by Jerome H. Skolnick and James J. Fyfe

About the authors: Jerome H. Skolnick is a law professor at the University of California in Berkeley. James J. Fyfe is a professor of criminal justice at Temple University in Philadelphia and a former New York City police officer. They are the authors of Above the Law: Police and the Excessive Use of Force.

How can police, who can be exemplary heroes, beat people and then be prepared to lie about it"

Policing, because it is a 24-hour-a-day identity, generates powerfully distinctive ways of looking at the world, cognitive and behavioral responses that, when taken together, may constitute “a working personality.” How working cops learn to see the world around them, and their place in it, offers a key to understanding their motives, fears and aspirations, as...