Urban America and its Police

URBAN AMERICA

AND ITS POLICE

FROM THE POSTCOLONIAL ERA THROUGH THE TURBULENT 1960S

HARLAN HAHN AND JUDSON L. JEFFRIES

URBAN AMERICA

AND ITS POLICE

URBAN AMERICA

AND ITS POLICE

FROM THE POSTCOLONIAL ERA THROUGH THE TURBULENT 1960S

Harlan Hahn and Judson L. Jeffries

U n i v e r s i t y

P r e s s

o f

C o l o r a d o

© 2003 by the University Press of Colorado Published by the University Press of Colorado 5589 Arapahoe Avenue, Suite 206C Boulder, Colorado 80303 All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of American University Presses. The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State College, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Mesa State College, Metropolitan State College of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and Western State College of Colorado. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hahn, Harlan, 1939– Urban America and its police : from the postcolonial era through the turbulent 1960s / Harlan Hahn and Judson L. Jeffries. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87081-726-4 (alk. paper) 1. Police—United States—History. 2. Police-community relations—United States—History. I. Jeffries, J. L. (Judson L.), 1964– II. Title. HV8138.H343 2003 363.2'0973'091732—dc21 2003007231 Design by Daniel Pratt 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

From Judson L. Jeffries To all my relatives who served in the U.S. Armed Forces

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Contents

Preface

ix

Acknowledgments xv Introduction 1 1

Police Functions in Urban America 17

2

Police and the Law 39

3

From the Viewpoint of the Police 69

4

From the Public’s Standpoint 97

5

Police and Racial Conflict 123 Conclusion: Police, Politics, and the Community 149 Index 171

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Preface

A

on urban law enforcement, only a handful of books examine the subject from a national historical perspective. Studies that address the specific history of urban areas exist for New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, to name a few. One of their shortcomings is that they address only the experience of police officers in a single city and lack a comparative perspective. Another shortcoming is that the period of investigation for each study is usually limited. The studies by James Richardson,1 Eric Monkkonen,2 Roger Lane,3 and Robert Fogelson4 provide the most comprehensive analyses. Richardson and Lane are especially valuable because of the insight they provide about the history of policing in Boston and New York, respectively. Monkkonen’s and Fogelson’s works are important because of their comparative approach. All, however, have a limited period of investigation. In this study we reinterpret and synthesize some of the findings from these and other earlier studies with our own research to present a broad, comparative analysis of the police experience from a national perspective. We have relied extensively on numerous underused government documents, reports by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, monographs from think tanks, and myriad other unpublished works. Also unique about this work is the focus on police perceptions of the public and public perceptions of the police. Consequently, we rely heavily on survey data, especially those that focus on the 1960s. The reason for this is twofold. First, the 1960s represented a watershed period in the development of American police. Police officers were confronted with a host of seemingly unanticipated problems such as growing public anxiety about crime, the eruption of LTHOUGH A WEALTH OF LITERATURE EXISTS

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collective violence in urban neighborhoods, and increased expectations among political leaders and citizens that the police seemed ill prepared to meet. Perhaps even more important, although scarcely recognized at the time, was the appearance of new research—especially in the social sciences—about police activities and organizations. Although law enforcement had been a somewhat neglected area of policy analysis, the events of the 1960s attracted a rather unfamiliar group of researchers to study the subject. The relation between the growth of new police responsibilities and the emergence of this research was symbiotic. The renewed interest in the police was triggered by trends that emerged during the 1960s or thereafter, and again perhaps more significant, the research conducted about police policies—and the direction established for future studies—was strongly influenced by the events of that decade. Second, the 1960s were the first era in which extensive polling was conducted about law enforcement. Thus social scientists were eager to ask numerous detailed questions about subjects that had not been investigated previously and that have been only briefly explored in subsequent surveys. This period offers a rich pool of data that seemingly has not been equaled—or even approximated—in later years. Moreover, public opinion about police activities and police attitudes toward the public appear to have changed little since that decade. Except as noted in the references, basic attitudes on this topic have been remarkably stable. As a result, the range of these questions provides an opportunity not only to examine empirical associations between various issues but also to offer additional speculation that can only be regarded as hypotheses for further study. Ignoring the value of these data, therefore, seemed to entail greater risks than relying on them extensively. Unfortunately, scholars who have examined the role of police in urban America have paid little attention to police perceptions of the public. This omission is surprising when we note the huge literature on policing in American history. Most histories of the earliest formal police departments in U.S. cities either ignore the issue or give slight attention to it. Our study not only fills this gap but also shows how the law, race, and ethnicity have been important aspects of American policing since the creation of the first U.S. police force. This work makes extensive use of the literature on the urban revolts of the 1960s provided by the fields of sociology and criminology. Unlike political scientists, scholars and intellectuals in these fields have made great efforts to examine the status and role of the police during violent uprisings. They have proposed hypotheses about riot theory, and they have posed questions about the role law has played in shaping the duties and responsibilities of the police and about the role of police in a democratic society. x

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In addition, scholars in these fields have gathered many anecdotal data that, if brought together under one roof, would make a major contribution to the literature on law enforcement in urban America. This book attempts to do just that. The works of sociologists and criminologists, however, pose another problem: they lack historical perspective. Many examine the problems and issues faced by the police and the public in a historical vacuum. Our study provides the historical analysis needed to tie together some of the theories about the police in society from the postcolonial period through the turbulent 1960s. The introduction begins with an important discussion of the history of law enforcement in the United States and the emergence of police forces in the urban milieu. Chapter 1 describes in some detail the duties of police officers. An indepth look at these functions, their relationship to one another, their effect on the way police carried out their responsibilities, and their impact on the lives of their clients are laid out. Chapter 2 examines the legal authority the courts granted police officers to cope with crime, the impact of major court decisions on police practices, and the problems officers encountered in enforcing certain types of laws. We end with a discussion of the relationship between police practices and local political characteristics. Chapter 3 gives a unique look at police officers and their world. We discuss several issues critical to successful policing, such as the exercise of discretion and the recruitment and socialization of police officers. The chapter concludes with an examination of the impact of order, authority, protection, and service on police relationships with the public. Chapter 4 assesses the role of police departments in social and political controversies, which were stimulated by the increasing fear of crime and by perceived inequities in police practices. We also provide an in-depth appraisal of minority (especially African American) attitudes toward the criminal justice process, as well as the implications of declining public confidence in the police. In Chapter 5 we explore the relationship between the police and ethnic and racial minorities, the role of the police in urban disorders, and the responsibilities of law enforcement agencies in preventing or controlling civil disorders. Because the outbreak of violence—especially during the 1960s— created one of the most difficult and demanding times for police officers in U.S. history, an examination of this topic is essential to understand the role of police in urban America during the period of investigation. Although one might be inclined to regard the role of the police in urban disorders as seemingly irrelevant, there are several reasons for including this xi

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discussion. First, there is a need to preserve the data about these events and their interpretation. This chapter serves, at least in part, as a compendium of this information not only to prevent it from becoming lost but also to encourage other social scientists to include it in the accumulation of research literature. The mere fact that some observers might view this evidence as irrelevant to research on law enforcement can be cited as an important justification for including it here. Social scientists must heed the many familiar warnings about the neglect of history and the vulnerability to repeat it. Second, records indicate that urban violence has never completely ended. One of the clearest examples of this fact is found in the Los Angeles and Cincinnati uprisings in 1992 and 2001, respectively, that in many ways were triggered by the police beating Rodney King and the shooting death of Timothy Thomas.5 Both before and since the 1960s, collective violence has been more sporadic and isolated than it was during that decade. Part of the explanation for the relative neglect of urban uprisings on other occasions can likely be traced to media coverage. Just as simultaneous outbreaks of collective disturbances are more likely than individual acts of violence to receive media attention, the eruption of massive disorders in scattered locations is less likely to be reported by national news sources than is a series of violent incidents, such as the events that occurred in the 1960s. As a result, it is difficult to estimate accurately the amount—or the intensity—of collective violence that has occurred in a particular geographic region or during a specific period of time. Third, the duties of police officers in urban uprisings involved fundamental theoretical issues about the function of law enforcement agencies in a democratic society. To put it crudely and much too simply, the police may be called upon to stop violence many citizens believe they had a role in starting. The police may be called upon to impose order and exert authority after other means of attempting to do so have failed. Moreover, massive violence could signal a departure from the classic definition of government or the state as a legitimate monopoly on the exercise of power. In an uprising, power is transferred from government offices to crowds on the street. If police agencies cannot be given official power by these crowds, the political process would suffer irreparable damage. In a basic sense, the eruption of extensive violence may be interpreted as an indication that ordinary methods of accommodating conflict and resolving grievances have collapsed. Hence police agencies must walk an extremely perilous tightwire, especially in minority neighborhoods. If they are perceived as imposing order or authority too aggressively, that perception could interxii

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fere greatly with their mandate to quell violence when all other branches of government have failed. Hence Chapter 5 concludes with a reassertion of the argument that by successfully and routinely performing community service activities, the police might have been able to acquire the favorable reputation—especially in black neighborhoods—they needed to fulfill a crucial mission in more trying times. The Conclusion focuses on the relationship between police forces and the community, police administration, and various reform proposals aimed at improving the quality of police personnel. NOTES 1. James Richardson, Urban Police in the United States (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1974). 2. Eric Monkkonen, Police in Urban America 1860–1920 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Eric Monkkonen, Crime, Justice and History (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002). 3. Roger Lane, Policing the City: Boston, 1822–1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). 4. Robert M. Fogelson, Big-City Police (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). 5. Stephen Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat From Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon, 1995).

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Acknowledgments

I

to many whose contributions undoubtedly strengthened this work. I start by thanking Dean Margaret Rowe (now vice provost for Academic Affairs) for providing me with a stipend during summer of 2001 that allowed me to complete my part of the project in a timely fashion. Appreciation is also extended to Professors Renford R. Reese of Cal Poly Pomona and Steve Herbert of the University of Washington. Their insight into and critical analysis of the study of police work and urban life proved invaluable. This book also benefited immensely from the assistance of Carol Black, who provided me with numerous sources on the history of the police in America. The timeliness of this work results largely from the typing assistance of Michelle Conwell and Betty Hartman, two trusty secretaries employed by the Department of Political Science at Purdue University. Laura Schneider, my teaching assistant during the spring 2003 semester, tracked down numerous page numbers and titles of newspaper articles that I carelessly omitted in earlier drafts. I am also grateful to Harlan Hahn, who thought enough of me to invite me to coauthor a work of this magnitude. Last but certainly not least, I am grateful to Kerry Callahan, former acquisitions editor at the University Press of Colorado, who saw this project through to the end. She is without question the most honest, professional, and efficient editor I have ever worked with. Callahan always made herself accessible, returned phone calls promptly, kept me abreast of goings-on even if there was nothing to report, and offered valuable and insightful criticism. In my humble opinion she is the standard against which other editors should be measured. OWE A DEBT OF GRATITUDE

—JUDSON L. JEFFRIES March 2003 xv

Introduction

Introduction

D

1829, when Sir Robert Peel1 organized the first modern police force in London, to the industrialized twentieth-century American metropolis, the conditions of urban life have imposed increasing demands on law enforcement agencies.2 As a result of growing concerns about crime and social order, the police were thrust into the forefront of some of the most significant public controversies of the day. For many policemen, these social controversies were an unwelcome and uncomfortable development. In addition, the growth and development of police forces as agents of public authority produced marked changes in the distance between citizens and their government.3 No longer was political power exercised exclusively by officials who were geographically removed from the average citizen and who had little direct contact with him or her. The complexity of urban life and its propensity to attract people of varying characters changed all that. The increasing numbers of patrolmen in inner-city neighborhoods to some extent “personalized” government and bore testimony to the rules and laws to which all members of the society were compelled to abide. For many people for whom government was a remote and impersonal institution that had little apparent relevance to their lives, the police represented perhaps their only immediate and tangible symbol of government. Since law enforcement agencies were one of few arms of government required to interact regularly with the public, residents probably encountered policemen more frequently than any other government official. In addition, many tended to regard the locus of political power as residing with those who enforced the law rather than with government bodies responsible for enacting the law. Hence for some citizens, government was ATING BACK TO

1

Introduction

probably personified more by the cop on the beat than by their elected representatives. Despite the salience of police for the general public, until the 1960s relatively little scholarly attention had been devoted to law enforcement as an integral part of the political process.4 The reason is twofold. Initially, other social and political issues tended to overshadow the local and personal effects of law enforcement activities. Not until the second half of the twentieth century were studies of the police finally based on a perceived correlation between major social issues and practices in the administration of the law. This awareness seemed to peak in the mid- to late 1960s when debates about local policing reflected growing anxiety about crime and violence, demonstrations for civil rights and peace, and campaigns in which slogans preserving “law and order” rivaled economic and foreign policies as major issues even in presidential elections. Christian Parenti put it best when he wrote: “Sure, the Man Act of 1910, the Harris Act of 1914, the Wickersham Commission, and the Hale Bogg’s mandatory minimums of 1951 had made crime a national political issue. But the vast majority of criminal justice policy was local and not the business of American presidents.”5 Barry Goldwater’s rhetoric during his 1964 presidential campaign changed all that. As a result, a proliferation of research by social scientists ensued on crime and police matters.6 Still, many critical questions about the role of the police in society remained unanswered. Second, a misperception, inspired perhaps by the media, existed regarding the nature of police activities. Despite the images portrayed on television, police officers did not spend most of their time investigating or solving serious crimes. By far the bulk of their duties involved what might be termed personal and social services.7 Moreover, to the extent the police were engaged in detecting and apprehending criminals, a large amount of their time was consumed by relatively minor infractions involving social commerce or transportation. During the era when most police officers walked a beat, their efforts were aimed at keeping the streets clear and safe for pedestrians, but as many residents became motorists, their most time-consuming law enforcement tasks concentrated on traffic regulation. Far from the glamour depicted in detective stories and movies, most police officers spent their time quietly cruising city streets, writing reports, and responding to requests for services. Perhaps the most significant feature of the police force was its crucial position between the public and governmental authority. In the complex and impersonal environment of urban America, the police probably constituted not only the principal agent of social control but also a major vehicle for bringing community resources to bear upon personal and social problems. 2

Introduction

Police officers’ various roles promoted either tension or cooperation with the citizens they encountered. As a result, this book focuses on the reciprocal perceptions the public had of the police and police officers formed about the public from the postcolonial era through the turbulent 1960s. This feature distinguishes this work from others. By examining both sides of the policepublic relationship, the reader can gain a more expansive and a clearer understanding of the realities of community-police relations during this time period than could be obtained by examining either side in isolation. To fully understand police-citizen relations, it is important to be familiar with the history of urban law enforcement in America. THE BIRTH OF URBAN POLICE DEPARTMENTS The emergence of U.S. police practices was strongly influenced by traditions reflecting the dominant culture and the country’s prevailing sentiments. Originally, police duties were considered the private responsibility of local merchants and property owners rather than the obligation of governments. W. Marvin Dulaney maintains that in most U.S. cities, these formal watch or city guard systems became the foundation for American policing.8 The belief that the tasks of night watchmen could be performed informally or through voluntary participation by male residents of a community gradually gave way to the concept that policing should be performed by paid government employees. A possible reason for the increased organization of urban police departments during this time was the unfavorable reaction of prominent residents to the waves of immigrants from various ethnic backgrounds that left Europe after the 1840s. Most police leadership at that time—and many would contend subsequently—reflected the interests of local elites who were distressed by these newcomers and the problems they introduced to Eastern cities. As a result, police personnel frequently were ordered to carry weapons. Some evidence, for example, indicates that the arming of police officers in Boston was prompted by increasing ethnic conflict. Not until the 1850s, however, was the system of privately sponsored night watchmen replaced in most cities by a regular police force organized, authorized, and subsidized by local governments.9 Boston, for example, had used a city watch since 1634. The citizens there reorganized their government in the nineteenth century and by 1838 had converted the watch into a full-time police force similar to the Metropolitan Police Force of London.10 In 1844 New York City also reorganized its watch into a full-time police force.11 New York began with 800 officers. They wore star-shaped badges made of copper, which quickly gave rise to the nickname “copper” or “cop.” Other cities soon 3

Introduction

followed New York’s lead: police departments in Chicago and New Orleans were established in 1851 and 1852, respectively,12 Philadelphia established a force in 1854, Baltimore police came into being in 1857, and the Washington, D.C., force was formed in 1861.13 By the end of the Civil War, most American cities had begun to organize formal police agencies. In part, this transfer of power reflected both the influence of the London model and the motives of the white ruling class that sought to avoid reliance on the military, to avert the hostility of the masses, and to legitimize oppression by creating a public police force.14 Nevertheless, as a result of their private origins and orientations, common expectations about the proper role of the police emerged from a tradition based largely on the protection of property. Because policing was initially regarded as a private rather than a public responsibility, concerned citizens or vigilantes in many localities empowered themselves to maintain social order.15 Occasionally, this type of law enforcement activity produced direct conflicts with the state. For example, one request from a California governor for federal assistance to suppress domestic violence was an 1856 petition beseeching the national government to prevent the San Francisco Vigilance Committee “from usurping the authority of the State.”16 Despite such controversies, however, the relatively unclear source of the authority police agents exercised seemed to provide them with broad discretionary power from the beginning. Records from the nineteenth century indicate that police officers concentrated primarily on preserving public order and that they enjoyed relatively wide latitude in performing this duty. For example, in Boston in 1856 the largest number of arrests (44 percent) were for public intoxication, 18 percent were for disorderly conduct, and 4 percent were made on the legally tenuous grounds of “suspicion.” Nearly thirty years later in the same city, 59 percent of arrests involved public intoxication, and 5 percent were for disorderly conduct and suspicion.17 Similarly, in New York in 1891, almost 30 percent of arrestees were charged with drunkenness, 18 percent were arrested for disorderly conduct, and 5 percent were taken into custody on suspicion.18 These statistics, which are not entirely unlike contemporary arrest records, may have reflected the prevalent belief of nineteenth-century elites that many city problems were caused by lower-class residents’ tendency to drink too much. Since removing drunk and disorderly men from public streets was widely regarded as a necessary but unpleasant duty, the implicit discretion entailed in deciding who to put in jail and who to send home never evolved into a means of reinforcing or justifying the performance of personal services by police 4

Introduction

officers.19 In any event, a large portion of early police activities seemed to involve patrolmen in the role of “peace officers” authorized to keep the streets clear of drunks and other rowdy elements. Perhaps the major reason for the accelerating growth and organization of urban police forces in the nineteenth century, however, was the constant threat of riots and civil disorders.20 Repeated ethnic conflicts as well as other violent demonstrations prompted police forces to launch plans for rapid mobilization and to acquire arms.21 In the 1863 New York City draft riots, the city police superintendent was fatally wounded by a tumultuous mob that embarked on a three-day rampage directed at free blacks and military conscription policies, which permitted affluent white males to hire another man as a surrogate to serve in his place in the Union Army.22 Although lawlessness in America has usually been traced to the frontier, it may have emerged from a stronger tradition of crime and violence that flourished in urban areas.23 The emergence of police departments in U.S. cities was also influenced by powerful trends in urban areas prior to the Civil War. In a tradition born in the Revolutionary War and the subsequent struggle to ratify the Constitution, many citizens—fearful of expanding government authority—simply “did not want to be policed.”24 Public support for the protection of individual liberties produced strong resistance to the creation of police forces. This reluctance was overcome by several factors. The decline of a rural or agrarian society and the growth of industrialization and urbanization created increased heterogeneity within communities. As a result, they could not remain selfpolicing. Citizens were becoming less familiar with their neighbors, and they found it increasingly necessary to rely on police personnel to maintain order and provide protection from crime. This trend was amplified by urban elites’ growing fear of crime, violence, drunkenness, and the rise of the so-called dangerous classes.25 Again, perhaps the most crucial determinant among these influences was the accelerating threat of ethnic conflict and civil disorders. It could be argued that the most lasting residual effect of the private origins of policing was a strong emphasis on the protection of property and the exercise of wide discretion to maintain public order. Since most problems associated with urbanization played a pivotal role in the formation of law enforcement agencies, the U.S. police began as and remained an almost distinctively urban institution. Although the English system of sheriffs and constables was transferred to rural America, the large metropolis provided the principle base for the expansion and development of police organizations.26 Increasing waves of immigrants, for example, created new functions as well as new problems for urban police departments. In many 5

Introduction

cities, neighborhood police officers became an extension of the ethnic political machines that dominated local governments in the nineteenth century.27 Thus police departments also emerged as a vehicle for patronage, bribery, graft, and other “evils” that aroused reformers’ ire. THE POLITICS OF POLICING Jerry Bornstein argues that the close links between police and politicians in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries meant that law enforcement agencies were often enmeshed in local political corruption.28 The big-city political machines and local party hacks often protected local criminals—for a price. Police personnel often shared in the spoils. At the turn of the century, a scandal in Minneapolis, Minnesota, showed how entrenched corruption could become. When he was elected in 1901, Mayor Alfred Elisha Ames fired honest police officers. Crooks around the country were granted “concessions” to ply their trades in the city. Prostitution, gambling, and other criminal activities thrived under police protection. The problem was not unique to Minneapolis; it was national in scope.29 Along with politics and graft, police work seemed to offer immigrants an opportunity for professional and social advancement.30 In fact, large city police forces were frequently portrayed as havens for ethnic patronage.31 The Irish emerged as the most important immigrant group to occupy administrative and rank-and-file positions. Other nationalities, such as the Germans, competed with the Irish for police jobs, but the Irish eventually prevailed. Yet initially, there appeared to be resistance to the admission of ethnic groups into major police departments. In Boston, the first Irish police officer was not hired until 1851, sixteen years after the department was created; by 1880, Irish officers still comprised only 15 percent of the force.32 A similar pattern existed in New York. In 1887 less than one-third of the force was foreign born; only three captains had been born in Ireland, whereas twenty-five were born in America.33 Through their numbers and political influence, however, the Irish eventually dominated the police forces in many major U.S. cities, including St. Louis, New Orleans, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia. H. Bruce Pierce notes that the Irish so thoroughly dominated the police force in New York City that the department was called the “Irish Mafia.”34 During the antebellum period, the Irish tied police jobs to political patronage and made the police a significant part of urban politics. When the Irish and other ethnic groups finally achieved control of large city police forces, they were called upon to assume new responsibilities. In the bewildering environment of a strange city, the immigrant frequently relied 6

Introduction

on police officers as well as politicians to obtain social services that were either unavailable or inaccessible from other sources. Perhaps the clearest justification for this role of policemen, as well as for the urban machine, was provided by Martin Lomasny, the political boss of Boston, who told Lincoln Steffens in 1915, “I think that there’s got to be in every ward somebody that any bloke can come to—no matter what he’s done—and get help. Help, you understand; none of your law and justice, but help.”35 Since the cop on the beat often lived among the people in his neighborhood and shared their ethnic and class affiliations, he was in an especially unique position to use his political and social connections to aid local residents. As a result, a new relationship flourished between urban policemen and the ethnic enclaves they patrolled. Unlike earlier police traditions, the customary association between police and the public during the era of old-style political machines was not based primarily on the protection of property or on the vigorous exertion of authority to quash disorders. Order seemed to be maintained less by impersonal application of the law than by the enforcement of what later observers called a lower-middle-class Irish Catholic moral consensus.36 The policeman was fully integrated into the political system, and he became, in effect, a kind of “social worker.”37 As a result of this rapport, relationships between patrolmen and residents of inner cities during this era were not marked by the tension and hostility that characterized later decades. Although few reliable data on early forms of police brutality or misconduct exist, some support appears to exist for the theory that police wrath in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was primarily directed toward persons suspected of committing heinous crimes in wealthy areas of Northern cities. Relations between the police and affluent groups within the community, as well as residents who managed to avoid suspicion, seemed relatively cordial. In 1900 a New York City police chief issued an intriguing order that stated, “It is sometimes unavoidable for a policeman to use force, and he should always assert his authority on proper occasions, but there is no reason for his ever behaving in a discourteous manner.”38 This emphasis on courtesy seemed to remain a feature of some police activities during the early twentieth century. In 1928, New York police commissioner Grover Whalen ordered every station house to post a placard that stressed the need for courtesy and noted, “To the public our slogan must always be: ‘At your service.’ ”39 Police courtesy, however, was not extended to all segments of the community. In 1931 the Wickersham Commission revealed startling evidence of police brutality and the pervasive use of third-degree techniques to extract 7

Introduction

confessions from suspects.40 The explanation for this apparent paradox was probably embedded in the perceptions various groups in the city held of the proper role of law enforcement. Police departments often remained under the control of community influentials, and when crimes occurred in high-status areas of the city, the police spared no effort or force to locate the culprit. The cop in ethnic neighborhoods, on the other hand, maintained a paternal surveillance of his beat; he had little incentive to vent his frustrations or aggressions on his neighbors, except perhaps when community leaders demanded that the police produce a suspect for crimes committed in affluent parts of the city. Major instances of police brutality or misconduct probably occurred after suspects were taken into custody at the station house rather than on the streets in full view of the public. At the organizational level, extensive police corruption existed. During the nineteenth century, investigative commissions discovered reports of graft and favoritism in New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Kansas City, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, and Boston.41 Aside from the flagrant cases of police brutality reported by the Wickersham Commission and other investigative groups, however, common encounters between the police and the public reflected at least a degree of civility and mutual respect. EMERGENCE OF THE REFORM MOVEMENT The waves of reforms that affected American police departments and other agencies of municipal government during the early twentieth century virtually destroyed the connection between the police and political machines.42 One of the major objectives of the reform movement was to abolish political patronage and introduce the civil service system. This change seemed to draw a different type of person to the force. Although many ethnic groups had become assimilated enough to master civil service exams, some were attracted more by status or a desire to participate in police work than by political motives.43 During prohibition the police were—at least partially—successful in withstanding the temptations created by a nearly unenforceable law. In an effort to counteract the organization of criminal enterprises, police forces were also able to obtain additional resources to bolster their institutional structure. The depression of the 1930s and its aftermath continued to produce policemen with better skills and training. In 1940, for example, more than half of the 300 recruits in the New York City Police Department held college degrees.44 After World War II, however, these numbers declined because of increasing prosperity, the end of the manpower shortage, and the bonuses granted returning veterans on civil service examinations. The foundation had 8

Introduction

been laid, however, for the growth of a conventional form of police professionalization that reflected middle-class values. In the decades after World War II, Americans became increasingly concerned about a supposed “rising crime wave,” and they began to impose stringent demands on law enforcement. The explanations for this development were many and complex. They included improved methods of reporting crime, growing urbanization, and the migration of poor blacks from the South to the Northern industrial centers. But perhaps a major factor in this development was the return of millions of young men from the war and the concomitant “baby boom.”45 Since most crimes were committed by people under twenty-five, what America was probably experiencing in the decades after World War II was less a rising crime wave than a rising youth wave. The perception of growing crime rates was compounded by new and unfamiliar social problems and demands. Black and Latino city dwellers declared that they were unwilling to accept police harassment as a condition of urban life, and they became increasingly militant in their efforts to attain their goal of equal treatment under the law. The conflicting social objectives represented by the desire to stop crime and the quest for equality thrust the police into the center of controversy. Their response to this dilemma, and the reaction of many political leaders, was reflected by an increased emphasis on police professionalization. A primary goal of this trend was to increase police officers’ education and training. Until the 1930s, most officers were poorly educated; few had a high-school education. Pay was low, which allegedly heightened the danger of corruption. As a result, efforts were made to recruit better-educated officers, boost pay, and adopt modern investigative methods. The principal goals of police professionalization focused on higher educational standards, improved management techniques, and professional autonomy.46 Although professionalized policing was widely hailed as a novel approach to problems of crime and violence, the policy created a community ethos in which the impersonal application of the law was more highly prized than the services police officers could provide for city residents. The campaign against bootlegging and organized crime, as well as the need to patrol highways, gave the police technological resources to enhance their efficiency, and civil service requirements reinforced by the scarcity of alternative employment may have yielded changes in personnel. Moreover, the apparent growth of a specialized body of knowledge about law enforcement practices, along with training programs, seemed to give police officers an aura of expertise.47 Perhaps the major effect of municipal reformers on the growth of police professionalization was embodied in the common objective of “getting the 9

Introduction

police out of politics.”48 This aspect of professionalization was somewhat sporadic and uneven. Whereas some communities quickly adopted all of the attributes of a professional police force, others retained the characteristics of earlier “peacekeeping” agencies.49 Many police departments underwent a gradual transition from a loosely structured organization to a bureaucracy and finally to a profession.50 The degree to which the move toward professionalization curbed corruption is debatable. Dishonest police did not need ties to crooked political bosses to figure out how to take bribes or make deals with organized crime. In 1961 a grand jury in Kansas City, Missouri, revealed the existence of an eight-year-old arrangement between organized crime and the police department. The agreement sanctioned gambling, prostitution, and fencing of stolen goods in exchange for a guarantee that no major burglaries would occur within city limits. Eleven years later in New York, the testimony of officer Frank Serpico before the Knapp Commission revealed widespread police corruption and a look-the-other-way attitude on the part of high-ranking police officials. As police problems mounted, however, the trend in most cities was directed at increasing professionalization. Efforts toward professionalization were stepped up after the Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago in August 1968. Antiwar demonstrators converged to protest the Vietnam War. Police, with the assistance of the National Guard, moved forcibly on the activists. Live television coverage of young demonstrators—most of them white, middle-class college students—revealed that they were beaten savagely with nightsticks as they chanted “The whole world is watching!” Progressive Democrats criticized the police on the convention floor, triggering an angry response from Chicago mayor Richard Daley who defended his police. Subsequently, a special panel assigned by the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence concluded that the officers had engaged in a “police riot.”51 Although there was obvious provocation by some of the dissidents, the commission found that officers were guilty of “unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence . . . often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order and made no threat.”52 These events instilled the belief that police who worked the streets had to have a high degree of professionalism. They needed a level of expertise in dealing with difficult situations that had never been demanded of their predecessors. These trends were exacerbated by a mounting public fear of crime. In late 1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. This measure created the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), which issued grants to upgrade and modernize local police 10

Introduction

forces. The LEAA distributed nearly $8 billion to local police departments until it was disbanded in 1982.53 PROFESSIONALIZATION AND ITS LIMITATIONS Some argued that professionalization tended to emphasize technical competence or administrative efficiency rather than an improved relationship between police officers and the public.54 Like many other professionals, police officers were frequently asked to handle personal crises in a routine and confidential manner. Yet the major tenets of police professionalization seemed to stress the importance of fighting crime rather than performing personal services. In substituting a professionally oriented police force for the serviceoriented agencies maintained by political machines, the reformers—perhaps inadvertently—created an agency of government that was relatively unresponsive to public needs and demands. As a result, the police were ill equipped for many of the events they subsequently encountered. At a time when many police problems involved their relations with the community, law enforcement agencies seemed to concentrate on activities that widened the gap between policemen and citizen relations and that failed to produce popular support. As the police became increasingly alienated from the public and from political control, law enforcement practices emerged as an important aspect of urban policy. The growing conflict surrounding police conduct arguably demonstrated the failure of the reform ideal. One commentator offered this analogy of the professionalized police officer: like doctors, lawyers, architects, and other professionals, police possess a body of knowledge and are equipped with special skills that are necessary both to do and to understand their work. Therefore it would be no more prudent for a politician to instruct a police officer on how to do his or her work than it would be for a politician to instruct a doctor on how to remove a gall bladder or an architect on how to build a house. It followed from this analogy that to do the work of professional policing, administrators would require not only the highly sophisticated technological tools of such policing but also extremely intelligent and competent officers to employ them. Only in a police department thus equipped and staffed and working in an environment free from political interference could professional policing thrive. Although the professional analogy proved effective in getting improved personnel and technical resources as well as increasing autonomy for police, the analogy was not without flaws. Although certainly no politician should have a hand on a surgeon’s scalpel during an operation or calculate measurements 11

Introduction

for an architect, political involvement in medicine, landscaping, and other professions is thoroughgoing, and by most accounts, it needs to be. Although politicians do not dictate the manner in which a surgeon operates, they do influence where hospitals are built, what health insurance programs can be offered in a state, how and what forms of health care will be provided for indigent patients, and to what extent the government will support clinics, medical certification, education, and specialization. Unlike the role of government policy in health care, however, the supervision of police conduct is complicated by the fact that the police, as representatives and an extension of state authority, in fact are the state. The state cannot regulate itself, and the police cannot be self-regulating. Nor can the police be entirely divorced from politics. The issue becomes a conundrum that cannot readily be solved. Less abstract facets of the problem, however, are revealed by the demands for the professionalization of law enforcement that seemed to undermine the movement toward that goal. The argument appeared to be predicated on the assumption that the police really possessed a body of knowledge that could be used effectively. Most police officers wanted to rely primarily on information they had gained from experience rather than from careful analysis and investigations. In fact, many police leaders were even skeptical of findings beginning to emerge from social science research. In addition, the professionalism of law enforcement seemed to be unlike the connotations of the word in other occupations. A distinctive common feature of the role of professionals is the wide range of discretion afforded them in performing their activities. By contrast, police professionalism emphasized centralized control, a rigid command structure, extensive regulation, strict discipline, and careful scrutiny. Although most advocates of police professionalism sought highly qualified personnel, they did not attempt to recruit officers who would exercise broad discretion. Police administrators sought to repair their sagging public image by stressing the function that was most consistent with professional objectives—detecting and solving crimes. This also was the aspect of their duties least likely to produce dramatic results. A study conducted in the mid-1960s indicated that even by the most generous estimates, less than one in four of all serious crimes known to the police resulted in an arrest or other action.55 Unlike other activities, police efforts to fight crime seldom produced direct or immediate benefits for many segments of the community. Simply put, the police record in preventing crime was not demonstrably impressive. Yet because the tenets of police professionalization gave that task the highest priority, it often received the greatest amount of attention at the expense of cultivating, foster12

Introduction

ing, and maintaining good relations with the people the police had pledged to serve and protect. NOTES 1. David Taylor, Crime, Policing and Punishment in England, 1750–1940 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998). 2. Robert M. Fogelson, Big-City Police (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Anthony Pate and Edwin E. Hamilton, The Big Six: Policing America’s Largest Cities (Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation, 1991). 3. Terence J. Fitzgerald, Police in Society (New York: H. H. Wilson, 2000); L. B. Berg, Law Enforcement: An Introduction to Police in Society (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1992). 4. In 1968 the editor of a symposium on “The Police in a Democratic Society” was able to identify only a few scattered articles on the police in the political science literature. See Jameson W. Doig, “Police Problems, Proposals, and Strategies for Change,” Public Administration Review 28 (September-October 1968): 393–402. There were indications, however, stimulated largely by the activities of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice and the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, that this oversight was being rectified. 5. Christian Parenti, LockDown America (New York: Verso, 1999), 6. 6. See, for example, William K. Muir Jr., Police: Streetcorner Politicians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977); Peter K. Manning, Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977); George L. Kelling, Police and Communities: The Quiet Revolution (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 1988). 7. Egon Bittner, Aspects of Police Work (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990). 8. W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 9. Kenneth J. Peak, Policing America (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1997). 10. Roger Lane, Policing the City: Boston, 1822–1885 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). 11. Bryan Vila and Cynthia Morris, The Role of Police in American Society (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1999). 12. Jerry Bornstein, Police Brutality: A National Debate (Hillsdale, N.J.: Enslow, 1993). 13. Kenneth G. Alfers, “The Washington Police: A History, 1800–1866,” unpublished PhD thesis, George Washington University, Washington, D.C., 1975. 14. Allan Silver, “The Demand for Order in Civil Society: A Review of Some Themes in the History of Urban Crime, Police and Riot,” in David J. Bordua, ed., The Police: Six Sociological Essays (New York: John Wiley, 1967), 8–9, 11–12, 22–23; Elaine A. Reynolds, Before the Bobbies: The Night Watch and Police Reform in Metropolitan London, 1720–1830 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1998).

13

Introduction

15. Jerome H. Skolnick and James J. Fyfe, Above the Law (New York: Free Press, 1993). 16. Letter from the Attorney General to the Governors, August 7, 1967, With Attachments, in Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 292–293. 17. Lane, Policing the City, 230–235. 18. “Chronic Alcoholic’s Jailing for Intoxication Upheld,” New York Times, January 1, 1892, 1. 19. Harlan Hahn, “Alternative Paths to ‘Professionalization’: The Development of Municipal Personnel,” in Charles H. Levine, ed., Managing Human Resources: A Challenge to Urban Governments (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977), 37–56. 20. Silver, “Demand for Order,” 15–20; Lane, Policing the City, 26–38; James Q. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 31–32. 21. Lane, Policing the City, 133–134, 203–204. 22. Adrian Cook, The Armies of the Street: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1974). 23. Constance McLaughlin Green, The Rise of Urban America (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 79. 24. James Richardson, Urban Police in the United States (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat, 1974), 36. 25. For an interesting review of these trends, see Richard J. Lundman, Police and Policing: An Introduction (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980), 22–34. 26. Hereward Senior, Constabulary: The Rise of Police Institutions in Britain, the Commonwealth and the United States (New York: Dundurn, 1997). 27. Fogelson, Big-City Police, 13–39. 28. Bornstein, Police Brutality. 29. Ibid. 30. See, for example, Daniel Bell, “Crime as an American Way of Life,” in his The End of Ideology (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), 115–136. 31. James Q. Wilson, “Generational and Ethnic Differences Among Career Police Officers,” American Journal of Sociology 69 (March 1964): 522–528; Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1963), 261. 32. Lane, Policing the City, 75–76, 141, 197, 238. 33. “Nationalities of Policemen,” New York Times, March 28, 1888, 2. 34. H. Bruce Pierce, “Blacks and Law Enforcement: Toward Police Brutality Reduction,” Black Scholar 17 (May 1986): 50. 35. The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1931), 618. 36. Kenneth Rexroth, “The Fuzz,” Playboy 14 (July 1967): 78, 118. 37. “The Police as Social Workers,” Outlook 108 (December 16, 1914): 861–862. 38. “Bage Riot Investigation: Two More Witnesses Examined by President Yonk,” New York Times, September 22, 1900, 14. 39. “2,200 Police Ordered to Courtesy School,” New York Times, January 10, 1928, 2. 40. The Wickersham Commission (National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement) was chaired by George W. Wickersham, attorney general of the United 14

Introduction

States under President Herbert Hoover. The commission investigated police corruption and recommended that politics should be eliminated from police organizations. National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, Report on Lawlessness in Law Enforcement (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931). 41. Fogelson, Big-City Police, 1–39. 42. George L. Kelling and Mark H. Moore, “From Political to Reform to Community: The Evolving Strategy of Police,” in Jack R. Greene and Stephen D. Mastrofski, eds., Community Policing: Rhetoric or Reality (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1988), 2–25; I. Gaines, M. Southerland, and J. Angell, Police Administration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991). 43. For speculation on how this change may have shaped the nature of contemporary police departments, see Harlan Hahn, “Alternative Paths to ‘Professionalization’: The Development of Municipal Personnel,” in Charles H. Levine, ed., Managing Human Resources: A Challenge to Urban Governments (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977), 37–56. 44. Arthur Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield: The Police in Urban Society (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), 16. 45. Daniel Bell, “The Myth of Crime Waves,” in his The End of Ideology (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), 140–144. 46. O. W. Wilson and Roy Clinton McLaren, Police Administration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972). For a comparable although somewhat different account of developments, see Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior, 282; Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Police Organization in the Twentieth Century,” in Michael Tonry and N. Morris, eds., Modern Policing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 51–98. 47. National Crime Commission, Task Force Report: The Police (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 6. 48. See, for example, Raymond Fosdick, American Police Systems (New York: Century, 1920). 49. James Q. Wilson, “The Police and Their Problems: A Theory,” in Carl J. Friedrich and Seymour Harris, eds., Public Policy 12 (1963): 189–216. 50. Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield, 11–32; Michael Benton, The Policeman in the Community (New York: Basic, 1964), 106–110. 51. Bornstein, Police Brutality. 52. Ibid. 53. Edward Jay Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (London: Verso, 1990). 54. Jerome H. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial (New York: John Wiley, 1966), 235– 239. 55. National Crime Commission, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 247–248; Albert J. Reiss Jr. and David J. Bordua, “Environment and Organization: A Perspective on the Police,” in David J. Bordua, ed., The Police: Six Sociological Essays (New York: John Wiley, 1967), 35.

