Becoming a Policeman Socialization of Cadets in a Police Academy

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Journal of Contemporary

http://jce.sagepub.com/content/6/2/149The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/089124167700600202

1977 6: 149Journal of Contemporary EthnographyMarianne Hopper

Becoming a Policeman: Socialization of Cadets in a Police Academy

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BECOMINGA POLICEMAN

Socialization of Cadets

in a PoliceAcademy

M A R I A N N E HOPPER

MARIANNE HOPPER is an advanced graduate student and a teachingassistant at the University of Texas atAustin. Her interests include social

psychology, social disorganization, and the sociology of law. Her currentresearch deals with the use of the dramaturgical model in studying the

trial process and especially with the presentation of self in court. Sheearned her M.A. in sociology from the University of Texas in 1974.

GN ENTERINGA POLICEACADEMY, young menbegin one of the most complicated rites of passage in our society.This rite of passage consists of the series of instructions,

ceremonies, and tests through which their status changes fromthat of ordinary citizen to that of policeman. Technical skilland legal knowledge are not sufficient to make a policeman; inaddition, they must learn to play the part of a policeman in ourcomplex society. That is, they must learn what is expected ofthem as policemen and what to expect of others. The concept ofcareer (Hughes, 1958; Becker and Strauss, 1956) as a sequenceof movements from one position to another by an individual

employed in an occupational system is probably the mostconceptually adequate way to study this socialization process.The notion of career contingencies as the factors upon whichthis mobility depends is a crucial one. These career contingencies

AUTHORS NOTE: The present report draws upon my M.A. study of policecadets, &dquo;Potice Training and Cadet Socialization:An Observational Study,&dquo;the University of Texas atAustin, 1974. I am indebted to Sheldon Olsonand LouisA. Zurcher for critiques of an earlier draft of this paper.


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include both elements of the social structure and changes in the

perspectives and motivations of the individual.It must be remembered that in the police academy the

cadet is not a policeman. Cadets have an ambiguous status some-what like that of adolescents caught between childhood and

maturity. The cadets, by virtue of their interest in the professionand the amount of training they have already completed, knowmore about policing than most ordinary citizens. Yet they knowless about policing than the officer on the street, because theyhave not finished their training and most of them have not had

any practical experience. It is this ambiguous stage of being acadet that I will focus on; the stage when rights and respon-

sibilities are not clearly known. The cadets must learn how toact as cadets, and they must learn this thoroughly before theycan become policemen.As short range goals, they must meet thetrials and challenges presented in the police recruit trainingprogram. I intend to discuss the shift in perspective that takes

place as these young men move from the status of private citizento that of probationary police officer.

CONTEXT

It is only recently that social scientists have begun to devoteresearch efforts to the everyday standards of police behavior(Rubinstein, 1973; Reiss, 1971; Westley, 1970; Wilson, 1968;Neiderhoffer, 1967; Skolnick, 1966). These studies largelydocument the results of the occupational socialization process.

Our interest is in the socialization process itself. Several recentworks have dealt specifically with this process (Van Maanen,.1974, 1973; Harris, 1973). One problem with most of thediscussions of police socialization in the above cited works isthat the writers tend to assume a homogeneity on the part of thecadets in terms of their past experiences and perspectives on

police work. They tend to agree that police training should beviewed as a rite of passage, but in describing this status passage


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they speak of the experience and reactions of &dquo;the recruit.&dquo;The object of this paper is to show that the cadets actuallydiffer in terms of their background experience with the lawenforcement

professionand these differences are indicative of

significant differences in their long range perspectives on

police work and the police world. These different perspectiveslead to different career contingencies to be faced by the various

groups of cadets.As Hughes (1958: 129) says, &dquo;Career is, infact, a sort of running adjustment between a man and the variousfacts of life and of his professional world.&dquo; Because of theirdifferent background experiences and their different perspectiveson police work, it is not surprising that there are very real

differences in the adjustment processes of various groups ofcadets.

