Abstract
This article deals with the social construction of police heroes, an important, but often neglected aspect in police research. The dramaturgical approach as developed by Goffman is used to understand how police heroes come into being and how they can fall into disgrace. The social construction of the police hero is studied first by looking at the person of Buford Pusser, a Tennessee sheriff in the 1960s and 1970s who has often been seen as the most famous American (police) hero. From the dramaturgical perspective three different patterns can be distinguished that can contribute to the instability of police heroism and that can result in the fall of the hero into disgrace. Finally, it is suggested that social meaning and practices of police heroism are highly dependent on their cultural context.
Introduction
Presumably, there are not many police officers who have received as much honour as a public hero as Buford Pusser (1937–1974). Between 1964 and 1970, Pusser was the sheriff of McNairy County in southern Tennessee (and constable in the same area). At least four films, a TV series, one TV film, three books, dozens of (mainly country and western) songs and many documentaries 1 have been made about him, and an annual festival. In a museum devoted to Pusser (based in his former house in Adamsville, Tennessee) many souvenirs can be bought that keep alive the memory of this hero, such as coffee cups, key rings, T-shirts, caps and baseball bats.
Initially, Pusser acquired fame as a result of his fight against illegal whiskey distilleries, dubious gambling houses, shady motels, prostitution, extortion, robbery and other types of crime that were quite common in the poor border regions between Tennessee and Mississippi, and in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the 1950s and 1960s. The story goes that in his fights, Pusser had to deal with criminal gangs with names such as the Dixie Mafia and the State Line Mob. According to information from the Pusser Museum, Sheriff Pusser succeeded in jailing about 7500 criminals and, in a period of just one year (1965), cleared up 185 illegal whiskey stills. 2
In addition, Pusser owed his reputation to his unorthodox methods, which were not always in line with the law and did not always follow the rules. That is the main reason why he is (still) also known as Buford the Bull. He owed this reputation as a persistent crime fighter to his height of more than two metres and to the wooden stick that he used in his fights with criminals and to clean up clandestine bars. Even today, this is recognizable in the icon used by the museum and local tourism: the silhouette of a giant man armed with a stick.
Pusser’s status as a hero was reinforced because in his fight against crime he faced many struggles and suffered repeated personal misfortune and disaster. According to information provided by the Pusser Museum, during the six years that he was sheriff, he was stabbed at least seven times and shot eight times. There were also several attempts to assassinate him. During one of these attempts (in 1966), his wife was killed in an ambush and Pusser himself was severely wounded. Soon, however, he returned to work and resumed his fight against crime. In 1974, he died in a one-car crash. Even though there have been rumours of sabotage, why his car went off the road resulting in his death remains unknown.
Even during his lifetime Buford Pusser was a well-known legend and was generally seen as a typical American hero. The ambush that resulted in his wife’s death made him a national figure. To mention only one example, in 1970 the then well-known rockabilly singer Eddie Bond made an LP (
Police heroes as a research topic
Buford Pusser as a police hero is not an isolated case (and certainly not in the United States). On the contrary, a Google search of the keywords ‘police heroes’ produces millions of hits. In many American cities, both large and small, there are monuments to remember police officers killed in the line of duty, reflecting a much broader worship of police heroes. Many American police forces also have (annual) police hero awards or comparable decorations to honour the heroic and outstanding performance of police officers. 4 The police hero of the year is usually rewarded with a decoration (e.g. a police hero medal) in a public ceremony, in the presence of many authority figures and police officers in ceremonial uniform. The moral and social meaning of the ceremony and the award are emphasized by several rituals and by messages in the speeches. The websites of American police forces usually pay great attention to these awards, emphasizing that the award is not only important in providing role models for other police officers. Its implicit wider message is also to explicate and confirm the moral meaning of the police for the local community.
To a certain extent, this is also related to the way in which in the United States the mass media, such as TV and films, often pay attention to police officers as heroes in their fight against evil or as protectors of the weak and innocent. This can also be found in popular books about police heroes. An example is journalist Chuck Whitlock’s collection of dozens of portraits of American police officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty. In his words, these ‘acts of heroism’ by individual police officers are no exception, but ‘are so frequent and widespread…that they almost have become routine.’ According to Whitlock (2004), these police heroes show their willingness to give their lives for an ‘unselfish, noble purpose’.
