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Warning: This is an extremely long post!
Since joining the forums here at SIW I have had the privilege to read many fine posts on a wide variety of topics. Posts that showed thought, were informative, in-depth, and were expressing the opinions and beliefs of the author. I had enjoyed all of them, almost.
Those posts that have brought me concern fall into the area of those severely critical to security or law enforcement. They clearly show the deep animosity by the authors of one field for the other. Those posts tend to cause me concern for their discontent, at times downright hateful stance, about one of the two fields. It is this animosity I wish to address in this post to the forums.
Modern law enforcement has gone through a long evolutionary process in America. August Vollmer, Berkeley Chief of Police (1905-32), was a strong proponent of professionalizing the police forces. Vollmer believed that every police officer should hold a bachelors degree as a minimum. This movement by Vollmer to have educated police officers covered the period from 1921 to 1943, before being interrupted by World War II. The ideas were so strong in Vollmer that upon leaving his post as Berkeley Chief of Police in 1932 he became a professor of police administration at the University of California Berkeley until 1937. The next era of educating the police officer started in the early 50’s and continued down that road to this day. Work by Vollmer lead ultimately to the creation of the first university department of criminology in the United States at Berkeley. Vollmer became the Dean of the school and supervised a curriculum that was based on public speaking, sociology, psychology, abnormal psychology, and statistics. Throughout Vollmer’s career he was a constant advocate for change – calling relentlessly for standardization or modernization of law enforcement. Vollmer also wrote the Wickersham Report, which represented a baseline for comparison and reform of police agencies. Today’s CALEA standards for accreditation came largely from this report by Vollmer. Vollmer had a positive effect on law enforcement right up to today. He wasn’t the only man working to improve law enforcement by any means, but he is one of the first.
Yet even with this drive by Vollmer and others, professionalizing the police has been a very long road. Even in Vollmer’s time there were issues to be dealt with. Vollmer himself proposed (in 1941) that police officers should have high IQ’s. In those days many police officers around the United States were of the “dull and feebleminded” and were known as leatherheads. With the IQ testing used at that time, police officers in the city of Detroit scored an average of 55, while those in the force run by Vollmer had an average of 147. This is a large difference indeed.
Nothing was accomplished quickly. It wasn’t until 1959 that California established its Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission. Slowly over the coming years all states created commissions of their own. Yet, in the early 70’s when the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards looked at the criminal justice system they found a wide variety and inconsistent system of police training requirements and patterns around the United States.
Even with this level of professional training for police it hasn’t eradicated problems in modern policing. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in 1968 blamed rioting around the country on the police in many instances. The report said that the police often caused the riots to start by escalating routine traffic stops with their racism and abrasiveness. In the 70’s there were several commissions that spent themselves on investigating police corruption. One of the most famous was the Knapp Commission. Even with these investigating bodies problems still abounded in law enforcement. The “drug war” in America brought many police to misery when faced with such large sums of money available to them.
Take the Buddy Boys of the NYPD, a whole precinct involved in criminal activity. From an editorial review on Amazon.com of a book on this group:
“This book concerns police in one of the toughest ghettos in New York City who became thoroughly corrupt, stealing, dealing drugs, and extorting. Reporter McAlary follows the careers of Henry Winter and Tony Magno, who started out as good cops, and slowly became bad in a precinct governed by no rules and known as a dumping grown for cops who had "messed up." Once there, officers quickly became part of a gang protected by the Internal Affairs Department and their union. Eventually, Winter and Magno were caught and gathered evidence against fellow cops rather than go to jail. This scary book shows how easily good men can be corrupted. Well-crafted, fast paced, and thorough, it provides new understanding of an old problem.”
Buddy Boys: When Good Cops Turn Bad. Mike McAlary (1988)
Problems have continued to exist. One of the latest commissions looking into the police was the well known Christopher Commission review of LAPD and the officers involved in the beating of Rodney King.
Yet law enforcement continues to strive to move forward, to eliminate its ugly past by becoming a better profession. It is always looking to improve not only police officers but also policing organizations. This is the state of law enforcement today.
If one currently looks at the state of private security in America and contrasts it against the, admittedly brief portrayal, history of American police one could objectively state that the industry is somewhere around the state of law enforcement of the late 40’s and through the 50’s. There abounds in the industry many who fit the same mold that police officers were in during that time. There are large numbers of reports in the media of the actions of security officers, both good and bad. The industry is working in a modern world, yet still in an infancy when it comes to professionalizing itself. As a group the security industry employs many guards still and will into the future if nothing is done to force improvement down on the companies with the outmoded idea that security is a warm body job comprised of people who aren’t capable, for a variety of reasons, of doing more than observing and reporting what they see to the police.
The governing laws enacted by the states make the security industry a terrible mismatch of requirements (all inadequate) for officers and companies in the same way that the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards of the 70’s found those problems in policing. The many problems facing the ability of security officers to become professionals are the same the police faced over the decades from the 50’s until well into the 70’s and 80’s. This does not have to be. Change can occur just as it did for the law enforcement field. Until these kinds of changes get a strong foothold throughout the United States, and possibly Canada, there will always be incompetence within the field, to include behavior that is outright criminal by some working in the field.
