Policing Citizens

Police, Power and the State

P.A.J. Waddington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781135361495
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This analysis of policing throughout the modern world demonstrates how many of the contentious issues surrounding the police in recent years - from paramilitarism to community policing - have their origins in the fundamentals of the police role. The author argues that this results from a fundamental tension within this role. In liberal democratic societies, police are custodians of the state's monopoly of legitimate force, yet they also wield authority over citizens who have their own set of rights.

CHAPTER 1

What is Policing?

Introduction

The simple answer to the question “What is policing?” is that policing is what police officers do. There is much sense in this response, but it is typical of the sociologist to make life complex by showing that there is much more to the subject under examination than meets the eye. This can be frustrating for the reader, because before we can examine our subject we need to stand back from it and assess why it needs examining and what needs examination. However, I will try and temper your frustration by eschewing general conceptual issues—at least for the moment—and concentrate instead on what real-life police officers actually do or rather did during one evening’s duty in Chicago.

What Officers Do—An Anecdote

I met the two officers I was to accompany for the Friday evening’s patrol at the police station. Pete had seven years’ experience, having spent a few years in the military. He was white, married, had a couple of kids, lived in the suburbs and was soon hoping for posting to the detective branch. Al was a rookie, having graduated from the police academy just a few months previously. He was much younger than Pete, an unmarried African-American and was attached to his more experienced partner so as to learn how the job should be done in practice—a relationship that is common in police forces throughout the world and goes by a variety of official designations, such as “Field Training Officer” (van Maanen 1973) or “Tutor Constable” (Fielding 1988). The attitudes of the two men were also quite typical of their respective roles and experience: Al was enthusiastic at the prospect of getting out on the street and talked excitedly about his work. Pete was more laconic and not a little cynical—his was a job to be done and a period to survive.

I climbed into the rear of the blue and white patrol car and with Pete driving we pulled out into the early evening traffic which had obligingly stopped to allow us onto the road. For a while we drove around the area for which these officers were responsible. Similar to a wild animal establishing its territory we cruised the area to see that everything was as it should be. As we did so my companions pointed to various housing projects containing low-cost accommodation and from where we might expect to receive calls. There was quite a bit of personal domestic chatter between Pete and Al and gossip about colleagues and events within the police bureaucracy.

It took about an hour of patrolling before Al reached for the radio handset and acknowledged receipt of a dispatch. He explained that there was a drunk causing a nuisance in a bar near the city centre. We drove directly but without undue haste to the bar. As the officers walked into the dimly lit interior the angry exchanges from a group of people standing near the bar suddenly hushed. Pete asked what the problem was and the smartly dressed manager told of how the dishevelled man had become drunk and refused to leave when asked to do so by the bartender, who was also standing in the group. The man was clearly very intoxicated, unable to stand without swaying and his speech was slurred. Pete turned to him and asked whether he was going to leave or would he prefer to be arrested. The man lurched unsteadily towards the door onto the street with Pete and Al in close attendance. Outside the man slumped against the display window of a neighbouring shop as Pete warned him that if there was any recurrence of trouble he would arrested. Just then another patrol car turned up and Pete ambled over to tell them that there was nothing to worry about and thanked them for stopping by; they left with a wave. Pete returned to the man and told him to go on his way.

As we climbed back in the car Pete suggested that we cruise down to the entertainment district which was not far away. People were now thronging the streets and the patrol car had some difficulty nosing its way through the heavy traffic. It was noticeable that we became the centre of attention for many pedestrians and Al took obvious but quiet delight in returning the smiles and waves of the many small groups of scantily clad young women. Having woven our way through the crowds we resumed our general patrol and then had a break for a meal.

