Police Culture
Former police inspector and MP, Ross Meurant describes joining the police and learning its culture as akin to getting lost in a forest. He says: "You are immediately part of the thin blue line. You are part of a team and that team looks after itself. You are special. You are the border between good and evil. The attitudes of the police instructors, armed not with teaching certificates but with ten years' exposure to the police subculture, either consciously or subconsciously invite you into the forest."
"Your mission is to protect society from this evil. Very soon you learn to decide what is evil and what is not. You are no longer just a collector of human rubbish at the base of the cliff but you have an obligation; yes, even a duty to guide the country to a decent society. That direction is best decided by you and others in your sub-culture of police, for what better epitomises the values of a decent society than those cherished by the men and women in blue? Your task is honourable. What better vocation than to rid the country of evil? Thus, achieving this end can even justify the means!" Meurant says that recruits are not specifically taught to use violence - but that the culture teaches recruits to look the other way if one should transgress.
"If you don't, as a new recruit, you are ostracised. You may as well quit there and then. But once you have provided succor, you have taken your next step into the forest. Later you will witness another indiscretion and you will again 'cover'. After all, you have been accepted as one of the team. You are 'reliable'. To lose that status is not a desirable outcome. But already you are compromised. Then one day you will commit an indiscretion and others will cover for you. Then you are beholden. Then you have entered the forest proper. There is no light to show the way home."
Meurant says police culture is "introverted, self protecting and lacking objectivity. It is a culture which looks after itself and has a certain view of how life should proceed. It is reinforced by drinking and bonding sessions. The 'them and us' ethos becomes tangible. What is more, the culture is working class conservative in its origins. Bigoted and intolerant. Few of its officer corps are university graduates and even fewer hail from private schools. There is no network which pervades the upper echelons of society. The police are insular."
Read more about this topic: New Zealand Police
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