plsonline | By the mid-1960s police officers had responded with an aggressive and
widespread police unionization campaign. Aided by court rulings more
favorable to the organizing of public employees; fueled by resentment of
the authoritarian organization of departments; and united in a common
resistance to increasing charges of police brutality, corruption and
other forms of misconduct, nearly every large-city police department had
been unionized by the early 1970s. Police officers struck in New York
City in 1971; in Baltimore in 1974 and in San Francisco in 1975. "Job
actions" such as "blue flue" and work slowdowns (i.e. not writing
tickets, making few arrests) were common in other cities.
Initially, the response to this union activity was to reduce
centralization in the police bureaucracy and to include officers in
discussions of rules, procedures and departmental practices. What had
been the exclusive fiefdom of the police executive was now subject to
negotiation with a union. But reduced municipal tax bases, caused
primarily by the exodus of white, affluent executives and professionals
to the suburbs in the 1970s; a prolonged economic recession in the 1970s
and early 1980s; and fiscal mismanagement in many cities, led to
layoffs of police and other municipal workers, and rollbacks in
benefits. In fact, unions became an attractive scapegoat for municipal
problems. Politicians, administrators and the media all blamed demands
by public workers for the financial straits in which the cities had been
floundering. Despite the fact that the fiscal crisis had been caused by
much larger social and economic trends, blaming police and other
workers allowed police administrators and politicians to once again
reorganize the police. This reorganization has been dubbed the
"Taylorization of the police" by historian Sydney Harring (1981).
Under the "Taylorization" reforms, police departments reduced the
size of their forces; went from two-person to one-person patrol cars;
and increased the division of labor within police departments. Police
work was broken down into ever more specific, highly specialized tasks;
patrol became more reactive; technology was used to restore the control
of police administrators (i.e., 911 emergency lines; computerization);
and some traditional police tasks were turned over to civilian
employees. All of this served to further isolate the police from the
citizenry; to further reduce the effectiveness of police practices; and
to continually justify ever more "Taylorization" as a response to
increasing inefficiency.
Concurrent with reform efforts aimed at professionalization, was an
increased reliance on technology and scientific aspects of police
investigation. The idea of police as scientific crime fighters had
originated with August Vollmer as early as 1916, with the introduction
of the crime laboratory. By 1921 Vollmer was advocating the widespread
use of lie detectors and the establishment of a database for collecting
national crime data (Crank and Langworthy 1992). Over the years science
became synonymous with professionalism for many police executives. The
use of fingerprints, serology, toxicology chemistry and scientific means
for collecting evidence were emphasized as part of a professional
police force. In terms of technological advancements, new ways of
maintaining police record systems and enhancing police communications,
such as the police radio, became priorities.
The emphasis was on
efficiency and crime-fighting, with the social work aspects of policing
deemphasized and discouraged. The hope was also that the professional,
scientific crime-fighters would be less susceptible to corruption. It is
therefore a further irony of policing that in Philadelphia new
communications technologies were put to use in establishing what is
arguably the first "call girl" system in the United States, calling out
for prostitutes using police communications systems.
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