. PRESmENT'S CoM-MISSION ON LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE ADMINISTRA-TION OF JUsTICE, TAsK FORCE REPORT: TnE POLICE(1967).

- W. Wirtz, quoted in Copsides, THE POLICE CHIEF(January 1969).

2 Sterling, supra note 7.

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the policeman has come to recognize as a preludeto violence.

2"

Although many policemen try to minimize thedangerous aspects of their work, Skolnick believestheir "strategies of denial" are defense mechanismsthat enable them to perform their job effectively.He concludes that the "unambiguous" consequenceof danger in police work is a suspicious outlook onlife.

Policemen are also trained to be suspicious. Ac-cording to Skolnick, a good policeman has an in-tuitive ability to sense the unusual. He pays closeattention to normal everyday routines so he canspot anything out of the ordinary. He notices whenstores open and close, which houses are vacant,which lights are left on. He has to be suspicious orhe will overlook tell-tale signs of criminal activity.Toch and Schulte's" study of the perception ofviolence indicates that police training has a verysignificant effect on one's perceptual processes.Suspicion, therefore, may be an occupational re-quirement. Unsuspecting cops do not make "goodpinches."

Unfortunately most writers have not distin-guished between suspiciousness as a specific orgeneric trait. While many of them imply that sus-piciousness pervades all aspects of the policeman'slife, it may well be confined to his working hours,and even then to only certain aspects of his job.Because black ghettos are high-risk areas wherecrime and delinquency are commonplace, the menwho patrol the ghettos are understandably sus-picious of the local residents. But will their sus-piciousness carry over during their off-duty hours?Will they be equally suspicious when they patrol"respectable" middle-class neighborhoods? If not,we ought to be cautious about treating suspicious-ness as if it were a pervasive feature of the police-man's personality. In all fairness it should beadded that Skolnick may have coined the term"working personality" to avoid treating suspicious-ness as a generic trait. Nevertheless, other writershave not been so careful, and even Skolnick refusesto rule out the possibility that policemen are au-thoritarian personalities in the generic sense of theterm.

Cynicism. One of the outstanding features of thepolice mentality is supposed to be cynicism-adeep-seated distrust of basic human goodness. The

2SxoLmcK, supra note 3.10 Toch & Schulte, supra note 18.

policeman's subjective world is full of savagery andhypocrisy: police officers are assaulted.every day;respectable housewives try to fix their traffictickets; and businessmen uphold the law only whenit is in their interest to do so. Everyone, it seems,is "on the take" in one way or another.

One of the most common explanations for policecynicism is public antipathy toward the police.Westley found that 73 percent of the policemen heinterviewed believed the average citizen dislikespolice officers." As Westley points out, the police-man's image of the public is shaped by the peoplehe deals with every day on the job. To many, per-haps most of these people, the policeman is an in-truder. Nowhere is the policeman's status as anoutsider better illustrated than in the case of thefamily quarrel. The police officer is most apt to becalled to settle a family dispute in a low-incomeneighborhood, the very place he is most likely to bedefined as an outsider. Even if he has been calledby one of the parties to the dispute, there is a goodchance that everyone will turn on him before heleaves. The following comment by a police officerillustrates the policeman's predicament:

Her husband was drunk and ugly when we gotthere... I started to grab him and struggled withhim and the first thing I know I felt an aluminumpan pounding on my head and there is the littlewoman who ten seconds ago was standing theretrembling at what the husband would do when weleft, beating me on the head with an aluminumpan and saying, 'You are not supposed to hurt him.Let him alone.' 12

The policeman's social identity as a law enforce-ment officer, and therefore as an intruder, is a"master status." It overrides all other aspects ofhis public identity. Whatever else the policemanmay be, he is still a cop who can arrest you if hesees fit. The exclamation, "Better watch out, he'sa cop," underscores the policeman's marginal iden-tity. Presumably the policeman withdraws into hisown circle of friends and defines the public in de-viant terms just as he is so defined by them.

Public hostility toward the police takes manyforms, some direct, others not. One kind of hostilityis the abuse the policeman absorbs day after day ashe patrols his beat. Another takes the form ofbiased reporting and editorial attacks in the news-papers. Niederhoffer found that 72 percent of a

31 W. VESTLEY. VIOLENCE AND THE POLICE (1970).a Id. at 61.

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large sample of New York police officers believedthat news papers "seem to enjoy giving an un-favorable slant to the news concerning the police... ,, 3" In a less direct way, public hostility is re-flected in the low prestige of his police work gen-erally. The police officer's pariah feelings are in-tensified by his low occupational status. McNa-mara foundn that 75 percent of the experiencedpolicemen he studied in the New York Police De-partment believed that police work should beranked as high as medicine and law. Yet he andReiss have found that-policemen believe their pres-tige has actually been declining in recent years.35

Skolnick discovered that 70 percent of the officersin a large Western city ranked the prestige of policework as "only fair or poor," while Westley foundthat 70 percent of the policemen he interviewed inan Eastern department said they would not wanttheir sons to become police officers. According toWatson and Sterling,

[I]t appears that many of these officers exhibitcharacteristics similar to those shown by a perse-cuted minority. They are very sensitive about criti-cism. They seem to fear that everyone is againstthem including their own commanding officers.They are hypersensitive and touchy about theirstatus and their prerogatives."