15

1 P

Police Functions in Urban America

Police Functions in Urban America

for the study of police activities entails the formulation of a conceptual structure that can be adopted to organize evidence from some initial investigations of the subject by social scientists and to guide future research. Obviously, this endeavor could be considered both innovative and foolhardy. Although few serious students of law enforcement would probably deny the value of advancing a theoretical construct for such purposes, there is also little doubt that almost any proposed conceptualization might be strongly criticized by other analysts who prefer a different approach. In reviewing the results of research conducted by social scientists in the 1960s and thereafter, we decided the imperative to develop a new conceptual paradigm for organizing and guiding research seemed to overshadow the risk of criticism. Much of the research on law enforcement from the 1960s and beyond has apparently been shaped more by ad hoc considerations than by an informing theoretical legacy. Some of it scarcely seemed to rise above the level of the descriptive to gain the status of the analytical, let alone the realm of empirical validity. Hence the major purpose of this chapter is to introduce a new conceptual framework for the analysis of these issues. Other statements concerning the purpose of police work have directed attention at the specific duties of law enforcement agencies.1 Most of the tasks enumerated in the lists compiled by police administrators, however, have emphasized the investigation and suppression of criminal conduct. In fact, many readers might also complain about the omission of that role from the conceptual framework presented in this chapter. Several reasons account, however, for the absence of this mission in the analytical design. First, the crime-fighting duties of the police can be derived directly from other functions ERHAPS THE MOST CRITICAL NEED

17

Police Functions in Urban America

included here, such as exerting authority, providing protection, and maintaining order. (The association between authority and service poses a special problem that will be discussed in greater detail later.) Second, efforts to combat crime differ from other functions in another way that might surprise some observers. In many respects, the role of the police concerning crime seems primarily symbolic. Society needs demonstrable evidence of police response to the problem of crime, even if that response accomplishes little of substance. This evidence is manifested by the presence of police officers patrolling commercial centers and residential neighborhoods. The responsibility of controlling crime cannot be fulfilled by any specific activity. Most police work consists of patrolling city streets without apparent consequences. Although defenders of existing practices might contend that the deterrent value of the mere presence of police officers has been important in controlling crime, the burden of demonstrating the effects of deterrence is similar to the impossible task of proving a negative. Since there is no way of determining the amount of crime that might have occurred if the police were not present, there is also no means of assessing the effectiveness of local police in curbing or preventing crime. Hence an independent variable that adequately measures the effect of police tactics on violations of the law does not appear readily available. Many analysts have also stressed the critical importance of having at least some standard by which police intervention can be evaluated. Often they have been tempted to adopt a dependent variable that does not represent a meaningful dimension of the problems police encounter. As a result, attempts have frequently been made to adopt crime statistics as dependent variables in studies of police work. The invalidity of these endeavors cannot be fully excused by the lack of other comparable information. These attempts have also been plagued by weaknesses intrinsic to crime date. Thus the analysis of the role of urban police returns to the discussion of crime rates at the end of the chapter. By stressing concrete police behavior, these reports have contributed to an increased understanding of law enforcement practices, but they seem to neglect the broader social implications of policing. Rather than concentrate on the role of police officers in maintaining law and order or on their detailed activities, this work pays special attention to four critical functions of police officers in the urban milieu: protection, order, authority, and service.2 PROTECTION Perhaps the function that has been given the greatest amount of attention by police departments is the protection of life and property. In this regard, the 18

Police Functions in Urban America

police have been able to exercise what they consider their basic prerogatives in the prevention and detection of crime. Yet as was mentioned earlier, the largest portion of police time devoted to this function was not consumed by the investigation or repression of actual crimes. Police officers’ major contribution concerning the protection of life and property was to maintain a constant surveillance of the community. By cruising neighborhoods in marked patrol cars, checking the locks of businesses and schools, and engaging in related activities, policemen served as a constant reminder to law-abiding citizens of their security and to potential offenders of their prospects for apprehension. Although studies conducted in Kansas City raised serious questions about the effectiveness of police patrolling in deterring crime,3 many law enforcement officials regard such practices as the principal means to protect lives and property. Protection has been the major justification for the existence of a police force in a free society since the days when the police originated as private watchmen rather than public officials. In subsequent years, few have denied the need for policemen. Yet the effectiveness of police activities designed to protect lives and property has been seriously questioned. A review of various studies revealed that offenses that involve the police in a protective capacity were often divided into “crimes against the person” and “crimes against property.” This distinction has limited police success in solving crimes. According to authoritative estimates, the proportion of crimes that did not produce an arrest usually ranged from less than 10 percent for homicide to more than 80 percent for larceny.4 Although most crimes against the person involved offenses in which the victim knew the offender, crimes against property were generally committed by strangers who left little trace of their identity.5 The ability of the police to protect life and property, therefore, has usually depended on information supplied by victims, witnesses, informants, and friends and acquaintances of the victim.6 Although both crimes against the person and crimes against property increased substantially in secular as well as short-range terms, the sharpest gains were exhibited in burglary, larceny, and other crimes against property. These trends, for the most part, mounted steadily each year, and unfortunately the police were unable to demonstrate their effectiveness in adequately protecting private property.7 As a natural corollary to their protective function, law enforcement agencies assumed two major additional responsibilities. Initially, police departments attempted to prevent the occurrence of crimes—particularly property crimes— by reducing opportunities for the commission of such offenses. This tactic involved not only the quiet patrol of city streets but also the aggressive detention 19

Police Functions in Urban America

and interrogation of persons in what were regarded as suspicious circumstances. Despite many police departments’ heavy reliance on this technique, few efforts were made to assess the effects. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice noted, “About 200,000 policemen spend half of their time on ‘preventive’ patrol. Yet, no police chief can obtain even a rough estimate of how much crime is thereby prevented.”8 The Kansas City study, which was supposed to provide such evidence, failed to find any association between preventive patrolling and crime rates.9 In fact, so-called aggressive preventive patrolling may have produced negative ramifications by increasing the number of hostile and abrasive contacts between police officers and the public. Second, the police assumed a number of other responsibilities, such as traffic regulation, as a consequence of their mandate to protect lives and property. Such tasks accounted for a large share of police duties, and they were indispensable to a society in which potentially lethal or destructive instruments such as cars and trucks were readily available. But they also had dysfunctional ramifications. Each contact between police and the public involving a suspected traffic violation is potentially explosive. Needless to say, many law enforcement practices have not inspired public sympathy or goodwill. As a result, to some extent police departments still have not received the extensive popular support some other social institutions enjoy. Although the protection of life and property has historically been considered a function that could inspire general public approval, its effect has been relatively limited. Protection may be enthusiastically endorsed by persons whose property or life is being protected, but it has frequently brought the police into conflict with some segments of the population. It is difficult, for example, to convince a cynical pedestrian or an irate motorist that he or she is receiving the same protection granted others in the community. In addition, people tend to be most supportive of activities that produce direct, immediate, and tangible benefits for them. Since police protection is sometimes an abstract and impersonal service that may be considered important only when it has failed, the protection of life and property has probably led to the active and sustained public support many law enforcement agencies need to face the challenges of the future. ORDER Although the idea of order may be somewhat misleading when used in conjunction with the concept of law, there seemed little doubt that the maintenance of public order was another important duty assumed by police departments.10 20

Police Functions in Urban America

This function has often been equated with the need to uphold generally accepted social norms or conventions, but it also encompasses a wide range of other activities. In their celebrated 1982 Atlantic Monthly article, James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling noted that the order maintenance function of the police involved taking care of disorderly behaviors—panhandling, soliciting, loitering, and public intoxication—and disorderly people—vagrants, drunks, and vandals.11 They noted that it is important to take care of such things because they are presumed to play a key role in making communities ripe for criminal invasion. Simply put, if disorderly conduct is not addressed, more serious crimes will emerge. The original police mandate to preserve public order, for example, arguably arose from the common threat of riots and civil disturbances. In normal circumstances this duty required, among other things, intervention in domestic arguments, boisterous congregations of young people, street fights, noisy parties, and tavern brawls. A major proportion of the arrests made by police officers have involved crimes against public order. Since the earliest days of police history, for example, public intoxication and disorderly conduct have been the two crimes that produced the largest number of arrests. Moreover, many of the crimes prosecuted as part of the police mission to preserve order had no immediate victims except the rather remote abstraction known as “society.” As the president’s Crime Commission noted in 1967, “Nearly 45 percent of all arrests are for crimes without victims or against the public order [such] as drunkenness, gambling, liquor law violations, vagrancy, and prostitution.”12 The extensive use of arrests to stop “crimes without victims” has provoked widespread controversy regarding the wisdom or propriety of such a policy. The argument frequently advanced has been that an act really cannot be considered criminal unless it results in harm to another person, that it may be impossible to eliminate some conduct because people are unwilling to abandon personal vices for “the public good,” and that the continued prosecution of victimless crimes subverts respect for the law. In addition, some observers noted that the enforcement of laws concerning crimes without specific victims has often had the potential to undermine proper police procedures. The argument went as follows: police forces may be tempted either to accept payments for the protection of illegal enterprises or to become overzealous by making the entire state enforcement apparatus available to an indignant third party.13 On the other hand, proponents of the practice argued either, abstractly, that society should not surrender its right to prescribe appropriate forms of social conduct or, pragmatically, that police activities designed to halt crimes 21

Police Functions in Urban America

without specific victims have frequently led to the prevention or resolution of more serious offenses. The debate, which was generally confined to vice and narcotics laws, perhaps could not be resolved without broad agreement on underlying normative issues. The failure of police forces to administer many laws against seemingly harmless but offensive conduct without prior legislative repeal might have produced arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement practices. But the more important questions probably revolved around whether efforts to maintain order and to halt victimless crimes had the potential to divert police resources from more important tasks or to hinder attempts to stop more dangerous activities. Although police actions in response to charges of assault and battery may have been regarded as conduct aimed primarily at protection, the vast majority of such crimes may also have involved law enforcement officers’ efforts to maintain public order. Since assault was classified as a misdemeanor in most states, a police officer could not make an arrest for that crime unless he either obtained a sworn complaint from the victim or the assault occurred in his presence. In many cases assaults were regarded as personal matters, and the police were viewed as unwelcome intruders. A national survey published in 1967 revealed, for example, that more than half of the assaults that occurred in the United States were not reported to the police primarily because the victim did not want to harm the offender or because no one involved regarded the incident as a legitimate concern of the police.14 Another study in Oakland, California, disclosed that personal inconvenience was often a barrier to arrests for assault and that in 70 percent of the battery cases in which the offender was known, the victim decided not to press charges.15 Assault and battery seem to have many of the characteristics of crimes without aggrieved victims. Although targets of an assault frequently suffer major physical injuries, they are unlikely to solicit the intervention of the police in what they consider essentially a private affair. Perhaps even the most serious crimes— such as assault and battery—that involve police officers in the function of maintaining order may not be consistent with the need for public support. The task of preserving order requires the identification of deviant behavior, a stigma many offenders would tend to dispute. Although most people recognize the need to enforce established norms of conduct, the duty of curtailing socially unacceptable behavior and imposing order has not attracted widespread approval in a society founded on personal freedom. Certainly, few citizens detained for the commission of crimes without specific victims could be expected to admit the need for their actions to be punished. Even the victims of dangerous assault may be reluctant to acknowledge the necessity 22

Police Functions in Urban America

for police intervention to stop what they regard as a private conflict. Again, perhaps the most controversial aspect of maintaining public order has involved the police role in preventing and squashing riots or civil demonstrations, in which police intervention was anything but welcomed by rioters or protestors. Moreover, in each case, with the possible exception of civic disturbances or violence, the interest of other members of society in suppressing illegal activities was usually insufficient to provide firm support for police actions to maintain order. The outbreak of the 1960s rebellions may have changed public sentiment slightly by arousing the fears of the white community, but police efforts to end the threat also seemed to provoke more criticism and ill will than any other single police activity. AUTHORITY Perhaps the fundamental basis upon which all other police functions rest is the exercise of authority. Without the formal authorization bestowed by public institutions, police officers would be unable to command the deference necessary to maintain social control. To enhance their power, local governments have invested police officers with the badge, gun, nightstick, and other tools of coercion. In large measure the cop on the beat has been empowered by the state to assert control over personal interactions in a world in which other forms of social discipline are inadequate. As agents of public authority, the police have been responsible for implementing community standards by which the activities of residents are judged or evaluated. Unlike the functions of providing protection and order, the exercise of authority has not been associated with any specific form of illegal conduct. In many circumstances, however, people have turned to the police officer as a type of social arbiter to mediate conflict or prevent the disruption of normal social conventions. Perhaps the most common influence of police on private affairs has been produced by their intervention in domestic or marital quarrels, where the disputing parties have frequently been persuaded by the authority of the badge to accept the officers’ decision regarding the conflict. Even when a crime was committed, the major responsibility of the police officers called to the scene has been to gain control of the encounter and to structure the situation for themselves.16 Rather than searching for clues or pursuing a culprit, police efforts have been devoted primarily to assessing the motives and the testimony of victims or witnesses to the incident. In public places, most contacts between police officers and the public may also involve the exertion of authority. Although law enforcement officers have sometimes 23

Police Functions in Urban America

lacked firm legal grounds for such a command, few citizens are likely to ignore a directive from a police officer to “come over here” or to “move along.” Authority has been one of the most basic and frequently used powers available to police officers in performing their duties. Local governments have conferred a great deal of power upon police departments, although few other methods of persuasion have been made available to them. Although the problem of securing compliance with law enforcement directives may depend on social skills rather than on legal sanctions, historically, police officers have not been equipped with the training or selection procedures to develop those abilities. Moreover, the granting of broad discretion to police forces has rarely been accompanied by more specific corresponding guidelines regarding the exercise of their powers. As a result, in many instances police have been likely to regard as illegal or provocative those actions that interfered with what they considered their legitimate duties. In fact, in many areas failure to respect the authority of a police officer, although not explicitly recognized in the statutes, has been accorded the status of a crime. A major study of police attitudes published in 1953 revealed that showing “disrespect for the police” was the most frequently cited justification for the use of excessive force in making an arrest.17 A subsequent investigation of “professionalized” police officers in the late 1960s by James Leo Walsh found that the exercise of force was reserved primarily for “animals,” or known troublemakers who looked and acted especially tough.18 Another study in two separate communities revealed that more than 40 percent of arrests for “disorderly conduct” resulted from a person resisting, disobeying, or verbally abusing an officer.19 Although the act of imposing authority has frequently been cloaked by statements about the need to establish order, evidence has indicated that the exercise of authority may constitute a separate and distinct police function. In some circumstances authority may be employed simply to regulate behavior or to adjudicate a minor dispute, but under other conditions the discretion available to police has apparently been expanded to include the defiance of authority as an unwritten crime susceptible to punishment. Since police departments have operated under the imposing formal auspices of the state with little direct supervision, they have been in a unique position to repel challenges to their authority. The exertion of authority, like many other law enforcement activities, commonly resulted in a negative or hostile encounter between police and citizen. Although many reacted to the imposition of external controls with resentment or annoyance, others responded favorably. To many persons who recognized the inadequacy of personal restraints on human behavior, an aware24

Police Functions in Urban America

ness of the presence of the police may have produced an aura of security and a faith that public agencies were equipped to repress improper or threatening conduct. This sense of personal safety and confidence in the police has possibly been a principal source of popular approval. In general, however, the exercise of authority by the police in the past has not yielded the active and intense public support accorded other political institutions. SERVICE Unlike protection, order, and authority, another police duty has tended to generate widespread public acceptance. As the history of law enforcement indicates, the provision of community services evolved in a somewhat different manner than the other police functions. Service activities may have flourished in the somewhat tainted era of the old-style political machine. Subsequently, however, increasing police professionalization tended to discourage this function, primarily on the grounds that it could interfere with “real” police work. In fact, many police officers tended to consign service tasks to a large residual category of “bullshit,” which was sharply differentiated from “real police work.”20 In fact, one expert, who later identified the “service style” as a major form of police behavior, initially sought to exclude service functions from consideration because they could be sold by profit-making organizations.21 Regardless of debates about the merits or lack thereof implied by conservative proposals to transfer critically needed services to private rather than public agencies, the fact remained that a major proportion of police officers’ duties required them to perform social services. Numerous studies of popular demands on the police indicated that the largest number of citizen requests for police intervention had nothing to do with crime. Most involved what might be termed community services. A study of calls to the Syracuse Police Department in 1961 disclosed that more than half were requests for health services or assistance with children.22 A partial replication of the study in 1966 confirmed that the largest proportion of calls—37.5 percent—sought services, with health problems or accidents still leading the list; 30.1 percent concerned the maintenance of public order; 22.1 percent were attempts to gather information; and only 10.3 percent were related to crime.23 Comparable results were found in Chicago and Detroit.24 Nationally, a task force of the president’s Crime Commission estimated that only about a third of police radio calls involved matters that could possibly lead to an arrest, and only about 5 percent actually produced an arrest.25 As part of their service responsibility, police assistance has long been provided to diverse groups ranging from expectant mothers to stranded motorists. 25

Police Functions in Urban America

Despite the vast amount of time devoted to this work, police departments have frequently believed it was necessary to legitimize their service activities by relating them to supposedly more professional practices. As the National Crime Commission concluded begrudgingly: In the absence of conclusive proof to the contrary, the Commission believes that the performance of many of the nonenforcement duties helps [the police] to control crime, and that radically changing the traditional police role would create more problems than it would solve—including the problem of finding other people to perform the indispensable services the police would be excused from performing.26

The phrasing of this conclusion seemed to imply that many law enforcement agencies would have preferred to have found an excuse to avoid service functions but were unable to do so. Police departments may have been the sole local agency capable of providing vitally needed services, but there would appear to have been little reason to make this function dependent upon tradition, the difficulty of replacing them, or their effectiveness in stopping crime. In fact, the tendency to make service an extension of crime control could have intensified mutual suspicion and distrust between police and the community. Ironically, the duty that claimed the largest share of police time and attention was the task law enforcement agencies found most difficult to justify. In general, police officers probably spent more of their active duty time providing services and writing reports than they did on any other single function.27 The extensive public reliance on police departments to provide critical services is not difficult to explain. The police represent the only public agency that continually circulates throughout the community and that can be summoned on a nearly instantaneous around-the-clock basis. Moreover, many citizens were not aware of services provided by other groups in the community. Elaine Cumming, Dan Cumming, and Laura Edell noted in their study that “poor, uneducated people appeared to use the police in the way that middle-class people use family doctors and clergymen—that is, as the first port of call in time of trouble.”28 Because of their ability to respond to emergency calls quickly and effectively, the police were viewed as a natural source of assistance in personal or family crises. Many persons—including some members of minority groups who may have sought to avoid the social stigma of becoming involved with the police—could have relied on private sources of help, but for others who could not afford the economic or social costs of private aid, the police were often their only option. The performance of services offered police officers an unusual opportunity to become familiar with the problems and personalities of the residents on their beat. Further, there 26

Police Functions in Urban America

would seem to have been little reason to deny citizens the services available from local police forces. The heavy demands community services imposed on the police produced intense strains and conflict. According to some observers, the time consumed by service functions compelled the police to act in latent rather than overt roles and to alter their status correspondingly from professionals to amateurs.29 This interpretation, however, seemed founded on the assumption that the primary duty of the police was to prevent crime and that they already had professional stature or expertise in that field. The vast amount of time devoted to public services, as well as the difficulties police encountered in their highly publicized role of solving crimes, raised some doubts about this claim. Although the idea might appear radical or novel, no intrinsic reason appears to exist for assuming that narrowly defined law enforcement duties should have been granted a higher priority than community services. Police officers acquired a great deal of experience in providing personal assistance that could have been enhanced by further training and a clearer recognition of their responsibility for service. An honest acknowledgment of the need for community services seemed to require a thorough reappraisal of the police mission. Although service activities formed a major—even a critical—part of police duties for many years, they were allowed to develop without either a strong commitment to their value or even more than a tacit admission of their existence. Police professionalization, with its emphasis on battling crime, relegated services to a position of secondary importance. Yet unlike other duties assigned to police departments, service work involved the police in a positive rather than an adversarial relationship with the public. In fact, the performance of services may have been the only major police function that could have generated the kind of widespread support these agencies needed. In the controversy resulting from the police entanglement in major social issues, public services could have enabled law enforcement agencies to regain increased favor and approval. Ironically, this is also the function subjected to the most vehement attacks by the proponents of police professionalization. CONFLICTING POLICE FUNCTIONS The tendency to downgrade service functions was stimulated not only by the growth of police professionalization but also by basic problems in the nature of police work. Unlike most tasks, providing community services was often regarded as inconsistent with other law enforcement goals. Although all police functions—order, protection, authority, and service—may entail some overlap 27

Police Functions in Urban America

or duplication,30 service has probably produced more conflict with the remaining objectives than any of the other duties. A prominent conflict in the occupational mandate of the police was created by the simultaneous demand for services and the obligation to maintain public order. In addition to the strain created by the staggering volume of telephone calls police departments received,31 this tension was illustrated by routine situations encountered by officers on the street. For the purpose of preserving order, police were directed to intervene in victimless crimes, civil disturbances, and private fights between friends or relatives; but as providers of public service they were asked to help persons who had suffered serious mishaps. As a result, the police were frequently forced, for example, to decide whether they should arrest a staggering drunk or send him home. In other circumstances they were often compelled to determine whether to attempt to facilitate reconciliation between members of a couple engaged in a loud family argument or to escort one of the parties to the station because of disorderly conduct. Perhaps even more important, police officers were commonly faced with the dilemma either of stopping a crowd of demonstrators to restore order or of guarding the demonstrators’ right to protest from the threat of troublesome onlookers. In many of those situations, the average police officer had to make a choice between establishing order and providing aid to persons in need. In many cases, however, cops on the beat were given little direction or guidance regarding which of the two functions they should perform. The needs to provide services and to exercise authority also forced the police to act in different capacities. Their job usually required them simultaneously to offer assistance and impose their authority. In most circumstances in which officers were summoned to a scene, they first asked if anyone was injured and then sought to gain control of the situation. If offenders were injured, the officer attended to their needs before applying the penalties of the state as a result of their illegal conduct. The effect of this action, which arises from the fact that police forces are both masters and servants of the people, may have created confusion in the eyes of witnesses and uncertainty in the minds of some police officers. Although normally the obligation to provide services and protect lives or property would not produce tension, the two functions may become inconsistent if the performance of services is viewed as an additional opportunity to investigate or scrutinize citizens’ activities. Tension between protection and service, therefore, depends on the manner in which those functions are administered. Although authority has often been viewed as a necessary condition for public order, those two functions may also represent opposing responsibili28

Police Functions in Urban America

ties. Perhaps the clearest example of this conflict might arise when a police officer attempts to use force in arresting a person for disturbing the peace. The force may be successful in subduing the suspect, but it might also provoke him or her or a crowd of hostile observers to engage in even more disruptive or violent behavior. The exercise of authority may be disruptive of public order, and in large measure it may appear to exceed conventional or socially accepted modes of conduct. The incipient flame of revolt that burns in some individuals could be ignited by the firm imposition of authority in a manner that could destroy public order. Basic inconsistencies among the four principal police functions of order, service, protection, and authority are illustrated in Figure 1.1. Conflicts are represented by opposing arrows, and supportive functions are pictured as straight lines. The tension between protection and service is depicted by broken lines. As this analysis indicates, the police mission—like the objectives of many organizations—encompasses many conflicting duties. For some, such apparent inconsistencies may not represent a serious concern. Some public and private institutions have embraced conflicting tasks, and they have operated successfully. But the existence of numerous opposing responsibilities provides a relatively clear picture of the ambiguous and loosely structured manner in which the police mandate had been defined. Again, the most inconsistent police function was community service. An emphasis on providing services might conflict with maintaining order, establishing authority, and possibly protecting lives and property. Perhaps in an effort to minimize this conflict, the doctrines of police professionalism tended to deemphasize the importance of service activities. On the other hand, the protective function produced the least conflict with other duties. Order, authority, and possibly even service contributed to and supported the function of protecting persons and property. Since protection was most closely related to the norms of police professionalization and involved few conflicts with other assignments, it probably received more emphasis and attention than any other function. INTERSECTION OF PROTECTION AND CRIME Police usually interpreted the responsibility of protection as allowing them to concentrate on fighting crime. Yet the largest proportion of police time was devoted to other tasks, and most crimes that were reported to the police did not result in an arrest of a suspect.32 As two close observers of police activity submitted, “Only in a superficial sense may police be said to solve crime or to 29

Police Functions in Urban America

enforce the law.”33 Contrary to the impressions conveyed by detective stories and television dramas, criminals were seldom identified by an incriminating clue or a long series of logical deductions. More often, when law enforcement officers arrived at the scene of a crime they asked, “Who did it?” And frequently someone—the victim, a friend, a relative, or a witness—told them who had done it. Silence, however, was a common response to property crimes such as burglary, which were usually committed by a stranger. Studies of police detectives generally concluded that their work was inefficient and unproductive.34 As a result, the police were helpless in a large number of crimes in which the offender could not be identified. In cases where the suspect was known to the victim, the police were simply were left to make the arrest. In most situations the crucial work in bringing a culprit to justice was performed by private citizens rather than police forces. Despite police departments’ heavy reliance on deterrent mechanisms, no consistent correlation was discovered between the amount or type of police activity and the prevention of crime in either a neighborhood or a community. As the National Crime Commission observed, “Perhaps the best proof that much remains to be discovered about police work is that the ratios of policemen per thousand residents in cities of over 500,000 population range from 1.07 to 4.04, while the incidence of reported crime in those cities shows no such gross differences.”35 In fact, the Kansas City experiment, which was expected to provide those data, failed to demonstrate any association between patrolling practices and crime rates.36 Slight evidence suggested that increased numbers of police officers may have reduced certain types of street crimes such as muggings, purse snatchings, and related offenses; but such crimes accounted for only a small portion of illegal activities, and a temporary reduction may have simply represented a displacement of crime to other areas of a community.37 This point was underscored by the conclusions of another study, which noted that police departments “cannot control crime any more than they can alter the economic structure, the political system, the educational system, or fundamentally affect the birth rate or patterns of migration. They have oversold themselves as crime fighters.”38 Overall, there was relatively little discussion of the issue. Perhaps one of the most persuasive facts that could have been offered to support these conclusions was the absence of a consistent correlation between crime rates and police strikes. After reviewing the available information about the subject, Richard J. Lundman concluded that “strikes help reveal what police otherwise feel obligated to obfuscate, that contemporary police organizations can do little to prevent or control crime.”39 30

Police Functions in Urban America

Service

Order

Authority

Protection Figure 1.1.

Perhaps the ideal form of deterrence might have been achieved by maintaining a constant surveillance of civilian behavior or by placing a patrolman in every block, but the first policy would not be tolerated in a free society and the second is impractical. Moreover, most deterrent activities such as aggressive preventive patrolling, the interrogation of suspicious persons, and the saturation of high crime-rate areas often brought the police into hostile conflicts with the public. The prospects for police forces to represent an effective deterrent against crime, therefore, seemed relatively limited. Although some police officers were defensive about the issue, the fact that many law enforcement agencies did not have proven means of preventing or controlling crime should not be interpreted as a criticism of them. Police officers have an enormously difficult job. If fault was to be found anywhere, a major portion of the blame rested with policy analysts and social scientists who failed to provide police departments with useful information about methods 31

Police Functions in Urban America

of reducing the crime rate.40 For many years police departments pointed to a “rising crime wave” to justify their requests for increased appropriations from local politicians. In this continuing dialogue, little was said to correct the impression that increased funding would produce a reduction in the crime rate. That argument, of course, was based on the erroneous assumption that law enforcement agencies had developed practical and effective methods of curbing crime. Perhaps part of the problem that confronted both law enforcement agencies and social scientists had to do with incomplete and inadequate data about crime. Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compiled an annual volume of statistics known as the Uniform Crime Reports, the series was of limited value in evaluating the effectiveness of police work. In fact, the information made available by the FBI, which was usually interpreted as indicating that crime had increased steadily since the end of World War II, was probably a more sensitive measure of police departments’ increasing ability to keep accurate records. In assessing the effects of improved reporting procedures, a study by the National Crime Commission found that “cities that significantly changed their reporting systems after 1959 accounted for nearly 25 percent of all reported Index crimes against the person and about 16 percent of all reported Index property crimes.”41 Hence, ironically, a few major cities that improved their reporting and record-keeping techniques probably contributed disproportionately to the apparent increase in crime. In some communities, methods of compiling crime rates may have changed for other reasons. The available evidence suggested that many police organizations altered their crime statistics to create a favorable image in the eyes of municipal authorities and other outsiders.42 In addition, the actual volume of crime in the United States was greatly obscured by people’s failure to report many crimes to the police. In 1966 a national sample survey of approximately 10,000 U.S. households was undertaken to determine the actual occurrence of crime. A comparison of so-called Part I crimes (serious offenses such as homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and vehicle theft) contained in the Uniform Crime Reports and the statistics reported in the survey revealed that although the ranking of each specific crime remained the same, the estimated rate of all crimes except homicide and car theft was substantially higher in the survey. The researchers concluded, “As a whole, there appears to be twice as much major crime as is known to the police.”43 This finding was subsequently confirmed by several surveys conducted by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. When people were asked why they did not report crimes, the 32

Police Functions in Urban America

largest proportion replied, ”Realistically . . . there is not very much that the police can do about them anyhow.”44 The lack of an accurate method of determining the actual rate of crime by calculating meaningful crime statistics deprived informed observers of a basis for assessing the consequences of police activity.45 Despite the inadequacy of existing information about crime, police were continually pressed to develop a standard for measuring their effectiveness.46 The result of this tension was a measure known as “the clearance rate,” which is the proportion of crimes known to police that law enforcement agencies believe have been solved. Instead of defining the solution of crimes as an arrest or a conviction, however, the meaning of the term expanded to include confessions, the release of suspects to other agencies, and other actions that removed the offense from the books. The number of crimes known to the police was also reduced by labeling citizens’ complaints as “unfounded,” by investigating officers’ tendency to submit a routine report on an incident rather than filing it as an offense, and by the classification of many complaints as “suspicious circumstances” rather than crimes.47 In most cases that were cleared by an arrest, the suspect was named by the victim and was taken into custody soon after the commission of the offense.48 Despite the inability of police to identify a suspect in many crimes, the need to maintain a favorable public image prompted strong pressure to produce a relatively high clearance rate. Perhaps the most significant example of this tendency was evident in efforts to obtain admissions to prior offenses from suspects held on another charge. To secure information that could enable a department to increase its clearance rate, persons taken into custody were frequently promised a reduction in charges, confidential handling of confessions, or immunity from further investigation of earlier crimes.49 Although reliable data on the use of such techniques were lacking, there was good reason to claim that the second-largest proportion of all crimes cleared by arrest was “solved” by arresting otherwise known violators.50 Even when a suspect was arrested, the evidence was sufficient to sustain a formal charge in 60 to 80 percent of cases for various offenses, and a smaller proportion resulted in a conviction.51 Clearance rates reported by local police departments, therefore, failed to convey an accurate picture of their effectiveness in solving crimes. CONCLUSION Even by the most generous estimates, the performance of police departments in coping with crimes or in reversing the allegedly growing crime wave of the 33

Police Functions in Urban America

1960s was not particularly impressive. Perhaps more important, the failure to present an authentic or a realistic basis for evaluating law enforcement activities seriously undermined public confidence in the police. In large measure, this problem resulted from police preoccupation with the detection and investigation of criminal conduct. If police departments prominently reported the number of sick or injured persons they assisted or even the number of marital disputes they helped reconcile, they might have been able to display a favorable record and to garner increased popular approval and support. By concentrating on the punitive aspects of law enforcement and on their role in battling crime, the police exposed the weakest and the most negative facets of their mission to public scrutiny. In many respects this emphasis on crime control probably could not have been otherwise. The origins of modern police were based on the need for protection—the function most closely related to solving crimes—and that focus was reinforced by the doctrines of police professionalization. As cities faced the problem of increased discontent, police forces added the responsibilities of maintaining order and exerting authority; additionally, the accelerating waves of immigration prompted new needs for community services. But this service function conflicted with other duties. Protection, however, was supported by those duties. Hence protection emerged as police forces’ primary mandate. Since police had become intimately involved both in regulating criminal conduct and in corresponding debates about individual liberties, a thorough reappraisal of police functions cannot be undertaken without a careful examination of the relationship among the law, courts, and urban law enforcement. NOTES 1. Joseph D. Lohman and Gordon E. Misner, The Police and the Community, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), 25–26; Arthur Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), 11. 2. Geoffrey P. Alpert and Roger G. Dunham, Policing Urban America (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland, 1997). 3. Roy R. Roberg and Jack KuyKendall, Police in Society (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1993). 4. Robert H. Langworthy, The Structure of Police Organizations (New York: Praeger, 1986). 5. National Crime Commission, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 18–19. 6. Ibid., 23–24. 7. G. W. Cordner, “The Police on Patrol,” in D. J. Kenney, ed., Police and Policing: Contemporary Issues (New York: Praeger, 1989), 60–71. 34

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8. Cited in ibid., 247. 9. George L. Kelling, Tony Pate, Duane Dieckman, and Charles E. Brown, The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment—A Summary Report (Washington, D.C.: Police Foundation, 1974). 10. George L. Kelling, “Acquiring a Taste for Order: The Community and the Police,” Crime and Delinquency 33 (1987): 90–102. 11. James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, “The Police and Neighborhood Safety: Broken Windows,” Atlantic Monthly 127 (March 1982): 29–38. 12. National Crime Commission, Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 20. 13. Jerome H. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial (New York: John Wiley, 1975), 209– 211. 14. Phillip H. Ennis, Criminal Victimization in the United States: A Report of a National Survey (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 42, 46. 15. James Q. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 23–24, 132–134. 16. Donald J. Black and Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Patterns of Behavior in Police and Citizen Transactions,” in Studies in Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, n.d.), 27. 17. William A. Westley, “Violence and the Police,” American Journal of Sociology 59 (July 1953): 34–41. 18. James Leo Walsh, “Professionalism and the Police: The Cop as Medical Student,” in Harlan Hahn, ed., Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 225– 245. 19. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior, 130–131. 20. Marvin Cummins, “Police and Service Work,” in Harlan Hahn, ed., Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 279–290; John Van Maanen, “Kinsman in Repose: Occupational Perspectives of Patrolmen,” in Peter K. Manning and John Van Maanen, eds., Policing: A View From the Streets (Santa Monica: Goodyear, 1978), 115– 128. 21. Ibid., 4–5. 22. Elaine Cumming, Dan Cumming, and Laura Edell, “Policeman as Philosopher, Guide and Friend,” Social Problems 12 (Winter 1965): 279. 23. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior, 18–19. 24. Herman Goldstein, “Police Response to Urban Crisis,” Public Administration Review 28 (September-October 1968): 418. See also Thomas E. Bereal, “Call for Police Assistance: Consumer Demands for Governmental Service,” in Harlan Hahn, ed., Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 267–277. 25. National Crime Commission, Task Force Report: Science and Technology (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 93. See Cummins, “Police and Service Work,” 279–290. 26. National Crime Commission, Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 98. 27. Richard J. Lundman, “Police Patrol Work: A Comparative Perspective,” in Richard J. Lundman, ed., Police Behavior: A Sociological Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 52–65. 28. Cumming, Cumming, and Edell, “Policeman as Philosopher,” 285. 35

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29. Ibid., 277. 30. The concepts of order, protection, authority, and service may not be entirely mutually exclusive, but they would seem to be both analytically and empirically separable. It is hoped that they might provide a basis for more detailed and quantitative studies of police activities, perhaps employing the techniques offered by role theory. For a discussion of this approach, see Jack J. Preiss and Howard J. Ehrlich, An Examination of Role Theory: The Case of the State Police (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966); S. Eitzen, In Conflict and Order (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1993). 31. Jonathan Rubinstein, City Police (New York: Ballantine, 1973), 74. 32. Peter K. Manning, Police Work: The Social Organization of Policing (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1977), 116. 33. Albert J. Reiss Jr. and David J. Bordua, “Environment and Organization: A Perspective on the Police,” in David J. Bordua, ed., The Police: Six Sociological Essays (New York: John Wiley, 1967), 41; Paul F. Lazarsfeld, William H. Sewell, and Harold L. Wilensky, eds., The Uses of Sociology (New York: Basic Books, 1967). 34. Peter W. Greenwood, Jan M. Ckahen, Joan Petersilia, and Linda Prusoff, The Criminal Investigation Process, Vol. III: Observations and Analysis. Rand Corporation (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, 1975); William B. Sanders, Detective Work: A Study of Criminal Investigations (New York: Free Press, 1977). 35. National Crime Commission, Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 96; see also William W. Turner, The Police Establishment (New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1968), 304. 36. Kelling et al., Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment. 37. National Crime Commission, Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 95; James Q. Wilson, “Dilemmas of Police Administration,” Public Administration Review 28 (September-October 1968): 408. 38. Manning, Police Work, 371–372. 39. Richard J. Lundman, Police and Policing: An Introduction (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1980), 41–42. 40. Ibid., 106–107. 41. National Crime Commission, Task Force Report: Crime and Its Impact—an Assessment (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 23. 42. Lundman, Police and Policing, 43. 43. Ennis, Criminal Victimization in the United States, 9. 44. National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals, Criminal Justice System (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973), 199. 45. Perhaps if law enforcement agencies were able to develop an effective response to crime, that fact might be noted by many people who failed to report offenses in the past because they felt in some instances there was nothing the police could do. Thus speculation suggests that they might be encouraged to report crimes to police departments. Ironically, improvements in police capabilities to deal with crime could prompt the crime rate, or the number of offenses known to the police, to increase rather than decline. 46. David H. Bayley, “Measuring Overall Effectiveness, or Police-Force Show and Tell,” in Quantifying Quality in Policing (Washington, D.C.: Police Executive Research Forum, 1996), 37–54. 36

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47. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, 174–179. 48. National Crime Commission, Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 247–248. 49. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, 174–179. 50. Reiss and Bordua, “Environment and Organization,” 43. 51. National Crime Commission, Task Force Report: Crime and Its Impact—an Assessment, 38.

37

2 B

Police and the Law

Police and the Law

had traditionally been regarded as the major focus of police departments, the regulation of law enforcement activities created difficult and distinctive problems.1 The power to impose the authority of the state on the behavior of citizens necessitated especially close supervision by other government institutions. Unlike many other administrative agencies, the police have a unique relationship not only with executive and legislative bodies, which are responsible for establishing general public policy, but also with the judiciary, which examines police conduct in individual criminal cases. Frequently, in the period studied the directives of political and judicial officials were inconsistent. Whereas elected officials have historically demanded increasingly aggressive and stringent law enforcement, the courts have mostly been more interested in protecting the rights of defendants and in the legal proprieties of police behavior. In the midst of this conflict, police departments expressed both a growing frustration over the failure of outside agencies to understand their problems and a mounting professional interest in regulating their own affairs. Many police officers believed the courts denied them the use of certain techniques necessary to satisfy public interest in controlling crime. On the other hand, they blamed the public for its unwillingness to appreciate the difficulties of police work under rigid legal restrictions. As a result, the adequacy of legal provisions for exerting police authority was the subject of great dispute. ECAUSE CRIME DETECTION AND APPREHENSION

THE POWER OF ARREST Perhaps the most basic power available to the police is arrest. In some jurisdictions private citizens are authorized to make an arrest without a warrant 39

Police and the Law

when a felony, or a serious crime usually punishable by more than one year in prison, is committed in their presence.2 Police officers can generally arrest a suspect in two additional circumstances. They may, under carefully specified conditions, arrest a person accused of committing a felony, even though they were not witnesses to the crime; and they may arrest someone committing a misdemeanor, or a lesser offense, in their presence. To facilitate life in U.S. society and to reduce the burdens of citizenship, certain authority was conferred on law enforcement officers that does not extend to all people, but those rights were relatively limited. In many respects, police officers are professional citizens; they are paid to discharge obligations that fall upon all citizens, and their obligations are to the community as a whole.3 In general, police officers had the right to arrest a suspect without previously obtaining a warrant either when there were reasonable grounds to believe a felony had been committed or when a misdemeanor had been committed in their presence. Perhaps the most crucial element of this statement is the need for reasonable grounds, commonly referred to as “probable cause.” Since the use of arrest warrants had been confined to a relatively small number of offenses that did not require prompt action, the vast majority of arrests were governed by the criteria affecting action without warrants and by police officers’ instantaneous on-the-spot decisions. The importance of this standard for arrests was underscored by the fact that the largest proportion of criminal charges was not seriously contested in court. Research conducted on this topic in the 1960s found that 90 percent of all criminal charges in the United States were decided by the defendant’s guilty plea.4 Pleading guilty was more common in misdemeanor than in felony cases, but the proportion of felony convictions resulting from guilty pleas seldom fell below 70 to 85 percent. Although attorneys and judges subsequently played a critical role in shaping the nature of the penalty, the fate of most defendants for all practical purposes was probably established at the moment the police officer made the initial arrest. After the suspect had been taken into custody, his or her guilt or innocence was rarely examined by lawyers or the courts simply because the issue was not placed in contention. Police officers, therefore, played a uniquely critical role in the administration of criminal justice. Although an elaborate legal superstructure had been created both to review the actions of law enforcement officers and to protect the rights of the accused, the largest number of convictions seemed to have been determined by a police officer’s immediate decision to make an arrest rather than by the formal adjudication of prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, or juries. 40

Police and the Law

The judgment by a police officer that a crime had been committed and that an arrest should be made had important implications not only for the defendant but also for society at large. In fact, such periodic decisions by police officers probably had a more influential effect on common definitions of acceptable and even legal conduct than the verdicts of lawmakers or judges. Although the police had more latitude in felony than in misdemeanor cases, the courts gave them relatively little guidance that might either clarify what constituted “reasonable cause” for a felony arrest or to specify the conditions under which an officer could conclude that a misdemeanor had been committed in his or her presence.5 Relatively few cases involving such issues were reviewed by appellate courts, whose opinions were considered and followed by other judges. Also, judicial officers often seemed reluctant to interfere with police procedures. Persons who wanted to avoid the punitive consequences of an arrest, therefore, were well advised to follow the orders of a cop on the street rather than the dictates of legal codes or judicial decisions. The vast amount of discretion given most police officers raised fundamental questions regarding the use of the power of arrest to restrain human behavior. What may have been considered a crime in one instance might have been tolerated in another situation. Moreover, acts that could have provoked an arrest in one community may have been accepted or ignored in another locality. To some extent, differences in law enforcement practices reflected prevailing customs or a dominant consensus on moral values, but for persons who failed to recognize those distinctions, ignorance of special local traditions or norms sometimes resulted in arrest. Since suspects had little reason or incentive to challenge arrests, the decisions of police regarding appropriate forms of conduct in specific social situations subsequently became binding. As will be seen, however, the application of inconsistent law enforcement standards against individuals aroused less concern than the possibility that different criteria for arrest might be imposed on racial, economic, or social groups in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner. Although police discretion in the power of arrest undoubtedly produced inequities in the administration of criminal justice, an even more significant problem resulted from their failure to invoke this authority. Few would contend that all laws were enforced equally or that all criminal offenders brought to the attention of police were arrested. Yet statutes in most states explicitly required that police fully enforce the law.6 Action to withhold punishment is as arbitrary and unjust as an improper arrest. The dilemma produced by a legal system that demanded complete and impartial law enforcement and that gave police broad discretion was also compounded by other factors. 41

Police and the Law

Initially, police did not always clarify the motivation for the failure to invoke the criminal process. Decisions not to arrest a suspect have been made for a wide variety of reasons, including an unwillingness to enforce the law, a lack of police resources, victims’ refusal to cooperate, or a belief that the arrest would jeopardize efforts to convict other criminals and bring down larger operations;7 but it was nearly impossible to determine accurately the number or types of incidents encompassed by such decisions. Court decisions, police manuals, and statements by public officials continued to maintain that the police sought total enforcement of the law without adequately knowing or recognizing the extent to which criminal statutes had not been invoked. As a result, police officers were given little direction regarding nonenforcement of the law. Because legislators and police administrators failed to assume the responsibility of defining circumstances in which an arrest should be made, the obligation to determine what constitutes appropriate use of the power of arrest was informally accepted by the cop on the beat.8 In addition, no effective means was developed for controlling police discretion concerning arrests. A variety of legal actions—including the use of the constitutional equal protection of the law doctrine9 and the establishment of Police Appraisal and Review Boards10—were proposed as methods of curbing nonenforcement or selective enforcement of the law, but none of the possible remedies was especially successful.11 Even if adequate grounds were available to contest police officers’ failure or refusal to make some types of arrests, the vast majority of such cases would have remained undetected. Many police departments, for example, required their officers to prepare both a criminal complaint report on all crimes and another record of all encounters with the public, but there was no means of ensuring that all offenses would be filed as criminal matters or that crimes would be reported at all. Perhaps the basic problem concerning nonenforcement arose from the fact that police decisions about whether to make an arrest had little visibility to the public or the courts. In a relatively small proportion of serious or controversial cases that did not yield a guilty plea, criminal defendants were given the opportunity to expose the incident and the grounds for arrest to the thorough scrutiny of the legal process. But if the event did not produce an arrest, the actions of police officers were rarely subjected to judicial or administrative review. The lack of effective surveillance of police activities that did not result in an arrest was exacerbated by the widespread occurrence of such practices. Perhaps the largest proportion of police time was devoted to preventive patrolling. Police officers frequently viewed it as their right or their duty to stop 42

Police and the Law

and question persons suspected of a crime without necessarily invoking the power of arrest. This procedure, commonly known as field interrogation, provoked numerous encounters between police officers and citizens that were inadequately investigated by the courts or other agencies. A study of police operations in San Diego revealed that approximately 20,000 field interrogation reports were submitted by officers each month and that an equal number of such contacts were believed not to have been recorded.12 Despite the frequency with which field interrogations were employed to investigate crimes, police departments gave their officers little guidance regarding the use of this tactic. An examination of police manuals from twentysix cities revealed that half made no reference to the questioning of suspicious persons, six asserted the need for field interrogations but made no attempt to define the circumstances in which they would be proper, and only seven made any effort to indicate when the questioning should be conducted.13 Because there were few legal appeals concerning cases in which a field interrogation either produced an arrest or did not result in criminal charges being filed, the courts were relatively silent on the propriety of the practice. The policy of stopping to question numerous suspects without adequate supervision created problems relating not only to nonenforcement but also to accusations about the use of field interrogations as a method of harassment. According to a 1967 task force report, the vast majority of field encounters occurred in low-income urban areas with high crime rates, and they were frequently directed at persons the police viewed with mistrust. As a report of the Commission on Crime observed, Misuse of field interrogations . . . is causing serious friction with minority groups in many localities. This is becoming particularly true as more police departments adopt “aggressive patrol” in which officers are encouraged routinely to stop and question persons on the street who are unknown to them, who are suspicious, or whose purpose for being in the United States is not readily evident.14

