Between the 1960s and 1970s, Jerome Skolnick wrote a couple of seminal books that have shaped sociological theories on policing. Skolnick’s theories were based upon field studies of American police officers. His recent work has focused on corruption, abuse of authority and excessive force — while his early work talked about the police culture and the daily work of police officers. I studied these theories as part of my academic studies and saw some of them play out in my own research while watching from an outsider’s perspective. More and more though, now that I’ve been doing police work for a few years, I’ve realized that the theory of symbolic assailant may have been applicable in the 1960s, but it now needs a bit of updating.
The best way to describe Skolnick’s symbolic assailant theory was: how officers associate a minority as a criminal. In Skolnick’s studies, he found that officers were more likely to single out a minority male as an offender (of some crime). However, from an updated perspective, I feel the symbolic assailant is now actually about characteristics and behavior. More simply, how officers find criminals and how officers categorize them for attention or future references. This translates into what police officers develop as a ‘mental shorthand’ or characteristic of those people that most relate to criminal activity. This is not to say that racism is absent from all policing, however, with the current standards of what’s acceptable in our society and Canadian culture, racism occurs at significantly lower amount than previously studied.
How does today’s symbolic assailant manifest itself? Whether by appearance, clothing or behavior, officers can identify criminal people from the rest of the citizenry. Although much different than other theories such as phrenology, I’ve found that officers do have a sense of ‘what a criminal looks like’ and develop cues based on their past experiences or clues learned from colleagues. These clues then make up part of an officer’s on-going investigative activities, basically how they look for ‘trouble’ in daily patrol. For instance, police officers often look for the people that stand-out amongst the regular public. Things such as dirty clothing, disheveled appearance may indicate someone who is living on the street. From there, inferences can be drawn from past experience that homeless people usually have some sort of substance abuse problems, which they turn to criminal activities such as minor thefts, frauds, etc, to provide for these addictions. Another inference may be drawn from someone with similar disheveled appearance with an over-abundance of tattoos, the sign of a rounder at local jails. All of these calculations are made over time through experience, but also occur in an instant — especially when confronting the particular person that has drawn your attention. I think it’s also important to make clear that identifying the symbolic assailant in my context does not involve a ‘race’ consideration. Although that may have been the case in the 1960s, nowadays, I would argue it is the characteristics of criminality that stand out to a police officer.
Moving away from people, the same inference can be drawn to cars for example. Police officers know that criminals use a variety of cars to do their criminal deeds. The wide majority of ‘crime vehicles’ usually fall into three categories: the shitbox, the stolen car and the gangster’s wheels. Each of these have their own characteristic giveaways, such as to name a few: the shitbox – rusted to the bone, plate falling off, parts not functioning; the stolen car – (sadly so obvious) 4 young adults in a Honda or Dodge product late at night; the gangster car – shiny wheels, jacked up, souped up engine, etc. All of these vehicles usually draw the attention of a police officer, whether the vehicle is stopped or checked — the clues are there for further investigation.
Sometimes, there are exceptions to an officer’s ’symbolic assailant’. But, despite the outliers, with good learned investigative skills, having a good sense of what a criminal looks like can give you opportunities for good police work.
On the other end of the scale, I have heard about some departments where the symbolic assailant theory has been taken to a whole new level due to human rights complaints. In one department, contact slips must be completed with ALL encounters with the public, in order to disprove any potential complaints that officers are only targeting one specific minority group. This is obviously an extreme case of risk management on the part of the department.
In the climate of more and more charter of rights violation decisions, officers must articulate correctly their reasons for stopping to talk to someone, both to the court and the individual. Cops are excellent observers of criminal activity, lets make sure that we demonstrate that to the public.
