Violence and the Police

Abstract

The tasks and types of work performed by the police are legion; theoretical approaches to explaining police behavior have often either stumbled in the attempt to include such diverse and seemingly unrelated acts or fallen into the trap of viewing policing as simply the gateway to the criminal justice system and only focusing on the law enforcement tasks prescribed by judicial or administrative institutions. One consistent common thread running through conceptualizations of police work is the inclusion of violence and risk.

The tasks and types of work performed by the police are legion; theoretical approaches to explaining police behavior have often either stumbled in the attempt to include such diverse and seemingly unrelated acts or fallen into the trap of viewing policing as simply the gateway to the criminal justice system and only focusing on the law enforcement tasks prescribed by judicial or administrative institutions. (cf. Rumbaut and Bittner 1979, Bayley 1979, Bayley and Bittner 1984, Walker 1992, Manning 2005) One consistent common thread running through conceptualizations of police work is the inclusion of violence and risk. (cf. Crank 1994, Ericson and Haggerty 1997, Behr 2000, Christe-Zeyse 2006)

Klukkert et al. (2009) describe the legal basis for force in Germany:

The legal requirements for using physical coercion are that (a) a measure by the police cannot be implemented effectively in any other way, (b) the principle of proportionality is not neglected when implementing immediate coercion, (c) immediate coercion will have the desired impact and (d) among the different coercive means the least harmful one (capable of bringing about the effect) is to be used. Regarding firearms, there are three ways police officers may use them (each one has different regulations in police law): (a) to protect others, (b) to protect themselves (self-defence) and (c) to kill an offender (e.g. in hostage-taking situations). (189)

These requirements set minimum conditions for implementing physical coercion without establishing when violence must be used. Violent interactions between police and citizens in Germany are rare, at least in comparison to the US. (Klukkert et al. 2009) Violence reminds, however, strongly associated with police at various levels including popular culture and in the importance of scandals and critical media events for establishing or challenging images of policing. (Wrocklage 2008, Ohlemacher 2011, Sturm 2011) Yet these associations are, without further explanation or exploration, broad and specifically based in broader cultural narratives: is what makes police ‘police’ the fact that they employ violence, or is police violence a necessary component of dealing with situations where violence is likely to be encountered? More importantly to the present study, how do various understandings of violence impact the structure, character, and the interactional processes that constitute police work?

Violence is culturally seen as identical to police work in many cases. Ethnographic and interview-based research has found that police identify law enforcement orientations strongly with violence or coercive force. (Regoli and Poole 1980, Marks 2004, Kurtz and Upton 2017) Sandhu and Haggerty (2017) write:

Officers frequently noted the difficulties have in making sense of images of violent encounters, which are messy and chaotic as compared to the stylized violence citizens are accustomed to from television and the movies. (91)

They state that officers often ‘narrate’ ongoing encounters in a way that outwardly seems unnecessary or excessive, essentially curating situations both for participants and onlookers in an attempt to make their definition of the situation both clear and more difficult to effectively resist. This reinforces the problematic nature of not just violence by the police, but of the larger problems inherent in police communication: police attempt to apply their understanding of a situation in a way which imparts ‘order’ and ends any resistance. (Ericson 1982) The police authority to do so is backed up by the capacity to use force, though it is relatively rarely necessary to exercise that force. (Bittner 1970) The actual implementation of force can undermine not just public trust in the police, but specifically any form of police authority not specifically predicated on the ability to use force (i.e. personal or situational-derived authority developed through repeated interactions and negotiation.) The police need to be able to manage the presentation of potential force dramaturgically in order to effectively communicate their intended meaning to any audience, and develop a repertoire of practices which can be applied. Fassin (2013) describes the internal and external managing of violent imagery of a French ‘anti-crime squad’; officers identified with pop cultural images of ‘maverick’ or ‘rogue’ police—particularly idolizing, for example, the ‘morally grey’ officers of The Shield. (cf. Bielejewksi 2016) The reputation and appearance of these officers was deeply associated with violence in a way that often undercut the actual need for violence: “They were much readier than their colleagues to use force, but in general their presence was sufficiently menacing and their reputation well enough established to dampen any urge to react in their public, who were aware that things would inevitably escalate into a confrontation that would culminate in charges of insulting¹ and resisting the police.” (Fassin 2013: 60)

Violence has been attributed to two core aspects of policing: the police role and demands for service (i.e. what police do); and police occupational culture (i.e. how police learn to view what they do.) While there is potentially significant overlap between these two aspects, particularly depending on the particular approach or assumptions, effective arguments have been presented by Waddington (1999) and others (cf. Reuss-Ianni 1983, Skolnick 1985, Martin 1999, van Hulst 2013, and see Wilson 2000 for a more pop-culture-oriented approach) suggesting that conflating these two aspects has often been a weakness in criminological studies of the police: that is, either confusing what police say informally to colleagues to what they do in carrying out their routine duties, or assuming a direct and linear connection between the two, that policing culture is simply a reflection of police work. The most effective, and among the most cited, work in policing has generally maintained a separation between violence as related to the tasks police are expected to perform—essentially policing at a societal or institutional level—and the individual, group, or organizational level working practices that develop around these demands and expectations.

Of particular interest to the present work is what role violence plays contextually within both of these aspects. The area and organization being investigated differ significantly from the ideal type police agencies which were used to develop contemporary bases of knowledge about police work both in the US / UK and in Germany as well. (Young 1993, Weisheit et al. 1994, Feest and Blankenburg 1972, Barrett et al. 2009 cf. Girtler 1980) The region has fewer calls for service than would be typical for Germany due to the lack of major urban centers and likely to demographic factors (e.g. an older population and a high proportion of individuals who were born or raised in the area with local family.) Two generalized assumptions (‘weak theories’) were posited which would relate to a general thesis that violence would be constructed differently and play a different role both in practice and in policing (narrative) culture than would be otherwise expected based on the contemporary policing literature:

• 1) Fewer calls for service related to serious crime equate to a reduced focus on crimefighting as the most-valued policing task or orientation, and

• 2) working in a local community where personal networks play a significant role even within policing actions puts both the background and consequences of violence into ‘sharper’ focus which is reflected in how police construct violence.

These hypotheses were related to the rural characteristic of Falkenmark in particular but specifically to the Revierpolizei, as a community-oriented organization with a mandate that emphasizes the local and contextual aspects of situations. The first assumption could be further divided to relate directly both to the rural nature of the county but also to the structure of the work of the Revierpolizei, which is more proactive than reactive, and though calls for service and emergency response play a major role, they do not necessarily form the core duties as they typically do with patrol officers. (Reiss 1971, Mastrofski 1980, Mensching 2007, Demaree 2017) The image typically presented in the literature—at its most extreme in the US, but to some degree in the UK and Germany as well—is one in which police culture emphasizes violence not as a positive feature per se but as a necessary and useful tool for serving justice unrelated to judicial punishment, and that despite some ‘softening’ in the past several decades, this emphasis on conceptual violence remains central to the self-image of Western police, generally.² (Van Maanen 1978b, Paoline 2001, 2003, Campbell 2004, Chan 2004, Dick 2005, Behr 1993, 2006, Christe-Zeyse 2006, Moskos 2008b, Loftus 2009, Kurtz and Upton 2017) Barrett et al. (2009), using focus groups of officers presented with hypotheticals, found evidence that attitudes towards the ‘proper’ use of force varied between urban, suburban and rural departments: however, it should be considered that hypothetical scenarios lacking in personalized or local detail fit better to the idealized incident-based model of institutional policing as well as the practical realities of urban policing, but arguably have much less direct relevance to rural policing in particular. The fact that rural officer gave more ‘by-the-book’ responses while urban officers gave ‘no nonsense’ responses (e.g. seeing insults against officers as an invitation to a physical confrontation) may not necessarily indicate an increased aggressiveness among urban officers but rather the increased likelihood of rural officers to immediately link a hypothetical situation—one that would be highly unrealistic or at least rare in their everyday work routine—to an institutionally proper course of action (as abstract concepts and actors exist there, rather than in towns and villages where individuals can be properly identified and better understood.) Urban officers may better translate these hypothetical—where names, descriptions, appearances, locations, times of day, etc. play a less crucial role in situating an encounter when compared to role-defining behavior such as insulting or ignoring an officer. (cf. Van Maanen 1978a) In any event, the implication is that the application of the concept of violence to the realities, as well as identity, of police work varies based on the structural background of the community and region. What is being challenged here is the universality of this image of policing practice and culture: effectively asking the question of whether the Revierpolizei in Brandenburg present a counter-example by constructing and internalizing the relationship between violence and policing in a way that does not wholly correspond with the generalized narratives presented in the research literature.

In hermeneutic fashion, the present analysis seeks to present a plausible understanding of the complex and varied roles that violence can play within the realm of police work and culture within a specific geographic and institutional context. It should be noted that exploring violence in this way was not originally central to this study, but rather emerged ‘organically’ in conversation with police, in the presentation of stories and narratives, and, in the fewest cases, within observed interactions. (cf. Becker 1998, Konecki 2008) Coupled with the centrality of violence as a concept to the theory of policing as it stands today, it seemed worthwhile to examine the processes of meaning-making involving violence to the degree that it was possible.

Actual encounters between Revierpolizei officers and members of the community involving violence are rare enough that analyzing violence purely through participant-observation would be impractical, apart from raising a host of additional issues. (cf. Westmarland 2001) Violence was encountered as part of the field study primarily through narrative, in stories told both of officers’ previous experiences as well as well as previously heard stories; these stories were for the most part collected ‘organically’ from spontaneous retellings, rather than being prompted in interviews, by questions about violence specifically, etc. Analyzing the ways violence was used within stories uncovered a variety of uses and a scarcity of cases where violence was idealized or idolized. Violence could be presented in ways that communicated information about the user, the recipient, or both, and could refer both to past experiences or situations as well as expectations for the future, such as how describing an individual as ‘violent’ could refer either to a history of committing, possibly unprovoked, violent attacks or to the assumption that the individual’s current behavior (in the narrative being presented) indicates a likelihood of a situation escalating or of immediate violence. This analysis, presented later in the chapter, suggested that the narratives which Revierpolizei officers were most forthcoming with tended to downplay violence as something to be actively used, but differed in how they gave agency to violent actors or simply presented violence almost as a natural reaction, which could either be an essentially just conclusion to deviant or dangerous actions, or as an ever present risk to the officers themselves.

5.1 Violent Acts and Violent Symbols: Constructivist Concerns

“The bomb lives only as it is falling.”