It is quite striking that research on the police pays little attention to this phenomenon. To our knowledge, the only study that has touched upon this issue is the classic
In this article, we use a somewhat different perspective: the police hero as an important element of the wider social imagination of the police. We concentrate on two questions: how do police heroes come into being and how can they fall into disgrace? This analysis is a first exploration of an issue that to date has almost been neglected in police research. In this analysis we use a dramaturgical approach, as developed by Goffmann (1959).
First, we deal briefly with the (police) hero as a concept and a research topic. Then the question is raised of how the (police) hero is created. This is illustrated by looking in more detail at the ways in which Buford Pusser has been presented in films and TV series. Next, we look at how heroes can fall into disgrace: heroism as an unsteady and sometimes even contested social construction. The first sections of the article present examples and illustrations of police heroism derived from the mainstream American cultural situation. However, this raises an important question about the cultural contexts of police heroism. To get a first understanding of the relevance of these contexts, the final section of this article deals briefly with the way in which police in two different countries remember officers who were killed in the line of duty.
Heroes: overview of earlier studies
There are only a limited number of studies available, not only about police heroes, but also about heroes and heroism in general. This is quite remarkable considering the ‘hunger for heroes’ that some authors define as being typical of our contemporary society (Allison et al., 2016b). Besides, most of the studies available are not really very helpful in understanding the phenomenon of police heroes. This is partly because a very broad interpretation of this concept is often used, so that sports heroes, film stars, comic characters and pop musicians are also included (Allison et al., 2016a; Goode, 1978; Klapp, 1948; Sparks, 1996). Although it cannot be denied that these figures are generally very popular and attract a lot of attention, this broad view of heroes means that the normative and symbolic core of this concept is lost. In some other studies, the distinctive characteristic of heroes is supposed to consist of certain personality traits. However, already in 1948, Klapp concluded that this individualistic view of heroes neglects the important symbolic aspects of heroes and the way that this concept is applied: ‘The hero in social life is thus essentially more than a person: he [sic] is an ideal image, a legend, a symbol’. According to Klapp, the fame of the hero must be understood as a ‘collective product’ of popular interpretation. The reputation of the hero and the legends used to explain and to support his or her fame cannot be reduced to certain personality traits. Once they have come into existence, according to Klapp (1948), they have a life of their own.
Over the past decade, several new studies on heroes (see Allison et al., 2016a) have been published that may also be important for understanding police heroes. The work of Zimbardo is especially relevant here. Zimbardo presumes that becoming a hero is not preserve of only a select few. On the contrary, in his view: ‘Everyone has the capability of becoming a hero…’ (Zimbardo, 2011b). However, he is also critical of the current tendency to have a very broad interpretation of the concept. Zimbardo and his colleagues define heroes as those persons who have shown themselves to be prepared to act on behalf of others in need or in defence of a moral or public cause with recognition of the serious physical and/or social risks to themselves (Franco et al., 2011; Zimbardo, 2011a, 2011b). The empirical study by Rankin and Eagly (2008) shows that this definition corresponds with the meaning that many people give to this concept in everyday life. According to Åse and Wendt (2018), cultural imagination often associates heroism with great individual accomplishments and sacrifices for values that are considered to be morally superior.
This definition also seems to apply to police heroes. This contradicts the view of Goode (1978) that police officers and firefighters who try to save another person’s life in the line of duty should not be seen as heroes. Goode’s main argument is that police officers and firefighters do not act voluntarily, but under the duty of their job. The fact that so many police officers and firefighters are honoured as heroes shows that this view is untenable, at least in the United States. These duty-bound heroes (Franco et al., 2011) have done more voluntarily than reasonably could have been expected from them. That is exactly the reason why they are paid so much honour as heroes (Allison et al., 2016a; Cavendar and Prior, 2013).