METHOD

Studying the perspectives of the police cadets required,in part, an ethnography of police cadet culture. The approach

used to make initial notes and transcriptions was quite similarto the type of ethnography referred to as the &dquo;new ethnography&dquo;or &dquo;ethnographic semantics&dquo; (Spradley and McCurdy, 1972: 7).The study design draws on the research design employed byBecker et al. (1961) in the study Boys in White.As such, itis a qualitative research effort emphasizing participant observa-tion and informal interviewing. Final permission was given onFebruary 8, 1973 for an intensive study of the recruit training

procedures at theAustin (Texas) PoliceAcademy. The actualdata gathering process was designed to allow maximumidentification with the cadets. Thus, I became an ex officiomember of the 49th cadet class at theAustin PoliceAcademy.

As such, I attended and took part in almost all of the 960 traininghours in the 20 week course. The 49th cadet class received

training from March 19, 1973, toAugust 3, 1973.


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My role as a researcher was made explicit from the outset.

The fact that I was a female in a previously all male environment

initially served to set me off from the rest of the cadets.As

Garfinkel (1967) points out, such extraordinary circumstancescan be utilized to reveal aspects of the social relations of thesetting that would not be ordinarily visible in the smooth flowof daily activities. Gradually, as a result of the lengthy, personal,and involving nature of my academy experience, I came to be

accepted as a member of the class.

SAMPLE

It is appropriate at this time to discuss the nature of our

sample. The fact that prospective policemen must meet certainset requirements before they are allowed to be classified ascadets and to attend the recruit training course produced someuniformity in the sample. When the 49th cadet class firstconvened there were 29 cadets. One of these cadets was ill in

the early portion of the training and was dropped back to attend

the 50th cadet class. Of the 28 remaining cadets one wasemployed by the Sheriffs Office. However, since this cadet wastreated exactly like the other cadets he will be included inthe following considerations.

Following Becker et al. (1961), we will refer to the generalnotions about law enforcement and the law enforcement

profession that the cadets bring to the training course as their&dquo;long range perspectives.&dquo; Their initial long range perspective

dependsto some extent on the nature

of their past experienceswith law enforcement. To get some idea of these past experienceswe must consider the cadets backgrounds. Those cadets whohave previously worked in law enforcement, or who have hadclose dealings with people in law enforcement, will naturallyhave a more accurate and detailed mental image of what it meansto be a policeman.

By examining the cadets backgrounds for the extent oftheir dealings with law enforcement bodies, we found four


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general groups of cadets. The first group of cadets that wewill consider consisted of six cadets who had previously servedas law enforcement officers. The type of law enforcement agencywhere they had been employed varied, as did the length of theirservice. While these cadets did not know exactly what it wouldbe like to be policemen inAustin, they did have a generalidea of what it meant to be law enforcement officers.

The second group of cadets had worked as military policewhen they were in the service. There were five cadets in thiscategory. Being a policeman in the military differs from civilianlaw enforcement since the men work under a different set of

regulations and enforce a different set of laws. Though the cadets

who had been in the military police had not held jobs that wereextremely similar to police work inAustin, they did believe thatthis work had showed them that they &dquo;liked the feeling of this

type of job.&dquo;A third category of cadets consisted of those who had worked

as police aides prior to their entrance into the training course.There were four cadets in the 49th cadet class who had previouslybeen police aides. Though they had worked in various parts of the

station and had met different police personnel, they had notactually taken part in any law enforcement action, and they hadno first hand knowledge of the actual situation for officers onthe street. Their familiarity with law enforcement was with office

procedures at Austin Police Department (APD) and with&dquo;stories&dquo; of happenings on the street. Perhaps in this categorywe should include the cadet who had worked as a radio dis-

patcher atAPD for a year before deciding to become a police-man.

The final group of cadets were newcomers to law enforcement.Fourteen of the cadets fell into this category. Since these men

were over 21, they had held different jobs, and many of themhad served in the military. These cadets were often employeddoing clerical work at the police station for the brief intervalbetween the time tat they were hired and the time that the class

began. The point is, however, that they had never had any real


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TABLE 1

Cadets by Background Experience

job experience directly related to law enforcement. Many ofthemwere relatively naive about law enforcement.

