Table Of ContentA VIEW FRIitt THE STREET
Edited by
PETER K. MANNING
Michigan State University
JOHN VAN MAANEN
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
GOODYEAR PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
Santa Monica, California
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank certain institutions and departments which were sup
portive to this project in a variety of ways, both direct and indirect. The Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration, and in particular, the Institute of
Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice funded much of the research reported
here and granted Professor Manning a visiting fellowship in 1974-75. During
the period in which this book took shape, Professor Manning has been a
member of the Departments of Sociology and Psychiatry at Michigan State
University and a Visiting Research Scholar at University of London,
Goldsmiths’ College. Professor Van Maanen has been a member of the Organi
zation Studies Group in the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Or
ganization and Management at Yale University. Certain individuals deserve
mention here too. Nancy Emery, Ella Schrader, Felicia Pettygrew, and Carol
Sanders executed many of the necessary tasks associated with the production
of this book, and we are grateful for their assistance. Perhaps belatedly, we are
also deeply appreciative of the day-to-day solace, tolerance, and encourage
ment of our families, in whose debt we comfortably find ourselves.
Copyright © 1978 by
Goodyear Publishing Company, Inc.,
Santa Monica, California 90401
All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced in any form or by any means,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Y-6836-4
Current Printing (last digit):
10 987654321
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Policing.
1. Police—Addresses, essays, lectures.
I. Manning, Peter K. II. Van Maanen, John.
HV7921.P58 363.2 77-19343
ISBN 0-87620-683-6
About the Authors
Egon Bittner is a Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University. His extensive
theoretical and empirical writings include the book, The Functions of the Police
in* Modern Society (1971).
Donald Black is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University. He has
written numerous articles and is the author of The Behavior of Law (1976).
Richard N. Harris received his PhD in Sociology from Tufts University. He is
the author of The Police Academy: An Inside View (1973).
Peter K. Manning is a Professor of Sociology at Michigan State University. He
is the author of numerous articles and several books including Police Work
(1977).
Lawrence J. Redlinger is an Associate Professor in the School of Behavioral
Science at the University of Texas, Dallas. He has written several articles
drawing upon his extensive fieldwork concerned with illicit drug markets and
the police.
Jonathan Rubenstein received his PhD from Harvard University in History
and is currently associated with the Center for Policy Research in New York
City. He is the author of City Police (1973).
Harvey Sacks, until his recent and untimely death, was a Professor of Social
Science at the University of California, Irvine. He was a key figure in the
development of a phenomenological sociology and had written extensively in
sociolinguistics, conversational analysis, and ethnomethodology.
Larry L. Tifft is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Central Michigan
University. He is the author of several articles on policing including "The Cop
Personality Revisited” (1974).
John Van Maanen is an Associate Professor of Organizational Studies at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has written numerous articles and
edited several books including Organizational Careers: Some New Perspectives
(1977).
John A. Webster is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of
Illinois. He is the author of The Realities of Police Work (1973).
James Q. Wilson is a Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is the
author of numerous articles and books including Thinking About Crime (1975).
iii
Contents
Preface ix
PART ONE
BACKGROUND TO POLICING 1
The Police: Mandate, Strategies, and Appearances 7
Peter K. Manning
The Functions of The Police in Modern Society 32
Egon Bittner
PART TWO
CONTEXT OF POLICING 51
Dilemmas of Police Administration 57
James Q. Wilson
Rules, Colleagues, and Situationally Justified Actions 71
Peter K. Manning
Control Systems, Social Bases of Power and
Power Exercise in Police Organizations 90
Larry L. Tifft
Police Task and Time Study 105
John A. Webster
Kinsmen in Repose: Occupational Perspectives of Patrolmen 115
John Van Maanen
Private Information 129
Jonathan Rubenstein
PART THREE
STRATEGIES OF POLICING 141
Invitational Edges of Corruption: Some Consequences of
Narcotic Law Enforcement 147
Peter K. Manning and Lawrence J. Redlinger
i v
Contents v
The Mobilization of Law 167
Donald J. Black
Notes on Police Assessment of Moral Character 187
Harvey Sacks
The Police and Crime 202
James Q. Wilson
PART FOUR
PRACTICE OF POLICING 215
The Asshole 221
John Van Maanen
Lying, Secrecy, and Social Control 238
Peter K. Manning
Controlling People 255
Jonathan Rubenstein
PART FIVE
SOCIALIZATION FOR POLICING 267
The Police Academy and the Professional Self-Image 273
Richard N. Harris
Observations on the Making of Policemen 292
John Van Maanen
EPILOGUE 309
On Watching the Watchers 309
John Van Maanen
APPENDIX 351
Selected Research Studies of Police: Published Works,
Dissertations, Theses, and Works in Progress 351
References for Section Introductions 361
Preface
After spending eight nights observing the work of patrolmen, Jerome Skol-
nick, in an otherwise pioneering and exemplary study of the behavioral side of
the law, wrote in 1966: ”... patrol work is minimally connected with legal pro
cessing. To be sure, some street behavior is relevant to the patrolman’s role as
a legal actor. On the street, the policeman has the greatest potential for dis
cretionary judgement not to invoke the criminal law, a decision of major legal
consequence for those involved. Nevertheless, I thought that the typical activi
ties of a patrolman were not those of a law officer, but rather those of a peace
officer” (p. 33). This rather vague distinction was apparently viewed by Skol-
nick to be meaningful enough so that he could conclude a few lines further that
"law enforcement is not to be found in its most significant and interesting
forms on the street.”
