Police Organizations and Culture: Navigating Law Enforcement in Today’s Hostile Environment

Sworn to protect and serve, police officers who stray into deviant behavior may become a citizen’s worst nightmare. An honest look at the formal and informal processes of becoming blue, Police Organizations and Culture is a unique combination of Chief Scott Silverii, PhD’s academic research and more than 25 years in law enforcement.The book seeks to answer the ultimate question: Why do police organizations and individual cops behave the way they do. Right or wrong, there is a powerful culture that controls behavior and expectation. Chief Silverii explains how personal and professional lives are changed, and what effects that has on a public dependent upon their police agencies maintaining an ethos of Serve and Protect.

Police Organizations and Culture is the first of its kind to combine an anthropological lense for examining policing’s cultural expectancies with real-life experiences. By exploring the subculture of policing in vivid detail, it exposes the causes behind the separation from organizational ideals and a false sense of organizational entitlement.

Chief Silverii’s decades in police special operations groups and administration also lends a guiding perspective to officers or would-be officers who want to make law enforcement their chosen profession.