The sociological concept of solidarity refers to the unique sense of identity, belonging, and cohesion that one develops as part of a group of colleagues who share in common social roles, interests, problems, concerns, and even lifestyles. Since solidarity refers to loyalty to one’s colleagues instead of loyalty to an organization, community, or set of principles, it involves emotional ties and commitments rather than formal or contractual relationships.
A sense of solidarity, or unity as it is alternatively called, is the pivotal feature that pervades the police subculture and sustains its integrity. It derives from both common experiences police officers encounter in their working environment and from the socialization or social learning process inherent to the police subculture, which involves the transmission of social norms, values, and beliefs. It is both a consequence of other basic features of police subculture, such as a sense of social isolation, and a cause of other basic features, such as secrecy.
Solidarity as Loyalty to Colleagues Rather Than Loyalty to the Police Organization
As officers move into higher ranks, solidarity tends to decline. Conversely, members of the police administration are frequently seen by line officers in much the same way they perceive members of the community and other outsiders—as threatening the police subculture. Michael Brown (1981, 82) and Peter Manning (1978, 85-86) remark on how police loyalty and social bonds provide police safety from the arbitrary authority and power of aggressive administrators and supervisors. The very fact that officers feel detached from their departmental administrators and supervisors, and consequently develop in-group bonds as a collective protective response, may indicate that police solidarity is inversely related to organizational loyalty and respect for administrative authority.
In his study of civilianization of the communications division of police departments, Shernock (1988b) found that interpretations of membership in the police department differed for sworn and civilian communications personnel. Sworn personnel tended to interpret their membership in terms of their group identification with fellow officers, whereas civilian personnel tended to interpret their membership in terms of their identification with the organization itself.
In her study of police in New York City precincts, Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni (1983) concluded that there are two distinct cultures in policing: a street cop culture and a management cop culture, which have conflicting perspectives on policy, procedure, and practice in policing. The particularistic values of the street cop culture—the ”we-they” worldview, secrecy, and solidarity—are juxtaposed against the new bureaucratic values of police reform that the management cop culture has adopted, where the rule topic presumably takes precedence. In contrast to street cops, management cops take community relations, public opinion, and politics seriously and are concerned with public accountability, productivity, and cost effectiveness. Consequently, they are seen by street cops as not having loyalty to people but instead to social and political networks.
Shearing (1981) and Ericson (1981) argue, on the other hand, that what first might appear to be a conflict between sub-cultural and formal organizational norms can actually involve a complementarity between these ostensibly different norms. These authors interpret subcultural norms as providing direction and guidance for the real work of policing, while formal departmental rules provide the framework used in legitimating this work. In turn, top administrators support and reward those who are successful in managing both the ”backstage” work carried out according to subcultural norms and the ”front-stage” appearances of abiding by departmental rules. Leonard (1980, 67) adds that although police officers frequently complain about their agencies to their peers, any external complaint against or adverse publicity about their departments often results in an increased sense of solidarity among all members of the department.
In his empirical study on police solidarity, Shernock (1988a) found that the organizational loyalty of his respondents was not related to solidarity measured by either an index of ”toleration toward the misconduct of and unequivocal trust toward fellow officers” or by the comparative value placed on loyalty to fellow officers. On the other hand, he found two separate measures of subordination to authority inversely related to solidarity. Obedience to superiors was negatively correlated with both measures of solidarity, and opposition to greater supervision was positively correlated with both measures of solidarity.
Although there has been some disagreement regarding solidarity between line officers and police administrators, there is virtually no such disagreement regarding solidarity between sworn officers and civilians within the police department. In his study of civilianization, Shernock (1988b) concluded that patrol officers were disingenuous when they remarked that ”civilians can’t be trusted to the same degree as sworn officers because they lack street and police background.” The underlying problem of trust would not seem to reflect civilians’ response to the pressures of their work, given their significantly lower levels of reported stress in their work compared to that of sworn communications personnel. The problem of trust also would seem to be based only minimally on civilians’ perspectives toward work values and police functions, inasmuch as sworn officers performing the same work as these civilians do not differ significantly from them on these values and functions. Instead, given the significant differences in expressions of solidarity and loyalty between civilians and sworn officers in both similar and complementary positions to these civilians, the underlying problem of trust appears to be the threat of civilianization to ”the indescribable bond between police officers.”
Solidarity as Loyalty to Colleagues Rather Than Loyalty to the Community
Police solidarity has been most commonly seen as the consequence of a need for insulation from perceived dangers and rejection of the community. Even though actual violence occurs in probably fewer than 2% to 3% of police-civilian encounters, the highly unpredictable but potentially dangerous scene is always a part of police patrol. In order to deal with this constant threat of being in a potentially dangerous situation involving persons who cannot be identified in advance, patrol officers come to view everyone with suspicion. This omnipresent suspicion, in turn, serves to isolate police from the rest of society.