One of the most difficult issues in determining the appropriate use of field interrogations involved the problem of defining limits on the power of arrest. Most field interrogations required that a suspect be detained at least temporarily while he or she was questioned. Since arrest was usually defined as the act of taking a person into custody so he or she could answer to charges for the commission of a crime, a major controversy arose regarding the distinction—if any—between arrest and detention.15 Although many police officers retained the belief that a person had not been arrested until he had been “booked” by entering his name on the police blotter at the station house, the 43

Police and the Law

legal definition of arrest encompassed many other circumstances and forms of detection. As a result, large proportions of police arrests were of doubtful legality. Although mere “suspicion” has never constituted adequate grounds for arrest, many police officers continued to make arrests for this charge or for similarly vague reasons. For example, in the mid-1950s the Detroit police investigated approximately 1.9 million persons, making 27,000 arrests—40 percent of all arrests—on the grounds of suspicion.16 Most of those charges were subsequently dismissed or resulted in a guilty plea. Hence the judiciary reviewed relatively few cases resulting from arrests based on field interrogations. As the National Commission on Crime noted, a large number of critical legal issues were not fully resolved by statutes or court decisions, including the issues of “when a person may be stopped, whether or how long he may be detained, whether force may be used to detain him, what degree of force may be used, whether a person may be searched, whether he may be compelled to answer certain questions, and under what circumstances he must be advised of his legal rights.”17 Perhaps a major reason a relatively small number of issues relating to arrests were examined by appellate courts was the lack of available remedies to ensure compliance with legal requirements. Two basic means were provided by the courts to prevent abuses of police authority. Initially, a private citizen could file a civil suit against a police officer for an improper or unlawful arrest. The limited resources of the typical plaintiff, however, seemed to prevent tort action from becoming an effective restraint on police conduct. Although some commentators suggested that municipal governments could assume liability for police actions, civil cases on this issue rarely succeeded. THE EXCLUSIONARY RULE Another legal control imposed on the police was the so-called exclusionary rule.18 Under the Fourth Amendment doctrine prohibiting “unreasonable searches and seizures” as interpreted by early Supreme Court decisions,19 defendants were able to suppress illegally obtained evidence in a criminal trial. To protect the state from involvement in illegal activities and to prevent the police from employing unconstitutional means of achieving a desired end, judges held that the contents and findings of an improper search could not be used as a basis for conviction. Although the effectiveness of the exclusionary rule in restraining police behavior was a subject of immense controversy,20 courts relied on it extensively and applied its principles in circumstances ranging from field interrogations to private dwellings. 44

Police and the Law

The legal problems raised by stopping to question a subject were frequently joined with the issue of police authority to “frisk” that subject, or to search him or her for weapons, illegal substances, or stolen goods. Although the practice of stopping and frisking suspicious persons generated strong resentment among minority groups, police used it extensively for many years without thorough judicial assessment of the procedure. A study of police patrols in three major cities found, for example, that approximately one in five encounters between a citizen and a police officer included a search, that black civilians were more than twice as likely to be frisked as whites, that the police seldom obtained permission to conduct a search, and that many of the searches were questionable.21 The necessity for searches—like police discretion in arrests—in some cases became arbitrary and subjective, but perhaps unlike arrests, the abuse of the right to search could have conceivably been controlled by the specific restrictions of the exclusionary rule. In related decisions narrowly confined to the facts of the cases, the Supreme Court reversed the conviction of a narcotics offender who had been found to possess heroin but upheld the sentences of two robbery or burglary suspects who were frisked for concealed weapons, apparently on the grounds that police officers had the right to search persons if they were reasonably concerned about their personal safety.22 The police apparently were granted a limited right to stop and frisk persons suspected of committing a crime, but the scope or application of this ruling depended upon the development of both case law and police procedures. Although the practice of searching suspects had been extended to encounters on the street, searches were often viewed primarily as an opportunity to seek additional evidence while arresting a person for another offense. Specifically, a police officer armed with a proper search warrant issued by a magistrate was frequently regarded as one of the few persons authorized to breach the privacy of a citizen’s home, a boundary that constituted a formidable barrier against the scrutiny of public authority.23 In reality, police were able to conduct searches with or without a warrant. Even though the occasion for additional review made securing a warrant the legally preferred method of procedure, many police searches seemed to have been conducted without that document. An American Bar Foundation study revealed that during one year only 29 search warrants were issued in Detroit (all but 1 involved gambling cases), 17 were recorded in Wichita, Kansas, and an estimated 30 were granted in Milwaukee.24 Those statistics may not have been atypical; for example, from 1931 to 1965, the Los Angeles Police Department obtained a mere 1,177 search warrants.25 45

Police and the Law

If the police did not acquire a valid search warrant, the admissibility of evidence seized depended on a number of additional factors, including whether the suspect’s consent was secured, whether the search accompanied a lawful arrest, and whether the search was limited to appropriate evidence and to premises over which the suspect had immediate control. Police officers normally did not force their way into a suspect’s residence without a warrant, nor did they obtain consent to conduct a search through coercion or intimidation. Similarly, the courts have sought to prevent the police from ransacking a person’s home and from engaging in extensive “fishing expeditions.” Although a suspect’s ability to influence a search—even when it was conducted in his or her presence—might be questioned, the courts held that police searches must be confined and “reasonable.”26 Perhaps the most important element affecting police searches without a warrant was the requirement that an acceptable search must be incident to a lawful arrest. Since the standards for arrest contained a distinction between felonies and misdemeanors, that difference was also included in the rules governing searches. Police officers were allowed to search a suspect while arresting him or her when they had “reasonable grounds” to believe the suspect had committed a felony, but they could search a person suspected of a misdemeanor only when the offense had been committed in their presence. As a result, police had frequently arrested a person for a felony, and if the ensuing search proved fruitless, the charge could subsequently be reduced to a misdemeanor.27 Edward L. Barrett Jr. found that in California, as many as a fifth or more of all arrests were reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor.28 A basic reason for the controversy regarding searches was the stipulation that a police officer had to have probable cause to make a felony arrest before conducting a search. Many police officers believed their experience in law enforcement had provided them with a basis for determining from a suspect’s appearance or behavior whether a crime had been committed or was about to be committed. The police often used the search to verify or rebut their suspicions, and they applied seized evidence to justify the arrest after the search was completed.29 Under the provisions of the exclusionary rule, police were allowed to use the products of a search to supplement prior evidence that formed reasonable grounds for making a felony arrest, but they were not permitted to use such information as the sole basis for a conviction. RESTRAINTS ON POLICE BEHAVIOR Until 1960, the exclusionary rule applied only to federal crimes and to offenses in about half the states. In the historic 1961 Mapp v. Ohio case,30 46

Police and the Law

however, the Supreme Court held that the exclusion of illegally seized evidence was encompassed by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the rule had to be adopted in all state criminal trials. The Court had previously ruled that evidence obtained from the use of a stomach pump on an unwilling prisoner was inadmissible as an offense to “a sense of justice,”31 but Mapp signaled a major departure from prior rulings and law enforcement practices.32 Although many police leaders contended that the decision would severely hamper their attempts to secure criminal convictions, the immediate effects of broadening the exclusionary rule were not readily apparent. Perhaps the major impact of the case was felt in the enforcement of narcotics laws where police often lacked the necessary information to make a valid arrest and where prompt action would be required to prevent suspects from disposing of the evidence. The expansion of the exclusionary rule did not confirm the dire predictions of many critics, but it probably affected police procedures. A study of police operations in Boston, for example, revealed a striking rise in the number of search warrants issued after Mapp and a steady increase in the number of defense motions to suppress illegally obtained evidence as the implications of the decision gradually became known.33 Since motions to exclude illegally seized evidence were often more successful in relatively minor offenses than in crimes police considered serious,34 the long-term effects of Mapp hinged as much on careful police work as on the actions of defendants. The extension of the exclusionary rule had important implications for many police efforts to obtain evidence with which to convict suspects. In particular, the rule presented an obstacle to the use of eavesdropping and electronic surveillance equipment. Although an early Supreme Court decision refused to apply the exclusionary doctrine to wiretapping cases,35 an ensuing succession of court decisions and laws restricted the legality of the technique. Nonetheless, the police continued to rely extensively on this method of securing evidence. In New York City, for example, where police were permitted to obtain a court order to install wiretaps, only 338 orders were issued in 1952, but plainclothes officers made an estimated 13,000 to 26,000 wiretaps annually.36 Court rulings on some types of traditional law enforcement practices posed major barriers to certain police actions, but their reluctance to abandon those activities only seemed to exacerbate the problem. Respect for the law and respect for law enforcement may be closely related, but the persistence of illegal police conduct probably seriously undermined their credibility. 47

Police and the Law

As a means of restraining police behavior, the courts adopted the exclusionary rule to protect citizens from several improper methods of eliciting evidence in addition to unreasonable searches. After a suspect was arrested, the individual normally had to be brought before a magistrate either to be arraigned or to answer an indictment by pleading guilty or not guilty and then to fix the conditions under which he or she would be released or remain in custody. In a series of decisions applying to federal jurisdictions—including Washington, D.C.—the Supreme Court held that a coerced confession may be inadmissible and that a suspect had to be promptly arraigned before a magistrate.37 Although the decisions provoked accusations that the courts were deliberately placing law enforcement agencies at a disadvantage in capturing criminals,38 the rulings sought to prevent the police from detaining persons for extended periods without adequate legal justification. The practice of bringing a suspect before a magistrate was developed in part to ensure that police officers had reasonable grounds for the initial arrest. In many communities the police arrested persons to provide additional time or opportunity for interrogation without a definite intention to prosecute. Caleb Foote’s 1950 study of several major cities, published in 1957, disclosed that a large number of arrests each year were made for “suspicion” or “investigation” and that more than 80 percent of the suspects arrested on those charges were released.39 In some areas that had not adopted the McNabbMallory rule (which held that evidence obtained from a suspect during a period of unreasonable delay before arraignment can be excluded from the trial), a high proportion of arrests was regularly made for “investigation,” and the prosecutor’s decision regarding the issuance of an indictment often resulted in the suspect’s release.40 Not all releases resulted from insufficient evidence. In a few cases, charges were dropped because the complainant refused to prosecute. But the volume of both arrests for investigation and releases indicates that the police frequently used the power of arrest without probable cause. The District of Columbia was covered by the McNabb-Mallory rule, and as a result many lawyers and police officials expected that fewer arrests for investigation would be made in Washington than in other localities. Yet after the Mallory decision, arrests for suspicion continued to constitute 40 percent of felony arrests made by the Washington Police Department. An examination of a large number of those cases revealed that 48 percent of the arrests for investigation lacked the probable cause necessary for a legal arrest.41 Even under the restrictions of the Supreme Court ruling requiring prompt arraignment, the police apparently had often regarded arrests as a method of acquiring evidence rather than a means of initiating criminal prosecution. 48

Police and the Law

In addition, arrests to facilitate investigation often not only involved a temporary loss of freedom for the suspect, they sometimes involved extended periods of detention under trying physical or psychological circumstances. Research on felony charges in Chicago in 1956 revealed that as many as half of the defendants were held for seventeen hours or longer between arrest and booking.42 A similar study in two California cities found that more than half of the suspects were held without charge for more than a day before they were indicted or released.43 The Washington, D.C., survey also reported that persons held for the longest period of time were less likely to be charged than those who were detained briefly.44 Some persons taken into custody by the police served nearly the equivalent of a light sentence for a petty offense, even in the absence of sufficient evidence for a formal arrest. A basic reason for the extended detention of suspects without adequate cause was police reliance on securing confessions as evidence of guilt. Modern police officers rarely resorted to the physical beatings and third-degree tactics that may have characterized an earlier era of law enforcement, but they developed relatively sophisticated psychological techniques of extracting confessions and incriminating statements from suspects.45 Despite some persons’ demonstrated proclivity to confess compulsively, as reflected in the countless admissions of guilt prompted by famous crimes, the police continued to regard confessions as highly prized items of evidence and to work assiduously to obtain them. To prevent the abuse of police efforts to encourage confessions, judges consistently held that admissions could be excluded as trial evidence unless they were made voluntarily. Although such cases often raised difficult legal issues, the Supreme Court invalidated numerous coerced confessions.46 In spite of the legal limitations imposed on them, many police spokespersons have continued to maintain that the extended detention of suspects and repeated attempts to secure confessions are necessary and valuable aspects of criminal investigation. Although limited studies have been conducted on this subject, some findings suggest that prolonged interrogations rarely yield critical confessions. A study of field contacts conducted by Fred Inbau and John Reid (note 45) between police and citizens indicated that most suspects who confessed did so “voluntarily at the outset of the encounter . . . without prompting or probing by the officers.” Another examination of felony arrests in two California cities disclosed that most confessions in one of the communities were made after the suspect had been in custody for one hour or less, whereas in the other town most confessions were made in eight hours or less. When suspects 49

Police and the Law

did confess, they were usually motivated by considerations unrelated to the duration or skill of police questioning. A 1964 survey of 359 prisoners in New Jersey and Pennsylvania revealed that although only 24 percent believed they were required to furnish the police with all the information they requested, 44 percent had actually answered all the questions asked by the police, including signing a statement. The major reasons given for the confessions included either a belief that they would be convicted anyway or a feeling of guilt. Only 10 percent blamed a lack of resistance as a result of intoxication, narcotics, long detention and questioning, or psychological pressure; and 21 percent claimed they had experienced actual or threatened violence by the police.47 In light of these findings, it would seem that extended interrogations may have been of limited value to the police. COUNSEL In a series of landmark decisions during the 1960s, the Supreme Court appeared to restrict the freedom of police to secure confessions by introducing another regulation designed to shield the rights of the accused. In addition to barriers to conviction posed by the exclusionary rule, the Court sought to inject some of the protections of the courtroom into preliminary investigations by providing suspects with legal counsel. After declaring that all persons had the right to be represented by counsel in felony cases even if they could not afford the cost,48 the Court extended this ruling to the detention and interrogation of persons before they were brought to trial. In the famous 1964 case Escobedo v. Illinois,49 the Supreme Court reversed the murder conviction of a suspect who had confessed to the police after he had been denied permission to consult his attorney. Henceforth, the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment would prohibit police from interrogating a suspect without giving him or her the opportunity to confer with a lawyer. Perhaps the principal objection of most police critics of the Escobedo ruling was the view that permitting a suspect to hold a conference with an attorney would foreclose possibilities of securing a confession or other evidence that might be necessary for conviction. In most circumstances a lawyer’s advice to a suspect in police custody is simply to remain silent. Yet confessions have played a relatively minor role in the successful prosecution of many criminal cases. Most defendants have been convicted because they pleaded guilty, but most guilty pleas have not been entered because of prior confessions. A sample survey of 724 persons who pleaded guilty in a major metropolitan court indicated that fatalism and pragmatism were the major reasons for the failure to contest the charges. In 57 percent of the cases, the suspect’s 50

Police and the Law

decision to plead guilty was affected most by his or her lawyer’s suggestions; the police were influential in under 1 percent of the guilty pleas.50 In terms of the ultimate goal of securing convictions, defense attorneys engaged in plea bargaining may have contributed more to that objective by urging their clients to plead guilty than did the efforts of police to elicit confessions and other incriminating evidence. The guarantee of legal assistance to all felony suspects may not have been the ultimate solution to the problem of protecting the rights of the accused. Surveys of prisoners who pleaded guilty in several cities indicated that lawyers assigned by the courts or supplied by Legal Aid were most apt to propose a guilty plea in their first meeting with the suspect, whereas privately retained attorneys did not tend to make this suggestion until their second, third, or subsequent interview.51 In many urban jurisdictions the crowded dockets of criminal courts and the heavy burdens on publicly supported counsel prevented a careful scrutiny of police practices and effective representation of the accused. Still, the constitutionally protected right to consult a lawyer probably offered the suspect an important measure of support and assistance in facing the imposing authority of the law. In the case of Miranda v. Arizona,52 the Supreme Court reached a major culmination of the doctrine that suspects must be furnished counsel. As a result of this decision, police officers were required to inform persons at the time of their arrest that anything they said could be held against them, as well as of their rights to remain silent and to obtain an attorney—who would be provided by the state if they could not afford one. The ruling recognized that an arrest usually marked the initiation of an adversarial relationship between the suspect and police and that arrestees should at least be aware of the ground rules of such an encounter if they were to protect their own interests adequately. These requirements were strongly resisted by police officers. An investigation of police contacts with citizens prior to Miranda in Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C., disclosed that persons were informed of their rights in less than 3 percent of encounters. In addition, there were few indications of increased police compliance with this standard after the Miranda decision was announced.53 The rule also seemed to have little effect on police work. A study by a Los Angeles County district attorney, for example, reported that among 790 suspects duly informed of their rights, nearly 55 percent made confessions to the police anyway. Even considering the failure of Miranda to limit admissions of guilt, the analysis concluded that confessions were essential for successful prosecution “in only a small percentage of criminal cases.”54 51

Police and the Law

The stipulation that a suspect must be informed of his or her rights probably necessitated some major changes in arrest procedures, but it did not have the disastrous effect on law enforcement activities that many critics of Miranda had predicted. Supreme Court cases affecting searches and seizures, interrogations, access to counsel, and informing suspects of their rights probably stirred more controversy than most other judicial decisions in the history of law enforcement. Many police leaders found the rules especially offensive not only because they threatened to seriously disrupt established routines but also because they seemed to reject or undermine law enforcement officers’s expertise. As part of the mission to solve crimes, police officers had gradually acquired a body of information and experience regarded as particularly appropriate or successful in their work, and the Supreme Court seemed to be attacking precisely those customs. In some areas such as searches and confessions, the importance or value of traditional police practices may have been exaggerated. But a repudiation of what were regarded as “proven” procedures would have implied serious doubts about police competency. At the very time the police were anxiously attempting to achieve the status of a profession, their most commonly accepted and recognized methods were being subjected to the strongest challenges from the courts. Despite the vigorous protests the Supreme Court decisions provoked from many police officers, the rulings apparently had little effect on their ability to solve crimes.55 Although the specific effects of the rulings were often difficult to discern, law enforcement efforts to solve crimes probably continued much as they had before the police became embroiled in a bitter conflict with the courts. Perhaps more important than police opposition to Supreme Court decisions were the policies and procedures that had initially inspired the judiciary to impose additional restrictions on law enforcement activities. In large measure, increased supervision of police activities by the courts probably resulted from the failure of police to respect existing regulations.56 To prevent improper or illegal practices, the courts sought to reduce police discretion and to strengthen the requirement that arrests had to be based on “reasonable grounds.” Then, as alluded to earlier, in 1968 the U.S. Supreme Court did an about-face. In Terry v. Ohio the court expanded rather than limited the power of the police.57 The petitioner, John Terry, had been convicted along with another man, Richard Chilton, of carrying a concealed weapon. The weapon had been discovered by a Cleveland police detective, Martin McFadden, who had noticed the two men acting suspiciously—walking back and forth in front 52

Police and the Law

of the same store window numerous times, looking inside repeatedly, and conferring with each other and a third man periodically. Detective McFadden— convinced that the men were “casing” the store—approached the men, informed them that he was a police officer, and asked their names. The men mumbled something in return; McFadden subsequently grabbed Terry, turned him around, and patted him down. Feeling a pistol in the pocket of Terry’s coat, he ordered the three men inside the store, where he removed Terry’s coat and retrieved a gun. A pat-down search revealed a revolver in Chilton’s coat also. The third man had no gun. Terry and Chilton were arrested, charged, and convicted of carrying concealed weapons. On appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Terry claimed Officer McFadden’s “stop and frisk” search had violated the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizures; therefore, the revolver should not have been admissible as evidence against him in court. The Court disagreed, ruling that if a police officer has reasonable suspicion that a person may be armed and dangerous or about to commit a criminal act, the officer may stop the person and make reasonable inquiries of that person. If those inquiries do not disabuse the officer’s reasonable fear for his or her safety or that of others, the officer may conduct a limited search of the person’s outer clothing for weapons—regardless of whether the officer has probable cause for arrest—without violating that person’s Fourth Amendment rights. The Court’s ruling established for the first time the legal right of police to stop, question, and frisk a person who is behaving suspiciously as long as the police officer has reasonable grounds for perceiving the person’s behavior as suspicious.58 Kenneth J. Peak submits, “This case instantly became, and remains, a major tool for the police.”59 CRIMES WITHOUT VICTIMS In our research the police often employed the power of arrest to harass suspects and alleged criminals rather than to solve crimes or pursue criminal prosecution. The use of arrests for the extra-legal purpose of deterring criminal activity or for disrupting the operations of organized crime were probably most common in offenses involving vice, or so-called crimes without victims. In one Detroit precinct studied by the American Bar Foundation, for example, prosecutions were initiated in only 75 of 3,047 arrests for prostitution and in 24 of 606 arrests for gambling. In some cases police attempts to harass suspects even extended beyond the inconvenience of an arrest. Law enforcement officers often routinely destroyed or confiscated liquor and money as well as automobiles used in gambling operations.60 Although countless 53

Police and the Law

other cases of improper arrests have occurred, many police departments have adopted an unofficial policy of utilizing arrests to achieve purposes not legally mandated. Another tactic commonly employed in the absence of legal authority was the “raid.” Acting frequently without the benefit of either arrest or search warrants, police officers sometimes broke down doors and smashed windows to discover prostitution, narcotics, gambling, and liquor violations. Normally, suspects were released immediately after the raids. A 1967 American Bar Foundation study revealed that although eighty-three gambling raids resulted in the confiscation of $8,810.31 and 582 arrests, only 24 suspects were prosecuted.61 Although illegal searches and raids were often designed to discourage organized criminal operations, they were conducted in some localities merely to eliminate undesirable persons or unwelcome businesses. Despite the apparent virtue of the social objectives the police sought to accomplish, indiscriminate arrests and invasions of private dwellings introduced an unsavory element of lawlessness into police work. The police also frequently usurped legal authority by delegating unusual privileges to private citizens who cooperated in certain types of law enforcement activities. To probe crimes such as burglary and narcotics trafficking, which did not usually spark citizen complaints, police relied on an elaborate network of informants who supplied information in return for police favors. Frequently, this arrangement enabled such individuals, or special employees, both to acquire concessions in prosecution or sentencing and to continue their illegal habits and activities while they were working for the police. The official tolerance of criminal conduct supported by the informer system occasionally produced paradoxical results. In one police department, “Burglary detectives permitted informants to commit narcotics offenses, while narcotics detectives allowed informants to steal.”62 Estimates indicated that in narcotics violations, which imposed strong penalties and heavy punishment for prior convictions, nearly 50 percent of all persons arrested by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics over its entire history had been converted to the status of special employees.63 The hiring of a large number of informers often reflected a deliberate police decision to neglect some petty offenses in the hope of stopping large, well-organized narcotics operations. Yet this technique was apparently less successful than many police officers assumed. In one city, out of 508 narcotics cases, less than 9 percent cited the use of an informant.64 In addition to raising doubts about the motives or trustworthiness of informants, extensive use of the informer system compromised the legal and moral position of the police by compelling them 54

Police and the Law

not only to condone some forms of criminal behavior but also to attach priorities to crimes they were most anxious to prosecute. The use of informants, unauthorized searches, and arrests for harassment often constituted significant features of police practices because they represented formal department policies rather than isolated or sporadic incidents. Because the courts had to limit their supervision to cases and issues brought before them, they were unable to exercise effective control over many police activities that never reached trial. Relatively broad discretion and vague standards for arrest permitted the police to adopt procedures that were either patently unlawful or that hovered on the boundaries of legality. As a result, police department policies varied widely for different types of crimes and in different communities. Some of the most flagrant abuses of legal authority probably occurred during the investigation of vice crimes such as prostitution, gambling, and narcotics violations that required the police to display independent initiative rather than rely on citizen complaints. Since illegal vice enterprises usually operated in private and were carefully protected by their supposed victims, police officers were compelled to resort to questionable practices, such as hiring special employees or impersonating potential clients, to gather information about such crimes. Moreover, even when the police gained sufficient evidence to prosecute, severe punishment was rare for most vice crimes except narcotics offenses, which often imposed stiff statutory penalties. In 100 prostitution and solicitation cases tried in a California city, for example, only 21 of the defendants were jailed, 34 were fined, 24 were dismissed by the judge, and 5 were found not guilty.65 Police usually considered narcotics crimes to be particularly serious because they could produce other forms of criminality, but—as with most other vice crimes—police interest in narcotics had been focused primarily on large, well-organized criminal operations rather than on petty offenders. As a result, the bulk of police attention was devoted to attempts, either through informers or through methods of harassment, to maintain constant supervision of vice activities. The persistence of vice in most cities did not necessarily reflect police corruption, but it was encouraged by the difficulties of securing evidence needed for conviction and the lack of citizen complaints. The existence of vice traditionally reflected public demands for goods and services that could not be obtained legally, and the police were faced with the awkward dilemma of recognizing those desires while enforcing the moral standards of the legal code. In seeking to control rather than eliminate vice crimes, the exercise of police discretion was shaped both by popular wishes and by the nature of the offenses. 55

Police and the Law

JUVENILE CRIMES, DISORDERLY CONDUCT, TRAFFIC OFFENSES, AND OTHER MINOR INFRACTIONS Juvenile Crimes Perhaps the most extensive latitude granted the police involved dealing with juvenile offenses.66 Since greater emphasis was placed on prevention or deterrence than on apprehension in handling minor juvenile crimes, law enforcement officers had to rely on their personal judgment in determining the disposition of many cases. As a result, the outcomes of many police encounters with youths were determined more by factors such as the suspect’s race, demeanor, and cooperation than by the character of the offense.67 In addition, the treatment of juveniles was influenced by the professionalism of police departments. For example, a comparison of two cities revealed that the rate of juvenile arrests was 50 percent higher in the community with a professional police force, but the probability of arrest for young black men was three times greater in the community where police officers were not professional.68 In localities that had not established neutral or impersonal standards for evaluating adolescent conduct, the disposition of juvenile cases often depended upon the subjective and sometimes biased perceptions of the cop on the beat. Although police practices that imposed uniform criteria for arrests in all juvenile offenses may have been more impartial than procedures that granted individual police officers wider latitude, little conclusive evidence had been compiled to indicate which policy was more effective in discouraging further criminal behavior.69 Since young people accounted for a large proportion of crimes such as petty theft, police policies regarding juveniles also had a critical impact on general patterns of law enforcement in the community. As a result of their emphasis on youths, for example, cities with specialized juvenile divisions usually recorded higher arrest rates for larceny than communities that had no specific units for handling young people.70 The outcome of crimes involving juveniles, therefore, was often shaped both by suspects’ demeanor or appearance and by the characteristics of city police departments. In allowing those factors to affect police discretion, administrators introduced significant disparities and inequities into the standards that regulated juvenile conduct. Disorderly Conduct The adult equivalent of the discretion granted police officers in juvenile crimes may have been reflected in the offense known as disorderly conduct, or disturbing the peace. One of the major problems associated with this crime was the difficulty of defining orderly conduct. In the absence of a clear, uni56

Police and the Law

form understanding of what constituted normal or acceptable social behavior, the classification of unlawful conduct became the responsibility of individual police officers. In many cases police officers apparently made arrests for disorderly conduct to repel or block challenges to their personal authority.71 The ambiguity of disorderly conduct made this crime a convenient and tempting device for restricting actions police regarded as disrespectful, upsetting, or undesirable. Although the charge of disorderly conduct was probably imposed in a random or capricious manner, the pattern of arrests for this crime varied by types of communities. A study in Nassau County, New York, revealed that small, locally controlled police departments produced more arrests for breaches of the peace and related offenses than large, detached law enforcement agencies did.72 Since disorderly conduct accounted for the second-largest number of all arrests in Nassau County, personal decisions by police and community characteristics that influenced the offense may have had an important impact on the general character of law enforcement activities. By failing to specify the meaning of disorderly conduct, lawmakers expanded police discretion and created opportunities for the arbitrary or discriminatory use of this charge. Other Minor Infractions The largest number of arrests made by the police in most cities we studied was for public intoxication. Although many of these arrests resulted from citizen complaints rather than the initiative of police officers, the offense of drunkenness gave police great discretion in their encounters with the public. In the twentieth century the charge of public intoxication was apparently reserved for persons who became involved in major disturbances such as fights, neighborhood disturbances, or attacks on police officers. A sample of cases in Syracuse reported by James Q. Wilson, for example, revealed that at least 55 percent of drunken arrests resulted from some type of aggressive behavior rather than from mere drunkenness. In other communities simple intoxication was considered sufficient grounds for arrest—frequently accounting for 70 to 80 percent of persons taken into custody. Again, differences in police procedures were apparently influenced by community characteristics and departmental policies. Some evidence suggested that police in middle-class suburbs made more arrests for drunkenness than their counterparts in working-class communities. In addition, the volume of arrests was influenced by administrative regulations that required police officers to formally process, book, and jail all persons arrested for drunkenness or by policies excusing them from court appearances unless 57

Police and the Law

the suspect pleaded not guilty. In Oakland, California, the number of persons detained for this offense more than doubled after the police began arresting all drunks in an effort to reduce forcible robberies in the city.73 Other cities adopted a somewhat different approach to drunks commonly known as the “golden rule.” Under this procedure, persons were detained by the police until they regained sobriety. The Detroit police held more than 6,000 persons on this basis in one year.74 The major difficulty with the golden rule policy, as with most other criteria affecting arrests, arose from the fact that the police were given little guidance or direction regarding the exercise of this authority. The inconsistent pattern of arrests that resulted from personal judgments based on suspects’ actions or appearance and from differing departmental policies expanded police discretion, but it also impeded the adoption of uniform standards for assessing criminal conduct. As a result, the classification of behavior as either illegal or acceptable was often relegated to police decisions that varied widely in different localities. Although many offenses that produced a large proportion of arrests had been vaguely defined in the statutes, perhaps the most ambiguous laws the police were required to enforce concerned vagrancy, which differed from other crimes in several major respects. In most state codes vagrants were defined as persons who possessed no visible means of support or who could not give a satisfactory account of themselves or their business at the location where they were found. As a result, the ordinary obligations of the burden of proof were reversed for people accused of vagrancy, so they had to demonstrate both their solvency and a satisfactory reason for their presence before they could be considered innocent of the charge. Furthermore, vagrancy was one of few crimes that made poverty or purposeless activity a blatant element of illegality. Although the enforcement of vagrancy statutes was usually justified by the assumption that a lack of support and unaccountable movement may be associated with other forms of criminality, the distinguishing characteristics of the offense granted the police broad discretion to restrict conduct that would otherwise be considered proper or acceptable. Police usually used the charge of vagrancy either to remove undesirable persons from certain areas of the city or to arrest citizens suspected of committing some other crime. The latter use of vagrancy and related offenses was especially important because it frequently enabled the police to make arrests for investigation without sufficient evidence to support another charge. When police attempted to secure a conviction for vagrancy, the relatively vague elements of the offense made it difficult for defendants to rebut the accusation. The outcome of vagrancy cases probably depended more on the judge’s sense 58

Police and the Law

of noblesse oblige than on other factors.75 Although convictions for vagrancy may have imposed punishments of one or more years in prison, the judicial determination of cases was characterized by a great deal of laxity and informality. An investigation of vagrancy offenses in the Philadelphia courts revealed that most cases were decided within a few seconds without either a clear statement of the charges or the presence of witnesses, testimony, counsel, adequate records, and other protections normally available to the defendant to ensure a fair trial.76 Since vagrancy laws were primarily directed at the most indigent and defenseless people in the community, the wide latitude afforded the police in administering those laws probably provoked serious inequities that were inadequately reviewed by the courts and other public agencies. Traffic Offenses Whereas vagrancy and other offenses involving public order were a concern of the poorest and least influential groups in the population, the largest number of encounters between police officers and all members of society probably involved traffic violations. Ironically, even though minor parking or moving violations were frequently considered some of the least serious criminal offenses, they were among the crimes most likely to be cleared or successfully prosecuted. Most traffic cases were resolved by the simple payment of fines, reflecting a forfeiture of bail; but the remaining unpaid citations were usually sent to state data-processing facilities where license numbers were matched with names and addresses, resulting in the issuance of warrants and a search for motorists that continued until they were found.77 The technical resources offered by automated equipment enabled the police to develop more successful methods of identifying and locating suspects in traffic cases than was the case in major crimes such as robbery, burglary, and other felonies. Once a traffic citation was issued, police officers also had less discretion regarding the continuance or termination of investigations for traffic violations than for most other types of crime. Although computers seemed to eliminate many prior forms of “ticket fixing,” they apparently did not have a similar impact on police procedures involving other offenses. Yet police officers retained a substantial amount of discretion in traffic cases. Since no strategy could likely ensure the full enforcement of all traffic laws or the prosecution of all traffic violations, the establishment of standards for traffic regulation remained the primary responsibility of the patrol officer in the squad car. Traffic policies also varied widely by community. A study of 503 American cities revealed that the volume of citations issued per 1,000 registered 59

Police and the Law

vehicles in a one-year period ranged from fewer than 100 in 24 percent of the communities to more than 300 in 18 percent of the towns. In part, those differences were shaped by practical considerations—such as whether patrolmen were required to appear in court when the motorist pleaded not guilty— and population mobility, with lower ticketing rates in communities with stable populations than in cities with large resident turnover.78 But perhaps the major factor affecting the issuance of traffic tickets was administrative pressure within police departments. Local policies encouraging a high number of traffic tickets were apparently more influential in determining the total output of citations than community characteristics or the establishment of specialized traffic units.79 Although many police administrators vigorously denied their existence, department policies regarding traffic cases were often reinforced by the adoption of a quota system that specified a minimum number of tickets all officers were expected to write within a given period. To comply with the requirements of this system, some police officers resorted to patrolling “duck ponds,” or roads and intersections where a large number of violations were known to occur. Extensive variations in ticketing rates by community and the adoption of quota systems illustrated the general problem of defining the appropriate limits of police discretion governing offenses involving a large number of contacts between police officers and the public. Because of the low visibility of most encounters between citizens and police officers, as well as the lack of extensive litigation of minor crimes, the courts were unable to exercise the supervision that might otherwise produce universal criteria for assessing the illegality of different types of behavior. As a result of legal inattention, the nature of police practices in communities were shaped by widely divergent policies and customs. To obtain uniform and impartial standards for evaluating criminal conduct, the judiciary likely needed the assistance and support of other government agencies. POLICE PRACTICES AND THE POLITICAL PROCESS One method of securing improved supervision of police activities was offered by increased political control of police departments. Although this concept was often associated with the fear of corruption or with local violations of civil liberties, substantial evidence indicated that police forces actually developed differing styles and procedures in response to civic demands. For example, one study of law enforcement in eight communities identified three major types of police behavior: (1) a “watchman style” that tended to be relatively tolerant of legal infractions but not of offenses against the public 60

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order, with cities in which it was used normally imposing light penalties unless the crime was unusually serious; (2) a “legalistic style” that sought vigorous and impersonal law enforcement, was intolerant of disorderly behavior, and frequently invoked the power of arrest and other severe restrictions on public conduct; and (3) a “service style” that displayed many features of the “legalistic” department but that was inclined to administer punishment in the form of stern warnings or lectures.80 In addition, an analysis of 146 American cities indicated that a correlation may have existed between arrest rates for certain types of offenses and the form or professionalization of local governments.81 In many unexpected and subtly communicated ways, the prevailing attitudes or ethos of a community was probably reflected in local law enforcement patterns. The impact of political characteristics on police practices probably produced significant inequities, but the available evidence seemed to demonstrate that law enforcement procedures had been highly amenable to the influence of political considerations. The complete attainment of universal norms for judging criminal conduct would have required regulations that were national in scope. Without necessarily sacrificing the local administration of police functions, however, city governments fully representative of all segments of the population might have been able to exercise sufficient direction and control to prevent the arbitrary or discriminatory use of police discretion within communities. By devising remedies for specific local problems, the political process could have become an important instrument for promoting changes in police practices that may have brought them into conformity with generally accepted standards of conduct. Increased police involvement in community affairs might have contributed, in many important respects, to the fulfillment of their mission. By engaging in activities that did not require them to play a punitive or an authoritative role, the police could have sought to significantly alter adversarial relationships with the public. Growing participation in service activities, therefore, might have gained the police public respect and support that could also have increased the effectiveness of their law enforcement functions. To some observers, the suggestion to increase the emphasis on service roles at the expense of duties implied by concepts such as authority, order, and protection that might enhance the universality of law enforcement policies could be heretical. Many citizens might not purposefully choose to endorse a function that could inspire wide variations in other police activities. Yet an analysis of police efforts to curb a divergent range of crimes in different cities in different periods of time failed to disclose significant prior evidence 61

Police and the Law

of uniform police practices. Perhaps local police agencies’ growing involvement in the political process would only enhance this variability. In a democratic society, where changes in government actions can be expected to reflect fluctuations in public opinion, law enforcement policies are not immune to such influences. Yet persuasive arguments could be made that police organizations should devote increased attention to local citizens’ needs and wishes. Extensive evidence indicates that statutory requirements concerning “full enforcement” are not likely to be achieved in any event. Law enforcement agencies informally prioritize the targets of their actions, even though such priorities are never officially released to the general public. Perhaps more important, another significant inequity is present in the handling of criminal incidents. Data have demonstrated that a substantial proportion of all crimes is never reported to the police. There are undoubtedly many reasons for this failure to disclose the commission of crimes, including the complicity of victims and confidence in law enforcement agencies. Police forces are known primarily for their negative and punitive roles. This reputation is not likely to inspire a high level of support or cooperation, especially among segments of society that may have the most extensive information about criminal activities. Although the argument may not rise above the level of speculation, there seem to be strong reasons to believe the effective performance of service activities might promote heightened public approval that could eventually be translated into increased willingness to cooperate with the police by giving them information that would assist in the identification or apprehension of a suspect. The proposition might receive further verification or refutation through some type of experimental setting, but such evidence would require the participation of a police department that would be willing to undertake—and to publicize—an increased emphasis on service functions. One of the major difficulties law enforcement agencies faced was the problem of determining the actual extent of criminal behavior. Various studies that asked respondents to report crimes they had personally committed revealed much higher rates of criminal conduct at all social levels than had been commonly acknowledged. A survey of 1,700 adults in New York reported that 91 percent admitted committing crimes for which they might have received a prison sentence.82 A national survey of criminal victimization also indicated that many crimes such as rape, aggravated assault, burglary, and larceny of more than fifty dollars’ value were substantially underreported in crime statistics, whereas other offenses such as homicide and vehicle theft were adequately reported.83 By learning more about the factors associated 62

Police and the Law

with the occurrence of different types of offenses, the ability of police to cope with crimes might have been greatly facilitated. Police efforts to deal with crime, however, were also seriously hampered by the absence of important data about crime. Although some evidence suggested that the commission of illegal acts may have been correlated with temporal factors and with personal characteristics such as age,84 even such basic questions as the association between socioeconomic status and crime seemed to remain at least partially unresolved.85 CONCLUSION Although some police spokespersons sought to fix responsibility for their problems on Supreme Court rulings, many of the issues surrounding law enforcement outcomes probably resulted from the relatively limited range of techniques the police used to stop crime. Instead of becoming too restrictive, judicial control of law enforcement activities was likely most often characterized by its inability to effectively supervise many aspects of police behavior. For many years, questions associated with broad police discretion remained dormant because they did not directly affect the most articulate and influential members of society. Both the legal guarantees afforded by court decisions and the administration of vaguely defined crimes were particularly relevant to the poorest and least privileged segments of the population, but those same groups displayed increasing hostility and resistance toward the police. To restore their prestige and respect, the police needed more advice and guidance from all sectors of the community than they had received previously. In large measure this consultation could have been channeled through the political process, which provided one of few available means of promoting democratic accountability and responsiveness. The police officer’s job has always been difficult and demanding, but in the circumstances created by expanding controversy, perhaps law enforcement should have considered modifying traditional methods of policing. NOTES 1. Steven M. Cox, Police: Practices, Perspectives, Problems (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996). 2. Donald M. McIntyre Jr., Law Enforcement in the Metropolis (Chicago: American Bar Foundation, 1967), 54; Elizabeth Watson, Alfred R. Stone, and Stuart M. Deluca, Strategies for Community Policing (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1998). 3. Michael Benton, The Policeman in the Community (New York: Basic, 1964), 6; David Carter and Louis A. Radelet, The Police and the Community (New York: PrenticeHall, 1999). 63

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4. Abraham S. Blumberg, Criminal Justice (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1967), 28–30; Donald J. Newman, Conviction: The Determination of Guilt or Innocence Without Trial (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), 3; Jerome H. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial (New York: John Wiley, 1994), 13. 5. Wayne R. La Fave, Arrest: The Decision to Take a Suspect Into Custody (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), 231–264. 6. Joseph Goldstein, “Police Discretion Not to Invoke the Criminal Process: LowVisibility Decisions in the Administration of Justice,” Yale Law Journal 69 (1960): 557–560. 7. Wayne R. La Fave, “The Police and Nonenforcement of the Law—Part II,” Wisconsin Law Review (March 1962): 179–239. 8. Frank J. Remington and Victor G. Rosenblum, “The Criminal Law and the Legislative Process,” University of Illinois Law Forum (Winter 1960): 481–499. See also Harlan Hahn, “Local Variations in Urban Law Enforcement,” in Peter Orleans and William Russell Ellis Jr. eds., Race, Change, and Urban Society, issue of Urban Affairs Annual Review, vol. 5 (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 373–400. 9. M. Glenn Abernathy, “Police Discretion and Equal Protection,” South Carolina Law Quarterly 14 (Summer 1962): 472–486. 10. Goldstein, “Police Discretion,” 572–589. 11. Wayne R. La Fave, “The Police and Nonenforcement of the Law—Part I,” Wisconsin Law Review (January 1962): 104–137. 12. Joseph D. Lohman and Gordon E. Misner, The Police and the Community, vol. I (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), 127. 13. Frank J. Remington, “The Law Relating to ‘On the Street’ Detention, Questioning and Frisking of Suspicious Persons and Police Arrest Privileges in General,” in Claude R. Sowle, ed., Police Power and Individual Freedom (Chicago: Aldine, 1962), 14–15. 14. National Commission on Crime, Task Force Report: The Police (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 184. 15. Caleb Foote, “The Fourth Amendment: Obstacle or Necessity in the Law of Arrest?” in Claude R. Sowle, ed., Police Power and Individual Freedom (Chicago: Aldine, 1962), 29–36. 16. McIntyre, Law Enforcement in the Metropolis, 19, 80. 17. National Commission on Crime, Task Force Report: The Police, 184. 18. Bryan Vila and Cynthia Morris, eds., The Role of Police in American Society: A Documentary History (Greenwood, Conn.: Praeger 1999). 19. Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616 (1886); Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383 (1914). 20. Monrad G. Paulsen, “The Exclusionary Rule and Misconduct by the Police,” in Claude R. Sowle, ed., Police Power and Individual Freedom (Chicago: Aldine, 1962), 87–98; Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, 218–225. See also Dallin H. Oaks, “Studying the Exclusionary Rule in Search and Seizure,” University of Chicago Law Review 37 (Summer 1970): 665–757. 21. Donald J. Black and Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Patterns of Behavior in Police and Citizen Transactions,” in Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, n.d.), 80–90. 64

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22. Terry v. Ohio, 88 S. Ct. 1968; Sibron v. Ohio, 88 S. Ct. 1889 (1968). 23. Arthur Stinchcombe, “Institutions of Privacy in the Determination of Police Administrative Practice,” American Journal of Sociology 69 (September 1963): 150– 160. 24. McIntyre, Law Enforcement in the Metropolis, 33. 25. American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Police Malpractice and the Watts Riot (Los Angeles: American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, n.d.), 57. 26. United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56 (1950). 27. McIntyre, Law Enforcement in the Metropolis, 53–54. 28. Edward L. Barrett Jr., “Police Practices and the Law: From Arrest to Release or Charge,” California Law Review 50 (March 1962): 33. 29. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, 213. 30. 367 U.S. 643 (1961). 31. Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165 (1962). 32. Jerry Bornstein, Police Brutality: A National Debate (Hillside, N.J.: Enslow, 1993). 33. Ibid. 34. “Search and Seizure in Illinois: Enforcement of the Constitutional Right to Privacy,” Northwestern University Law Review 47 (1952): 497–499; cited in Paulsen, “Exclusionary Rule,” 94–95. 35. Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928). 36. Samuel Dash, Robert E. Knowlton, and Richard F. Schwartz, The Eavesdroppers (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1959), 68–69. 37. McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332 (1943); Mallory v. United States, 352 U.S. 449 (1957). 38. Alan Barth, The Price of Liberty (New York: Viking, 1961), 7–9. 39. Caleb Foote, “Safeguards in the Law of Arrest,” Northwestern University Law Review 52 (March-April 1957): 29–30. 40. Barrett, “Police Practices and the Law,” 30–33, 38–39. 41. Report and Recommendations of the Commissioners’ Committee on Police Arrests for Investigation (Washington, D.C.: District of Columbia, 1962), 10–11, 58. 42. American Civil Liberties Union, Illinois Division, Secret Detention by the Chicago Police (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959), 25. 43. Barrett, “Police Practices and the Law,” 40–41. 44. Report and Recommendations of the Commissioners’ Committee, 39. 45. Fred E. Inbau and John E. Reid, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions (Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1962). 46. See, for example, Brown v. Mississippi, 297 U.S. 278 (1936); Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940); Ashcroft v. Florida, 332 U.S. 143 (1944); Watts v. Indiana, 338 U.S. 49 (1949); Fikes v. Alabama, 352 U.S. 191 (1957); Payne v. Arkansas, 356 U.S. 560 (1958). 47. Arnold S. Treback, The Rationing of Justice (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 250–252. 48. Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963). 65

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49. 378 U.S. 478 (1964). 50. Blumberg, Criminal Justice, 90–93. 51. Ibid., 93–94; Treback, Rationing of Justice, 260. 52. 384 U.S. 436 (1966). 53. Black and Reiss, “Patterns of Behavior,” 124–131. 54. Cited in William W. Turner, The Police Establishment (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), 249–250. 55. Arthur Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), 162–164. 56. Herbert L. Packer, “Two Models of the Criminal Process,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 113 (November 1964): 3. 57. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968); Bryan Vila and Cynthia Morris, The Role of Police in American Society (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1999). 58. Robert M. Regoli and John D. Hewitt, Criminal Justice (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1996), 300. 59. Kenneth J. Peak, Policing America, 2d ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1997), 278. 60. McIntyre, Law Enforcement in the Metropolis, 44–46, 84–88. 61. Ibid., 41–43. 62. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, 129. 63. McIntyre, Law Enforcement in the Metropolis, 11. 64. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, 133. 65. Ibid., 190–191. 66. David Bryan Wolcott, “Cops and Kids: The Police and Juvenile Delinquency in Three American Cities, 1890–1940.” PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon, 2000. 67. Irving Piliavin and Scott Brier, “Police Encounters With Juveniles,” American Journal of Sociology 70 (September 1964): 206–214. 68. James Q. Wilson, “The Police and the Delinquent in Two Cities,” in James Q. Wilson, ed., City Police and Public Policy (New York: John Wiley, 1968), 173–195. 69. David Wolcott, “The Cops Will Get You: The Police and Discretionary Juvenile Justice, 1890–1940,” Journal of Social History 35 (2001): 349–371. 70. James Q. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 111–114. 71. Ibid., 130–131. 72. Ibid., 212–215. 73. Ibid., 121–128. 74. McIntyre, Law Enforcement in the Metropolis, 94. 75. Stinchcombe, “Institutions of Privacy,” 150–160. 76. Caleb Foote, “Vagrancy-Type Law and Its Administration,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 104 (1956): 603–650. 77. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, 71–90. 78. John A. Gardiner, Traffic and the Police (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). 79. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior, 95–99; ibid., 111–165.

