Abstract
In the Chicago Police Department, a sustained tradition of tolerating violent conduct has contributed to the fostering of a police culture in which the use of force is celebrated. Evidence suggests that there has been a historical reluctance to take action to discipline officers accused of misconduct – many of whom are highly decorated veterans of the Chicago Police Department. It is the contention of this article that the long-standing endorsement of excessive force in Chicago policing has compromised officers’ ability to thin-slice, a psychological process in which people are able to draw on their experiences and socio-cultural context to make quick decisions under pressure. Instead, officers are instinctively drawn to engage in misconduct as a means to an end, with the confidence that their actions will not attract the sanction of their superiors.
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Bleakley, P. A Thin-Slice of Institutionalised Police Brutality: A Tradition of Excessive Force in the Chicago Police Department. Crim Law Forum 30, 425–449 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10609-019-09378-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10609-019-09378-6