Police scholars document that although there is fragmentation of the so‐called “monolithic” police culture, historically consistent features of the occupational culture of police exist. By drawing on ethnographic observations in three U.S. police departments, I describe how one consistent feature of police culture—the preoccupation with danger and potential death—is maintained by the commemoration of officers killed in the line of duty. Through the use of commemorative cultural artifacts, officers and departments construct an organizational memory that locally reflects and reifies the salience of danger and potential death in policing. Furthermore, commemoration of fallen officers is not restricted to a department's own; the dead of other departments are commemorated by distant police organizations and their officers, maintaining broad, occupational assumptions of dangerous and deadly police work that transcend a single department and its localized organizational memory. Implications for the study of police culture, inequalities in policing, and police reform are considered.

中文翻译：

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纪念死亡，组织记忆和警察文化

警察学者记录说，尽管所谓的“整体式”警察文化存在碎片，但警察的职业文化在历史上具有一致的特征。通过在美国三个警察局中的人种学观察，我描述了警察文化的一个一致特征-对危险和潜在死亡的关注-是通过纪念在执行任务中被杀的人员而保持的。官员和部门通过使用纪念性文化文物来构建组织记忆，以局部反映和增强警务中危险和潜在死亡的严重性。此外，对阵亡人员的纪念不仅限于部门本身。遥远的警察组织及其官员纪念其他部门的死亡，他们保持广泛，超越单个部门及其本地化组织记忆的危险和致命警察工作的职业假设。考虑了对警察文化，警务不平等和警察改革的研究意义。