Sociologist Austin Turk and Policing: Structural Reinforcers and Reversals of the Positional Authority of Police

Austin Turk (1969) offers a distinctly sociological explanation of policing by theorizing that structural reinforcers (e.g., older police officer, younger citizen) and reversals (e.g., younger police officer, older citizen) of the situationally absolute positional authority of police officers affect the relationship between police officers and citizens. To this point, however, there have been only three direct tests of Turk’s theory ( Greenleaf and Lanza‐Kaduce, 1995 ; Lanza‐Kaduce and Greenleaf, 2000 ; Weidner and Terrill, 2005 ). All have examined overt conflict and the results are mixed. The present research therefore adds a fourth test of Turk’s (1969) theory to the sociological literature by examining the effects of structural reinforcers and reversals on citizens’ perceptions of the legitimacy and propriety of police actions during routine traffic stop encounters. Net of control measures, including the legal reason for the traffic stop, and extra‐legal measures, such as driver gender, the data provide modest to strong support for parts of Turk’s (1969) theory and absolutely no support for others. The conclusion of the present study is that more research is needed to determine whether Turk (1969) is correct in theorizing that there is a sociology, and not just a social psychology, to police‐citizen encounters.     

Building from the Ground Up

SUMMARY

In an era of low crime rates and high imprisonment rates, the role of communities in producing safety and justice is open for critical reexamination. This article suggests that community resiliency is an unexplored factor in the recent drop in violent crime rates, and that community capacity is adversely affected by imprisonment policies, creating critical questions about the ability of community organizations to engage in partnerships on crime and justice topics. Drawing lessons from several community policing experiments, this article outlines a possible role for community engagement in reducing the current reliance on incarceration as a response to crime.     

THIS PROTEST WILL BE TWEETED

This article examines the use of Twitter at protests surrounding the G20 meetings held in Pittsburgh, PA in September 2009. Based on work on information communication technologies and protest, and on more recent work on Twitter usage at protests, we develop several hypotheses about the content of tweets during protests. Most significantly, we argue that Twitter is a widely available mobile social networking tool that can be used to reduce information asymmetries between protesters and police. Examining the content of 30,296 tweets over a nine-day period, we find that protesters frequently used Twitter to share information, including information about protest locations, as well as the location and actions of police, which is information that was formerly monopolized by the police. Twitter use may be creating a new dynamic in protester and police interaction toward information symmetries. We conclude by identifying implications for policing practices and for protesters.     

Policing Diversity: Examining Police Resistance to Training Reforms for Transgender People in Australia

ABSTRACT

Using field notes collected from participant observation of Australian police officers training to work with the transgender community, the current research builds on previous work examining social identity theory (Tajfel, 2010) to explain how one training program implemented to educate police about transgender people challenges police culture. This research determines that police culture, training procedures, and stereotypes of gender are equally influential on police perceptions of all transgender people. Overall, the results indicate that negative police perceptions toward police training reforms strengthen in-group identity of police, and negative out-group perceptions of transgender people.     

INFORMATION WARFARE AND THE FUTURE OF THE SPY

This article examines the impact of the new ICTs on the collection of covert intelligence and covert political actions undertaken by national intelligence agencies. It is argued that there exist two distinct doctrines in the literatures of intelligence and information warfare concerning the future relative importance of information from human sources ('agents') and technical methods (signal interception, overhead imagery and the emerging field of clandestine penetration of networked information systems). The arguments in favour of human and technical methods are examined in the context of information warfare techniques and technologies, as are covert action methods such as disinformation, disruptive action and 'cyber-sabotage'. Certain civil liberties implications of ICT-based strong encryption are also examined. The article concludes that what is required is a greater emphasis on integrating human and technical methods into a unified whole, especially where human methods can provide opportunities which can be further exploited by technical methods.     

大连市社会治安防控警务模式研究

社会治安形势是社会和谐的"晴雨表"。文章结合大连市社会治安形势,以信息化建设和情报研判体系建设为切入点,综合分析各类案件发生时间、地域、人群与涉案物品等规律,提出了高发案时间段的"实效巡逻"警力投放模式、高发案地区和部位的"重点防控"模式、高发案人群的"精确管理"模式及被盗、抢、骗等涉案物品的"科学管控"模式。     

论社区警务建设

从20世纪70年代开始,西方国家开始了社区警务建设。社区警务与传统的警务相比有着很大的区别。在我国的社区警务建设中,我们要大力挖掘社区警务的本土资源,充分发挥本土资源的优势;各个地方要结合各地的不同情况,创立社区警务的不同运做模式;强化社区警务战略中的软环境建设。     

Monitoring social media and protest movements: ensuring political order through surveillance and surveillance discourse

ABSTRACT

Social network sites (SNSs) such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are often claimed to be central in their role as a facilitating medium for contemporary protest movements. Protestors are able to coalesce around particular keywords such as found in the use of ‘hashtags’ on the SNS Twitter, while sympathetic audiences across the globe are able to follow events in real time. While the role of Twitter use in protests has been celebrated as a means of reducing the information asymmetry between protestors and police, this article problematises this view by exploring the ways in which social media data are beneficial to law enforcement agencies and the state. The article examines the extent to which intelligence agencies are able to monitor activists, drawing on the Edward Snowden revelations of widespread SNS surveillance, and the ways in which internet users are altering their online activities as a result of the revelations. Far from challenging the state, social media use and the data it provides offer the state a multitude of resources to extend its reach and to ensure political order.     

Social unrest and community oriented policing services

Since 2014, there have been several, high-profile police-involved shootings that have captured the nation as a whole. The misunderstandings between culture, legal knowledge, and human behavior all come together to create an environment of social unrest that may lead to violence in the United States. Because we have a decentralized structure for policing services in the United States, the need for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) educational initiatives could help close the divide of knowledge in our country. With grant assistance from the COPS office, law enforcement and community members could make an impactful change in our schools to educate children on concepts related to police operations and the perceptions of police misconduct by community members. By having a proper source of information to offset misunderstandings about police and minorities perpetuated by news media and social media, our youth and community members can critically evaluate the best way for communities to be served by law enforcement.     

QCA as competing or complementary method? A qualitative comparative analysis approach to protest event data

Studies of state repression of protest have focused on theories of threat and weakness, in which states repress movements that threaten state authority or elite interest or movements that lack organizational or political strength. Empirical studies have most often used regression analysis of protest-event datasets. This paper proposes qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as an alternative approach to protest-event data that retains more qualitative complexity and captures the conjunctural and heterogeneous nature of causation during events. The paper applies both methods to protest data from the United States (1963–1973). While both methods provide strong evidence for the threat and weakness hypotheses, QCA more effectively illustrates how combinations of threat and weakness factors increase the risk of repression. The paper argues that QCA is a viable alternative approach to event data, but it should also be seen as a valuable complementary method that can improve regression-based approaches.