Holding the Police Accountable? Insights from a Police Oversight Agency.

• In Event: 30662 - Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Policing Issues 1

Abstract

This article analyzes audio recordings of interviews conducted during investigations by a police oversight agency. In these interviews, officers tasked with oversight duties (hereafter, investigators) address misconduct allegations with officers implicated by public complaints. The analysis focuses on two questions: (1) Can we explain the outcomes of these interviews by reference to officers' abidance to the rules alone? (2) Are there other factors shaping the outcome of these investigations? To analyze this material, I used Conversation Analysis. This method for studying social interaction focuses on how interacting participants, in responding to each other's actions, sustain a joint understanding regarding the interaction at hand, including their institutional identities, rights, responsibilities, and goals. The analysis of these materials reveals that interviews may assume a (1) exculpatory, (2) incriminatory, and (3) expiatory character. In exculpatory sequences, investigators design their questions to invoke implicit understandings regarding structuring exculpatory accounts for different allegations, thereby guiding officers under investigation on how to account for their actions. In incriminatory sequences, on the other hand, investigators treat the officers as having committed an "un-excusable" violation, adopting a more adversarial stance (for example, by challenging some of the responses). These violations typically involve the breach of an aspect that previous studies have identified as part of the police working personality, such as their mandate to use force to control subjects and maintain order or display internal solidarity with other officers. Finally, in expiatory sequences, although investigators treat officers as having violated an aspect of the police working personality, they allow them to recognize their mistakes and reassert their commitment to values important to police culture.

Author

• Andre Buscariolli, University of California-Santa Barbara