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80. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior, 95–99. 81. Gardiner, Traffic and the Police, 140–277. 82. James S. Wallerstein and Clement J. Wylie, “Our Law-Abiding Law Breakers,” Probation 25 (March-April 1947): 107–112. 83. Phillip H. Ennis, Criminal Victimization in the United States: A Report of a National Survey (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 8–14. 84. Bruce Smith, Police Systems in the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 25–52. 85. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior, 40–41.

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3 A

From the Viewpoint of the Police

From the Viewpoint of the Police

LTHOUGH LEGAL AND JUDICIAL REGULATIONS HAD AN EFFECT on police behav-

ior in cases that resulted in an arrest or a trial, most contacts between police officers and private citizens were influenced more by the informal norms and traditions surrounding police work than by the decisions of lawmakers or judges.1 The supervision exercised by the courts and other administrative agencies did not provide law enforcement with a full set of clearly defined standards for invoking the power of arrest or for governing their relations with the public. In defining appropriate conduct, police officers were usually compelled to rely on the collective experiences of other law enforcement officers or on their personal judgment. Since law enforcement agencies regarded efforts to investigate serious crimes as their primary responsibility, the most salient incidents for police officers tended to involve segments of the community that were particularly susceptible to criminal behavior. By concentrating solely on the fight against crime and failing to stress contacts with the public in less hostile or strained circumstances, the police may have acquired a distorted and unfavorable image of the people they purportedly served. The ordinary relationship between police officers and citizens was viewed with anxiety or antagonism. In many police locker rooms, as a new shift left for patrol the cry often heard was, “Let’s go face the enemy.”2 In the investigation of major crimes, the police sometimes faced an unusual dilemma. Law enforcement’s prospects of apprehending criminals often depended upon the reports and cooperation of witnesses or victims. Yet the police were taught to assume a posture of suspicion toward and to maintain their distance from all persons. Police officers traditionally regarded themselves 69

From the Viewpoint of the Police

as “the thin blue line” separating civilized groups from unruly elements that threatened to devastate society.3 In their everyday routines, however, they were not always in opposition to the general public; nor did they occupy a position exclusively on the other side. A panoramic view of police behavior would probably have revealed a more nuanced picture than some of their harshest critics would have predicted. Many observers also have noted that law enforcement officers sometimes approached incidents without much force, even in situations where they could have reacted more strongly. As a major repository of coercive power in a democratic form of government, the public may have frequently wanted police agencies to assert authority and to back up that authority with force if necessary. Hence the role of the police in exerting authority, maintaining order, and providing protection often overshadowed their service activities. And yet the performance of services could have been essential to secure the trust and cooperation police departments needed to fulfill their other responsibilities. The philosophy of the police to some degree seemed to reflect a disparaging view of human nature. Police officers were commissioned to impose moral judgments on behavior, and their experience to some extent encouraged them to regard human beings as weak and corrupt. As William H. Parker, former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department and a leading police spokesperson, once remarked, “I look back over almost . . . thirty-five years of dealing with the worst that humanity has to offer. I meet the failures of humanity daily, and I meet them in the worst possible context. . . . I think I have to conclude that this civilization will destroy itself, as others have before it.”4 Such pessimism regarding the nature of society and the progress of mankind may be a natural product of numerous encounters with the criminal public, but it also may have had an unfavorable effect on the performance of many police duties. Conditioned by the belief that people are fundamentally immoral or depraved, some police officers may have found it difficult to grant civilians the respect that may have been necessary to establish a relationship of mutual trust and cooperation. Again, the dividing line between the police and the public was often marked by antagonism and distrust. Police distrust of human nature was not reserved solely for criminals; it pervaded their dealings with many segments of the population. Police officers confronted evidence of human frailties in many types of situations. Estimates suggested, for example, that a large proportion of police fatalities resulted from their intervention in marital disputes.5 As a result, it has been argued that police officers felt justified in approaching all persons with the same detachment and authority they displayed toward dangerous criminals. 70

From the Viewpoint of the Police

The principal police response to disturbing and distasteful tasks was to adopt a posture of cautious suspicion. In fact, suspicion probably became the trademark of police officers in their relations with other segments of society. In 1963, Thomas F. Adams published an article that advised police officers to investigate and question persons in twenty common circumstances, including people who were casual, nervous, or evasive when approached by an officer.6 A literal interpretation of that list and similar rules probably brought almost all members of the public under police surveillance in most circumstances. The police mission required officers to place great emphasis on public conduct that adhered closely to accepted social conventions, and the uncertainties of their work prompted them to view even a slight departure from ordinary behavior as a significant concern. POLICE DISCRETION A partial explanation for the failure of police to stop all persons who appeared suspicious or unusual had to do with their discretionary authority. The wide latitude granted police officers, coupled with their general suspicion and defensiveness, created major problems. In many encounters police officers took action primarily to preserve and protect their authority rather than to secure compliance with the law or to promote respect for law enforcement. Although the discretion afforded police officers may have been necessary to provide sufficient flexibility to deal effectively with specific problems and circumstances, it produced the potential for serious abuses in law enforcement practices that undoubtedly affected members of the public. Since some police generally held the public in low esteem, concerns were provoked that discretion would be administered in an arbitrary or overly restrictive manner. A study of police perspectives about the society surrounding them, therefore, must encompass the organizational impact of the agencies within which they operate as well as the opinions of their personnel. Structural or systemic sources of the distinctive attitudes that characterize institutions such as police departments frequently provide a more parsimonious explanation than opinions revealed by surveys of their members. As a result, this analysis seeks to combine both influences in assessing police perceptions. Police encounters with the public generally originated from three major sources. Most contacts between police and citizens were so-called dispatched mobilizations launched at the initiative of citizens seeking police assistance. Occasionally, police officers on the beat or in patrol cars were summoned directly by citizens in “field complaints or mobilizations.” When police officers 71

From the Viewpoint of the Police

took the initiative, the incident was often termed an “on-view mobilization.” Significantly, police officers enjoyed the greatest freedom of action in on-view situations that were seldom monitored by police supervisors or witnessed by complainants and bystanders. The absence of citizen requests for aid and the ability of persons to undermine or subvert police authority in on-view incidents also made them the most likely type of encounter to produce conflict.7 In other words, the probabilities of both the exercise of discretion and the outbreak of conflict were highest in the type of encounter that was least effectively supervised or regulated by police department superiors. In addition, most contacts between police officers and suspects or arrestees occurred in on-view mobilizations. A study in Washington, D.C., Boston, and Chicago revealed that although the largest number of police-citizen interactions were produced by complaints or requests of city residents, one of every three transactions with suspects or offenders resulted from the initiative of police officers.8 Police officers often tended to exercise their legal powers largely in isolated circumstances of their own choosing when they were least susceptible to the scrutiny or control of police administrators. The structure and organization of local police departments exhibited important characteristics that distinguished them from other social or political institutions. Unlike most groups, in which the range of available actions is constricted as status decreases and subordinates work primarily to fulfill the directives of upper-echelon executives, in law enforcement agencies discretion increases “as one moves down the hierarchy.”9 The options available to the heads of police departments may have been somewhat limited by political and legal pressures, but most important, they were restricted by the inability of leaders to influence the conduct of subordinates. Police chiefs often encountered imposing obstacles in their efforts to alter or even to gain needed information about their forces’ activities. As a result, the usual processes of implementing organizational standards were greatly complicated in police departments. In many communities police administrators responded to this dilemma by neglecting to adopt explicit policies regarding law enforcement practices, but this inaction led mainly to expanded discretion for the cop on the beat. By avoiding the policy-making aspects of police work, law enforcement agencies tended to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the problems created by the broad discretion available to lower-ranking officers. Even the limited number of specific guidelines provided by statutes and legal codes were liberally interpreted by law enforcement agencies, and, unfortunately, little effort was made to communicate their meaning to rank-and-file police officers. 72

From the Viewpoint of the Police

The growing complexity of legal regulations made it almost impossible for anyone to be familiar with the many forms of conduct that had been declared criminal. Many of the offenses that produced a large portion of arrests had been so vaguely written as to give police virtually unlimited opportunities for selective enforcement of laws. The discretion granted the police by loosely drafted and inadequately understood legislation, however, did not necessarily promote excessive zeal in law enforcement. In fact, police forces’ normal tendency was probably to underenforce the law. An investigation of police-citizen encounters in three cities found that a majority of persons who confessed to illegal behavior were not taken into custody.10 Police officers’ hesitancy to invoke the power of arrest also seemed to increase with experience. A survey of 220 police officers showed that whereas only 6 to 13 percent of newly appointed recruits believed arrests were made because “the officer could not avoid it without getting into trouble,” 21 to 24 percent of patrolmen who had served for more than two years and 18 percent of their superior officers chose that justification.11 Because law enforcement personnel have always valued a “good arrest,” police officers seldom aroused intense criticism by producing a large volume of arrests or adopting harsh enforcement policies. Police decisions were usually based on popular concepts of morality rather than legalistic rules. In addition, they often revealed a reluctance to impose seemingly unfair or unnecessary hardships on others. Many police officers developed a cynical and bemused approach to human foibles that viewed humans as corrupt beings but that tried to at least somewhat tolerate their weaknesses. The effect of this attitude, although it perhaps constitutes a major safeguard against the oppression of a police state, was compounded by the absence of clear standards for the exercise of police power. In their contacts with the public, police officers were frequently required to make instantaneous decisions that subsequently became the objects of lengthy legal analyses and arguments. Neither legislative guidelines nor the training most cops received adequately equipped them for their responsibilities. To protect themselves from judicial criticism, they often failed to enforce the law, or they based their judgments on other criteria. In their encounters with ordinary citizens, police officers relied not only on legal definitions of criminal conduct but also on other clues such as individuals’ appearance, demeanor, or location. Police decisions to investigate, and perhaps the ultimate disposition of many criminal cases, depended upon relatively superficial characteristics such as a person’s age, race, clothing, behavior, and reactions to police officers. An unconventionally dressed black male walking or driving through a white suburb late at night probably escaped 73

From the Viewpoint of the Police

police attention or scrutiny less often than a white male wearing a suit and walking or driving through an inner-city neighborhood. Personal and physical attributes are unrelated to illegal activities, but police officers have been conditioned by the media and taught by their colleagues to attach major significance to such traits. Although no accurate method had been devised for measuring the prevalence of cases involving harassment or the use of excessive force, both the volume and documentation of charges of “police brutality” indicated that such incidents occurred with some frequency. In making a lawful arrest, police officers have the right to use reasonable force when necessary to secure the cooperation of a suspect. The amount of force that is unnecessary or excessive to make an arrest, therefore, has usually been a matter of sharp dispute. Since the appropriate use of force would depend upon the circumstances of individual cases, which have seldom been effectively supervised or subjected to judicial analysis, no comprehensive, accurate estimates exist of the total number of instances of police brutality. Despite the dramatic impact of well-publicized cases of police brutality and the controversies they generated, both the volume and the distribution of encounters involving physical mistreatment by police officers were to some degree difficult to investigate or validate. The use of force has always been a particularly critical issue because police officers, unlike virtually any other group, have been formally granted the right to carry and use guns and other potentially lethal weapons. The use of firearms was seldom adequately investigated by public agencies, and it was effectively supervised in only a few communities. A study of coroners’ records in Los Angeles revealed that of 319 persons killed by the police between 1947 and 1966, over half were members of minority groups. Also, 313 of the deaths were ruled justifiable homicide; 5 were considered accidental, excusable, involuntary, or undetermined; and only 1 was classified as unjustifiable.12 Equally interesting, another investigation of 30 police killings in Los Angeles reported in newspaper clippings during a three-month period indicated that 10 of the victims may not have been engaged in conduct that would have legally permitted the use of deadly weapons.13 Another study suggested that approximately 500 traffic deaths in the United States in both 1966 and 1967 may have resulted from the “hot pursuit” of persons suspected of committing traffic offenses.14 The potentially lethal implications of many police activities raise critical questions about the legitimate use of force. Some evidence indicated that intense but not fatal force was directed most frequently at persons accused of assaulting or resisting a police officer. A 74

From the Viewpoint of the Police

study of police practices in Philadelphia noted “a significant number of arrested parties who incurred ‘scalp lacerations.’ ”15 Police officers probably displayed the strongest hostility toward uncooperative persons who seemed to threaten their status or authority. An investigation by a Colorado state commission on brutality charges in Denver in the late 1960s revealed that in thirteen of twenty-two cases, the only charge leveled against the suspect was resisting arrest.16 Police brutality was not always confined to physical brutality. Perhaps more numerous were incidents involving the harassment of minority groups and the use of insulting or degrading language and gestures. Some police officers regularly engaged in such tactics without explicit intent to invoke the power of arrest. This practice, reinforced by the policy of conducting numerous field interrogations in high crime-rate areas, was perceived by many as a discriminatory and objectionable form of police abuse. A survey conducted in New Orleans in the early 1960s revealed that 34 percent of white and 41 percent of black arrestees stated that they had been “harassed” by the police. Many of the grievances apparently arose from the policy of arresting large groups of patrons in bars located in predominantly black sections of the city. Twenty-two percent of the blacks but only 6 percent of the whites were arrested in groups of four or more.17 Substantiated cases of physical coercion, as well as the intimidation created by the badge and the gun, tended to lend plausibility to the complaint that harassment had been a marked feature of law enforcement practices in many areas of the country. Despite the efforts of many departments to stress courtesy in their relations with civilians, verbal abuse was a pervasive characteristic of police behavior. The same New Orleans study found that one-third of the black arrestees were the targets of racist language by police officers, and a similar proportion of whites complained about “tough” or abusive talk.18 Indeed, an examination of police-citizen interactions in three cities discovered that more encounters were characterized by police brusqueness or acrimony than by courtesy or tactfulness.19 Although police officers frequently adopted the racial slurs and epithets that pervaded their social milieu, some evidence revealed that contacts between the police and minority groups typically did not involve the use of such terms. In New Orleans, most white arrestees reported that their treatment by the police was “gentle or easy,” whereas most black suspects stated that they were handled in a “professional” or neutral manner. However, 21 percent claimed police officers had physically abused them.20 Studies in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., also concluded that most black residents were approached in a “businesslike” or “bureaucratic” style, 75

From the Viewpoint of the Police

but more whites than blacks were treated in a “personal” or “good-humored” manner.21 Some officers were probably reluctant to deal with black residents in essentially human or personal terms, and fear of reprisal for discriminatory behavior may have prevented them from displaying the most blatant forms of prejudice. The discretion available to most police officers enabled them not only to engage in selective law enforcement but also to treat certain groups preferentially. In addition to the racial implications of harassment and verbal abuse, some evidence indicated that civilians’ social and economic status influenced the type of treatment they received from the police. When policemen in three cities were asked which group was the most difficult to handle, they tended to mention blacks.22 For years, many law enforcement officers made no secret of the fact that they preferred contacts with high-status whites and disliked those aspects of their job that forced them to interact with persons on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, especially blacks. As a result, middle- and upper-class citizens probably enjoyed a decided advantage in their contacts with the police. The study of police-citizen interactions in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., found that both dispatched and on-view encounters were more likely to involve contacts with blue-collar individuals than with white-collar persons, and white-collar citizens enjoyed the lowest probability of arrest.23 Interestingly, white-collar persons were more apt to be released after field interrogations and less likely to be threatened by the police than were their blue-collar counterparts.24 The survey of arrestees in New Orleans also indicated that police officers were twice as likely to speak courteously to highstatus persons than they were to unskilled workers, and they were seven times more apt to handle a laborer roughly than they were persons in white-collar or professional jobs. Furthermore, 54 percent of the white-collar arrestees spent no time in jail, and none was kept in custody longer than overnight; but an identical proportion of blue-collar workers (54 percent) remained in jail overnight or longer.25 In nearly all phases of law enforcement—from the initial encounter to the ultimate disposition of the case—socioeconomic status had an important impact on police practices. In part, the preferential treatment accorded white-collar and professional workers may have reflected the common inclination of persons from working-class and lower-middle-class backgrounds—including police officers—to display deference toward those they regarded as their social superiors. Perhaps the tendency of middle- and upper-class people to dominate many areas of civic activity inspired a fear or a hesitancy among some police officers 76

From the Viewpoint of the Police

about taking punitive action against those citizens. Police forces were subjected to numerous community pressures; hence the average police officer was probably reluctant to incur the real or imagined displeasure of his or her supervisors in the department or in city hall. Police officers often faced incompatible community demands or directives. On one hand, for example, police officers confronted intense popular desires to fulfill broad social objectives, such as eliminating all forms of organized gambling in a community. On the other hand, the same persons who expressed those sentiments were probably highly offended or critical when the police interfered with specific activities, such as placing a bet with a bookie and other petty vices.26 To many middle-class citizens, the fight against crime was apparently defined or interpreted as a battle against disorderly or potentially violent forms of illegal behavior engaged in by disreputable or objectionable elements of the population. The normal reaction of police officers to this dilemma was growing cynicism. In addition, police officers had often enforced laws against criminal activities that had the least political support in the community and neglected illegal operations that enjoyed the greatest local approval or acceptance. Since upper-status residents possessed disproportionate political influence, the forms of illegality those citizens sustained or tolerated were commonly granted the greatest amount of police protection. Socioeconomic factors in law enforcement, as in many other aspects of police behavior, simply reflect the fact that police forces are public agencies; hence they are susceptible to the same influences that affect the actions of other government bureaus. Although law enforcement agencies shared many traits of other political bodies, police departments also developed distinctive organizational structures and personal characteristics that shaped the performance of their duties. Unlike civilian units, police forces are organized in a hierarchical pyramid as quasi-military institutions designed to ensure that subordinates will promptly obey the orders of commanding officers. Yet those in the lowest police ranks probably enjoy more discretion and immunity from control by superiors than most minor bureaucrats do. In fact, many studies have indicated that patrolmen’s behavior may be affected more by the influence of colleagues in comparable ranks than by the actions of their supervisors. POLICE RECRUITMENT AND SOCIALIZATION By a variety of indicators, numerous studies revealed that most police recruits tended to emerge from working- and lower-middle-class backgrounds. Two separate surveys of the graduates of the New York City Police Academy, for 77

From the Viewpoint of the Police

example, found that nearly 80 percent of the police officers’ fathers had been employed as laborers or service workers.27 In addition, questions about the highest prior position attained by police recruits revealed that few had advanced beyond the status of clerical or sales worker.28 Despite the relatively low pay and seemingly unfavorable working conditions connected with police duty, joining the force usually constituted an advancement over the occupation of the patrolmen’s fathers, as well as over most other jobs with which the police officers had been associated. For many recruits, the prospect of becoming a police officer represented both an opportunity for upward social mobility and a chance to improve their economic position. Although many departments required examinations that eliminated a sizable number of applicants, an unusually large proportion of police officers had relatives who worked in law enforcement. Studies in Chicago, New York, and elsewhere revealed that one-third or more of police officers in those cities had relatives who were employed in police work or related fields.29 Perhaps the association between generational decisions to enter police jobs partially explained the predominance of some ethnic groups—especially the Irish—in many departments. For example, an investigation of Chicago police sergeants found that two-thirds of the Irish officers had relatives who were police officers, and three-fourths of those were members of the immediate family.30 Preferences for police work were often transmitted directly from one generation to the next, thereby perpetuating a common body of police values and traditions. One of the most serious consequences of the relatively restricted sources of police recruitment was the difficulty of hiring minority police officers.31 For many years in most urban departments, the proportion of black police officers was substantially below the percentage of black residents in the city, and relatively few black officers were promoted to high police ranks.32 William G. Lewis notes that the continuing absence of blacks on police forces as employment opportunities for minorities were expanding in other occupations created a strong suspicion that efforts were being made in many cities to prevent them from becoming police officers.33 Police work, like many other occupations influenced by generational succession or narrow recruitment patterns, appeared to develop institutional norms and expectations that carefully regulated the characteristics of persons allowed to join the profession. In addition to the predominantly white lower-middle-class characteristics of police recruits, initially, law enforcement agencies attracted few recruits with advanced educations. By the late 1960s, 70 percent of all U.S. police departments required a high-school degree or its equivalent. Fewer than 30 percent of police officers, however, attended college.34 Moreover, most top 78

From the Viewpoint of the Police

police administrators earned high-school diplomas, but few had college educations. To the extent that higher education became a necessary indicator of status in middle-class America, police jobs seemed to lag behind the rising standards of other occupations. As a result, police officers probably found themselves at a disadvantage in dealing with better-educated and more respected members of the community. Somewhat ironically, citizens were very reluctant to grant esteem or give deference to those entrusted with enforcing the norms and rules of society. A national survey of the prestige of ninety occupations conducted in 1947 and published in 1962 found that police ranked fifty-fifth.35 A replication of that study in 1963 revealed that police officers had climbed to forty-seventh.36 Apparently, public regard for the police did not climb steadily. A pilot study of college students suggested that higher police ranks may have been rated more favorably than the average patrolman,37 but popular respect for those responsible for law enforcement was not a marked feature of U.S. culture. In many communities police salaries failed to match the wages of semiskilled laborers. In general, the public was apparently unwilling to grant police forces respect and resources commensurate with their powers to regulate social conduct. Although the allure of the badge and other symbols of authority may have been a persuasive inducement for many police recruits, the opportunity to obtain public status or respect was not a major motivating factor in the decision to join the force. Police officers themselves seemingly shared the popular perceptions of the prestige of police work. A survey of the New Orleans Police Department, for example, found that most officers considered their job to be more prestigious than those of furniture mover, auto mechanic, or bus driver but less prestigious than high-school teacher, pharmacist, or business executive.38 Most police officers’ working-class backgrounds and limited educational attainments may have prevented them from aspiring to many white-collar jobs they viewed as more lucrative and prestigious. Perhaps a major attraction of police work was the security offered by public employment. Police officers in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Chicago disclosed that “job security” and “interest” were their primary reasons for becoming police officers.39 In responding to questions about which aspects of their position they liked most, the largest proportion also cited job security and retirement benefits.40 When officers considered leaving the force, they tended to mention salary and economic considerations, but nearly half said financial security and retirement benefits were the principal reasons they remained in the department.41 Although economic considerations probably 79

From the Viewpoint of the Police

played a major role in both preventing and encouraging police resignations, the survey revealed that most police officers had relatively modest goals and expectations. The largest group of officers endorsed $6,500 to $7,500 annually as an acceptable starting wage.42 In determining career choices and plans, limited earnings were probably of greater significance to police officers than to persons in most other occupations. The tendency of most police officers to emphasize job security and to attach major importance to their salaries raised serious questions about the motivation and satisfaction they derived from their jobs. A survey of New York patrolmen revealed that a majority agreed with the statement that any “recruit who thinks he is going to get much personal satisfaction just from performing police duties is due for a rude awakening.”43 Nearly three-fourths of those who had two years’ experience also believed it would be difficult to prevent officers from resigning “if it weren’t for the salary and other benefits connected with the job.”44 Many police officers apparently found little enjoyment in the aspects of their work that involved serving others. Despite the critical nature of their obligation to impose social controls on human conduct, police officers continued to regard their jobs almost exclusively as a means of securing economic rewards. Many police also seemed to recognize and accept a relatively low assessment of their qualifications and their ability to make significant social inroads. The New Orleans survey reported that most police officers considered themselves moderately dependable and extroverted, but many ranked themselves low on other characteristics. Only 9 percent regarded themselves as highly ambitious, 4 percent ranked themselves as highly intellectual, and no one rated himself or herself highly sophisticated.45 A lack of self-esteem probably had an important effect on the performance of police work. In deciding to join the police force, many recruits seemed to abandon lofty individual or social goals. Confirmation of this finding was obtained from a survey of police officers in a department on the West Coast, which asked respondents to select the qualities that best described their present feelings, their probable attitudes in ten years, and their personal goals. In all three circumstances the most highly valued characteristic was “good health and relative freedom from worry,” whereas “social prestige” and being “financially well-to-do” ranked at the bottom of the list.46 Apparently, police forces were seldom successful in recruiting persons with a commitment to strong personal ambitions or broad social objectives. After police officers joined the force, they normally underwent a training period before being assigned to patrol duty. Most of the time recruits spent in 80

From the Viewpoint of the Police

police academies or similar institutions was consumed by practical matters such as studying routine procedures for patrolling and handling suspects, working on physical conditioning, and learning the uses of firearms. Only a limited number of hours, if any, were devoted to courses in human relations or similar subjects that affected police encounters with the public. Despite the highly pragmatic and applied nature of police training, many rookies and their more experienced colleagues developed the belief that the average patrol officer had to be “reeducated” before venturing onto the streets. A survey conducted in New York City indicated that a majority of experienced police officers believed academy training “cannot overcome the contradictions between theory and practice,” and most police recruits believed they would have to learn everything over again when they were assigned to precincts.47 This disdain for academy training probably reflected not only a reluctance to think abstractly about law enforcement experiences but also pointed to significant and unusual features of the working relationships between police officers. POLICE SOLIDARITY One of the most striking and peculiar aspects of the police vocation has been the high degree of solidarity among most officers. United by the shared objective of fighting crime and by a common attitude toward the public, police officers have displayed a degree of cohesion unmatched by many other occupational groups.48 This fraternal loyalty and support not only was designed to encourage cooperation in the performance of police duties, but it influenced many other aspects of law enforcement. When rookie patrolmen emerged from academy training to become active members of the force, they were commonly exposed to the values and traditions of police work perpetuated by experienced officers. Most recruits found it difficult to violate those bonds of departmental camaraderie by rejecting advice offered by senior colleagues. Despite the efforts of many academy instructors and superior officers to promote new law enforcement practices, solidarity in police ranks often made established or habitual procedures resistant to change. Police cohesion was not only characterized by mutually reinforcing attitudes about work and organizational goals; it was also reflected in officers’ off-duty activities. Since many civilians seemed uncomfortable having police officers as close acquaintances, observers often noted the tendency of police officers and their families to restrict their social contacts to other members of the force.49 A study of police sergeants in Chicago reported that onefourth said they spent off-duty time with other officers once or twice a week.50 81

From the Viewpoint of the Police

Again, solidarity has been a widespread and distinctive characteristic of police forces in many cities. For example, when the members of a West Coast department were asked to name their three closest friends, 35 percent of the persons mentioned were other police officers. The natural tendency to develop personal loyalties among fellow workers was promoted and accentuated by strong organizational ties within the ranks of police forces. Indeed, organizations such as the Fraternal Order of Police and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association were formed in many departments to promote and protect police officers’ common interests.51 The strong personal cohesion and organized activity that existed among police officers undoubtedly had a major impact on the operation and administration of police departments. The effects of police solidarity were especially evident in attitudes toward departmental rules and regulations. A survey of patrolmen revealed that most officers viewed the Rules and Procedures, the officially prescribed policies of the New York City Police Department, as “a guide for patrolmen and not something to be followed to the letter.” More than 80 percent thought it would be “impossible to always follow the Rules and Procedures to the letter and still do an efficient job.”52 Another survey concluded that three-fourths of police officers in New York were “resigned to the necessity of violating rules in order to perform an active tour.”53 Prevailing attitudes toward departmental regulations were a major barrier to efforts to limit the discretion of the officer on the beat. Since many patrolmen accepted the guidance of fellow officers rather than adhering to the rules promulgated by their superiors, the cohesion of police forces formed a serious obstacle to the effective restriction of police conduct. In addition, some evidence indicated that police officers expected supervisors to support or protect officers charged with violating department rules. Most police administrators advanced to higher positions from within the department, and they frequently found it difficult to divest themselves of the fraternal loyalties that comprised an important part of police work. The survey of New York patrolmen disclosed that from one-half to two-thirds agreed with the statement “Most supervisors are careful to fit the Rules and Procedures to the situation rather than insisting the Rules and Procedures have to be followed regardless of the situation.”54 More than 80 percent thought patrol officers were “officially entitled to all the help” they needed from supervisors, and a comparable proportion believed supervisors were “expected to give help without any reservations to patrolmen who need help.”55 From the perspective of many police officers, superiors were not expected to enforce departmental rules to the detriment of patrol officers, but they were obligated to 82

From the Viewpoint of the Police

protect their subordinates from the restrictions imposed by political authorities and the public. When police officers were disciplined, the source of the complaint was usually attributed either to external or civilian influences. A survey in New York found that more than 75 percent of patrol officers and 56 percent of superior officers thought an “average departmental complaint was a result of the pressure on superiors from higher authority to give out complaints.”56 Disciplinary action against police was usually ascribed to impersonal or vaguely defined sources and not to superiors within the department. Police solidarity, which perhaps obscured common internal distinctions between organizational supervisors and employees, also had a profound impact on attempts to curb police discretion. In one New York study, fewer than one-third of police officers agreed with statements such as “patrolmen are not given enough latitude by their supervisors to handle the police problems in their area” and they “often fail to take necessary police action due to a feeling that supervisors will disapprove of their actions.” Most believed “supervisors almost never instruct a patrolman to reverse his plans when he has planned to make an arrest or to issue a summons.”57 Even police officers assigned to bad neighborhoods in eleven cities ranked supervisors and fellow officers almost equally regarding the most satisfactory aspects of their work.58 Perhaps department superiors were relatively ineffective at curbing the vast discretion of the average patrolman. The bonds of occupational loyalty and friendship that prevail in law enforcement agencies, as well as officers’ natural propensity to stress the perceived antagonism between the department and the outside community, probably impeded supervisors’ ability to discipline or regulate the activities of their subordinates. As a result of their dependence on superior officers for protection from unjustified criticism, police personnel often displayed great anxiety at the threat of disciplinary action. Interestingly, many police officers, for example, believed the mere issuance of a charge against them would inevitably produce a guilty verdict. More than 50 percent of the patrolmen in New York and 41 percent of their superior officers thought any officer summoned to appear before a disciplinary hearing would “probably be found guilty even when he has a good defense.”59 The source of this fatalism was reflected in many aspects of police behavior. Law enforcement officers usually considered themselves to be in conflict with political and community influences, and they protected themselves from the “hostile” forces by developing a form of solidarity that encompassed all members of the force. The filing of a complaint against an individual police officer was often perceived as destroying those 83

From the Viewpoint of the Police

standards. Deprived of the support of supervisors and fellow officers, the police officer accused of misconduct sometimes felt at the mercy of alien influences. As a result, even the most temperate criticisms of police conduct were frequently met with unexpected resistance and defensiveness. The belief that officers lose their departmental protection in disciplinary procedures left a residue of bitterness. A survey of New York patrol officers revealed that 63 percent believed “the department’s handling of civilian complaints” was unfair, and 54 percent thought “disciplinary action in the department” was unfair.60 This sense of unwelcome martyrdom, particularly as a result of grievances originating outside the department, was probably exacerbated both by the salience of threats to employment in an occupation that placed a premium on job security and by the fear of political interference in police work. But perhaps most important, police attitudes toward disciplinary action illustrated the difficulty of imposing regulations on an organization that had developed unified and effective methods of ensuring the mutual protection of its members. Despite the high degree of unity in police departments, some evidence indicated that top administrators may have had an important impact on the morale and performance of law enforcement organizations. Police officers displayed more concern about internal relations than did employees of other municipal agencies,61 and they were particularly apt to personalize authority in departmental superiors.62 Public officials also tended to defer to police expertise concerning law enforcement problems, but they frequently became impatient about the inability of police to solve vexing or sensational crimes. As a result, police chiefs were often compelled to rely on their personal charisma in getting programs adopted by civilian political leaders as well as departmental employees.63 One study of Chicago police sergeants conducted in 1960, when the department was embroiled in a major scandal, and followed up on five years later, after “reform” superintendent O. W. Wilson had assumed control, found a substantial increase in favorable attitudes about how the department was being run.64 In large measure, the new superintendent produced this change by promoting younger officers and introducing professional law enforcement practices. The professionalization of police forces usually required centralized authority, but it was often resisted by subordinates.65 The professionalization of police departments, therefore, tended to undermine the stature of individual police officers by limiting their discretion in the community.66 Although the professionalization of departments by police administrators probably had a temporary effect on the morale of law enforcement officers, 84

From the Viewpoint of the Police

the trend produced growing dissatisfaction. Unlike other professional groups that developed an expanded range of responsibilities to and personal relationships with the public, the particular brand of professionalism that arose in many police departments seemed to engender the centralization of authority and a lessening of police ties with the community. The effects of this kind of professionalization were evident in the attitudes of Chicago sergeants. Before the “reform” administration came to power, perceptions of relations with the public were much more significant than assessments of internal administration in shaping the department’s morale. After the new superintendent had initiated his professionalization program, however, perceptions of citizen respect had a strong impact on the morale of officers who thought the department was being run well, but citizen attitudes had only a limited effect on the morale of employees who remained dissatisfied with departmental management.67 The increasingly positive evaluation of the police force was not accompanied by a growing feeling of public respect or an increased reliance on community support as a basis for judging the department. Most sergeants maintained the view that the department had improved but that cooperation with the public had not reflected corresponding gains. The reference group that was especially salient in police attitudes seemed to shift from the public to the department itself. The introduction of professional norms and practices apparently increased the importance of internal control and loosened the bonds between police and the community. As police departments became increasingly professionalized, they tended to become self-contained rather than to rely more on the cooperation or assistance of the public. The growing specialization of police duties seemed to reduce the importance of information or contacts officers established during their tour of duty on the streets. One of the principal means by which the police maintained their separation from the community was through a strict policy of secrecy. In part to protect themselves from public interference and to prevent criticism of their professional or expert status, many departments rigidly enforced a policy of refusing to discuss police business with civilians.68 As a result of their defensiveness and disaffection, many police departments attempted not only to separate themselves from the public but also to insulate themselves from both public support and disapproval. The increasing gap between the public and the police was also reflected in the attributes of law enforcement officers. Modern city police officers who lived outside the area they patrolled, whose acquaintances were largely restricted to other members of the force, and who surveyed the beat from the windshield of a squad car usually developed few contacts with residents of the 85

From the Viewpoint of the Police

neighborhood to which they had been assigned. This estrangement was particularly pronounced in crime-ridden and potentially volatile urban enclaves. Several studies indicated that only a small proportion of police officers had become familiar with or involved in the communities they patrolled. Not only had patrolmen failed to gain extensive information about the neighborhood, but most of their existing contacts were confined to relatively unrepresentative groups. A survey of police who patrolled the inner city in eleven major urban areas, for example, revealed that they were most likely to be acquainted with store owners and merchants in the area. Patrol officers were more apt to be familiar with the organizers of unlawful enterprises than with “important teenage and youth leaders.”69 The limited relationships police developed in ghetto areas probably did not enable them to gain a critical understanding of problems in the neighborhoods. Some evidence demonstrated, however, that black policemen were able to establish a better rapport with urban residents than their white counterparts were.70 Whereas fewer than one-sixth of the white police officers who patrolled the ghettos of eleven major cities reported any involvement in the neighborhoods, 37 percent of the African American officers either lived in the area or attended local meetings there regularly, and 57 percent had relatives living on their beats.71 Another survey found that 41 percent of black police officers stated that they liked their assignments because they knew the local residents well, but only 26 percent of their white counterparts concurred.72 In addition, 89 percent of the African American patrol officers but only 48 percent of the whites claimed it was easy to get to know people on their beats.73 Although a lack of public support was the most common complaint about police work in inner-city neighborhoods, most police officers—white as well as black—stated that they would prefer not to be transferred to another assignment.74 Whereas the largest proportion of African American officers cited their familiarity with local residents as the major reason they liked their assignments, the majority of white police officers said they liked their patrols primarily because they were “active.”75 Perhaps an indication of the relationship between the public and the police was illustrated by a question posed to police officers in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., asking if people on their beats ever complained to them about police practices. Seventy-eight percent of the black police officers, as opposed to only 46 percent of their white counterparts, reported that they had heard such complaints.76 The findings, therefore, suggested that the insulation of police might have been largely restricted to white officers. They also seemed to imply that the policing of urban areas by black officers 86

From the Viewpoint of the Police

might offer an important means of improving communication between law enforcement agencies and that community. In responding to complaints from local residents about the police department, however, sharp differences between all police officers and the outside community seemed to reassert themselves. The survey revealed that nearly all police officers—white as well as black—“feel obligated to defend the department when it is criticized.”77 Black police officers seemed to enjoy a particularly close rapport with inner-city residents, but in the face of strong popular criticism, the usual suspicion and animosity toward the public became evident among almost all members of the force. POLICE CHARACTERISTICS In addition to the loyalty and defensiveness that separated them from the community, law enforcement officers were influenced by restrictions on their political and social affiliations. These restraints tended to shield the police from involvement in public issues that have crucial importance to society. As civil servants, police officers were often proscribed by local regulations not to participate actively in political controversies. In many areas this policy was apparently based on an uncritical acceptance of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum in a Massachusetts State Supreme Court case that upheld a municipality’s right to fire a police officer for discussing political issues by asserting that the man “may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman.”78 Furthermore, police traditionally displayed strong antipathy toward political intervention or pressures that might affect their law enforcement activities. As a result, police not only tended to reject the guidance and leadership of government officials and community leaders, but they also failed to acquire extensive experience with political processes. Many features of police work perhaps tended to promote markedly conservative and anti–civil libertarian beliefs among law enforcement officers. One researcher concluded after a careful investigation of a large West Coast police department that “a Goldwater type of conservatism was the dominant political and emotional persuasion of police.”79 A survey of New Orleans police officers found that 42 percent would prohibit a Communist from being employed as a retail clerk, and 50 percent would remove any novel written by a Communist from the public library.80 The strong conservative bias of most police officers often translated into departmental policies. In Philadelphia, for example, it was reported that investigations were regularly conducted to determine if recruits were members of the Nation of Islam, but no similar 87

From the Viewpoint of the Police

inquiries were undertaken to identify membership of white police in the John Birch Society or the Ku Klux Klan.81 Although such generalizations are fraught with numerous hazards as well as countless exceptions, the personality profile of the average police officer drawn from many studies suggested that he or she possessed several attributes that distinguished him or her from both the general public and members of other occupational groups. Not only were police officers more conservative and defensive than other segments of the population, but they also seemed to display high levels of cynicism, insecurity, suspicion, aggressiveness, and pessimism about human nature. Some of those characteristics were probably derived as much from popular stereotypes as from careful research, but discussions of the “police personality” have been a feature of numerous studies of law enforcement. Even among general observers, the mention of police work often brought memories of high-school classmates—more renowned for their toughness or physical prowess than for their intellectual acumen or sensitivity—who joined the police force. These remarks raised difficult and important empirical problems not only regarding the psychological attributes of police officers but also about the origins and impact of such characteristics. Perhaps the police force was an especially attractive avenue of employment to persons possessing particular attributes, or perhaps the nature of police work was primarily responsible for producing those characteristics. The resolution of this dilemma clearly has important implications for the evaluation of police conduct. Since police officers are almost constantly exposed to incidents that could result in unexpected physical injury or even death, many observers posited that this threat was instrumental in shaping police officers’ beliefs about and conduct toward the public. Yet a survey of police officers in three cities revealed that only 2 percent cited danger as an undesirable feature of their work, although 37 percent stated that their wives or families were concerned about that aspect of their job.82 Police departments either tended to recruit persons who displayed little concern about their personal safety, or perhaps over time police officers became relatively immune to the threat of danger. In any event, the perceptions of patrol officers themselves seemed to suggest that fear for personal safety was less influential in molding police attitudes than was commonly supposed. Police officers’ aggressive and even adventuresome characteristics probably derived in part from their predominantly working- and lower-middle-class origins. One prominent means by which personal backgrounds manifested themselves was in the persona and language police officers often used in ap88