The distribution of cadets by background experience is shownin Table 1. Several things need to be noted about this distribu-tion. In the first place, the four groups discussed were not

mutually exclusive. There was a cadet who had served as anM.P. in the service before he came to work atAPD as a policeaide.Also, the cadet who had experience as a dispatcher had beenin the Navy Shore Patrol before coming toAPD. Thus, these twocadets are each listed under two separate categories which

explains why the total is 30 rather than the expected 28. In thesecond place, we should note that fully half of the cadets werenewcomers to the law enforcement field.

It is appropriate at this time to consider the reasons thecadets gave for wanting to become policemen since these reasonsfurther illuminate the cadets initial conceptions of what itmeant to do police work. There were six distinct reasons thatcadets cited repeatedly. Many of them stated that they likedbeing outdoors and driving around. One of these cadets com-plained that since he had been hired, he had worked first in the

jail and had then been &dquo;penned up in the classroom.&dquo; He hopedthat the situation would

changeafter

graduationfrom the

academy.A second reason frequently cited for choosing lawenforcement was the fact that officers are &dquo;doing differentthings every day.&dquo; Rubinstein (1973) affirms the fact that

policemen know they have little control over what they may becalled on to do. He (Rubinstein, 1973: 63) states that manyofficers &dquo;claim this unpredictability is a virtue of the trade,an important reason why they prefer police work to other labor.&dquo;

As a third reason some cadets frequently mentioned the fact that


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their yearning for excitement brought them to this job. One ofthe cadets who had previously been in law enforcement men-

tioned that he loved to work at night because there was more

excitementthen. The fourth reason cadets often gave for

wantingthis job was that they wanted to help people. Several cadets spokevery idealistically about helping, though they were not alwaysspecific as to the sort of help they planned to give. The fifthreason some cadets gave for joining the force was job security.As one cadet put it, &dquo;this job assured that if something happenedto me, my wife and kids would be taken care of better than if I

was a shoe salesman,&dquo; which was one alternative type of work

he had considered. The cadets were also aware of the fact that

after the six month probation period, their job would be coveredby civil service provisions. These provisions would protectthem from being arbitrarily fired or laid off. The final reasonthat some of the cadets gave for wanting this job was that theyhad held similar jobs before, and they really enjoyed the work.These reasons give us some idea of the cadets expectations aboutthe career they had undertaken.

Though there is no perfect correlation between a cadetsreasons for wanting to be a policeman and his backgroundexperience with law enforcement and no neat tables can bedrawn, certain trends may be noted. Both cadets with law

enforcement experience and those without seem equally likelyto cite the fact that they liked being outdoors and drivingaround. Also, both groups were likely to cite the excitementand variety that the work provided as being appealing to them.Each group also mentioned the job security as an extremely

desirable aspect of the work. However, the cadets without aprevious background in law enforcement were far more likelyto mention the fact that they were becoming policemen because

they wanted to help people. On the other hand, only the cadetswith law enforcement experience could give the reason that theyhad held similar jobs and they enjoyed the work. Perhaps thesituation can be best represented as shown in Figure 1.

Thus, we see that there is a large area of overlap in the reasons

for wanting to become policemen given by cadets with back-


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Figure 1: Reasons for Wanting to Become Policemen

ground experience in some form of law enforcement and by thosecadets without such experience. These reasons set forth someof the intrinsic appeal law enforcement may hold for a man,even if he has never actually worked in the field.

DISCUSSION OF LONG RANGE PERSPECTIVES

If we were dealing with a group of students that was relativelyhomogeneous with respect to background knowledge of the

profession they were entering, such as the group of medicalstudents Becker et al. (1961) studied, we might expect to findonly one long range perspective among the neophytes. However,_as noted above, the cadets differ greatly in their sources of

background information about the law enforcement profession.Therefore, it is not surprising that examination of the contentsof each cadets long range perspective reveals that there wereactually three long range perspectives subscribed to by different

cadets at the beginning of the course. This is significant sincemost other discussions of police socialization assume a homo-

geneity in terms of cadets long range perspectives. On thebasis of these different perspectives, cadets face different career

contingencies in the process of becoming policemen. The three

perspectives may be characterized as idealistic, practical, andrealistic. The long range perspective of the idealistic cadets

may be summarized as follows:


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[157]

(1) We want to be policemen because we want to help people.