– Iain M. Banks, Use of Weapons (1990)

Despite its significant role in criminology and sociologies of crime, deviance, and social control, violence remains to a large extent poorly described, poorly defined and poorly understood.³ A great deal of the literature conflates violence, as an act, with aggression, as a deterministic psychological characteristic. (Jenkins 1994, von Trotha 1997, Walby 2012) Even sociological approaches to violence, particularly from the perspective of conflict theories, tend to emphasize political science or political economy understandings of violence at a macro-level, and say little about interpersonal violence (Goode 1972 provides one exception.) Many critical and constructivist perspectives have “little to say about realities in which things are typically not ‘bargained’ and ‘defined’ but rather struck and killed, in which power is not ‘definitional’ but rather ‘power of action.’” (von Trotha 1997: 13–14, own translation, cf. Popitz 1992)

As sociological theory focused less on explaining violence, an increasingly pragmatic and practitioner-oriented criminology claimed violence as one of its key topics of study, but with an emphasis primarily on violence as a synonymous either with crime or with mental health issues (cf. Reiss and Roth 1993), while state violence become a topic left primarily to political science, international relations, and philosophy, with a greater focus on war than on policing (Jabri 1996, Smith 2005), or else considering police organizations essentially as part of a centralized administrate (capitalist) state. (cf. Seigel 2019) Legal definitions of violence, as well, may play an important role in discussions relating to police reform or formalized structures, but for an interpretive sociological approach, the relevance lies in how meaning is constructed by participants and observers. (Hochstetler et al. 2014, Sandberg et al. 2015, Presser 2016, see also Fish 1988, Soeffner 2003)

The difficulty in approaching violence from an interpretive (or constructivist) approach is that categories need to be established for defining what is and what is not to be discussed as violence. The compartmentalization of violence into various specific fields has led to continuing usage of the term violence as a metaphor to represent the systems that either implement violence or to imply that those systems themselves are, essentially, violence. (Garland 2001) Various categories of violence—institutional, interpersonal, symbolic or potential, abuse in various forms—are reduced to the same concept at the macro level. (cf. Zizek 2008) Additionally, newer trends in discussing institutional violence in particular have at times de-emphasized the physicality and subjectivity of violence, implementing the label of violence in a normative way to describe socially harmful acts but risking overlooking interactional considerations and potentially reducing violence to ‘any undesirable uses of power.’ (Walby 2010) Even if these applications of the term or concept were accepted, it would still be necessary to examine how, when, where and by whom these terms are successfully applied and the effects this labeling can have within interactions and within a broader societal context. If violence were to be universally maligned or treated as a consistently negative, undesirable form of action, the use of violence to counter other uses of violence would be, if not impossible, arguably much more difficult to justify or account for than it seems to be. Akerstrom (2002) presents a case where physical abuse, including the slapping of nursing home residents and residents hitting nursing staff with canes, is not regularly seen as ‘violence’ because, in the view of one nurse, “it’s not directed at you, personally.” (516) The fact that police—as well as others—are able to, even sometimes, effectively engage in violent acts without needing to justify or neutralize the term at every level of social interaction (cf. Maruna and Copes 2005) makes it clear that violence is not ‘equal,’ that not all violence is given meaning in the same way, and that the act cannot be meaningful constructed simply through the physicality of it, but that the deeper context framing the actors and background need to be considered as inseparable from the act itself.

The symbolic relations of violence are significant, arguably more significant—from the perspective of social theory—than the implementation of violence itself. (cf. Soeffner 1991, Bourdieu 1991, Collins 2008) If an understanding is shared that violence may occur, a power difference between the potential user of violence and the potential victim is exploited without any violent act occurring, but overlooking this symbolically (if not explicitly) communicated potential would make it impossible to fully understand the interaction. At the same time, within human social actions the use of threats is assumedly intended to coerce or gain compliance, where actually employing violence would spoil the situation for both parties (e.g. in a bank robber’s threat to shoot the bank manager, whereas actually doing so would in no way help him open the bank vault.) This relates to the “double-layered nature” of action, or an “action/commentary structure” (Katz 2002: 262) in which actions suggest culturally understandable patterns of action in which the entire sequence or ritual may not need to be fully acted out. Katz (2002) writes that:

Implicitly known by everyone, the double-layered nature of action itself becomes a theme for signification. Thus, action may be underwritten without ever being performed. People commonly succeed in being taken seriously as really trying to perform a range of actions that they never actually complete, from effectively threatening violence to professing charitable concerns without ever writing the check… It is powerful testimony to the bootstrapped nature of social life that societies of all types and magnitudes are reproduced in recognizable form day after day, even while their social forms are only partially inhabited by proper spirits, even while so many people are seen as doing little to flesh out social forms beyond gesturing their will to invoke them. (262)

The symbolism of violence is both subjective and intersubjective: certain actions, behaviors, characteristics, or objects may be associated with violence by certain individuals or in specific contexts, but very often communicative processes and interaction rituals accompany these to highlight or downplay the potential for violence. (Hitzler 1999, Collins 2005) While a subjective approach is based on experiences of (potential) violence, an intersubjective approach considers the interactional processes between actors and the context in which violence may be experienced, and particularly the range of practices used to communicate violent intent, threats, peaceful intent, or legitimize the use of violence. (Nedelmann 1997, von Trotha 1997) Violence as both a symbol and as a practice has been increasingly anonymized, presented as a social fact lacking an interactional context. (Soeffner 200) For this reason it is seen as critical in exploring the ‘lowest’ levels of violence, not just as acts but particularly in how the symbolism of violence plays a role in everyday interactions and is given—or interpreted to have—deeper meaning: this means moving beyond a binary of what factors cause or avoid violence and rather looking at how violence is embedded within both interactions and within narratives and definitions which demonstrate various forms of authority over establishing certain behavior, actions and reactions as normal and in maintaining a moral order. Exploring the relationship between violence and the police within the context of the police requires an in-depth focus on the use of these interactional practices to communicate violence, exploring the intersubjective where the subjective is essentially unknowable: practices can become routine or ritualistic for separating symbolic, potential violence from immediate or manifest violence.

Force is considered here primarily as physical force of one individual against another. Though it could be argued that the terms have different weight or describe different actions or aspects, the terms ‘violence’ and ‘force’ are used here interchangeably, though the term ‘use of force’ applies only to that coercive force exercised by the police whereas violence may, where specified, refer to more general cultural concepts.

5.2 How Violence Defines Policing

“Let us accept the facts staring us in the face—that demonstrably we are no longer a republic. We are no longer governed by laws, only by armed men and force. This is just like the days of Billy the Kid. You have an armed man going down a dusty street and that is authority.”

– Gore Vidal, America the Great… Police State (Aug. 2009)

The relationship between the use of force and police work is one of the most discussed and written about topics within policing research, and yet there is very little consensus or shared framework for understanding how violence is used or understood by police or what is even meant by violence in a normative sense. Statements such as “We live in a world that increasingly displays distaste for the use of physical force to direct or control the behavior of others” (Alpert and Dunham 2004: 1) are commonly used to precede discussions of controlling, channeling or regulating the use of force by police work, but do not necessarily precede a critical analysis of how force is conceived of or represented within society, or by the police. The role of the police is often presented within the context of the ‘rule of law’ in which coercive force is presented as a social ill to be minimized, and the police are seen as one of few legitimate exceptions due to the ‘monopoly of force’ (Bittner 1970, Behr 2000, cf. Manning 1980) which pushes the responsibility for violence onto those who force the police, rationally, to react with violence. (cf. Fish 1988) Maintaining arguments justifying—but not celebrating—violence by the state while condemning violence as a serious enough issue to warrant intervention by the state has been a precarious issue in the past century, but one which has rarely been taken seriously within formal policing institutions; the primary interest in exploring this topic has come in the examination of police work as social interaction, which will be discussed in the following section, and in policing occupational culture and self-image, which will be discussed in greater detail and in relation to the Revierpolizei in Brandenburg in the second section.

Violence can define both the aggressor and the victim beyond the context of a single encounter once labels are effectively applied. The use of violence has defined the police not just in their core activities but also through cultural narratives on police abuse of power and excessive force. A significant portion of the literature on police violence focuses specifically on this topic, generally emphasizing either individual, primarily psychological, factors to identify individual officers or small groups as violent, or cultural-structural, exploring the relationship to violence and subjective meanings of violence constructed by officers within the theoretical institution of policing. (Alpert and Dunham 2004) Police abuse of power has specifically been the target of several committee-led investigations in the US following high profile scandals, such as the Rodney King beating in 1991 which resulted in the Christopher Commission. The Christopher Commission in particular focused on police accountability and insinuated that law abiding, rule following officers would never commit or be at serious risk of being accused of using excessive force. Klockars (1996) is skeptical of this institutional approach, stating that “there is no definition of excessive force that automatically renders it a form of brutality and escalates it to the status of a scandal,” (7) as the broader backdrop of use of force incidents was, in the end, more significant in determining how these incidents were framed or treated in the media, as aberrations or typical police excess, as warning signs of things to come or as unavoidable side-effects of crime control.

Policing is also defined by the use of force against police. (Van Maanen 1978b, 1980, Ohlemacher 2011) The mandate of policing charges officers with a variety of generalized tasks; the use of force is not a task in itself, but rather a capacity of police work intended to aid the police in accomplishing their immediate tasks as well as to overcome any resistance. (van Maanen 1974) The ability of police to use deadly force in most jurisdictions, specifically in the US and Germany, is legally not far removed from defense of self or others. (Fyfe 1988) Brodeur (2003) states that the “police continuum of force ends where the military one begins.” (208) This all refers back to the idea that police, in carrying out their duties, may face not only resistance but possibly attack. Ohlemacher (2011) found that police in Germany faced a higher risk of attack with (presumed) deadly intent than non-police, but at the same time were statistically at less risk of actually being killed in attacks than private citizens were.⁴

This basic concept within policing—physical risks to officers—has had far reaching consequences both visible in the structure and organization of policing, i.e. the availability of not just handguns but increasingly more powerful forms of weaponry; the requirement that patrol officers in many jurisdictions, including Brandenburg (with the specific exception of the Revierpolizei) travel two to a squad car; but the impact often considered to have the most impact and at the same time to be the most opaque is the effect it has had on policing culture and the self-image of the police.

5.3 Doing Violence: Coercive Force as the Core Police Function

“I’m a psych major—words are my weapons.”

“I’m a security guard—weapons are my weapons.”

Community, S5 E8

A useful starting point—and a specific point which Manning (2013) discusses as often oversimplified and misunderstood—is Bittner’s (1970) presentation of the use of force not just as the defining characteristic for determining what types of situations become police work, but as symbolically important for understanding how police work is imagined in society writ large.

Bittner’s most lasting legacy may be his definition of the role of the police as “a mechanism for the distribution of non-negotiably coercive force employed in accordance with the dictates of an intuitive grasp of situational exigencies.” (1970: 46) However, he is careful to mention that force itself, even implied force, rarely comes into play. His ethnographic work focuses only tangentially on violence per se, instead exploring how police officers frame and manage situations very often both to avoid the use of force but also to leverage the fact that force is one possible outcome in order to maintain their legitimacy and their situational authority. (cf. Bittner 1967, 1974) He details how force is ‘methodologically normalized,’ how police use “the aura of violence to sustain compliance.” (Manning 2013: 56) The focus remains on coercion, and how police maintain control over situations through a variety of practices and tactics. Limiting the actual use of police may strengthen the legitimacy of the police, but this legitimacy still stems greatly from the potential of violence as a way to effectively and authoritatively resolve situations. (Brodeur 2007) Bittner explores—although more in passing than as an in-depth analysis—the ironic nature of society trying to establish an order without violence by instituting a body largely defined by its capacity to use violence, adding that we “cannot understand how the police ‘found themselves’ in this unenviable position without taking into consideration that one of the cultural trends of roughly the past century-and-a-half was the sustained aspiration to install peace as a stable condition of everyday life.” (1970: 45) This position, in Bittner’s view, requires police to adapt an ethos that essentially contradicts the basis of their legitimacy: that violence—at least when used properly—is not only an effective tool for problem-solving and conflict-resolution but also imparts a moral weight for justly punishing the unjust. Violence is thus able to become an essential element of a police self-image, as the use of violence becomes a means unto itself.⁵ The rhetoric of the ‘war on crime’ that has escalated since the 1960 s reminds police that their real work is never routine, but that they—and we as a society—are in a constant state of emergency and must fight against crime with all the tools at their disposal because “we are in imminent danger of losing everything!” (1970: 48)

William Westley, one of the first researchers to examine policing sociologically, focused specifically not just on police violence but on how the concept of violence intersected with identity and guided encounters from beginning to end, impacting police work far beyond its actual implementation. Though his original publication focused specifically on the illegal use of violence by police, much of his analysis could be applied to the use of sanctioned, ‘legitimate’ violence as well. Westley presents a tripartite thesis that “(a) the police accept and morally justify their illegal use of violence; (b) such acceptance and justification arise through their occupational experience; and (c) its use is functionally related to the collective occupational, as well as the legal, ends of the police.” (1953: 34, see also Westley 1970) Even Westley admits, despite officers’ justification of violence in cases of disrespect or certain types of crimes, that extra-legal violence in his observed department did not appear to be frequent and unprovoked violence was unlikely to be common at all. There are hints here that violence is primarily relevant in how it frames police images of their own role and justifies their own categorization of individuals within situations: Westley, despite focusing predominantly on policing practices, was a pioneer in understanding the significance and normative role of the police occupational culture. (Greene 2010)