On the basis of this statement, one wonders not only where these most "in
teresting and significant forms” are to be found but, perhaps more critically,
what Professor Skolnick means by his usage of the phrase "law enforcement”
in this context? Regarding the latter complications, several interpretations are
possible. For instance, Skolnick may be suggesting, quite accurately, that law
enforcement per se occupies only a small fraction of a patrolman’s everyday
activities, which are dominated by those of a more mundane and servicelike
nature. He may also be noting that what many patrolmen do in the name of the
law is, in itself, not very legal—either procedurally or substantively. Finally,
Skolnick may be arguing, again quite accurately, that the police rarely have
much to do with the formal legal work that accompanies the cases they funnel
into the criminal justice machinery. That is, the legal decisions surrounding
the eventual disposition of cases sent forward by the police are most often
made by people other than the police; in particular, by prosecutors, whose
actions on now legally defined matters are made with their own specific
interests in mind. Certainly, all of these possible meanings are sound and
consistent with the available evidence. Yet, when this sort of reasoning is used
to direct our attention away from patrolmen, it obfuscates some rather stark and
compelling facts about the pivotal and critical role patrolmen do play in the law
enforcement.
First, the patrol division of any metropolitan police agency consumes more
resources, both financial and human, than all other divisions combined.
Second, far more arrests, for whatever purposes, are enacted by patrolmen
going about their everyday routine than are made elsewhere in police organi
zations. Third, all policemen, from chief to proverbial station-house broom, re
ceive their initiation to the police life as patrolmen, and it is from working a
VI
Preface VII
beat that their later understandings of the law enforcement mission must
necessarily derive. Fourth, whether keeping the peace by chatting idly with
the neighborhood locals in one’s district or enforcing the law by sending a .38-
caliber snub-nosed bullet through the back of a fleeing felon, police work is
primarily a reactive, not a proactive, business. And the locus of such reaction
lies at the bottom of police organizations, where there may be little division of
labor among the men but, nonetheless, a plethora of fundamental police tasks
to perform. To argue that patrolmen are not central figures in the patterns of
law enforcement is futile no matter how much one wishes to make of the pa
trolman’s peculiar position in the scheme of things legal.
At any rate, a major premise lying behind this book of readings is simply
that we consider the essence of police work to be located at the ground level. In
fact, we have called this book Policing not simply to distinguish it from other
police books on the market (though there is that objective too), but to em
phasize the active character of law enforcement. And, as the police themselves
are fond of saying, most of the action is to be found down among the "troops”
who are working the street at the patrol level. Certainly, other somewhat
specialized aspects of police work are significant as well, but often these more
glamorous and dramatic pursuits hide the plain fact that the activities of any
police agency are dominated by the hard-slogging work of the patrolman who
must go about his duties among the social debris and clutter of city streets.
These are the activities of our interest.
We have selected readings for this book that reflect, primarily, a concern
for a theoretical understanding of the police. We are not interested here in
merely detailing the world as the policeman (or social scientist) might see it;
rather, we wish to be able to suggest, first, why the world is viewed in such a
fashion, and, second, what the consequences are that flow from such a view.
Thus, we are asking the reader to take a step backward with us and consider
how it is that any social world can be said to exist. This theoretical perspective
bends toward the edicts of phenomenological sociology and is infused with
something of the neo-Marxian view that reality does not produce itself nor does
it stalk about with a label. The social worlds within which people live are
ongoing creations, and considerable work is required to maintain them. The
implication of this view stands conventional wisdom on its head, for truth in the
social world follows a believing-is-seeing prescription and not one that regards
seeing-as-believing.
In line with the above bias and passion, the reader should also be
forewarned that we have chosen to emphasize empirical work based upon the
field-work tradition in sociology. No doubt because we both work primarily out
of this mode, firsthand ethnographic or participant-observation reports seem
to convey to us the richness of any investigated social sphere in a more lively
and telling fashion than reports grounded upon survey or archival materials.