As usual, however, the evidence is not completelyconsistent. Bayley and Mendelsohn found thatDenver policemen believed they had higher-than-average respect in the eyes of the public.N Preissand Ehrlich found that the state police departmentthey studied also enjoyed relatively high prestige."In a nationwide survey of police opinions,39 only 50percent of the experienced officers believed that"public support for the police seems to be grow-ing." But surprisingly the more experience anofficer had, the more likely he was to endorse thisstatement. Furthermore, only three perecnt of theofficers said the "gradual drifting away of non-police friends" was the most important personalproblem they faced as policemen.40 The Denver

33 NIEDERHOFFER, supra note 12 at 234.1

4 McNamara, supra note 15.31 Reiss, Career Orientations, Job Satisfaction, and

the Assessment of Law Enforcement Problems by PoliceOfficers, in 2 STUDIES OF CRIME AND LAw ENFORcE-MENT IN MAJOR METROPOLITAN AREAS (1967).

6 N. WATSON & J. STERLING, POLICE AND THEIROPINIONS 9 (1969).

37

BAYLEY & MENDELSOHN, supra note 14.'1 PaiEiss & EHRLICH, supra note 24.39 WATSON & STERLING, supra note 36, at 55.40 Id. at 101.

police also displayed little evidence of social isola-tion. Only 12 percent said they had difficulty mak-ing friends with nonpolice families, and less than25 percent complained of difficulties in their social'relationships because of their job. As many as 68percent even said they associated primarily withnonpolice people. Banton has also criticized the as-sumption that American policemen are isolatedfrom the public.4' He contends that Americanpoliceman, unlike their British counterparts, areable to segregate police work from the rest of theirlives. In fact many of his American respondentsridiculed those who played the policeman's role intheir off-duty hours. Banton found that 67 percentof his Scottish respondents said their job affectedtheir private lives. This is considerably higher thanthe 40 percent found in three Illinois cities byClark who asked the very same question.A Yet 40percent is still a sizeable figure and is difficult tointerpret-fully 40 percent or only 40 percent?Banton himself adds in passing that relative toother American occupations, policemen in thiscountry really can be considered socially isolated.

Of course police isolation may be myth createdby policemen themselves in order to make their jobeasier. Ronald Tauber agrees with Banton thatAmerican policemen are not as isolated as manyhave daimed.4' However, he says that policemenneed a sense of isolation if they are going to functioneffectively. The greater the social distance betweenthe policeman and the public, the less cognitivestrain there is in enforcing the law. According toNiederhoffer, the most successful policemen are themost cynical4

Another commonly mentioned source of policecynicism is the judicial system. Policemen believethey have been hamstrung by the' courts. Thepolice officer is not just paid to enforce the law-the public demands that he do so. The blame forrising crime rates invariably falls on the police de-partment, yet policemen are frustrated at everyturn in their efforts to win convictions.

Because of the defense attorney's interrogations,[the police officer] often feels that he is being triedrather than the culprit. He is made to play the part41 M. BANTON, TILE POLICEMAN IN THE COMMUNITY

(1964).42 Clark, Isolation of the Police: A Comparison of the

British and American Situations, 56 J. Cimu. L.C. &P.S., 307 (1965).

43Tauber, Danger and the Police: A TheoleticalAnalysis, in 3 IssuEs IN CRIMINOLOoY 69 (1967).44 NIEDERHOFFER, supra note 12, at 76.

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of the fool. He is often frustrated in his attemptto make a pinch stick by the political machinationsof the courts and the existence of the fix. He tendsto lose faith in the course of justice and in obtainingthe support of the courts for his judgments. He mayfeel that the only way in which the guilty are goingto be punished is by the police. He has anxietiesabout the results of court action, for if the prisoneris declared innocent, he, the policeman, may besubject to a suit for false arrest. 45

As this quotation illustrates, police officers arenot just frustrated by fast-talking attorneys andbleeding-hearts on the bench. They are frustratedby the "fix," the back-stage deals against whichthey are helpless. Not even the courtroom is im-mune to the corruption which the policemen be-lieves pervades our society.

