Behind the Shield

"Well, I was a young rookie police officer and was attending college and that was one of the books recommended to us. Niederhoffer was a sociologist with over 20 years experience in the NYPD and the book was required reading for young, idealistic men – nowadays you’d say men and women but then it was men – starting out in the profession. It’s a book about the inevitable erosion from idealism to cynicism and the attitude of us against them. He talks about ways of defeating the culture of cynicism in the police force, one of which was to make policing a profession and not just a job. There were many efforts in the late 1960s and early 70s to achieve this via education. Serendipitously, it was during this era, the Vietnam War period, that a law enforcement education programme was initiated by Richard Nixon, of all people. This programme, called LEEP (Law Enforcement Education Programme) educated tens of thousands of police officers, including myself, who got to go to college. LEEP did for policing what the GI Bill did for returning vets after World War II. Nowadays, academics criticise Niederhoffer as superficial, but at the time his book was considered to be quite relevant. He tells the story of a Denver police officer just out of the academy, learning the ways of the profession. At the beginning, he accepts offers of free cups of coffee and free cigarettes. Then comes ‘the graft’ and turning a blind eye. And so begins the process of erosion. The author describes the emergence of what sociologist Emile Durkheim called ‘anomie’, the notion of isolation, frustration, and the development of an us-versus-them attitude. Today, the media and critics of the police refer to this as the blue wall of silence. It’s that attitude of cops coming together and protecting themselves: ‘No matter what happens you don’t give up your partner. We have to stick together. They are out to get us.’ Or, ‘They don’t understand us. They don’t know the shit we have to deal with on a daily basis. We deal with the scum of the earth that nobody else wants to deal with, but if we make one mistake we’re held up to ridicule and, sometimes, arrest.’ Most police officers feel that they are not understood and underappreciated. Of course it does! But, guess what? It exists in most professions, in the press and among doctors too. There are not many professions where people squeal on each other when something goes wrong. However, the media have this fixation with cops, you know. They love them but they love to hate them. Ironically, most of the shows on TV are cop shows"