Uncertainty and Social Obligation in 911 Calls: The Case of the Henry Louis Gates Arrest

• In Event: 2364 - Stance in Social Interaction

Abstract

Unlike proactive policing where police officers use discretion to decide where to patrol and whom to stop, reactive (or call-driven) policing has long held legitimacy among scholars. The primary reason scholars have not challenged reactive policing is due to its assumption that police have the assent of the public before acting. Yet several high-profile racially-motivated incidents stemming from 911 calls raise concerns about how and when citizens mobilize the law and the role that 911 call-takers and dispatchers play in conveying citizens’ demands. Using conversation analytic methods and drawing on my “unique adequacy” from working as a 911 operator, I examine the 911 call and radio traffic that led to the high-profile arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge, MA to challenge the widely accepted perspective that call-driven policing is relatively unproblematic. The Gates case is one of the most prominent controversies of the past decade and, as such, is useful for identifying the key concepts and assumptions that inform the current debate about police reform among academics and public officials, as well as their limits. Experts tend to ignore the role of the 911 operator in processing and conveying citizen requests to the police. Approaching police reform from this lens results in an oversimplified view of policing. In this case, I find that both the caller’s uncertainty and her resistance to being cast as a beneficiary of police services create interactional troubles during the call. This is because 911 operators are primarily trained in worse-case thinking when faced with uncertainty, and engage in selective listening. Neither the caller’s uncertainty or relation to the incident was passed on to responding officers, leading to a heightened police response. This case highlights the importance of including the upstream interactions that happen before police arrive on-scene in analyses of police-citizen interactions.

Author

• Jessica White Gillooly, University of Michigan