Amity Police Department

The Amity Police Department is the municipal law enforcement agency of Amity, Long Island, a small resort community whose year-round population of roughly 1,000 swells to nearly 10,000 each summer. Under the leadership of Chief Martin Brody, the department is responsible for public safety during the critical tourist season, a task that becomes a nightmare when a great white shark begins killing swimmers. The department's structure, culture, and relationship with the town's economic and political powers are central to the novel's exploration of institutional duty, community pressure, and moral compromise.

Structure and Personnel

The department operates on three shifts. The midnight-to-eight shift, which Brody uses to break in young officers, is normally manned by three men, but during the summer of the shark attacks one officer is on leave and another, Henry Kimble, a thirty-year veteran, routinely sleeps in his squad car behind the Amity Pharmacy, holding a daytime job as a bartender at Saxon's. The eight-to-four business shift requires experience and diplomacy and is staffed by six men: one handles summer traffic at the intersection of Main and Water streets, two patrol in squad cars, one mans the phones, one handles clerical work, and the chief himself handles the public. The four-to-midnight trouble shift is staffed by the six largest men on the force, all between thirty and fifty years old, who deal with fights at the Randy Bear, occasional muggings, and about twice a month a pot bust at a waterfront home. Patrolman Len Hendricks, a Vietnam veteran who joined the force for its $9,000 starting salary, security, regular hours, and the chance to become a respected community member, works the midnight shift and is the first officer to respond to the report of Christine Watkins's disappearance. The last duty-related fatality of an Amity policeman occurred in 1957 when an officer was run off the road into a stone wall while trying to stop a drunk driver.

Chief Brody's Role and the "Amity Understanding"

Brody's job extends beyond law enforcement into the delicate management of the town's reputation. There is a common, tacit understanding in Amity, born of the need to survive the winter on summer revenue: everyone is expected to do his bit to keep Amity a desirable summer community. Brody's contribution consists of suppressing rumors and, in consultation with Harry Meadows, the editor of the Amity Leader, keeping a certain perspective on unfortunate occurrences that qualify as news. The previous summer's rapes by a black gardener were barely reported as "molestations" because Brody and Meadows agreed the specter of a black rapist would not help the tourist trade. Wealthy summer residents arrested for drunk driving are booked on lesser charges on a first offense. When Amity's own youth cause a disturbance, the Leader runs a one-paragraph story without names. This system of managed information directly leads to the suppression of the news of Christine Watkins's death by shark attack, a decision Brody makes under pressure from Mayor Larry Vaughan and the selectmen, who threaten to remove him from office. The town's corporate charter gives the selectmen the power to remove the elected chief of police for "good and sufficient cause."

Response to the Shark Crisis

The department's response to the shark attacks is shaped by this institutional pressure. After the first attack, Brody wants to close the beaches and publicize the danger, but Vaughan and the selectmen force him to keep quiet. After the second and third attacks kill a child and an old man, Brody orders the beaches closed, posting two officers on the beaches who face seventeen confrontations with people insisting on swimming. One man claims a constitutional right to swim off his own beach; a New York lawyer reads the United States Constitution to a policeman and a cheering crowd. Brody also has to deal with a ticket scalper selling fake "Shark Beach" tickets on Main Street, whom he orders arrested for fraud. When the beaches are reopened for the Fourth of July weekend, Brody stations himself on a dune in a bathing suit with binoculars and a walkie-talkie, with Hendricks on the public beach and Hooper patrolling in a boat, creating a triangle of watch. After the shark nearly takes a boy, Brody closes the beaches again and, with the selectmen's reluctant approval, charters the boat of the fisherman Quint for $400 a day, cash in advance, to hunt and kill the shark. Brody himself joins the hunt, a decision that leads to the sinking of the Orca and the deaths of Hooper and Quint, leaving Brody as the sole survivor swimming for shore.