The second half of the shift was dominated by a single incident to which we were sent immediately after the meal break. An African-American man had reported a robbery. We pulled up at the address to which the dispatcher had sent us to find the man waiting on the footpath. The story he told was this: he had been in business with another man for a couple of years, but they had begun to experience financial problems and could not pay their small group of employees. His partner had proposed selling the personal computer that was used in the office, but the complainant had refused to permit this. He had been in the office during the evening, trying to find alternative ways of saving the business, when two nephews of his partner turned up to take the computer. He had resisted and they had beaten him before removing the computer. Pete shone his flashlight onto the man’s face and inspected the cut and bruising around his left eye; meanwhile Al was taking notes. The complainant did not know where the nephews might be found, but he gave an address for his business partner. He said that he would remain in the office for a while and the officers went in search of the partner at what turned out to be a surprisingly swanky apartment building. The officers enquired of the concierge who used the internal phone to call the partner. He refused to see the officers, but agreed to talk on the phone. He alleged that he was not a “partner” but had merely loaned the complainant money to start his business. The computer had been repossessed when the complainant had failed to repay the loan. His nephews had acted in self-defence when the complainant had pulled a gun on them and they had disarmed him. He did not know where his nephews were at that moment because they were trying to sell the computer and recoup his loss.

The officers returned to the complainant who again met us in the street—a habit the officers found disconcerting. Why did he not invite them into his office? It was now very dark and so all four of us climbed into the patrol car. The business partner’s account was relayed to the complainant who, of course, disputed much of it. “What about the gun?”, asked the officers. Well yes, the man conceded, he was in possession of a gun, but he had not pulled it on his assailants, they had simply stolen it along with the computer. Where was his licence for the gun? Well, he did not have a licence, it was a war trophy from Vietnam. Pete and Al climbed out of the car and had a brief conversation about what to do next. Pete then summoned the complainant. Look, he told him, they would take no action about the gun, but so far as they were concerned this was a civil dispute between business partners and he had better see a lawyer first thing Monday morning. With that we returned to the car and the complainant returned disgruntled to his office. Pulling up in a convenient place Al now started to write up a report. Turning to Pete he asked how he should report a stolen computer, unregistered gun, and so forth. Pete took the form from him and tore it into small pieces. Picking up the radio handset he broadcast to the dispatcher that they had investigated the incident but it turned out not to be a police matter.

We then cruised our area for the remainder of the shift and returned to the police station in the early hours of the morning. As I thanked Pete and Al for their hospitality, they apologized for the lack of action during the shift; it was an unusually quiet evening, they explained. Having bidden farewell to my hosts I stood waiting in the main foyer of the station for a taxi. Suddenly the doors burst open and two officers entered struggling to control a man—the man who Al and Pete had earlier ejected from the bar. As they passed near me, the man spat blood on the floor and I could see that in the midst of the saliva and blood lay a tooth.

The Same the Whole World Over?

I do not relate this anecdote to prove that I survived the mean streets of Chicago, quite the contrary: what is remarkable about this anecdote is that it is wholly unremarkable. At the time that the Chicago Police Department allowed me to accompany Pete and Al on patrol I was in the midst of three years’ observation of police patrol in my home town of Reading, England, and I had witnessed comparable events many times before. True, complainants in Reading do not usually have guns and neither do the police, but police officers share the experience of finding themselves enmeshed in complex quarrels as well as ejecting unruly drunks from bars. My experience is far from exceptional, indeed it is the norm. Many writers on the police describe essentially similar events to those related above. In various American police departments things seem to be much the same as in Chicago (Bittner 1967a, ibid, b; Wilson 1969; Rubenstein 1973; Muir 1977; Sykes & Brent 1983); Ericson (1982) found that policing was essentially similar in a municipal police force in Ontario during the 1970s; Cain (1973), Manning (1977); Chatterton (1983), Holdaway (1983), McClure (1980), Young (1991), Smith & Gray (1983) and Kemp et al. (1992a) depict similar scenes in various English police forces over a thirty-year period; and Punch (1979a) revealed that policing in Amsterdam conformed to this general picture. Even in those societies that appear to be very distinct from North America and Europe we still find clear echoes of police engaged in the kind of work I have described. Thus, despite the enormously difficult and dangerous security situation in Northern Ireland, members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary perform much the same tasks, at least away from areas where terrorism flourishes, as do police elsewhere (Brewer 1990a). Things are much the same in such socially, culturally and economically distinctive societies as India in the 1960s (Bayley 1969) and contemporary Japan (Bayley 1976, ibid. 1991a; Ames 1981). Even the People’s Police of Soviet-dominated East Germany, as distinct from the infamous Stasis, shared much in common with their counterparts in the liberal democracies (Wolfe 1992). Likewise, the militia of the Soviet Union concerned itself mainly with such tasks, albeit armed with far more formidable powers (Shelley 1990, 1996). Historically, we find a remarkably similar picture of policing in Oregon (Websdale 1991, ibid. 1994, ibid. 1995), Kentucky (Websdale & Johnson 1997), Merseyside (Brogden 1991) and elsewhere in Britain (Weinberger 1995).