From the Viewpoint of the Police

proaching the public. Not only did the association between police officers and criminals perhaps cause police to use more slang and epithets than would be used by members of most other occupational groups, but police officers also used this nomenclature both among themselves and with the public. In a survey of persons arrested in New Orleans in the early 1960s, for example, 26 percent of respondents reported that police officers used obscenities when making the arrest.83 The socioeconomic source of this language, which was more common in working-class than in middle-class enclaves, was also reflected in the fact that police officers’ vocabulary varied according to the race, sex, and occupational level of the person arrested. One-third of the white arrestees, for example, mentioned that the police used “tough talk” in making the arrest, whereas a similar proportion of black arrestees cited that racial slurs and epithets were used. Moreover, white-collar arrestees were more than twice as likely as laborers to report that police had been courteous or polite and that they had not used vulgar or obscene language.84 The language used by police officers in making an arrest, therefore, not only seemed to reveal a strong pattern of deference in which police were reluctant to use certain terms among higherstatus citizens that they adopted with social peers, but it also appeared to reflect an emphasis on masculinity that some argue was prevalent among workingclass persons. Police officers’ emphasis on both virility and conventional behavior bred a particular distaste for sexual deviance. A survey of New York officers found that homosexuals were rated second to cop fighters as the group most disliked by police officers, outranking other despised elements such as drug dealers and known criminals.85 Interestingly, in New Orleans most police officers considered homosexuality more serious than bribing or assaulting an officer but less serious than burglary, drug peddling, or miscegenation.86 A police officer’s position probably provided many men with a means of asserting their masculinity that was supported by the working-class ethos from which many were recruited. The conditions and circumstances of police work also probably had a major impact on the personalities of police officers. In the normal performance of their duties, many officers were brought into a close and continuing association with criminals and other elements of the population that rejected society’s moral codes. As a result, police officers were exposed to more temptation than many other occupational groups. Although no accurate estimates can be provided concerning the amount of corruption that exists in police forces, periodic scandals in major cities have indicated that at least some 89

From the Viewpoint of the Police

policemen may have entered law enforcement to obtain personal gains or favors. The unique experiences of police officers probably had an effect on their ethical values. The survey of New Orleans officers revealed, for example, that two-thirds or more considered such acts as taking graft, accepting bribes so a suspect could avoid being issued a ticket, and cheating on an examination for promotion to be highly immoral; but 46 percent saw nothing seriously wrong with discriminating against minority groups, and 57 percent had no serious objection to overestimating damages for an insurance report.87 In a study of patrols in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., 16.5 percent of policemen were observed engaging in misconduct that amounted to a felony, and an additional 10.5 percent admitted that they had engaged in similar practices.88 According to a former Denver police officer who was involved in a major scandal, police corruption often resulted from police solidarity and their animosity toward the public, which produced the sentiment “nobody likes us, so the hell with them.” In the investigation of a burglary, for example, before the final amount of theft was determined, new officers were encouraged to pocket remaining items, as an additional loss would be almost impossible to detect. After such promptings by fellow officers, rookie cops felt the pressure to belong so strongly that they picked up something. Then they were “in,” and the others could do what they wished.89 Some aspects of police work contributed to police officers’ unique personal characteristics, but many of their attributes such as aggressiveness and toughness also derived from their working- or lower-middle-class origins. In fact, many of the qualities that differentiate police recruits from persons who selected other avenues of employment were probably reinforced by the daily experiences and activities of law enforcement officers. In most encounters with the public, for example, the principal responsibility of police officers was to reconstruct and gain control of the social situation with which they were confronted. Police officers were equipped, therefore, both by their backgrounds and by the nature of their duties to engage primarily in the exercise of authority. EXERCISE OF AUTHORITY The opportunity to wield authority over the lives and conduct of other people undoubtedly appealed to many police recruits. Some departments made efforts to screen or eliminate recruits who displayed excessive interest in gaining a dominant position over other persons. For example, between 1953 and 1956, 11 percent of applicants for jobs in the Los Angeles Police Department 90

From the Viewpoint of the Police

were rejected because they failed to meet minimum psychiatric standards.90 Despite the attempts to remove persons who were unqualified or unfit for police work, many were drawn to the force primarily by the lure of the badge, the gun, and other symbols of authority rather than by the opportunities for public service. In addition, police officers often reinterpreted rules governing the exercise of authority to provide themselves with increased latitude and status. Perhaps the ultimate means of demonstrating police authority has been the use of physical force or violence. A classic study by William A. Westley found that someone showing “disrespect for police” was mentioned most frequently by police as the reason for using force. This reason was cited by 37 percent of the officers interviewed, as opposed to 23 percent who viewed violence as appropriate only when it was impossible to avoid, 19 percent who employed force to obtain information, 10 percent who used it against hardened criminals or sex offenders, and 11 percent who used it to make an arrest or when they knew a suspect was guilty.91 Although the law has never recognized “disrespect for the police” as a legitimate justification for the use of force or violence, some police officers adopted the attitude that force could be applied to gain deference, impose punishment, and the like. The instruments of force— symbolized by the gun and the nightstick—conferred on police officers by the state were frequently used to enhance their own authority. Since law enforcement officers had a great deal of discretion in low-visibility situations, effective control over the exercise of authority was difficult to impose. In addition, the consensus police forces developed regarding prerogatives perceived as necessary in the performance of their duties intensified the problem of limiting police authority. CONCLUSION In the past, police officers believed they had to deal with a hostile and uncooperative public; consequently, they felt compelled to emphasize authority in confronting members of the public. Of all the functions performed by the police, authority was perhaps the principal means by which officers could gain a strategic advantage over persons they encountered. As the experience of many police officers demonstrated, protection against crime—because of its relatively passive and undemonstrable character—was of limited value in generating public support for the police. Similarly, maintaining public order was seldom regarded as a sufficient reason for granting police officers deference or respect. In fact, many officers apparently believed the exertion of authority was necessary for establishing order. 91

From the Viewpoint of the Police

Service might have provided the police with a basis for securing the respect of the community. Many public agencies have developed mutually satisfactory and cooperative relationships with people solely through the provision of services. Yet the police continually neglected or downgraded this aspect of the job. The survey of officers in three cities found that at least 40 percent wanted to allocate less time to supervising school crossings, making hospital and sick calls, and providing other service activities. On the other hand, when they were asked about the duties on which they wanted to spend more time, most police officers mentioned investigating or preventing crimes. Only 7 percent cited improving police-community relations.92 Authority, therefore, was the principal means by which police officers attempted to deal with the public. Since the exercise of police authority usually implied a subordinate position for civilians, it was often met with begrudging acceptance by the community. As a result, popular attitudes toward law enforcement officers often reflected significant hostility and conflict. For many police officers, growing indications of disapproval or resentment only reinforced their basic suspicions about the public. Furthermore, the solidarity that existed among police officers tended to make their judgments about the public both a self-fulfilling and a self-sustaining prophecy. Suspicion and distrust were perpetuated not only by the officers’ personal experiences but also by the attitudes and beliefs that prevailed within many police departments. The defensiveness, insecurity, conservatism, aggressiveness, and cynicism many observers have identified as major attributes of police behavior probably developed as a result of their experience. Nonetheless, major difficulties were encountered in efforts to reduce or eliminate some of the relatively undesirable aspects of police interactions with the public. Since the greatest discretion was granted to police officers who had the lowest rank and the most frequent contacts with the community, few effective means were identified for limiting or controlling the exercise of police authority. A major conflict developed between the police and the public. In their encounters with most citizens, police officers tended to rely on the exercise of authority to the neglect of other functions. This approach provoked increasing public resistance and bitterness toward the police. The outcome of this struggle arguably had a more significant impact on the nature of the police role in exerting authority than on any other role in the field of law enforcement.

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NOTES 1. Eric H. Monkkonen, Crime, Justice and History (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002). 2. Joseph D. Lohman and Gordon E. Misner, The Police and the Community (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), vol. 1, 31; vol. 2, 171. 3. Jerome H. Skolnick and David H. Bayley, The New Blue Line: Police Innovation in Six American Cities (New York: Free Press, 1986). 4. The Police: An Interview by Donald McDonald With William H. Parker (Santa Barbara: Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, 1962), 25. 5. Samuel Walker, The Police in America (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992). 6. Thomas F. Adams, “Field Interrogation,” Police (March-April 1963): 28. 7. Donald J. Black and Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Patterns of Behavior in Police and Citizen Transactions,” in Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, n.d.), vol. 1, 4–13. 8. Ibid., vol. 2, 74–80. 9. James Q. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 7. 10. Black and Reiss, Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement, vol. 2, 111–112. 11. Arthur Niederhoffen, Behind the Shield (Garden City: Doubleday, 1967), 208. 12. Ed Cray, Testimony Before the Assembly Interim Committee on the Judiciary. Los Angeles: State of California, October 16, 1967. 13. Ed Cray, The Big Blue Line (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967), 157–158. 14. Richard D. Lyons, “Car Deaths Laid to Hot Pursuit: Physicians Say 500 a Year Died in Police Chases,” New York Times, June 18, 1968, 19. 15. Lohman and Misner, Police and the Community, vol. 2, 175. 16. Cited in Cray, The Big Blue Line, 125. 17. Joseph H. Fichter and Brian Jordan, Police Handling of Arrestees (New Orleans: Loyola University of the South, 1964), 6–7. 18. Ibid., 28–29. 19. Black and Reiss, Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement, vol. 2, 97. 20. Fichter and Jordan, Police Handling of Arrestees, 49, 52. 21. Black and Reiss, Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement, vol. 1, 56–59. 22. Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Career Orientations, Job Satisfaction, and the Assessment of Law Enforcement Problems by Police Officers,” in Studies in Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, n.d.), vol. 3, 81–83. 23. Black and Reiss, Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement, vol. 1, 78–80. 24. Ibid., 105, 115. 25. Fichter and Jordan, Police Handling of Arrestees, 21–22. 26. James Q. Wilson, “The Police and Their Problems: A Theory,” Public Policy 12 (1963): 189–216. 27. Arthur Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), 36–37; John H. McNamara, “Uncertainties in Police Work: The Relevance of Police

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Recruits’ Backgrounds and Training,” in David J. Bordue, ed., The Police: Six Sociological Essays (New York: John Wiley, 1967), 192–193. 28. McNamara, “Uncertainties in Police Work,” 193–194. 29. Ibid., 193; Gilmore Spencer and Keith Jewell, “Police Leadership: A Research Study,” Police Chief (March 1963): 40–45. 30. James Q. Wilson, “Generational and Ethnic Differences Among Career Police Officers,” American Journal of Sociology 69 (March 1964): 522–528. 31. Larry D. Stokes and James F. Scott, “Affirmative Action Policy Standard and Employment of African Americans in Police Departments,” Western Journal of Black Studies 17 (1993): 135–142. 32. W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 33. William G. Lewis, “Toward Representative Bureaucracy: Blacks in City Police Organizations, 1975–1985,” Public Administration Review 49 (May-June 1989): 257– 267. 34. National Commission on Crime, Task Force Report: The Police (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 10, 126–127. 35. Paul K. Hatt and C. C. North, “Prestige Ratings of Occupations,” in Sigmund Nosow and William H. Form, eds., Man, Work, and Society (New York: Basic, 1962), 277–283. 36. Robert W. Hodge, Paul M. Siegel, and Peter H. Rossi, “Occupational Prestige in the United States, 1925–1963,” American Journal of Sociology 70 (1964): 268–302. 37. Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield, 21–23. 38. Fichter and Jordan, Police Handling of Arrestees, 23. 39. Reiss, “Career Orientations,” 18–19. 40. Ibid., 27–29. 41. Ibid., 36–38. 42. Ibid., 44–46. 43. Ibid., 45. 44. McNamara, “Uncertainties in Police Work,” 242–243. 45. Fichter and Jordan, Police Handling of Arrestees, 15. 46. Jerome H. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial (New York: John Wiley, 1994), 269– 270. 47. Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield, 211–213; quote on 212. 48. McNamara, “Uncertainties in Police Work,” 246. 49. Michael Banton, The Policeman in the Community (New York: Basic, 1964), 188–219. 50. James Q. Wilson, “Police Morale, Reform, and Citizen Respect: The Chicago Case,” in David J. Bordue, ed., The Police: Six Sociological Essays (New York: John Wiley, 1967), 157. 51. Justin E. Walsh, The Fraternal Order of Police, 1915–1976: A History (Paducah, Ky.: Turner, 2001). 52. McNamara, “Uncertainties in Police Work,” 240–241. 53. Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield, 217–218. 54. McNamara, “Uncertainties in Police Work,” 241–242. 94

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55. Ibid., 232–233. 56. Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield, 207. 57. McNamara, “Uncertainties in Police Work,” 210–211. 58. Peter H. Rossi, Richard A. Berk, David P. Boesel, Bettye K. Eidson, and W. Eugene Groves, “Between White and Black: The Faces of American Institutions in the Ghetto,” in Supplemental Studies for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 104–105. 59. Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield, 178, 214–216. 60. McNamara, “Uncertainties in Police Work,” 235–236. 61. Robert L. Peabody, “Authority Relations in Three Organizations,” Public Administration Review 23 (June 1963): 87–92. 62. Charles R. Swanson and Leonard Territo, Police Administration: Structures, Processes and Behavior (New York: Macmillan, 1983); R. R. Rober and J. Kuykendall, “Police Professionalism: The Organizational Attribute,” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 6 (1990): 49–59. 63. David J. Bordue and Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Command, Control, and Charisma: Reflections on Police Bureaucracy,” American Journal of Sociology 72 (July 1966): 68– 76. 64. Wilson, “Police Morale, Reform, and Citizen Respect,” 139–149. 65. Wilson, “The Police and Their Problems,” 205–207. 66. David J. Bordue and Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Law Enforcement,” in Paul F. Lazarsfeld, William H. Sewell, and Harold L. Wilensky, eds., The Uses of Sociology (New York: Basic, 1967), 288–293. 67. Wilson, “Police Morale, Reform, and Citizen Respect,” 151–155. 68. William A. Westley, “Secrecy and the Police,” Social Forces 34 (March 1956): 254–257. 69. Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 112–113. 70. Stokes and Scott, “Affirmative Action Policy Standard,” 135–142. 71. Reiss, “Career Orientations,” 60–61. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid., 64–67. 74. Ibid., 58–59; Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 104. 75. Reiss, “Career Orientations,” 59–60. 76. Ibid., 76–78. 77. Ibid., 78. 78. McAuliffe v. New Bedford, 155 Mass. 216, 220 (1892). 79. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial, 61. 80. Fichter and Jordan, Police Handling of Arrestees, 15. 81. Lohman and Misner, Police and the Community, vol. 2, 160. 82. Reiss, “Career Orientations,” 38–39. 83. Fichter and Jordan, Police Handling of Arrestees, 30. 84. Ibid., 28, 31. 85. Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield, 122–123. 86. Fichter and Jordan, Police Handling of Arrestees, 24. 87. Ibid., 36. 95

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88. David Burnham, “Misconduct Laid to 27% of Police in 3 Cities’ Slums,” New York Times, July 5, 1968, 1. 89. J. M. Pollock-Byrne, Ethics in Crime and Justice (Pacific Grove, Calif.: Brooks/ Cole, 1989). 90. J. H. Rankin, “Psychiatric Screening of Police Recruits,” Public Personnel Review 20 (July 1959): 191–196. 91. William A. Westley, “Violence and the Police,” American Journal of Sociology 59 (July 1953): 36–41; see also James Lao Walsh, “Professionalism and the Police: The Cop as Medical Student,” in Harlan Hahn, ed., Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 225–245. 92. Reiss, “Career Orientations,” 117–122.

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From the Public’s Standpoint

From the Public’s Standpoint

is a joint product of police perceptions of the public and public perceptions of the police. Perhaps as a result of their training and experience, police officers often viewed civilians as both a hostile force and a hindrance to the effective performance of their duties. For example, a survey of 284 officers in a West Coast police department revealed that 70 percent rated the prestige with which others regarded the police as only fair or poor and believed “relations with the public” was the most important problem police officers faced.1 This feeling seemed especially prevalent in the poorest areas of major cities. A study of officers in eight lower-class precincts in three large cities found that “lack of public respect” was regarded as a major problem; nearly one-fourth of the officers cited this as the factor they disliked most about their jobs.2 Similarly, a survey of police officers who patrol the ghettos of eleven cities disclosed that 48 percent of respondents said the lack of external support was the most serious problem for police, and 54 percent said they were dissatisfied with the respect they received from local residents.3 Another survey found that most law enforcement officers regarded “public abuse” and “politics” as the least satisfactory aspects of their work.4 This attitude was not confined to patrol officers who had the greatest amount of contact with the public; it also pervaded higher ranks of police organizations. In a survey of Chicago police sergeants, one-half to nearly twothirds expressed the opinion that most citizens did not respect the department, and similar proportions disagreed with the statement that “civilians generally cooperate with police officers in their work.”5 Another study in New York reported that 56 to 64 percent of patrol officers and 78 percent of HE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POLICE OFFICERS AND LOCAL CITIZENS

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their superiors were convinced that the public “usually has to be forced to cooperate with police officers.”6 In their efforts to overcome perceived disrespect by exerting their authority, many law enforcement officers consciously or unconsciously conveyed their own hostility to local citizens. In response, one might expect some members of the public to display reciprocal animosity and distrust. Surprisingly, however, this was not always the case. The attitudes of the general population toward the police were both ambiguous and sharply divided. Among some segments of the community, such as ghetto neighborhoods, perceptions of the public and the police erupted in mutual antagonism and conflict.7 But in predominantly white neighborhoods, opinions about the police reflected a complex mixture of esteem, anxiety, and indecision. In fact, if any one word could be used to describe the sentiments of the entire community, the most appropriate would probably be “ambivalence.”8 Despite the difficulties of framing general statements about public attitudes toward law enforcement officers, several studies indicated that most people did not display the same enmity toward the police that some police officers attributed to them. A national survey, for example, found that 42 percent of the public thought the police were doing a “very good” job of protecting people in their neighborhoods, and 59 percent made a similar appraisal of the respect the police displayed toward people like themselves. In addition, 22 percent believed the police were doing an “excellent” job of “enforcing the laws,” 45 percent felt they were doing “good” work, and only 32 percent rated their performance as “fair or poor.”9 Subsequent surveys in eight major cities found that “the vast majority . . . of the residents thought that their police were doing either a good [44 percent] or fair [38 percent] job; only a small number [12 percent] thought that the police were doing a poor job.”10 The studies also discovered that blacks were almost three times as likely as whites to believe the police were doing a poor job; but an earlier survey of predominantly black precincts in Washington, D.C., published in 1907, discovered that 85 percent of residents endorsed the statement that those “who are willing to take on the tough job of being a policemen deserve a lot more thanks and respect than they get from the public,” and 78 percent agreed that “just a few policemen . . . are responsible for the bad publicity the police department gets.”11 In general, public attitudes were somewhat favorable and relatively devoid of intense personal dislike for law enforcement officers. In specific circumstances, however, many different types of people expressed important reservations about law enforcement activities. A study of police-community relations in San Diego, for example, found little criticism 98

From the Public’s Standpoint

of the police force in predominantly white, middle-class areas of the city— except for their role in traffic law enforcement, the principal source of contact between those residents and police officers.12 Situations that involved a direct confrontation with police authority frequently seemed to produce a marked shift in public attitudes. A survey in selected areas of Chicago, Boston, and Washington, D.C., reported that only 27 percent of residents agreed that police officers should be able to stop them on the street and ask them what they were doing there, where they had been, and related questions. Furthermore, only 18 percent said they would consent to a search if the police stopped them.13 Although many people applauded conventional police methods of preventing or investigating crime, they often became critical when police efforts impinged upon their personal rights. The conflicting goals of controlling crime and avoiding restrictions on personal freedom reflected a lack of general agreement regarding the proper authority police officers should be granted. For example, a national survey by Philip Ennis, published in 1967, revealed that 52 percent of the American public favored giving the police more power to question suspects, but 65 percent believed a person should be allowed to consult a lawyer before being questioned by the police. In addition, 58 percent believed the police should be “really sure” they arrested the right person rather than risk arresting an innocent person. Perhaps most significant were Ennis’s conclusions that the responses were not related to each other and that the answers reflected a “lack of consensus” concerning the appropriate limits of police authority.14 Most people apparently had not developed clear or consistent beliefs about the power law enforcement agencies should be granted to protect them from crime. Although many citizens disclosed few signs of willingness to surrender rights that might affect them personally, controversies focusing on crime and the police emerged as important subjects of popular concern, especially in urban areas. In a series of national surveys, crime was listed as one of the most serious problems facing the country.15 Statements by law enforcement officials about the rising crime rate apparently had a significant impact on public opinion. Surveys in areas of Boston and Chicago, for example, revealed that 57 percent of residents thought violent crimes had increased substantially, even though neither city had experienced a rise in the crime rate prior to the surveys.16 FEAR OF CRIME One of the first national surveys conducted on criminal victimization, published in 1967, found that 33 percent of Americans felt unsafe walking alone 99

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at night in their own neighborhoods, and 16 percent reportedly had decided not to leave their homes at night because of fear for their personal safety.17 This fear was particularly prevalent in major cities. For example, a 1969 survey in Brooklyn revealed that nearly half of the people there were afraid to walk alone after dark.18 Later surveys revealed that the proportion of urban residents who felt unsafe walking alone at night in their neighborhoods ranged from 36–38 percent in cities such as Dallas, Denver, and Portland to more than 50 percent in cities such as Baltimore, Newark, and Detroit.19 In four areas of Brooklyn and Chicago, 24 percent of residents said they wanted to move from their neighborhoods because of increasing crime.20 Such anxieties were concentrated among a relatively small segment of the population, and they were not necessarily translated into action. As a summary of subsequent research in thirteen cities concluded, “Even among low-income blacks who had been victims of crime and who perceived their neighborhood as either somewhat or very unsafe, less than half [43 percent] said that the danger was strong enough to make them seriously consider moving; among other ethnic and minority group respondents the proportion was considerably lower.”21 In addition, only 3 percent of city residents who had moved mentioned crime as a motivating factor in their decision.22 The salience of the police to city dwellers was undoubtedly fostered both by the publicity crime received and by the gradual decline of familiarity and cohesion in many urban neighborhoods. In an earlier period of history, many sections of major American cities were inhabited primarily by a predominant ethnic group that formed a tightly knit community for mutual protection and advancement. As those “ethnic enclaves” gradually disintegrated, they were replaced by communities reflecting less widely shared moral values and greater cultural diversity. Although many urban residents tended to stress the positive aspects of their neighborhoods, evidence of the changing nature of local areas was reflected in perceptions about crime. In the Boston and Chicago surveys, 23 percent of residents ranked crime and deviant behavior as things they disliked most about their neighborhoods. In addition, 37 percent reported that some of their neighbors were noisy or disruptive, and 35 percent said some aspects of the neighborhood gave it a bad name. Local residents mentioned the presence of deviant persons and irresponsible behavior most often as disreputable features of the area.23 In a number of studies, lawless or rowdy conduct by young people also emerged as a major source of criticism in urban neighborhoods. The decline of both a well-enforced moral consensus and community discipline probably contributed to the growing anxiety about crime in many sections of American cities.24 Surveys conducted in several urban areas 100

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indicated that most residents had no complaints about their neighborhoods; but among those who expressed concerns, factors such as noise, trash, overcrowding, and population changes—or “bad elements” moving in—often overshadowed crime as sources of dissatisfaction. As was mentioned earlier, as the fear of crime increased, many urban residents altered their daily activities and lifestyle.25 In Boston and Chicago, 61 percent of residents reported that they had made one or more changes in their personal habits. The most common changes included staying off the streets at night, refusing to talk to strangers, and using taxicabs or cars at night instead of public transportation, referred to by 21 percent. Twenty-eight percent also stated that they had installed new locks on their doors for added protection.26 It is not surprising, then, that growing anxiety about lawlessness prompted people to remain indoors where they may have actually faced a greater statistical risk of serious or violent crime than they would on crowded city streets in the presence of many potential witnesses. Perhaps one of the most dangerous possible consequences of popular anxiety about crime was reflected in many people’s tendency to acquire weapons for their own protection. The Boston and Chicago studies revealed that one in ten persons started carrying a knife, and 14 percent reported owning firearms.27 Indeed, in 1966 more than half of Americans admitted they were worried that their homes might be burglarized.28 Nearly two-thirds of black Americans and more than half of whites believed they had “to be prepared to defend their homes against crime and violence” rather than leave that responsibility to the police. Perhaps most important, however, this apparent lack of confidence in police protection among whites was significantly related to several other characteristics, including gun ownership, the opinion that police officers should use more repressive measures to control urban violence, and the belief that urban revolts represented an effort by blacks “to take over the cities.”29 The implications of those findings appeared to suggest that the ethos of vigilantism in America may persist as a formidable obstacle both to public acceptance of police duties and to the maintenance of a government monopoly on the use of physical force—long a basic prerequisite for any sovereign state.30 In many respects, the preservation of police authority is essential to maintain the domestic security of the state because, unlike other government agencies, police possess “the societal delegated privilege to exercise coercive force.”31 By expressing their preparedness to employ self-defense rather than to rely on law enforcement officers for protection against crime and violence, many citizens seemed to display a fundamental lack of faith in the 101

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police, which worked to undermine police authority. As a result, law enforcement agencies were increasingly confronted both with the threat of white resentment toward the inadequacy of police protection and with the danger of armed attempts to usurp police prerogatives. Although the growing public anxiety about crime may have had ominous implications for the relationship between police and society, evidence indicated that most white citizens remained relatively unexposed to the threat of lawlessness. Initially, since most violent crimes were committed in private dwellings by relatives or acquaintances, many people’s tendency to stay at home or to avoid public places in the evening because of their fear of “crime in the streets” was of little value in preventing such offenses. Moreover, in the normal conduct of everyday life, the risk of crime for many persons was relatively remote. The average white, middle-class American living in a relatively affluent suburb, for example, was much less likely to become a victim of a violent crime than was a black or Latino resident of the inner city.32 The danger of crime was greatest in the poorest and most densely populated neighborhoods of large cities, and it declined significantly in prosperous and less urbanized areas. The principal sources of white anxiety about crime and of a loss of confidence in police protection were located in areas somewhat insulated from the threat of lawlessness. Although black citizens’ tendency to endorse selfdefense as a safeguard against crime increased in larger cities, with a correspondingly higher risk of victimization, the willingness of white Americans to leave this problem to the police seemed to diminish in sections that were relatively immune to the danger of criminal attacks and to increase in areas where the risk of crime was high. Whereas only one-third of whites living in cities with populations of more than 1 million were prepared to employ selfdefense as a form of protection against crime and violence, that proportion grew to more than one-half in communities ranging from 2,500 to 100,00 in size and to two-thirds in rural areas with fewer than 2,500 residents.33 Ironically, the segment of society that was most secure against the threat of crime was also apparently most responsive to political movements based on the fear of crime. Emerging trends indicated that continued public alarm about law enforcement issues might provoke the strongest demands for enhanced police protection and security among segments of the white population that were least vulnerable to crime. As a result, police administrators were increasingly exposed to agonizing dilemmas concerning the allocation of resources and personnel. Whereas law enforcement agencies usually concentrated police of102

From the Public’s Standpoint

ficers in areas with high crime rates in the hope of preventing or reducing the commission of serious offenses, they encountered powerful pressures from fearful white citizens to change their policies.34 The growth of public concern about crime, which approached the level of hysteria in some communities, was probably highly dysfunctional to law enforcement agencies. In addition to the implication of a loss of public confidence in the police, the prospect of an armed and suspicious population that regulates many of its activities according to a faulty perception of the risk of crime could have potentially emerged as a severe problem in preserving public order. Although many people viewed crime primarily as a threat to their personal safety, that fear also might have been used to serve other motives and especially to secure police protection from unwanted “cultural assailants.”35 Popular cries for augmented police security and repression may have cloaked deeper and more basic desires to isolate or remove from the community divergent racial groups, persons with unconventional appearance or behavior, and others who seemed to threaten traditional values. A survey in Memphis discovered that citizens who shared police values emphasizing order and stability, crime control, and improved efficiency rather than principles of justice and procedural safeguards also displayed unfavorable feelings toward groups such as liberals, women’s liberation advocates, and blacks—which were consistent with police perceptions.36 There was a danger that dominant segments of the community could exploit the police simply to confine or suppress what they regarded as undesirable social groups or unacceptable social conduct. PERSONAL CONTACTS WITH POLICE Despite the salience of crime and law enforcement issues to many sectors of the public, most people tended to shun or avoid individual contact with police officers. In large measure, this hesitancy probably resulted from a general perception of police officers as agents of social control and from an understandable reticence to become personally enmeshed in the punitive aspects of law enforcement. Boston and Chicago surveys indicated, for example, that many persons living in high-crime areas had been compelled to call on the police for assistance, but they were not inclined to interact closely with police officers. In addition, nearly one-third of respondents stated that they had never had social contact with employees of the police department. Whereas 41 percent of residents asserted that they had experienced some official contact with the police during the past year—usually in the role of complainant— 45 percent said they did not know any police officers personally, and only 14 103

From the Public’s Standpoint

percent could name someone on the police force. However, 29 percent had friends or relatives who were police officers.37 This gap between the public and the police was undoubtedly communicated to many law enforcement officers. In the same areas of Boston and Chicago, as well as in four police precincts in Washington, D.C., 61 percent of police respondents claimed the public rarely or never cooperated with law enforcement officers by giving them needed information. The principal reasons given for this lack of cooperation were fear or dislike of the police, fear of reprisal, and an unwillingness to become involved in the problems of others.38 Yet studies of consumers of police service revealed generally high levels of satisfaction with department performance, a nearly universal finding of surveys on citizens’ attitudes toward the police. Moreover, the potential for antagonistic associations was reduced by the fact that a high proportion of criminal incidents and reported complaints did not result in any contact between police officers and civilians. Although police officers may have tended to exaggerate the public’s indifference or opposition to law enforcement efforts, they also undoubtedly encountered many persons who displayed a natural reluctance to develop close relationships with representatives of the law. Similarly, a survey in Denver, published in 1969, revealed that 23 percent of whites and equivalent proportions of black and Latino residents had called the police for assistance during the past year. In addition, whites were twice as likely as any other group to report that they had discussed a problem with a police officer within the same period. But only 9 percent of whites, 13 percent of blacks, and 11 percent of Latinos reported that they were personally acquainted with police officers assigned to their neighborhoods.39 The lack of extensive encounters between urban residents and patrol officers obviously reduces the effectiveness of law enforcement personnel. As a social scientist with major experience in police work noted: Most of what a patrolman knows about the people he polices is learned with their active cooperation. Aside from businessmen, service personnel, and street workers, he has met most of the people he knows personally because they have called for his assistance. . . . If he gets no calls, he is much less likely to know the people who live in the houses he drives past daily.40

In any event, reticence to become involved with law enforcement agencies has probably been both a major barrier to improved police-community relations and a primary source of the ambiguity that characterized public attitudes concerning police activities. One of the most common sources of interaction between the public and police officers stems from the enforcement of traffic laws. In a study of a state 104

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police department, citizens were classified by their contacts with police officers and by the number of traffic tickets they received. The research revealed that persons having no contact with the police held much more positive images of state law enforcement officers than those who had experienced some or many encounters with traffic officers. In addition, individuals who had no contacts with police were more apt than any other group to report that they liked the image of police officers.41 Apparently, individuals who had not had direct contact with police officers tended to base their assessments of police on the characterizations portrayed by the media, but those who had experienced personal encounters with law enforcement personnel expressed more negative views, and they seemed to base their judgments on their own experiences. Since a primary source of interaction between police officers and civilians had been the enforcement of traffic laws that sometimes led to distasteful encounters, perhaps those situations had a major impact on public sentiments concerning law enforcement officers. The case of a traffic stop is part of a larger category of situations that might affect police perceptions. From the personal experience of one of the authors of this book, public contacts with law enforcement officers result either from calls to police departments or from actions taken at officers’ initiative. In the former circumstance, officers intervene in reaction to the call; in the latter instance, their conduct is proactive. Whereas reactive interventions are based on the perceived legitimacy of a public request, proactive behavior requires police officers to justify their action independently. People may be more inclined to accept the wishes of fellow citizens rather than abstract government authority as a reason for personal inconvenience or interference. Hence proactive police tactics frequently elicit more displeasure than reactive encounters do. In addition, public attitudes toward encounters with police may have been influenced by the manner in which officers approached citizens and by the nature of the offense being investigated. In research which found that people rated crimes against persons as more important than crimes against property or crimes without victims, efforts were also made to determine the amount of cooperation law enforcement officers received in different types of circumstances. The results revealed that when officers gave a reason for questioning members of the public, the extent of cooperation paralleled the perceived importance of the offense. The longest period of cooperation was produced when police officers questioned people about crimes against persons, followed by crimes against property and victimless crimes. The least cooperation occurred when no reason was given for police intervention. As the authors of this study concluded: 105

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The police-citizen encounter is a two-way exchange. If the citizen acts in a negative or abusive manner, policemen are likely to respond in kind. . . . However, the officers often set the tone for the interaction. A positive relationship can be established by such simple and low cost behaviors as providing explanations.42

Whereas offering a reason for contacts with citizens would seem to be a basic condition necessary for cooperation with law enforcement officers, many other factors may have influenced the opinions formed as a result of encounters with the police. The nature of interactions between the public and law enforcement officers has been studied extensively. In general, people appear to be remarkably controlled when confronted by the police. One investigation of police-citizen contacts, which revealed that approximately 30 percent of people were agitated by and 10 percent were antagonistic to law enforcement officers, also disclosed that a majority of citizens can be characterized as calm and deferential in encounters with the police.43 These emotions are often reciprocated by law enforcement personnel, but there have been notable exceptions. The same study concluded: It is also clear that police officers depart from a model of professional or bureaucratic handling of citizens. Although in almost three-fourths of all encounters, the police behaved in a businesslike or routine civil fashion toward citizens, and in an additional 15 percent they were more personal in demeanor, expressing humor or joviality, in 11 percent of all encounters they were hostile, authoritarian, or derisive of citizens.44

A significant relationship was also found between police and citizen conduct in specific encounters. Law enforcement officers were most apt to be good-humored or jovial when people were very deferential, civil behavior by citizens was usually greeted with businesslike or routinized police actions, and police officers were most likely to exhibit authoritarian, brusque, and hostile conduct when civilians were antagonistic. Perhaps most interesting are the deviations from this pattern. When citizens were antagonistic, for example, slightly more than half of police officers were able to maintain a polite or businesslike demeanor, but about three-eights responded to animosity with animosity.45 DIFFERENTIAL ENFORCEMENT OF THE LAW Another important source of popular ambivalence toward police authority was differential enforcement of the law. People usually favored strict enforcement of the law as long as it was primarily directed against the behavior of 106

From the Public’s Standpoint

others. Frequently, however, when police practices had a direct or personal impact, they were greeted with decreasing favor. This distinction not only influenced individual perceptions of the police, but it also had a profound effect on the sentiments of broad segments of the community. Many citizens, especially members of the politically influential white middle class, held the belief that law enforcement responsibilities should be confined to habitual criminals and other undesirable elements. As a result, abrasive encounters between police officers and civilians unaccustomed to confrontations with the law often provoked unusually intense criticism and controversy.46 A prominent traditional basis of conflict between law enforcement officers and the community has been the disparity between public and private morality. Although many persons have been willing to prohibit some forms of conduct for the entire society, they often have been reluctant to surrender their own minor vices. A businessman, for example, who pressures the police department to stop the operation of the “numbers game” in slum neighborhoods might see nothing inconsistent about placing a substantial wager in a football pool at the office or the country club. Similarly, middle-class citizens who encourage police to crack down on vice and liquor laws in local bars might not anticipate the same treatment while attending a business or lodge convention. Getting caught for many types of petty offenses seems to be widely regarded as a product of bad luck or overly stringent law enforcement practices rather than as a sign of personal blame or guilt. Consequently, police officers have been faced with growing demands that they serve incompatible objectives.47 Although members of the public have demanded that police officers accept major responsibility for upholding the law and maintaining public order, they often become incensed when legal restrictions are applied to their own behavior. In the face of conflicting pressures and demands, criminal statutes have required the police to provide total and impartial law enforcement. As a result, police officers often have seemed more zealous in enforcing the law than the public has desired. In one study, law enforcement officers, members of the public, and community leaders were asked about six common moral offenses. The results revealed that the police were somewhat less likely than the other groups to regard each of the crimes as “morally wrong.” Yet in every case, with the important exceptions of racial discrimination and violations of Sunday blue laws, the police officers stated that they would be likely to invoke the power of arrest more often than the community actually wanted or that they felt the public wanted.48 The rigid criteria imposed by a full enforcement policy, which may have inhibited the police from reflecting public 107

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demands, were also a major source of tension between police forces and the community. Yet public desires undoubtedly had an effect on law enforcement practices, and large segments of the population have apparently recognized that impact. In general, popular perceptions have frequently related social or economic characteristics with police behavior. In Boston and Chicago, 42 percent of residents surveyed expressed the belief that police treated people differently depending on who they were, and 16 percent said that was sometimes the case. When people were asked what groups law enforcement treated best, 35 percent referred to “the rich and respectable.” The study concluded that more people see the police as applying differential justice by exempting persons or treating them “better” than by employing the more primitive application of justice, or treating them “poorly.”49 In the view of many persons, perhaps, the police responded to local influences primarily by diverting scrutiny from the politically dominant sectors of the community. Instead of reflecting a clearly defined and publicly acknowledged departmental policy, this standard of law enforcement was usually administered by members of the force who had broad discretion but relatively little accountability—the average patrol officer on the beat. Suffice it to say, public recognition of differential law enforcement practices was probably a critical impetus for animosity in many lower-class urban neighborhoods. PERCEPTIONS OF CORRUPTION Another aspect of patrol officers’ discretion that often stirred public resentment was the opportunity it afforded for corrupt practices within police departments. Regardless of police officers’ moral standards, a large proportion of the public retained the impression that unethical conduct or graft had been a common feature of law enforcement operations. Whereas a national survey disclosed that 59 percent of Americans generally felt “almost all” police officers were honest, 70 percent of people living in Brooklyn thought police officers were “mostly honest with a few whom are corrupt.”50 Another survey conducted during a minor police scandal in Detroit found that 63 percent of residents believed law enforcement officers sometimes “break the rules for their personal gain,” and 34 percent estimated that one-fourth or more of the officers were involved in misconduct. In four areas of Boston and Chicago with relatively high crime rates, 38 percent of the residents thought police officers took bribes or payoffs.51 According to the author’s experience, for cops on the beat, the pressures and temptations of law enforcement responsibilities created numerous prob108

From the Public’s Standpoint

lems. In predominantly white middle-class sectors of the community, they were often urged to ignore minor infractions of the law and to concentrate on the investigation of known criminals. On the other hand, the opportunities both to obtain favors and to neglect some forms of illegal activity in other areas of the city were difficult to ignore. Unfortunately, the only resource police officers had to cope with this problem was their own discretion. As a result of this latitude, police officers frequently allowed a suspect’s social characteristics or appearance to affect their disposition of a case. On other occasions, they did not adhere to strict law enforcement policies in exchange for monetary or material rewards. Since political authorities provided police officers with little more than a universal and impossible requirement that all laws must be fully and impartially enforced, they probably could not have been expected to do otherwise. In circumstances involving direct bribes, nonenforcement of the law was more lucrative for the police and more morally reprehensible to society than were situations in which nonenforcement was influenced by social or economic considerations, but in both circumstances— bribery and discretion—selective enforcement of the law has been important to the police in resolving the conflicting demands the public has imposed on them. Perhaps the most disturbing consequence of the differential enforcement of the law, however, was its tendency to produce disadvantages for lower-class citizens. In general, the groups most favored by the police were probably those with the greatest influence and power. In some areas this meant violators of the law who could offer the greatest material rewards received the best treatment from police officers; in other places that advantage accrued to the politically dominant middle class. In many communities law enforcement undoubtedly fulfilled firm standards of impartiality, but police authority was often applied sparingly to one group. Seldom, however, have lower-class persons received exceptionally favorable police treatment. Another source of the social and economic distinctions that developed in police procedures in the author’s experience may have been lower-class unfamiliarity with commonly accepted principles of law and law enforcement. Most middle-class citizens have maintained that laws should be universally and fully enforced, even though they have occasionally sought specific exemptions from those requirements. In addition, they have endorsed the view that police personnel should adopt legalistic and impersonal criteria for evaluating public behavior. Lower- or working-class people, however, have often used personal methods of resolving disputes, and they have supported the belief that personal factors should be considered in administration of the law. 109

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Law enforcement officers who patrol working-class neighborhoods have often been caught between opposing perspectives. As William Foote Whyte noted in his classic study of working-class culture: There are prevalent in society two general conceptions of the duties of the police officer. Middle-class people feel that he should enforce the law without fear or favor. Cornerville people . . . believe that the policeman should have the confidence of the people in his area so that he can settle many difficulties in a personal manner without making arrests. These two conceptions are in large measure contradictory. The policeman who takes a strictly legalistic view of his duties cuts himself off from the personal relations necessary to enable him to serve as a mediator of disputes in his area. The policeman who develops close ties with local people is unable to act against them with the vigor prescribed by law.52

Many patrol officers, who have regarded their primary mission as “handling situations” or “keeping the peace” on their beats, have accepted some of the views of lower-class residents. As the police became increasingly professionalized, however, there was an increasing emphasis on impersonal application of the law and on universal standards for judging social conduct. Consequently, a widening gap seemed to develop between police officers and working-class city dwellers. Armed only with the authority to impose penalties on unacceptable or deviant behavior, police officers increasingly resorted to the power of arrest as a means of maintaining order. At the same time, perhaps they deprived themselves of important sources of public cooperation and assistance. Since the provision of community services had been generally regarded as an irrelevant or inappropriate function for law enforcement officers, the police were left with few major duties that may have created popular support in lowincome neighborhoods. Some evidence of increasing lower-class resentment of law enforcement practices emerged in a study that sought to relate public attitudes regarding increased police power and civil liberties measures that might limit police authority, such as civilian review boards and the right of suspects to consult an attorney before police interrogation. As might have been anticipated, social status was related to urban dwellers’ ability to resolve the tension between approval of police power and support for civil liberties. Perhaps most important, among whites as well as black residents with low levels of education, a growing fear of crime was related to increased support for the protection of civil liberties rather than to approval of increased police power.53 Although the acceptance of enhanced police power among upper-income citizens was apparently associated with a desire to reduce guarantees of civil liberties, 110

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perhaps the increased anxiety of lower-class residents who were most vulnerable to the threat of lawlessness produced a simultaneous demand for protection both against crime and against occasional excesses of police authority. Hence the treatment accorded white as well as black and Latino residents and poor urban residents in neighborhoods with high crime rates seemed to provoke increased reluctance to endorse the growth of police power. In part, public reactions to law enforcement practices also appeared to reflect variations between different urban areas. A survey of fifteen major American cities, for example, not only revealed important local differences in public statements about police abuse, but it also disclosed a correlation between the reports of police mistreatment given by white and black residents of those cities.54 PERCEPTIONS OF POLICE MISTREATMENT Perhaps the most significant area of public criticism of police officers in most localities was centered among blacks and other minority groups. For centuries, black Americans and other minorities have been both the principal targets of prejudice and the most oppressed segments of the population. Moreover, their highly vulnerable position in the community has brought them into frequent conflict with law enforcement officers. As a result, black citizens often perceived police practices as another manifestation of the injustice and discrimination that permeated America.55 To an extent, black attitudes toward police behavior also appeared to reflect community differences in law enforcement activities. A 1964 survey revealed that their treatment by police officers was rated as “bad” by 23 percent of the black citizens in Chicago, 34 percent of blacks in New York, 39 percent of blacks living in Atlanta, and 60 percent of black residents in Birmingham, Alabama.56 Those responses, therefore, seemed to provide empirical confirmation of the special brand of justice meted out by many Southern sheriffs. Gradually, however, black criticism of police activities began to spread to nearly all sections of the country. A national survey conducted in 1966 indicated that 41 percent of black Americans in the North believed the police had been more harmful than helpful to the cause of civil rights.57 A study in Denver found that 54 percent of whites but only 22 percent of blacks and 31 percent of the Mexican American residents of that city felt police officers had good reputations in their neighborhoods.58 In the Boston and Chicago surveys, whites were more than twice as likely as blacks to say that law enforcement officers did a better job in their own neighborhoods than in other parts of the city.59 Perhaps most significant, black censure of law enforcement agencies 111

