Dimensions of Police Types

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Abstract
In his book, Police: Streetcorner Politicians (1977), William Ker Muir, Jr., presents a typology of police officers that is undeniably appealing, intuitively and logically. The typology of four officers rests on two dimensions: Perspective and Passion. This article presents the results of an empirical test of those two underlying dimensions. The conclusion to be drawn from the findings is that the two dimensions described by Muir, as represented empirically in this test, fail to identify the four types he depicts. Instead, the four types appear in this analysis as very general characters defined by several dimensions that are distinct rather than cohesive. Perspective and Passion, therefore, claim too much; they each contain more than can be subsumed in a single dimension.

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