Social scientists have become so familiar with amalgamating research from such a broad diversity of social, economic, political, cultural and historical conditions that there is the danger that we lose sight of the genuinely remarkable consistency midst diversity that research reveals. When Banton compared the police in Edinburgh in Scotland with a police department in North Carolina it was the similarities between them that allowed him to discuss generally what policing entailed (Banton 1964). We need to keep this consistency across apparently diverse conditions firmly in mind lest we slide into parochial and particular explanations for why policing takes the form it does.

Crime-Fighters?

So what is the consistent core of policing? The obvious answer is that the police enforce the law and by so doing ensure that the “bad guys” get their just desserts and the rest of us remain safe in our beds. This traditional image of policing, to which the police themselves tenaciously hold and fictional portrayal re-affirms, is that of the proverbial “thin blue line” protecting society from lawlessness. Patrolling officers prevent crime by their presence and the possibility that they will stumble across an offence in progress or use their supposed “sixth sense” to recognize that something is amiss with a person or situation. Alternatively, once a crime has been committed the patrol car speeding to the scene of a crime may catch the criminal red-handed probably after a struggle. If neither prevention nor immediate apprehension succeed then the third line of defence lies in detection: the superior intellectual powers and dogged persistence of the sleuth concludes with the assemblage of evidence that brings the guilty to justice. The problem of crime in modern societies, from this perspective, is simply that there are not enough police. As an officer quoted in the magazine of the Police Federation of England and Wales would have us believe: “With more officers the crime rate would tumble in dramatic fashion and the entire community would feel safer. It would ease the biggest fear in the minds of the public which currently is that one day they will become a victim of crime” (Police magazine. May 1997:6). Popular as these image are, successive generations of researchers have found that they have little substance.

There are two principal grounds that police researchers have relied upon for denying that law enforcement is not the defining characteristic of policing: first, law enforcement is neither what the police do nor what the public ask the police to do; and secondly the police are not very effective crime-fighters. There are also two subsidiary arguments that might additionally be employed: that police are not, and never have been, organized to fight crime; and there are many more enforcement agencies than the police.

Non-Crime-Fighting

Under-Enforcing the Law

Pete and Al epitomize one of the most dominant characteristics of the police—the non-enforcement of the law. As Reiss noted, “No tour of duty is typical except in the sense that the modal tour of duty does not involve an arrest of any person…. This is not to say that arrests could not have been made on many tours of duty, but often they are not because the officer exercises his discretion not to make such arrests” (Reiss 1971:19). Pete and Al could have arrested the drunk in the bar who was clearly committing offences, yet they were content to escort him outside and let him go with a warning. The dispute over the computer involved a whole range of possible offences including assault, possession of an unregistered firearm, and theft, but the officers concluded that it was better dealt with as a civil dispute. The characteristic feature of policing is under enforcement of the law—not its enforcement. It is instructive to note that when police unions in the United States wish to bring industrial pressure to bear, one tactic they employ is the “ticket blizzard” when they do rigorously enforce the law and usually succeed in bringing the police organization and much of local society to a halt. Most of the time, discretion is exercised in favour of non-enforcement.

Public Demand

A substantial proportion of the public in the advanced economies call upon the police for assistance during the period of a year, but only a minority do so to report crime. Estimates vary according to the precise definitions used by the researcher (an issue to which we will return shortly), but there is widespread agreement that complaints of crime comprise between only a quarter and a third of the problems that the public ask the police to assist with (see for example: Comrie & Kings 1975; Antunes & Scott 1981; Ekblom & Heal 1982; Shapland & Vagg 1988). In my own research, I found that only just over a quarter of calls were reports of crimes and these resulted overwhelmingly in one of two outcomes: a crime complaint form was completed or no action was taken usually because the alarm turned out to be false (Waddington 1993a). Only rarely was an arrest made and if it was then it arose mainly because the suspect was handed over to the police by store detectives who had detained the person on suspicion of shoplifting. Not only was the media image of the police rushing to the scene of a crime and apprehending criminals extremely rare in actuality, the most likely outcome of any instant mobile response was that by the time the police arrived at the scene there was nothing for them to do. Indeed, I incidentally discovered while doing other research (1985), that most arrests were made inside the police station—officers routinely made appointments, which suspects kept, in order to make an arrest at a mutually convenient time! Perhaps most surprising of all is that victim satisfaction with the police does not seem to rely upon whether the culprit is arrested and prosecuted. What victims seem to want most (but do not always get) is sympathetic and considerate treatment by the police (Mayhew et al. 1993, ibid. 1994).

