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Reports of community alienation and high ingroup identification in the police suggest that they are a particularly ethnocentric group. To empirically test this hypothesis, a sample of urban police officers was surveyed to ascertain their social identity pattern. Results indicated a high level of peer solidarity, community alienation differentiated on the basis of race and social class, and the perception that the source of alienation lies more with the community than with the officers themselves. A central finding was that those officers who identified most strongly with peers also tended to report lower levels of alienation from the community groups. This finding, in conjunction with unremarkable levels of authoritarianism and perceived stress in the sample, challenges the stereotype of the ethnocentric, authoritarian, and stressed out police officer. Results are placed within a novel framework for understanding the police solidarity phenomenon, and implications for police‐community relations are discussed.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine similarities and differences in motivational-type and sensation seeking tendencies in male and female firefighters and to determine how a growing focus on extrinsically focused reasons to volunteer relates to traditional, intrinsically focused rationales. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 160 volunteer firefighters (29 women, 131 men) were compared to 210 undergraduate controls (171 women, 39 men) across a spectrum of motivation and sensation seeking types in a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based, approach. Findings – Female volunteers showed a distinct pattern of motivations for volunteering and though similar to their male counterparts in Thrill and Adventure Seeking were lower in impulsive sensation seeking. Greater levels of career-focused motivation did not come at the cost of intrinsically focused motivation or to the number of years one projected volunteering. Research limitations/implications – The approach did not provide the means to check if reported intentions translate to behavioural outcomes and the small number of female firefighters sampled compromised power. Practical implications – Findings of how female volunteers differ from male counterparts and university women might be considered when developing recruitment drives and formulating policy to modify what is rewarded in firefighting. Findings further suggest that the potential of gaining paid employment is unlikely to compromise traditional reasons for volunteering. Social implications – Evidence that female volunteers possess a distinct and desirable pattern of motivations and sensation seeking relative to their male counterparts seemingly provides a rationale to target women in recruitment drives that extends beyond bolstering numbers. However, that they were also distinct from university females raises questions about their representativeness and, in turn, about the size of the potential pool from which fire services may draw. Hypothesized concern about the negative impact that volunteering as a means to obtain paid work has on more traditional, intrinsically focused motivations appears to be unfounded. Originality/value – Moves beyond anecdote to provide empirical evidence of the motivations and sensation seeking tendencies of volunteer firefighters, especially women, and contributes to a nascent area of inquiry about how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation can co-exist in this group.