The semiotics of survival: Street cops read the street

Abstract

Urban police officers must learn to approach the street as a text and to decode its myriad messages as a primary survival tactic. The street is a text common to all, yet, as with all complex texts, its interpretation depends upon the awareness and skill of the reader. In interviewing more than 150 Chicago police officers for two collections of police narratives, What Cops Know and Pure Cop, the author learned that police officers place a high value upon what they term “reading the street,” The ability to decipher messages that often demand immediate action, and, if read incorrectly, can result in tragedy. Understanding the complexities in reading the street may shed some light on police successes and failures in interpreting the streets many‐layered messages and may have significant carryover into the reading of semiotic texts for all “strangers in a strange land.”