A persistent theme in discussions of police cyni-cism is the police officer's continual exposure to thevery worst in life." While it is true that policemenspend more time rescuing cats and giving directionsthan they do fighting crime, one could argue thatthey still have more contact with the seamy side oflife than most people. The very nature of their posi-tion makes them constant targets for bribes andpayoffs by "respectable" and disreputable citizensalike. Of course policemen are not the only oneswho see the "dark side" of human nature. Ghettodwellers see crime and violence every day. But thepoliceman sees these things from a unique point ofview. As a law enforcement officer the fact of devi-ance is foremost in his mind. Not surprisingly,Niederhoffer found that cynicism in the New YorkPolice Department was directly related to thelength of time an officer spent on the force.

Bigotry. Police cynicism supposedly finds itsstrongest expression in racial prejudice. Prejudice,after all, is really a kind of "directed cynicism."There is some indirect evidence that anti-minoritysentiment among policemen is directly related tothe amount of contact with members of minoritygroups. Black and Reiss found that a larger propor-tion of officers made "highly prejudiced" state-ments in Negro precincts than they did in raciallymixed or white areas.'7 Of course the crime rate ishigher in black neighborhoods; the poverty isgreater; and the values are different. According toJohnson," many policemen suffer from cultural

45 VEsTi;EY, supra note 31, at 82.40 BLACK, supra note 4; NEDE HoPPER, supra note

12; WESTLEY, supra note 31.7 Black & Reiss, supra note 5.4s Johnson, Police Community Relations: Attitudes

shock in the ghettos, so it would not be surprisingto find a high degree of prejudice among them.Kephart found a similar relationship between thearrest rate in black neighborhoods and the negativeattitudes of white policemen who patrolled there."The high crime rate might have contributed to theofficers' prejudice, but the causal arrow could pointthe other way as well. The officers could have ar-rested more blacks because they were prejudiced inthe first place, Not only that, but Kephart failedto find any relationship between anti-Negro feelingsand length of service on the police force. As Skol-nick points out, it is wise to keep police prejudicein the proper perspective: "the policeman may notget on well with anybody regardless (to use thehackneyed phrase) of race, creed, or nationalorigin." 50

Anti-Intraception. Policemen have been accusedof anti-intraception. They are supposedly opposedto tender-minded, sympathetic visionaries who in-sist on complicating "reality" with unworkableidealism.

Police tend to be pragmatists, a characteristic re-lated, no doubt, to the exigencies of their calling.Much of a policeman's work calls for action-now.He frequently handles emergencies in which time isprecious. He has to make decisions in situationswhere facts are hard to come by and guidelines areuncertain. Small wonder, then, that he values'common sense' more than theory, successes morethan idealsA'

According to Watsbn and Sterling,5 2 the police-man's hard-bitten pragmatism is closely tied to hiscynical outlook on life. Deterministic theorieswhich, from the policeman's point of view, excusethe criminal from responsibility for his actions areinconsistent with a cynical, misanthropic world-view. Nevertheless, Watson and Sterling foundthat most officers disagreed with the view that so-cial science is unrelated to the "everyday realities"of police work.

Violence. Critics also accuse the police of beingoverly fond of violence as a problem-solving tech-nique. Police cynicism supposedly forms a back-ground against which police brutality is under-

and Defense Mechanisms, in 4 IssuEs IN CRIMINOLOGY69 (1968).

41 W. KEPHART, RACIAL FACTORS AND UREAN LAWENFORCEMENT (1957).50 SKor.NICK, supra note 3 at 49-50.

" WATSON & STERLING, supra note 36, at 6.S2Id.

ROBERT W. BALCH

standable: Policemen need not have compunctionsabout splitting the heads of vile degenerate men.The police officer's reaction to the sex offender is aprime example: "If I saw a guy beat up a sexcriminal I'd figure the guy had a good reason for it.If the guy is no Goddam good ... I think it's allright to rough him up." -'

WesteyM believes that the root of police brutal-ity is the public's definition of the police officer asa pariah. Policemen simply spend too much timedealing with the public to escape its opinions.They are ambivalent about their status. On the onehand, they regard themselves as competent crafts-men performing a vital task; yet on the other, theyare condemned and degraded by the very peoplethey have sworn to protect. Because their status isinsecure, because they are not even sure if theyrespect themselves, policemen feel compelled todemand respect from the public. Significantly,Westley found that disrespect for the police wasthe greatest single reason officers gave for "rough-ing a man up." Likewise Black and Reiss concludedthat a "disproportionate part of 'unprofessional' ornegative police conduct is oriented toward citizenswho extend no deference to them." 11

According to Banton" and Tauber, 5 Americanpolicemen cannot rely on the authority vested intheir uniform to gain compliance. Instead theyfeel compelled to assert their personal authority.The citizen may take offense at the policeman's in-timidating manner, and the stage is set for a violentconfrontation in which each party is struggling tomaintain his self-respect in the face of a perceivedthreat by the other. Westley adds that the lowerthe status of the citizen, the greater the threat heposes to the officer's uncertain self-esteem. In thiscontext police brutality is indeed understandable.

