A Cross Cultural Perspective on Police Values and Police-Community Relations

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Abstract
In this study, the values of a sample of police officers from Detroit, Michigan and Toronto, Ontario, Canada are compared using the Rokeach Value Survey. While Toronto has a history of sound police-community relations, Detroit has experienced periods of serious tension between the police and its citizens. If police-community tension is basically a matter of the values of individual officers, one would expect tofind significant differences between the value systems of Detroit police officers compared to Toronto constables. The authors of this study found, on the contrary, that the value systems of both samples were remarkably similar. The paper concludes that any analysis of police-community relations must pay special attention to the organizational-cultural milieu of the department since their findings suggest that differences in police-community relations be attributed more to organizational and cultural variables than to value systems of individual police officers.

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