(2) We already know generally how we want to go about helpingpeople, and by becoming policemen we will be able to carryout these goals.

(3) We are dedicated to this work, as we must be since there aremany jobs where the pay is better.

The cadets with this long range perspective were generallynewcomers. One of these cadets told me that the present condi-

tions on the police force did not allow enough contact with the

public. He said, &dquo;Policemen should go out and listen to people.&dquo;He added that he wanted officers not in uniform, not talking,but listening. These cadets were prone to speak very idealisticallyabout the amount of good they could accomplish as policeofficers. The idealistic cadets were also united in their belief

that the training should not change a cadets basic outlook.These cadets self-defined conceptions of police work (most ofthem formed without the benefit of close contact with the law

enforcement profession) and their aversion to personal changeindicated that they did not feel that an actual conversion was

going to be necessary in order for them to become police officers.This outlook caused them considerable difficulty as the course

progressed.A second long range perspective was that of the practicalcadets. It may be summarized as follows:

(1) We want to be policemen because the idea appeals to us.

(2) We do not know just what this job entails, but we are willing toIearn.. -

(3) The things we do know about the job make it appealing enoughto overcome its remunerative shortcomings.

The cadets holding this long range perspective were new-comers, former aides, or former M.P.s. They differed from theidealistic cadets in that they were willing to change in the process


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of becoming policemen.Also, they did not have any specific planfor &dquo;doing good&dquo; or helping people. This is not to say that theydid not care what wrongs were done. On the contrary, some ofthem were very moralistic. One of these cadets told me that he

was taught &dquo;right&dquo; from &dquo;wrong&dquo; as a child, and he liked tosee &dquo;right&dquo; done. They wanted &dquo;right&dquo; to be done, but they hadno special plan for achieving this end.The third long range perspective, that of the realistic cadets,

could be summarized as follows:

(1) We want to be policemen because we realize what it entails andwe enjoy the work.

(2) We will adapt our prior knowledge of law enforcement to theprocedures atAPD in order to enable us to function as police-men here.

(3) We realize that there are monetary limitations and accept themas part of our chosen profession.

All of the cadets with this long range perspective had formerlybeen law enforcement officers. Due to their experience, they had

the clearest idea of what their jobs would include. They weregenerally aware of their potential for helping people and alsoof the structural restrictions that would inhibit this help process.They realized that a conversion was necessary in order to becomepolicemen, but they felt that they had already been converted.These cadets knew what to expect and in fact did not encounter

any substantial surprises.We should note that it was not always easy to determine just

what perspective a cadet held. Some of the idealistic cadetshad less developed conceptions of how they would use policework to help people and were less firmly opposed to personalchange than others. On the other hand, some of the practicalcadets did have some incipient idea of how they hoped to dopolice work and did set some limits on the degree of changethey were willing to undergo in order to become policemen.Even though it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between

the idealistic and the practical cadets, it was, in fact, possible


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TABLE 2

Cadets in each Perspective by Background Experience

to make these distinctions. These categories facilitated systematic

thoughtabout the cadets

long range perspectivesand the

impactthe course had on these perspectives.The distribution of cadets in each perspective by background

experience is shown in Table 2.Again we must note that twocadets are listed twice producing a total of 30. The two cadetsthat are listed twice both came to the course with practical longrange perspectives and are counted in both of the starred figures.

Several interesting facts can be seen from the table. First,one of the cadets who had previously worked in law enforcementis listed as having an idealistic long range perspective. Thoughthis cadet had worked for several years at the Sheriffs Office

he had managed to maintain a very idealistic outlook. Thisindicates that his idealism must have been quite deep-seated andinflexible. Perhaps the same can be said of the cadet who spentseveral years as an M.P. and managed to maintain a veryidealistic outlook.As we will see below, this inflexible idealisticstance had definite consequences for both of these cadets.

