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¶ … Serpico/Blue wall of silence.
There is a need to present a complete, objective 'front' when issuing an incident report. If two officers saw the same incident the same way it will appear to be better evidence in a court of law that events transpired as they did. Also, the knowledge of having to vouch for a colleague when generating a report can encourage honesty amongst officers. On the other hand, this stress upon uniformity can have a negative effect, causing officers to turn against officers who have a legitimate grievance about the ways in which enforcement is conducted. There is a great deal of evidence that in actual practice the subculture of policing views whistleblowing as a betrayal rather than as a necessary corrective action against abuses.
There are a number of factors which can contribute to the creation of such a blue wall of silence, first and foremost the fear that officers constantly operate under. The natural instinct is to protect one's fellow officers and the education instilled by the police force bolsters rather than circumvents this point-of-view. Secondly, the largely masculine culture of the police force discourages talking about negative incidents...
There may also be a fear (however unfounded) that an officer who informs will not be supported in a backup situation (Jones & Carlson 2004: 85). Even if the Serpico incident is not representative, it reflects a kind of mythic fear that can have actual consequences in reality in terms of how officers behave.
The blue wall of silence is inevitable perhaps because of the cultural values that are inculcated in officers and which are to some extent necessary to supplant personal values. An officer must judge conduct based upon official and constitutional values: he or she cannot only apply civilian standards of right and wrong in an emotional fashion. However, when official and unofficial pressures actually run counter to what the officer knows to be ethical, this can make it challenging not to feel as if he or she was betraying his or her colleagues when coming forth about a fellow officer's wrongdoing. For example, one officer, when he informed the police chief that his fellow officer "inappropriately touched a woman that was riding in his police cruiser" was told "this stuff needs to be over with and that he would be fired if…
References
Driver, J. (2009). The history of utilitarianism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Retrieved from:
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/utilitarianism-history
Jones, J.R. & Carlson, D.P. (2004). Reputable conduct: Ethical issues in policing and corrections (2nd ed.). Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
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