The functional role of symbolic violence is often described as fundamental to the hypothesized close-knit police occupational culture, based not so much on facing or engaging in actual violence, but more in the perceived risk of violence or the assumption that others view the police as violent. (Crank 1998, Cockcroft 2013) Loftus (2009b) writes that a “sense of togetherness is reinforced by defining features of the police role, including working the arduous hours of the shift system together: difficulties in separating work from home life; needing to rely on colleagues in times of danger; and the isolating nature of their position as the impersonal face of coercive authority.” (14) Waddington (1999) notes that adapting an occupational culture centered around the symbolism of violence and conflict “not only places the police in the position of valiant protectors of society, but also of those who are knowledgeable of the dark side of society and, therefore, in a uniquely privileged position to apprehend the danger that threatens [it.]” (299)

5.4 The Symbolism of Violence

“The force of the law is always and already indistinguishable from the forces it would oppose. Or to put the matter another way: there is always a gun at your head. Sometimes the gun is, in literal fact, a gun.” (Fish 1988: 898)

While the implementation of force by police remains a controversial and pressing issue, it also seems to be one likely to remain controversial and pressing for some time. Policing culture, specifically within the US, seems to be embracing this ‘warrior mentality’ as a way to brush off criticisms of police violence, while critics of policing as it stands offer little in terms of substantial reform due to the opaqueness of the policing organization. (Sparrow 2016) The symbolism remains relevant, particularly in how minor everyday aspects define what police work is. Van Maanen discusses the significance of police symbolism in setting police work apart in the eyes of the police themselves:

Various identifying devices carried by the police, such as the badge, the uniform, and the truncheon, promote and make visible [the contrast between policing and other occupations,] although it is the revolver carried on and off duty which serves as the omnipresent symbol of membership within the community. Dispatchers in the radio room wear guns, “Officer Friendly” visiting the local elementary school to lecture on bicycle safety wears a gun, administrators wear guns, the police psychologist and chaplain—if they are sworn officers—wear guns, even the Chief of Police often wears a gun. To not be armed, no matter where one is or where one is located in the organization, is a potential sign that the person no longer cares about the job, about his social position in the police community, or, perhaps, about his very own colleagues. (1980: 148)

The identification with policing through violence extends beyond this, particularly in terms of cultural presentations of policing. (Wilson 2000, Bielejewski 2016) Although violent encounters between police and individuals are certainly the least likely type of encounter, they are the ones most likely to gain traction in social or mass media and to affect narrative frames of how police are talked about, talked to, and used as metaphor.

The cultural significant of violence to policing is difficult to understate. Both Westley and Bittner present the emphasis on violence among police officers as a reaction to the position police work has been placed in within society: needing to carry out ‘dirty work,’ using behaviors otherwise condemned as base or unfit for normal society to confront others employing not always dissimilar behaviors, (Dick 2005, cf. Hughes 1951, 1962) with Bittner (1970) noting that “no amount of public relations work can entirely abolish the sense that there is something of the dragon in the dragon-slayer.” (7) Waddington (1999) remarks that:

Few of us would feel entitled to approach a fellow citizen in a public place and demand, however politely, an account of themselves; but this is something that police officers frequently do. Young officers intervening in a violent domestic quarrel may find themselves exercising authority over adults old enough to be their parents. Even when officers provide a service, like searching for a missing child, they violate the privacy of those whom they serve, for they will demand to know whether, for example, a family quarrel has prompted the disappearance. (299)

Careers and social roles involved in dirty work tend to look for ways to normalize or dignify their work, either by changing societal perceptions or by adopting subcultural perspectives which value otherwise low status or stigmatized actions. (Hughes 1951, 1962) While dirty work can encompass a variety of tasks that would otherwise violate general social norms or be seen as ‘low work,’ the use of violence is in certain forms and contexts valued in hegemonic masculine subcultures (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, Behr 2017), and emphasizing these aspects of the job—i.e. catching criminals, ‘fighting the bad guys’—is likely an ‘easier sell’ than types of policing tasks which don’t involve violence but which could otherwise be seen as low status work—e.g. dealing with addicts or sick people. (cf. Vollmer 1971) This functional aspect of police culture has been primarily described as (an attempt at) legitimizing the work of the police to an external audience and to secure respect, and arguably thereby compliance, pre-emptively, but it has also increasingly been analyzed as an internal mechanism less concerned with external experiences or ‘societal frontstage’ and more with maintaining an internal ethos, work satisfaction and self-image. (Martin 1999, Waddington 1999, Marks 2004, Mensching 2007, Manning 2012)

In the German context, Behr (2006) describes a shift from the Post-war self-image of the police in terms of protection of the state and the rule of law to a more citizen-centered orientation around the 1980 s. He associates an earlier fixation with the application of violence with a hegemonic masculinity which sees violence by presumably male police officers against primarily male offenders as an effective ‘smoothing out’ of disorder. Conflicts between citizens and police governed by aggressive masculinity are increasingly rare, according to Behr⁶, as transformation processes in the police have fundamentally altered the police self-image and downplayed violence and strength as core values; yet traces still remain—primarily within special units focused on the policing of specific groups. Most scholars, however, still identify a broad police occupational culture in Germany that is consistent with that described generally and in which masculinity and emphasis on violence play significant roles, though these cultures might be even more flexible due to the larger state-based institutions and career mobility when compared to US municipal policing. (Watolla and Hermanutz 2014, Dübbers 2015, Behr 2017, 2018)

In any event, the fact remains that the proper use of violence in situations in which violence is deemed necessary is generally considered within policing culture(s) to be a necessary and valued part of the police work—worth questioning is how this plays out culturally within the police and how universal this understanding of the use of force is. The generalized occupational culture of the police is already seen to be unrelated to the actual work police do or the specific individual experiences of violence officers may have⁷, but the practices and narratives that reflect this culture may very well vary between contexts, i.e. between urban and rural settings, between reactive patrol and proactive community engagement assignments.

Violence as related to the police is not random, in the sense that structural and process-related factors surround it, as well as that its use occurs within interactions which develop both through situational determinants (i.e. what happens in the encounter) as well as through the use of culturally-interpretable symbols. Violence itself can be used as a symbol with normative or moral weight, particularly when considered within policing occupational cultures, or symbolized through the use of communicative practices, gestures, speech acts or the presentation of physical objects.

5.4.1 Violence as a Symbol

The relationship of violence to the concept of ‘dirty work’ lies primarily in the physicality of the act, in the violation of general social norms by touching someone without their consent or in a way that redefines the situation as something exigent. Behr (1996) describes the difference between head work and hand work (Kopfarbeit / Handarbeit) and applies this to policing: while head work is generally seen as legitimate middle-class work based on concepts of rationality and (constrained) decision-making, hand work is seen as not just menial, but, by emphasizing the physicality of touching others, it is considered tainted and segregates its practitioners into restricted classes. (cf. Bittner 1970) Some forms of hand work, specifically that of doctors and increasingly nurses, avoid stigmatization by emphasizing the professional status and expert knowledge behind the use of physicality, as well as by restricting it as often as possible to secluded clinical settings and away from public audiences. Police officers are able to claim professional status and expert knowledge effectively, but the public nature of their work arguably leaves aspects of police work in a meso-state between high and low forms of work. Notably, the aspects of police work that emphasize head work have traditionally been downplayed at the institutional level, as seen in the status of police discretion and decision-making power and the emphasis on presenting technocratic efficiency rather than politically-responsive strategy-making. (Feest and Blankenburg 1972, Bittner 1974, Blumberg 1979, Goldsmith 1990, Dick 2005, Buvik 2016) The police, as an institution, tend to focus on what the police do—in the use of official statistics, press releases, etc.—while avoiding broader discussions about what the police should be doing or how, when or why certain decisions are made.

While the use of violence by police may be ‘normal,’ in the sense that it corresponds to a legitimate, expected police role, the specific and immanent use of violence against an individual is not normal, and is essentially stigmatizing behavior. When police confront an individual and employ coercive force, the violation of normal interaction constitutes a ritual that may even effectively become a degradation ceremony: the individual is not only restrained, but is in a way visibly losing power, status, and face. (Garfinkel 1956, Collins 2005, Bonacker 2002, cf. Goffman 1971) In contrast to doctors who primarily perform work on patients in private, clinical settings to minimize the potentially degrading, norm-violating actions required in even basic medical procedures, coercive force applied by police can occur just as often in a public setting as in a private one, with the designation formally playing no role in the decision whether force is considered appropriate.⁸ Yet the actual use of violence by police is guided by a variety of perceptual and interactional factors, many of which are coterminous with the managing of physical space—it is for this reason that a key signifier of an appeal to (or the maintenance of) institutional authority is maintaining essentially a ‘combat readiness,’ keeping distance and keeping clear physical space for the officer to draw a weapon or physically restrain others if necessary; these factors often coincide with the concepts of spatial space which also effect police readings of an ongoing situation. Officers who have entered a house have typically entered with a more relaxed, routine posture or else as emergency response, potentially with weapons drawn, and these existing frames certainly impact how the actions and reactions of residents and suspects are interpreted in the context of ‘violent intent.’ (cf. Collins 2008)

Violence by the police has often been associated with specific groups or demographics who have effectively been framed, either by society broadly or more specifically by government or police institutions, as problematic. Waddington (1999) writes: “Distinguishing criminals from citizens is part of a wider strategy that excludes certain groups from citizenship, for once this is achieved the exercise of coercive authority can be conducted almost without restraint.” (300) Identifying groups and then, more immediately, individuals as criminal, deviant, or outsiders, is often a prerequisite condition to legitimizing the use of force even when that use of force is already legally justified, and the degradation which may result from the application of violence is not only threatening due to the obvious physical harm or to the immediate visible loss of power or agency, but also to the implication that the affected person belongs to a social category of those with no recourse.⁹ (cf. Becker 1963)

Alpert and Dunham (2004) present an interactional theory of police violence which they describe as “authority maintenance.” Consistent with the earlier work of Westley (1970) among others, this approach focuses on the continuous domination of the encounter and the consistent ability to define the situation by police as the ‘normal’ course of a police encounter, with the implication that violence is employed not only to maintain physical control of a situation but also to force a higher level of submission than would otherwise be necessary. A similar practice is described by Van Maanen (1978), in which “’street justice’—a physical attack designed to rectify what police take as personal insult” (310) is used against individuals considered to be “assholes” based on their presumed challenging of police authority. Violence in these cases is seen as essentially a moral statement, inflicting pain¹⁰ and degrading the status of the person because they have become a victim: in stark contrast to the socio-legal assumptions conflating violence with deviance. (cf. Cancino and Enriquez 2004, Dick 2005) In these cases, violence serves as punishment, rather than simply as a tool for enforcing compliance to aid in the efforts of a larger formalized system of punishment.