We should also note that all of the cadets who had formerlyworked atAPD either as aides or as a dispatcher had practicalperspectives. This is in contrast to the fact that nearly halfof the newcomers came to the course with idealistic long rangeperspectives.Now that we have discussed the long range perspectives that

the cadets held when they entered the class, we must considerthe effects of the training on these perspectives. The three

groups of cadets reacted in different ways as different realiza-


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tions struck them about the nature of police work and what it

would mean to be a policeman atAPD. Hughes (1958) has notedthat confronting the reality of a new profession is in somecircumstances &dquo;traumatic.&dquo; Several researchers discussingpolice socialization (Van Maahen, 1973; Westley, 1970) haveindicated that these realizations may entail &dquo;reality shock.&dquo;Since the groups of cadets differed in their reactions to the

training, we will discuss each group separately and ask how theydealt with the different realizations that the course presentedto them.

We will first consider the idealistic cadets, since they werethe first group to encounter difficulties in their adjustment to

police work. They began to have problems when the class wasintroduced to the Code of Conduct. The Code specifies themanner in which the department feels police officers shouldconduct themselves. These cadets were bothered by the fact thatthe Code placed restrictions on them and required changes intheir personal lives. Since their definitions of police work did notcall for such changes, they were not ready to accept them. Duringthe first week of the course the Chief addressed the class and

made it clear that certain standards of behavior were expected.He said, &dquo;As you become a policeman you will become a differentperson with a different personality.&dquo; The idealistic cadets hadnot planned to become &dquo;different people,&dquo; and the idea of thesechanges bothered them.

The idealistic cadets were equally upset by the fact that rulesset forth in class were not uniformly followed on the street.In class the cadets were told that policemen should not accept

any gratuities. This rule bothered many of them since they hadseen some officers accepting free coffee and half-priced mealsduring the shifts they had ridden.We should note that some of the practical cadets were also

upset by this rule since they had counted on these benefits as

being part of being policemen. However, as we previously noted,these cadets were more willing to adapt to what policemenactually do. Therefore, most of them easily came to the con-


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clusion that when they graduated they would do as the officerson the street did in these matters.

We should also consider the reaction of the realistic cadetsto the restrictive rules and to the fact that these rules were not

always followed on the street. The realistic cadets had alreadydealt with this probem in their experience as law enforcementofficers. They accepted the fact that what officers did on thestreet was not always the same thing as what they had learned inthe classroom. One of these cadets told me, &dquo;itll change whenthey get out on the street.&dquo; He said that &dquo;the police departmentused the school to start cadets off right, then when the men getonto the street some of them will do things differently.&dquo;The point is that the ambiguity over these rules bothered the

idealistic cadets. They wanted the situation, with respect tothese rules, to be clear cut. Instead, the instructors readingthe rules seemed to expect that the cadets would violate theserules later on. They did make it clear, however, that if the men

got caught in violations they could be disciplined.Some of the idealistic cadets also had trouble in the course

when their personal definitions of police work did not correspondto the definitions presented in training. One of these cadetsstated in class that when he had been spending a shift workingat the booking desk he had seen several officers hitting a prisonerwith a nightstick. This event obviously upset him. The instructorwent to the jail and followed-up the incident. It turned out thatthe prisoner had been rowdy and physically aggressive, and thatthe supervisor had told these officers to use their nightsticks to

help get this subject into a cell. In this case the cadet had a

completely different definition of the necessary use of forcethan the department did. The cadet wanted to help people, and hecould not see the use of force unless it was absolutely necessaryin order to protect another citizen.The adjustment problems that the idealistic cadets encoun-

tered indicate that the rigid preconceptions of police work andthe unwillingness to change that are inherent in the idealistic

perspective do not help the cadets cope with the problems


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presented in training. The initial perspectives of the first fewweeks belonged to a group of cadets who did not know each otherwell.As the cadets began to get to know one another they triedto develop group perspectives that would solve the problemspresented in their situation. The general reaction was to try toemulate the cadets who seemed to be doing well in the course interms of successfully handling class assignments and adjustingto police work. These class models tended to be the practicaland realistic cadets. However, some of the idealistic cadetswere so committed to their preconceptions of police work that

they were unwilling to modify them even when it became

apparent that their utility was minimal. Two of these cadets

resigned from the course. These two cadets could not bring them-selves to modify their conceptions in terms of the reality pre-sented in the training course.