This sense of isolation is reinforced by citizens’ failure to help the police in fights. The police officer’s lack of confidence in receiving help from the public in dangerous situations leads officers to believe that the only people who can be counted on in tight or problematic situations are other police officers and to equate the very essence of survival with the existence of an unquestioned support and loyalty among fellow officers. Since the successful officer needs the full support of his or her partners in order to act in dangerous situations, to violate the sanctity of solidarity by reporting a fellow officer leads one to be viewed as an unsafe officer.
Probably the factor in the external working environment most frequently cited as contributing to both police solidarity and a negative community orientation is the police perception of public hostility toward law enforcement and police officers. During the 1960s, Skolnick (1966, 225) reported that the Westville police he studied felt the most serious problem they had was not race relations but some form of public relations, lack of respect for police, lack of cooperation in enforcement of the law, and lack of understanding of the requirements of police work. In his interviews of police officers, Westley (1970,107) found that 73% of the officers interviewed believed that the public liked and supported the police. Similarly, Skolnick found that 70% of the 282 officers in the Westville police believed that the public rated the prestige of police work as either poor or only fair, while only 2% felt that the public rated it as excellent.
If this perception of hostility by the public toward the police is realistic, public hostility becomes an environmental precondition for police isolation and solidarity. On the other hand, if the perception is mistaken, it may indicate that the dynamic characteristic of the occupational subculture itself, which includes a sense of minority group status and solidarity, leads to the projection of hostility and, in turn, contributes to a negative community orientation.
Van Maanen (1978, 119) states that ”in general, there is little to link patrolmen to the private citizen in terms of establishing a socially satisfying relationship” and that ”patrolmen recognize accurately that few civilians are likely to return favors.” The long and often irregular working hours, particularly as a result of shift schedules, do not allow police to develop off-duty friendships with nonpolice and thereby contribute to police isolation. Ferdinand (1980) found that until the age of forty, much of a police officer’s social life is spent within the confines of the police subculture.
Police suspicion itself is reinforced by officers’ work experiences, their being so frequently in an adversarial relationship with the public and being confronted daily by people who are weak or corrupt, as well as dangerous. Lundman (1980, 85) notes further how the public stereotypes and depersonalizes the police, conferring on them a master status that leads them to feel a loss of identity and a sense of being stripped of their individuality.
In contrast, Walker (1992, 226-27) states that police officers do not have an accurate perception of citizen attitudes and that survey data indicate citizens are supportive of police. He cites the 1975 National Crime Survey, which found that 84% of whites and 74% of blacks rated the police as good or average. Although Lundman (1980, 83-84) recognizes some factual basis to the police perception of public hostility, he also finds that the police academy and the field training experience communicate a defensiveness theme to recruits, emphasizing distrust of persons and organizations outside the police department.
The defensiveness theme is communicated by seasoned officers in their war stories and in their interpretations of both the community relations unit as merely functioning to deflect public criticism and of the internal inspection squad as merely functioning to protect the department from attempts to create a civilian review board. Thus recruits are presumably cautioned that ”the only people to be trusted are other police officers.”
As an outsider group, the patrol officers’ occupational identity and subculture crystallize, wherein isolationism, secrecy, strong in-group loyalties, sacred symbols, common language, and a profound estrangement from the larger society intensify. Like other minorities, police officers not only tend to distrust members outside their in-group, but, moreover, tend to fraternize, both on and off the job, with members of their own minority group in order to avoid unpleasant interactions with civilians who view them only in terms of their police identity.
Thus, isolated by the hostility and stereotyping they perceive, the police compensate by developing an intense solidarity for self-protection and moral support (Westley 1970, 111). The consequent unity enables them to tolerate isolation from, hostility of, and disapproval of citizens. Police loyalty then can be seen as assuaging real and imagined wrongs inflicted by a hostile public. As the police bonds to the public become weaker and their in-group activities and cohesiveness become greater, the police become more suspicious of and more polarized from the public, wherein the police-public relationship often turns from supportive to adversarial.
In his study on the relationship between police solidarity and community orientation, Shernock (1988a) found that solidarity as measured by an index of ”toleration toward the misconduct of and unequivocal trust toward fellow officers” was weakly related to less support for the service function and to the comparative value placed on respect for citizens, but not related to the comparative importance of the community relations function. On the other hand, when solidarity was measured as the comparative ranking of the value ”loyalty to other police officers,” it was found strongly related to a lower comparative value placed on respect for citizens and moderately related to less importance placed on the community relations function, but not related to less support for the service function when controlling for age and police experience and not related to defensiveness toward the media.
Shernock also found that antagonism toward externally imposed control over police discretion was found to be highly correlated with the first measure of solidarity and weakly to moderately correlated with the second measure of solidarity. There appears to be a definite tendency for solidarity among police to increase as their level of antagonism toward externally imposed control over police discretion increases.
