NCJ Number
143125
Journal
Journal of Police Science and Administration Volume: 16 Issue: 4 Dated: (1988) Pages: 288-302
Date Published
1988
Length
15 pages
Annotation
An exploratory study used data from 11 municipal police departments to gather information regarding areas of work and informal organization in which civilian communications personnel and sworn police officers differ and how they differ on any given dimension.
Abstract
The agencies were all located in small to medium-sized cities in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. Survey questionnaires were distributed personally to almost all communications personnel and at roll call by either the researcher or the shift supervisor to almost all patrol officers during a 24-hour period. The study included 177 patrol officers (an approximate 75-percent return rate) and 78 communications personnel (an approximate 90-percent return rate). The 78 communications workers included 36 sworn officers and 42 civilians. Results revealed that civilians reported much greater job satisfaction and much lower levels of stress than did sworn personnel. However, the two groups and the patrol officers had similar employee values, although civilians placed a higher value on efficiency and effectiveness and a lower value on loyalty to fellow employees than did sworn officers. Thus, civilians are somewhat more oriented toward the functional aspects of their work and somewhat less oriented toward the informal organization within the department. Civilians tended to identify more with the organization, and sworn officers more with their fellow officers. Therefore, findings suggested that patrol officers' views that civilians cannot be trusted to the same degree as sworn officers related to the threat that civilianization poses to what Korczynski calls "the indescribable bond between police officers" and not to civilians' attitudes or responses to the pressures of their work and police functions. Tables, notes, and 41 references