The cadet who had worked for the Sheriffs Office and main-

tained his idealistic perspective attempted to do the same thingatAPD. However, he could not maintain this perspective andmeetAPDs expectations, hence he was cut from the class.A

rigidly idealistic stance simply is not functional in this setting.We should make it clear that not all of the idealistic cadets

resigned or were cut. Some of them less committed to theiroriginal ideas about police were able to make enough changes toallow themselves to accept the realities presented in training.Often these were the idealistic cadets whose initial conceptionsof police were closer to the conception presented in training,thus they were not called upon to make great changes. In effect,these cadets shifted to a practical perspective. They realized

that their initial idealistic perspectivewas not

useful insuccess-

fully completing the course and decided to try the approach ofthe practical cadets who were having less difficulty adjusting.They decided that they still wanted to be policemen, though theywere no longer sure just what this meant. They were willing tolearn and, to a certain extent, to change in order to become

police officers. After having made this decision, these cadets


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opened themselves up more fully to the conversion process. Theycan now be considered with the group of practical cadets.We should now consider the practical cadets and the dif-

ficultiesthey

encountered in the process of

becoming policemen.We previously noted that these cadets were aware of the factthat a conversion was involved and were at least willing totry to convert. The conversion for these cadets involved a longseries of problematic situations that can arise in police work.They had to become aware of these situations and come to viewthemselves as being able to cope with them. One of the firstproblems to bother these cadets was the ambiguity involved.There are many questions that arise in police work in which thereare no clear cut answers. The instructors merely told the cadetsto use their &dquo;common sense and good judgment&dquo; when there wasno clear cut formula for police action in a situation.

Besides dealing with these ambiguous situations, the cadetsalso learned that policemen have to live with contradictions.Policy says one thing, and, at times, policemen on the streetdo another. We have already discussed the reactions of different

groups of cadets to this situation.

Another problem that the practical cadets had to deal with wasthe realization of the great amount of responsibility involved ina policemans job. They soon discovered that policemen did nothave nearly as much authority as they had previously imagined.They also discovered that the job carried more responsibilitythan they had &dquo;bargained for.&dquo;

The practical cadets also worried about their responsibilityfor knowing vast amounts of legal material.As they read arrest

and search material, they became aware of some of the toughlegal decisions that they were going to have to make on thestreet. In many organizations the decisions are made by themen at the top, men who have spent years in the business. Thisis not the case with the police. Here, many of the toughestdecisions must be made by &dquo;rookies,&dquo; by men who have been

policemen less than two years. This organizational structure

places a tremendous amount of responsibility on the new men.


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[164

About halfway through the course the practical cadets beganto feel this responsibility personally, and they began to worryabout it.

During the training the cadets became aware of the fact that

police work is a service profession. They were made keenly awareof the fact that they were working for the public, and that it wasthe public that they had to satisfy.

Finally, we should mention that the practical cadets becameaware of the fact that there were certain personal qualities neededin order to be police officers. They needed a large measure ofself-discipline. Maturity was also one of the requisites for beinga police officer. In light of the officers discretion over the

behavior of citizens, it is imperative that they be mature enoughto handle this authority. Closely related to the issue of maturityis the fact that they must be able to deal with all sorts of people.They must be outgoing or at least willing to approach and engageanyone in a conversation.

