Sadly, reacting to burglary or traffic offenses because of race, fixing parking tickets, and conducting unauthorized record checks called only for verbal reprimand or no consequence. In the study just previously quoted, one adjoining State did not participate due to F.O.P. objections. In the State where the 861 officers were surveyed, the largest police department in that State also declined to participate due to F.O.P. objections. Mollen made a number of recommendations to improve this situation and praised the condemnation of police corruption in the local press by the P.B.A. and their pledge to address it. The pressures for conformity on people starting out in a new career are considerable.
Group pressure is a natural phenomenon and one that is difficult to resist.
Social psychologists have long identified the tendency of individuals, regardless of occupation, to conform to group views and norms in order to avoid the discomfort and self-doubt of remaining independent. Those least likely to conform are less authoritarian, more intelligent and mature - measurement of these characteristics and the extent of the readiness of those who display them being candidates for policing raises issues of recruitment and selection which will be dealt with in a separate monograph. Suffice to say it is difficult to fly in the face of natural tendencies of mankind. Resolving the dilemmas of those officers unhappy with police malpractice needs to be focused on means of providing them with somewhere or someone to turn to, not to simple dictums or rules which attempt to counterbalance the reality of group pressure. At present the effects of breaking the wall of silence are fairly disastrous.