Since joining the forums here at SIW I have had the privilege to read many fine posts on a wide variety of topics. Posts that showed thought, were informative, in-depth, and were expressing the opinions and beliefs of the author. I had enjoyed all of them, almost.
Those posts that have brought me concern fall into the area of those severely critical to security or law enforcement. They clearly show the deep animosity by the authors of one field for the other. Those posts tend to cause me concern for their discontent, at times downright hateful stance, about one of the two fields. It is this animosity I wish to address in this post to the forums.
Modern law enforcement has gone through a long evolutionary process in America. August Vollmer, Berkeley Chief of Police (1905-32), was a strong proponent of professionalizing the police forces. Vollmer believed that every police officer should hold a bachelors degree as a minimum. This movement by Vollmer to have educated police officers covered the period from 1921 to 1943, before being interrupted by World War II. The ideas were so strong in Vollmer that upon leaving his post as Berkeley Chief of Police in 1932 he became a professor of police administration at the University of California Berkeley until 1937. The next era of educating the police officer started in the early 50’s and continued down that road to this day. Work by Vollmer lead ultimately to the creation of the first university department of criminology in the United States at Berkeley. Vollmer became the Dean of the school and supervised a curriculum that was based on public speaking, sociology, psychology, abnormal psychology, and statistics. Throughout Vollmer’s career he was a constant advocate for change – calling relentlessly for standardization or modernization of law enforcement. Vollmer also wrote the Wickersham Report, which represented a baseline for comparison and reform of police agencies. Today’s CALEA standards for accreditation came largely from this report by Vollmer. Vollmer had a positive effect on law enforcement right up to today. He wasn’t the only man working to improve law enforcement by any means, but he is one of the first.
Yet even with this drive by Vollmer and others, professionalizing the police has been a very long road. Even in Vollmer’s time there were issues to be dealt with. Vollmer himself proposed (in 1941) that police officers should have high IQ’s. In those days many police officers around the United States were of the “dull and feebleminded” and were known as leatherheads. With the IQ testing used at that time, police officers in the city of Detroit scored an average of 55, while those in the force run by Vollmer had an average of 147. This is a large difference indeed.
Nothing was accomplished quickly. It wasn’t until 1959 that California established its Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission. Slowly over the coming years all states created commissions of their own. Yet, in the early 70’s when the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards looked at the criminal justice system they found a wide variety and inconsistent system of police training requirements and patterns around the United States.
Even with this level of professional training for police it hasn’t eradicated problems in modern policing. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in 1968 blamed rioting around the country on the police in many instances. The report said that the police often caused the riots to start by escalating routine traffic stops with their racism and abrasiveness. In the 70’s there were several commissions that spent themselves on investigating police corruption. One of the most famous was the Knapp Commission. Even with these investigating bodies problems still abounded in law enforcement. The “drug war” in America brought many police to misery when faced with such large sums of money available to them.
Take the Buddy Boys of the NYPD, a whole precinct involved in criminal activity. From an editorial review on Amazon.com of a book on this group:
“This book concerns police in one of the toughest ghettos in New York City who became thoroughly corrupt, stealing, dealing drugs, and extorting. Reporter McAlary follows the careers of Henry Winter and Tony Magno, who started out as good cops, and slowly became bad in a precinct governed by no rules and known as a dumping grown for cops who had "messed up." Once there, officers quickly became part of a gang protected by the Internal Affairs Department and their union. Eventually, Winter and Magno were caught and gathered evidence against fellow cops rather than go to jail. This scary book shows how easily good men can be corrupted. Well-crafted, fast paced, and thorough, it provides new understanding of an old problem.”
Buddy Boys: When Good Cops Turn Bad. Mike McAlary (1988)
Problems have continued to exist. One of the latest commissions looking into the police was the well known Christopher Commission review of LAPD and the officers involved in the beating of Rodney King.
Yet law enforcement continues to strive to move forward, to eliminate its ugly past by becoming a better profession. It is always looking to improve not only police officers but also policing organizations. This is the state of law enforcement today.
If one currently looks at the state of private security in America and contrasts it against the, admittedly brief portrayal, history of American police one could objectively state that the industry is somewhere around the state of law enforcement of the late 40’s and through the 50’s. There abounds in the industry many who fit the same mold that police officers were in during that time. There are large numbers of reports in the media of the actions of security officers, both good and bad. The industry is working in a modern world, yet still in an infancy when it comes to professionalizing itself. As a group the security industry employs many guards still and will into the future if nothing is done to force improvement down on the companies with the outmoded idea that security is a warm body job comprised of people who aren’t capable, for a variety of reasons, of doing more than observing and reporting what they see to the police.
The governing laws enacted by the states make the security industry a terrible mismatch of requirements (all inadequate) for officers and companies in the same way that the National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards of the 70’s found those problems in policing. The many problems facing the ability of security officers to become professionals are the same the police faced over the decades from the 50’s until well into the 70’s and 80’s. This does not have to be. Change can occur just as it did for the law enforcement field. Until these kinds of changes get a strong foothold throughout the United States, and possibly Canada, there will always be incompetence within the field, to include behavior that is outright criminal by some working in the field.
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