The social construction of the hero
From a social scientific perspective, a hero is a person who not only proves to be heroic in his or her behaviour, but who is also recognized and defined as such. For that reason, Franco et al. (2011) see heroism as a ‘social attribution, never a personal one’. This implies that the meaning and use of the concept of hero are dependent on historical, cultural and situational circumstances.
This notion can be found in the 1940s and 1950s in the work of Klapp, according to whom heroization is not so much a rational process, but a manifestation of emotions, symbols and the need to express certain norms (Klapp, 1954). In other words, the meaning of the hero goes beyond the individual concerned. The hero can be understood only in relation to legends made about him or her and the symbolic meaning of the hero’s role. This implies that if a person is seen as a hero, this is also the outcome of a process of social construction and definition (Cavendar and Prior, 2013; Rankin and Eagly, 2008).
An important condition of this process is its dramaturgical context. A person can only come to be defined as a hero with the presence of an informed audience: ‘Any means of placing a figure before the public eye will help to make him a hero’ (Klapp, 1948: 139). Although the behaviour of an individual may have been very heroic, risking his or her own life to save that of another person, without the presence of an audience this person will not be recognized and honoured as a ‘hero’. This is one of the dramas of heroes who have been fighting on the side of the loser. Generally, the audience is only interested in the heroes on the winners’ side (Franco et al., 2011). To achieve the position of the hero, it is not only necessary that an image of the hero is created, but also that this is presented to an audience. The metaphor developed by Goffman (1959) of a performance on a stage, with the use of a range of presentational strategies, is especially relevant here. In this performance, information is supplied to support the created image of the hero. This may happen both in a goal-oriented way, and more or less unnoticed by the participants (‘given’ and ‘given off’) (Goffman, 1959). Information that can disrupt the intended image will often be omitted, as far as possible. Several symbols, dramatic acts and rituals can be used to make the presentation and the created images more effective, for example at a police hero awards ceremony. In such a case, a special setting will be created, with symbols and rituals to recognize and honour the hero in a more or less formalized way, or even to arrange appointment of the person as ‘police hero of the year’. This ceremony should give expression to the important social values that the hero proved to be able to realize, also in a wider social context: ‘an expressive…reaffirmation of the moral values of the community’ (Goffman, 1959: 45).
The example of the police hero awards ceremony shows that the stage on which the hero is presented may have a much more complex structure than just one actor (or one group of actors) who dominates the stage. In the case of the police hero awards ceremony, however, there is often a third party (e.g. the state or the chief constable) who has created the stage to present and honour the hero. The underlying notion that is often communicated only implicitly here is that this third party who organizes the ceremony is actually more important than the hero him- or herself. After all, this third party has the so-mentioned definition power (the power to define; Salet, 2017) to transform someone into a hero and to honour this individual in front of the audience. By implication, in the end, this third party may be higher in the status hierarchy than the hero.
The hero is not only imagined, but also appeals to other people’s imaginations. More important than the thrill and adventure that are often associated with heroes, is that the hero refers to important norms, values and collective ideals. In that sense, the hero can be seen as a role model. Besides, the hero can have important collective functions; he or she can improve group solidarity and confirm existing social norms and values ‘Because adulation of heroes is a collective phenomenon…, they reinforce group solidarity and reaffirm social norms’ (Cavendar and Prior, 2013: 478; see also Klapp, 1954: 62). Comparison with Durkheim’s (1964) analysis of crime forces itself upon us. Just as every society ‘needs’ some level of rule-breaking to keep the memory of social norms alive, the same seems to apply to heroes. The existence and worship of heroes can confirm social norms and values in the collective consciousness.
In our society, the presentation and social status of heroes are strongly dependent on the mass media (Åse and Wendt, 2018; Cavendar and Prior, 2013). On the one hand, the mass media try to fit the existing fascination for heroes and the need of the audience for information about them. Because of audience ratings this may be an important issue for the mass media. On the other hand, the mass media play an important role in the social construction of heroes and as a result strengthen the fascination with heroes. As early as the 1940s, this observation evoked the fear that this might result in an artificial and insincere construction of heroes. According to Klapp (1948: 139): ‘In the age of mass communication…heroes can be more arbitrarily manufactured and more quickly and widely diffused, once a formula for making heroes is found.’