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encompassed a large proportion of all police. Whereas only one-fourth of the whites in Boston and Chicago were critical of a majority of police officers, one-third to more than two-fifths of the blacks in those cities agreed that it would be necessary to replace half of the police now on the force to have a really good police force.60 White and black assessments of police behavior disclosed sharply conflicting perspectives. A 1965 survey in Detroit, published in 1970, revealed that 56 percent of black residents believed “the police treated some people better than others,” but 61 percent of whites thought policemen “treated all people the same.” Whereas whites supported the belief that most law enforcement activities respected strict standards of impartiality, black citizens tended to view police conduct as a reflection of severe inequality. Furthermore, many black Americans felt they were the victims not only of differential treatment but also of unusually harsh or aggressive behavior. Among white citizens, there was little recognition that police practices departed from the requirement of equality before the law.61 Black resentment of law enforcement activities has frequently been expressed in the charge of “police brutality.” Since many allegations of brutality have tended to arise from encounters initiated by police in the absence of witnesses, departmental superiors, and other observers, the validity of those attacks has often been difficult for the courts and other agencies to evaluate. Yet people generally have tended to base their actions on what they believe to be the facts rather than on what may actually be true or real. According to several surveys, the proportion of black citizens who believed at least some police brutality existed in their communities was 47 percent in the Watts area of Los Angeles, 43 percent in Harlem,62 and 49 percent in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn.63 The widespread perception of police brutality in urban areas presented a major barrier to law enforcement officers’ objective of gaining public respect. Despite the difficulty of assessing claims of police discrimination or abuse, at least some evidence provided empirical support for the charges. For example, observational studies of police procedures in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., revealed that blacks were twice as likely as whites both to be constrained or prevented from leaving an encounter with police and to be taken to the station house for further processing.64 Since some police officers felt compelled to make instantaneous decisions about a case based on the suspect’s superficial appearance rather than on a judicious investigation of the circumstances, racial or ethnic characteristics were especially salient in transactions between citizens and law enforcement personnel. In fact, some police 112

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officers contended that the appraisal of racial or socioeconomic traits in approaching members of the public only represented a type of sociological generalization derived from prior experience and from studies of crime statistics. The inspection of law enforcement practices in the three cities found that black citizens were more likely than whites to be subjected to a search by police officers. Yet those searches were also more likely to uncover weapons on black suspects than on whites.65 Despite the grounds that might be cited to support such conduct, however, actions based solely on racial or similar considerations comprised a major form of discriminatory treatment. The continued use of such factors in shaping the nature of encounters with minority groups, therefore, again raised the threat of increasing public resistance to the authority of law enforcement officers. In addition to the differential procedures that have influenced police contacts with minorities, these groups have been viewed as the targets of aggressive and sometimes violent physical mistreatment. Perhaps the most intensive research on this subject was conducted in a survey of black residents of Watts that asked about six common forms of police abuse, including showing a lack of respect, using insulting language, rousting and frisking, using unnecessary force in making arrests, and beating up suspects in custody. The results revealed that a high proportion of persons believed such practices occurred in their neighborhood—from 65 to 72 percent, depending on the type of misconduct that comprised the basis for the question. Moreover, from 21 to 41 percent asserted that they had seen cases of police abuse, and 4 to 23 percent stated that they had been abused.66 A survey conducted in Denver found that 68 percent of the black and 59 percent of the Mexican American respondents—but only 46 percent of whites—reported hearing about charges of police brutality. Also, 21 percent of the blacks, 25 percent of Mexican Americans, but only 4 percent of the whites said they had seen someone treated badly by police officers. Whereas 25 percent of the black and Mexican American residents also related a personal experience from which they had concluded that police officers did not treat all people equally, only 9 percent of whites in Denver related a similar experience.67 From information acquired by reports from other persons, direct observation, and personal experience, large proportions of blacks and other minorities concluded that the police are guilty of hostile and abusive behavior. Another major survey of white and black residents in fifteen American cities, which asked people about the use of insulting language, unjustifiable searches, and unnecessary physical force by police, yielded comparable results.68 Black hostility toward law enforcement agencies not only was directed 113

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at flagrant cases of police abuse or brutality, but it was also focused on the failure of police officers to provide needed services and to offer sufficient protection from the many crimes that plague urban communities. To many observers, based on the author’s experience, black attitudes concerning police conduct appeared paradoxical or enigmatic. Although large segments of the black community complained about police harassment and oppression, a significant percentage also objected to the lack of adequate police protection. Whereas the former criticism appeared to suggest a desire for police surveillance to be relaxed in black neighborhoods, the latter charge seemed to denote popular support for the expansion of police patrols and for the adoption of strict law enforcement practices. Hence many police administrators reacted to this dilemma with apparent confusion and indecision. ATTITUDES CONCERNING POLICE PROTECTION Although the greatest amount of publicity has probably been devoted to the issue of police abuse or mistreatment, police protection against crime has also been a persistent problem in many black communities. In general, lowincome urban areas have suffered higher crime rates than white middle-class sectors of the city, and black residents of those neighborhoods have been the most frequent victims of unlawful acts. As with many other areas of social behavior, illegal activities have seldom crossed racial boundaries; criminal attacks perpetuated by black offenders have usually been directed at other blacks. Since crime has tended to be intra- rather than interracial in character, many urban dwellers have demanded that police officers provide increased protection against the threat of economic loss and personal injury resulting from criminal conduct. Some evidence, in fact, indicated that black discontent over inadequate police protection tended to surpass concern about abusive police behavior.69 A partial summary of data on this subject was provided by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders when it noted, “Surveys have reported that blacks in Harlem and South Central Los Angeles mention inadequate protection more often than brutality or harassment as a reason for their resentment toward the police.”70 Perhaps a major source of the seemingly inconsistent black complaints about both police brutality and insufficient police protection was the widely adopted, supposedly professional doctrine of “preventive patrolling.”71 As the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice explained, the procedure usually entailed “aggressive action on the part of the police in stopping persons using the streets in high-crime areas and in making 114

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searches of both persons and vehicles.”72 Hence many black residents of neighborhoods with high crime rates were subjected to “stop and frisk” tactics by law enforcement officers that sparked charges of police harassment and abuse. At the same time, the delegation of resources to interrogate and search suspicious people on the streets may have prevented police officers from reacting quickly to calls for police assistance in adjacent residential areas. In Cleveland, for example, it was revealed that patrolmen took nearly four times longer to respond to burglary reports in black neighborhoods than they did to those in white sections of the city.73 Since the volume of urban crime usually exceeded the resources of law enforcement agencies, police officers probably felt compelled to devote less attention to the many minor offenses that occurred in slum areas than to the prospect of making an arrest for a serious crime by stopping and frisking suspicious persons. Black citizens’ simultaneous demands for an end to police brutality and for increased police protection, therefore, were probably promoted by the professional law enforcement policy of aggressive preventive patrolling that provoked numerous abrasive contacts between police officers and ghetto residents while diverting police manpower from investigating crimes that directly affected black citizens in urban areas.74 In addition to the apparent neglect of ghetto crimes that resulted from the emphasis on preventive patrolling, many black persons expressed strong disapproval of the inequities in police protection in different segments of communities. Although lower-class urban neighborhoods were perhaps traditionally less secure from crime than relatively affluent sections of the city, a growing number of inner-city residents had begun to regard differential police protection as an indication of racial rather than socioeconomic distinctions. A survey of the Twelfth Street ghetto in Detroit that asked persons to compare the amount of police protection received by five other groups in the community tended to confirm this supposition. Whereas only 31 percent of the black inhabitants of the area believed homeowners in general received more police protection than renters did, 61 percent felt white homeowners obtained more protection than black homeowners received.75 By introducing home ownership as a crude means of controlling the effects of social status, the findings seemed to reveal the strong racial connotations that have permeated black appraisals of law enforcement activities. Additionally, urban minorities perceived other important discrepancies in law enforcement operations. In the study of the Twelfth Street ghetto, onehalf of the residents stated that large stores were granted more police protection than small businesses, and one-third thought older persons received more protection than young people did.76 A survey in Denver disclosed that 56 115

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percent of blacks, 47 percent of Mexican Americans, but only 20 percent of whites believed personal status affected the way people were treated by police officers. Moreover, when black and Mexican American residents were asked to name the groups that received differential treatment, their replies reflected a consensus about “rich and influential people.”77 In the view of many members of minority groups, law enforcement officers apparently failed to provide impartial protection for all sectors of the population. Perhaps one of the most serious consequences of this lack of confidence in the equality of police practices was again a reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement officers. In the Denver study, approximately 20 percent of the black and Mexican American residents but merely 5 percent of whites believed persons who assisted police officers were “just asking for a lot of trouble.”78 Similarly, fewer than half of the residents of the Twelfth Street ghetto reported that they would call the police regarding several hypothetical incidents, including a traffic accident, a robbery, and an apparent case of police brutality. Perhaps most significant, a close examination of those responses indicated that perceptions of impartial police protection were significantly related to people’s willingness to contact law enforcement officers in circumstances that required police intervention. Whereas inner-city residents who believed police officers did provide equal protection to various local groups were prepared to summon the police in such situations, those who perceived major disparities in police protection were hesitant about requesting assistance from law enforcement officers.79 Appraisals of differential police protection, therefore, seemed to form a major barrier to cooperation with police officers in many urban communities. The unwillingness of many citizens—white as well as black—to contact the police was a critical and persistent problem for law enforcement agencies. A major national survey which found that the crime rate was twice as high as recorded in official statistics also revealed that a lack of confidence in the police seemed to be a major cause of many persons’ refusal to inform them about illegal acts. Fifty-five percent of victims of crime who did not notify the police stated that “the most important reason” for their inaction was the belief that “the police would not be effective.” Although low-income black citizens were somewhat more reluctant than whites to report property crimes, the results of this study disclosed that a large proportion of both white and black victims of all types of crime neglected to contact the police because they believed there was little police could do about the matter.80 Public skepticism about the ability of police officers to handle their requests apparently did not lack empirical foundations. Although the national 116

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survey of illegal incidents revealed that 51 percent of crime victims did not notify a law enforcement agency, 23 percent of those who reported the event said the police did not come after their call. Fifty-six percent of the victims of crimes that did not produce a police response were dissatisfied with the outcome of the case—a level of dissatisfaction exceeded only among persons who did not report the incident, victims of crimes that did not yield an arrest, and those who believed the penalty imposed upon the offender was too lenient.81 A similar finding concerning public calls for police assistance was reported by another study that observed police procedures in three major cities. For many reasons, more than one-fourth of the mobilizations examined in this research did not occasion any interaction between a police officer and a civilian. Although many of the mobilizations dispatched by police radios did not involve crime-related events, 31 percent of those called failed to result in contacts with the public. In addition, police officers seemed intentionally to ignore several attempts by citizens to stop them on the street.82 Although many of the decisions to neglect public requests may have resulted from police discretion and their tendency to assign a higher priority to major crimes than to incidents that did not entail unlawful conduct, their failure to respond to some calls from citizens probably weakened public confidence in law enforcement agencies. CONCLUSION Perhaps the most important single reason for police officers’ inability to halt increases in crime was the failure of many people to contact the police. In addition, a significant proportion of the public had begun to exhibit a fundamental and potentially dangerous lack of confidence in the ability of the police to protect them from the threat of lawlessness and violence. Since police officers often defined their responsibilities solely as “combating crime,” many citizens seemed to regard law enforcement as having this single purpose. Furthermore, as the mounting fear of crime began to grip large groups of Americans, people were subjected to a heightened recognition of their dependence on the police for the preservation of conventional standards of social order. Because police departments seemingly failed to fulfill their only mission, law enforcement officers suffered a decline in public approval and cooperation. Although much of this criticism was unjustified, the strong emphasis placed on police protection by both the people and law enforcement agencies seemed to contribute to a serious loss of vital confidence. Many of police officers’ other duties, such as providing community services, may have offered an essential alternative source of respect, but those tasks appeared to be overshadowed by 117

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the attention focused on the problems of crime and police protection. By neglecting to stress the many other police activities that produce direct and perceptible benefits to the community, law enforcement agencies deprived themselves of a firm basis of popular support. NOTES 1. Jerome H. Skolnick, Justice Without Trial (New York: John Wiley, 1975), 50. 2. Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Career Orientations, Job Satisfaction, and the Assessment of Law Enforcement Problems by Police Officers,” in Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, n.d.), vol. 2, 21–22. 3. Peter H. Rossi, Richard A. Berk, David P. Boesel, Bettye K. Eidson, and W. Eugene Groves, “Between White and Black: The Faces of American Institutions in the Ghetto,” in Supplemental Studies for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 104–105. 4. Alan F. Arcuri, “Police Pride and Self-Esteem: Indications of Future Occupational Changes,” in Paul F. Cromwell Jr. and George Keefer, eds., Police-Community Relations Selected Readings, 2d ed. (St. Paul: West, 1978), 95. 5. James Q. Wilson, “Police Morale, Reform, and Citizen Respect: The Chicago Case,” in David J. Bordua, ed., The Police: Six Sociological Essays (New York: John Wiley, 1967), 147–149. 6. Arthur Niederhoffer, Behind the Shield (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), 225. 7. Mike Davis, City of Quartz (New York: Vintage, 1992). This, of course, does not mean police officers generally regard all members of the public as hostile or disrespectful. Muir estimated that a typically “uncertain officer” views about 20 percent of the population as not “governable” and as a threat to safety and security. William Ker Muir Jr., Police: Streetcorner Politicians (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 167. 8. Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Public Perceptions and Recollections About Crime, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice,” in Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, n.d.), vol. 1, 35. 9. Philip H. Ennis, Criminal Victimization in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 53. 10. Reiss, “Public Perceptions.” 11. Albert D. Biderman, Louise A. Johnson, Jennie McIntyre, and Adrianne W. Weir, Report on a Pilot Study in the District of Columbia on Victimization and Attitudes Toward Law Enforcement (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), 135–137. 12. Joseph D. Lohnan and Gordon E. Misner, The Police and the Community (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), vol. 1, 37–38, 51, 77, 177. 13. Reiss, “Public Perceptions,” 88–89. 14. Ennis, Criminal Victimization, 64–65. 15. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 49–50. 118

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16. Reiss, “Public Perceptions,” 36–37, 93–97. 17. Ennis, Criminal Victimization, 72–74; President’s Commission, Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 50–51. 18. David W. Abbott, Louis H. Gold, and Edward T. Rogowsky, Police, Politics, and Race: The New York City Referendum on Civilian Review (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 21–22. 19. In specific interactions, the attitude of police officers is naturally shaped by the mood of civilians. Reiss, for example, found that agitated suspects were especially apt to become targets of police hostility, but most citizens did not openly display antagonistic attitudes toward law enforcement personnel. Albert J. Reiss Jr., The Police and the Public (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 48–53. 20. Reiss., “Public Perceptions,” 31–33. 21. James Garofalo, Public Opinion About Crime: The Attitudes of Victims and Nonvictims in Selected Cities (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1977), 27–28, 87. 22. Garofalo, Public Opinion About Crime, 174, 190, 206, 222, 238. 23. Ibid., 25–34. 24. James Q. Wilson, “The Urban Unease: Community vs. City,” in Henry J. Schmandt and Warner Bloomberg Jr., eds., The Quality of Urban Life (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1969), 455–472. 25. Ennis, Criminal Victimization, 74; Abbott, Gold, and Rogowsky, Police, Politics, and Race, 22. 26. Reiss, “Public Perceptions,” 102–109. 27. Ibid., 104, 106–107, 111. 28. Ibid., 75–76; Abbott, Gold, and Rogowsky, Police, Politics, and Race, 22. 29. Joe R. Feagin, “Home-Defense and the Police: Black and White Perspectives,” American Behavioral Scientist 13 (May-June-July-August 1970): 797–814. 30. The implications of the findings appear to raise serious questions about the extent to which America actually fulfills Max Weber’s classic definition of a state as a “human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” See Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 78. 31. Richard J. Lundman, Police and Policing: An Introduction (New York: Rinehart and Winston, 1980), 170. 32. Ward Just, “Leaders Must Use Language of Justice,” Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1968, G3. 33. Feagin, “Home-Defense and the Police,” 800–802. 34. Eric H. Monkkonen, Crime, Justice and History (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2002). 35. Lohnan and Misner, Police and the Community, vol. 2, 57. 36. Ibid. 37. Reiss, “Public Perceptions,” 58–64. 38. Reiss, “Career Orientations,” 79–81. 39. David H. Bayley and Harold Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police: Confrontation in America (New York: Free Press, 1969), 57–86. 119

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40. Jonathan Rubinstein, City Police (New York: Ballantine, 1973), 184. 41. Jack L. Preiss and Howard J. Ehrlich, An Examination of Role Theory: The Case of the State Police (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966), 133–136. 42. Ibid., 133–134. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. James Q. Wilson, “The Police and Their Problems: A Theory,” Public Policy 12 (1963): 189–216. 48. John P. Clark, “Isolation of the Police: A Comparison of the British and American Situations,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 61 (Fall 1965): 307–319. 49. Reiss, “Public Perceptions,” 41–45; see also, Bayley and Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police, 113. 50. Abbott, Gold, and Rogowsky, Police, Politics, and Race, 27–28. 51. Reiss, “Public Perceptions,” 69–71. 52. William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943), 136. 53. Richard L. Block, “Support for Civil Liberties and Support for the Police,” American Behavioral Scientist 13 (May-June-July-August 1970): 781–796. 54. Howard Schuman and Barry Gruenberg, “The Impact of City on Racial Attitudes,” American Journal of Sociology 76 (September 1970): 223–261; Peter H. Rossi and Richard A. Berk, “Local Political Leadership and Popular Discontent in the Ghetto,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 391 (September 1970): 111–127. 55. Judson L. Jeffries, “Police Brutality of Black Men and the Destruction of the African American Community,” Negro Educational Review (October 2001): 115–131. 56. Gary T. Marx, Protest and Prejudice (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 36– 37. 57. Louis Harris and William Brink, Black and White (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967), 234. 58. Bayley and Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police, 41, 111. 59. Reiss, “Public Perceptions,” 40–41. 60. Ibid., 55, 57–58, 80–88. 61. Joel D. Aberbach and Jack L. Walker, “The Attitudes of Blacks and Whites Toward City Services: Implications for Public Policy,” in John P. Crecine, ed., Financing the Metropolis: Public Policy in Urban Economies (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1970), 526–528. 62. John F. Kraft, Inc., “The Attitudes of Negroes in Various Cities,” in Federal Role in Urban Affairs, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, Committee on Government Operations, U.S. Senate, 89th Congress, 2d Session, August 31–September 1, 1966 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), vol. 6, 1389, 1400. 63. Harlan Hahn and Joe R. Feagin, “Riot-Precipitating Police Practices: Attitudes in Urban Ghettos,” Phylon 31 (Summer 1970): 187–188. 120

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64. Donald J. Black and Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Patterns of Behavior in Police and Citizen Transactions,” in Studies of Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, n.d.), vol. 2, 102. 65. Ibid., 80–88. 66. Walter J. Raine, The Perception of Police Brutality in South Central Los Angeles (Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Government and Public Affairs, 1967). 67. Bayley and Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police, 117–129. 68. Angus Campbell and Howard Schuman, “Racial Attitudes in Fifteen American Cities,” in Supplemental Studies for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 42–43. 69. Hahn and Feagin, “Riot-Precipitating Police Practices,” 187–189. 70. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 161. 71. For an insightful discussion of the effects of this policy, see Robert M. Fogelson, “From Resentment to Confrontation: The Police, the Negroes, and the Outbreak of the Nineteen-Sixties Riots,” Political Science Quarterly 83 (June 1968): 217–247. 72. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: The Police (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 23. 73. See the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 161– 162. 74. Hahn and Feagin, “Riot-Precipitating Police Practices,” 183–193. 75. Ibid., 190–191. 76. Harlan Hahn, “Ghetto Assessments of Police Protection and Authority,” Law and Society Review 6 (1971): 183–194. 77. Bayley and Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police, 113. 78. Ibid., 120–121. 79. Hahn, “Ghetto Assessments of Police Protection and Authority.” 80. Philip H. Ennis, Criminal Victimization in the United States: A Report of a National Survey (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 43–47. 81. Ibid., 47–51. 82. Black and Reiss, “Patterns of Behavior in Police and Citizen Transactions,” 17, 25.

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during the twentieth century was the conflict between police officers and racial minorities.1 From a persistent legacy of resentment and suspicion, police contacts with minority groups were not only a major source of animosity, but they sometimes erupted in heated—and on occasion violent—acts of apparent warfare. Whereas a significant number of black Americans and other disadvantaged groups viewed the police as agents of repression and injustice, some police officers regarded urban minorities as their principal adversaries. Not surprisingly, an intense sense of mutual hostility and mistrust developed over the years between minority groups and the police.2 A striking indication of this antagonism was revealed in the urban rebellions that swept through U.S. cities during the 1960s.3 As an expression of black discontent that produced staggering levels of death, injury, and destruction, the civil disorders dramatically demonstrated many urban residents’ willingness to defy the legal restrictions imposed on them by the established order.4 Consequently, the violence created increased burdens for law enforcement agencies. Not only were police actions often regarded as a major impetus for the disorders, but police were also charged with the responsibility of quelling the disorders. Although the revolts of the period 1964 to 1968 appeared to subside shortly thereafter, many of the issues that had triggered the violence remained unresolved for both urban residents and city police departments.5 Hence the responsibility of police officers in preventing or controlling urban violence was a pressing and persistent problem for law enforcement agencies. The conflict that flared into massive violence between mostly black citizens and police officers was undoubtedly one of the most tragic and significant NE OF THE MOST PRESSING ISSUES IN URBAN LAW ENFORCEMENT

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events in the history of law enforcement. As a strong perception of police abuse surfaced in many neighborhoods, the eruption of violence was apparently sparked by a seething sense of indignation that persisted among many residents for decades.6 WHITE POLICE OFFICERS IN THE BLACK COMMUNITY The controversy over police behavior in urban settings had its origins in an extensive historical tradition of abrasive encounters between minority groups and law enforcement. For many decades police practices not only were controlled by the white elite, but they also were strongly influenced by the racial prejudice that pervaded U.S. society. The primary objective of white voters and politicians was to prevent both slave and free black persons from disrupting a segregated social structure, and the police served as an essential instrument of that policy. For the vast majority of black Americans living in the South and for many others residing in the North, the police were regarded as the agents of oppressive political institutions rather than as a source of protection from crime and violence. Police officers frequently were guilty of inflicting extra-legal punishment on black citizens, and they commonly failed to provide blacks with security against unlawful white attacks. In addition, black citizens were arbitrarily denied the right to join police forces or to pursue other means of promoting changes in law enforcement activities.7 The actions of police officers during much of American history were founded on legal regulations that seemed to reflect common racist assumptions. The laws in northern as well as southern states not only prevented black people from achieving impartial treatment, but many statutes were expressly designed to force them into a position of social and political inferiority. Neither the law nor its enforcement by police officers guaranteed black citizens equality in the prevailing system of criminal justice. Hence black disapproval of the police also reflected their opposition to the discriminatory measures police officers were authorized to administer. As a result, for many years the principal goal of many black Americans, especially in the South, was to avoid police intervention in the affairs of their communities. In part, this perspective seemed to gain at least the tacit acceptance of white law enforcement officers. Although the police were prepared to impose stringent and frequently cruel penalties on black suspects accused of committing crimes against white persons, they often appeared to adopt a passive or indifferent attitude toward illegal conduct by blacks against other blacks. Gunnar Myrdal provided a particularly interesting account of the be124

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havior of police officers in black communities during an earlier period of history. In his classic study An American Dilemma, he stated: Police service to Negro communities is limited largely to radio cruising cars. A map of their routes through Atlanta’s Negro sections, however, shows that they do not go through the areas where most Negro homicides occur, but rather stay on the main thoroughfares which are given over largely to business purposes. Too often the police go into the Negro community only when called, as it were, to umpire Negro brawls, or even more often to pick up members of the “enemy” faction. . . . The real function served by the police in many Southern communities seems to be limited to rounding up vagrants, loiterers, crap shooters, noncooperating prostitutes, and drunks. These occasional arresting excursions serve several purposes: they keep the Negroes intimidated, they maintain arrest quotas, they earn money for the police court, and sometimes they help preserve order.8

Since the presence of white police officers in black neighborhoods created the danger of additional oppression, residents similarly sought to refrain from contacting local police departments. As a result, many black communities became, at least to some extent, self-policing. Black southerners made few demands on law enforcement agencies, and police officers tended to neglect offenses in black areas that did not arouse the wrath of the white population. The relationship between police officers and black citizens seemed to reflect important changes as a result of the increasing migration to the North that occurred during the World War I era. Although black northerners were greeted by several racial conflicts in which police officers reacted by aiding white attackers rather than impartially restoring order,9 those incidents appeared confined largely to riotous situations. Moreover, the police violence to which black migrants were subjected in the North, tragic as it was, did not seem to parallel the numerous lynchings that were tolerated or encouraged by southern law enforcement during this period. Whereas black citizens may have encountered comparable problems with law enforcement officers in northern cities, they were to some extent able to escape some of the most blatant forms of police discrimination and injustice they had experienced in the South.10 In addition, black residents in some cities in the North were apparently successful in gaining employment with police departments. For example, by 1930 in Chicago, 2.2 percent (137) of the 6,163 police officers on the force were black. Although two-thirds of those men were assigned to predominantly black neighborhoods, their presence on the force seemed to represent a modest advance from the days when rigid barriers of racial discrimination maintained local police departments as exclusively white organizations.11

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Subsequent progress in the integration of urban police departments was slow, but it was not completely imperceptible. Although a study of the nation’s twenty largest cities in 1950 disclosed that the mean proportion of black law enforcement officers in those departments was only 3.1 percent, by that date Chicago had hired approximately 275 black officers, and other northern cities reported similar contingents.12 The number of African Americans on the Philadelphia police force increased from 35 in 1884 to 60 by 1890 and to 100 by 1905. The number peaked at 260 in 1920, dropped to 219 by 1930, and declined for the next twenty years. By 1950, only 195 African Americans served on a Philadelphia force of more than 4,500 officers. Still, Philadelphia and Chicago were a step ahead of other northern cities and light-years ahead of southern cities in hiring black police officers. By contrast, a 1947 survey revealed a total of only 221 black police officers in forty-one cities throughout the South.13 By 1960 an estimated 3.6 percent of all sworn officers in the United States were African American.14 As integration proceeded in many northern cities, the issue of promotions or advancement rather than membership in the force apparently became a concern for black personnel. The entrance of black officers into police ranks did not cause racial prejudice among white officers to suddenly decline. According to a survey conducted in the Philadelphia Police Department during the 1950s, 59 percent of the white officers stated that they would “object to riding with a Negro patrolman.”15 Although 94 percent of those officers allegedly felt “it is a good thing to have some Negroes on the police force,” 57 percent thought a white community would object “to having a Negro policeman assigned to that area,” and 76 percent believed “a Negro patrolman should be assigned to a Negro neighborhood.” Furthermore, 52 percent of the white police officers claimed they had “found it necessary to be more strict with Negro law violators than with white violators.”16 Racial intolerance, therefore, apparently remained strong within major urban police departments in the North during the decade following World War II. Despite the racial discrimination that continued to permeate law enforcement practices, black attitudes toward policemen gradually appeared to shift in a favorable direction. As black citizens in the North achieved the rights to vote and to participate in other government programs, they also began to develop the expectation that law enforcement officers would treat them similarly to whites. Unlike the earlier perceptions of many black Americans living in the South, police officers were generally regarded as impartial administrators of the law rather than as agents of an oppressive political regime. As a 126

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result, a growing number of black residents of northern cities seemed to acquire confidence in the equality of police procedures, and they began to call upon the police for assistance. Although this changing assessment of police functions had numerous consequences, perhaps the most direct and visible effects were reflected in an apparent growth of crime in black neighborhoods. As some blacks overcame their reluctance to notify the police about illegal acts, the number of crimes known to the police seemed to increase precipitously. In fact, some observers have contended that one of the principal reasons for the sharp rise in the urban crime rate since World War II was the increased willingness of black citizens “to report crimes in their neighborhoods.”17 Perhaps the primary response of law enforcement agencies to this dramatic growth in reported offenses was reflected in the assignment of patrolmen in precincts with high crime rates. As a result of techniques developed early in the twentieth century, many police departments had adopted a strategy for the “proportional distribution” of manpower based on the incidence of law enforcement problems in different sectors of the city.18 Although police forces probably continued to provide greater protection for affluent commercial and residential areas than for low-income black communities, this program may have augmented the presence of police in predominantly black neighborhoods. As historian Robert M. Fogelson concluded in 1968, “Negro ghettos are . . . more thoroughly and intensively policed today than Irish, Italian, and other ethnic ghettos were two generations ago.”19 To some extent, the policy was also self-perpetuating. Increased police surveillance of urban ghettos may have occasioned a larger number of arrests, thereby producing a higher crime rate that bolstered the justification for placing additional personnel in those neighborhoods. One of the principal effects of growing black confidence in impartial law enforcement, therefore, was to expand the scope of police influence in innercity communities. As black citizens seemingly became less hesitant to call the police, those crime reports provided a basis for strengthening law enforcement officers’ authority. Not only were police officers available to respond to local requests for assistance, but they were also able to confront black persons at their own initiative. As a result, the larger numbers of police officers in urban areas seemed to increase the opportunities for abrasive or unwelcome encounters between law enforcement officers and local residents. Although black Americans in northern cities began to gain the advantages of added police protection, they were also increasingly exposed to the punitive aspects of law enforcement practices. 127

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As discussed in Chapter 4, the seemingly ubiquitous presence of patrolmen in black neighborhoods may have received a major impetus from the mounting trend toward professionalization in large city police departments. In an effort to reduce the crime rate in urban communities, police adopted the practice of “aggressive preventive patrolling,” or stopping to interrogate and to search or “frisk” persons who exhibited suspicious behavior. By employing such tactics, law enforcement agencies hoped to prevent the commission of crimes before they occurred. Since the goal of preventing undesirable phenomena was a major tenet of professionalism in other occupations, the application of this concept to the problem of crime seemed highly consistent with professional police procedure. Yet this policy also had the effect of increasing contacts between inner-city residents and police officers that were initiated by police officers rather than encounters that represented a response to calls for assistance. As a result, black citizens increasingly became the subjects rather than the beneficiaries of police action. Although aggressive preventive patrolling in areas with high crime rates was usually justified as a deterrent to illegal acts, no effective means was developed for ascertaining the amount of crime such activity prevented. In fact, some evidence indicated that patrolmen tended to overestimate the value of this procedure. According to a survey of the officers who patrolled black neighborhoods in eleven major cities, 56 percent guessed that half or more of the persons they stopped were found to be carrying a weapon such as a gun or a knife “that might lead to a crime.” In addition, half of the officers believed that at least four of every ten people stopped on the streets were wanted for other crimes.20 Although no reliable statistics demonstrated the actual efficiency of “stop and frisk” techniques in locating fugitives from justice, studies conducted in high-crime areas for the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice disclosed that just 10 percent of the persons searched by police officers were found to be carrying guns, and another 10 percent were carrying knives.21 Apart from the effects of preventive patrolling on public cooperation with the police, the importance of this policy as an instrument of law enforcement was not definitively established by careful studies of police practices. Despite the absence of conclusive evidence to demonstrate their effectiveness, both the proportional distribution of personnel and the use of stop and frisk tactics in neighborhoods with high crime rates were adopted by an expanding number of urban police departments. Such practices were supplemented by other technical innovations, including improved methods of transportation and communication that seemed consistent with the movement toward 128

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professionalization. Perhaps the major impact of this trend, therefore, was to increase the distrust and estrangement that separated minority residents and law enforcement officers. As patrol cars began to replace the cop on the beat and as the police exercised aggressive methods of investigating suspicious conduct, many black citizens were prevented from interacting with police officers in unofficial situations or in circumstances where police intervention was requested rather than uninvited. Instead of denoting a response to calls for police services, contacts with police officers gradually acquired the aura of an encounter with the awesome force of legal authority.22 The utilization of supposedly modern law enforcement practices not only seemed to deny inner-city residents the opportunity to gain an understanding of police officers, but it also appeared to deprive police officers of valuable sources of information and experience in the black community. For example, the survey of patrolmen in eleven cities disclosed that 49 percent of the officers could not name five or more adult leaders in the neighborhood, and 59 percent could not recall an equivalent number of important teenage or youth leaders.23 Furthermore, most police officers apparently had not had extensive informal contacts with black citizens elsewhere. A study conducted in Denver found that only 8 percent of police officers listed black residents among their social friends, and only 18 percent “said they had Negro friends to whom they could say what they really thought.”24 In general, police contacts with ghetto residents were increasingly limited by law enforcement officers’ preoccupation with preventing or controlling crime. Since police departments adopted the fight against illegal acts as their primary mission, they sought to enforce the law uniformly in both white and black neighborhoods with tactics that for the most part seemed appropriate to that objective. Yet the use of impersonal and supposedly nondiscriminatory tactics such as preventive patrolling appeared to arouse public resentment rather than praise. As a result, many police administrators became intensely frustrated by their apparent inability to gain the confidence of black Americans. Perhaps one of the major difficulties affecting the relationship between police officers and black citizens was the exercise of police discretion. Although the application of universalistic standards for judging public conduct undoubtedly eliminated some of the most obvious forms of discrimination and injustice in police work, law enforcement agencies did not devise adequate means of ensuring that police authority was imposed in a totally impartial and unbiased manner. In fact, by encouraging officers to investigate all forms of suspicious conduct, preventive patrolling appeared to extend rather 129

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than restrict the discretion available to the average cop on the beat. As Robert Fogelson noted, “Police discretion, which is applied everywhere in urban America and with satisfactory results in white neighborhoods, does not work well in Negro ghettos because the police, not knowing which Negroes to ignore, check them all.”25 The problem of police discretion was probably intensified by the low quality of law enforcement personnel assigned to predominantly black neighborhoods. As Albert J. Reiss Jr. testified before the President’s Commission to investigate the causes of ghetto violence: “I think we confront in modern urban police departments in large cities much of what we encounter in our schools, in these cities. The slum police precinct is like the slum-school. It gets, with few exceptions, the worst in the system.”26 Since patrol duty in urban areas seldom provided the status necessary to attract superior police officers, the least qualified and least experienced police officers on the force were often granted the greatest discretion in black neighborhoods. Although manifestations of intolerance seemed to decline in police organizations, as well as in other social institutions, those sentiments remained a basic element of the beliefs of some law enforcement officers. A survey in Denver, for example, found that 36 percent of police officers in that city would be upset by attending a party where most of the guests were black, and 85 percent said they would be disturbed if a member of their family chose a black marriage partner. Although police officers scored only slightly higher than white members of the public on a general measure of racial prejudice, the responses reflected a desire by police officers to avoid close personal contact with black residents of the city.27 Perhaps the clearest evidence of racial antagonism was displayed in police assessments of the movement for racial equality and other attempts to improve the position of black Americans. According to the 1969 survey of police officers in eleven large cities, 60 percent believed black citizens were moving “too fast” in their efforts to achieve equal rights. In addition, 82 percent felt police behavior toward black persons was better than or equal to their treatment of whites, and 81 percent made a similar judgment about the conduct of public officials. Interestingly, 72 percent of the police denied that black residents were the victims of inequality in medical care and education.28 A study of the Detroit police department found that a majority of lowerranked white officers believed black residents were treated fairly in several areas, including housing, schools, employment, welfare, business, and law enforcement; in fact, a majority stated that black citizens even had an advantage in fields such as education and welfare.29 Apparently, the perceptions of 130

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many white police officers did not encompass either a recognition of the existence of racial discrimination or an appreciation of black efforts to gain equal opportunities. Police officers also expressed special enmity toward organized civil rights activities. In the study of inner-city patrolmen in eleven cities, 75 percent of the white law enforcement officers claimed their work had become more difficult because of the actions of civil rights groups. Similarly, in the Denver survey, police officers ranked civil rights workers as the least cooperative and sympathetic segment of the community.30 Although police sentiments may have been shaped in part by the criticism of their practices that emanated from civil rights groups, their attitudes also seemed to denote a basic problem in understanding the needs and aspirations of black Americans. Numerous restrictions were imposed to prevent law enforcement officers from displaying racial prejudice in the performance of their duties, but some evidence indicated that personal attitudes and perspectives can exert an important influence on police officers’ conduct. For example, an analysis of the survey of patrolmen in eleven cities revealed that police perceptions of local hostility were more closely related to the personal traits of white officers than to actual differences among the cities. The attributes most strongly associated with police appraisals of ghetto sentiments included age, levels of racial prejudice, and the extent of acquaintance with inhabitants of the neighborhood. Whereas highly prejudiced young police officers with few acquaintances in the area were most apt to view minority residents as intensely hostile to police authority, older and less prejudiced officers tended to perceive lower levels of hostility.31 The individual characteristics of law enforcement officers apparently had a major impact on police perceptions and behavior. The potential dangers implicit in the exercise of police discretion in urban enclaves were probably intensified by personal factors such as racial bias and a lack of familiarity with the community. Perhaps the most serious evidence of racial intolerance among police officers was reflected in their opinions concerning crime and lawlessness in predominantly black neighborhoods. Although the proportion of police officers favoring a differential application of the law among racial groups had apparently declined somewhat, the 1966 Denver survey revealed that approximately one of every three policemen in that city still believed that both black and Mexican American residents required stricter law enforcement practices than other segments of the population.32 This finding was generally confirmed by a study conducted in three Michigan communities, which discovered that 52 percent of the police officers there agreed with the statement “most Negroes 131

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have lower morals than whites.”33 Although such responses seemed to reflect definite racial prejudice and stereotyping, they were also molded by the peculiar character of police experiences in crime-ridden neighborhoods. Since law enforcement officers frequently confronted the public during moments of personal weakness and trauma, they tended to develop perspectives that emphasized law-breaking rather than law-abiding facets of human behavior. Perhaps the distorted images produced by their exposure to violations of the law in high-crime areas, combined with a strong innate racism, greatly impaired some officers’ ability to objectively assess pressing social issues and problems. THE POLICE AND URBAN VIOLENCE Further evidence of this distinctive police orientation was reflected in their opinions about the causes of the violence that erupted in many U.S. cities in the 1960s. In the survey of police officers who worked in urban areas in eleven major cities, half of the white officers attributed the urban uprisings to social deficiencies within the black community, and only 21 percent ascribed the blame to the failure of political or social institutions to resolve persistent grievances. When the police officers were asked specifically about six possible interpretations of the violence, 34 percent endorsed the view that the rebellions were produced by nationalists or militants, 74 percent said they were the work of criminal elements in the ghetto, and 33 percent simply asserted that “Negroes are basically violent and disrespectful.” Only 24 percent agreed that unmet black needs ignited the violence, and just 4 percent believed the violence was caused by “police brutality.”34 According to a 1968 study conducted in Detroit, most white officers thought the violence in that city was inspired by agitators or militants, unrestrained self-interest, or the violent mood of the times.35 In evaluating the origins of urban unrest and in viewing other social problems, law enforcement officers usually tended to stress individualistic explanations. Police officers seldom considered either social and economic forces or deficiencies in existing institutions as a source of conflict or unlawful acts. The perceptions of white police officers, of course, contrasted sharply with the attitudes of most black Americans. Numerous surveys of urban neighborhoods, which exploded in violence, revealed that black citizens identified discrimination and deprivation associated with housing, employment, education, and other policies as the primary reasons for the uprisings.36 Furthermore, a large proportion of city residents who witnessed a serious outbreak of violence also mentioned improper law enforcement practices as an important cause. According to research conducted in the Watts section of Los Angeles, 132

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for example, 21 percent of the black persons interviewed said police mistreatment was one of the main sources of the upheaval there in 1965.37 A survey conducted shortly after the upheaval in Detroit revealed that black citizens ranked “police brutality” at the top of a list of twenty-three possible reasons for the violence.38 Although most black residents apparently attributed the revolts to persistent problems arising from social and economic inequality, mounting local complaints about police behavior also may have constituted a major impetus for the upheavals.39 Although the outbreak of urban violence seemed to dramatize the sharp disagreements that had developed between white police and the black residents of urban areas, relatively few subsequent efforts were made to resolve— or even confront—the issues that divided them. In fact, when Detroit police were asked why a local survey discovered that many black residents regarded police abuse as a primary cause of the uprisings there, incredulously, most white officers in the department simply referred to the “antisocial nature of the black community.”40 The seemingly jaded and highly individualistic perspective of white police officers thus provided them with a convenient interpretation for the apparent inconsistency between their views and the attitudes of the black community. Many black citizens remained equally convinced that police act primarily as the representatives of a brutal and repressive white power structure. In the midst of this controversy, little attention was devoted to the structural characteristics of police practices that may have provoked the conflict. Consequently, even by the most generous estimate, only minimal progress was made in resolving the problems that sparked the uprisings. The relationship between black residents and predominantly white police forces continued to exhibit indications of a growing—and potentially disastrous— polarization. In the study of inner-city patrolmen in eleven cities, 30 percent of white officers labeled “most Negroes” as their “enemies,” 43 percent applied that designation to “most young adults,” and 52 percent employed the term in describing their relationship with “most adolescents.” Surprisingly, even some black police officers used the word enemy to characterize the same three groups.41 Instead of viewing their work as a law enforcement responsibility, many police officers apparently regarded their activities in slum neighborhoods as a type of militaristic warfare. The mounting conflict between police officers and black citizens was seemingly promoted both by the historical animosities that permeated race relations in America and by the organizational practices law enforcement agencies had adopted in urban communities. As many city police departments 133

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began to employ the techniques of preventive patrolling and stop and frisk procedures in areas with high crime rates, the incidence of disagreeable encounters with police officers rose perceptibly. Although no attempts were made to estimate the total number of persons stopped by police officers in slum areas, one study in San Diego revealed that approximately 20,000 field interrogation reports were prepared each month, and perhaps an equal number of such confrontations did not result in the filing of a report.42 The policy of aggressive preventive patrolling undoubtedly subjected a large number of black residents in many cities to irritating contacts with police officers. As police themselves admitted, few persons who were stopped and questioned by law enforcement officers tended to react in a congenial manner. In the survey of inner-city police in eleven cities, 80 percent acknowledged that people generally dislike being searched. Thirty percent of the officers reported that most persons “respond finally under threats and pressure,” and 11 percent stated that the typical stop and frisk incident provoked physical resistance by the suspect. Only 9 percent believed members of the public were usually cooperative in such circumstances.43 Both the volume and the annoying or harassing nature of search and interrogation procedures produced a strong legacy of public grievances about police behavior in predominantly black urban neighborhoods. Some research has indicated that public hostility toward police officers may have been especially prevalent in areas that experienced serious turmoil. A study completed after the Newark revolts in 1967, for example, revealed that 49 percent of black residents but only 5 percent of whites in that city believed the police were “too brutal.”44 Another survey that compared white and black attitudes in Watts concluded that “the races [were] polarized more over the issue of the police than over any other single question.”45 Perhaps the most striking evidence of criticism of police practices was discovered by a survey undertaken in the Twelfth Street area of Detroit shortly after the 1967 upheaval. Although the results of the investigation disclosed higher levels of general militancy and discontent in that neighborhood than were found by comparable studies conducted elsewhere,46 the expression of disapproval of law enforcement issues seemed unusually strong. For example, 92 percent of the black residents of the community denied that “all laws are enforced equally.” Similarly, 81 percent believed police officers in Detroit treated some groups better than others rather than treating “all people the same.” Seventy-eight percent stated that before the uprisings, police officers were “mainly interested in trying to keep things quiet” rather than “in trying to help the people in this neighborhood.” An overwhelming proportion of 134

