to racially profile is a product of gender as well as race. If policemen are using Terry stops and frisks to play the game of “who’s the man?” rather than just to gather evidence of crime, then we need to change the gender dynamics of policing. I propose that we do so by changing the cultures of police forces. This can be achieved by establishing extensive training programs designed to root out the attitudes and rituals that perpetuate a macho police culture.2 ° In order to demonstrate that the Terry doctrine’s promotion of masculinity contests is a problem that ought to be addressed by training programs, this Article is structured as follows. In Part I, I propose a comprehensive theory of how masculinities affect policing. I review the hegemonic masculinities school of thought, which is the dominant school within masculinities studies, and identifies the following background
principles of the hegemonic pattern of masculinities 21 in the United States: (1) men’s concern with the opinions of other men;22 (2) anxiety over whether one has proved one’s manhood; 23 (3) a competitiveness reflected in a need to dominate other men and a general aggressiveness; 24 and (4) a denigration of contrast figures reflected in a repudiation of femininity and homosexuality as well as subordination of racial minorities. Next, I describe two manifestations of the hegemonic pattern of U.S. masculinity: (1) a chip-on-one’s-shoulder attitude known as the culture of honor stance and (2) an exaggeration of masculine qualities known as hypermasculinity. Then I identify two important aspects of the pattern of police officer masculinity that is hegemonic in the U.S.: (1) the predominance of command presence as a paradigm for police officer behavior and (2) the unofficial rule that police officers must punish disrespect. All of those aspects of masculinity come together to create and enhance the risk that policemen will enact command presence in order to stage masculinity contests with male civilians. Having developed a comprehensive theory of police officer masculinity, Part II tests and applies that theory by considering the Terry decision. First, I demonstrate that a crucial part of the decision seems to be animated by the assumptions behind the hegemonic patterns of U.S. and police officer masculinity.
Specifically, I suggest that part of the Terry Court’s refusal to exclude evidence obtained from stops and frisks not based on probable cause derives from its conclusion that officers sometimes initiate encounters with citizens for reasons unrelated to evidence gathering. 26 The Court later acknowledges that in such encounters, policemen may be “motivated by the officers’ perceived need to maintain the power image of the beat officer, an aim sometimes accomplished by humiliating anyone who attempts to undermine police control of the streets. 27 Part II also discusses how the Terry Court’s implicit assumption that officers will inevitably engage in masculinity contests is consistent with mainstream views about police at the time. This may have subtly led the Terry Court to favor an answer to the question of whether officers could conduct stops and frisks without probable cause that allowed officers to shore up their masculinity. Additionally, I show that contemporary incidents of police bullying by means of Terry stops and frisks which appear to be solely incidents of racial profiling are actually instances where race and masculinity intersect to produce the result. Having demonstrated the risk that police officers will turn Terry stops into masculinity contests, Part III proposes responding to such masculinity-based police bullying by changing the cultures of police forces. In this Part, I distinguish my views from those of legal scholar Angela Harris by arguing that the solution to masculinity-based police bullying is to train officers to enact command presence only when it is necessary, not to attempt a dramatic change from a punitive to a restorative model of 28 justice. Then I detail how training currently fails to properly instruct officers on when to enact command presence. Finally, I propose that police training explicitly address racial and gender stereotypes, and that officers be trained in how to verbally diffuse tense situations. Having explained how to get police officers to stop initiating masculinity contests, Part IV concludes by explaining why officers themselves would be better off if they stopped bullying civilians in futile attempts to maintain their image as “the man.” Before starting the substantive analysis, it will be helpful to note that the insights in this Article are most applicable to men. After all,