The media image can follow the social reality, but the opposite may also happen. An example is the way in which the English police in the 1950s and 1960s reacted to the then very popular TV police series
In an even stronger way this can also happen in social media. Here, anyone basically has the opportunity to create his or her own stage and performance as a hero. Many recent heroes had their careers started in social media and would be unknown without Twitter or Facebook. However, social media may also promote the vulnerability of potential heroes, an issue that will be dealt with in more detail with regard to police heroes in one of the following sections of this article.
The mediatization of heroes can also have some other unintended effects. One of the assumptions of Zimbardo (2011b) is that anyone can become a ‘hero’. The process of mediatization seems to be able to fulfil this promise, although in quite a different way to the one that Zimbardo was probably thinking of. If everyone became a hero, it is likely that the assignment of heroism would soon lose its Durkheimian function. With the increasing impact of the media, heroism will probably lose its fundamental meaning; if every sports star is to be seen as a hero, it will become unclear what underlying and fundamental social values will still be affirmed by this. The sheer number may also be important here: if too many people are seen as heroes, then heroism will lose its special meaning and, as a result, will no longer contribute to the distinction in public consciousness between good and evil.
The construction of Buford Pusser as a police hero
How do the social construction and presentation of the police hero look in practice? The example of Buford Pusser is used here to analyse several of the relevant elements in these processes. This is mainly based on the three motion pictures
These films and TV series are based on the life of Pusser, but they also add many fictional elements, especially in the later works. Because the fictional elements are also important for social construction of the hero, in the following we are not concerned with the question of the boundaries between fact and fiction.
The core of the presentation of Pusser as a hero consists of his unremitting fight against crime. Every new episode of the TV series Buford, the legendary sheriff of his time, upholds the law, against the criminals who strike the innocent.
In the first two films it is emphasized that Pusser does not operate on his own, but on behalf of (the respectable and good part of) the local community. Both films pay no attention to Pusser’s election as sheriff. They depict his relationship with the local community in a more direct and personal way. Pusser is asked to take the job as sheriff at a meeting with a group of leading, older and respectable (male) members of the community. They do not know how to cope with the persisting problems of crime, immorality and illegal activities that have hit their area. They beg Pusser to accept this job; in one of the films Pusser only does so after much hesitation and after consulting his wife.
These films emphasize Pusser’s position as a hero by showing how in different ways he was successful in his fight against crime and evil. He proved to have the power to close down many illegal stills, and to get rid of gambling houses and brothels. A recurring element in the films consists of local citizens who are most grateful for what he had accomplished.
In particular, the films show in detail that Pusser often used heavy-handed and tough measures in his battle against evil. Although the legend says that for principled reasons Pusser did not want to use firearms 5 , both the films and the TV series present a different picture. Also here, the famous ‘big stick’ is an important instrument in his fight against evil. It shows the tremendous physical power of this police hero. Pusser used it not only to pitch into villains, but also to smash furniture in the gambling houses and motels where innocent tourists were being ripped off, and to destroy the illegal whiskey stills. At the same time, use of the ‘big stick’ symbolizes Pusser’s standard of fair play: he prefers to fight criminals with his bare hands. In the films, the way that Pusser uses his big stick and turns the gambling houses upside down shows his deep-rooted personal anger about the injustice against which he is fighting.
The films also show that in several respects Pusser did not hold much with formal rules and law books. Soon after he was elected sheriff, he became annoyed about a judge who decided to release some criminals who had just been captured. For that reason, he felt forced to study the penal code, although only for one night. However, he does so with a clear aversion, only motivated by his desire to find better ways to by-pass legal obstacles.
