Police culture, transparency and civilian oversight: A case study of the National City Police Department
| Author | Anthony M Triola,Joshua Chanin |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14613557221132490 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Research Articles |
Police culture, transparency and civilian
oversight: A case study of the National City
Police Department
Anthony M Triola
University of California, Irvine, USA
Joshua Chanin
San Diego State University, USA
Abstract
The aim of this article is to take stock of theorizing around the concept of police culture, the degree to which it may be
static or dynamic, and the ways in which these collectively shared practices and ideals influence and are influenced by
social structural problems. We take a “ground-up”approach to this problem by conducting interviews with officers
and staff from a relatively small Southern California police department (National City Police Department). The interviews
were aimed at gauging officer opinions on the issues of civilian oversight and departmental transparency. These were con-
ducted using Q-sorts, which prompt the interviewee to rank order responses to the questions. These answers were sub-
jected to exploratory factor analysis, the function of which is to take steps towards ascertaining latent causal relationships
that underlie correlational relationships. The inductive nature of this methodological approach limits its generalizability
but allows for exploration into open-ended questions that can serve as bases for the expansion or refashioning of the-
oretical approaches. Overall, our findings suggest a need for further exploration into the extent to which demographic
and experiential characteristics may underlie a more diversified police occupational culture than the traditional police
culture narrative suggests.
Keywords
Police culture, oversight, transparency, reform, Q-sort
Submitted 15 Jul 2022, Revise received 15 Aug 2022, accepted 20 Sep 2022
Introduction
Policing scholars have long debated the theoretical notion
of police culture. Among its proposed attributes are a
certain “occupational personality”that functions to cope
with stressors, a collective emphasis on insular social
values and the valorization of crime-fighting as the most
important aspect of policework (Skolnick, 2008; Terrill
et al., 2003). It has traditionally been characterized by a vis-
ceral “us vs them”mentality (Manning, 1977; Van Maanen,
1978), with an ideological orientation that tends to
mythologize the police officer as a “warrior”
1
(Balko,
2013; McLean et al., 2020) on the front lines of a battle
against (lower class) criminality (Wilson, 1975) or the gen-
erally “threatening”public.
Contemporary scholarship has emphasized that officer
diversity could undermine this theorized ideological unity.
Corresponding author:
Anthony M Triola, University of California, 2354 Social Ecology II, Irvine,
California, USA.
Email: Atriola@uci.edu
Original Research Article
International Journal of
Police Science & Management
2023, Vol. 25(1) 81–95
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/14613557221132490
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