Supreme Court Effectiveness and the Police Organization

This article emphasizes the limits of the effectiveness of Supreme Court-imposed restraints on police behavior. It argues that such effectiveness is mitigated by the milieu in which the police officer operates, by the characteristics of the police decisionmaking process, and by the relationship police have with their reference groups. The focus is not upon the Supreme Court, nor upon any single court decision. Rather it is upon the everyday activities of the police organization. It emphasizes organizational analysis because "the language of courts is given meaning through a process mediated by the organizational structure and perspective of the police."1 There is a risk involved with arguing that common police behavior and attitudes mitigate the effectiveness of these rules because "common" is a difficult word to define and a difficult concept to quantify. It is used here to connote activity that is prevalent, widespread, and typical. This emphasis on the police organization is accompanied by an emphasis on the uncertain nature of compliance with formal rules. Within bureaucratic organizations such as the police there is an inherent and basic tension between the attempt to impose formal rules and the members' recalcitrance to adopt changes in behavior in order to implement these rules.2 Rules, of course, are characteristic of all bureaucracies, and tension evolves from the inherent difficulty of applying general rules to specific situations. Rank and file bureaucrats typically have at their disposal a wide variety of methods that they can use to cope with this tension and limit the rules' effectiveness 3 In addition, there are special characteristics of police bureaucracies that increase the tension between rule and implementation.