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 environment. Some research implies that the conventional wisdom is overdrawn, and recent research has begun to question it more directly. Changes in the composition (i.e., the race, sex, and education) of police personnel, as well as philosophical and organizational changes associated with community policing, could be expected to further fragment police culture and to shift the distribution of police attitudes. Here we examine variation in outlooks that, according to conventional wisdom, are part of the police culture, using survey data collected in two police departments. We also examine the relationships between these outlooks and characteristics of officers—sex, race, education, length of service, community-policing training, and community-policing specialist assignment—that are associate...

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

Knowledge about police officers' job satisfaction to date has been limited to empirical inquiry based on individual officers' educational level, ethnicity, gender, and rank/years of service. This study explores the effect of the agency work environment on officers' job satisfaction in addition to the usual demographic variables. Until now, the police work environment primarily has been viewed in a pejorative context, synonymous with workers' stress, job burnout, cynicism, and alienation. Analysis of survey data from a medium-sized police department in the northwestern United States suggests that a police agency's work environment is a principal source of job satisfaction, regardless of the measure of the dependent variable employed.

Sources of job satisfaction among police officers: A test of demographic and work environment models

This study examined the behavioral differences between Black and White police officers in handling interpersonal conflicts. Observational and survey data from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods and the 1990 census data were used. Actions taken by officers are examined along two behavioral dimensions: coercion and support. Findings show that Black officers are more coercive than their White counterparts in responding to conflicts. Black officers are also more likely than White officers to conduct supportive activities in predominantly Black neighborhoods, whereas they do not differ in initiating supportive actions in racially diverse communities. Situational characteristics play a strong role in determining police actions during conflict resolution. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.

Racial Differences in Resolving Conflicts: A Comparison between Black and White Police Officers:

Objective and subjective underemployment relationships to job satisfaction.

This paper examines the effects of race and gender on patterns of interpersonal interaction in a police patrol bureau, and the organizational structural devices and cultural underpinnings that work together to obstruct the integration of women and blacks into the bureau. Analysis and interpretation of qualitative data gathered during field research in one midwestern police department are used to develop the subject. Gender and racial integration failed despite various organizational structural devices to “level the playing field” and carry out integration. No one single structural, political, or individual characteristic or condition appeared to be a decisive cause of the lack of integration. Instead, races and genders were divided by features of organizational life such as tensions, conflicts, and intraorganizational feuding about affirmative action, dual promotion lists, the decision-making process related to job assignments, police leagues in the department, and the presence of women in patrol.

Patterns of interaction in a police patrol bureau: Race and gender barriers to integration

The central issue of this study involves determining the importance of various demographic and job specific attitudes in predicting job satisfaction among patrol officers. Findings contradict much of the previous literature that suggested a predictable association between specific factors and officer attitudes. Instead this study supports a Situational approach to predicting job satisfaction. In addition, the impact of affirmative actions was shown to be highly associated with job satisfaction under certain circumstances.

Eva S. Buzawa

Papers

Determining Patrol Officer Job Satisfaction

The role of race in predicting job attitudes of patrol officers