Reflections on trust and acceptance in ethnographic studies of policing

Abstract

Police researchers have highlighted the importance of gaining a measure of trust and acceptance from the police officers they study. Reflexive ‘tales from the field’ have stressed the need to consider whether one’s own personal characteristics may shape the research relationship and impact on the quality of data collected. Little attention, however, has been paid to the implications for trust and acceptance of the way in which police officers conceptualise their own role. In the case study discussed later in this chapter, significant attempts were made by some police officers to avoid being observed for the purpose of the research. One explanation for this was that the researcher’s biography - a young, black, male, university student - may have heightened the usual concerns about allowing outsiders to study police behaviour. The problem with this explanation - made clear throughout the ethnographic process - was that different groups of police officers responded differently to the project. Some were obstructive and uncooperative, while others enthusiastically generated opportunities for the observation of routine police activity, throughout the fieldwork. There was no evidence to suggest that those who were receptive to the research held less-problematic views about the researcher’s personal characteristics. It seemed instead that the more comfortable police officers were with their particular policing role, the more willing they were to being researched. This leads to the conclusion that reflexive accounts of police-ethnographer field relations should attend to how police officers conceptualise their intuitional role.