Cross-Cultural Communications: Going Beyond the Jargon

Before you read on, I want you to stop and repeat after me: “I use jargon.” It’s OK. Really. We all do. No need to be upset.

 No matter the industry, our professional vocabularies are chock-full of undecipherable, incomprehensible phrases, acronyms and plain-old-slang. The business community has its game-changers and paradigm-shifters, parodied hilariously here. Us in the media industry have evergreens and flacks, which have nothing to do with trees or body armor (that’s perpetually-important content and publicists, FYI). When I walk into my firehouse, my brain operates using an entirely foreign set of verbs and nouns– a topic I intend to cover in another post.

Well, policemen are no different. Bound by tradition, common culture, and unique job necessities, police officers have developed their own language to communicate with one another.

“Years ago, police jargon was coded for two primary reasons: first, to cut down on ‘air time’ to keep the air clear for emergencies and second, to have a code system to keep the ‘bad guys’ from understanding what was going on,” explains J. Martin “Marty” Lurz, captain of the Baltimore County Police Department’s Precinct 7, which encompasses Cockeysville.

Ten-codes are the most cryptic police jargon known to us civilians. Yes, they do slowly creep out of patrol cars and precincts into common dialogue. Some of us have even adopted this police language. Everyone has at least one totally un-cool friend who says 10-4 to mean “OK,” or has referred to a criminal as a “perp” (on behalf of law enforcement personnel everywhere, thanks, Law & Order). Even Captain Lurz agrees: “ask my daughters know what 10-4, 10-6, 10-7, 10-8, 10-9 and 10-22 mean and they will tell you in a second.”

(Appropriately, in the emailed interview, Captain Lurz left it to me to determine what those codes actually meant. The fire department generally doesn’t use ten-codes, so I had to call in reinforcements. A police officer tells me that: 10-4 means “message received,” or OK; 10-6 means busy, as in “can’t talk, I’m busy”; 10-7 means out of service, commonly used to mean “broken”; 10-9 means “repeat”; and 10-22 means “disregard,” or, in teenage girl parlance, something close to “ugh, never mind!” Consider yourself informed.)

Here’s the difference, though. When I throw my PR terms around, I do so in a fairly close-knit circle. Even though my editor might tell me my dek – that little sentence that appears below the title of this story – needs work, neither one of us would ever use it in conversation with a complete stranger. For police officers, on the other hand, it is their job to interact with complete strangers. All. Day. Long.

What’s more – and this makes police officers’ interactions with strangers different than grocery store clerks, for example – the interactions of patrol officers are usually pretty negative, and can be downright dangerous. A unified – and coded – system of communication is a survival mechanism.

Criminals – it is my experience – speak cop-ese better than law-abiding citizens. But, when a patrol officer who is used to criminals must communicate with community members – which is often – Joe Q. Public is left wondering what, exactly, the men and women in blue are trying to say.

This is a very common complaint. Is it because of ten-codes? I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, not quite.

Coded language is just a result of a coded mindset, and we’re all guilty of it. My observations of the police officers in my life has led me to the following conclusion: there is only one culture in police circles, and that culture is blue. Yes, the men and women of the law enforcement are unique and uniquely special, but think of blue as a unifying character trait – just like a CPA certification.

Yes, friends, only other CPAs understand your lame accounting jokes. And, similarly, only other cops understand some of the realities of being a cop.

My suggestion – both to my boys in blue and to those seeking to find common ground with that police officer who dutifully drives through your neighborhood at night – is to move, when you can, toward the center. So – dear Speeder, the reason that officer set up a speed trap at Galloway and Greenside avenues might be because he knows, firsthand, what speeding through a school zone will get you. And so – dear Officer, the reason that mother won’t calm down is because she doesn’t know that almost all kids reported “missing” venture home, unharmed, after a few hours of goofing off with friends.

Captain Lurz, for his part, understands: “we preach that the officers place themselves in the position of the victim and how they would feel if they received poor service,” he says. “The more officers that we move towards that vision, the more confidence and trust we establish with our residents.”

Well, Joe Q. Public, same goes for you. Let’s work to inform each other, rather than focus on the jargon that separates us. We are all our mothers’ children. We all know how to communicate with some common decency, I hope, and we shouldn’t let petty language barriers keep us from being able to do so.