Solidarity as Loyalty to Colleagues Rather Than Loyalty to Ethical Principles
As a shield against the attacks of the outside world and against public criticism, the police place a high value on secrecy within their subculture. This code of secrecy among police officers, which is not confined to American policing alone, appears to be the strongest code adhered to within the police agency and, according to Goldstein (1977, 165), is stronger than similar tacit norms in the highly regarded professions of media and law.
The perceived hostility toward the police fosters an ”us versus them” attitude and a feeling that officers must stick together even to the point of lying about the misconduct of other officers. Secrecy is thus seen by Westley (1970, 111) as solidarity insofar as it represents a common front against the outside world. Blumberg (1976, 15) concurs, stating that ”secrecy provides the glue that binds police solidarity.” It maintains group identity and supports solidarity since it gives something in common to those who belong to the police subculture and differentiates those who do not. The sense of unity and loyalty that results from the demand for conformity to the values of the police subculture can someday be invoked by any officer to cover a serious mistake or to help the officer out in serious trouble.
Yet, as Westley (1970, 112) significantly observes, secrecy does not apply to achievement but to mistakes, to plans, to illegal actions, to character defamation. Because the police subculture requires that its members be loyal and trustworthy, officers feel obligated to cover up a fellow officer’s brutal acts, petty thefts, extortionate behavior, abuses of police power, and other illegalities. ”Blowing the whistle,” ”finking,” and ”squealing” are breaches of the code of silence and secrecy that represent the most heinous offense in the police world. It is an unwritten law in police departments that police officers must never testify against their fellow officers. Every officer tacitly agrees to uphold the secrecy code in order to claim solidarity rights to the unit or agency to which the officer belongs.
It is still uncertain, however, whether those conforming to the ”code of silence” disapprove of the misconduct of fellow officers and whether tolerance of that misconduct indicates how individual officers themselves can be expected to behave. The answer from a number of students of police misbehavior is that there is a connection between an officer’s own values and behavior and the officer’s tolerance of the misconduct of fellow officers. Noting the effects of police subcultural expectations on recruits, Savitz (1970), in a longitudinal study at three different time periods, found that recruits not only became more permissive toward corrupt police conduct but approximated the values of experienced officers over time.
More specifically, Barker (1978) has observed that those police officers who believe that certain forms of misconduct will not be reported are probably more likely to engage in such misconduct. Stod-dard (1968) has gone even further, noting that ”whether one can inform on his fellow officers is directly connected with the degree of his illegal involvement prior to the situation involving the unlawful act.” Likewise, Muir (1977, 67, 72) believes that once a police officer has violated a standard or rule, that officer is bound to remain silent regarding others’ violations, even if they are more serious. It would thus appear, according to these critics, that tolerance toward the misconduct of other officers is more likely to be based either on a more complete socialization to the subcultural value systems or on complicity that develops as a result of one’s own misconduct than on mere conformity to the ”code of silence.”
Conclusion
Some degree of solidarity may be very positive. Loyalty to fellow officers may bolster officers’ self-esteem and confidence and may call forth a courageous reaction to threats to the interests of a member of a group to which one belongs. Nevertheless, attention has been focused on the police subcultural attribute of solidarity because of its perceived negative consequences for organizational control and change, public accountability, and ethical conduct.
The particularistic value placed on loyalty to colleagues often comes into conflict with the bureaucratic values of police reform, and police solidarity itself often undermines supervisory control by police administrators. The isolation associated with police solidarity may undermine loyalty to the community insofar as it influences officers to develop attitudes that are essentially different from those of the wider society within which the police function and whom they are charged to protect, and may create and sustain negative perceptions toward and hostile encounters with members of the public. Excessive loyalty to colleagues also has been seen as inconsistent with loyalty to the high ideals of the ethical canons of the profession and, consequently, as militating against the obligation impelled by a regulatory code of ethics to identify and mete out professional sanctions against those fellow practitioners who have failed to perform their duties properly.
While police officers might continue to express solidarity with fellow officers by maintaining the ”code of silence,” there are some indications that there are changes in patterns of fraternization among police that have bolstered solidarity in the past. Blumberg states that regardless of what a number of dated studies may show, his experience in contact with a variety of police departments would lead him to believe that the new generation of police recruits has developed a more expanded friendship network than their predecessors and that the social isolation of police is somewhat exaggerated.
There are also some indications, despite the need for more research, that the recruitment of women and African Americans has modified police solidarity. Martin found that the entrance of women into policing has diminished the traditional solidarity of the group because expressions of friendship that are acceptable between two males are problematic between officers of different sexes, and also because women officers do not share the same off-duty interests as male officers. While it might be assumed that increased educational qualifications and professionalization of the police might lead to conflicts between old-line officers, and thus at least temporarily weaken solidarity among police officers, the effects of these changes, as well as others, must be determined by future empirical research studies.