Although the films often call him the ‘law man’, his actions are mainly personally motivated. In many cases, it looks more like collective vigilantism, with citizens taking justice into their own hands and with the sheriff in charge. After his wife’s funeral (in the films his wife was killed after she and her husband were caught in an ambush, it remains unknown who the offenders were), Pusser went directly to a notorious gambling den where he drove his car straight through the front door, killing two of the suspects who were inside at the time. Other local citizens soon arrived at the scene to help him set fire to the house. This unregulated act, done largely out of revenge, only seemed to increase his charisma. One of the implicit messages of the films is that this hero not only has to fight criminals, but also ‘impossible’ rules and ‘naive’ judges. This incident also illustrates the great indignation and moral involvement of this hero.
According to Zimbardo’s above-mentioned definition, heroes act not only in a ‘positive and prosocial’ manner, but also with serious risk to their personal life (Franco et al., 2011). In the films and TV series, the presentation of Pusser as a hero follows the same line. His fierce battle was accompanied by many risks and personal suffering. During continuing confrontations with criminals, he was seriously wounded several times. His life was a chain of personal loss and drama. Not only was his wife killed (an element in the film
In the films and TV series these two central elements of the fight against evil and the suffering of the hero are reinforced by other sharply contrasting images of the hero. Both the films and TV series pay great attention to Pusser as a family man. He is presented not only as a faithful husband and father, but also as a son who cares for his elderly parents. This image makes it easier for the average viewer to identify with the hero: after all, he is not a conspicuously deviant macho, but proves to be a ‘normal guy’. This is more or less similar to what Klapp (1954) called the hero as a ‘supernormal deviant’: ‘the hero exceeds in a striking way the standards required of ordinary group members’, but ‘his courage, self-abnegation, devotion, and prowess’ make him also deviant in his normality; in other words, he becomes a ‘supernormal deviant’ (Klapp, 1954: 57). The fact that he is, after all, just a ‘normal’ husband and father makes his heroism even more striking.
In addition, other potential heroes, who might be in competition with Pusser for the position as the main hero are presented in a minimal way. For instance, his closest colleague is killed in an accident with Pusser’s car, probably as a result of an act of sabotage. The films pay almost no attention to his death. He is certainly not presented as a hero. It looks as if the presentation of Pusser as a hero is not compatible with a second hero in the script.
In the United States, hero worship of Pusser is ongoing after more than four decades. Even today, new films and documentaries are being made about him, some in a more professional way, others by enthusiastic amateurs. Nevertheless, and despite the general and massive worship of this hero in the United States, from time to time there have also been dissenting opinions. For instance, the many videos about Pusser on YouTube show that his fame and image not only raise admiration and approval, but there are also frequently more critical comments. One of the complaints is that Pusser did not always obey the law himself and that he used brute force, even if this was not always strictly necessary.
Not all the songs about Buford Pusser sing his praises. For instance, a radically dissenting view can be found in some songs by the Southern rock and alternative country band The Lord works in mysterious ways. They’ll probably make another movie, glorifying what he done. But I’ll never have to hear them say (2x), watch for Buford.6
The unstable construction of the police hero
More than 70 years ago, Klapp (1948) was interested in not only the social construction of heroes, but also how heroes can lose their special position. Unfortunately, his analysis did not deliver much more than the observation that, on second thoughts, the hero could prove to be a traitor, a fool or a much weaker individual than was originally presumed. From the dramaturgical perspective, three different patterns can be hypothesized that can contribute to the instability of the heroism and result in the hero’s fall into disgrace: conflicting definitions, disruptive events and self-fulfilling prophecies.
First, although it is almost a truism, it is important to note that the definitions of heroism and opinions about who is a hero may differ sharply and can even be conflicting; what is seen as a heroic act by some, may be seen as a piece of villainy or even terrorism by others (Franco et al., 2011). This can be illustrated by above-mentioned song by
An example of this process is the situation that arose in many police forces in the Netherlands immediately after liberation of the country in 1945 which put an end to its occupation by Nazi Germany. During the years of occupation, a small number of Netherlands police officers refused to follow the orders of the German occupiers to arrest Jewish people after which they would be transported to concentration camps. For those officers this decision was very risky. After their refusal to obey German orders (and in many cases also the orders of their own police chiefs), they (and their family members) were forced to go underground. Many of these police officers became members of the resistance movement. Had they been found by the Germans or by the Netherlands police, they would not only have been imprisoned, but also would have run the risk of being tortured, of being transported to a concentration camp and being killed there (Meershoek, 1999; Vernooij, 1985).