Conventionalisin. One of the policeman's out-standing characteristics, we are told, is his rigidadherence to middle-class values. By and large,policemen are recruited from the working class, butthey are required to display middle-class values.Mustaches and long side-burns are prohibited, andhair must be trimmed in a conservative style.- Intheir study of a Midwestern police department,Preiss and Ehrlich found 9 that over a ten-yearperiod most of the cases to come before the depart-

' Quoted in WESTrEY, supra note 31, at 135.&4 Id.

15 Black & Reiss, supra note 5, at 37.16 BANTON, supra note 41.47 Tauber, supra note 43.u NiEDERHOFFER, supra note 12..9 PREISS & EHRLICH, supra note 24.

ment's trial board were for social offenses-intoxi-cation, sexual promiscuity, financial negligence,and so on. A police department is a paramilitaryorganization. Strict discipline is required at alltimes, and conformity to the rules can become anend in itself. When in doubt, the safest course ofaction is to follow the rules, even if it means inef-fective law enforcement. 6 The policemen's sus-piciousness could also contribute to his conven-tionality. Things out of the ordinary indicatecriminal activity.

In addition policemen are politically conserva-tive and seem to be heavily represented in the JohnBirch Society.6 In the 1964' Presidential election,Denver policemen not only voted for Goldwater infar greater proportion than the general public, butin greater proportion than white Denver citizenswith the same educational and economic back-grounds as policemen. Watson and Sterling foundthat respondents in a nation-wide survey of policeopinions tended to "side with" a sample of "ci-vilian conservatives" more often than a sample of"civilian liberals." 62 The conservatives includedseveral Klansmen and members of the John BirchSociety. However, the police officers were not asextreme in their views as the conservatives, andWatson and Sterling caution us against "the mis-taken impression that the police are 'all of a mind'-that they are a monolithic group so far as theirviews, opinions, and attitudes are concerned. Thisis definitely not the case ......

Skolnick has suggested that Festinger's theoryof cognitive dissonance may explain why police-men are conservative and support the laws theyenforce. Unless they were tough law-and-orderconservatives when they joined the force, theyare apt to experience some cognitive strain sincethey are required to enforce the law whetherthey believe in it or not. Their dissonance can bereduced in one of two ways. They can eithermodify their behavior-and risk losing their job-or they can decide that the laws are pretty goodafter all.

Policemen, then, seem to have good reason tobe suspicious, cynical, conventional, and so on.There seem to be powerful forces at work in thepoliceman's role that could generate an author-itarian outlook on life. Recall that McNamaran

found that more experienced policemen were more

60 McNamara, supra note 15.61 NIEDEIHOFFER, supra note 12.62 WATSON & STERLING, supra note 36.63 McNamara, supra note 15.

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POLICE PERSONALITY

authoritarian than recruits in the police academy.However, policemen do not confront their prob-lems alone. They are submerged in a subculturewhich provides a ready-made set of solutions.When police recruits leave their sheltered acad-emies, experienced patrolmen begin to re-socializethem. Preiss and Ehrlich" found that policesupervisors took special delight in debunkingwhat rookies had learned in school-in fact, theyconsidered it an important part of their job.Authoritarianism may not be an individual re-action which, incidentally, happens to be sharedby others. It may be an attitude that is conveyedfrom one generation of policemen to the next.Niederhoffer is quite explicit about the system'sability to create authoritarian personalities. Hegoes so far as to say the system is a failure if itdoes not develop authoritarianism.

THE SELECTION OF AUTHORITARIAN

PERSONALITIES

An alternative explanation of police author-itarianism is that authoritarian individuals arerecruited for police work in the first place. Threekinds of selection are possible: 1) self-selection,2) the weeding-out of "liberals," and 3) recruit-ment from an authoritarian class of people.

Self-Selection. Authoritarian individuals maydeliberately choose police work because it is com-patible with their personality needs. It is easy tosee how an authoritarian might be drawn topolice work. The police are a paramilitary orga-nization whose job is to uncover suspicious activitiesand protect conventional moral standards. Mc-Namarama found that police recruits did not ob-ject to the rigorous discipline of the police acad-emy. He points out that this is what we should ex-pect, given their relatively high F-scores. How-ever, even if high F-scores are compatible with amilitaristic organization, we cannot conclude thatmemnbers have been self-selected. McNamara alsobelieved that his recruits were no more author-itarian than the average working-class male.Similarly the authors of the Portland study ofpolice applicants concluded that their subjectswere very much like the typical male collegestudents.15 Bayley and Mendelsohn also concludedthat policemen were "absolutely average people." 66

The evidence that particular personalities are

" PREiss & EHRLICH, supra note 24.ela McNAmARA, supra note 1511 Matarazzo, et al., supra note 13.11 BAYLEY & MENDELSOHN, supra note 14.

selected for different occupations is not at allclear. According to Donald Super,6 the morenarrowly and specifically defined the occupation,the better the chance certain personalities willbe attracted. But the problem with police work isthat it defies easy description. The average police-man is a social worker, watchman, detective,guide, and so on.

