The military and police professions share a number of common facets, but in spite of surface similarities, the two professions are significantly different. Consequently, the evidence indicating a convergence of primary aspects of the two roles presages an important societal development, with substantial implications on several levels. Thus, this article has several objectives. First, it reviews the evidence indicating role convergence, that is, evidence that significant segments of police operations in the United States have taken on military characteristics; and evidence indicating that many U.S. military initiatives have taken on policing characteristics. Next, using the notion of internal and external role-change “drivers,” it examines how such role shifts occur and considers some political and legal implications of the shift. Third, the article compares the role orientations and job demands of both professions, identifying the important differences inherent in the two roles and presenting an analysis of the occupational implications of role convergence for job holders, job evaluators, and job “clients” (i.e., ordinary citizens). The last section considers the implications of role convergence for role management.
U.S. Department of Labor, Dictionary of Occupational Titles (Washington, DC: Labor Department, Employment and Training Administration, United States Employment Service, 1991).
2.
For example, research in Australia has documented precisely the same developments. See J. McCulloch, Blue Army: Paramilitary Policing in Victoria (PhD thesis, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1998). Additionally, in Western Europe, we would expect forces similar to those operating in the United States (involving illegal drug trafficking, organized crime, and international peacekeeping) to result in the same type of convergence that is occurring in the States. However, in Europe the convergence may be less noticeable, given that region’s tradition use of national police forces (e.g., the French and Austrian gendarmerie, the Italian carabinieri, the Netherlands’ Marechaussee, etc.) to complement their civilian police organizations. Ironically, some analysts have concluded that these national police forces have evolved so far away from their original military roots that they can no longer automatically fulfill a paramilitary role in international peacekeeping operations. See R. Oakley, M. Dziedzic, and E. Goldberg, eds., Policing the New World Disorder: Peace Operations and Public Security (Darby, PA: Diane Publishing, 1998), 40.
3.
K. Berger, "You Can’t Camouflage the Military-Cop Convergence," Editorial Comment, Seattle Weekly, May 10, 2000, http://www.seattleweekly.com/generic/show_print.php?id=14747&page=&issue=0019&.
4.
See P. Kraska, Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and the Police (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001).
5.
Huba Wass de Czege, "Policing the Frontiers of Freedom," ARMY Magazine56, 7 (2006): 14-22.
6.
D. Zimmerman , "Between Minimum Force and Maximum Violence: Combating Political Violence Movements with Third-Force Options," Connections: The Quarterly Journal4, 1 (2005): 43-60.
7.
Kraska acknowledges that his findings contradict other police scholarship that suggests policing is moving toward a more democratized, "community policing" model. However, he criticizes this scholarship as providing no definitive answer to whether this supposed shift is actually substantive. See Kraska, Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System, 6-8.
8.
Ibid.
9.
P. Kraska and V. Kappeler, "Militarizing American Police: The Rise and Normalization of Paramilitary Units," Social Problems44, 1 (1997): 1-18.
10.
P. Kraska, "SWAT in the Commonwealth: Trends and Issues in Paramilitary Policing," Kentucky Justice & Safety Research Bulletin (1999), http://www.justice.eku.edu/about/grants_KJSRB_June_1999.asp.
11.
See Kraska and Kappeler, "Militarizing American Police," for a detailed description of the questionnaires and research procedures.
12.
T. Dunn, "Military Collaboration with the Border Patrol in the U.S.-Mexico Region ," Journal of Political and Military Sociology27 (1999): 257-78.
13.
A. Isacson, J. Olsen, and L. Haugaard, Blurring the Lines: Trends in U.S. Military Programs with Latin America ( Washington, DC: Joint Publication from the Latin America Working Group Education Fund, the Center for International Policy, and the Washington Office on Latin America, 2004).
14.
M. Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait ( Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1960).
15.
The increase in peacekeeping missions since the cold war has been so remarkable that one militarily-focused scholarly publication has already devoted an entire issue to the topic. See Armed Forces & Society 23 (Spring 1997). As another indicator, Langholtz has reported more recently that about forty-five thousand military peacekeepers and civilian police from eighty-seven nations conducted fifteen UN peacekeeping missions during the summer of 2002 alone. See H. Langholtz, "Series Foreword," in The Psychology of the Peacekeeper: Lessons from the Field, ed. T. Britt and A. Adler (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003) ix-x.
16.
D. Zimmerman , "Between Minimum Force and Maximum Violence "
17.
Eric Shinseki, personal communication, U.S. Military Academy, August 19, 2006.
