In the line of duty: Grief, Police, and the Politics of Death

• In Event: Doing Visual Criminology: New Empirical and Theoretical Directions

Abstract

The police funeral has long been a moment of spectacle. The visual strength of thousands of police officers flooding the streets reflects life in the aftermath of death and emphasizes the power of grief. School campuses close, towns shut down, and cities grieve. Oftentimes, the fallen officer’s funeral procession takes the funeral through the town, and onto the interstates between cities, all in memorial to an officer who sacrificed their life in the line of duty. Yet, such honor operates beyond simple grief. What we see in the compassion of a community, and their honoring of fallen officers, is a disavowal of other lives. In fact, the power reflected in the visually stunning funerals of police negate any counter memories, operating within a political narrative that places some lives as worth honoring, and others as discarding. Imploring a study of the visual powers of police funerals, I look to draw back our attention to the counter memories of police power, the violence used to securitize the social anxieties of late capitalism. In doing so, I look to address how the politics of death play through the visual powers of the police funeral.

Author

• Justin Turner, Morehead State University