Additional Pattern Four: The Blue Wall

A pattern evident from the cross-case analysis is that when individual police in a police-civilian interaction choose to deny or conceal misconduct associated with that interaction, it is likely that other individual police or police organizations will act to support that denial or concealment. These acts are likely to take the form of silence or perjury, a phenomenon known as the code of silence or the Blue Wall, as documented in the literature on police culture. It is also apparent that, in cases where the Blue Wall is evident, accountability requires the intercession of individuals or organizations which choose not to be constrained by the Blue Wall. It is apparent that user-generated online video of the police-civilian interaction can function as a tool and as a goad for these individuals or organizations to penetrate the Blue Wall. It is also apparent that if accountability is entirely controlled by individuals or organizations complicit in the Blue Wall, the outcomes for accountability are likely to be lower media profiles, significantly reduced transparency, and the reduction of penalties for misconduct nearly to zero.

The constraints of the present research do not allow the development of this observed pattern into a robust theory.

There are doubtless many research questions regarding the Blue Wall whose answers would be of significant value. The existing body of research on the subject, from a range of fields and perspectives and carried out through a variety of methodologies, provides an adequate scaffolding of concepts and existing theory to justify researchers’ future concentration on explanatory research or on the further development of theory. In particular, comparative examinations of the Blue Wall prior to and following the societal permeation of user-generated online video may prove valuable. Duplication today of research originally conducted prior to 2005 may reveal significant differences in the attitudes, processes, effects, or perceptions of the Blue Wall. The essential difficulty for both police and civilian scholars lies in securing access to sufficient data to draw meaningful conclusions. It is possible that user-generated online video may provide assistance to researchers, both by identifying cases worthy of study, and by providing additional leverage to pry apart some small gap in the Blue Wall.