Abstract
Interviewees’ backgrounds, opinions and motivations are assessed to provide context about the type of person who becomes a chief police officer; this supports subsequent interpretation of their accounts of the right to exercise power and contributes to knowledge about police cultures. It is identified that chief officers are predominantly well educated, middle class and have liberal attitudes, and a third are women. They were attracted to policing by public service and excitement, the latter was associated with the power inherent to policing. A pronounced attraction to power may have delegitimating consequences, including using power for selfish purposes, which partly explains interviewees’ support for constitutional controls on police power. Chief officers’ approaches to power are found to be affected by gendered cultural norms, which emphasise competition and action, and it is identified that there is insufficient support and encouragement for chief police officers to reflect on the use of police power.
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Notes
- 1.
Bramshill was the former location of the Police Staff College. The Bramshill Scholarship scheme (which funded some serving police officers who were considered to have potential to excel, to attend university full time whilst being paid as police officers) has not operated for several years.
- 2.
This research did not disentangle these perceptions of excitement from the day-to-day experience of the practice of policing, which may often be more mundane.
- 3.
On 25 June 2021.
- 4.
Alison Halford became the first police chief officer in the UK when she was appointed as an Assistant Chief Constable in Merseyside in 1983. Pauline Clare became the first woman to be a Chief Constable in the UK when she was appointed to this post in Lancashire in 1995.
- 5.
Lord Flashheart is a loud, arrogant fictional character who appeared in series 4 of the BBC comedy series Blackadder and in series 2 as an ancestor with similar traits.
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Shannon, I. (2022). Chief Police Officers’ Backgrounds and Motivations. In: Chief Police Officers’ Stories of Legitimacy. Palgrave's Critical Policing Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85879-7_3
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