Ineffective Crime-Fighters

Police need not spend a great deal of time on crime-fighting in order to deter criminals and respond effectively on those occasions when crime occurs. One might imagine police officers, as they often imagine themselves, as crime-fighters that are either filling in time doing other tasks while they await the next crime, or actually being deflected from their prime task by all the incidental “rubbish” or “bullshit” that the police organization and public heaps upon them. Certainly, the clear implication of the 1996 British Government White Paper was that it took the latter view, complaining that “In a typical day, only 18 per cent of calls to the police are about crime and only about 40 per cent of police officers’ time is spent dealing directly with crime” (Home Office 1993: para 2.3).

In so far as the police devote themselves to crime-fighting, they do so through patrolling with the aim of preventing crime and detecting criminals after the event.

Patrolling

The traditional weapon in the police armoury designed to prevent crime is patrolling. Bayley estimates that in 28 separate forces the proportions of total personnel devoted to patrol work are: 65 per cent in the US, 64 per cent in Canada, 56 per cent in Britain, 54 per cent in Australia, and 40 per cent in Japan (Bayley 1994). The justification for this considerable investment of resources is that it enables police to deter offenders by their presence and swiftly intervene when crime occurs and thus capture offenders. A neat idea, but unfortunately not one that corresponds to reality. The classic study on preventative patrol was an experiment conducted in Kansas City in which levels of motor patrol were systematically varied and the impact on crime assessed (Kelling et al. 1974; Pate et al. 1976). The outcome was that it did not matter much whether police patrolled as normal, intensively or did not patrol at all and only reacted to calls for assistance. Larson criticized the implementation of the experiment, since it proved difficult to ensure that police complied with the experimental conditions. For example, patrolling officers seemed to find compelling reasons to drive through those areas that were supposed have no preventative patrol (Larson 1976). Even so, Kansas City provides strong evidence for doubting the effectiveness of visible patrolling as a crime control strategy. Do foot patrols fair any better? Well, not according to the Newark Foot Patrol Experiment where a similar assessment was conducted by systematically varying the allocation of foot patrols without any discernible impact on crime rates, albeit that there were other payoffs from foot patrolling (Wilson & Kelling 1982). In Britain the authoritative Audit Commission concludes that traditional styles of patrol are grossly inefficient as a means of crime control (Audit Commission 1996).

There is, in sum, surprisingly wide agreement among academic commentators that police patrol is a peculiarly ineffective method of crime prevention (Hough, J.M. & Clarke 1980; Morris & Heal 1981; Wycoff 1982; Heal & Morris 1985; Audit Commission 1996; Hough, M. 1996)

“Sleuthing”

If routine patrol has little preventative impact, do police fight crime effectively once it has occurred? Again, the answer seems to be that they do not. The notion that the police catch offenders red-handed at the scene of a crime has little to support it, mainly because whatever the police do to reduce the time it takes them to respond to the complaint that a crime has been committed, they can do nothing to shrink the much longer delay between the crime occurring and it being brought to their attention (Bieck 1977; but see also Cordner et al. 1983). It is now widely accepted that such reactive policing has had little, if any, payoff in terms of detecting criminals at possibly considerable cost in police-public relations. Nor do detectives live up to their media image as persistent sleuths. Greenwood’s major study of detective wo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• 1. What is Policing?
• 2. Keeping People in Their Place
• 3. Keeping Dissent in Its Place
• 4. Thought, Talk and Action
• 5. Abusing Authority
• 6. Controlling Police Officers
• 7. Controlling Police Organizations
• 8. Reform and Change
• Bibliography
• Index