4 - Storying Policing

Summary

Chapter Four analyzes police officer identities performed and assumed in both the victim/survivor and police officer interviews. For police, there are a number of identities emergent, constrained, and enabled by the network of social meanings and ideologies circulating in the domestic violence field of indexicality. I focus on analyzing police narratives and emergent identities. Most of the narratives told by police are either about procedure, police, and law, or about domestic violence victims. Their identities, then, largely emerge in relationship to an/other, a victim/survivor, who is storied as uncompliant with police wishes and expectations. This chapter argues that identity is formed and emerges via stories told about prior interactions and others. The identity that emerges is one of frustration and adherence to protocol but also of caring. In some moments of empathy, police demonstrate concern for victim/survivors and a desire for victim/survivors to get and stay safe.