Niederhoffer (1967) defined four stages that led to police cynicism throughout a police officer’s career:
Stage One Pseudo Cynicism: New recruits are idealistic, their desire is to help people.
Stage Two Romantic Cynicism: Involves the first five years of police work; these officers are the most vulnerable to cynicism.
Stage Three Aggressive Cynicism: Failures and frustrations, resentment, and hostility are obvious and prevalent at the tenth-year mark.
Stage Four Resigned Cynicism: Detachment, passiveness, an acceptance of the flaws of the system.
Read pg. 108-110 of the supplementary reading “Police Culture”, the section on The Police Personality: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/38432_4.pdf. After reading the text, consider the following issue: one of the surprising findings from a comparison of the different surveys using the Rokeach scale (see pg. 113 of the textbook) is that the values carried by police officers have not changed over a span of 30 years. Discuss these findings with Niederhoff’s four stages of cynicism. Is it because of the fact that an officers or departments’ values do not change that they become so cynical about their job or the public they serve? Are they even capable of change? How? Do you believe the four stages are accurate?
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