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persons living in the area were intensely critical both of police officers and of the legislative and judicial codes that served as the foundation for their actions: “People who accepted a conventional belief in the impartiality of the law and its enforcement formed a small minority. The prevailing consensus supported the position that injustice pervaded the entire legal system.”47 In many respects, black objections to police practices seemed to reflect an even more basic criticism of the nature of political authority. In a fundamental sense, police officers have acted as the local representatives of a massive legal and judicial system created and dominated for centuries by white Americans. Although this structure was charged with the responsibility of dispensing justice impartially to all citizens, the process of criminal justice frequently appeared to perpetuate the influence of the white majority by preventing black citizens from gaining equal treatment before the law. Since black Americans often were excluded from participation in framing the statutes and rules that govern society, they have failed to express strong support for the servants of a legal system that has commonly worked to their disadvantage. To a large degree, police officers were and continue to be the most immediate targets of an underlying resentment of white legal and political institutions. In addition, established political processes have frequently been attacked for their lack of responsiveness to the needs of minority neighborhoods. In the view of many black citizens, the white majority and its public officials have not only tended to neglect the needs of urban communities, but they have also been reluctant to relinquish their dominion over those communities. Hence according to many black residents, the only interest white Americans have displayed concerning black communities has been in controlling them. Moreover, the police have comprised the major vehicle through which the white public and political leaders have sought to exert this control. To a large segment of the black population, law enforcement officers have personified both a type of political authority in which they have been prevented from participating and a manifestation of whites’ unwillingness to surrender their domination of black communities. As a result, police officers were often perceived as an army of occupation or as agents of an alien colonial administration.48 The ever-present sojourns of white police officers in black neighborhoods constantly reminded residents of their subjugation to the authority and control of legal institutions they had little part in creating. Again, increasing black resentment of law enforcement practices seemed to form a major impetus for the violence that exploded in many ghetto communities during the 1960s. The results of several surveys of black attitudes revealed that strong disapproval of police conduct was closely related to public 135

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support for the uprisings as a way of bringing attention to the degraded way of life to which many had been consigned.49 In addition, the role of police behavior in spawning the violence was frequently demonstrated by the precipitating incident, or the event that sparked the upheavals. The outbreak of violence not only was inspired by a mounting dissatisfaction with police procedures, but it was also frequently triggered by the specific acts of a police officer. As the President’s Commission on Civil Disorders concluded, “Almost invariably the incident that ignites disorder arises from police action.”50 Although some smaller disturbances as well as the revolts that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 were provoked by other factors,51 the involvement of police officers at the start of many of the nation’s most serious and destructive outbreaks of urban violence appeared to be more than coincidental. In many upheavals, the particular act that triggered the disorders seemed to be a relatively innocuous police practice. In each case, however, the actions of police officers appeared to spark a smoldering antagonism that probably could not have been dampened indefinitely. Police officers’ critical role in urban violence was demonstrated by their involvement both at the start and at subsequent stages of the disorders. During most serious upheavals, the police, as well as stores and businesses, were the main targets of public animosity. As the principal agents responsible for imposing the legal restrictions of the outside society on minority communities, law enforcement officers have been natural targets of hostility and aggression. In addition, however, the assaults on law enforcement officers during major upheavals may have signified other objectives. By directing their anger at police officers and local retailers, rioters seemed to exhibit their disrespect both for the primary representatives of the legal order and for the personal and property rights that comprise the normative bases of political authority.52 Several studies have disclosed a striking parallel between the attitudes of police officers and those of merchants concerning crime, race relations, protest, and rebellions.53 The attacks on police officers and store owners thus may have been related to a broader political goal of assailing established social institutions and forms of authority. In a fundamental sense, moreover, the revolts represented a deliberate repudiation of external social controls and a continuing defiance of attempts by law enforcement agencies to reimpose conventional restraints on the community. During inner-city uprisings, crowds that formed spontaneously on the streets usually established their own rules of behavior to replace the regulations previously enforced by police officers. Although the newly created norms of the aggrieved frequently protected innocent bystanders and black 136

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merchants from harm, perhaps their principal impact was to condone acts of violence against police officers and local businesses. By substituting their own moral judgments for the legal codes prescribed by public officers, the participants in rebellions seemed to form a separate rule-making community. Their rejection of the regulations enacted by supposedly legitimate political institutions therefore necessitated strong police intervention to preserve the existing authority of the state. The role of police officers in major uprisings, however, often seemed to intensify rather than reduce the level of violence. In general, police effectiveness during ghetto uprisings was sharply impeded by a prevailing lack of confidence in law enforcement activities. One researcher noted that “police officers, in their attempt to enforce a higher authority, are perceived by inner city residents more as a causal factor than a deterrent of riot behavior.”54 Since police officers often were considered responsible both for the growth of discontent and for the events that precipitated the upheavals, their actions in a serious riot seldom drew support or approval from persons living in a neighborhood that erupted in violence. Indeed, police behavior during revolts frequently became an additional source of criticism. The results of the survey conducted in the Twelfth Street area of Detroit shortly after the unrest of 1967, for example, revealed that many persons apparently perceived police conduct as reprehensible during the violence. More than half of neighborhood residents disapproved of the manner in which police officers had treated local people before the violence, and 31 percent also stated that police behavior grew worse during the violence. Perhaps the most striking fact disclosed by the survey was that 81 percent of the residents reported hearing “stories that some policemen were involved in taking things or in burning stores” during the rebellions.55 Although concrete evidence of police participation in illegal acts such as arson and looting was difficult to obtain or evaluate, rumors of such incidents apparently were widely circulated and believed in minority neighborhoods. Regardless of the accuracy of the charges, the actions of law enforcement officers during the rebellions did not appear to provide a strong basis for public compliance with police efforts to end the disorders or to restore their authority in the ghetto after the violence had subsided. In addition, law enforcement agencies frequently were verbally attacked for exerting unnecessary physical force or violence during the unrest. In a study of several major rebellions, the deaths, injuries, and damage initiated by police conduct greatly exceeded the amount of force perpetrated by participants.56 In addition to several well-publicized cases of seemingly unjustifiable 137

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violence committed by police,57 police actions in urban revolts undoubtedly imposed greater hardships and suffering on the residents of ghetto communities than the aggrieved inflicted on police officers. As a result, the “official violence” produced by precipitous police behavior during the disorders was a source of grave ethical and legal concern. Although the growing recognition that black residents were the principal victims of violence in urban ghettos may have contributed to the gradual decline of major uprisings, the use of excessive force by police officers during those incidents also seemed to promote an increasing—and potentially disastrous—loss of confidence in the authority of law enforcement officers. The burdens imposed on police forces in major disorders seemed to exceed the obligations of nearly all other government bureaus. Police intervention in violent incidents often reflected the failure of public officials to resolve divisive conflict. Since the outbreak of rioting was usually provoked by the accumulation of public grievances, the willingness of government leaders to summon the police frequently signified the inability of normal political processes to satisfy civic demands in an equitable and responsive manner. When all other channels of conciliation and negotiation collapsed, police officers were usually asked to curb the popular unrest elected officials were incapable of assuaging.58 As a result, the tasks of implementing riot control policies have probably been among the most demanding responsibilities required of any government agency. Despite the importance of police functions in controlling serious disorders, relatively little systematic attention has been devoted to this issue. An examination of violence in U.S. cities during the early twentieth century, for example, concluded that “in almost every major disorder local police forces have been ineffective and inefficient.”59 Furthermore, the actions of police officers in the violence of the 1960s did not appear to reflect a demonstrable improvement. Although police conduct in the latter incidents seemed to change from a passive to a more aggressive approach, another study found that law enforcement officers’ efforts to end ghetto unrest were frequently hindered by the use of inappropriate riot control strategies, a lack of coordination among various agencies of social control, and the breakdown of police organizations.60 Police departments seldom developed extensive plans for curbing civil disorders. In fact, one investigation, which found that the intensity of riot activity in cities reflected the patterns of a cumulative scale, also discovered that the preparation of a special riot control plan was directly related to the severity of urban uprisings.61 Although this association may have indicated either that the plans contributed to the escalation of rebellions or that plan138

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ning was confined primarily to cities with a high propensity for violence, it did not seem to support the proposition that police forces have been successful in developing effective disorder control techniques. In general, police efforts to stop urban unrest were plagued by what can be termed the problem of “undercontrol and overcontrol.”62 Whereas many persons have argued that the police should employ an impressive display of strength immediately after the outbreak of disorders to deter further unrest, others have urged that law enforcement should adopt a relatively passive approach to avoid inciting additional violence. The alternatives available to police administrators seeking to control a major disorder have posed an agonizing paradox. Although outbreaks of violence have usually been overcome by the superior force of law enforcement, the presence of police officers in urban neighborhoods also has apparently contributed to both the outbreak and the escalation of many disorders. As a result, the general features of urban upheavals have seldom suggested a simple or an easily discernible method of ending the violence. Perhaps at least one basis for resolving this dilemma was provided by the perceptions of slum residents who had experienced a serious disorder. Although police considerations of riot control usually focused on technical issues such as the mobilization and deployment of personnel, the development of rapid communication systems, and the acquisition of weapons,63 public reactions to the techniques police officers used in attempting to stop riots frequently seemed to be even more critical to their success. Perhaps the primary purpose of riot control measures, as well as nearly all other law enforcement activities, has been to secure public compliance with legal authority. Inner-city assessments of disorder control strategies thus have probably had a critical impact on their effectiveness. Although many police administrators seemed to assume that inner-city residents would express as much hostility toward rebellion control efforts as they displayed toward other police activities, the results of a survey conducted in Detroit after the 1967 revolts failed to confirm that supposition. Black residents appeared evenly divided on several basic disorder control issues. Approximately half of the residents believed that “if the police had gotten tough right away . . . they could have stopped the trouble then,” but another half believed this tactic “would have made matters worse.” Fifty-four percent thought the force applied by police officers to stop the rebellions was “too strong,” whereas 24 percent said it was “about right” and 22 percent stated that it was “not strong enough.” Perhaps most important, the study revealed that persons who felt police officers had exercised early self-restraint and did 139

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not perceive police conduct as deteriorating during the riots also tended to favor relatively strong riot control measures and to approve of the methods Detroit police officers used to end the violence. In addition, many urban residents who believed police officers had been prevented from using sufficient force at the beginning of the rebellions also predicted that the behavior of neighborhood police officers would improve in the aftermath of the violence. The evidence indicated, therefore, that an appreciable segment of the neighborhood may have been willing to accept an impressive display of strength and firm measures to control violence, provided strict restraints were imposed on the use of force by police officers and that police conduct was not viewed as deteriorating during the revolts.64 Although public attitudes may have constituted a more extensive basis of support for riot control functions than many police officers expected, they also seemed to impose some essential limitations on police activities. PREVENTING URBAN VIOLENCE Although police officers were apparently granted the opportunity to utilize riot control measures designed to secure public cooperation in a serious outbreak of violence, those methods did not provide a solution to many continuing problems and sources of tension that had produced the violence in black neighborhoods. In military terms, the conflict between police officers and urban residents seemingly changed from massive confrontations in violent battle to sporadic and clandestine acts of guerrilla warfare. As many persons experienced the crushing force exerted in police attempts to control serious revolts, resentment of law enforcement officers in inner-city communities appeared to shift to less dramatic—but even more dangerous—actions. In 1968, for example, a neighborhood in Cleveland exploded into an armed skirmish between black residents and law enforcement officers.65 Subsequently, periodic battles began to occur in many urban enclaves between police agencies and black radical organizations such as the Black Panther Party and the Republic of New Africa. Numerous events, therefore, indicated that black animosity toward the police had not subsided appreciably. Just as a sizable percentage of police office viewed most black citizens as their principal enemies, an increasing proportion of urban residents began to regard police officers as their antagonists. In the aftermath of serious upheavals, the relationship between police officers and black Americans appeared to be worse than it had been before the violence erupted. One of the disturbing effects of the cessation of urban rebellions was that no significant movement emerged to remedy either the social and economic 140

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conditions or the police problems that had ignited the violence. In fact, law enforcement officers’ principal response to the revolts was apparently expressed in their demands for increased power to repress further disorders. A study of Detroit police after the uprisings in 1967, for example, revealed that a large majority of white officers below the rank of lieutenant suggested more stringent laws or more efficient police work rather than social action programs or improved police-community relations as the principal means of preventing future violence.66 In addition, many police officers strongly objected to proposals such as the recommendations of the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders that called for major police reforms and expanded government programs to alleviate the plight of black Americans. In a survey of six occupational groups—including police officers, educators, social workers, political activists, merchants, and employers—that worked in the urban areas of fifteen major cities, police officers comprised the only group that disagreed with the findings of the Kerner Commission report by a substantial majority. In addition, 57 percent of police officers predicted that the report would have no effect on their own community.67 In general, most white citizens seemed to share the perspectives of law enforcement officers concerning appropriate means of averting continued violence. According to a survey of people living in the same fifteen cities, a majority of whites but fewer than one-tenth of black residents proposed “more police control” as the most important method of preventing further violence.68 Furthermore, those sentiments paralleled the attitudes of national legislators. Research conducted in 1967 revealed that a majority of members of Congress ranked measures such as increased penalties for rioters and “larger, betterpaid police forces” as “of great importance” in avoiding a recurrence of the disorders.69 Perhaps most important, however, white Americans’ growing cry for the repression of civil disorders and violence appeared to impose mounting pressure on law enforcement officers and political leaders. In a study of three Michigan communities, only 21 percent of police officers agreed with the statement that “to control future revolts effectively, Negroes must be taught a lesson and kept in their place by force,” but 24 percent said their fellow officers felt that way, and 57 percent believed their friends held that viewpoint.70 Although the Michigan police officers’ specific responses seemed to raise vexing problems of interpretation, evidence from many sources indicated that law enforcement agencies had been subjected to increasing attempts by the white public and its political representatives to influence the conduct of law enforcement.

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CONCLUSION The growing demand for police repression of urban revolts posed a serious threat to other forms of protest and dissent. As white citizens became increasingly alarmed by the menace of crime and violence, they called on local police departments to quash many peaceful as well as unlawful expressions of social discontent. Consequently, police officers received extensive public support for the use of “official violence” to end troublesome demonstrations. As a result of the actions of the Chicago police toward antiwar protestors during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, for example, the phrase police riot entered the vocabulary of law enforcement through an officially commissioned report.71 Perhaps of even greater significance, however, was the fact that a large segment of the American public condoned and applauded the seemingly abusive treatment of demonstrators by Chicago police. A national survey disclosed that only 19 percent of U.S. residents thought police officers had employed “too much force” in attempting to end the protests.72 The findings, therefore, appeared to suggest the grave threat that public support for the exercise of civil liberties in other circumstances could be overshadowed by a strong willingness to tolerate the use of repressive force by law enforcement officers. An important opportunity to assess the sources of popular approval of this type of action was provided by another national survey, which developed an empirically defined measure of public attitudes toward “police violence.” Although this research disclosed that black citizens were more likely than whites to criticize police violence, it also revealed that among whites with comparable educational backgrounds, the strongest opposition to the use of excessive force by police was expressed by younger, less affluent, and politically inactive segments of the population.73 The major complaints about police violence appeared to be concentrated among groups that possessed relatively little political influence in society. As a result, the attitudes of the more influential segments of the community seemed to impose few constraints upon the application of violent force by law enforcement agencies to repress discontent and unrest. Increasing fears of crime, violence, protest, and disorder were not enough to bring about an adequate remedy for those problems. As a report prepared for the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence noted, nearly every government commission convened to study outbreaks of violence recommended a “two-pronged” solution that stressed the need for both social and economic improvements—including changes in police practices— and more effective methods of controlling unrest. Yet in almost every case, 142

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the recommendations for social reform were neglected, and major emphasis was placed on more efficient social control. As a result, political leaders not only failed to resolve the problems that had caused the violence, but they also imposed massive burdens on law enforcement agencies. As the report concluded, “Even given the possibility of short-term control of riots, and ignoring its immediate destructive effects, the political nature of riots suggests that forceful riot-control techniques may channel expressive protest into more organized forms of political violence, thus requiring greater military and paramilitary force with its inescapable monetary and social costs.”74 In addition to the increased use of excessive “official violence” and the threat of guerrilla warfare, the demand for expanded social control presented a pressing danger that civil liberties in the United States would deteriorate. The emergence of racial conflict and violence presented police officers with a critical challenge that seemingly could be resolved only by improving social and economic conditions in urban communities. Numerous surveys revealed that an overwhelming proportion of black Americans regarded increased opportunities in employment, education, and housing, as well as changes in police conduct, as the most significant means of preventing future violence. Perhaps the importance of this finding was expressed most succinctly by the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice when it stated, “Examination of the crimes that are committed during rebellions and of the conditions of life in the places where riots break out leads to the conclusion that the only enduring guarantee that riots will not occur is to answer the cry of ‘Help!’ that Negroes have been uttering for many years, and that can be heard clearly even amid the destruction and bloodshed of a riot.”75 Perhaps the most fundamental problem police officers faced in urban areas, both during periods of racial turmoil and at other times, was an increasing loss of public confidence in police authority. The intense criticism of law enforcement officers that emerged in predominantly black neighborhoods not only produced extensive hostility and violence, but it also led to renewed reluctance among some inner-city residents to provide assistance or support for police activities. For example, the survey of residents in the Twelfth Street neighborhood of Detroit disclosed that among those persons who endorsed the principles of black separatism, a majority also stated that they reacted to a neighborhood robbery by simply ignoring it rather than by calling the police.76 The estrangement of many black citizens from the values and standards of the legal system and its enforcement apparatus appeared to reach massive proportions. Since police officers must rely on public respect and cooperation 143

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for the effective performance of their duties, the mounting lack of trust in police functions seemed to raise serious questions about their capability to provide effective law enforcement in those neighborhoods. The goal of gaining increased public support for police activities in the inner city, therefore, was probably the most crucial challenge confronting law enforcement agencies. Perhaps even more significant, however, the ability to achieve that objective appeared to depend on the adoption of extensive reforms and a restructuring of local police departments. NOTES 1. Judson L. Jeffries, “Police Brutality as a Major Everyday Threat: Notes From an Angry Young Professor,” Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy 6 (Summer 2000): 129–146. 2. Judson L. Jeffries, “Police Brutality of Black Men and the Destruction of the African American Community,” Negro Educational Review 52 (October 2001): 115– 130. 3. Steven Steinberg, Turning Back: The Retreat From Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon, 1995). 4. Michael Parenti, Democracy for the Few (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995). 5. Harlan Hahn, “Los Angeles and the Future,” in Michael Dear, Greg Hess, and H. Eric Schockman, eds., Rethinking Los Angeles (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1996), 77–95. 6. Bryan Vila and Cynthia Morris, The Role of Police in American Society (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1999). 7. William G. Lewis, “Toward Representative Bureaucracy: Blacks in City Police Organizations, 1975–1985,” Public Administration Review 49 (May-June 1989): 257– 267. 8. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), vol. 2, 1189; see also John Dollard, Caste and Class in a Southern Town (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957). 9. For an interesting compilation of materials focusing on the history of U.S. race riots, see Allen D. Grimshaw, ed., Racial Violence in the United States (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), especially 60–115. 10. Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (New York: Routledge, 2000). 11. Harold F. Gosnell, Negro Politicians: The Rise of Negro Politics in Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1935), 244–279; W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). 12. William M. Kephart, Racial Factors and Urban Law Enforcement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957), 134–139. 13. “Negro Police in Southern Cities,” New South 2 (October 1947): 1. 14. Dulaney, Black Police in America. 15. Kephart, Racial Factors and Urban Law Enforcement, 134–139.

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16. Ibid., 77–88. 17. Albert J. Reiss Jr. and David J. Bordua, “Environment and Organization: A Perspective on the Police,” in David J. Bordua, ed., The Police: Six Sociological Essays (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1967), 42. 18. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: The Police (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 52. 19. Robert M. Fogelson, “From Resentment to Confrontation: The Police, the Negroes, and the Outbreak of the Nineteen-Sixties Riots,” Political Science Quarterly 83 (June 1968): 243. 20. Peter H. Rossi, Richard A. Berk, David P. Boesel, Bettye K. Eidson, and W. Eugene Groves, “Between White and Black: The Faces of American Institutions in the Ghetto,” in Supplemental Studies for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 107. 21. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 94–95. 22. As the so-called Kerner Commission Report concluded, “The patrolman comes to see the city through a windshield and hear about it over a police radio. To him, the area increasingly comes to consist of lawbreakers. To the ghetto resident, the policeman comes increasingly to be only an enforcer.” Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 160. 23. Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 112–113. 24. David H. Bayley and Harold Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police (New York: Free Press, 1969), 157; P. Fielding, The Police and Social Conflict: Rhetoric and Reality (London: Athlore, 1998). 25. Fogelson, “From Resentment to Confrontation,” 231. 26. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 160. 27. Bayley and Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police, 144–147. 28. Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 89. In Denver, half of the police officers judged that black residents were “pressing too hard for their rights,” and 47 percent said they “were trying to push in where they were not wanted.” Ibid., 150– 151. 29. Robert A. Mendelsohn, “Police-Community Relations: A Need in Search of Police Support,” American Behavioral Scientist 13 (May-June-July-August 1970): 749– 752; reprinted in Harlan Hahn, ed., Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 159–174. 30. Bayley and Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police, 152. 31. W. Eugene Groves and Peter H. Rossi, “Police Perceptions of a Hostile Ghetto: Realism or Projection,” American Behavioral Scientist 13 (May-June-July-August 1970): 727–743. 32. Bayley and Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police, 163–164. 33. Joe R. Feagin and Harlan Hahn, Ghetto Revolts (New York: Macmillan, 1973), 179–180. 34. Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 110–111. 145

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35. Mendelsohn, “Police-Community Relations,” 749. 36. See, for example, Joe R. Feagin and Paul B. Sheatsley, “Ghetto Resident Appraisals of a Riot,” Public Opinion Quarterly 33 (Fall 1968): 354; Nathan S. Caplan and Jeffrey M. Paige, “A Study of Ghetto Rioters,” Scientific American 119 (August 1968): 21; see also Feagin and Hahn, Ghetto Revolts. 37. T. M. Tomlinson and David O. Sears, Negro Attitudes Toward the Riot (Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Government and Public Affairs, 1967), 13. 38. Philip Meyer, “The People Beyond Twelfth Street,” Detroit Free Press, August 20, 1967, 1, 48. 39. In fact, one commentator even labeled the issue of police abuses a “folk theory” of ghetto violence. Peter A. Lupsha, “On Theories of Urban Violence,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 4 (March 1969): 282–283; see also Burton Levy, “Cops in the Ghetto: A Problem of the Police System,” American Behavioral Scientist 11 (March-April 1968): 31–34. 40. Mendelsohn, “Police-Community Relations,” 751–752. 41. Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 106. 42. Joseph D. Lohman and Gordon E. Misner, The Police and the Community (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), vol. 1, 127–134. 43. Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 108. 44. Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorder, State of New Jersey, Report for Action (Trenton: State of New Jersey, 1968), 22–37. 45. David O. Sears, “Black Attitudes Toward the Political System in the Aftermath of the Watts Insurrection,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 13 (November 1969): 524. 46. Harlan Hahn, “Ghetto Sentiments on Violence,” Science and Society 33 (Spring 1969): 197–208; Harlan Hahn, “Violence: The View From the Ghetto,” Mental Hygiene 53 (October 1969): 509–512. 47. Harlan Hahn, “Philosophy of Law and Urban Violence,” Soundings 52 (Spring 1969): 113. 48. See James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Dell, 1962), 65–67; G. Alpert and R. Dunham, Policing Urban America (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland, 1994). 49. Bayley and Mendelsohn, Minorities and the Police, 179–181; Raymond J. Murphy and James M. Watson, The Structure of Discontent (Los Angeles: UCLA Institute of Government and Public Affairs, 1967), 46–48. 50. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 93. 51. Bryan T. Downes, “Social and Political Characteristics of Riot Cities: A Comparative Study,” Social Science Quarterly 49 (December 1968): 512. 52. Harlan Hahn, “The Political Objectives of Ghetto Violence,” unpublished manuscript, 5. 53. Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 73–101; Howard Aldrich and Albert J. Reiss Jr., “The Effect of Civil Disorders on Small Business in the Inner City,” Journal of Social Issues 26 (Winter 1970): 187–206. 54. James R. Hundley Jr., “The Dynamics of Recent Ghetto Riots,” Journal of Urban Law 45 (Spring-Summer 1968): 637. 146

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55. Ibid. 56. See Jerome H. Skolnick, The Politics of Protest (New York: Ballantine, 1994 [1969]). 57. See, for example, John Hersey, The Algiers Motel Incident (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968). 58. Harlan Hahn, “The Public and the Police: A Theoretical Perspective,” in Harlan Hahn ed., The Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 9–33. 59. Allen D. Grimshaw, “Actions of Police and the Military in American Race Riots,” in Allen D. Grimshaw, ed., Racial Violence in the United States (Chicago: Aldine, 1969), 271. 60. Gary T. Marx, “Civil Disorders and the Agents of Social Control,” Journal of Social Issues 26 (Winter 1970): 19–57. 61. Jules J. Wanderer, “An Index of Riot Severity and Some Correlates,” American Journal of Sociology 74 (March 1969): 500–505. 62. Ralph W. Conant, “Rioting, Insurrection, and Civil Disobedience,” American Scholar 37 (Summer 1968): 427. 63. See, for example, Rex Applegate, Riot Control: Material and Techniques (Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1969); R. M. Momboisse, Riots, Revolts, and Insurrections (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1967). 64. Harlan Hahn, “Cops and Rioters: Ghetto Perceptions of Social Conflict and Control,” American Behavioral Scientist 12 (May-June-July-August 1970): 761–779. 65. For an account of the incident, see Charles E. Jones, ed., The Black Panther Party Reconsidered (Baltimore: Black Classic, 1998). 66. Mendelsohn, “Police-Community Relations,” 747. 67. Rossi et al., “Between White and Black,” 100. 68. Angus Campbell and Howard Schuman, “Racial Attitudes in Fifteen American Cities,” in Supplemental Studies for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 48. 69. Harlan Hahn and Joe R. Feagin, “Rank-and-File Versus Congressional Perceptions of Ghetto Riots,” Social Science Quarterly 51 (September 1970): 371–373. 70. Donald Bouma, Kids and Cops: A Study in Mutual Hostility (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1969), 93–94. 71. Daniel Walker, Rights in Conflict (New York: Bantam, 1968). 72. John P. Robinson, “Public Reaction to Political Protest: Chicago 1968,” Public Opinion Quarterly 34 (Spring 1970): 1–9. 73. William A. Gamson and James McEvoy, “Police Violence and Its Public Support,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 391 (September 1970): 97–110. 74. Skolnick, Politics of Protest, 342–346, quote on 343. 75. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 38. 76. Harlan Hahn, “Black Separatists: Attitudes and Objectives in a Riot-Torn Ghetto,” Journal of Black Studies 1 (September 1970): 44–45.

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Conclusion: Police, Politics, and the Community

A

that have confronted law enforcement agencies, perhaps few were more important than the need to develop public confidence in police activities. Since extensive cooperation and assistance have usually formed an essential prerequisite for the fulfillment of police responsibilities, the effective performance of law enforcement tasks has seemed to depend on widespread favorable judgments about police behavior. In the absence of broad community support, police officers seldom achieved a high level of success either in controlling crime or in performing their numerous other duties. Public approval and respect have constituted a critical foundation for law enforcement operations. Increasingly, some segments of the population have displayed a serious loss of faith in police work. As growing numbers of black Americans experienced abrasive and harassing encounters with police officers, public hostility toward law enforcement rose to an alarming level in many urban neighborhoods. At the same time, the accelerating fear of crime also appeared to provoke strong reservations among white citizens about the efficacy of police protection. Law enforcement agencies faced a mounting crisis of public confidence in police authority. As a result, the growth of popular dissatisfaction seemed to indicate an urgent need for major changes and reforms to restore public trust in police practices. In many respects, the difficulty of regaining public respect for law enforcement officers was inextricably linked with the larger task of designating the proper role of the police in a democratic society.1 Although law enforcement agencies have been commonly accepted as necessary for the maintenance of social order, relatively little attention was devoted to this problem MONG THE MANY DIFFICULT AND CRITICAL CHALLENGES

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prior to the turbulent 1960s and the reaction that turbulence produced in the 1970s. As many citizens became aroused by the threat of crime, discontent, and violence, local police departments were exposed to powerful and conflicting public influences. Whereas some Americans demanded that the police stop “crime in the streets,” others were primarily concerned with ending “police brutality.” In addition, a growing controversy emerged over the value of stopping socially disruptive behavior and of punishing crimes by government officials. Implicitly, the controversy appeared to raise some basic, inescapable questions concerning how police resources should be allocated and who ought to control law enforcement agencies—questions that seemed to lack conclusive answers. Although anxiety about crime and police conduct became a major topic in several national elections, the fundamental subject of defining the public accountability of police organizations remained a persistent source of contention in many U.S. cities. This problem, however, did not seem peculiar to America. Although law enforcement officers in several European countries traditionally maintained a high degree of public respect that enabled them to dispense with guns and other lethal weapons, the relatively democratic police forces in England and Scandinavia had been plagued by increasing conflicts with the public.2 In fact, one study of Great Britain, the former Soviet Union, and the United States concluded that whereas each of those nations responded similarly to growing public pressures, neither democratic nor totalitarian police agencies were notably successful in halting crimes that created public alarm.3 The experiences of other societies seemingly did not offer a remedy that could be easily transferred to U.S. police departments. Perhaps one of the principal reasons for America’s failure to resolve the tension between police officers and the public had to do with a prevailing ambiguity about the democratic responsibilities of law enforcement agencies. Police officers assumed the tasks of controlling and restricting public behavior, but they also acted as public employees who are ultimately responsible to the people. As a result, the conduct of law enforcement officers in a democratic country often seemed to pose an irreconcilable dilemma. In fact, George Berkeley concluded that from many perspectives, “the phrase ‘democratic police force’ is a contradiction in terms.”4 Yet law enforcement agencies also seemed to possess important means of fulfilling their mission in a democratic society. Although police officers could not be directly responsive to shifting public tastes in law enforcement, they could be made responsible to the entire community. Police departments, like all other agencies, ultimately had to be accountable to the public for their 150

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policies and behavior.5 At the same time, this requirement also seemed to impose reciprocal obligations on citizens. Democratic law enforcement practices cannot be sustained in a nation where the public blindly or passively accepts whatever the police choose to do. Nor can they be preserved in a society where the people seek to employ police powers for their personal benefit or to subjugate other segments of the population. Although the maintenance of democratic police organizations requires a delicate balance between the privileges and duties of law enforcement officers and the community, police functions do not appear to be inherently incompatible with guidance and direction by responsible public attitudes and political leadership. Furthermore, efforts to strengthen the public accountability of law enforcement agencies could have provided an important means of enhancing popular respect for law enforcement activities. People have often tended to harbor reservations about government bureaus that apparently are not under popular control and that appear to demand public trust solely on the basis of their expertise. By demonstrating their willingness to heed the opinions of the community, police departments could have received increased cooperation from local citizens. This Conclusion, therefore, examines several proposals that might have promoted the democratic management of law enforcement agencies and improved public confidence in police practices. POLICE PERSONNEL Perhaps the most commonly proposed suggestion for increasing the quality of police work focused on the recruitment and selection of law enforcement officers. In general, the ability of police departments to attract capable men and women has been impeded by widespread public reluctance to assume the duties of police officers. For example, according to a survey published in the late 1960s, in Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., only 46 percent of officers said they would advise a young man to enter police work, and only 26 percent stated that they would encourage one of their sons to join the force.6 This perception was apparently shared by large segments of the population. In a survey of the same cities, 68 percent of the residents in each city asserted that it would be a mistake for a young man to become a police officer rather than accept “a job paying as much in the construction business.”7 Since many have regarded law enforcement as a thankless and unappealing vocation, some reformers have advocated that police officers should receive reimbursements commensurate with their seemingly awesome and demanding responsibilities. Another major proposal called for increased representation of minority groups in law enforcement agencies. As discussed in Chapter 5, in 1960, 3.6 151

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percent of all U.S. police officers were black. Over the next thirty years (to 1990), the number crept to a mere 10.5 percent. Latinos, meanwhile, represented about 5.2 percent of all police officers in 1990 (unfortunately, few data are available on Latino officers for earlier years).8 As the data show, over the years the percentage of black and Latino police officers has not been commensurate with the proportion of those groups in the population of most cities. As a result, police departments were urged to provide greater employment opportunities for groups that had historically been denied such opportunities. In many communities, however, this policy was promoted not only to eradicate the effects of racial discrimination but also to enhance the effectiveness of police work in urban areas. Because black police usually fared better than white officers in developing a rapport with black residents, their presence on the police force was often viewed as a means of extending the authority of law enforcement agencies in predominantly black neighborhoods. For similar reasons, efforts were also made to recruit female officers. Although law enforcement had historically been a male-dominated profession, some women were able to penetrate the ranks of police departments. Alice Stebbins Wells, the first female officer in U.S. history, was hired by the Los Angeles Police Department in 1910.9 By 1925, 145 police departments nationwide had hired female officers.10 In 1960 women still made up a paltry 1 percent of all U.S. police officers. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several police departments began to eliminate gender-specific duties and to assign women to patrol on the same basis as men. Two interrelated factors led to this policy. The first was the 1972 amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which extended the act’s coverage to public employees and prohibited job discrimination on the basis of sex. The second was an investigation conducted by the Police Foundation in the early 1970s on the performance of female officers. Not surprisingly, the studies found that women carried out their duties effectively. The only variance between them and male officers was that women made fewer arrests and gave fewer traffic citations. Studies also found that women police officers were more adept than male officers at defusing potentially explosive situations and were less likely to use excessive force against suspects. Additionally, female officers tended to take women’s complaints of spousal abuse more seriously.11 Their presence at the scene of such conflicts proved invaluable. Women officers were also found to be less likely than their male counterparts to engage in unbecoming conduct. With the support of antidiscrimination laws and corroboration of their effectiveness as patrol officers, women began to join police forces across the country in increasing, albeit small numbers. By 1975, 4 percent of all sworn 152

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police officers were women, and by 1990 the number had climbed to 9 percent. The intensive recruitment of police officers of color, women, and other highly qualified individuals appeared to offer a relatively simple and direct method of reducing antagonism between the police and the community.12 Although efforts to secure exceptionally competent persons may have contributed to the improvement of police practices, an exclusive emphasis on this program may have been inadequate to achieve the desired goals. Initially, any organization that seeks to resolve its difficulties solely through personnel practices may impose excessive or undue burdens upon its employees. As a result of the increasing conflict between law enforcement agencies and the residents of urban areas, black police officers seemed especially vulnerable to intense personal strain. As a major study of black officers concluded, “The Negro policeman occupies a doubly marginal position between the marginal police role and his own marginality as a Negro.”13 Although some blacks may have been attracted to law enforcement by the relative impartiality of civil service policies, they were also subjected to racial tensions both within police departments and in the community. Moreover, attempts by law enforcement agencies to expand their influence by assigning black officers exclusively to black neighborhoods raised serious obstacles to public acceptance of police authority. Interestingly, according to a Detroit survey, 78 percent of whites and 88 percent of black residents thought it was more important to obtain highly trained police officers than to designate black law enforcement officers to black areas.14 Although proposals for well-qualified police officers appeared to draw more public support than practices that implied racial separatism, neither approach seemed to provide a total solution to the many challenges that confronted law enforcement agencies. The problems of police departments appeared to extend beyond the individual characteristics of the officers involved. Efforts to recruit either an increasing number of minority police officers or highly trained white officers needed to be accompanied by major changes both in the internal organization of police forces and in their external relationships with the community. As many Americans began to demand visible and concrete improvements in police officers’ ability to combat crime and violence, extensive plans were launched to gain higher-caliber law enforcement officers. In addition to major increases in salaries, opportunities were provided for officers to take college or junior college classes in police science and related fields.15 Since police officers were usually from lower-middle-class origins, the increased educational and financial opportunities appeared to provide significant hope for improving the quality of law enforcement personnel. 153

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Yet these programs’ effectiveness seemed to be limited by several factors. Perhaps most important, the type of education traditionally offered police officers appeared to develop their physical prowess and technical proficiency in police procedures rather than their knowledge and understanding of the communities in which they had to work. Although the curriculum for police officers usually devoted a large amount of time to such topics as the use of firearms, legal regulations, traffic control, and related subjects, relatively little attention was devoted to social problems or issues.16 Since contacts between law enforcement officers and members of the public comprise a fundamental aspect of police activities, perhaps the relative neglect of the social sciences in training programs prevented police officers from acquiring important information and perspective. Furthermore, rigid barriers to promotion within law enforcement agencies often hindered police officers’ ability to utilize their educational experiences. For example, appointments to most relatively high-level administrative positions in a police department were often restricted to members of the force. Law enforcement administrators usually began as patrol officers and advanced slowly through the ranks. The relative absence of provisions for “lateral entry,” or the recruitment of personnel from comparable work either in other communities or in civilian occupations, deprived police departments of access to valuable talent.17 In addition, promotional patterns probably tended to increase the isolation and solidarity of law enforcement agencies. Since police administrators were usually promoted through the ranks of the same department, they were exposed to similar socializing experiences and often developed natural ties or affinities that inhibited their ability to exercise effective command. The potential value of improved methods of recruitment and training for law enforcement careers was frequently reduced by the agencies’ internal characteristics and procedures. Efforts by police officers to solve major crimes, for example, were seldom successful unless people were willing to furnish the information necessary to accomplish that objective. Similarly, police officers could not be effective in controlling incidents of disorder or violence if conflict between the public and the police had reached a stage where it could no longer be avoided or contained. The ability of police officers to fulfill their responsibilities depended more on the general perceptions of law enforcement officers than on their individual characteristics. Although efforts to staff police departments with educated and capable officers did help to improve the public image of the police, they also may have produced a disadvantageous response for law enforcement agencies. Since police forces generally portrayed the fight against 154

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crime as their primary area of competence and concern, political leaders and citizens may have anticipated that the investment of large public expenditures to enhance the qualifications of police officers would result in an immediate and direct reduction in the crime rate. Without a massive amelioration of pressing social problems and a comparable shift in popular views of police authority, however, such a result was probably unlikely. Moreover, in many respects police leaders’ preoccupation with plans to improve the caliber of their officers seemed to reflect the traditional American nostrum that the solution to almost any problem rests in finding “better men for the job.” By focusing on the personal traits of police officers rather than on the structural characteristics of law enforcement agencies, police administrators failed to remedy the difficulties that confronted them. As careers in law enforcement began to offer increasing status and financial compensation, the personal attributes of police recruits shifted to some extent to college-educated men from middle-class backgrounds. Although many viewed this trend as desirable, it also may have increased the social and cultural distance that separated police officers from the habitual offenders and lower-class city residents who often were the principal objects of police interest and attention. As a result, law enforcement officers may have encountered increased difficulties in becoming familiar with the problems and characteristics of the people who lived on their beats. Changes in the socioeconomic characteristics of police officers, therefore, also may have created the unanticipated consequence of widening the schism that had already developed between the public and the police. The problems produced by police officers’ failure to understand thoroughly the areas they patrolled were probably most severe in urban areas and neighborhoods with high crime rates. In some cities, commanders assigned men to such areas as a way of disciplining them.18 Patrolmen in urban communities were frequently either the most inexperienced or the most aggressive members of the force. Yet police officers did not express strong dissatisfaction with those assignments. A survey of police in high-crime areas of Boston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., revealed that only a small fraction of the officers would have preferred to have been assigned elsewhere. When those officers were asked why they liked their beats, black officers tended to state that they “knew the people well,” but most whites ascribed their choice to the fact that the district was “active.”19 What the patrolmen apparently meant by the term active was that the neighborhood gave them numerous opportunities to make a “good arrest” and to engage in other tasks directly related to solving crimes or enforcing the law. White patrol officers, therefore, appeared more 155

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interested in imposing strict controls on public behavior in neighborhoods with high crime rates than in becoming familiar with the residents of the area. Ironically, the opportunities for police to acquire extensive familiarity with the areas they patrolled were sharply restricted by regulations within police organizations. For example, in Philadelphia, departmental rules prohibited patrol officers “from residing within the police district to which they were assigned.”20 In other cities, patrol assignments were rotated periodically.21 Although such procedures may have been adopted to discourage favoritism, perhaps their principal impact was to prevent law enforcement officers from participating in the lives of the communities they patrolled. A survey of urban police in eleven major cities revealed that only 21 percent of the officers occasionally attended meetings in the neighborhoods to which they were assigned, 12 percent saw friends from the area frequently, and 17 percent lived in the area where they worked.22 As the police were granted higher salaries and increased prestige, this trend probably continued. According to an estimate in one major metropolitan area, approximately 85 percent of the police officers assigned to the central city lived in surrounding suburban communities.23 Both departmental requirements and police officers’ increasing aspirations for middle-class status contributed to raising an invisible wall between law enforcement officers and the communities in which they worked. Although the issue seldom received public attention, the assignment of patrol duties was one of the most important policy decisions police administrations were compelled to make. Since police protection was one of few indirect benefits law enforcement agencies were able to confer upon the community, both the number and the competence of patrols allocated to different sectors of the city were of major concern to local residents. In many urban areas, the distribution of patrols might have been incidentally related to the influence of business and commercial interests. Yet in attempting to control crime, police chiefs appeared to be confronted by a choice between what one observer called the “crime minimization” approach, meaning spreading patrol officers throughout the city so all citizens received comparable protection, or the “crime equalization” principle—concentrating patrol officers in high-crime areas so the probability of crime prevention was equivalent in different sections of the community.24 Although both policies contained important implications concerning the costs and benefits people received from police forces, neither strategy had the effect of reducing the total amount of crime in the city. As a result, the allocation of patrols required that police administrators make a crucial political decision, but that choice did not achieve the ultimate objective of controlling crime. 156

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A third alternative could have been considered. By assigning patrol officers on the basis of their residence or their familiarity with an area, both police officers and local residents might have gained an improved understanding of each other. Although this approach would undoubtedly have required careful supervision to avoid the danger of either espionage or favoritism, it also could have promoted a closer working relationship between police officers and the community. In addition, police officers in areas with high crime rates might have been advised to consider reducing aggressive or harassing practices such as the policy of “preventive patrolling,” which provoked numerous hostile and abrasive encounters. Although efforts to gain public trust and respect often appeared to yield fewer immediate results than other measures, police departments that examined those alternatives in reaching decisions about patrolling eventually discovered that they could contribute to the primary goal of reducing crime. In assigning police patrols and formulating other policies, police administrators were frequently confronted with a fundamental problem. Attempts to curb unlawful activities were guided either by programs to enhance police officers’ efficiency or by plans to improve their relationship with the community. Although many police chiefs found the former proposal especially attractive, the latter approach may have offered the most effective long-range means of reducing crime. Furthermore, there were few techniques law enforcement agencies could have employed in isolation, without strong public assistance and cooperation, to accomplish that purpose. Although some evidence indicated that a relatively short response time, or the prompt appearance of a police officer at the scene of a crime, tended to increase the probability of making an arrest, perhaps the most significant factor affecting the ability of the police to solve a reported crime was the victim’s willingness to name a suspect.25 Instead of emphasizing technical proficiency, police departments seemed to possess ample justification for assigning a high priority to the development of public confidence in law enforcement officers. The suggestion that police officers could be encouraged to live in the neighborhoods they patrolled seemed to provoke unusual controversy. The basic impetus for this proposal was the proposition that increased familiarity with local residents might have enhanced effectiveness in the exercise of discretion. In the era of the old-style ethnic political machine, the proximity of police officers may have enabled them, for example, to decide which drunk or disorderly persons should be taken to jail and which should be sent home. University professors need not live in student dormitories to work with undergraduates (although some do). But police officers’ decisions are intimately 157