If a man is to be an officer he must also be able to cope with

the tension produced by the uncertainty and danger inherent inhis profession. He must be capable of action when a dangerous

situation arises. In Rubinsteins (1973: 290) words, &dquo;Signs ofdanger and trouble suggest withdrawal and flight to most people,but for the policeman they are signals of obligation and oppor-tunity. He must be prepared to advance when others withdraw.&dquo;We have considered some of the difficult realities of police

work that the practical cadets have to come to terms with in orderto become policemen. We have only spoken of the practicalcadets, because the realistic cadets were already aware of these

aspects ofthe profession. They must already have dealt with thesedifficult realities since they had chosen to continue in this pro-fession. We have not spoken of the idealistic cadets because bythe later stages of the course they had either dropped out of the

program, been cut, or joined the ranks of the practical cadets.The practical cadets all attempted to adapt to the realities of

police work. None of them resigned because of problems in


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[165]

accepting the nature of the profession as it was revealed in thecourse. Two of the practical cadets did resign from the course.Both did so in order to take higher payingjobs and cited financialreasons for

doingso. There were,

however,a number of

practicalcadets who were cut from the class during the practical problems.portion of the course. They were cut because their performancesindicated that they did not possess, and were not developing, thepersonal qualities needed to be police officers. Thus we see thateven though an individual may be willing (even anxious) toconvert he may not be allowed to do so. Or, even though he feelsthat he has converted he may not be accepted by the group.

The remainder of the practical cadets did adapt to the realitiesof being policemen atAPD. There seemed to be several factorsthat helped them adjust. In the first place, they were encouragedby the fact that they could &dquo;count on&dquo; other officers. They weretold that on their first difficult calls &dquo;youll get all shook up,but dont worry. Youll have all sorts of help out there.&dquo; Theywere also told many times that &dquo;police hang together&dquo; or that

&dquo;police stick together.&dquo; These statements assured the cadetsthat as policemen they could expect some support from other

officers. There was another factor that aided the practicalcadets adjustment. They were encouraged by the fact that in oneor two years they would be the &dquo;old pros&dquo; on the street.

By the end of the training, the practical cadets had adopteda perspective very similar to that of the realistic cadets. Theynow had a more realistic idea ofwhat it would mean to be a policeofficer, and they had dealt with some of the personal changes thatthis role requires. The major difference between the practical

cadets and the realistic cadets was the fact that the practicalcadets had never actually been on their own on the street. Thus,their conception of police work still had fewer details than thatof the realistic cadets.

We now inquire as to the realistic cadets responses to the

training. It became immediately apparent that they did not haveto deal with the realities of police work in the same mannerthat the idealistic and practical cadets had to. The realistic


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[166]

Figure 2: Cadets Progress Through the Course

cadets had dealt with these realities in the course of their previousexperience. They had been converted in their earlier law enforce-ment jobs, so instead of dealing with the conversion process

they used the training course to learn the specifics of policework atAPD. There were, however, two problems that did seemto bother the realistic cadets during the training. In the first

place, some of these cadets had trouble coming to terms with theircadet status. They were accustomed to being law enforcementofficers and the demotion to mere cadet status bothered them.

Some of the realistic cadets also had trouble asserting the

proper amount of authority during the practical problems. In

these cases the_ cadet often had been accustomed to asserting adifferent level of authority in his former law enforcement

position. One of the cadets was accustomed to much more

authority, and he had difficulty complying with the restrictionson authority set byAPD.Another cadet was accustomed to

asserting less authority. Though he felt that he was using theproper amount of authority, the instructors felt that he was not

controlling the situation. This cadet was cut from the class by


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[167]

TABLE 3

Attrition of Cadets by Background Experience

the instructors. Though his perspective was acceptable, theinstructors did not feel that he could adequately fulfill theduties of an officer atAPD. By the end of the course, the otherrealistic cadets had made the required adjustments in the levels

of authority that they asserted. They were also free of theirproblems involving cadet status since they were finally com-missioned police officers.We can represent the progress of the cadets through the

course with the schematic diagram in Figure 2. Note that we use15 to represent the initial number of practical cadets. Since weare not considering the cadets in terms of the categories of their

background experience there is no reason for any cadet to be

counted more than once.To sum up the progress of the cadets through the course we

will now return to Table I and consider the overall attrition ofthe cadets by category of background experience. The incre-mented table is Table 3.

