Police subculture and organizational behavior

Rixton is a small community of 16,000 people with a police force of 36 officers. Police Chief Walton Eager came up through the ranks and is a pleasant man, but he has little administrative ability. He promulgates all policies and procedures by tacking notices to a bulletin board already overcrowded with memorabilia dating back several years. He makes no effort to determine whether his officers understand his policies and procedures, and officers feel no need to pay any attention to them. The department has many excellent officers who, despite poor leadership, conduct themselves in an exemplary fashion. A small minority of six, however, causes some severe problems. These six officers, 17% of the force, have their own police subculture and peculiar role expectations. The dominant police culture in Rixton, although not predicated on officially established rules and regulations, is generally accepted by most police officers and dictates role expectations consistent with democratic processes. The minority subculture conflicts with the dominant culture; each group thinks the other is ineffective. The officers in Rixton refer to the two groups as cliques. Each clique operates according to its role expectations, with neither clique particularly constrained by Chief Eagers policies and procedures. The minority clique believes the police role should be predominantly militaristic, based on heavy enforcement of the law with little consideration of law, policy, principles of policing in a democratic society, or community-oriented policing practices. The following situations involving minority clique members provide some interesting data on how role expectations and perceptions affect behavior. Patrol Officer Luigi Pasternak, who collects guns and believes that most people are criminals, received a radio call to mediate an argument at a gas station. On receiving the call, Pasternak said, Good. Maybe Ill get a chance to crack someones head. Patrol Officer Brodie Fishbaum, when asked what changes he would recommend to make the Rixton Police Department more professional, remarked, Id make it more military, have them all get haircuts, and have them wear combat boots. He commented on his role, I like this [police work]. This is just like being in the military. At least I think so. Pasternak and I think we are. Patrol Officer Mindy Mickehaus, commenting that Brodie Fishbaum and Luigi Pasternak had been transferred to her shift, said, Now that Fishbaum and Pasternak are back, youll see a lot of arrests. We try to outdo each other. These three conversations were typical of how minority clique members felt about themselves. Their attitudes and behavior were dictated by their own subcultural role expectations and reinforced by the members of their small but influential peer group. The fact that the dominant police culture behaved differently based on different role expectations had little effect on what they did. Members of the minority clique were disturbed, however, that their group consisted of so few officers. Mindy Mickehaus, for example, was forever comparing her professionalism with that of other department members; she was disturbed by her perception that other officers were not as professional as she perceived herself to be. She once remarked that she gets so upset about societal degeneration and her departments inability to deal with it that she sometimes has to drink herself to sleep. Although Mickehaus considered herself to be professional, she was looked on by officers subscribing to the dominant police culture as being dangerous. The Rixton Police Department, with its two cliques of patrol officers, illustrates a department with more than one set of role expectations. The fact that the dominant police culture in Rixton was service-oriented and not militaristic was a fortunate quirk of fate. The minority clique, however, caused tremendous problems for the chief and a significant amount of internal disharmony within the ranks of those officers who were trying their best to do their jobs properly. Discussion Questions – How (and why) does a minority police subculture develop in a police organization? – How can two such different cliques (the dominant culture and the minority subculture) coexist within one small police organization? – If Chief Eager retired and you were appointed police chief in Rixton, what would you do to reduce the size and influence of the minority police subculture?