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enmeshed in the family life of urban residents, and although other professionals might appear to have been in a better position to handle this type of discretion, a principal thesis of this analysis is that personal sensitivity and a genuine concern about the fate of urban neighborhoods may have comprised more appropriate preparation for intervention in family matters and related issues than formal educational credentials did. It has also been argued that urban housing markets would have precluded officers from living in the communities they patrolled. But that objection simply focuses attention on issues concerning appropriate reimbursement schedules and the type of individuals who could have been attracted to law enforcement agencies. POLICE PROFESSIONALIZATION The principal effort to improve the effectiveness of police work was centered in the growing movement toward “professionalization.” Although the concept of police professionalism acquired a variety of meanings, again, the major tenets of this doctrine seemed to include demands for higher salaries, extended training, technical resources, and similar improvements to increase police officers’ capability to cope with crime. In many respects, the drive toward professionalization reflected a natural response to growing pressures both within law enforcement agencies and from the general population. The trend toward police professionalism seemed to produce many desirable results. By seeking to raise the standards of law enforcement and to upgrade the occupation generally, many police departments gained both higher morale and a renewed awareness of the importance of their responsibilities. Moreover, the notion of professionalism had been associated with a shift from tough or violent police behavior to an approach that increasingly emphasized human relations in the conduct of law enforcement duties. Perhaps most significant, the entrance of highly trained and qualified persons into the field of law enforcement appeared to facilitate the removal of gross incompetence and corruption in some police departments. The desire to gain increasing professional status also had a strong impact on police attitudes and behavior. A comparative investigation of the handling of juvenile cases in two urban areas indicated, for example, that police professionalism seemed to promote the impartial treatment of white and black youths, as well as the imposition of strict penalties according to legal rules rather than through the exercise of personal discretion.26 Similarly, research in four Wisconsin cities on police reactions to the 1966 Miranda decision found that the degree of professionalization in police departments was related to approval of 158

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the court decision and to its acceptance as a legitimate restraint on the exercise of police power.27 The growth of professionalism apparently was associated with the expanding use of universalistic legal standards in police work. Another study in several midwestern communities revealed that police officers with a high level of professional commitment were more likely than their less professionalized colleagues to reject extremist right-wing political movements, to express favorable opinions of minority groups, to refrain from using excessive force, and to avoid using racial or social class epitaphs in describing the types of individuals against whom differential force might be employed. The perspective of professional law enforcement officers, however, did not seem to imply a complete renunciation of the need for physical force in contacts with civilians. Whereas police officers with a relatively low degree of professionalism tended to identify racial minorities and lower-class people as the principal groups that might require the exercise of physical force, most officers displaying strong professionalism applied that designation to people they called “animals,” or known troublemakers who prevented the police from performing their routine duties.28 The highly professionalized police officers appeared to express intense resentment toward those who hampered or interfered with what they considered their major responsibilities. Although the attitudes of professional police officers seemed to reflect some progress from the days when persons who were disrespectful toward them were probably met with harsh physical force,29 the changes exerted by police professionalism were also limited by several factors. Initially, the emergence of a profession usually implied that the members of that occupation had acquired an extensive body of knowledge about the proper performance of their duties. In fact, the accumulated experience of years of police work, especially in attempting to control crime, appeared to form a major impetus for the drive toward professionalization among law enforcement officers. Yet in some ways police forces apparently did not achieve great success in developing effective techniques to fulfill their self-imposed mission. As numerous studies have demonstrated, the largest proportion of crimes known to the police were not solved by the arrest—much less the conviction—of a suspect in the case; nor were the police able to devise proven methods of preventing or detecting illegal acts that were not reported to them by the public. Although major advances were made in the efficiency of law enforcement operations, the expertise of police forces alone apparently failed to produce a demonstrable reduction in the crime rate. In addition, the major elements of police professionalism appeared to ignore one of the most critical features of the job. Like the practitioners of 159

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law, medicine, and other occupations that gained the status of professions, police officers had an unusually intimate relationship with clients, or criminal suspects, on a continuous basis. People often confronted law enforcement officers during some of the most traumatic moments of their lives, and individuals may have been compelled to divulge highly personal or confidential information to explain their behavior. Moreover, the judgment of a police officer in deciding to exercise his or her power of arrest or to refrain from its use ultimately may have life-or-death implications for the suspect. Although the criminal clients of law enforcement officers might be perceived as members of an especially disreputable segment of the population, other professionals such as attorneys and physicians are also required to protect the fate of persons who may appear to lack redeeming social attributes. Thus one would have expected professional codes of police conduct to emphasize sensitivity concerning the plight of the client, or suspect, and to foster an increased awareness or appreciation of that client’s problems and needs. Yet the principal thrust of police professionalization appeared to emphasize an adversarial relationship. Relatively little attention was devoted to matching the client’s interests with the requirements of the law or to determining whether the suspect’s observance of the law would be enhanced or diminished by different legal alternatives. In fact, the prevailing doctrine of police professionalism tended to stress the rigid—albeit impartial—application of statutory penalties to any conduct that ran afoul of its specific provisions. Although this approach may have promoted relatively strict standards of equity or fairness in law enforcement, the primary focus seemed to reflect punitive objectives rather than the development of a relationship of mutual confidence and respect between clients and members of the profession. Perhaps the most salient characteristic of the police professionalization movement was a desire for increased self-governance. Again, just as doctors, lawyers, and other professions earned the prerogative of establishing internal processes of occupational discipline and control, a growing number of law enforcement personnel also demanded the right to regulate their own operations without outside intervention. The simultaneous growth of police professionalism and the emergence of intense opposition to the expression of civilian grievances or influence, therefore, seemed more than coincidental. Basic to a trend toward professionalization was a prevalent belief among police officers that they should be exempt from external interference and that they should be allowed to pursue their central mission—the prevention and control of crime—according to their own practices and judged by their own criteria. 160

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Critics of police professionalism, however, noted several basic weaknesses in the argument for self-regulation. Initially, this power was usually conferred upon professions only after they devised successful methods of achieving goals that gained the respect of both members of the profession and the general public. Since the association between police practices and the reduction of crime had not been demonstrated by careful research, many persons found it difficult to accept police demands for the rights and privileges of a profession. Furthermore, law enforcement officers apparently failed to develop effective procedures governing one of the most crucial facets of police work: their relationship to their clients. Many regarded the demands for professional perquisites in the field of law enforcement, therefore, as premature. Unlike members of most other established professions, police officers are also public servants employed by governments to administer the laws enacted by representatives of the people. Moreover, as the principal government agency that translates abstract requirements of the social order into the specific conduct of community life, the police occupy a unique position in the structure of political authority. Hence it might be argued that members of the public and their political leaders should not have been denied the opportunity to exercise some direction of police activities by granting law enforcement agencies the authority to regulate their own affairs. The growth of police professionalism may have enhanced isolation from the public. Law enforcement agencies were frequently described as a “brotherhood” in which police officers were socialized by their colleagues to accept the prevailing attitudes and beliefs of the organization. Both the strong bonds of loyalty that exist in police departments and their capacity to induce orthodoxy or conformity in police behavior evoked serious doubts concerning efforts to promote professionalization by reducing or eliminating external supervision. Because police departments already possessed many characteristics of a selfcontained community, the granting of additional powers of self-governance to law enforcement agencies might have enabled the police eventually to ignore their responsibilities to the people and ultimately become a law unto themselves.30 Although the classification of police work as a craft, a trade, or a profession was the subject of extensive controversy, there appeared to be little doubt that the trend toward professionalization was exerting a powerful impact on the field of law enforcement. Perhaps the major conflict within police departments was represented by the antagonism that existed between the new doctrine of professionalism and the conventional values of what one writer called the “system,” or a highly particularistic and fraternal structure of authority within police organizations.31 As the traditional norms of police work were 161

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challenged by growing professional aspirations, these opposing forces continued to produce serious tensions within law enforcement agencies. In addition, police departments experienced severe disruptions as a result of another new movement, this one toward unionization. At the end of the 1960s, many police officers appeared to be joining teachers, clerks, and other municipal employees in an effort to preserve and expand their status through collective bargaining agreements with local governments. Since the functions of policemen and firemen were perhaps even more crucial for the protection of the community than were the duties of other civil servants, the emergence of police unions to some degree may have produced a major crisis in urban politics. Moreover, there did not appear to be any obvious method of safeguarding the interests of the public in the face of the somewhat contradictory trends toward professionalization or unionization. Although Calvin Coolidge was vaulted into national politics by his assertion during the 1919 Boston police strike that the police had no right to strike against public safety, many fundamental issues regarding the control of law enforcement activities by public officials seemed to remain essentially unresolved. As a result, the emergence of new types of police forces, operating either as self-regulating professions or as militant labor unions, appeared to raise critical questions about the proper relationship between police officers and the public. THE POLITICS OF POLICE DISCRETION Although most of the changes or reforms proposed by police spokespersons focused on the internal operations and characteristics of law enforcement agencies, perhaps an even more important issue was the need for significant modifications of police practices that affected their relationship with the community. Police officers were most effective when they received active popular support and cooperation. The ability of law enforcement officers to perform their basic duties historically depended upon a merger of public and police sentiments. Perhaps one of the major steps that should have been taken to gain public trust was to manage police discretion. Since officers in the lowest ranks of police organizations usually had the widest range of alternative actions available to them, controversies arising from that authority were often a major source of public contention and concern. Patrol officers were sometimes criticized both for engaging in unnecessarily hostile or abusive behavior vis-à-vis some citizens and for neglecting to enforce the law against other members of the community. Moreover, the exercise of discretionary power frequently occurred in circumstances that were not amenable to effective surveillance and control by either superior officers or the public. As a result, the 162

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issue of police discretion was arguably one of the most troublesome and frustrating challenges for police administrators. The problem of discretion was not only reflected by variations in police practices within a single department, but it was also represented by divergent police conduct in separate communities. Since the enactment of most criminal laws was a prerogative of the states and their enforcement was a local responsibility, the principles of U.S. federalism could introduce wide discrepancies into police behavior. Many cities, for example, acquired reputations for police leniency or for their “wide-open” character, whereas other towns were noted both for civic virtue and strict law enforcement. Although extensive collaboration exists among national, state, and city law enforcement agencies,32 governmental policies did not appear to provide a totally satisfactory method of reconciling the inequities that may have resulted from local diversity in police conduct. As a result, major changes were required to strengthen the control of police discretion both within and between communities. The tasks of managing police discretion and of gaining increased public respect for the police appeared to indicate a need to situate law enforcement activities increasingly within the broad contours of the policy-making process. Law enforcement agencies could have received valuable assistance from responsible spokespersons for the public in seeking to define their role in the community. Many questions concerning the exercise of police authority might have been more justifiably decided by public officials than by the cop on the beat. Although police chiefs still encountered difficulties in their efforts to supervise the actions of their officers and to produce comparable police practices in different cities, the adoption of local law enforcement policies could at least have been submitted to established political processes for resolution in the same manner other public issues were determined. Thus police administrators, political leaders, and members of the public—acting together—might have been able to devise a body of general rules to guide police officers in discharging their duties and in handling their contacts with citizens. As James Q. Wilson has noted, in many situations “the patrolmen can be given a clear statement about how to intervene even if not about whether to intervene.”33 By attempting to delineate proper standards of public behavior insofar as possible, therefore, political authorities not only were capable of exercising increased control over police discretion, but law enforcement officers might have been relieved of many of the burdens and responsibilities produced by the open-ended alternatives available to them. In seeking to define appropriate limits of police discretion, policy makers might have seriously considered removing major inequities in police protection 163

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and services. Abstract standards of impartiality and fairness seemed to offer little justification for law enforcement practices that conferred significant benefits upon one city or sector of the community while producing severe disadvantages for another locality or segment of the population. Moreover, public perceptions of those inequalities were often a major source of hostility and criticism. Efforts to formulate increasingly specific and impartial guidelines for the exercise of discretion, therefore, not only could have expanded the public accountability of police departments, but they also might have enhanced public respect of and support for law enforcement functions. In addition to providing relatively clear policy directives for law enforcement officers, public officials may have faced a need to develop improved methods of processing citizen grievances about police conduct. In many police departments, established channels that permitted the filing of complaints by either police officers or members of the public seemed absent or ineffective. For example, according to a survey of 1,181 cities conducted in 1965, only 40 percent of the communities had a formal grievance procedure for employees, and only 35 percent had an informal process within their law enforcement agencies.34 Perhaps most important, even though some police departments had established internal mechanisms for handling complaints from local residents at the time the complaints were made, only a few cities such as Philadelphia and New York had experimented with police review boards that included representatives of the public. Moreover, in those communities that had adopted complaint procedures within police departments, only a small proportion of the charges proffered by members of the community seemed to result in disciplinary action. A study of grievances presented to the Los Angeles Police Department, for example, indicated that only about 5 percent of complaints about excessive force were sustained by the department’s Internal Affairs Division; but more than 80 percent of the charges of neglect of duty, which emanated primarily from superior officers, were upheld by internal investigations.35 As a result, many people concluded that law enforcement agencies were unresponsive to community grievances, and they began to advocate the creation of civilian police review boards to evaluate complaints about police behavior. The issue soon provoked a heated and political controversy. An extensive national survey published in 1967 revealed that 45 percent of the American people favored proposals for civilian review boards, 35 percent were opposed, and 20 percent were undecided.36 Gradually, public attitudes on this question seemed to reflect a growing polarization between the dominant white community and minority groups. A study in Denver revealed that 164

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only 47 percent of whites, in comparison with 73 percent of blacks and 71 percent of Mexican American residents, endorsed a plan for a civilian review board there.37 This finding was confirmed by a major investigation of a New York City referendum on a local civilian review board, which resulted in the abolition of the board in 1967. According to a survey of 374 white voters in Brooklyn, racial antagonism and disapproval of the civil rights movement emerged as the most significant attitudinal index of public opposition to the board.38 Despite the intense racial conflict that surrounded the issue, however, civilian review boards were not used exclusively as an instrument of minority groups. In fact, an examination of grievances reported to the New York Civilian Complaint Review Board disclosed that complaints lodged by whites frequently outnumbered those filed by black or Latino citizens. In addition, the records of three privately sponsored complaint centers—deliberately located in the center of slum neighborhoods in Los Angeles—revealed that whites still lodged about 20 percent of the complaints, approximately 50 percent were made by black residents, and most of the remaining 30 percent were filed by Mexican Americans.39 On the other hand, a report on the Police Advisory Board in Philadelphia indicated that approximately five-eighths of the grievances presented to that body were submitted by black complainants, even though black residents comprised just slightly more than onefourth of the city’s population. Nonetheless, further analysis demonstrated that nearly 40 percent of the grievances filed by men in Philadelphia were brought by white males.40 The experience of civilian review boards, therefore, seemed to suggest that complaints about abusive police treatment were not confined solely to minority groups; they also encompassed a segment of the white population. Although definitive evidence of police abuse has often been difficult to gather or examine critically, detailed investigations of individual cases and the reports of police review boards both seemed to indicate that such incidents certainly occurred. Moreover, existing political structures seldom appeared to offer citizens an adequate remedy for grievances concerning police misconduct. Yet the conflict over the merits of civilian police review boards did not result in their widespread adoption. Whereas most police officers continued to fight the plan with exceptional vigor, many former supporters of the issue also concluded that review boards were unsuccessful and ineffective. Perhaps one major outcome of this controversy was suggested by the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice when it concluded: 165

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In going beyond the established legal procedures, the Commission finds it unreasonable to single out the police as the only agency that should be subjected to special scrutiny from the outside. The Commission, therefore, does not recommend the establishment of civilian review boards in jurisdictions where they do not exist, solely to review police conduct. The police are only one of a number of official agencies with whom the public has contact, and in some cases, because they are the most visible and conspicuous representatives of local government, they may be the focus of more attention than they deserve.41

Although it seems difficult to justify the conclusion that the police had been the object of undue concern, the general thrust of this statement seemed to contain some validity. In many respects, the commission’s recommendation appeared to argue for the appointment of an ombudsman, or an office designed to facilitate citizen grievances against all government bureaus, rather than to reject civilian review boards. Perhaps a pressing mandate had emerged for an expanded means of processing public complaints not only concerning police behavior but also regarding the conduct of other administrative bodies. Moreover, as a public agency that constantly mingles with the community and that occupies a uniquely critical position in the relationship between the people and abstract political authority, the necessity for public supervision of police departments seemed especially compelling. Even though civilian review boards may not have been the most efficient mechanisms for accomplishing this purpose, the obligation to develop effective methods of resolving public grievances about the police and other political institutions has remained a crucial responsibility of city governments. The problems that confronted urban police officers, therefore, did not appear to support continuing efforts to divorce the police from both the public and political supervision. In fact, they seemingly indicated a need to make law enforcement operations an integral part of the policy-making process. Public officials encountered a growing need not only to provide relatively clear and consistent guidelines for the exercise of discretionary police authority but also to institute improved methods of satisfying citizen complaints about police behavior. As a result, the relationship between the police and political leaders also seemed to assume increasing importance in the conduct of law enforcement duties. CONCLUSION Numerous studies conducted in communities throughout the United States found that the largest proportion of calls police received from private citizens did not involve crimes or illegal activities; they were usually requests for per166

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sonal aid or assistance. Interestingly, despite the large quantity of their time consumed by this function, police officers often viewed such work as an unwarranted interference with their principal objective of fighting crime. As William H. Parker, the late Los Angeles Police chief, once stated: I’m a policeman, not a social worker. . . . Law enforcement officers are neither equipped nor authorized to deal with broad social problems. We do not control economic cycles; we are not equipped to deal with racial, religious, or political prejudice; we are not arbiters of right or wrong. In short, we are not healers of social ills. Our job is to apply emergency treatment to society’s surface wounds; we deal with effects, not causes.42

As a result, many police officers considered community service tasks—which they did perform—solely as a means of familiarizing themselves with their patrol districts or as a method of gaining information that might be helpful in solving crimes. Many law enforcement officers regarded service activities as inappropriate or demeaning; consequently, they frequently sought to avoid such duties. There appeared to be no sensible justification for deemphasizing community service functions in police work. Much research demonstrated that the basic sources of crime can be traced to fundamental social and economic conditions rather than to individual propensities. The major police objective of combating lawlessness may have been achieved more effectively by attempting to eradicate the origins of crime rather than by expanding the ability of the police to punish illegal conduct. An increased emphasis on the performance of community services might have constituted one of the most valuable contributions police departments could have made to ameliorate pressing social problems and to the eventual reduction of crime. In addition, police officers appeared to lack a clear moral criteria for assigning a higher priority to arresting a criminal suspect than to transporting an injured person to a hospital. The ethical issues police officers faced were complex, and they might reasonably have expected assistance from policy makers in resolving those questions. Although communities may have eventually decided that law enforcement agencies should devote their attention to fighting crime rather than to providing services, this judgment might at least have been formulated as an explicit public policy after alternatives were carefully assessed by representatives of the public and political leaders, as well as by police officers. In addition, an emphasis on community services would probably have necessitated major administrative or organizational changes. At the time covered by this research, most police departments were divided into units such as homicide, burglary, and narcotics, which signified their relatively limited 167

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focus concerning the goal of fighting crime. A more realistic administrative structure that would have reflected the actual distribution of police officers’ work and that might have enabled them to utilize their specialized talents in a reorganized community service agency, therefore, might have consisted of bureaus such as medical assistance, family problems, and similar divisions. In addition, intensive efforts could have been launched to improve police departments’ capability to refer specific cases to other government agencies. Although many people may have argued that other bureaucracies might be better equipped than law enforcement agencies to process community services, at least two characteristics of the police—their availability and their accessibility—could have been cited in defense of continuing to include those activities within the purview of police departments rather than redistributing them elsewhere. Since police officers circulated throughout the community twenty-four hours a day, they could be dispatched almost instantaneously to any location where personal help or assistance was needed. Police officers were indeed in a unique position to provide services to the community that no other branch of government was capable of offering. Unfortunately, their inability to recognize that fact ultimately led to the disintegration of public confidence and trust from which the police have yet to fully recover. NOTES 1. Sidney L. Harring, Policing a Class Society: The Experience of American Cities, 1865–1915 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1983). 2. Mark Dantzker, Understanding Today’s Police (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1995); Michael Tonry and Norval Morris, eds., Modern Policing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 3. Robert W. Clawson and David L. Norrgard, “National Responses to Problems of Urban Crime: The Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States,” in Harlan Hahn, ed., The Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 71–93. 4. George E. Berkeley, The Democratic Policemen (Boston: Beacon, 1969), 2. 5. Harlan Hahn, “The Public and the Police: A Theoretical Perspective,” in Harlan Hahn, ed., The Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 9–33; Samuel Walker, The Police in America (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992). 6. Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Career Orientations, Job Satisfaction, and the Assessment of Law Enforcement Problems by Police Officers,” in Studies in Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), vol. 2, 7–12. 7. Albert J. Reiss Jr., “Public Perceptions and Recollections About Crime, Law Enforcement, and Criminal Justice,” in Studies in Crime and Law Enforcement in Major Metropolitan Areas (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), vol. 1, 55, 57.

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8. Bureau of Justice Statistics, State and Local Police Departments, 1990 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1992), table 11. For a review of the earlier data, see Samuel Walker, The Police in America: An Introduction, 2d ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1992), 303–323. 9. Janis Appier, “Gender and Justice: Women Police in America, 1910–1946.” PhD diss., University of California at Riverside, 1993. 10. Michael J. Palmiotto, Policing: Concepts, Strategies, and Current Issues in American Police Forces (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 1997). 11. Edith Linn and Barbara Raffel Price, “The Evolving Role of Women in American Policing,” in Abraham S. Blumberg and Elaine Niederhoffer, eds., The Ambivalent Force: Perspectives on the Police (Forth Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1985), 69–79. 12. National Center for Women and Policing, on the World Wide Web <www.feminist.org/police/newpabout.Html>. 13. Nicholas Alex, Black in Blue: A Study of the Negro Policeman (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969), 20; W. Marvin Dulaney, Black Police in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996). 14. Joel D. Aberbach and Jack L. Walker, “The Attitudes of Blacks and Whites Toward City Services: Implications for Public Policy,” in John P. Crecine, ed., Financing the Metropolis: Public Policy in Urban Economies (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1970), 536–537. 15. See, for example, Charles L. Newman and Dorothy Sue Hunter, “Education for Careers in Law Enforcement: An Analysis of Student Output, 1964–1967,” Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 59 (March 1968): 138–143. 16. J. Robert Havlick, “Recruit Training: Police Chief ’s Dilemma,” Public Management 50 (December 1968): 300–303. 17. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Task Force Report: The Police (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 142. 18. Joseph D. Lohman and Gordon E. Misner, The Police and the Community (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1966), vol. 2, 162; R. Roberg and J. Kuykendall, Police and Society (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1993). 19. Reiss, “Career Orientations,” 57–61. 20. Lohman and Misner, Police and the Community, vol. 2, 51. 21. Ibid., vol. 1, 161. 22. Peter H. Rossi, Richard A. Berk, David P. Boesel, Bettye K. Eidson, and W. Eugene Groves, “Between White and Black: The Faces of American Institutions in the Ghetto,” in Supplemental Studies for the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 113. 23. Ibid. 24. James Q. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 61–62. 25. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 247–248; see also the commission’s Task Force Report: Science and Technology (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 92–93. 169

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26. James Q. Wilson, “The Police and the Delinquent in Two Cities,” in James Q. Wilson, ed., City Politics and Public Policy (New York: John Wiley, 1968), 173–195. 27. Neal Milner, “Comparative Analysis of Patterns of Compliance With Supreme Court Decisions: ‘Miranda’ and the Police in Four Communities,” Law and Society Review 5 (August 1970): 119–134; Neal Milner, “Some Common Themes in Police Responses to Legal Change,” in Harlan Hahn, ed., The Police in Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 247–262; see also Robert R. Afford, Bureaucracy and Participation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1969), 144–146. 28. James Leo Walsh, “Professionalism and the Police: The Cop as Medical Student,” American Behavioral Scientist 13 (May-June-July-August 1970): 705–725. 29. William A. Westley, “Violence and the Police,” American Journal of Sociology 59 (July 1953): 34–41; P. Fiedling, The Police and Social Conflict: Rhetoric and Reality (London: Athlore, 1998); S. Eitzen, In Conflict and Order (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1993). 30. Harlan Hahn, “Local Variations in Urban Law Enforcement,” in Peter Orleans and William Russell Ellis Jr., eds., Race, Change, and Urban Society (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1971), 373–400. 31. Terrence J. Fitzgerald, Police in Society (New York: H. H. Wilson, 2000). 32. Morton Groodzins, The American System (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966), 89–124. 33. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior, 65. 34. “Municipal Personnel Data,” in 1966 Municipal Yearbook (Chicago: International City Manager’s Association, 1966), 179–181. 35. American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Law Enforcement: The Matter of Redress (Los Angeles: Institute of Modern Legal Thought, 1969), 21–23. 36. Philip H. Ennis, Criminal Victimization in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967), 64. 37. David H. Bayley and Harold Mendelson, Minorities and the Police (New York: Free Press, 1969), 134. 38. David W. Abbott, Louis H. Gold, and Edward T. Rogowsky, Police, Politics, and Race: The New York City Referendum on Civilian Review (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 35–41. 39. Algernon D. Black, The People and the Police (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 240–241. 40. American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, Law Enforcement, 55– 56. 41. President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, 103. 42. O. W. Wilson, ed., Parker on Police (Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1957), 12.

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Index

Index

Adams, Thomas F., 71 Administrators, 79, 84 Admission, exclusion of, 49 African Americans. See Blacks American Bar Foundation, 45 An American Dilemma (Myrdal), 125 Ames, Alfred Elisha, 6 Antiwar demonstrations, 10 Arrest(s), 19, 21, 46, 48, 51, 56, 76; and confession, 49–50; differential use of, 107–8; power of, 39–44; for public intoxication, 57–58; resisting, 74–75; for vagrancy, 58–59; for vice, 53–55 Assault and battery: on police, 74–75; victims of, 22–23 Assistance, police role in, 25–26 Atlanta, 8, 111 Attorneys, 40, 50, 51 Authority, 57, 85, 99; discretionary, 71–77; exercise of, 23–25, 28, 39, 90–91, 92; patrolling and, 128–29; riot control and, 139–40, 141 Autonomy, of police departments, 11–12 Baby boom, 9 Baltimore, 4, 8, 100 Bedford-Stuyvesant, 112 Behavior: deviant, 22–23; of police, 7, 70; police authority and, 24–25 Black Panther Party, 140 Blacks, xi, 9, 45, 78, 101, 143; attitudes toward police, 98, 104, 110, 111–12,

113–15, 116, 143; fear of crime among, 100, 102; as neighborhood patrol officers, 86–87; and patrolling techniques, 128– 29; in police departments, 125–26; as police officers, 152, 153; police treatment of, 75–76, 115, 124–25, 126–27, 129– 30; racial prejudice and, 130–32, 145(n28); urban rebellions and, 123– 24; urban violence and, 132–40 Boston, 3, 4, 6, 7, 151, 155, 162; policecitizen interactions, 72, 75, 76, 99, 103– 4; police misconduct in, 8, 90; public attitudes in, 108, 111, 112; public fear in, 100, 101 Brooklyn, 100, 108, 112 California, 4, 46, 49–50, 55. See also Los Angeles; San Diego; San Francisco Chicago, 4, 25, 49, 78, 81, 151, 155; black police officers in, 125, 126; Democratic Party convention in, 10, 142; policecitizen interactions, 72, 75, 76, 97, 99, 103–4; police misconduct in, 8, 90; public attitudes in, 108, 111, 112; public fear in, 100, 101 Children, 25 Chilton, Richard, 52–53 Citations, traffic, 59–60 Citizens. See Public Civil demonstrations, 23 Civil disorder, xi, 5; plans for, 138–39. See also Urban violence

171

Index Civil liberties, protection of, 110–11 Civil rights, 130–31, 145(n28) Civil Rights Act (1964), 152 Civil service system, 8 Civil War, 5 Clearance rates, 33 Cleveland, 115, 140 Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 20, 21, 25 Communication, technological improvement in, 128 Conduct, police, 69 Confessions, 48; Supreme Court decisions and, 50–53; voluntary, 49–50 Conservatism, 87–88 Convictions, arrest and, 40 Coolidge, Calvin, 162 Cooperation, citizen, 104, 105–6 Corruption, 6, 10, 14–15(n40), 90; public perceptions of, 108–11 Courtesy, 7 Courts, 39; public intoxication charges, 57– 58; vagrancy cases, 58–59 Crime, 2, 18, 19, 56; police response to, 116– 17; preventing or controlling, 29–33, 128–29; public fear of, 99–103; reporting, 32–33, 36(n45), 62, 127; vice, 53–55 Crime Commission. See Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, 10 Crime fighting, as police duty, 17–18 Crime prevention, 12–13 Crime rates, 30, 43, 114; patrolling and, 128–29; reporting and, 32–33, 127 Crimes against property, 19 Crimes against the person, 19 Crime scenes, authority over, 23 Crime statistics, 32 Crimes without victims, preventing, 21–22. See also Vice Crime waves, 9 Culture, and social conduct, 110 Daley, Richard, 10 Dallas, 100 Deaths, 74 Defendants, 40 Democratic Party National Convention, 10, 142

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Demonstrations, antiwar, 10 Denver, 75, 90, 100, 104, 111, 113, 130; civil rights in, 131, 145(n28); differential protection in, 115–16; review boards, 164–66 Depression, 8 Detention, 20, 49 Deterrence, 18, 30–31 Detroit, 25, 44, 45, 53, 58, 100, 108, 143; public attitudes in, 112, 115; racial attitudes in, 130–31, 153; urban violence in, 133, 137, 139–40, 141 Disciplinary actions, 83 Discretion: police use of, 71–77, 162–66; preventive patrolling and, 129–30 Discrimination: police procedures and, 112– 13, 126–27; in protection, 114–16 Disorderly conduct, 21, 56–57 Disrespect, for police, 24 District of Columbia. See Washington, D.C. Domestic disputes, 23, 28 Draft riots, New York City, 5 Drunkenness. See Public intoxication Due process, 50 Duties, of police officers, xi, 17–18 Economics, police officers and, 79–80 Education, of police officers, 9, 78–79, 153– 54 Effectiveness, measuring, 33 Emergency calls, 26 Employment, public, 79–80 Equal rights, blacks and, 130–31 Escobedo v. Illinois, 50 Ethics, police, 89–90 Ethnic conflict, 3, 5 Ethnic groups, and police forces, 6–7. See also Minorities Evaluation, of law enforcement, 33–34 Evidence, obtaining, 47, 48 Exclusionary rule, 44, 45, 46; police procedures and, 47–48 Family issues, police and, 26, 28 Favoritism, 8 FBI. See Federal Bureau of Investigation Fear, public, 99–103 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 32 Felonies, arrest for, 40, 41, 46 Field interrogation, 43–44, 45

Index Force, use of, 24, 74–75 Fourteenth Amendment, 47 Fourth Amendment, 44, 50, 53 Fraternal Order of Police, 82 Friendships, police officers’, 81–82 Frisking, 45, 53, 128 Fugelson, Robert, 130 Gambling, 6, 53, 54 Germans, 6 Golden rule procedure, 58 Goldwater, Barry, 2 Government, police force and, 1–2 Graft, 6, 8 Guidelines, police department, 72 Guilty pleas, 40, 50–51 Harlem, 112, 114 Health services, request for, 25 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 87 Homosexuals, 89 Human nature, police distrust of, 70–71 Immigrants, police departments and, 6–7 Indictment, 48 Informants, informer system, 54–55 Inner-city communities, policing in, 127–28 Integration, 125–26, 129, 130 Internal Affairs Divisions, 164 Interrogation, 20, 48 Investigation, arrest for, 48, 49, 55 Irish, 6, 7 Irish Mafia, New York police department as, 6 Johnson, Lyndon B., 10, 20 Judges, 40 Judiciary, 39, 41, 49 Juvenile crimes, 56 Kansas City (Mo.), 8, 10, 20, 30 Kelling, George L., 21 Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders, 141, 145(n22) Killings, by police, 74 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 136 King, Rodney, xii Knapp Commission, 10 Language, used by officers, 88–89 Latinos, 9, 104, 152, 165

Law enforcement, ix–x, 2, 7; arrests and, 41– 43; evaluation of, 33–34; proper role of, 149–50; research on, 17–18; urban, 3– 6; urban violence and, 132–40 Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), 10–11; on reporting crime, 32– 33 Laws, differential enforcement of, 73, 106–8, 109–10 LEAA. See Law Enforcement Assistance Administration Legal counsel, rights to, 50, 51 Legal system, enforcement of law and, 41, 143 Life, protection of, 19, 20, 28 Lomasny, Martin, 7 London, 1, 3 Los Angeles, xii, 165; police behavior in, 70, 74; police misconduct in, 8, 112; urban violence in, 132–33 Los Angeles Police Departments, 45, 152, 164; psychiatric evaluations in, 90–91 Lower-class, treatment by police, 109–11 Lower-middle class, 76, 77–78 Low-income areas, 43, 114 Loyalty, police, 82–83 McFadden, Martin, 52–53 McNabb-Mallory rule, 58 Magistrates, 48 Mapp v. Ohio, 46–47 Massachusetts State Supreme Court, 87 Memphis, 103 Metropolitan Police Force (London), 3 Mexican Americans, 111, 113, 116, 165. See also Latinos Michigan, 131–32, 141 Middle class, 57, 107, 109, 114 Migration, south-north, 9, 125 Milwaukee, 6, 8, 45 Minneapolis, 6 Minorities, xi, xii–xiii, 45, 74, 78, 129; in law enforcement, 151–52; police departments in, 125–26; police treatment of, 75, 115–16, 123, 124–25 Miranda v. Arizona, 51–52; responses to, 158–59 Misconduct, 8, 90; accusations of, 83–84 Misdemeanors, 40, 46 Mistreatment, police, 111–14 Mobilizations, citizen or police-initiated, 71–72

173

Index Moral consensus, 7 Morale, professionalization and, 84–85 Morality, 89–90, 107; urban fear and, 100– 101 Myrdal, Gunnar, 124; An American Dilemma, 125 Narcotics laws, 47; violations of, 54–55 Nassau County (N.Y.), 57 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 114 National Commission on Crime, 26, 30, 32, 44 National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement. See Wickersham Commission National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, 10, 142–43 Neighborhoods, 111; interactions in, 85–86; crime rates in, 114, 127; patrol officers and, 86–87, 155–58; police and, 7, 8; public fear in, 100–101 Newark, 100, 134 New Jersey, 50 New Orleans, 4, 6, 75, 76, 89, 90 New Orleans Police Department, 79, 80, 87, 89 New York City, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 47, 78, 81, 111, 164; police solidarity in, 82, 83 New York City Police Academy, graduates of, 77–78 New York City Police Department, 8, 83, 84, 89, 97–98 New York Civilian Complaint Review Board, 165 Night watchmen, 3 Nonenforcement, 42, 43 Oakland, 22, 68 Obscenities, police officer use of, 89 Order, maintaining public, 20–23 Organized crime, in Kansas City (Mo.), 10 Parker, William H., 70, 167 Patrolling, 19, 20, 127; active, 155–56; in high crime areas, 128–29; police discretion and, 129–30; preventive, 42– 43, 114–15 Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, 82

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Patrol officers, 104, 127; assignments of, 155–56; attitudes toward citizens, 97–98; blacks as, 86–87; neighborhoods and, 86, 157–58 Patronage, 6, 7 Peel, Robert, 1 Pennsylvania, 50 Personal freedom, 99 Personal issues, 26 Philadelphia, 4, 6, 8, 59, 75, 126, 156; police conservatism in, 87–88; police review boards, 164, 165 Police Advisory Board (Philadelphia), 165 Police Appraisal and Review Boards, 42 Police brutality, 7–8, 74, 75; charges of, 112, 113 Police chiefs, 72 Police departments, xi, 1, 24, 57, 72; accountability of, 150–51; conservatism of, 87–88; crime fears and, 102–3; crime prevention and deterrence and, 31–32; differential treatment by, 114–16; increased budgets for, 154–55; integration of, 125–26; modernizing, 10–11; operation styles of, 60–61; organization of, 3–6; politics of, 6–8; professionalization of, 84–85; public interactions, 85– 86; rules and regulations of, 82–83; service and, 25–27, 166–68; urban violence and, 132–40 Police officers, ix, xii, 45, 47; attitudes toward, 143–44; attitudes toward citizens of, 69– 71, 97–98, 118(n7), 119(n19), 145(n22); authority function of, 23–25, 92; black, 125–26; and black rebellion, 123–24; citizen interactions with, 56–57, 75–77, 103–6, 109–10, 126–27, 133– 34; conflicting functions of, 27–29; as conservative, 87–88; crime prevention and, 29–33; discretion of, 71–77, 162– 63; duties of, xi, 17–18; education of, 78–79; exercising authority, 90–91; government and, 1–2; immigrants and, 6–7; job security and, 79–80; and minorities, 124–25; minority neighborhoods and, xii–xiii; Miranda rules and, 51, 52; order function of, 20–23; personal characteristics of, 88–90; power of arrest and, 40–44; preventive patrolling, 42–43; professionalization of,

Index 8–9, 11–12; protection function, 18–20, 34; psychiatric evaluation of, 90–91; racial prejudice and, 130–32; recruitment and selection of, 151–58; review boards and, 163–66; roles of, 2–3, 4–5, 12–13; service function of, 25–27, 166–68; social class of, 77–78; solidarity of, 81– 87; training, 80–81 Police procedures, practices, 49; discretion and, 162–66; discrimination in, 112– 113, 114–15, 126–27; exclusionary rule and, 47–48; politics and, 60–63; public intoxication arrests, 57–58; Supreme Court decisions and, 50–53; traffic violations, 59–60; and urban violence, 133–35; vagrancy and, 58–59 Police riots, 142 Police strikes, 30, 162 Political machines, immigrants and, 6–7 Politics, 2, 8, 10; police autonomy and, 11– 12; discretionary power and, 162–66; police departments and, 6–8, 60–63; police officers and, 87–88 Portland, 100 Prejudice, racial, 130–32. See also Discrimination; Racism President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, 114–15, 128, 130, 136, 143, 165–66 Prestige, of police work, 79, 97 Professionalization, professionalism, 27, 56; impacts of, 84–85, 158–62; and patrolling tactics, 128–29; police, 8–10, 11–12 Prohibition, 8 Property, protection of, 3, 4, 19–20, 28 Prostitution, 6, 53, 55 Protection, 34; discrimination and, 114–16; police duty as, 18–20, 28, 29–33 Psychiatric evaluation, of police, 90–91 Public, 44, 73–74, 92, 97, 160, 161; and differential enforcement of law, 106–8; fear of crime among, 99–103; distancing the, 85–86; perceptions of police, ix, 1–3, 98–99, 117–18; police attitudes toward, 69–71, 97–98, 119(n119); police contact with, 71–72, 75–77, 103–6; and police departments, 150–51; on police mistreatment, 111–14; power of arrest by, 39–40; on review boards, 164–65;

services for, 26–27; and urban violence, 135–36, 139–40 Public intoxication, 4, 28, 57–58 Public order, 91; preserving, 4–5, 21–23, 28 Public space, authority in, 23–24 Public spending, and police departments, 154–55 Race, 78; and attitudes toward police, 113–14, 153; conflicts and, 123–24; equality issues of, 130–31, 145(n28); neighborhood patrolling and, 86–87; and review boards, 164–65 Racism: police attitudes and, 75–76, 130–32; police procedures and, 112–13 Raids, 54 Recruitment, 8; education and, 78–79; of officers, 151–58; social class and, 77–78 Reiss, Albert J., Jr., 130 Reports, criminal complaint, 42 Report writing, 26 Republic of New Africa, 140 Research, on law enforcement, 17–18 Review boards, need for, 164–66 Riots, 5, 23, 142; police department plans for, 138–39. See also Urban violence Rules and regulations, 82 St. Louis, 6 Salaries, of police officers, 153 San Diego, police-community relations in, 98–99, 134 San Francisco, 8 San Francisco Vigilance Committee, 4 Search and seizure, 44, 45, 46, 53 Search warrants, 45, 46 Secrecy, community interaction and, 85 Security, of public employment, 79–80 Self-defense, need for, 101–2 Self-esteem, of police officers, 80 Self-governance, police professionalization and, 160–61 Serpico, Frank, 10 Service(s), 28; community, 7, 12–13, 25–27, 29, 61, 166–68 Social class: police recruitment and, 77–78; and police treatment, 76–77, 89, 108, 109–11 Social conduct, class and, 110 Social discontent, 142. See also Urban violence

175

Index Social life, police and, 81–82 Social order, 4 Social workers, 7 Solicitation, 55 Solidarity, among police officers, 81–87 South Central Los Angeles, 114 Steffens, Lincoln, 7 Students, antiwar protests, 10 Subordinates (employees), and superiors, 82– 84 Superiors (supervisors), and subordinates, 82–84 Supreme Court, 63; on confessions, 48, 49, 50–53; search and seizure laws, 44, 45, 47 Suspects, confessions by, 49–50 Suspicion: arrests for, 44, 48; police posture of, 70–71, 92; reasonable, 52–53 Syracuse, 57 Syracuse Police Department, 25 Terry, John, 52–53 Terry v. Ohio, 52–53 Thomas, Timothy, xii Traffic offenses, deaths associated with, 74 Traffic regulation, 20 Traffic violations: police-citizen interactions and, 104–5; police procedures and, 59–60 Training, of police officers, 9, 80–81 Transportation, technological improvement in, 128–29 Uniform Crime Reports (FBI), 32 U.S. Congress, on urban violence, 141 Unlawful arrest, 44 Upper class, police treatment of, 76 Urbanization, 9; law enforcement and, 3–6 Urban sector, 43, 115; disorder in, x, xi–xii; neighborhood patrol officers, 86–87;

176

patrolling in, 155–56; public fear in, 100–101 Urban violence, x, xi–xii; components of, 130, 132–40; prevention of, 140–41 Vagrancy, 58–59 Vice, arrests for, 53–55 Victims, 19, 22–23, 62 Vietnam War, 10 Vigilantes, 4 Violence, 5, 23, 130; police, xii, 10; racial, 123–24. See also Urban violence Washington, D.C., 4, 48, 112, 151, 155; police-citizen interactions in, 72, 75, 76, 104; police misconduct in, 8, 90; public attitudes in, 98, 99 Watts, 112, 113; urban violence in, 132–33, 134 Weapons, 3, 101 Wells, Alice Stebbins, 152 Whalen, Grover, 7 Whites, 45, 78, 86, 101, 102, 165; attitudes toward police of, 99, 104, 105, 110, 111–12, 113, 116; minorities and, 124– 25, 129; police treatment of, 75–76, 113; on racial issues, 130–32 Wichita, 45 Wickersham Commission, 2, 7–8, 14– 15(n40) Wilson, James Q., 21 Wiretaps, 47 Wisconsin, Miranda responses in, 158–59 Women, as police officers, 152–53 Working class, 57, 89; interactions with police by, 110–11; police recruitment and, 77– 78 World War II, 8