This perhaps represents a drawback to the material presented here, since field
data often suffers from a lack of comparative concepts and are usually far more
suitable for the building, not the testing, of theoretical supposition. Neverthe
less, a number of urban police settings are examined in the various selections of
this book, and the data reported from them we feel are remarkably consistent
viii Preface
across key issues. Furthermore, since firsthand, in situ data are emphasized in
the readings, we have provided an epilogue to the book which describes in some
detail how one field worker went about his task. The generality of this account
cannot be established of course, though we believe that many of the major con
cerns raised in doing ethnographic work in police organizations are covered.
With some cautious optimism and a bow to the traditions established at the
University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s, we should also note that there
seems to be something of a rebirth of this methodological genre in the social
sciences today—although there will no doubt continue to be continuing legal,
moral, and procedural difficulties in pursuing participant-observation re
search within law enforcement agencies.
Summarily, we have chosen to select readings that are close to our own
substantive and methodological interests and have, as a matter of course, in
cluded much of our own work in this anthology. Not insignificantly, we have
emphasized the active nature of police work in both the title and in the organi
zation of the book. The sections that follow are thought to flow in something of
a natural order. We begin in Part I with a consideration of the historical pro
cesses and changing cultural arrangements that have provided the police with
their rather loose mission and mandate within this society. We move, in Part
II, to examine the present-day context in which policing is accomplished. Part
III deals with the various tactics, including administrative, operational, and
individual, used when performing various police tasks; and Part IV investi
gates these general tactics within the framework of the everyday practice of
policing, taking, as a primary focus, the street-level encounters between the
police and the public. Part V closes the book and, to some degree, brings us full
circle, for it is concerned with how the dicta of police work are learned and
transmitted from generation to generation of policemen. Here we come face to
face with the fact that many of the portraits of the police sketched in this book
seem to arrest the passage of time. By offering only single frames from a con
tinuous reel, some portraits may become instantly obsolete. Since police de
partments have, within the last decade, become something of the organiza
tional parvenu among public service agencies because of the tremendous flow
of dollars pumped into them by federal programs, dramatic changes in the pat
terns of law enforcement may be immanent. However, we think this possibility
is very unlikely, for policing has displayed a massive resistance to change
across the years. Whether this traditional "conservativism” is viewed as posi
tive or negative depends on one’s values. But, values aside for the moment, we
feel there are some altogether sound theoretical reasons which account for
such a stable state of affairs. And we believe these reasons are laid out rather
persuasively in the materials to follow.
Peter K. Manning
John Van Maanen
PART ONE
BACKGROUND TO
POLICING
The present form and function of any police organization is linked to the his
tory of its development, the present cultural definition of its purpose and ex
tent of its legitimate control and authority, and the ways in which the organ
ization symbolizes how it carries out its charter. These matters, although
conceptually distinct, are in fact, closely intertwined. For purposes of introduc
tion, we will discuss these broad concerns in the following fashion. First, we
briefly examine the emergence and development of the police mandate as it
originated historically in Great Britain. Second, we look at the American
transformation of the English version of the police mandate. Finally, we note
some of the more salient structural and symbolic features that characterize
policing in the United States. Many of these same themes are, of course, echoed
across the parts and articles that make up this book; nonetheless, it is useful to
present them here together as a way of framing the evolutinary canvas upon
which the actions of the police in present day society can be portrayed.
In the so-called classic discussions on the emergence of the "modem” police
in the early decades of the nineteenth century, there is a distinct and some
what ethnocentric bias which regards the invention of the police, as repre
sented by the Parliamentary Police Act of 1829 authored by Sir Robert Peel, to
be a rather reasonable and altogether rational response to certain chaotic so
cial conditions that were then prevalent in London (Reith, 1956; Lee, 1901;
Critchley, 1967). From this perspective, organizing a formal police agency rep
resented simply the culmination of certain relentless trends occurring in
British society, if not all of "civilization.” Other not so classic but equally crude
arguments suggest that the police in England were the product of some ill-
defined conspiracy of some similarly ill-defined ruling classes to repress the
peculiarly well defined working classes (Parks, 1970). An unusually articulate
and sophisticated version of this theory on the origins of the police has been
advanced by Silver (1967), wherein he argues that the modem police stem from
the elites’ fear and dread of the "rabble” or "dangerous classes” in the populace.
Somewhere between, no doubt, lies the answer; for, as Manning (1977) has
shown, neither the sinister and dark conspiracy theories or the romantic ver
sions of British humanity and good sense can fully explain, on their own, the
complicated and diverse political movements which led to the establishment of
the English police.
However, some themes have been articulated and more or less agreed upon
by all scholars examining the origins of the police in Britain. First, the basic
legitimacy of the English government at the time the police emerged seems to
be unquestioned. Second, there appears to have been a consensus among the
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