Saint Xavier University
From the SelectedWorks of Christopher C. Cooper Dr.
Summer July 21, 2000
ENTRENCHED POLICE SUBCULTURE IS
AT ROOT OF POLICE BRUTALITY AND
BIAS CASES
Christopher C. Cooper, Saint Xavier University
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/christopher_cooper/9/
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July
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By Christopher Cooper
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he videotaped beating of
Thomas Jones by Philadelphia police officers is yet another incident that calls attention to the nationwide, systematic
problems of police brutality and racially discriminatory policing.
I am a fom~erU.S. Marine and
police officer who has come under
gunfire and confronted many fleeing suspects both armed and unarmed. Regardless of the severity
of Jones' alleged actions, his having
been set upon by a mob composed
of law-enforcement agents indicates cowardice and a lack of professionalism by the officers involved. A courageous, physically fit
police officer does not behave like
a bully or lose control of himself
when things become tense.
For many Americans not of color,
what happened to Thomas Jones is
an aberration. For people of color,
in particular black people and Latinos, Jones' beating is commonplace
police behavior. Another group that
knows it's commonplace is police
officers themselves.
Sadly, in our early tenure as cops,
we are insmcted on the "code" of
the police subculture. These are
norms that are almost always perverse. Two such norms were operable in the Jones mob attack The
first is that if a citizen runs from one
of us, we are to beat him severely.
Another is that if a citizen physically hurts one of us, we are to hurt
that citizen even more before we
bring him to the station. And if that
citizen has killed a cop, he shouldn't
make it to the station alive. This is
well-documented in research literature about policing (including the
work of Elizabeth Reuss-Ianni and
Jonathan Rubinstein) and in public
testimony by police officers.
The police say Thomas Jones
hurt a cop - shot him in the hand,
says the police report. AS that informtion was Passed by police radio
from officer to officer, the police
subculture sprang into action. Officers turned on lights and sirens and
accelerated to the site with total disregard for the community. Time to
carry out the subcultural mandate.
Some police officers, fortunately,
decide to resist such corms. We are
the code violators. \Ve testifv
,~oainsrfellon nffi, r_c2nd routine-
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Iy interrupt beatings of the
u&irenaline rush," but never a.'
type. Too many of our colleagues, 'crime with the ingredient of mal- :
however, choose to be strict adher- ice. If anyone is to blame, they ')
point to automatic weapons that
ents of the code.
b s e c u t o r s fail to re&e that fire too quickly, Supervisors who ',
the police
provides justi- didn't supervise, a training course ;
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fiation for ~ 0 ~ e s -beatings
w ~
that'was never delivered.
.A
different
perspective
is
held
by
.
long before the, beatings ever ocl e academicians of color, '.
cur. ~t teaches police officers how p e ~ ~ and
to have a =dy excuse to explain as well as some whites. We recog- !
away bad behidoil ~ ~ ~ lay
h i nize
l that
~ ,American policing suffers
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p p l e-DAk, judges ~d juries - h m a pemene subculNR* G d
that
all
too
often,
individual
offkare willing to m e p f authoritative . ers
the
to stand up to '
versions of what happened on a P that code.
result is a too-fre- f
lice scene without question. Such went lack The
of gemty,and respect
automatic deference, coup!ed with for human life, a lack of respect
knorance
of the police code,
that
too often exacerbates the
lows police brutality and racially ,,d tensions that sue ~in our
t
discriminatory policing
to
flourish.
society.
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imagine the success we&Ameri...
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cans, good police officers included, ~ h r i . & ~ h~~o o p w a, lawyer, is a
would have instamping out police former Washington D.C. metropolitan
brutality if we took the police sub- police officer. He is on the board of
culture seriously. !' ,:ji; . :
- . directors of the National Black Police . .
NO surprise a t . c w ' . & o re- - Association and is an associate
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*tment
at the hands of iKofessor of crimina: justice wim a
iGde out to be liars. $ p e c i d i o n in policing at St. Xavier
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police are
Black and Latino people,reportweap UniVerS* in
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ons being planted on 'them, report , .'
being beiten for merely questioning
an officer's inquiry. Their accounts
are deemed "unbelievablen and the
In a May 3 Gwynne Dyer column,
products of wild imagination.
informant Victor Ostrovsky was
That view is supported by many quoted as alleging that Mossad, the
white social scientists. Unlike their Israeli secret service, was involved
colleagues of color, they assert that in a plot to blame Libya for the
police officers' actions are seldom bombing of the La Belle disco in
if ever motivated by race. When of- Berlin in 1986, and subsequently in
ficers gun down an unarmed man in an attempt to implicate Libya in the
a barrage of 41 bullets on a Bronx bombing of Pan Am 103. It has bestreet, or when officers beat a man come clear since then that Ostroviciously on a Philadelphia street, vsky is not a credible source far
these scholars assert that it's the these allegatiu;.~.and the columnist
~r.-~rltudeof the officers or nn ~.vi.;hesthem :-~rhara\~n.
ones
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Clearingthe record