This is not to say that violence is routinely used by police for these reasons or as a purely moral statement; rather, the relevant argument is that the use of violence will often have these effects regardless of why violence is employed, hence the emphasis in the literature and in practice of attempting to minimize the actual use of force, consistent with the practices described by Bittner. The understandings of violence described have been explored ethnographically but primarily in the context of urban US or UK policing and in patrol divisions in which community contact almost exclusively occurs in response to calls for service or reported crimes. Kelling and Coles (1996) in advocating for a Broken Windows style of policing present several examples of police employing coercive force in potentially escalating scenarios, i.e. white police officers in primarily black neighborhoods. They argue that when the officers are familiar with the local community as individuals and their use of force can be understood in a broader context as related to solving a problem, the audience or other involved parties will side with the police (or at least not actively side against the police), and the individual against whom force is applied will be unable to effectively frame the situation as racially based or as a conflict between police and community. The degrading aspects of the force are still implied to be present, but assumed to be only applicable to a person who is already at risk of losing status within their local community and with the immediate audience, and in this case the police are simply ‘authenticating’ a change in social status which was already occurring. Whether these scenarios could be considered realistic or relevant, the implication is that among police officers who have a closer familiarity with their community and it residents violence will necessarily be seen in a more complex context and not simply as justified based on the authority of the police: the use of violence needs to be weighed against the consequences to the individual not just physically but socially, and the positioning of the immediate community (particularly those present as participants or observers but presumably in a more general sense) with regard to the conflict between police and specific individuals needs to be considered. (cf. Christie 2004¹¹)

5.4.2 Symbols of Violence

“I am fate with a badge and a gun.”

– Officer Brian Taylor, End of Watch (2012, dir: David Ayer)

An interactionist perspective on symbols emphasizes the construction of meaning; generally focusing more on the situational processes of negotiation and meaning-making rather than structure or stability between encounters. (Fine 1992, Musolf 1992, Snow 2001) The symbolism of police work is often functional, both in the sense that many symbols of policing—particularly in terms of weaponry and tools such as handcuffs and flashlights—have practical uses, and in the sense that these objects need to be symbolically linked to the police and reinforce the authority of the police; a police officer pointing a gun at a suspect intends that suspect to remain still not only because of the threat of death or injury, but also because the gun is being held by a police officer with an assumed legal right to do so, who may, if the situation develops in a particular way, decide to shoot and be considered justified both by immediate bystanders or additional responders as well as later on by the courts, the press, or society at large. What a gun is is of less importance within the interaction, and assumed to be already understood by all involved, than what the gun means in the moment, in terms of how, when, and against whom it will be used. Stokes and Hewitt (1976) write that:

A great many of the objects that constitute the human world have a ‘pre-existing’ meaning, in the sense that people confront such objects with a set of assumptions about them – with a particular preparedness to act in routine, familiar and unquestioned ways. These meanings have to be verified, to be sure, as people act toward familiar objects in routine ways and either find or do not find that their lines of conduct can be completed. But so long as conduct can be constructed appropriately by taking familiar objects for granted, the objects persist and their meanings are relatively stable. (841)

Communicative forms representing violence, or the potential for violence, can come in many forms operating at different conceptual levels. (Gusfield 2000, Manning 2012 cf. Turner 1974) Relevant here is the distinction between immediate, or actionable, symbols and representations, or representation symbols. This distinction is not mutually exclusive, but rather is based on the different ways in which meanings can be constructed in relation to the object-as-sign. Immediate symbols are capable of being used or becoming physical implements of violence or authority—i.e. handguns or batons—and even their mere presence in a situation or any act drawing attention to them can signal that violence is possible, likely or not. Immediate symbols signify that which they can do or that which they can be used for. They are typically icons of themselves—intentionally recognizable in their function, but also maintained as “possessional territory” (Goffman 1971: 38): as objects which almost always imply a sense of belonging to a person or setting or, in this case, tethering a person to a certain role and image. While weapons could be considered non-symbolic in their utilitarianism, they bear a deeper association with the police role, and the purpose of brandishing them is—at least in theory—to not have to use them. Considering the physical incarnations as symbolic suggests that “to see what is happening with a symbolic is to distinguish that experience as other than a more common meaning—usually one of means and ends; of reason rather than emotion; of universal terms rather than particular images.” (Gusfield 2000: 219) Immediate symbols essentially straddle the “distinction… between manifest meanings that are immediately apparent and latent meanings, not immediately apparent but perceptible.” (Gusfield 2000: 219) They bear meaning in the future tense; without intent or action nothing is likely to happen with them, but their presence already signifies that they could be implemented. Operational processes, that is, where meaning is inferred by how the symbol is used and by whom, are most relevant in establishing shared meaning and situations with these types of symbols. (Turner 1967) Raising a weapon signifies an intent to strike with it, even if the ‘true’ intent is simply to make a threat, but this threat can be interpreted by others because there is not only potential, but accompanying behavior that has moved in the direction of turning that potential into action. However, significantly, exegetical processes, where meaning is determined from individual understandings, experiences, or accounts—i.e. ‘reading from the text,’—is also relevant, particularly in cases where the symbol (e.g. a police firearm) is simply present but not actively being handled, used, or referred to: to an observer aware of its presence it certainly still bears symbolic meaning.

Representations operate on a more abstract level but may invoke other symbols, in the sense that a police uniform or badge indicates the office and corresponding authority and power of an officer—including the ability to use coercive force. Representations are often not intended to be symbols first and foremost, and while they may often accompany specific types of actions they are generally not used directly, and as a result effectively communicating their significance and meaning is key to image work. (Manning 1982) A police officer’s badge and uniform—trends in ‘tactical gear’ notwithstanding (Maguire and King 2004, Kraska 2007)—are essentially only effective to the extent that they are able to communicate with certainty that the bearer is a police officer and entitled to certain accompanying powers and authority, and it is for this reason that uniforms and badges, as well as patrol cruisers, are made to be visible, contain unmistakable text, and tend to share common features, most famously a color scheme. These representations communicate meaning not so much by instructing or providing new contexts or relations, but rather by tapping into already existing sources of (assumed) cultural knowledge: a uniform alone cannot tell you much about a police officer or what he or she is capable of: it simply tells you that whatever you think a police officer to be is what you are currently seeing. Representations set a socio-cultural context—including boundaries, expectations, and relations—to the meanings being presented that is more encompassing, as well as nuanced, than the more direct cause-effect, action-oriented relationships implied by immediate symbols. The objects that identify an individual as a police officer are able to do so specifically because they are made visible in many arenas, often simplified or stripped down to the point at which minor differences (such as differing logos or types of firearms) become indistinguishable.

What is significant with both immediate symbols and representations is that they imply a common understanding of their meaning, loosely, and that the potential violence implied can be ‘curated,’ that is, meaningfully applied to interactions and taking on more or less relevance as actions are taken and reacted to: an armed police officer ordering a coffee will not be mistaken for a robber despite the presence of the weapon, but may be considered welcome for the general idea of safety that the presence of an officer brings; an officer with a drawn gun will always be seen differently as one with a holstered weapon.¹² Representations can ‘channel’ or contextualize what would otherwise be seen as primarily immediate symbols, essentially placing the symbol (and its bearer) into a social context where the relevance of the symbol/object’s presence is highlighted or downplayed. The juxtaposition of symbols and their active inclusion in interactions—positional processes (Turner 1967)—can communicate a great deal, but remain dependent on an understanding of the symbolic meaning, whether or not it is intended to be communicated: fleeing from a man with a gun would generally be considered rational, while fleeing from a uniformed police officer—also a person with a gun—would more likely be considered suspicious behavior to an uninvolved observer.

Symbols that work at a representative level are more internalized, or have a more direct connection in meaning to the thing they represent. All symbols need some context in which to be interpretable, but while immediate, actionable, symbols can be understood solely based on what they can do, a representational symbol implies more about not just the symbol itself but also about the person, place or thing that bears it. A police officer may understand his patrol cruiser as a representational symbol when he sees how other drivers react to its presence without needing to directly communicate that speeders will be fined or reckless drivers will be punished. Different practices can be used to indicate either immediate or representational symbolism; this is of primary relevance in cases where, lacking additional context, immediate contexts will likely take precedence, intended or not; that is, some objects, unless explained or otherwise justified, will almost always present a meaning based on what they are immediately capable of. The immediate symbol of the police most likely to be also take on a representational role is that which most immediately represents the capability of the police to use force: the gun.

5.4.3 The Gun and the Symbolism of Police Training

There is no greater symbol for the relationship of police and violence than that of the handgun. The development of police training, from the early days of August Vollmer in Berkeley to high tech specialized training today, is to a significant degree simply the history of weapons training. (Kraska 2007, Chappell 2008) The efforts to professionalize police and create specialists from mere watchmen essentially focused on the core activity which Bittner saw as legally, socially and morally a last resort—the use of deadly force. Discussing the use of force and police expertise, Bittner states that:

[i]t is, or should be, a source of embarrassment to everybody who undertakes to talk about police practice that he has virtually nothing to say about the exercise of physical coercion. Only the use of firearms is somewhat regulated. Policemen usually receive some instruction on how to use firearms and many departments require regular marksmanship practice. All this is of slight importance, however, because in the United States the pistol is not mainly a tool but an emblem the symbolic value of which draws on history and myth. Thus, the discussion about the role of firearms cannot refer only to practical need or use. (1970: 101–102)

The situation has greatly changed since Bittner’s day, with use of force training expanded, given a veneer of science, and even corporately sponsored with specific commercial programs being offered in the US by the National Rifle Association, Smith and Wesson and various other organizations. (Balko 2013, Kraska 2007) Journalists in particular have been fascinated and shocked by the injection of resources into providing local police with military-style equipment and to the extent that this militarization has seemingly impacted the culture of policing. (Bauer 2014) Both critics of the police and those supporting a more aggressive police tend to agree that increased firearms training—particularly the use of ‘shoot / don’t shoot’ scenario training—is desirable, overlooking the effect this training may have in cementing ‘crime fighter mentalities’ within occupational cultures or in biasing police decision making towards the use of force. A recent controversy in the US city of Minneapolis has revolved around the use of “Warrior cop” training. This style of training—based specifically on military training—emphasizes the capacity to use and the actual use of force, informing officers that they are the ‘sheepdogs’ who protect the sheep from the wolves. (Cobb 2017) The city of Minneapolis banned this form of training—which included a program entitled “the Bulletproof Warrior” attended by the officer involved in the controversial 2016 shooting of Philando Castile—prompting the police union to offer to pay for any officers willing to defy the city. This has become a popular debate within policing social media, with significant criticism leveled at the mayor for not understanding the realities of police work or being ‘soft on crime.’ (Shackford 2019) In this case, the role of police as experts based on experience is being used to defend the type of training that should be required for police work: but if this training is seen as practical for police, as better fitting with the police self-image or simply supported by a vocal minority to better provide themselves a front stage platform in public discussions remains unclear. Yet by emphasizing the ‘warrior’ nature of the police and not just firearms training but the need to be prepared to “kill any person you meet” (Cobb 2017) the gun is reinforced not just as a symbol of the office, but specifically as a symbol for potential deadly force.

5.4.4 “I Don’t Want to Hurt Anybody”: Police and Symbolic Violence in Rural Communities

The previous discussion has been primarily based in either the American policing literature, or literature heavily influenced by studies of urban North American or British departments. An examination of the ubiquitousness of policing culture must consider the role violence does (or does not) play as a component in presenting and maintaining an image of police work within occupational cultures. The approach of Egon Bittner was to examine how meaning—in this case the meaning of force and violence legally and normatively—was created through situational and organizationally-constrained interaction. The criticism put forth by Peter Manning (2013) is that Bittner’s conclusions have been recycled and applied to police in general, regardless of differences in local conditions. The differences not just between policing in the US and Germany, and not just between urban and rural, but between the specific setting and context under review in the present work and every outside case are all of great relevance here to developing a understanding of the complex nature of policing and the social interactions that take place within its framework. (Mawby 1999, Hendriks and van Hulst 2015)

The research site of Falkenmark—and in a broader sense the type of ethnography planned from the earliest stages—was chosen specifically with the expectation that actual violence was unlikely to play a major role in routine police work due to its predominantly rural nature and relatively low and sparse population. In a country with already generally low crime rates and significantly less expectations of major crime events (mass shootings, hostage situations etc.) than the US, the rural areas of Germany could be expected to present a challenge to a conception of police work centered around violence and crime-fighting.

