title: Born to be Blue? The Constructing of Canadian Police Officers’ Identity
Creators: name: Couto, Jose
Publisher: name: Vancouver Island University
Year: 2024
Subjects: College of interdisciplinary studies

description: 2024
description: Police professionals navigate competing conceptions of what it means to be a police officer, giving rise to a unique police identity crisis (Hunt, 2021; Pickett et al., 2022). Given the dynamic nature of personal and professional self-identity, this crisis can be examined through discursive practices involving interaction and storytelling among and by police officers. This research project critically analyzes law enforcement discursive practices and its impact on police officer’s self-identity. It specifically examines how and why discourses are constructed and reinforced within police culture to create the idea of what it means to be a police officer. As well, it considers the opportunities to change the normative discourses of police culture so that the profession becomes more equitable, diverse, and inclusive. The research data informing this dissertation involved semi-structured interviews with 30 police officers from four Canadian police services. Utilizing Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), specifically Fairclough’s (2005) Dialectical-Relations Approach to CDA, the insights provided by the research participants assisted me in making recommendations to address challenges and opportunities for police officers and their organizations to drive change as follows: (1) Police officers and organizations must come to terms and answer whether today’s police officers are guardians or warriors (or both). In this regard, I argue that today’s police officers must be encouraged to build their self-identities based on the guardian model as their “default” lens through which they do their jobs. Self-identity is a driver through which individuals see themselves and act in their personal as well as their professional lives. (Hunter, 2011; Zheng et al., 2022). Given their prime role as law enforcers in democratic societies, police officers will always need to be trained and educated to perform the law enforcement duties sometimes required to ensuring public safety and well-being. However, I posit that the training officers receive in their police academies and organizations, the workplace policies and supervisory oversight under which they operate, and the workplace norms and values that are accepted and promoted throughout the police hierarchal structure must be turned toward the constant promotion of police officers as public servants; as the peoples’ guardians. This contrasts with the continued emphasis in training on a paramilitary enforcement of the law (Ho, 2020; Morgan, 2022), the trend towards the militarization of policing in North America (Phillips, 2016; Cyr et al., 2020), and the glorification of warrior cops in popular culture, (Nichols-Pethick, 2012; Salter, 2014). (2) The deep divide between senior leaders, managers, and police unions must be acknowledged and addressed if meaningful change is to occur. Police unions in North America exert political clout and retain the ability to negotiate effectively on behalf of their members, despite uneasiness among the public for their perceived power (McCormick, 2015; Levin, 2020). Police unions are and are likely to remain important and powerful interest groups within Canadian policing. Given this, effective reform of policing as an institution and any positive change in the self-perception of police officers as guardians as well as warriors will require buy-in from their unions. I argue that police managers and unions leaders must move beyond traditional mistrust and commit to system change because police officers are common members to both groups. (3) Recruitment of new police officers must be seen as the first step to officers’ identity-building, specifically to achieve the goal of diverse police organizations that truly reflect the community. Given the systemic challenges to recruiting from groups that have traditionally felt oppression at the hands of police, it is critically important for police recruitment to both continuously improve the quality of service provided to these communities and place an emphasis in recruiting from diverse communities (Walters et al., 2007). Better alignment of the demographic profile of a police service with the communities it serves is crucially to more effective policing (McMurray et al., 2010) and efforts to attract qualified and diverse candidates for future success, and (4) Police training must shift from a paramilitary to a public service model. The paramilitary model of policing is increasingly under pressure to meet contemporary community safety needs, what Fry and Berkes (1983) called a “misfit” in terms of its ability to meet policing functions in modern society (p. 255). Following Blumberg et al. (2019), I posit that police training that focuses largely on the law or on “perishable skills” such as arrest and control, defensive tactics, driving, and firearms will not assist police officer in developing their identity as one of service to their community (p. 19). A police officer who sees him or herself as a public servant requires training from the academy and on-going through their community service, combining traditional law enforcement skills with the psychological skills that help officers navigate the changing nature of crime and contemporary social challenges to police work. My research findings are presented in the form of a three-part portfolio consisting of an article for a major Canadian peer-reviewed journal, The Journal of Community Safety and Well-being, a White Paper to be presented to the CACP and made available to senior police leaders in Canada, and a seminar syllabus and website that could be delivered through police organizations for internal training of police officers. The findings and recommendations contained in the portfolio should be useful to police leaders, academics, and educators/trainers both within and external to policing, as well as policymakers with an interest in the future of policing as a social service.