Because of their fundamental decision to refuse to help the German occupier with its
Second, the fall of a police hero into disgrace can also happen because somehow it was shown that the presentation and image of the hero did not correspond with ‘reality’. In terms of Goffman (1959), ‘disruptive events’ may be so strong that the hero is no longer able to save his or her performance by ‘defensive practices’, or in the case of the police, to successfully patrol the facts as Ericson (1989) called it. Even a minor slip by the hero or some information accidentally given off may disrupt his or her carefully created, but still unstable performance: ‘…the impression of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thing that can be shattered by very minor mishaps’ (Goffman, 1959: 63).
These disruptions can happen in several ways. The hero may get into trouble because the audience gets a glimpse of what is (‘really’) happening backstage. As a result, members of the audience see the ‘true character’ of the hero or are informed about secrets hidden there (Goffman, 1959). With hindsight it proves that the person who first appeared to be a hero has, in fact, been a villain or coward (Klapp, 1948). As a result, the audience may start to doubt the integrity and honesty of the person, a situation that may undermine belief in the magic of the hero (Goffman, 1959). This is presumably also why corruption of police officers in particular has such a negative impact on citizens’ trust in the police (Schaap, 2018).
On becoming informed about what is going on backstage, the audience may at first disbelieve the new information about their hero and only gradually start to realize how behind the presentation of the hero there was another ‘reality’. This is what happened in the case of Jan P., a police officer in Southern Geldern in the Netherlands. 7 Among his colleagues he not only had a strong reputation as a professional and experienced criminal investigator, but was also seen as an important and honest role model. In September 2012, he was dead found in his house, along with two others. It was shown that he had killed these two people and then committed suicide. The subsequent police investigation showed that over the last few years of his life, this police officer had been deeply involved in drug-related crime. Many of his former police colleagues were shocked and could hardly believe it, and wondered what had happened to their former colleague to make him live a double life.
A combination of ‘conflicting definitions’ and ‘disrupting events’ may happen in the case of a fabricated hero. Goffman (1974) uses the concept fabrication if the real meaning of a phenomenon is being replaced by another by discrediting the original meaning. This can happen for several reasons, for instance because of conflicting underlying opinions and definitions. However, fabrication also implies that the hero knows that there is a risk that his or her presentation will not be perceived as ‘honest’ because it does not correspond with ‘the facts’. It is the latter element in particular that may contribute to the fall of the hero: not only that he or she uses another definition, but the discovery that the presentation as a hero is ‘fabricated’, is not ‘honest’ and indicating a lack of integrity. For instance, a coward may try to present as a hero, something that happened after May 1945 when the Netherlands police officers who had refused to arrest Jewish people (with serious risks to their life and the safety of their family members), were confronted by former colleagues who claimed to be the heroes because they had remained at their post, even during the difficult times of the German occupation. However, in the view of the officers who went underground, these former collaborating colleagues had no right to present themselves as heroes because they did not have the courage to say ‘no’ to the Nazis.
Fabrication can also be the result of an intended PR strategy by the police. In that case, unacceptable police behaviour is glossed over and may be presented as heroic. This is what happened in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson (see Goldsmith, 2010; Greer and McLaughlin, 2011). There was a G20 Summit in London on 1 April 2009. Both the police and mass media had predicted that there would be violent protests against this summit. During the protests, a man named Ian Tomlinson died. At first the police said that the man had suffered a heart attack and had died from natural causes. According to the police, dutiful officers had tried to do their best to help him, despite violent protestors hurling bottles at them. In the first days after the incident the mass media had followed this interpretation. However, within a couple of days several videos were made public that showed that the man had died for completely different reasons. In fact, Tomlinson had tried to make his way home. Because he was not allowed to pass a police cordon, he walked away with his hands in his pockets. At that moment, without any clear reason, police officers hit him from behind with a baton. At first Tomlinson, helped by bystanders, seemed able to go on, but soon afterwards he died in the street. From the moment that these videos appeared in the media, the dominant police perspective (‘protestor violence’) was replaced by another frame (‘police violence’). A second autopsy showed that Tomlinson had not died from a heart attack, but as a result of the use of violence, raising the suspicion of manslaughter. The original praise given to the police for their heroic conduct was now replaced by fierce criticism of their attempts to cover up.
