Comparing police supervisor and line officer opinions about the code of silence: The case of Croatia

We examine the contours of the police code of silence - the informal prohibition in the occupational culture of policing against reporting misconduct of fellow police officers - using a representative stratified sample of the Croatian police (N=1,649). Results suggest that, while the code was strong among the line officers, it did not extend equally to all forms of misconduct. Furthermore, the. code tended to be somewhat less extensive among the supervisors. Both the line officers and the supervisors were quite familiar with the extent of the code of silence in their agencies.