Police Solidarity Essay

Solidarity can be defined as the close-knit nature and intense loyalty between police officers (Crank, 2004). Officers will look out for each other against the public, but also against administrators, as seen in the occupational and organizational environments. This mindset is instilled in officers at the beginning of their training and is reinforced as they progress through their careers. The most powerful form of solidarity is between police partners, as officers are expected to watch out for their assigned partner above all (Crank, 2004). While this can be seen as a positive aspect of solidarity, there is also a dark side. Loyalty can be used to keep officers quiet regarding corruption and misconduct, which may erode an idealistic officer’s beliefs. Peer pressure to uphold solidarity will often mask deeper issues within a police department, while alienating family and friends forcing police to depend on each other (Crank, 2004). The pressure to keep silent regarding illegal behavior segues into the code of silence.
The code of silence (source 8 and 15) Police culture can protect …show more content…
These behaviors ranged from sex-related, alcohol-related, and drug-related, to violence-related, and profit-motivated (Stinson, 2015). All officer misconduct on or off duty can be categorized under any of these categories, however they are not mutually exclusive to one category. An example of this is a drug-related crime being profit-motivated, or sex-related being violence-related. While all off duty misconduct may be generalized as overall misconduct to the general public, it is indistinguishable from on duty crime by other officers as there is no definitive line for the end of work. Despite there not being a national database for misconduct and corruption statistics, police departments have taken initiative to investigate the root causes with departmental wide