Police Subcultures
Law enforcement in the United States has endured constant changes as society has progressed. Through these changes, the internal structure of law enforcement has remained almost the same. The relationship between officers who serve the public as always been different from that of other career fields. Due to various aspects of their job, men and women in the field of law enforcement have developed a subculture separate from society. In looking at some law enforcement agencies from the Southern Tier, it can be concluded that even in small departments of less than a hundred officers this subculture exists. The role of law enforcement in society has enduring countless changes throughout the history of the United States. At the beginning of the twentieth century police were seen as crime fighting saviors of justice. The methods they used when working was never second-guessed by society, nor was their judgement. Citizens knew that police were rough with people, but they did not strongly discourage it. The term "police brutality" was not a frequent headline in the papers either. The police were admired by children and respected by adults in the early part of the twentieth century. In the mid - 1960's this relationship c
The chain of command of Department Two is relatively simple. There is one lieutenant, one sergeant, one corporal, and the rest are regular officers. The lieutenant is in charge of the department much like a Chief or Sheriff. Below him is one sergeant who assists the lieutenant. Below the sergeant is a corporal who acts as a liaison between the lieutenant and the officers. Then there are the officers that handle the calls for service. The officers are all students of the college they serve. The lieutenant, sergeant, and corporal are all full time officers; the rest are part time. There are three shifts which cover the day; "A shift" goes from 7:30am to 3:30pm and consists of the lieutenant and the sergeant, "B shift" runs from 3:30pm to 11:30pm and consists of the corporal and an officer, "C shift" covers 11:30pm to 7:30am and is staffed by one officer. On weekends, all the shifts are covered by one part time officer. On holidays the shifts are staffed the same as we! Despite the strong bond between the officers of Department Two, there is a clear separation between the full time officers and the part time officers. The separation is based on the amount of work the different groups have to do. The part time officers feel they are "stuck with the crap work that the full timers are too lazy to do". Upon researching this claim it was found that the part time officers are required to do more tasks than the full time officers are. This causes the officers to hold contempt for the lieutenant as well because he assigns the tasks to the officers. The contempt spawns the officers to deviate from their duties. Many of the officers sleep on shifts when they work alone because they feel that "no one cares what [they] do anyway". Indeed, there is no way for the lieutenant or sergeant to monitor what the officers do on their shifts. None of the other officers will tell because they all deviate from their duties in one way or another when working.! onvention in Chicago. A large group of protesters converged on the convention center after several warnings by Mayor Daly not to do so. The Chicago Police department was called in to disperse the crowd. Unfortunately, many television crews were caught in the melee that followed. The entire incident was plastered across the nation on every television set. The Chicago Police department was show swinging their batons about and hitting anyone they could. These images put the final nail in the coffin for police. No longer would police be seen as protectors or helpers, but instead they began to represent the political machine that ran the country and oppressed all the less fortunate. These events also began to strengthen the subculture that exists amongst law enforcement. The departments that are mentioned in this paper allowed their structure and officers to be studied on the condition that the names of the department and their officers would not be mentioned. All quotes contained within this paper came from the officers belonging to these departments. between suspects and themselves than the other two platoons combined. From these differences, officers from A platoon feel that they are different from the other platoons. They feel they are superior to the other platoons. Naturally, the other two platoons feel the same way about their own platoon. Because of this difference of opinion about themselves, the officers of each platoon only associate with each other when they are off duty. Every other week they have what are called "shift parties". The parties are hosted by a different officer each time and only consist of officers from the same platoon. ommand. At the bottom of the structure are the "beat cops". These are the officers out on patrol that handle calls. The duties of a police officer are endless. Their job is to do whatever they are called upon to do whether it is chasing a bat out of a house or breaking up a fight. The diversity of the s
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Approximate Word count = 2945
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page double spaced)
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