The Eliminatioi. of "Liberal" Recruits. Evenif authoritarian personalities do not deliberatelyseek out police work, a second selective factormay be operating. Liberals simply may not applyfor police work. This is a much more parsimoniousexplanation of police conservatism than the theoryof cognitive dissonance. Bayley and Mendelsohnnot only found that Denver policemen were con-siderably more conservative than the generalpublic, but that age was unrelated to politicalbeliefs. If police work really develops a conserva-tive outlook, then the older, more experiencedpolicemen should have been more conservative*than the younger ones. Of course, police selectionprocedures are geared to weed out unconventionalapplicants if they do apply. Applicants are sub-jected to rigorous character investigations, andany finge of radicalism in one's background maybe grounds for disqualification."

Even when liberals do become policemen, theyare not apt to last on the job.69 The police forceis already a conservative organization when theliberal arrives-he will not find much social supportthere for his beliefs. Even if he is not ostracizedby other policemen; the job itself may be anti-thetical to his values. The police organization is aparamilitary bureaucracy which rewards con-formity and discourages innovation. The liberalwill have to enforce many laws he finds personallyobjectionable, and law itself may be subordinatedto order-maintenance. The liberal has three al-ternatives. He can develop an "underlife" byseeking alternative sources of support for hisvalues and self-esteem. He might, for instance,find a compatible niche in the community relationsdivision. He could also change his belief system,and this is what we might predict from dissonancetheory. But if the change is too radical and wouldrequire a complete realignment of the self-concept,it may be easier to opt for the third alternativeand drop out of the system altogether. It seems

67 D. SUPER, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CAREERS (1957).1s NrEDERHOFFER, supra note 12.69 Vego, The Liberal Policeman: A Contradiction in

Termst, in 4 IssUEs rv CRorNOLOGY 15 (1968).

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reasonable to assume, then, that liberals are un-likely to apply for police work, and, even if theydo, they are unlikely to survive.

Working-Class Authoritarianism.j0 The thirdkind of selection has already been mentioned:The police recruit their members from a relativelyauthoritarian segment of the population.7' It doesnot follow, however, that policemen themselvesare authoritarian. The working class, the familybackground of many police officers, comprises alarge portion of our population, and within thatclass there is room for a tremendous range ofvariation. While the mean level of authoritarianismmay be very high, policemen could be selectedfrom the lower end of the distribution. Bayleyand Mendelsohn 72 found that Denver policemenwere less authoritarian than their non-police con-trol populations. On the other hand, McNamara'sfinding that police recruits scored as high on theF-Scale as Adorno's working-class sample doesnot support this interpretation.Y In other respectspolicemen seem to be very much like the generalpublic, which, unfortunately is never well defined.One study found substantial agreement betweenthe police and the general public when they wereasked to judge the rightness or wrongness ofvarious actions.74 Matarazzo, et al.,75 and Bayleyand Mendelsohn also found strong similaritiesbetween policemen and the public. One more thesame inconsistencies prevent us from drawingany firm conclusions.

Many writers believe that police work is a"natural" choice for working-class men. It offersreasonably good pay, security, and adventurefor young men without a college education orany special training.78 For many, securing a job

7 0 WATSON & STERLING, supra note 36, have chal-

lenged the assumption that most policemen come fromlower middle- and working-class families. However,their data seem to support the very assumption theywish to challenge:

[TIoday's police officers have come from thefamilies of craftsmen and foremen, and serviceworkers (including police) in larger proportionthan is true for the general adult work force. Con-versely, the data shows [sic] that proportionatelyfewer police officers than other adults are childrenof professional, technical and managerial workers;clerical and sales workers; operatives; farmers; andlaborers. (119).71 J. WILSON, VARIETiEs of PoLicE BEHAvIoR: The

MANAGEMENT OF LAW AND ORDER in EIGHT COM-n-uNITEs (1970).7 2

BAYLEY & MENDELsOuN, supra note 14.73 McNamara, supra note 15.74 Clark, supra note 42.75 Matarazzo, e al., supra note 13.76 Although the President's Commission on Law

on the force represents an advance in social status.Studies show that Denver policemen and recruitsat the New York Police Academy are upwardlymobile in relation to their fathersY

