Why do police officers need the stable patterns that cop culture offers, according to Behr?
Police life on duty has two states: something big can happen at any time, and when it does, one is usually overwhelmed. To bear this contingency, officers need stable patterns of orientation and action, and cop culture provides them.
Contingency means that what happens is not predictable; it could always be otherwise. On duty, two things are true at once:
- at any moment, something big can happen, and
- when something really big happens, one is usually overwhelmed by it.
Fixed patterns of how to see and how to act make this uncertainty bearable. The strong need for connection among officers is an attempt to reduce the psychological and physical overload of exceptional operations.
Behr also notes a cost: officers can end up in moral dilemmas that leave traces but cannot be referred to medicine or therapy, for example dealing with guilt after an excessive use of force.
Go deeper:
Wikipedia: Police culture — solidarity, danger and the informal norms of police work.