Social Theory and the Street Cop: The Case of Deadly Force

• NCJ Number: 219223
• Author(s): David Klinger
• Date Published: June 2005
• Length: 16 pages
• Sale Source: Police Foundation
• Publication Format: Document (Online)
• Publication Type: Research (Theoretical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: From Ideas in American Policing, No. 7, June 2005; downloaded on July 23, 2007.

Annotation

This paper examines how social theory can help police officers deal better with violent incidents and other potentially threatening situations and how social theory can help members of the public to better understand what they can realistically expect from police officers, who have sworn to serve and protect them.

Abstract

Normal Accident Theory (NAT) has important implications regarding deadly force beyond providing insight into specific officer-involved shootings. First, it can help most citizens understand that some shootings are plainly unavoidable. NAT can also help citizens understand shootings that might otherwise seem incomprehensible, or be attributed to evil police designs. Third, NAT can help police officers have a good deal of motivation to avoid shootings. Shootings put them in physical danger and can expose them to substantial legal, administrative, and financial liability. Lastly, NAT offers an easily understood framework to help officers accomplish this goal: keep things simple and do not get too close. NAT concerns tactics in police work. Examples from diverse areas of policing show how social theory can serve as a tool to help officers both understand why they are doing what they do and help them to do it better. NAT was developed in the early 1980s to explain how bad things happen in high-tech systems, such as nuclear power plants. NAT asserts that understanding why things sometimes go wrong requires us to pay heed to two key factors: the complexity of systems and the extent to which their elements are coupled, or tied together. In the world of policing, social theory has guided agencies in a variety of endeavors and helped the public understand both the goals of the police and the methods they use to reach them, such as deadly force. This paper examines how NAT can be applied to police shootings. This paper examines the link between social theory and police operations which comes from work that was done in the 1980s. It reviews a few cases where such theory has proven useful in realms of policing that are less dramatic. References