The commemoration of death, organizational memory, and police culture

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12224
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Author: Michael Sierra‐Arévalo
• Date: 01 November 2019

Received: 27 July 2018 Revised: 21 March 2019 Accepted: 5 June 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1745-9125.12224

ARTICLE

The commemoration of death, organizational

memory, and police culture∗

Michael Sierra-Arévalo

School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers

University—Newark

Correspondence

MichaelSier ra-Arévalo,Rutgers School of

Criminal Justice, 123 WashingtonStreet,

Newark,NJ 07102.

Email:michael.sier raarevalo@rutgers.edu

Fundinginformation

JohnD. and Cat herine T.MacArt hur

Foundation;Institution for Social and Policy

Studies,Yale University

∗Iwould like to thank Eugene Paoline III,

AndrewPapachristos, Edward Maguire, Robert

Apel,David Hureau, Matthew Clair, Todd

Madigan,Seth Abrutyn, Anna Mueller, Gráinne

Perkins,three anonymous reviewers, and the

editorial staff at Criminology fort heir gener-

ousassistance and t houghtful comments on

this article. My thanks as well to the officers

oft he EPD, WPD, and SPDfor their guidance

andtr ust—this researchwould not be possible

without you.

Thisresearch was supported by the John D.

andCat herine T.MacArt hur Foundation 15-

108050-000-USP,the Justice Collaboratory at

YaleLaw School, and the Institution forSocial

andPolicy Studies.

Abstract

Police scholars document that although there is frag-

mentation of the so-called “monolithic” police culture,

historically consistent features of the occupational culture

of police exist. By drawing on ethnographic observations in

three U.S. police departments, I describe how one consis-

tent feature of police culture—the preoccupation with dan-

ger and potential death—is maintained by the commemora-

tion of officers killed in the line of duty. Through the use of

commemorative cultural artifacts, officers and departments

construct an organizational memory that locally reflects

and reifies the salience of danger and potential death in

policing. Furthermore, commemoration of fallen officers

is not restricted to a department’s own; the dead of other

departments are commemorated by distant police organi-

zations and their officers, maintaining broad, occupational

assumptions of dangerous and deadly police work that

transcend a single department and its localized organiza-

tional memory. Implications for the study of police culture,

inequalities in policing, and police reform are considered.

KEYWORDS

commemoration, culture, death, ethnography, police

On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Jackson—an Army veteran angered by the police killings of Philando

Castille and Alton Sterling—opened fire on police officers in Dallas, Texas. The resulting deaths of

five officers marked it as the deadliest day for U.S.law enforcement since September 11, 2001. In the

days that followed, officers fromacross t he country traveled to Dallas to attend the funerals of the five

slain officers (Eligon & McGee, 2016), gathering as a collective to mourn and to honor the sacrifice of

fellow members of the police brotherhood. In remarks to a July 12 memorial service, President Obama

632 © 2019 American Society of Criminology wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/crim Criminology.2019;57:632–658.

SIERRA-ARÉVALO 633

emphasized the danger that all officers face on patrol, linking the deaths of the five Dallas officers to

the enduring specter of death with which police contend (2016, para. 4):

But your work, and the work of police officers across the country, is like no other. For the

moment you put on that uniform, you have answered a call that at any moment, even in

the briefest interaction, may put your life in harm’s way.

What’s more, the commemorative acts inspired by the tragedy of July 7 were not circumscribed to

Dallas. In memory of the murdered officers, police from departments across the country donned black

mourning bands across their badges (Batchelor, 2016; Ruth & Bravo, 2016), a symbolic tribute to

emphasize that, “When a police officer is killed, it’s not an agency that loses an officer, it’s an entire

nation” (quote by Chris Cosgriff, ODMP Founder; ODMP, 2017, opening quote).

Even though the murder of police officers is a rare phenomenon (Zimring, 2017), the events in Dallas

nonetheless serve as dramatic confirmations of the danger and the looming proximity of death strongly

emphasized within police culture (Marenin, 2016). Such line-of-duty deaths are especially poignant

given the lack of confidence and intense scrutiny of police resulting from a series of highly publicized

shootings of minority men since 2014 (Weitzer, 2015). In the years after the police killing of Michael

Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, some have gone so faras to argue that scrutiny and mounting pressure to

reform U.S. policing is tantamount to “virulent anti-law enforcement” rhetoric that has led to increased

violence against police (Mac Donald, 2014, 2016, p. 3). Despite the fact that data on felonious officer

deaths do not support this narrative (Maguire, Nix, & Campbell, 2017), other researchers have found

that police administrators commonly believe in the existence of a “war on cops” and that officers now

face unprecedented danger on patrol (Nix, Wolfe, & Campbell, 2018).

These beliefs are implicated across a range of officer behaviors associated with the “warrior men-

tality” embraced by some police departments and officers. Namely, the preoccupation with danger

and violence emphasized by this mentality can propagate aggressive, enforcement-centric policing

practices wholly misaligned with democratic ideals and individual rights (Rahr & Rice, 2015). This

warrior mentality is associated with a confrontational, even antagonistic, approach to policing in which

the public is equated to potential threat. Police–public interactions that rely on dominance in lieu of

cooperation or empathy are apt to devolveinto dominance contests over status and respect (Sunshine &

Tyler, 2003; see also Stoughton, 2016, p. 655), in turn, increasing the risk of interactions escalating to

violence that damages public health and police legitimacy (Gau & Brunson, 2010; Sewell & Jefferson,

2016).

Concern regarding the causes and consequences of the warrior mentality are a contemporary mani-

festation of the long-standing recognition that the danger of police work is a key driver of (and justifi-

cation for) detrimental police practices like secrecy, corruption, and brutality (Hunt, 1985; Kappeler,

Sluder, & Alpert, 1998; Punch, 2009). Given the persistent link between danger and such highly dam-

aging behavioral outcomes, it is crucial to understand how the deaths of police officers—even if they

are statistically rare—influence the culture that in turn shapes officers’ action on the street. Building

on past research in which scholars conceptualized police culture as a multilevelphenomenon mediated

by police organizations (Ingram, Paoline, & Terrill, 2013; Ingram, Terrill, & Paoline, 2018; Paoline,

2001, 2004), I use ethnographic observations and interviews across three urban police departments to

shed light on how officers and police organizations activelyreproduce a police culture that emphasizes

danger and death. Leveraging concepts from the literatures on police, culture, memory, and organiza-

tions, I describe how commemorative cultural artifacts—the tangible, observable symbols that reflect

the values and assumptions of a group (Schein, 2010)—are employed by individual officers and police

organizations to construct an organizational memory in which dangerous police work is emphasized