Dear jack70,
The following is a list of references for ethnographies of police work. I have
provided excerpts where available.
1. Police and Community Perspective
Excerpt: "Looking at the problem from the police vantage point, in almost every
instance officers are at a serious disadvantage. They can bank on the fact that
they are seriously out-gunned in any gang related incident. L.A. and Ventura
County gangs carry and use semiautomatic weapons as part of their regular daily
activities. Brass knuckles and two by fours are a thing of the past as is the
old-fashioned fist fight. For the gang member, a certain amount of status is
derived from owning and even brandishing a weapon- most commonly a 9mm
semiautomatic, which may be capable of firing 17 or more bullets without being
reloaded. Although many police departments are now equipped with 9mm
semiautomatic weapons as well, the gang members are also armed with uzis,
shotguns, small revolvers, AK-47's with an 80 round clip, knives, and whatever
else they devise as a weapon."
California State University of Northridge : "An Urban Ethnography of Latino
Street – Gangs in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties"
http://www.csun.edu/~hcchs006/17.html
The bibliography for this study may also provide some useful links,
http://www.altenforst.de/faecher/englisch/immi/21.htm
2. Ethnography of Police Work in An Affluent Community, Otis Jeffrey White.
Prentice Hall.com – Field Anthropology: A Manual for Doing Cultural
Anthropology, 1/e
http://vig.prenhall.com/catalog/academic/product/1,4096,0138894523,00.html
3. Police, Drugs and Community, by Mike Collison London and New York: Free
Association Books, 1995.
Excerpt from a book review by Mathieu Deflem published in the SSSP Newsletter
29 (1): 33-35, 1998 :
" With Police, Drugs and Community, Mike Collison has made a serious and
successful effort to add to the scholarly informed research on the policing of
drugs. Collison’s study presents the results of an ethnography, conducted in
1990 in an unnamed English town, of cops in the street, police who make "shit
bum arrests" of small dealers and hustlers (p. 12). By necessity, it can be
anticipated, the results of this work will mainly pertain to England and the
United Kingdom, to towns, moreover, similar to ‘Newtown’ (pseudonym), and
cannot be readily transported to the American scene. However, that should and
does not imply that Collison’s study has no relevance to scholars interested in
the policing of drugs in the United States. "
4. Purdue University – liberal arts department
http://www.sla.purdue.edu/people/soc/mdeflem/ZSSSPREV.htm
5. Police in America, by Walker, Samuel. Mcraw Hill 1995.
6. Danger, Duty, and Disillusion: The Worldview of Los Angles Police Officers,
by Joan Barker. Waveland Press, paperback
7. Gender and Community Policing , by Susan Miller. Northeastern University
Press, 1999.
These book references come from the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and
Criminal Justice at Rutgers University. They are listed as required reading
for Dr. Humphries class entitled, "Police and Policing" for the fall 2001 term.
http://www.crab.rutgers.edu/~humphri/police.html
8. Diary of a Police Officer, by Jim Knox and Stephen MacDonald. Police
Research Series, paper 149
Homeoffice.gov.uk – research development statistics publications
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/prs149.pdf
9. Traffic Wardens: An Ethnography of Street Administration, by Joel Richman.
Manchester University Press, July 1983
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0719008980/qid=1019685313/sr=1-
1/ref=sr_1_1/102-1181225-0668165 .
10. Cop Knowledge: Police Power and Cultural Narrative in Twentieth Century
America, by Christopher P. Wilson. University of Chicago Press, June 2000.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0226901335/qid=1019685422/sr=1-
2/ref=sr_1_2/102-1181225-0668165 .
11. "Police as Life World. An Ethnography of Police-Officers' Identity," by
Raphael Behr
" Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to present some findings and problems
which I encountered during my ethnography work on several German police units
conducted in 1995. Participant observation is not original, but nevertheless
unusual for a study of police work. To understand the behavior and the
thinking of police officers, one must regard their exclusive possession of
power and their discretion for using it. The power of the police is different
to the power of suspects or other individuals: Police-power is part of the
monopolized state-force, the action of suspects against the police is seen as
violence or obstruction. The tensions following this difference are both
subject and background of stories and actions of police officers, especially
for those "on the beat" (also called "street cops"). The ethnography of police-
work refers to the narrations of street cops and the observation of their
attitudes for "managing the job". I argue, that in contrast to the
official "police culture", it can also be referred to it as "cop culture". Cop
culture is significantly connected with "doing masculinity".
Please not that this study is available on-line only in German.
This abstract can be found at Forum Qualitative Social Research,
http://www.qualitative-research.net/fqs-texte/1-02/1-02behr-e.htm .
Additional Websites that may interest you:
Office of National Drug Control Policy: Ethnographers, Epidemiologists, and
other Ethnographic Sources, provides a list of ethnographic sources
http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/drugfact/pulsechk/summer97/pcap
pb.html#ethnog
Ethnography and HCI: 3. Crowd Mistakes Rescue Attempt, Attacks Police; 4.
Symbolic Interactionism – The Crowd's Culture, The Police Officers
http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs5724/g5/ethnography.html
American Society of Criminology : Publications
http://www.asc41.com/publications.html
Search Terms Used:
Police ethnography
Cop culture
Police research
I hope that this information is helpful. Good Luck!
Cheers,
Shal |
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