Weak links and warrior hearts: a framework for judging self and others in police training

Abstract

This paper examines professional socialization within a metropolitan police academy in the USA. Specifically, the research documents how the normative orders of the occupational culture come to function as a framework used to either stigmatize or idealize fellow recruits. A series of narratives regarding and reactions to particular events in the training serve as examples that detail the manner by which recruits internalize the occupational culture as they evolve through the training. The paper also discusses how recruits are eventually able to utilize their burgeoning understanding of normative orders to discredit police administrators and the training structure itself.

Keywords:

• masculinity
• moral career
• narrative
• normative order
• police culture
• police socialization

Acknowledgements

Immeasurable thanks go to Ryan Bees for inspiring this research and Patrick Doreian for his continuing support on this project. The author is also extremely grateful to Dilip Das, John Eterno and James Adcock for their work in moving this article toward publication. Additionally, the comments of Linda Morrison, Lawrence T. Nichols and three anonymous reviewers were essential for improving the overall quality of the work.

Notes

1. Eterno (2006) has noted that high stress paramilitary training is common among large compstat departments while non‐stress training is frequently found in community‐oriented policing style departments. In a comprehensive survey, Hickman (2005) discovered that 54% of American academies can be categorized as the high stress variety. So, while there is variation in training styles throughout the USA, the type of academy described in this research is quite common within large urban departments.

2. Rockport is a pseudonym for an American city with a population of 500,000 and a police force of 2000 officers.