When comparing to other occupations, police partnerships are a unique characteristic of the job and an important aspect of doing police work. It would be rare to find another job where workers spend 10 hour days in a relatively small work environment such as the patrol car (as compared to a cubicle, office or ordinary workplace). Having a good partnership can make the job fun and exciting, but can create stress and difficulty should there be a personality or work-ethic conflict. From an administrator’s point of view, partnerships are crafted to ensure a balance in temperaments, such as a ‘laid back’ cop paired with a ‘hyperactive’ one (to the coppers out there, I’m sure you know of a few partnerships where you have two ‘hyperactive’ cops are put in the same car — it usually becomes a complaint-prone two-person wrecking crew).
In good partnerships and because of the amount of time together, officers come to ‘know’ what the other is thinking at a call, most specifically when your partner getting ready to move into action. This is an important part of a partnership and police work, as you don’t have the chance to discuss what you’re going to do next in front of the bad guy and you just have to rely on your partner knowing you well enough to react accordingly. Eventually, you have little ‘hints’ or ‘giveaways’ that only partners know and telegraph the next move.
Beyond the tactical stuff, what two officers experience on the job becomes exclusive to that partnership. In two years with my partner, we’ve been in situations that made us laugh, shake our heads in disgust, sit in quiet reflection or high-five, such as after a good arrest. In all of these situations, a bond between partners is built upon and we usually end up referring to these ‘memorable’ moments when reminded of them in the run of any given workday. Often, partners spend more time with each other during a work week than you do with your spouse during that same week. As a result, the shared time develops an interesting and unique connection between colleagues.
Before becoming a police officer and during my stress and policing research work, police ’solidarity’ was a subject that I often talked about as a method of coping ‘culturally’ with stress. However, what I’m realizing now after being on the job, is that the partnership bond is significantly more valuable to an officer than relationships with other colleagues. With their work partners, officers talk about personal matters, workplace difficulties, usually anything and everything. Also, eventually your workplace social identity is closely tied to your partnership as other co-workers refer to you as “Dan’n'Pete” almost as a singular person. Of course, I would have never been able to fully experience this as an outsider researcher.
What is unfortunate is that long-standing partnerships are rare nowadays, as police forces are hiring more and more recruits thus requiring new staff to be trained and mentored. As a result, partnerships are split up, putting senior officers with junior members in order to guide the new officer. This new partnership usually is short lived, as both officers gain more experience, move to other positions or begin the training cycle yet again.