Although most policemen come from working-class homes, they share typical middle-classvalues such as "looking toward the future andgetting ahead, owning a home and a new car,being on time, and assuming responsibility." 78

Many, however, feel insecure precisely becausethey are new to the middle class. In a sense theyare marginal men and seem to have profounddoubts about their social standingY1 In the ab-sence of tangible social rewards like high pay andprestige, they cling to respectability to verifytheir middle-class status. As Chwast put it, the"police are more middle-classy than the av-erage .... "80 It may be significant that 52 per-cent of the police applicants in the Portland studyarrived for their interviews wearing a suit andtie.8" The researchers were also interviewing po-tential firemen, but only 15 percent of them woreties to their interviews. Yet all the applicants hadworking-class backgrounds. Perhaps the police-man's upward mobility accounts for his author-itarian predilections.

The police officer of lower class background may beinsecure in his new status position and consequentlymay cling tenaciously to middle-class values whilesuppressing all traces of his previous class identifi-cation. To him, 'lower-classness' in others may beintolerable.,'

The policeman's uncertainty is aggravated byhis ambiguous standing in the eyes of the public.Many policemen believe they are not given therecognition or prestige they deserve. Some evenbelieve the prestige of police work has been de-clining. Policemen also believe they are being"handcuffed" by the courts, civil right groups,and local government. Not only is their socialstanding marginal, but their effectiveness as alaw enforcement agency is being threatened.

Enforcement and the Administration of Justice hasrecommended that police officers have at least twoyears of college, very few departments require anyamount of college preparation. See note 26 supra.7 BAYLEY & MENDELsoEN, supra note 14; Mc-

Namara, supra note 15.78 Chwast, Value Conflicts in Law Enforcement, in

CRIM AND DELINQUENCY 151, 154 (1965).19 BAYLEY & MENDELSOHN, supra note 14.80 Chwast, supra note 78, at 154.81 Matarazzo, et al., supra note 13.2 WATSON & STERLiNG, supra note 36, at 121.

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Studies indicate that a large proportion of policeofficers join the force in search of job security.HFor these men especially, the uncertain status ofpolice work must be very hard to bear.

Declining status and influence have been im-plicated in the growth of fascism." The NaziParty was supported initially and primarily bysmall business and property owners who werebeing squeezed out of existence by labor unionsand big business. They felt powerless to copewith the changes occurring in Germany andseized on Nazism to restore their former socialand economic security. Although the word fascismhas been over-used and misused, and parallelsshould not be drawn too closely, a similar status-anxiety explanation might explain the policeman'sapparent authoritarianism, expecially his conven-tionality and conservatism.

In spite of the uncertainties inherent in policework, status-anxiety may characterize lower mid-dle- and working-class people in general. There issome evidence that today's "silent majority"shares the policeman's feelings of insecurity. Arecent Gallup Poll of the "forgotten man," thewhite middle-class American, reveals that middle-class whites are increasingly pessimistic aboutAmerica's future. 85 Almost 50 percent believethat the United States has changed for the worsein the last ten years, and a majority believe thingsare going to get even worse in the next ten. Theydecry the decline of community spirit and re-ligious and moral standards. They worry aboutrunaway crime rates and believe the world isbecoming a dangerous place. What we need, theysay, is to take the handcuffs off the police: "Tomost people, the possibility of added police poweroffers no conceivable threat to anyone but wrong-doers. 'Behave yourself and there's no problem.' "88The forgotten Americans are also feeling theeconomic squeeze. Blacks are unfairly gettingthe biggest slice of the pie--they should have towork for what they get like everyone else.

Apparently the frustration and resentment aregreatest in the working class--"families whosebreadwinners have at most a high-school educa-tion, hold blue-collar jobs and bring home incomesof $5000 to $10,000 a year." 8 They too worry

1 NIEDERHOFFER, supra note 12; PREiss & EmH.LIcH,supra note 24; Reiss, supra note 35.14 S. LipsET, POLITICAL MAN: TE SOCIAL BiAsEs or

Porrncs (1960)85 NEwswzzK 46 (Oct. 6, 1969).86Id.87 ffd

about crime, racial violence, rising prices, andcrumbling values, but they worry more and theiropinions are more extreme. Marginal socioeco-nomic status becomes intolerable in an age ofaffluence.

What has been described is the white middle-and working-class American, but one could easilysubstitute the word "policeman" in all the appro-priate places and still be reasonably correct.Members of the "silent majority" are certainlynot fascists, any more than policemen are, butthey seem to have many authoritarian charac-teristics: conventionalism, authoritarian aggres-sion, stereotypy, cynicism, and projectivity. Fromthis point of view, policemen appear to be goodrepresentatives of white middle- or working-classAmerica.

