Everyday Policing and the Responsibility of Co-Production





I woke up today to a range of different articles focused on policing. I always find mainstream articles on the police fascinating – trying to navigate the politics behind it, the message they’re trying to get across and the level and type of engagement the author has had with policing. But, more often than not, with ‘sociologically illiterate’ (Loader 2014) content. More and more I find myself infuriated, self-defined policing experts passing judgement on police decision making.





I’m currently a PhD student and all going well, if I pass my defence in the distant future, I’ll be classed an ‘expert’. Even typing that I chuckle to myself. I’ve always held fast in the belief that when people start defining you as an expert, you’re normally at the stage where you know there is so much more to learn, meaning you feel entirely uncomfortable self-defining as such. I’ve recently finished 12-months fieldwork with a large, well-known metropolis police force and am now grappling with data analysis and writing for the final stages of my thesis. I still don’t feel an expert, there’s so much more to learn about policing, so many more officers I wish I could speak to.





My work is actually quite simple – I watch police officers. I look to see how they react, how they engage, how they cope. It’s an odd type of job, but one I couldn’t feel more privileged at being able to do. I learn first-hand about human behaviour, about cultures, about vulnerability. My research deals with the everyday. It explores the everyday grind of officers negotiating their way through society’s ills, predominately working to the mind-set of only using their legal powers as a last resort. Headlines are interesting, police malpractice is important to be informed about. But what happens in the everyday? What happens when police action doesn’t attract media attention?





Early in my fieldwork I was out with a response team, attending a night-shift, where I would guess 85% of the calls were related to mental health, the officers told me that this was the norm for them. Another night-shift, the first call I attended with officers was a domestic dispute, where a woman had bitten a chunk out of her partners chin whilst the children hid in their bedroom. A woman hysterically crying, clearly suffering from a mental health breakdown – whilst her partner disclosed she was no longer taking her medication. In the front room a young PC is sitting with her, talking to her in a soft, calm and low tone. Another officer on their hands and knees with the children making sure they were okay. The flat was claustrophobic with so many people, with so much chaos. I stepped outside, it was early in my fieldwork and I was yet to become familiar with the uncomfortable sensation of stepping into the most private areas of a person’s life. Amongst all that chaos, an officer noticed I was missing and came to find me, “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay?” Compassion.





I was once asked to wear a stab protective vest, I complied, not thinking anything of it. An hour or so later whilst with a number of officers on the city streets watching them deal with an incident, a passer-by says something to me that I don’t catch and then spits on the ground at me. Something I had never experienced before and was confused by, an officer chortles at my shock, “you’re in a vest, they think you’re one of us” – a nonchalant explanation from someone used to being treated this way. Tolerance.

I remember observing my first stop of a young black man. A member of the public had called in with a description, he fitted that description. “This is the tenth fucking time I’ve been stopped by you this week!” He angrily shouts at the officer. “By me?!” The officer exclaims, shocked. “No” he replies, “by your mates." The anger is palpable and the officers face drops in genuine misery, there’s a few seconds silence: “that’s shit, really shit. I’m so sorry you’ve experienced that…” and then moves on to explain the description they were given and why he was being stopped. Navigating the profoundly complicated relationship between ethnic minority communities and the police all in a matter of minutes. Negotiating a requirement of the job, but with the recognition and sensitivity of systemic injustices, all within one interaction. Professionalism.





I spoke to an officer who was policing a protest, just him and one other colleague in amongst a group of protesters, trying to build relations. The situation escalated and they both ended up getting assaulted and needing to be dragged out by colleagues. They took a break, heading to the nearest coffee shop to sit there for half an hour and refuel. One then announces, “right, best get back in there and try and make amends.” Resilience.





Another officer – one of the most skilled officers I observed during my fieldwork, spoke about the need to keep trying with protest groups, even after they started chanting, “we need to kill a cop, we need to get revenge.” For him, these people needed a space to vent their anger and frustration and the police needed to facilitate that space. He relocated and kept a close eye on the member of the public chanting this threat but did nothing else to silence the man’s anger. Leadership.

These are just a small number of observations made and conversations had during my fieldwork. They’re not extraordinary, they’re notable by the fact they’re everyday examples of ordinary police work. The everyday is not what you read about in the newspapers because decent police work doesn’t make for a good headline. Police officers and policing more widely is a state-imposed institution; therefore, corruption must be commonplace, right? Abuse is a cultural norm, correct? We must fight these enemies, LONG LIVE THE REVOLUTION, yes? But as Žižek points out, revolution is great, until we have to figure out what to do tomorrow.





What people so rarely stop to reflect on is the behaviour and conduct of us, the public. The common-place behaviour observed during my fieldwork was at best, acceptable and at worst, abysmal. The type of behaviour the reader would isolate themselves from, thinking I’m speaking about some distant ‘type’ of person, a group you could never belong to. But I’m not, I’m speaking about you. The self-centred business worker who abuses an officer for a street being closed as it’s a short cut to their work, not once stopping to enquire what had happened - an attempted murder on a young female, if you were wondering. The hipster loudly abusing an officer for being racist, superficially analysing from a distance a conversation between an BME officer and a BME male. An officer being told on a protest that they were “a disgrace”, simply for being a police officer.





I’m writing with frustration, frustration that so many people are experts on policing, with very few taking the time to learn about the work they’re judging. Is policing without its problems? God, no. But I didn’t see any more or less than the problems I observe in academia, or in government, or in general society - they just less frequently make the headlines. The British public policing model is part of British identity, whether we love it or loath it. The Scotland Yard Detective is world famous. The video of the dancing police officer at Notting Hill Carnival is shared hundreds of thousands of times. The British police uniform can be found in most fancy-dress shops – available in both adult and children sizes. Drunken nights out often involve a request to wear a copper’s hat whilst posing for a photo. Our public police are only as good as our public conduct and I’d say that it is us, the public, who are falling below the mark so far.





This article is not written as a defence, policing is a service that should be held to the highest standards. But it’s written as a plea for a more educated analysis of the world that is so often open to criticism. Ethnography – the methodological approach used for my PhD – requires the researcher to get behind the façade. To know the world they’re studying deeply, not superficially. To consider the complexities of that world: not exploring it from a perspective of black and white, but problematising it to understand it from the depths of the murky grey – the very context in which officers operate in daily. This takes time and it takes energy, but social order and social cohesion can only be achieved through co-production. As a member of the public, you are not a passive customer of a state service with rights – “I PAY YOUR WAGES” being a common slur shouted at officers – you are instead an active citizen, utilising a state service, with much responsibility.





The British public policing model is currently in danger, being torn up by political rhetoric with pound signs in its eyes. Public scorn of policing is presently engaged at a basic level, taken right down to a small number of characters to ensure a punchy tweet. But public service is complex. Policing is complex. And by only engaging in debate that approaches policing problems at a basic level, we are legitimising the destruction of a public service. As a great thinker has said before, “that’s the standard technique of privatization (sic): defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.”