Word: wilson
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Patrolmen, often the rawest, lowest paid, and least intelligent members of the force, are left with the other 99 per cent of police work, which Wilson dubs "order maintenance"--the usually tedious, sometimes dangerous duties of controlling restless teenagers on hot streets, of stepping into armed quarrels between lovers, of shepherding drunks. As Wilson sees it, the patrolman's lot is not a happy one. He pounds his beat alone or in pairs and doesn't enjoy the neat guidelines of the detective; "disorderly conduct," "creating a public nuisance," and other laws used to maintain order leave the patrolman with...
Such are the hard patterns Wilson found in the eight communities, from Oakland, Cal. to Long Island, which he studied to develop his comments on police behavior patterns. In all cases, the patrolman had, of necessity, to use a great amount of judgment in his work. Wilson argues that police administrators can at best instill a certain style of approaching order maintenance into their policemen and dress them down afterwards for their actions in specific cases, but they cannot tightly control their patrolmen's behavior on the street...
...THREE STYLES of police behavior developed in the book, the "watchman style" has the most familiar ring. As Wilson notes, most 19th century American policemen did behave like watchmen, ignoring small offenses and maintaining order through their personal authority (often backed with fists) rather than by their arrest power. The watchman-style patrolman judges offenses by the prevailing standards of the immediate community. He might ignore a small theft in a ghetto neighborhood, but investigate the same theft in a prosperous white area. Only in more serious offenses would he crack down, perhaps breaking a few more heads...
Such is the credo of the traditional, the watchman force, now disappearing due to what is loosely called professionalism--a term which Wilson uses sparingly...
...choice of Oakland is apt, for it's long been wondered how a city with a reputedly professional police force could generate so many complaints of police brutality and harassment of minority groups. As Wilson sees it, there have been few cases of actual brutality, but the complaints of harassment are understandable, considering that the chief pressures his men to maintain order by the book, even where that book is irrelevant. What might be considered a disorder in a prosperous area might be only a quiet evening on ghetto streets. But the legalistic-style police go where the "offenses...