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Policing Identities: Cop Decision Making and the Constitution of Citizens

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Trish Oberweis  and
Michael Musheno
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Abstract

We examine police decision making by focusing on police stories and drawing together contemporary thought about identities and police subculture. Our inquiry suggests that police decision making is both improvisational and patterned. Cops are moral agents who tag people with identities as they project identities of their own. They do engage in raw forms of division or stereotyping, marking some as others to be feared and themselves as protectors of society, while exercising their coercive powers to punish “the bad.” Due, in part, to the many ways that they identify themselves, cops also connect with people as unique individuals, including individuals whose categorical identities (e.g., drug dealers) put them at the margins of society. Rather than using their coercive powers to repress these individuals, cops infuse them with certain virtues (e.g., good family men) while cutting them breaks. As they complicate representations of themselves, cops also project complex notions of law and legality. Moral discourse seems to infuse their judgments, while they invoke law strategically as a tool to enforce their moral judgments.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , Fall 1999 , pp. 897 - 923
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1999 

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