Police culture, individualism, and community policing: Evidence from two police departments

According to the conventional wisdom, the police culture consists of a set of values, attitudes, and norms that are widely shared among officers, who find in the culture a way to cope with the strains of their working environ ment. Some research implies that the conventional wisdom is overdrawn, and recent research has begun to question it more directly. Changes in the comp osition (i.e., the race, sex, and education) of police personnel, as well a s philosophical and organizational changes associated with community polici ng, could be expected to further fragment police culture and to shift the d istribution of police attitudes. Here we examine variation in outlooks that , according to conventional wisdom, are part of the police culture, using s urvey data collected in two police departments. We also examine the relatio nships between these outlooks and characteristics of officers - sex, race, education, length of service, community-policing training, and community-po licing specialist assignment - that are associated with the changes in poli cing. We find that officers' outlooks do not conform to the pattern that we would expect on the basis of conventional wisdom. We also find that the va riation in officers' occupational attitudes is not patterned to a great ext ent by their characteristics. We conclude with directions for future resear ch on police attitudes.