The Return of the Police Gazette? A Cultural Sociology of Intelligence Bulletins

• In Event: Media Frames, Cultural Criminology, and Narratives of Crime

Abstract

In the late 18th century, Patrick Colquhoun and Jeremy Bentham imagined “Police Gazettes”—state publications that cataloged crime and preached moral order—as tools for shaping public perceptions of crime and authority. Widely distributed in both official and public spaces, these gazettes did more than inform; they served as ideological instruments that made police power appear essential to social life.

This paper returns to that vision to critique contemporary police intelligence bulletins produced by fusion centers—post-9/11 institutions created to enhance interagency information sharing. Often dismissed within the intelligence community as low-value “spam,” these bulletins nonetheless perform an important ideological function. Like the Police Gazette, they construct a world of generalized suspicion in which the police are imagined as neutral protectors and crime as an ever-present threat.

Through a content analysis of unredacted bulletins from the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, the Minnesota Fusion Center, and the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center—leaked in the 2020 BlueLeaks archive—this paper identifies recurring tropes of police fetishism: the police as benevolent guardians, as scientific arbiters of truth, and the criminalized “other” as a universal enemy. Far from ensuring safety, these documents manufacture insecurity, reinforcing the idea that life without police is unthinkable.

Author

• Brendan McQuade, University of Southern Maine