Ending Racial Profiling in Law Enforcement: Appendix E - Why Police Resist Profiling Data Collection

© 2002 Peter Free

 

Go to: Page 1 ─ Page 2 ─ Page 3 ─ Page 4 ─ Appendix A

 

Appendix B ─ Appendix C ─ Appendix D ─ Footnotes

 

 

Why Street Cops Feel Threatened by the Collection of Profiling Data

 

            In the police world, administrators are invariably the enemy.  Administrators' chief concerns tend to revolve around looking good on paper and avoiding citizen complaints and political pressure.  From the patrol officer's perspective, administrators are usually promoted from the ranks of officers who did little on the street, avoided controversy, played politics, and had a poor feel for genuine law enforcement and the risks that go with it.

            An administrator's problem with the rank and file is compounded by the reality of the job she must do.  She will never get points from important people or from influential or irritated groups when she supports her people in doing a demanding, thankless job.  No one really wants to hear what is true: police work, done well and without bias, always draws fire from someone.  Line supervisors know that if complaints are not coming in, officers are not doing their jobs.  The organizational problem comes in distinguishing valid, partially founded, and unfounded complaints from one another.

            On the organizational side, an administrator will rarely get kudos from the rank and file when she attempts to supervise diligently, knowledgeably, and carefully.  Police officers are independent and broadly capable.  They do not like supervisors keeping track of them.  Capable of making instantaneous decisions about life and death, willing to jump daily into social chaos, and selected for a capacity to act without much guidance, police officers are a tough bunch to supervise effectively.

            Law enforcement supervision, correctly done, is an interpersonal art form.  Proportionately few people do it well.  Given the scarcity of talented supervisors, police departments often substitute "don't do" rules for actual supervision.

            Line officers see that these administrative rules are often used to shield administrators and the organization from the messes that street level policing creates simply by doing police work.  Department rules are often written specifically to this end.  The regulations are trotted out when administration wants to demonstrate that the mess-making officer should have known better.

            Street police and detectives resent this approach.  They know that the interface between cop, citizen, and situation is so complex and so fluid that perfect decisions are impossible.  They feel trapped, because most departments do not provide value-laden guidelines and parameters for handling discretionary tasks. [129]  Consequently, administrators leave the line to skate its way as best it can in the tumult of day-to-day enforcement and service.  Alternatively, some departments drown officers in voluminous policies that are impossible to follow in actual situations.

            As a consequence of the split between administration and the line, data collection on racial profiling is profoundly threatening to the street cop.  It attacks her sense of discretion. [130]  It makes overt the possibility of administrative discipline supported by misused or unfairly applied data.  It raises the fear that she must keep a racial quota list to guide her interventions throughout the day.  She is sure that over-contacting one racial/ethnic group will result in proof that she is a bigot.   People whom she did not wrong will use the data collected against her in the "race card" game—they will try to evade responsibility for their illegal behavior.  She wonders what will happen if she is assigned to a predominantly minority district and her statistics are compared with those of someone working a more integrated area.  She is concerned that her use of force, or the grade of the violation she charges, will be compared to someone working a less violent, less lawless precinct.  Deep down, she is most worried that data collection is simply one more way for lawyers and administrators to get her. [131]

            Police unions attempt to protect the line.  They will resist racial data collection until assurance is given that it will not be used to crucify their members.  Consequently, much of the data required to really probe the profiling problem won't be collected or will be subjected to constraints that hamper verification.  Resistance will recede only when police administrations actually begin to grapple with the complex realities of police work in a way that is not hypocritical, not evasive, and not inordinately self-protective.

            It should also be noted that racial profiling emerged in a climate in which police departments, generally, were not held accountable for adequately supervising their officers.  Too often, accountability for police abuses was confined to bad officers and officers acting badly without raking in the supervisors who should have been modifying their behavior.

 

(This is Appendix E)

 

Go to: Page 1 ─ Page 2 ─ Page 3 ─ Page 4 ─ Appendix A

 

Appendix B ─ Appendix C ─ Appendix D ─ Footnotes