TOWARD A SOCIOLOGICAL MODEL

OF POLICE BEHAVIOR

.Unfortunately, only one firm conclusion canbe drawn from this review: The evidence isinconclusive. We began with the assumption thatpolicemen are very unusual people, set apartfrom the rest of the population by virtue of theirauthoritarian mentality. Now it looks like police-men may be rather ordinary people, not greatlyunlike other Middle-Americans. We cannot evenbe sure there is such a thing as a police personality,however loosely we define it.

According to Howard Becker,7 everyone hasdeviant impulses and.practically everyone violatessocial norms at one time or another. Yet only afew are publicly labeled deviant. The same rea-soning may apply to the police. Authoritarianism,as a personality syndrome, is widespread in thiscountry, and policemen may not be any moreauthoritarian than other people from similarsocioeconomic backgrounds. Bigotry is hardlyunusual in the United States. Nor is conservatism,cynicism, or any other authoritarian trait. Froma sociological point of view, the important questionis not, "Why are policemen authoritarian?" but"Why are they singled out for special attention?"

The police might have escaped the authoritarianlabel if they were not so visible. If the averageworkingman is bigoted, that is his business, butif a policeman's bigoted, that is everyone's busi-ness. Policemen may simply be very ordinarypeople who happen to be extraordinarily visible.

88 H. BECKER, OuTSms: STUDIES IN THE SOCIOLOGYoi, DEVIANCE (1963).

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ROBERT TV. BALCII

Police behavior is public behavior, not just be-cause police work involves members of the public, orbecause it often occurs in public places, but becausethe police are being subjected to public scrutinyas never before-in news stories, editorial columns,scholarly journals, radical tirades, and everydayconversation.

However, not all aspects of police behavior areequally visible to the public. A great deal ofpolice work is only peripherallyr related to lawenforcement. Patrolmen spend most of their timegiving directions, writing reports, breaking upfamily quarrels, and the like, but we hardly noticethese activities because they do not conform toour popular cops-and-robbers stereotype of policework. On the other hand, we are outraged bypolice brutality and discrimination. We pay atten-tion when innocent citizens are stopped andfrisked, when blacks are harassed and demonstra-tors beaten. Law enforcement may be only asmall part of police work, but it is certainly thepart that attracts the most attention and criticism.Police behavior often appears to be authoritariansimply because the public only pays attention tocertain aspects of the policeman's job.

Cummins89 has drawn some interesting parallelsbetween the study of the police and early attemptsby social scientists to come to grips with theproblem of criminality. At one time most Americancriminologists were preoccupied with the natureof the "criminal mind." Cummins suspects thatthese early criminologists were driven by an"ideological need" to separate criminals fromnoncriminals. Today the evidence indicates thatthe personality characteristics of criminals arenot appreciably different from those of peoplegenerally. But as the attention of criminologistshas shifted away from criminals to the agents ofsocial control, the need to psychologize anddichotomize has reasserted itself.

Even though the earlier researches on criminalityhad wandered unsatisfactorily through the thicketof psychological distinctiveness, the same basicelements of the old framework cropped up againwhen the sociologists turned to analyzing thepolice side of deviance. True to form, the sociologi-cal studies emphasize the importance of some dis-tinguishing psychological trait structure of policeofficers, particularly some undesirable feature.Perhaps once again, the ideological need for separa-tion underlies the analyses5

89 M. J. Cummins, The Problem of Police Minds,undated (unpublished).90 Id. at 3.

As Cummins points out, discussions of thepolice mentality have strong moral overtones.The use of labels like "cynical" and "suspicious"is "implicitly unfavorable, for it is, after all, along stretch of the imagination to portray sus-piciousness as a virtue." 91 He adds that morepositive adjectives like "realistic" or "analytical"might be equally appropriate. While none of theauthors cited in this paper have been openlyhostile to the police, their studies provide ammuni-tion for those who are. One of the favorite meansof discrediting an undesirable character is to pina psychiatric label on him. Authoritarianism, likemental illness or any number of more specificterms, is one of those convenient labels that allowsus to make sense of police behavior and to discreditit at the same time.

