Too much of a good thing

This description blew up all the ways I usually think about team culture:

Despite his forty-year police carer, [John Guido] was never part of the NYPD culture...  "The Irish thought the job was a calling," Guido liked to say to me.  "To me, it was just a job." ... the consummate outsider, he did not mingle with colleagues.  He refused to attend formal police functions like retirement dinners or testimonials staged by wealthy police buffs."

Sounds a someone you don't want on the team.  Not a team player!

But the reason he kept his distance was to avoid the sleazy side of the job.  By keeping himself clean, he eventually became Chief of Internal Affairs, and earned high distinction.

"There are many cultures in the New York City Police Department, but corruption is the strongest one," he said.

A group like the NYPD has the opposite problem of most organizations: too much sense of team and identity.  Corporations would kill for that kind of loyalty.  We usually think of a strong culture as being good, but in this case, Guido points out that it can easily work the other way.  They're so loyal to each other, even the clean ones won't report the dirty ones, sometimes known as the Blue Wall.  As a result, many of them succumb to the temptation of power.

In a job like the police, with its danger and also the dual role the "policed" play as both customer and problem, the cultural problem isn't generating camaraderie and team pride, but doing the opposite -- without killing the pride that you still want good police officers to have in their job.  After reading NYPD Confidential, it clearly isn't easy to do.