Abstracts Category : Other

Shades of Brown and Blue| Understanding Latino Police Officers

by Ruben Quesada

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore the lived experiences of what it means to be a Latino police officer within the theoretical foundation of the Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit). The research questions focused on how Latino police officers lived experiences influence their ability to maintain ethnic self-identity and assimilate into the police organizational culture. This study examined Latino police officers who have an intersectional status when their identity as an ethnic minority is in competition with their professional identity status as a police officer. The study was composed of Latino police officers who shared a common connection in the use of the Spanish language. The researcher used a convenience sampling strategy based on current or past membership within the Arizona National Latino Police Officer Association (AzNLPOA) who represented various police agencies in the Phoenix, Arizona Metropolitan area. In person, semistructured, open-ended interviews served as the data collection instrument, while a modified van Kaam phenomenological approach was used to analyze the transcripts. Results indicate that the police organizational culture was the most influential factor in what it means to be a Latino police officer, but challenged the beliefs that the police organizational culture will eventually strip away the racial identity of an individual. For these Latino police officers, the use of the Spanish language caused them to maintain a heightened sense of awareness of their Latino ethnic self-identity, yet allowed them to succeed and thrive within the police organizational culture and the Hispanic or Spanish speaking community.