Police Subculture Term Paper

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individuals join the police academy, they undergo rigorous training. This training teaches these individuals about many subjects such as criminal law, defensive tactics, and verbal judo amongst many others that the individuals may be required to apply during the course of the job. However, regardless of these teachings the professional culture influences the behaviors of these individuals separately creating a bias in the learning techniques. The police subculture is not taught as a curriculum, but adopted by the individuals. The police subculture impacts the behavior of the individuals in a powerful way. This means that studying this subculture makes it easy to understand the behavior of the members of the police force.

Purpose Statement

This paper is the study of this subculture. It will briefly talk about the various characteristics of this subculture.

Argot

Communication is a very important dimension of this subculture. Officers rely heavily on communication as they are surrounded by critical situations where communication helps them align their strategy. Thus, police officers have developed an 'argot' 'understandable by them. Indecipherable statements like "He's in pocket" (used to ask whether suspect is in possession of narcotics), phonetic alphabets and codes are often used to steer safe of interpretation where civilians are involved. (Barry, 1999)

Esoteric knowledge

The training of the police officers in the squads involves teaching the officers the subjects on the curriculum (like marksmanship, investigative techniques, state penal codes et cetera) and many not on the curriculum (like acceptance of police roles).

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It is significant for the officers to learn the skills and knowledge before they can join a real squad. Thibault says that "the acquisition by initiatives of the body of esoteric knowledge and the appropriate behavior patterns before the novices are accepted by the initiated" is required by the officers. (Thibault, Lynch, McBride, Lynch, 2000; Barry, 1999)

Cynicism

Barry (1999) identifies Arthur Niederhoffer's work in connection to cynicism in the police. The author identifies various stages of cynicism a recruit goes through as he or she moves from the idealistic police role model to the realistic one on the streets. The first stage (pseudo-cynicism) is when the recruit trains for the job. The second stage (romantic cynicism) steps in during the initial five years of the police service, while the third stage (aggressive cynicism) take about 10 years to show. (Thibault, Lynch, McBride, Lynch, 2000; Barry, 1999)

Internal Sanctions

The police subculture gives officers the power to exert force on the civilians when it comes to criminal / legal matters. However, there are internal sanctions defined by the subculture which define the acceptable and unacceptable acts by the officers. For instance, officers using excessive force on the civilians are held accountable, which means that they are bound by sanctions / restrictions and investigations which keep the….....

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