This alternative has been less often identified in the literature, but it is likely that the relationship of violence and policing varies particularly in rural or small-town and the predominant focus on high-resource urban departments within policing research has simply overgeneralized one aspect of a (hypothetical) universal policing culture. (Wells et al. 2004) Even in urban departments, violence is often compartmentalized and specialized with certain jurisdictions and specialized units likely encountering the greatest or implementing the greatest proportion of violence and also internalizing it as part of their image of what police is to the greatest degree. This is of particular relevance outside of the US, where armed response squads in the UK and specialized units for making arrests in Germany are intended to downplay the ‘crime fighter’ aspects of patrol officers. (Behr 2000, Squires and Kennison 2010) The officers central to the current study either did not see or chose not to present violence or even overt coercion as the core of their self-image, relating ‘war stories’ or ‘horror stories’ within expected ‘canteen culture’ arenas—ostensibly, at least in some cases, for my benefit—but spending significantly more time discussing stories relating to identified social problems or non-violent forms of problem solving. Additional examples suggested that these narratives were not simply front-stage presentations to avoid undue focus on violence or other ‘critical’ issues in policing, as the narratives portraying violence as consistently undesirable outnumbered even those where it was presented neutrally, as a tool to be used properly, etc. Notably, several Revierpolizei officers (including one unit leader) admitted to very often going unarmed on foot patrol, leaving their service weapon locked inside the station. This was a breach of regulations, but justified—similar to several “cautionary tales” related to me—with statements such as, “any case where I would need to shoot is a case where I could only make things worse.”

Broader cultural differences of course play a role, and will be addressed elsewhere. Arguments have been put forth often enough that police culture most brightly reflects ‘mainstream’ culture, and the differences in attitudes and common meanings attributed to firearms between the US and other countries may do more to explain the differences in attitudes and common meanings attributed by police in Germany than any particular aspect of police work or the police organization. The Revierpolizei in particular bears a mandate emphasizing community access and positive community relations which could be difficult to reconcile with an emphasis on the capacity to use force. However, this work is not in the end an analysis or summary of a particular police department but rather an exploration into the processes and negotiations of various individuals and groups within an organization and institution: my interest is finding both similarities and divergence within the same setting, and explaining it within its own context. Several aspects related to violence and particularly (the symbolism of) firearms stand out.

5.4.5 The Gun as a Representation of Policing?

The focus of police expertise on the use of weapons, previously described, seemed to be essentially lacking throughout the course of my fieldwork. This is not to say that weapons were not present (they were present in almost every police-related setting, fitting with the observations of Van Maanen [1980]) or never discussed—but the rhetorical use of weapons to provide explanations or in telling stories was rare, muted and tended to emphasize the officer’s reluctance to use them. Anecdotal evidence suggested that police may have been conscious of their role as armed responders but simply did not share the understanding of the connection between police and weapons technology implied by the (US) literature previously discussed. Notably, in two of the three main stations within the county, visiting the armory and ‘showing off’ weapons and hardware only occurred spontaneously as the final part of my introductory tour—and in the headquarters station I was never shown the armory at all and only later asked if I ‘needed to see it.’

The role of the field researcher may be significant in relation to this point. My status as an American was highly relevant, coming up very often in conversation, and was very often used as a reference point in discussing the officers’ individual and institutional conceptions of police work. Apart from the practical use of this in establishing rapport with officers, the basic dichotomy of US / German policing led to the officers I accompanied presenting their own normative or moral system of policing narratively, very often with statements in the form of, ‘in the US they might do this, but here we wouldn’t do that.’¹³ These types of statements tended to associate American policing with a higher degree of violence, including extra-legal or racially motivated violence, than they would either consider normal or personally find acceptable in their own local context. This is not to say that these statements are necessarily reflective of either an organizational or the officer’s own system of norms and values, however: these statements are best considered as speech acts, presented in a front-stage scenario between researcher and representative of the institution and social group under observation.¹⁴ (cf. Atkinson and Delamont 2006) The relevance lies in the use of associations and stereotypes in drawing boundaries between an idea of policing in the US and the presentation of policing in Brandenburg.

At one point during a site visit at the smallest of the three stations weapon inspections were taking place. Every officer needed to submit their weapon to be checked by a team from Potsdam, the state capital, and the weapon would then either be certified or replaced. This took most of the day and was for me an opportunity to talk to a more varied group of officers apart from the Revierpolizei unit, such as the detectives. I entered the division head’s office to find it full of handguns placed upon both tables and the desk. An officer who I had accompanied on duty twice before commented, “just like home, eh?” (“Genau wie Zuhause, oder?”) Various other similar jokes were made during the course of the inspection which played on the stereotype that an American should be interested in and an expert on firearms, while the local officers—differing from the inspection team—presented themselves as not particularly interested in guns. The idea of guns as a representative symbol of seemed to be rejected here, or at least of minimal relevance. While guns could be considered tools or even manifestly symbolic, they did not appear to represent a higher-level symbol that police were expected to respond to as part of their self-image.

5.4.6 Imagining Violence: Firearms

On two consecutive days I accompanied two different Revierpolizei units to the same training facility (outside of either of their normal jurisdictions.) Training focused primarily on firearms, using modern systems that display targets or scenarios on the wall and register live-fire hits or misses. Although security and safety were taken very seriously and explained to me both by trainers and some of the officers I was with, my overall impression of the atmosphere on both days was, as recorded in my field notes, “like a field trip.” The setting was fundamentally different than any other type of routine working day, with officers who normally work individually and often spend only an hour or two in the office per day all riding together in a van, and then waiting together for their turn to complete firearm qualifications which in practice are not that very different from playing a game. The officers did not seem to consider this as part of their normal work either, with one officer referring to it as “something we have to do.” Officer Karsten, who I accompanied into the shooting hall, seemed especially to separate the qualification process as something far removed from the image of his work which he had attempted to present to me in the days we had previously spent together. During a training scenario where he was required to fire to hit a target once at a minimum, he fired three rounds at the target and then shouted “America!”, then once more three rounds then “America! Bang bang bang!” This was still within the parameters of the scenario, and Officer Karsten still passed his qualification, but I interpreted the performance as specifically intended for me essentially commenting on my assumed expectations of police work as an American. It would not be possible to evaluate if this should be considered ‘taking training seriously’ or not, but it indicated a disconnect between the artificial evaluation scenario and the expectation of the job itself. The continuous association of firearm use and expertise with American policing suggested a distancing from not only the stereotypical associations between US police and guns but also from the symbolism of guns: by making jokes about the presence of guns within a police setting, the officer of the Revierpolizei were challenging the centrality of violence to the policing role. While the presence of gun and its possession by a police officer was inseparable from most conceptualizations of policing, its use and even the symbolism and indication of its potential use were not within the normative routine for Revierpolizei officers.

5.4.7 Immediate and Representative Symbols of Violence: From Symbolic Potential to Intention

The use of force was presented by the Revierpolizei officers—as well as others in separate units I accompanied—as a specialized task requiring not only training but experience. Observing the Revierpolizei during firearms qualification suggested a disconnect between the expectations of the job and the more regulatory expectations of firearms expertise. A similar disconnect was evident in one specific case involving baton training, taking place on the same day at the same location. An officer was armed with a police baton and faced with a police trainer wearing padded armor and equipped with a padded shield. The trainer, simulating an aggressive suspect, would gradually approach the officer who was expected to follow procedure by issuing a verbal warning and then eventually strike the suspect with the baton. The trainer simulated a hostile suspect using informal language and slurs, essentially “you got a problem, pig?” (“Was suchst du hier, Bulle?”) The officer made several attempts to respond using very formal language, “Please remain where you are or I will need to use my baton” (“Bleiben Sie stehen oder ich mache mein Schlagstock zum Verwenden.”) but was unable to both complete the sentence and hit the trainer in the first few attempts. The officer stumbled over the words and was visibly surprised or startled as the trainer closed the distance between the two. The scenario—observed by the other officers present—took on more of a lighthearted nature, but the officer continued to attempt to complete the exercise following this interpretation of strict procedure despite the trainer’s suggestions to “say it simpler.” The need to speak politely and without demonstrating bias or disrespect seemed to be more important than the situational exigencies, in this case the need to speak quickly and clearly and react all within a few seconds. The response of the other officers—to view and discuss it in this way, rather than as a ‘failure’—suggested that for the officer involved, at a minimum, the type of situation is something that would be very unlikely to occur and the training exercise was more formality than something to take overly seriously. A police officer who is unable to insult and then hit suspects was not necessarily presented as a bad police officer, just as an officer who does not expect to use their sidearm in their entire career was not presented as an officer who has never lived up to their full capabilities. The baton—at least within the context of this training scenario—was interpreted almost as a representational, non-actionable, symbol by the officer, with more emphasis given to the issuing of commands rather than the implied potential threat of the brandishing of the baton. (cf. Sturm 2011) The presentation of the trainer emphasized that, essentially, the baton could effectively speak for itself and would only require a type of verbal anchorage or confirmation that the drawn baton was indeed an immediate threat to the addressee; the officer’s response suggested contradictory assumptions, with the verbal message intended to be complete and explicit in a way that could potentially be effective—at least in being properly understood—whether or not the officer was holding a baton.

Sturm (2011) describes how in certain, violent, situations police can essentially become an object, become the weapon. The use of violence, particularly the more ‘intimate,’ up-close violence of crowd control and the use of the baton, is described as, “not pretty, but brutal” (Sturm 2011: 326) even in cases where its use is measured, effective and professional. These types of situations strip away the immediacy of the representational meaning and leave only the immediate transition from potential to action: it is still important that the baton belongs to a police officer, that it carries the force of law, but this meaning is drowned out by the swing of the baton happening right now. When the immediate symbolism of the weapon predominates the bearer of that weapon loses the authority to define the situation beyond the constraints and contexts imposed by the weapon. Even in a training scenario, the officer attempted to maintain the weapon-as-representation, enacting coercion through the authority which the baton (and uniform, and the very concept of policing) represent(s) and only secondarily by the fact that the baton could enforce coercion once swung. The officer demonstrated a reluctance to become the weapon, to allow it to become more than a tool, by formally stating that which could have simply been implied, underscoring the fact that the weapon not only has a voice, but is rarely silent, and if an officer does not want it to speak for itself, that officer may need to speak clearly and first.

5.4.8 Contextualizing Violence

Only one incident of serious police violence occurred during my field stay. The Revierpolizei (Officer Karsten) were called in to support the public order office (Ordnungsamt), who had been called to support city officials who were accompanying inspectors from the fire department. A resident who was known to the police was specifically required to allow fire department inspectors into his house once per year due to his use of an open fireplace. Officer Karsten explained to me that a similar ritual played out every year: the man would refuse to open the door for the inspectors, and additional support agencies up to the police would arrive until the man eventually relented, or the police would open the door themselves. Officer Karsten, accompanied by another officer, knocked on the door and announced that he was from the police. A few moments later the door flung open and the man charged out and attempted to tackle the officer, and a few minutes after that Officer Karsten had the man pinned down on the ground. The inspection continued as normal, and in the end the man was released but it was almost certain he would eventually be charged and likely arrested for assaulting an officer. The entire scene lasted only a few seconds and the ‘threat’ was resolved before anyone else reacted in any significant way. Two contextual aspects of this incident stood out.