18.
Wass de Czege , "Policing the Frontiers of Freedom"
19.
Ibid.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Kraska and Kappeler, "Militarizing American Police"
22.
Ibid.
23.
See, for example, K. Haggerty and R. Ericson, "The Militarization of Policing in the Information Age," Journal of Political and Military Sociology27 (1999): 233-55. See also S. Nunn, "Police Technologies in Cities: Changes and Challenges," Technology and Society23, 1 (2001): 11-27.
24.
P. Galie, "Review of P. Kraska (Editor), Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Role of the Armed Forces and the Police," Law and Politics Book Review12, 1 (2002): 48-50.
25.
C. Dunlap, "The Police-ization of the Military," Journal of Political and Military Sociology27 (1999 ): 397-418.
26.
P. Brownfeld , "Defining the Domestic Role of the Military ," Fox News, February 23, 2004, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,112156,00.html.
27.
L. Keliman , "Domestic Anti-terror Role for the Military Called Unnecessary," Washington Times, May 11, 1995.
28.
Harry Summers , "Using Military for Policing a Bad Idea," Stars and Stripes, May 10, 1995, 17.
29.
Dunlap, "The Police-ization of the Military"
30.
See Shinseki, personal communication. See also Janowitz, Professional Soldier, 419; and the work of David Segal and his colleagues: D. Segal, B. Reed, and D. Rohall, "Constabulary Attitudes of National Guard and Regular Soldiers in the U.S. Army," Armed Forces & Society 24 (1998): 535-48; D. Segal, T. Furukawa, and J. Lindh, "Light Infantry as Peacekeepers in the Sinai," Armed Forces & Society 16 (1984): 385-403; and D. Segal, J. Harris, J. Rothberg, and D. Marlowe, "Paratroopers as Peacekeepers," Armed Forces & Society 10 (1984): 487-506.
31.
Dunlap, "The Police-ization of the Military."
32.
P. Brownfeld, "Defining the Domestic Role of the Military"
33.
P. Kraska, "Crime Control as Warfare: Language Matters," in Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System, 14-25.
34.
M. Klare, "Militarism: The Issues Today," Problems of Contemporary Militarism , ed. A. Eide and M. Thee (New York: St. Martin’s, 1980).
35.
Kraska, "Crime Control as Warfare"
36.
F. Schmalleger, Criminal Justice: A Brief Introduction (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pear-son Prentice Hall, 2008), 211. Interestingly, while Schmalleger only briefly mentions the impact of 9/11 on role convergence, he notes at some length another development of 9/11 that also has significant implications for civil liberties: the rise of "intelligence-led policing," including networking and information sharing across police jurisdictions and between law enforcement agencies nationwide (211-14).
37.
See Wilson’s classic examination of the patrol officer’s job. His analysis of this role provides substantial indirect support for our assertions that this job captures the core purposes of the police organization. James Q. Wilson, Varieties of Police Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 16-56. This analysis, together with his discussion of the police administrator’s role in relation to the patrol officer’s role, also offers a partial illustration of the processes outlined in Figure 1. See Wilson, 57-82.
38.
U.S. Department of Labor, Dictionary of Occupational Titles.
39.
See Wilson for an insightful discussion of the discretion-and therefore complexity-associated with the patrol officer’s role. Varieties of Police Behavior, 6-9.
40.
Ibid.
41.
D. Katz and R. Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations (New York: John Wiley, 1978), 194-97.
42.
For a detailed examination of required constabulary attitudes in peacekeeping troops, see Segal, Reed, and Rohall, "Constabulary Attitudes of National Guard and Regular Soldiers"; Segal, Furukawa and Lindh, "Light Infantry as Peacekeepers in the Sinai"; and Segal et al., "Paratroopers as Peacekeepers."
43.
Zimmerman, "Between Minimum Force and Maximum Violence."
44.
J. Nelson and A. Akman, "The Multi-skilled Soldier Concept: Considerations for Army Implementation" (Study Report 2002-06, U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, Arlington, VA, 2002).
45.
Ibid.
46.
E. Grabianowski, "How SWAT Teams Work" (March 2007), http//www.people.howstuffworks.com/swat-team.htm.
47.
Ibid.
48.
Given that the deployment of any new policing unit is typically controversial, Wilson’s work (i.e., Varieties of Police Behavior) also implies that we should not assume the creation of a police paramilitary unit necessarily represents any organizational consensus on a change in organizational mission, or a fundamental philosophical shift.