Perhaps, considering the unproductiveness ofthe personality model, we need an alternativeapproach to the study of police behavior. Anundue emphasis on personality diverts our atten-tion from a far more important issue: the struc-ture of police work itself. In his remarks about thesuspiciousness of policemen, Cummins points outthat our concern with the police mentality over-looks the sociological aspects of police work. "

Police brutality in minority-group neighbor-hoods is often cited as evidence of authoritarianism,reflecting bigotry and authoritarian aggression.As we have seen, there are many explanations forpolice violence, but the most parsimonious comesfrom the police themselves. They will tell youthat they have to be tough, especially in theghettos, or they will lose control of difficultsituations.9 As James Baldwin put it, " . . . theonly way to police a ghetto is to be oppressive." 91In this sense, being tough is a matter of survival.Bayley and Mendelsohn" found that 98 percentof their police respondents claimed to have beenphysically or verbally abused. Under these circum-stances policemen become alert to cues signalingcriminal activity and trouble-the symbolic as-sailant. The greater their anxiety, the less likelythey are to take chances and the quicker they areto try to forestall injury to themselves. Policemenare most anxious in minority-group neighborhoods,and it is there that most police brutality is saidto occur. In white middle-class neighborhoods

11 Id. at 7.92 Id. At 9.

" NIEDERHOFFER, supra note 12; SKOLNICK, supranote 3; McNamara, supra note 15.

94 J. BALDWIN, NOBODY Kxows My NAms 61 (1962).95

BAYLEY & MENDELSOHN, supra note 14.

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the police are less apt to worry about their well-being, and therefore they can be more relaxed intheir encounters with citizens. Force, then, is notjust an expression of personal prejudice or a fond-ness for violence. It may simply be a way offorestalling injury to oneself. Likewise, if police-men stop Negroes for suspicious activities moreoften than whites, it does not necessarily meanthey are prejudiced. Rather the officers havelearned that Negroes belong to a: high-risk categoryand are more likely to have committed a crime.96

A great deal of significant police behavior canbe explained solely in terms of the organizationalcharacteristics of police departments. Wilson'sstudy of the effect of professionalization on ju-venile arrests is an excellent example.9 7 WhenWilson compared delinquency rates in two cities,he discovered that the city with the "professional-ized" police force had a much higher juvenilearrest rate than the city with a nonprofessionalforce. Yet the rates of juvenile offenses known tothe police in the two cities were remarkablysimilar. He attributed the differences to theorganizational characteristics of the two depart-ments. In the "professional" department pre-cincts had been eliminated and the force hadbeen centralized. Because the department hadbeen plagued by scandals in the past, new regula-tions had been introduced, old ones had beenmade more stringent, and supervision had beentightened. Officers believed their behavior wasconstantly being monitored and their productivitymeasured. In order to "play it safe" they beganto treat juveniles in strict accordance with therules, without regard to personal characteristicsor extenuating circumstances. On the other hand,the non-professional department was decentralizedand run at the precinct level. Regulations were few,supervision lax, and individual officers had broaddiscretionary powers in juvenile matters. In caseswheie the "professional" officer would be likelyto arrest, the officer in the nonprofessional depart-ment might simply give the juvenile a "kick inthe pants" and send him home. In this case, policebehavior can be explained without recourse to thepsychological characteristics of individual police-men.

These remarks are not intended to deny the96 Wilson, The Police and Their Problems: A Theory,

12 PUB. PoLcY 189 (1963).11 WILSON, The Police and the Delinquent in Two

Cities, in CONTROLING DELINQUENTS 9 (S. Wheeler ed.1968).

validity or usefulness of personality as an explana-tory construct. Instead, they are meant to keeppersonality in the proper perspective. Personalityand social structure interact with each other. Forexample, Watson and Sterling have argued per-suasively that personality patterns acquired inchildhood have varying degrees of influence onpolice behavior depending on the nature of depart-mental organization.

If a police department is loosely organized, if themen get little in the way of training, if leadership isnonexistent, if supervision is lax, if there are fewrules and regulations, which actually govern theconduct of the men, if the men don't see themselvesas part of the law enforcement profession, if theythink of their job as just another job, and if theydon't feel a sense of dedication to their work, thenthe social class values of their childhood will prob-ably come into play in their occupational role. Tothe contrary, if a department is well organized,if the men are thoroughly trained in all aspectsof their work, if those in command of the depart-ment show strong leadership and direction, if super-vision is constant and effective, if rules and regula-tions are both known and followed by the men, andif the men feel they are strongly dedicated to thelaw enforcement profession, then there will prob-ably be little relationship between social class up-bringing and adult occupational performance. Forexample, the patrolman from a working-class back-ground would not be inclined to use rough languageor show a gruff manner in the latter kind of depart-ment.3

Presumably the effects of social class backgroundwould be minimal in a highly professionalizedpolice force.

CONCLUSION

The controversy over the police mentality willprobably persist for some time to come. Thereis simply not enough good evidence to supportor refute any side of the controversy. Even theexistence of modal personality characteristicsamong policemen is open to serious question. Thedevotion of social scientists to the personalitymodel has obscured the important role thatorganizational factors play in shaping police be-havior. Attracting better people to the same oldjob is not necessarily an improvement. In thecase of police work, it may simply mean thatcollege graduates will be "busting heads" insteadof high school drop-outs.

98 WATSON & STERLING, supra note 36, at 109.

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