Firstly, this was the most overt case of physical coercion which I observed, and the development of events and established background information leading up to the encounter were highly relevant even when considering that the use of force by Officer Karsten was in direct and immediate reaction to an attack on him. The situation had been described to me as if it were a ritual or a game, where both parties would threaten to escalate the situation but the man in the house would eventually allow the inspectors in. All the involved parties had expectations of the situation from the outset, but for the police, at least, the result was non-negotiable and the only unknowns were at one point the man would relent and whether or not it would be necessary to forcibly open the door. The scene was one of coercion before the police even arrived, but the symbolic role of the police to symbolically carry out violence was seen as far more decisive than the actual use of force which was not considered a normal part of this routine. The presence of the police alone was expected to tip the scales enough into gaining cooperation. The resident himself had previously described as “strange” and an “outsider” who was, at least for the Revierpolizei, primarily known through this annual ritual. He was described as a “Wessi” (West German) who had moved to Brandenburg shortly after unification—when property prices were extremely low—but had never integrated into the local community. The property was not well maintained, with overgrown grass and several windows boarded up, and Officer Karsten commented that “neighbors don’t get along with him,” although it was unclear if this translated into situations involving the police. The entire scene was observed by a half dozen neighbors, mostly watching through windows but some came out to the sidewalk, and one or two conversed with the city officials who had been the first to attempt to negotiate cooperation. Even though there had been no specific indication that violence was expected or likely—at least not overtly communicated, although I was instructed to remain on the sidewalk with the others while the two officers approached the house—the situation is one in which the type of coercion involved and the background scenario made the use of actual physical force a plausible outcome. The man, considered by police, and probably by neighbors, an outsider, lacked resources or social capital that could be leveraged to ‘save face’ in this scenario, and the only action he could take which would impact the overall setting would be to open the door which would at the same time effectively relinquish his control—except in this case because he simultaneously opened the door, ending the stalemate, but then also attacked the police officer, demonstrating resistance and altering the type of encounter. That the man was held on the ground while the inspection continued reinforced the idea that the police were effectively there as a support organization to ensure the normal function of the diverse array of municipal agencies; the use of violence in this situation did not effectively transform the development or outcome as it was occurring, even though it had the potential to.

Bittner (1970) famously compared police officers to sociologists, and in this case that perspective seems to be reflected in a macro / micro discrepancy. Police work is made up of individual situations, events and encounters which constitute the police habitus and constitutive view of society and their local community. (cf. Chan 2004) This situation, even with the clearly invoked specter of violence and the use of the police primarily as assistance for other agencies based on the ability to theoretically use force, was apparently viewed as a ritual of expressions and power—and one which the side of the police was essentially destined to win; violence changed the rules of this game in a way, altering dynamics and stripping concepts of private property and rights of their immediate relevance. Violence, as constructed by many of the Revierpolizei officers and Officer Karsten in particular, seemed to be compartmentalized and only take the foreground outside of the social boundaries—and often physical boundaries—of the local community. At the same time, and as was emphasized by this encounter, the potential for violence is entwined in the function of the police—the police were called in by other official agencies because of their capacity to ‘get things done’—and occasional reminders that violence does occur could and often are expected by police in their everyday routine work. This discrepancy can be further explored through the way police officers talk about violence, regardless of how that impacts the work they do.

The previous two examples are primarily performative and can only essentially be analyzed in that context. The involved officers used humor in situations which could at least potentially be expected to be treated differently due to the involvement of firearms and the assumed association of them with violence and deadly force. In practical terms, these situations facilitated the establishment of rapport by allowing the officers to break from a more solemn performative front-stage role, legitimizing their role and work by taking it seriously. My role as an outsider, specifically as an American and, through the use of questions, apparently assuming I had some knowledge on the practice of policing in the US, had been established and reinforced. This type of humor assumed a shared, if caricatured, assumption of the ‘crime fighter image’ and by using this image as a source of humor it placed a fascination with weapons or violence into the realm of the profane. Notably, this appeared to extend only to this fascination, rather than a respect or disregarding the concept of violence as a component of police work at all. The impression conveyed to me was that the use of weapons was seen as something reactive—as a potential situation that could or even should be considered in advance—but to which no ‘good cop’ (at least not within the Revierpolizei units I was with) would look forward to or be excited about. The presentation of violence in recounting—in the narrative—framed it in a way that both demystified it and distanced it from their own routine behavior.

5.4.9 Transforming Symbols

“If you’re gonna shoot, shoot! Don’t talk.”

– Tuco, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966, dir: Sergio Leone)

The immediate symbols presented—the police officer’s gun and baton—represent in all contexts the potential for violence. Alongside these two prominent examples one could include additional policing tools related to coercion such as handcuffs, pepper spray, tasers (which were notably not used in Brandenburg at the time of the field research, but are currently being implemented in several other German states) and even flashlights. When interpreted purely through their immediate symbolism, these objects are continuously ‘violent.’ This violence on its own remains purely potential, unless accompanied by any attributed intent, motive or possibility that could transform it into actual violence. (cf. Mills 1940) Objects can never be interpreted purely through their immediate symbolism; some outside context, representational symbolism, the juxtaposition of additional symbols, and the communicative practices and actions of the actor who controls the object will determine to what extent the immediacy of the object can or cannot take precedence within an encounter. This is of particular relevance when considering that any physical object, as well as the human body itself, could potentially be used as a weapon, in many cases even as a deadly weapon. Yet most objects do not bear the necessarily immediate symbolism to be primarily seen as weapons unless additional indications are given and preparatory actions are taken, such as raising a stone over one’s head as if to throw it.

This potentiality of the symbols of violence allow for, and often require, careful impression management to allow the bearer to take control of situations or establish the desired power dynamic. In the same way that a bank robber with a toy pistol may be able to effectively make threats up until he attempts to fire the gun, the police can often ‘profit’ from the potential for violence that is inextricable from their more basic image but can also find themselves limited once certain preparatory actions have been taken or ruled out. The institutional image of policing most clearly benefits from the recognizable capacity to use force significantly emphasized by Bittner (1970) Police officers distancing themselves from an imagined institutional authority can attempt to establish a more personal connection, among other practices, by removing their perceived ‘tactical advantage’ and therefore downplaying the potential for actual violence: avoiding taking preparatory actions that might be sufficient or supplement if not necessary: an extreme case could be an officer has already drawn and aimed his at a ‘disorderly’ suspect, attempting to calm the suspect verbally, lowering the weapon and making it (at least, by appearances) a less one-sided conflict if either party transforms the interaction into a purely physical, violent conflict. More common and everyday practices observed frequently among the Revierpolizei were simply getting physically closer to individuals in encounters: this reduces the ostensive tactical advantage police would have as officers lose the greater range advantage of firearms and risk being unable to draw their firearm, baton, or other equipment if violence were to suddenly erupt. Realistically, officers are not likely to be interpreting most of these situations as a willful act of putting one’s guard down or a de-escalation, but rather simply approaching the situation in a way that appears natural. The more militant advice in some (US) policing circles to “be prepared to kill everyone you meet” (Cobb 2017) is—for most—not intended to be taken literally in the cases of close friends and family; these applications of “safe categories” certainly apply to a wider range of individuals, particularly in cases where the police have both measuredly lower risks of immediate danger and lower individual perceptions of danger, e.g. community-oriented police in low-crime rural areas.

This means that the ability of police—specifically the Revierpolizei in Falkenmark—to engage in situational image work or handle situations informally by distancing themselves from an ideal type image of the police may be—at a theoretical level—to a significant degree dependent on the already existent and universally perceivable association of the police with violence.¹⁵ Bittner’s argument emphasized the types of tasks police become involved in the fact that the capacity to use force strengthened and secured the ability of police to find a way to solve problems. A critical dimension is the symbolism also associated with violence and how this can challenge, mediate, or channel the relationship between police and community or police officer and individuals. Police officers can distance themselves from the typical police role and its potential for violence, but at the same time reserve the right to pivot back to an institutional footing, and the use of discretion by police in some situations likely doesn’t undermine their ability to intervene later if the situation can be framed properly (as an emergency, as violent, etc.)

The symbolism of violence, as was found in Falkenmark, plays a more significant role in further representing ideas, concepts, and reproductions of ‘normality’ than in specifically and overtly governing everyday interactions—that is, the role that violence arguably played was predominantly through its avoidance, through the distancing police used and the perceptions of individuals that continued to see violence as a distant, unlikely, or even impossible outcome. The role of violence was more visible and direct in narratives. Police talked about their communities as peaceful and some individuals as chaotic. They talked about how most days are routine or even boring but “you never know who might be carrying a knife.” Violence played many roles in many stories, and these stories showed both how the officers viewed and needed to view their community and how central violence, as a concept, as a symbol, and as a representation, was to the very idea of policing.

5.5 Narratives of Violence

“I kill thee, make thee away, translate thy life into death, thy liberty into bondage. I will deal in poison with thee, or in bastinado, or in steel. I will bandy with thee in faction. I will o’errun thee with policy. I will kill thee a hundred and fifty ways. Therefore tremble and depart.”

– Touchstone, As You Like It, Act 5, Scene 1

Stories about violence could take a variety of forms, and implement violence in different ways: as a source of conflict, as a way to resolve conflict, as something morally deserved, as a test of physical or mental attributes, as a social problem, etc. (cf. Ewick and Silbey 1995, Athens 1997) While actual interactions involving physical violence were rare, cases of officers (mostly unprompted) telling stories that involved violence in some capacity were common, primarily to me individually but also to other officers: for example, in the break room or over lunch, the typical ‘canteen culture’ settings. (cf. Waddington 1999) The narratives of violence recounted to me instead were mostly of a cautionary nature, normative tales explaining risks or undesirable situations that could likely have been avoided. The typical self-image of police as recounted through “war stories” within the ‘canteen’ culture tends to be of “crime fighters on a mission in a dangerous environment” (van Hulst 2013: 624), but both the types of stories I encountered and their apparent ‘function’ or lesson differed greatly for the most part. Rather than stories emphasizing community hostility or likening the use of police as a sort of trial by fire through which a rookie becomes a ‘real’ officer, the stories I was told or that were told in my presence generally emphasized the risks and potential unintended consequences of attempting to use violence. (cf. Ford 2003, Loftus 2009b, Kurtz and Upton 2017)

Actual violence by police is relatively rare when compared to all police encounters, and even encounters where violence is hinted at are likely uncommon for most officers. Unsurprisingly, for the Revierpolizei in Falkenmark violence is something that is talked about much more than it is experienced. Most officers had never drawn their weapon outside on a resident. Stories about violence were, however, not uncommon. These stories were likely common specifically because of the perceived uniqueness of the events, as well as for the implied teaching function of them, i.e. either learning what to do from positive examples or learning what to avoid from negative ones. Due to the nature of rural (community) policing (cf. Young 1993, Huey and Ricciardelli 2015, Ohder and Schöne 2018) a significant amount of time was spent in transit; Revierpolizei officers generally work alone, and in this case the presence of a field-researcher changed this dynamic; officers had time and an audience to share their accumulated stories. Violence often played a role in these stories, often being the major topic of a story, but the specific function it played in the story varied. Sometimes it was explicit, with great detail given to how violence was carried out, to the visceral experience of the enactor of violence, the recipient, or observers; other times it was implicit and assumed to be understood as a narrative connection without much detail at all. Violence served both a functional role, in which events were sequentially linked by violent acts (e.g. a gun being fired and then a person being injured,) and a indicial or indexing role, in which additional detail could be provided that is not strictly necessary to following the major ‘plot,’ such as describing an individual as “someone who gets into a lot of fights.” (cf. Barthes 2004) The analysis of these narrative of violence—drawn primarily from stories told but also from the use of narrative within encounters or in more formal contexts—focused not so much on the overarching plot or composition of the narrative as on the specific use of violence as a mechanism for connecting or describing elements. Violence was often presented in the context of motive, i.e. “a rule which depicts the social character of the act itself.” (Blum and McHugh 1971: 100, cf. Sudnow 1965, Burke 1969) Functional and indicial elements, as presented by Barthes, relate respectively to ‘doing’ and ‘being,’ emphasizing that violence can be presented both as a pure physical action (which practically will bear further socially-derived implications) as well as a descriptor or characteristic typically based on a normative moral system (cf. Campbell 1991): a variety of presentations are to be expected, if for no other reason than the fact that police have a vested interest in justifying their use of force while maintain cultural narratives associating criminal behavior or deviance with violence and ultimately with a broader array of social evils. (cf. Manning 1980, Waegel 1984, Presser 2012)

The narrative role played by violence differed between the stories told, but some patterns were identifiable. Notably, emotions such as rage, frustration, shame, humiliation, or even love or compassion, which are often cited in biographic accounts or contextual explorations of violent acts (Katz 1988, Presser 2012, Sandberg et al. 2015) were almost never included in narratives of violence, and never in accounts of violence enacted by the police.