Again we must be careful to remember that in the figuresfor the initial group two cadets are listed twice. In the figuresfor those graduating only one cadet is listed twice since the

othercadet was cut

fromthe

class. Hence, therewere

actually19 cadets who graduated. Since we are dealing with only one classand the figures are small for each category we cannot make anygeneral assertions for cadet training. However, for this specificclass we can see that roughly two-thirds of the initial classgraduated and that the cadets with previous experience with theAustin Police Department (as police aides or as a dispatcher)had perhaps a slightly greater rate of success in the course.


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[168]

As a follow-up we should note that one of the graduatingcadets resigned fromAPD three weeks after graduation.At theend of six months the remainder of the cadets who had graduatedwere all still employed atAPD. It seems that the departmentis adequately able to select the cadets that will be acceptabletoAPD and that these cadets will be satisfied to remain with the

department at least in the short run.

CONCL USI4N

Our purpose in this paper was to study the shifts in perspectivethat took place as young men moved from the status of privatecitizen to that of probationary police officer. We found that thecadets that came to the course differed greatly in their sourcesof background information about the law enforcement pro-fession. Due to these differences, we were not overly surprisedto find among the cadets three different long range perspectiveson police work. This is a significant finding since most otherdiscussions of police socialization assume a homogeneity interms of cadets long range perspectives.

The three initial perspectives were found to be differentiallyfunctional in helping the cadets to deal with the problems thatarose during the class. Changes in perspective that took placeduring the course represented successive attempts on the partof the cadets to find a perspective that would assist them insuccessfully completing the course and adjusting to the realitiesof their profession.

Perhaps our main finding was that the idealistic perspectivehad little relevance to the cadets activities.As the idealistic

cadets realized that their initial perspective was not functionalin this setting thy were faced with two alternatives: they coulddrop out of the course or they could change perspectives. Those


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[169]

most committed to their original preconception of police workdropped out while the rest shifted to a practical perspective.The practical perspective seemed viable in this setting. Cadets

with this perspective admitted that there was muchthey

did not

know, but that they were willing to learn. They did much of theirlearning from the realistic cadets-cadets who had alreadyadjusted to many of the problems presented in the training. Bythe end of the training the practical cadets had a perspectivevery similar to that of the realistic cadets. The major remainingdifference was that the practical cadets had never actually beenon their own on the street and this factor was soon to be

remedied.

NOTE

1. We should note that Westleys study was actually made in 1950 and reported in

his Ph.D. thesis in 1951. However, since these findings were only recently published, theyhave only recently become available to other researchers.

REFERENCES

BECKER, H., B. GEER, E. HUGHES, andA. STRAUSS (1961) Boys in White.Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

BECKER, H. S. andA. L. STRAUSS(1956) "Careers, personality,

and adult socializa-

tion."Amer. J. of Sociology LXII (November): 253-263.

GARFINKEL, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall.

HARRIS, R. N. (1973) The PoliceAcademy:An Inside View. New York: John Wiley.HUGHES, E. C. (1958) Men and Their Work. New York: Free Press.

NEIDERHOFFER,A. (1967) Behind the Shield. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.REISS,A. J., Jr. (1971) The Police and the Public. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.

RUBINSTEIN, J. (1973) City Police. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

SKOLNICK, J. H. (1966) Justice Without Trial. New York: John Wiley.


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SPRADLEY, J. and D. McCURDY (1972) The Cultural Experience. Chicago: ScienceResearchAssociates.

VAN MAANEN, J. (1974) "Working the street: a developmental view of police be-havior," in Herbert Jacob (ed.) The Potential for Reform of Criminal Justice. BeverlyHills, Calif. : Sage.

(1973) "Observations on the Making of Policemen." Human Organization 32(Winter): 407-418.

WESTLEY, W.A. (1970) Violence and the Police. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.WILSON, J. Q. (1968) Varieties of Police Behavior. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.

Press.

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Becoming a Policeman Socialization of Cadets in a Police Academy

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