Police Culture

A secret report involving Toronto police culture has been released/leaked to the media.  It interviewed 800 volunteers with the Toronto Police Service to gauge workplace culture with a view for making changes.  

Changing a workplace culture is very difficult, but it can be done.  It is very difficult because a workplace culture is very ingrained and is the result of strong leadership, weak leadership, or the absence of leadership.  Often a new leader is hired with the express purpose of changing a workplace culture.  That is likely not going to work out well.  Sometimes leadership posts some new company values and expects that by doing so, workplace culture will change.  Workplace culture took years to develop and developed that way for a reason.  Think of a positive relationship in your life and think of a negative relationship in your life.  Both of those relationships didn't become that way over night.  A positive relationship needs time and effort.  A negative relationship needs time and struggles over time.  Neither one is going to be changed over night.  The same with workplace culture.  

The report from the Toronto police force revealed that most of the police force are over-confident in their abilities.  That is long-standing police culture and goes directly to their training.  In their training, they are conditioned to believe that they are better than most.  They are taught to be suspicious of everyone and they are taught to believe they are right because they have the law on their side.  They are taught to be confident and self-assured.  Which makes sense, when you have someone busting down a door to rescue innocent civilians, you want to be confident and you want them to feel self-assured.  When a police officer is risking their life for others, you want them to exude self-confidence and you want them to clearly know that they are on the right side of the law.  This culture continues as they move along in the police service.  They are tough and they are loyal.  Somewhere along the line, they realize anyone can be a criminal, and their trust issues increase.  They also start to believe that because they risk their lives daily, that they deserve special privileges in society and that they are always right.  To the civilians, it often appears like they are bullies.  

Unfortunately, this police culture doesn't always translate well into the rest of the world.  It is hard on relationships when one person feels that they are always right and that they always have the upper hand.  

I remember being friends with two young men, both were police officers with the same force.  When they had a "fight", they literally would have a physical fight with bruises to prove it.  Neither one would accept that they might be wrong.  The only way their relationship (and they) survived was to keep as much distance as possible.  However, when one was in trouble, they were also the only one each other trusted.  

It turns out that while the law is often black or white, life is not.  Being a black and white thinker may lead to a lot of arrests, but doesn't lend itself to the critical thinking skills that can possibly solve something outside of the judicial system.  In Canada, most of our criminals are going to eventually get out of jail, if they go at all.  Our judicial system simply doesn't have the resources to manage every violation of the law.  We also believe in restorative justice which gives people an opportunity for restitution and change.  Sometimes we have to look at the whole picture and often the judicial solution is not the best in the long run.  

Guns blazing is often not the best solution to resolving issues.  We are changing our societal views slowly, however, we have left our police forces in a bind.  We are still conditioning them to be over confident in their abilities yet at the same time, we expect them to be Rabbis, Social Workers, Psychiatrists, Counselors, Economic Development Officers, Guidance Counselors, and Crisis Intervention Workers, and that in the first hour of their shift with minimum 7 more hours to go.  

We actually expect too much from our police officers, and our teachers, and our bus drivers, and our elected officials, and our neighbours, and everyone else.  We have high expectations and we don't tolerate mistakes or else we will go to their superiors or make public their mistakes.  

We simply expect too much and that has become our societal expectation.  

Common sense suggests that anyone can be taught things like how to read a law book, or how to break down a door, things like that.  What is more difficult to teach is the "soft" skills like critical thinking.  How to resolve conflict with the least amount of effort and wear and tear.  It is easy to teach someone how to shoot a gun, but harder to teach compassion.  Ironically, the latter is probably more important to have in a gun fight.  

Police culture will be difficult to change, but starting from actually knowing what it is, makes the most sense.