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1. Balancing Loyalty and Oppression: Ambivalence and Marginalization among Lesbian and Gay Law Enforcement Officers in Central Florida

   Nolan Kline, Stephanie Gonzalez (June 2023, Law and Society Association Annual Meeting)

   Public attention to law enforcement officers’ violent interactions with people who are minorized due to their racial, ethnic, and gender identities has grown in recent years, policing has come under increased scrutiny and critique in the United States. Existing scholarship on law enforcement underscores how policing is a key feature of governmentality and upholds power inequalities based on race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, and other social constructions of difference. Scant scholarship, however, examines experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identifying (LGBTQ+) law enforcement officers, who are simultaneously agents of the state and also subjected to governing regimes that perpetuate social exclusions based on their identities. While research on LGBTQ+ officers has examined community perceptions of officers, workplace inclusivity, and masculinized employment settings, it has largely ignored the complexities and ambivalent sentiments of LGBTQ+ officers who are complicit with governing objectives but also disenfranchised due to their identities. In this paper, we report findings from participant observation with an LGBTQ+ law enforcement organization and semi-structured interviews with Lesbian and Gay law enforcement officers (n=7) who were recruited as part of a larger study focused on activism following the 2016 Pulse Shooting in Orlando, Florida. Findings underscore Lesbian and Gay officers’ tensions between embracing professional loyalty and experiences of trauma and exclusion due to their identities. Moreover, interviewees underscore the complex political and economic factors that reinforce their loyalty, including proximity to neoliberal economic ideals such as attractive wages and perceived prestige. Overall, we argue that Lesbian and Gay officers’ loyalty to policing obfuscates larger neoliberal economic failings and reinforces social and political differences. 

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2. Law enforcement training using simulation for locally customized encounters

   https://doi.org/10.3389/frvir.2022.960146  

   Kent, Julie A; Hughes, Charles E (September 2022, Frontiers in Virtual Reality)

   Law enforcement professionals require up to date training for interacting with individuals on the autism spectrum in a manner that facilitates positive citizen response. Although these officers interact with the public regularly, they may only have sporadic interactions with citizens who are not neurotypical. The timing of these interactions is not easy to predict; therefore, it is important to provide regular opportunities to practice contacts with special needs communities. However, in much the same way that it can be difficult to provide regular sessions with other protected groups of people, it is not practical to pull individuals on the autism spectrum to participate in law enforcement training. Role play with neurotypical individuals and classroom training presenting facts about autism do little to prepare these officers for their real-world encounters. Virtual interactions with people on the autism spectrum allow officers to practice techniques without compromising the health and safety of the communities they serve. This paper presents results of a study comparing police training through experiences in virtual reality (VR) with video training regarding police interactions with individuals on the autism spectrum. Police officers in a municipal police department who participated in the study were divided into three groups for continuing training purposes. One group received video training, one group received practice in VR, and one group received training through both video and VR. The differences in training method did not result in significant differences in training effectiveness. However, subjective data did support the efficacy of practice in a virtual setting. This project addressed three important challenges with training in VR. First, the team needed to define the specifics of behavior and language that the simulated individuals would exhibit. Second, the VR had to be tailored to be relevant to the officers participating. Third and finally, the schedule for training delivery had to minimize the time that officers were away from their assigned duties. Officer feedback on their training experiences indicated the approach to these challenges was well-received. The primary research question is whether training in VR is any more effective that watching a training video. 

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3. Laundering Militarization: Preparedness, Professionalism, and Police Common Sense

   https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2023.a913522  

   Katzenstein, Jessica (December 2023, American Quarterly)

   US police militarization is commonly understood as military violence abroad flowing to domestic policing, where it does not belong. Despite years of reform efforts, attempts to demilitarize local police have thus far failed to effect substantive change. This essay builds on the history of US policing, as well as sixteen months of ethnographic research with police in Maryland, to suggest that the ideological labor of policing contributes to these failures. Specifically, I examine two elements of what I call police common sense: preparedness as moral practice and violence as professional technique. In so doing, I demonstrate how policing metabolizes militarization as an apolitical technical craft that counterintuitively reduces violence, and that allows officers to fulfill their primary ethical role as stewards of public crises. Demilitarization reforms function in tandem with the political work of preparedness and professionalism to consecrate “good” militarization as commonsensical and legitimate. These reforms thus inadvertently lend power to the notion of police as the “thin blue line” between extreme violence and innocent (white) society. 

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4. Digital Transformation in Police Work: A Sociomaterial Perspective on Police Body Worn Cameras (BWC)

   Sesay, Abdul; Ramirez, Ron; Oh, On-Ook (January 2017, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences)

   The need to augment human capabilities through computer-based technologies, and a belief in the “objectivity” of data has contributed to the popularity of wearables. Such is the case with BWCs and their proliferation in police organizations. Unfortunately, BWCs have not been studied from an IS perspective, using specific or complementary theories applied in IS. We address this gap with a case study of a mid-sized police department, using a sociomaterial lens. We find that BWCs have triggered significant unanticipated changes in police practice. The impacts of these changes are not uniformly distributed. Rank-and-file patrol officers carry the burden upfront, while evidence technicians are burdened on the backend. We contribute by providing an actual account of the changes and impacts of BWCs in policing; providing initial evidence of how BWCs meet policing goals; and demonstrating the applicability of sociomateriality in explicating wearable technologies in general, and BWCs in particular. 

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5. Making the material routine: a sociomaterial study of the relationship between police body worn cameras (BWCs) and organisational routines

   https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2019.1705823  

   Guzik, Keith; Sesay, A.; Oh, O.; Ramirez, R.; Tong, T. (December 2019, Policing and Society)

   This article employs a sociomaterial perspective adapted from information systems and management studies to examine the potential impact of body worn cameras (BWCs) on police organisations. Based on 42 semi-structured interviews with police employees, the study illustrates how wearable camera technology is seen to ‘afford’ officers and agencies the ability to modify their work routines. Further, these modifications occur in conjunction with particular dimensions of body camera system’s material agency. Through the performativity of video recording devices to move, see, hear, and record, officers report altering how they approach patrol work by displacing certain tasks onto their material associates, which allows them to better carry out their duties. Through the interoperability of the cloud storage systems, departments describe being able to reorganise critical information processing routines in support of criminal prosecutions. Through the objectivity of the digital files produced by body-worn camera systems, departments note effortlessly creating packets of events bearing the impression of truth and legitimacy with which they are able to more easily resolve citizen complaints. These findings underscore the importance of remaining attentive to the materiality of technology in policing and law enforcement research. 

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