The increasing use of mobile phone cameras, social media and video-sharing platforms such as YouTube has strongly contributed to a ‘new visibility’ (Thompson, 2005) of the police. It has made presentation of the police more vulnerable and the police are walking more or less permanently on ‘thin ice’ (Brown, 2016). It has become more difficult for the police to ‘patrol the facts’ (Ericson, 1989) and to keep the back region closed (Goldsmith, 2010, 2015). Because of the increasing number of electronic eyes watching the police, and the fast and widespread dissemination of videos, the risk is much higher that any claim of police heroism will be disturbed. The death of Tomlinson shows how the police now run the risk of becoming defined as a villain and as fabricating the truth when claiming a position as a hero. As noticed previously, social media makes it much easier for many people to present themselves as a hero, but it also makes it much more difficult to maintain that claim; this is also true for the police.
Third, and more or less similar to the well-known social effects that may arise if a negative label is used such as villain, scoundrel or nutcase (Becker, 1963; Lemert, 1967), use of the positive label of hero can result in a self-fulfilling prophecy. A person who is defined and honoured in public as a hero, may (in the long run) start to believe in this label. This process is not without serious risks, especially in the case of police officers. In general, police officers are expected to avoid unnecessary risk and danger and to always watch out for their own safety and the wellbeing of their colleagues. ‘Police heroes’ may be confronted with the serious issue that they (gradually) start to think that certain risks do not apply to them or that the rules that the police are supposed to follow are not relevant to them. In the Netherlands’ police such officers may be called ‘cowboys’, a label that may warn other officers for the unpredictable behaviour of such persons (Terpstra, 2017).
Concluding remarks
Particularly in the United States the phenomenon of police heroes with its ceremonies and rituals, is widespread and receives a lot of public attention. Most American police forces have their annual police hero awards or comparable decorations to the honour heroic performances of police officers.
However, it is important to realize that the meaning of the police hero and how much attention is given to it, is highly dependent on the cultural context. For instance, the Netherlands’ police force (with about 63 500 officers) has hardly any comparable police hero ceremonies. In the Netherlands, there is only one national monument to commemorate police officers who have been killed in the line of duty either by accident or violence. This Garden of Reflection (as it is called) in Warnsveld is generally not perceived as having a clear public function. Each year a commemoration service is held in the Garden that is meant for family members and former colleagues. At the memorial monument, in the addresses given at the annual commemoration service, and in information provided on the special website about the Garden, terms such as (police) hero are not used at all. Still, addresses given at the commemoration often refer precisely to the two core elements of heroes, as distinguished by Zimbardo. For instance, the speeches refer to how the remembered police officers made the greatest ‘sacrifices’ for ‘the public interest’. The annual memorial service at the Garden is sober and the words used are plain. In many respects, the annual service at the monument barely resembles a hero ceremony. It even looks as if the term hero is deliberately avoided. The Garden and the annual memorial service are meant (as noted in one of the annual addresses delivered) for ‘…reflection and contemplation about the fundamental values of the police profession and the awareness that police work can have very serious consequences.’ One of the main messages of the monument is that the police do not want to forget officers who have been killed and that awareness of why they died should be kept alive. Police officers who have been killed are not presented as heroes, but as ‘friends’ and ‘colleagues’. The language used is not about heroism, but about the grief and memory of the ‘loved ones’ and ‘fellow humans’ who did their duty.
These remarkable differences between the police hero culture in the United States and the way that the Netherlands police remember officers who have been killed in the line of duty, raise many new questions about police heroism, cultural differences and police imagination. At present, it would be too speculative to try to explain these cultural differences. Comparative research to explore these issues in more detail is important to gain more insight into the meaning and practices of police heroism understood in its cultural context. That might also be relevant for better understanding international differences in police culture.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