Violence differed significantly in how it was used within stories; different narrative mechanisms could be interpreted in how the inclusion of violence in a story structured the overall narrative and connected characters, actions and events. Violence could play various roles within a narrative, such as simply describing actions or concluding a story and implying a moral or lesson. Apart from describing actions central to the plot, it can also be used to provide background or backstory to frame the primary action or contextual, describe or flesh out characters or relationships. Violence can be committed by identified social actors, groups, unidentified actors (e.g. “someone in the crowd threw a rock”), or can be simply just occur (e.g. “a lot of people got hurt”), and may or may not specifically be associated with a defined victim. It can be ‘successful’, attempted or intended violence, just as individuals described as committing violent acts could be also described ‘violent,’ but the latter could also refer to those simply perceived, by the narrator or others, as capable of engaging or likely to engage in violence. It can be presented as a phenomenon requiring further explanation or even defying explanation or as a matter-of-course, as fantastical or everyday, as sacred or as profane.

Two primary differences in narrative mechanisms of violence were determined based on the narratives involving violence, deviance and police work, primarily from Revierpolizei officers in Falkenmark but also including some narratives by officers in other units and retired officers who were encountered or accompanied during field stays. These differences involved how violence was presented causally and whether it was affixed to a situation (immediate or ongoing) or one or more individuals. Some narratives of violence explore its causes—at a root level, e.g. “he was from a poor neighborhood, so he learned that sometimes you have to throw the first punch,” or in a more direct sequential manner, e.g. “someone spilled a drink on someone else, and then things escalated, and pretty soon someone threw the first punch.” Other narratives remain silent as to the causes of the violence described, focusing instead on its immediate impact or aftermath, or else implying—but without specifically stating—that its ontology is self-evident, irrelevant or ‘natural.’

5.5.1 Deterministic and Attributed Violence

Narrative mechanisms can in this way be divided between deterministic, which are more victim-oriented an in which the broader narrative focuses on the lead up to the violence and its outbreak is reduced to an implied cause and effect formula, and attributed, focused more on the actor who engages in violence. In narratives where deterministic mechanisms are central to the plot, the overall narrative tends to focus on the lead up to violence or potential violence, including as important (even if unstated) elements the actions, reactions and personal characteristics that, inevitably, within the narrative, lead to certain characters encountering violence, which very often forms the conclusion or at least a major turning point in the story; deterministic narratives are the stories of violence. Narratives centered on attributed violence can include it anywhere in the plot, either as an outcome of a chain of events or actions or as background describing characters, framing the narrative, or foreshadowing events to come. These are stories of other actions or characters where violence forwards, mitigates, or foreshadows the action in relation to who the actors are, were, or have become.

Violence presented as a deterministic reaction often implied something deserved or possibly a form of ‘justice’ but generally emphasized that violence is often, from the perspective of the narrator, predictable once certain conditions are met. Deterministic violence simply occurs as a result of actions taken earlier, and while the violence is likely committed by a human actor, little or no attention is given to their motivation, reasoning or understanding, with the focus of the story instead on the likely victim and how their actions or status triggers violent acts. Attributed violence narratives presented it as an active choice by a social actor, though in few cases was the agency of the actor defined or explored, and the association of violence with the actor was primarily constructed through implied (and, rarely, explicit) assumptions about either the social role (i.e. as a police officer) or personal characteristics of the individual engaging in violent behavior.

5.5.2 Violent Situations and Violent Individuals

The second significant division was between describing violent situations, in which the violence occurred primarily as a mechanism for concluding the narrative or as a moral lesson in itself, and describing violent individuals, in which case the violence committed by these individuals serves a narrative purpose of explaining context, background or making a claim about social facts but does not on its own resolve the plot (Table 5.1).

Table 5.1 Narrative mechanisms of violence

Four specific roles of violence were identified in recurring in forms of narratives presented by police within ‘canteen culture’ situations as well as anecdotes and stories recounted directly to me or in front of others. These narrative forms position violence different within the narrative and thereby imply a different meaning, even when violence isn’t central to the story or fleshed out within the narrative. The forms are:

• 1. Outside consequences

• 2. Symbolic assailants

• 3. Consequences of failure

• 4. Warning sign

While violence can be narratively used in many other forms, these forms stood out to due to their relationship with the types of stories being recounted. Scholars exploring police storytelling have often analyzed the meaning of specific stories (cf. Waegel 1984, Ford 2003) or the setting and process of storytelling (van Hulst 2013), but this narrative analysis is specifically on the use of violence within the story, essentially how it relates to the plot: the significance of violence not just to police culture but as a break in (most forms of) normal interaction means that when violence is involved in a story it usually plays a significant role in describing characters, altering relations, determining outcomes, or in presenting moral claims.¹⁶ (Sandberg et al. 2015) Other narrative uses of violence, even within this typology, are certainly possible, but these four categories stood out both for their contrasts in how violence affected the larger story being told and for the general distancing from violence as a positive value or desired outcome. (cf. Van Maanen 1980, Ford 2003)

Outside consequences refer to an essentially deterministic outcome in which the behavior of a social actor (usually a non-police individual but in some cases also police officers) leads to them being confronted with a violent (re)action, without specifically attributing agency or intent to the violence: e.g. a story of an individual who is punished for drunk driving but continues the behavior, and then is seriously injured or killed in a car accident. These types of stories are essentially morality plays, isolating the behavior or characteristics of a social actor and blaming them for triggering the violence that they become victim of.¹⁷ (cf. Waegel 1984) This form could include narratives in which officers describe their own use of force with justifications such as “he made me do it” or “that’s just what happens.” (cf. Van Maanen 1980) Notably, outside consequence narratives can often be found in the rhetoric of policing research, where use of police by the force—as a dependent variable—is triggered by actions or factors outside of police control.¹⁸ Violence here is situational; it does not characterize individual, it is not evil or always intended to do harm, it is simply something that happens.

Symbolic assailants (Bittner 1970, Skolnick 1985) represent the presentation of risk in the generalized police occupational culture, it is the inclusion and respective labeling of “any group or action from which resistance might be imagined.” (Manning 2004: 3) Similarly to outside consequences, the intent of the violence does not need to be, and very often is not, incorporated into the narrative, but rather than being more-or-less a deserved outcome, the potential victim is a police officer who is not being morally maligned or blamed within the course of the story. Despite involving violent individuals into the narrative, the emphasis is not on deeply exploring their motivations or the background of (potential) violence, but rather violence is treated as inevitable: specific individuals are taken as part of a larger group, assuming that some members of the group will engage in violence, and then reducing the individual back to a ‘proportion of violence.’ Symbolic assailant narratives represent the type of “us vs. them” narrative that is well-represented in the literature on police culture, including in Germany. (Manning 1980, Reuss-Ianni 1983, Marks 2004, Behr 2018) These stories are typically depersonalizing (cf. Presser 2012), removing agency from individual social actors and employing ideal types, stereotypes, and hypothetical situations, even when known individuals are involved. Herbert (1996) provides an example of an LAPD sergeant warning of the risks to police officers from hypothetical assailants:

While discussing the possibility of hostile action, the sergeant repeatedly mentions the “vermin” that plague Los Angeles, the various people who do not “have a life,” the passengers in vans who are often “choosing evil” and are capable of indoctrinating even young children into attacking police officers. (577)

This suggests a moral element; specific, less valued, members of society are being identified and narratively constructed as symbolic assailants. Yet when used as a narrative mechanism, the primary function was to simply make the connection between outside society (however specifically defined) and the potential for violence. The narrative function was simply to establish that these types of groups or individuals exist, to remove even the question of intent from stories of violence and replace it with the basic assumption that some individuals will simply “choose evil.”

Symbolic assailants were invoked by the Revierpolizei in describing certain neighborhoods where “we don’t go unless we have to… because they don’t like us here,” and in these types of cases tended to focus on the presumed unpredictability of individual reactions which might even include violence, rather than expecting immediate violence. While these narratives sometimes included elements that attempted to explain or contextual why some individuals might become violent, the purpose of the overall story was still to emphasize the potential risk to police officers, and the potential for violent conflict was, within the narrative, discussed as if it were random, a roll of the dice, rather than a possible outcome of social interactions and communicative offers. These narratives also imply, in contrast to the more typical and personalized narratives of the Revierpolizei, that police work is primarily reactive and based on constructions of risk and dangerous: even simple and common utterances such as “I’ve never had to draw my gun” imply a lack of discretion as opposed to a selection from available and equally legitimate actions, at least in the realm of physical force. Symbolic assailant narratives tended to be more present or future oriented when compared to the other narrative uses of violence, and while they described (usually hypothetical) groups or individuals, the purpose of the narratives tended to be to describe a situation: specifically, one which served to communicate and highlight risks to the police as well as providing (often pre-emptive) justifications for future decisions by the police. Assuming that some social actors will be hostile and aggressive towards the police, regardless of motive, context, or interactional processes, serves as a justification for the police entering encounters with caution, suspicion, or paranoia.

The earlier example of Officer Karsten being attacked by a resident presents a case of the symbolic assailant being used to further explore an experienced encounter with violence: Officer Karsten’s refrain of, “what if he had had an axe?” emphasized the assumption that some individuals will be willing to attack the police and will not distinguish between a still dangerous but not likely to be life-threatening unarmed attack and one using a deadly weapon. Re-exploring and re-imaging this incident with different conditions or outcomes is not simply an analysis of how one handled a specific past incident but is a forward-looking exercise as well, imaging the potential threats yet to be encountered. One threat to a police officer essentially represents all imaginable threats to all police officers. More ‘postmodern’ examples of the symbolic assailant could be found in the (essentially offhand) statements made describing which locations and infrastructure in the region need to be watched due to their being the most likely targets of terrorist attacks: these statements tended to come rather late on the first few accompanied shifts, once most key locations and individuals had been discussed and one most recurring problems had been explained, when the officers were still attempting to find ‘things to show’ that seemed to be justifiably ‘police issues.’

Consequences of failure are in some way the mirror image of symbolic assailants: they are identifying the police behavior as that which leads to either violence or to a form of violence which is undesirable; in a way, deterministic outcomes but considering the agency and discretion of the individual officer. These types of narratives were fairly common, particularly in describing how communication was preferred over force. Violence was then often presented as something that “no one wants,” and a failure to adequately handle or prepare for a situation. However, unlike in outside force narratives, the violence was not always directed against the police, and often was, employed by the police but still presented negatively. The goal of the police officer was presented in most cases as, corresponding with more ‘official’ presentations of police practices, one of de-escalation (Mangold 2011), though this could be read to essentially mean that the goal should be to persuade or coerce the suspect to submit to the police definition of the situation without the intimation of physical resistance. One story recounted a former officer who attempted to fire a warning shot to force a fleeing suspect to stop, unintentionally hitting the suspect in the back of the head and killing him.¹⁹ This narrative was essentially a moral tale about the dangers of using a firearm except as a last resort; notably, if this story had emphasized poor marksmanship or lack of training it may have still been a consequences of failure narrative but with a different emphasis, as the story solely put the blame on the decision to shoot in the first place and not the failure of the shot to warn rather than kill. Another story involved an armed bank robbery where the local community officer was the closest on the scene but only arrived after the suspects had shot one person and fled. The ‘moral’ of the story was expressed as, “if the officer had been there earlier, he likely would have just been shot too.” Consequence of failure stories took the normative idea, not entirely foreign to policing perspectives, that interpersonal violence is undesirable, and applied this to policing situations as well, taking the exhortation that violence is only a last resort literally and typically suggesting that if this resort needs to be taken something else was done wrong which could have been done better in the future (and, ideally, the audience can apply this lesson in future encounters.)

