Urban police is faced which various issues which support deviance. The most important ones are low public visibility, managerial secrecy, and peer group secrecy. The peer group secrecy makes the police officers protect each other even when they are breaking the law. The officers feel safe due to the knowledge that their peers will not report them because of misconduct. The tight the secrecy group is, the higher the deviance as they cover up for each other for all mistakes.
Managerial secrecy promotes secrecy when the offenses of police officers are hidden. The managers fear that creating punishment for the officers who have broken the law may interfere with operations in the department. The managers also fear that they will be blamed if their officers are breaking the law and not getting punished. Secrecy ensures that the managers ignore the crimes the officers are committing (Davies & Bowers, 2019). Some managers even plan how some acts of defiance will be committed, for example, corruption, where the managers and the officers benefit together. Low public visibility explains the sour relationship between the police officers and the civilians. It makes the officers abuse the law and use excessive power so that community members can abide.
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The first-line supervisor can influence the problem of managerial secrecy. The supervisor is in charge of a specific number of police officers who report to him. If the officers are committing offenses such as corruption, they can work with the supervisors to keep it a secret so that the officers are not arrested. When there is secrecy, the officers will continue to act deviance as they do not fear their crimes being made public and taken to court so that they can pay.
Reference
Davies, T., & Bowers, K. (2019). Patterns in the supply and demand of urban policing at the street segment level. Policing and Society, 1-23.
