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Cultural Analysis Police Officers

fficers.

Historically, the “thin blue line” separates the police culture from public culture. This thin line has often been responsible for engendering a police culture that is rife with corruption. In the 1910s, the Curan Committee concerned itself with corruption on behalf of New York police officers. In 1931, the Wickersham Commission documented corruption and brutality in the U.S., and the Harry Gross investigations of the 1950s concerned themselves with police corruption (Swope, 2001, 80). New York City cop Frank Serpico’s story of routine corruption and unethical behavior among police officers prompted the Knapp Commission hearings in the 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s, police in Philadelphia and Miami were investigated for serious acts of corruption, with many arrests resulting from the investigations. In the 1990s the Rodney King (beaten by police), Abner Louima (sexually tortured by police), and Amandou Diallo (wrongly fired upon by police) cases of excessive force once again exposed widespread corruption, violence and dishonesty among police cultures in Los Angeles and New York. In the wake of such incidents and their subsequent investigations, the Christopher Commission reported that a “significant number of officers repetitively use excessive force against the public and persistently ignore the written guidelines of the department regarding force...failure to control these officers is at the heart of the problem” (Swope, 2001, 81). This analysis will look at internal and external aspects of police culture that promote such an environment.

Police culture, like any subculture, is unique. The attitudes, values and worldview of many officers are shaped by interacting levels of culture that evolves the subculture. These interacting levels of culture involve artifacts and creations that are visible but not decipherable to outsiders. These values are formed and adopted through social consensus, the ba...

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Cultural Analysis Police Officers. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 10:39, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1685278.html