THE COMMEMORATION OF DEATH, ORGANIZATIONAL MEMORY, AND POLICE CULTURE.

Police culture scholarship documents that though there is fragmentation of the so-called "monolithic" police culture, historically consistent features of the occupational culture of police exist. Drawing on ethnographic observations in three U.S. police departments, this paper describes how one consistent feature of police culture--the preoccupation with danger and potential death--is maintained by the commemoration of officers killed in the line of duty. The use of commemorative cultural artifacts by officers and departments contributes to an organizational memory that locally reflects and reifies the salience of danger and potential death in policing. Further, commemoration of dead officers is not restricted to a department's own; the dead of other departments are commemorated by independent police organizations and their officers, maintaining occupational assumptions of dangerous and deadly police work that transcend a single department and its organizational memory. Implications for the study of police culture and police reform efforts are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]