Warning sign narratives attribute violent behaviors or tendencies to individuals, making violence not just an immediate societal action, but part of a pattern, symptom, or sign of things to come. While symbolic assailant narratives emphasize that anyone (though not necessarily any specific individual) could be violent, warning sign narratives are more personalized and, while not necessarily downplaying violence, consider that the use of violence can increase or decrease over time and be related to additional, possibly harder to spot, factors. Warning sign narratives necessarily have histories and backgrounds while symbolic assailant narratives need not. (cf. Sasson 1995) These narratives fit into the mold of stories about individuals who were known to the police or had been in trouble earlier, and “need to be kept an eye on,” but where additional context is given. Several stories were presented about individuals (some of whom were encountered, while other stories were simply presented as anecdotes making a general point) who had been violent or committed assault, engaged in bar fights or domestic violence, often with alcohol or drugs discussed as a likely factor. In many cases these individuals were then described as being sober or clean at the present and therefore less likely to be violent. Other stories focused on social groups or friends who might lead a person into “trouble,” with implications that an individual might be, for example, “a good kid” who should not be judged simply based on violent acts, if removing the settings that fostered that type of behavior could remove the risk of future violent acts. These stories were the most contextual, tending not to focus on one specific event, or at least most starting out with it before expanding the scope of the narrative, but rather emphasizing longer-term factors and personal change.

5.5.3 Perspective in Narratives of Violence

The stories I was told by police involving violence were predominantly—though not exclusively—third party stories where the speaker either played a ‘bystander’ or tertiary role or was not present at all. Symbolic assailant narratives, in particular, were relatively rare when compared to their presentation in the general police culture literature, and tended to focus on “police” as a universal (or, at least, national) concept but without implying that individuals within the local community are likely to be hostile to the police; this contrast could be found in statements expressing that “many people don’t like the police [anymore]” juxtaposed against “people in Falkenmark like us.” The specific purpose or reasoning for officers telling these stories to me in the manners they did are indeterminable, but arguably they served some broader purpose of downplaying the significance of violence as the core of police work; the rarity of violence in the daily work of the Revierpolizei both makes the cases where it does occur especially noteworthy even when no obvious ‘moral’ can be discerned but also makes it harder for police to establish boundaries between those who understand policing and its habitus and those who don’t. (cf. Chan 2004) Policing is seen and often presented as a tainted or to some extent stigmatized occupation. Two generic responses to having an identity that violates or clashes with broader social values could be to neutralize or minimize the offending parts of that identity, or to emphasize and brandish them as icons of ‘eliteness.’ (Hughes 1962, cf. Fassin 2013) Many investigations of policing culture have found evidence suggesting a propensity towards the latter—at least within the investigated organizations—and this in turn has furthered the often-repeated theoretical assumptions of the centrality of not only violence but a specific and unique positioning with regard to violence as a core of the police occupational culture. (Waddington 1999, Behr 2000, Behr 2006)

The varying portrayals of violence are in some ways inconsistent, but they all tacitly accept (if not embrace) the image of an ideal type police officer as someone uniquely capable to apply violence correctly in applicable situations. This generally confirms to Ford’s (2003) finding that, “rare was the story that glorified physical force.” (99) More important was generally what the violence was presented as meaning—correctly applied violence is related to the skills and knowledge, whereas improper violence is presented as social, as well as personal, harm. Outside force narratives reinforce the idea that experiencing violence is a negative outcome, and one often brought about by one’s own actions—reflecting both the idea the police seek to prevent behavior they see as risky, even if not immediately so, and the fact that the police using force is, apart from any functional purpose, punishment on its own. Symbolic assailant narratives presume a type of moral superiority of police violence, when it must be used, over that used against the police—this could be best demonstrated in hypothetical hybrid outside force / symbolic assailant narratives, such as presenting a police shooting as “suicide by cop.” (Lord and Sloop 2010) These narratives employ forms of neutralization which manage to both present violent as a something negative and socially harmful, while at the same time absolving the police for that violence because the violence simply happened, it is not presented as a “narrative accomplishment” of the storyteller. (Katz 1988: 300, cf. Van Maanen 1980, Presser 2012) The types of “moral narratives” (Sandberg et al. 2015: 1177) that focus on individual protagonists making proper choices and thereby serving as a positive example never included violence as a form of conflict resolution; when violence did resolve a situation, the focus of the narrative was instead on the actions of the ‘problem person,’ the recipient of violence.

Overall, there was an identifiable contrast between the few stories that fit violence into a normative context—e.g. as part of the job, as an acceptable and deserved form of punishment for some individuals—and those that viewed violence as more problematic, critically, or reflexively—generally portraying it as a risk or uncontrollable, as a not-unexpected outcome of negative or poorly thought out behavior, or as having unpredictable and generally negative consequences outside of the bounds of its immediate use. One narrative, recounted in a breakroom setting by Officer Wolfgang, who had formerly worked in investigations, to myself and a group of three or four other officers, was set in the 1980 s prior to German unification:

We had a guy here in [the area] who was a suspected child molester. At some point, they [the detectives] found a boy who said he had touched him. But the father of the boy was—they said he was—working for the Stasi. At that point, we never heard from the guy anymore, and I didn’t ask questions. I wasn’t going to ask questions, we never worked with them. (Reconstructed from field notes)

The story led into a larger discussion about pre-unification police work, but most relevant is the ambivalence portrayed in the presumption of violence, based on the assumed-to-be-understood reputation of the Stasi and the secrecy involved. The ensuing discussion was primarily centered on distancing “normal police work” from the stereotypes of East German secret policing, and this is reflected here, but at the same time without directly challenging the outcome or suggesting that it could have been challenged. The selection of the story and in particular its inclusion of a child molester as the ‘victim’ of the Stasi allows for a different narrative, as the conveyed meaning seems to be: the Stasi were an instrument of violent punishment, which is why you should not do something to invoke their wrath. Few personal or specific details were included in this story, though that was typical both of stories of a more ‘sensitive’ nature as well as of stories going back more than about ten years. Stories involving the Revierpolizei that presented violence in this way were essentially non-existent (and never ended with the disappearance of a suspect at the hands of the police) but other comments, particularly in relation to events reported in the media, were sometimes more supportive of the idea of ‘deserved violence.’ An obvious distinction here seems to be the difference between local stories, in which the individual actors are often given some background, connection to the community, and context, and abstracted stories where the immediate situation takes precedent.

Though these examples stem primarily from policing narratives—some with dubious connections to real-life events—they suggest the broader processes of constructing a sense of community by creating stories to manage morality, normality, and risk. (Douglas 2013) Explanations of ‘why bad things happen’ can be moralistic, essentially blaming the victim and exhorting the community to learn from their example, or antagonistic, blaming either individuals within that society or an outside enemy for the disruption of society and normal or idealized routines. (cf. Ericson and Doyle 2003) Mary Douglas, invoking Durkheim, associates these general types as representative of differing forms of community (cultural) organization, but here the relationship of policing, institutionally, to the community is relevant, as well as the relationship of policing cultures—where these stories take place and matter, and where they are taken up variously as ‘entertainment,’ ‘small talk,’ ‘news,’ and ‘knowledge’—to both the institution and to the community. The fact that the stories encountered often sought to avoid insider antagonism in terms of violence suggests a certain orientation of individual Revierpolizei officers towards their community which is admittedly unsurprising due to their community-oriented mandate. The officers, in their descriptions of violence and the police role, tended to avoid demonizing or problematizing the community in general and told more intricate, exculpatory stories involving individuals; however, this is not to say that only these types of stories were told, and there was no singularly consistent ‘explanation’ of violence, but rather dynamic responses and narrative / rhetorical uses of violence. The police both needed to be able to communicate around the topic of violence and also selectively attribute it individuals, communities, and abstracted social problems within various settings.

5.5.4 Community-Oriented Policing and Violence

The paradoxical relationship to violence and police work has been noted by scholars and generally attributed to the fact that police are often pre-occupied with potential violence while spending very little time actually experiencing it. (Cullen et al. 1985) The work of the Revierpolizei is specifically focused on interpersonal relationships, and any occurrence of violence—by or against the police—may be especially problematic here in how it is internalized: is it personal? Could it have been avoided? Has it ‘corrupted’ an existing or potential interpersonal relationship? (cf. Peters 2005) The self-image of the Revierpolizei is often maintained or constructed through the use of ‘distancing,’ by comparing the type of work they do and how they do it to what other units or ‘normal’ police do—for example in the cases of the officers who went on patrol unarmed or the others who downplayed the effectiveness of using firearms in all but the most extreme and implausible cases. While the use of ‘war stories’ has been argued to remind police officers that police “always need to be the stronger side” (Behr 1993: 55, own translation) the mandate and the culture of the Revierpolizei emphasizes being clever rather than strong, reinforced among other venues through the telling of consequence of failure narratives. Officers described some cases in which attempting to be strong would only balance the situation against the officer and require an escalation of force; in at last one case this resulted in a “tactical withdraw” but was presented with the closing statement “that was early on, you need to learn to communicate better if you’re going to work alone… sometimes you can’t win if you do it that way.” The outbreak of violence is a stark reminder that Revierpolizei are also police, and the justifications or neutralizations to explain the significance of this violence push them in the direction of the theorized ‘universal police culture.’ (Behr 1993, Behr 2000) While the physical danger of policing was not a topic that came up often during my field stay (though also not never) it remains an ever-present component of the police occupational culture as I experienced it. Posters and flyers created by the two major German police unions, prominently displayed within every station visited, emphasized the risks of death and injury, essentially presenting police work as the dangerous job and a form of sacrificial service. (cf. Demaree 2017) Unlike many other jobs which may involve violence in some way—postal employees, bartenders, teachers etc.—police work offers narratives to not only explain this violence, but also ways to reinforce the values offered by the occupational culture, which are applicable even for officers—community-relations units, administrators, or in this case Revierpolizei—who do not necessarily see applying coercive physical force as a core aspect of their work. (Chan 1997, Reuss-Ianni 1983, Van Hulst 2013)

This is not to say that violence plays no role in the normal work of the Revierpolizei. Officers were tasked to carry out arrests—primarily in cases in which they had already been involved. However, several officers expressed distaste for actually going out to issue arrests, with one stating that, “we need people to like us here, so if I go out, I try not to be seen and let the others get the guy.” Not all officers expressed this view so directly, and it was unclear to me how common arrests were or how violent or physically coercive they were likely to become—the department did not allow me to accompany officers who were intending to make arrests on that shift, but in a broader sense there seemed to be a separation between Revierpolizei work focused more on communicative skills and other forms of police work that internalized violence to a greater degree.²⁰

Violence is deeply associated with policing in both mainstream culture as well as the theoretical literature on police and policing. This association is reflective of the nature of police work as well as the culture of policing, though it is often challenged by the realities of police encounters: what would it mean to describe the police as ‘violent’ when not every encounter is resolved with violence, or when violence is applied selectively, situationally, or within a specific institutional or organizational paradigm? Violence plays a significant symbolic role towards policing which—alongside the various other symbols and representations that make up ‘the police’ as a constitutive image—both strengthen and constrain the police in societal and community contexts. The image work of the police with regards to violence takes place at every level of the organization—in the present case especially at the level of individual interactions which tend to downplay the potential and relevance of physical force whenever possible, and in the crafting of individual and cultural narratives which provide meaning both to ‘the police’ and to the larger life-world.