The showability of policing: How police officers’ use of videos in organizational contexts reproduces police culture

Abstract

While much scholarly literature on police ‘canteen’ culture focuses on police storytelling, there is little research on the effects of camera phone technologies on police behaviours, particularly in organizational settings. This article introduces the concept of showability to examine how police officers use videos in their everyday police life, and how this relates to police culture. Based on an ethnographic study of the Dutch police, it illustrates that officers show, share, and discuss videos of various policing acts such as arrests, car chases, and use-of-force events, and do this in various locations such as office spaces, squad cars, and on the streets. First and foremost, officers show videos to entertain and to educate themselves and their fellow officers. Second, showing videos is a new occupational practice that, like in telling stories, reinforces and refutes aspects of police culture, for instance, a masculine ethos. The article contributes to criminological scholarship on the era of ‘new visibility’ by demonstrating that showability is a form of inward visibility wherein officers generate a visual world that fits their professional vision. It also contributes to a sociological understanding of the ‘everydayness’ of police culture. I claim that showability is a key feature of policing practices, which is relevant in light of increasing pressures on the police to account for their work.

Introduction

In recent years, policing has transformed from a low-visibility occupation to a high-visibility one (Loftus, 2019). Due to the omnipresence of smartphones, the police (mainly uniformed) is regularly captured on film. Police officers now work in continuous techno-social contexts not only by being filmed (Bock, 2016), but also by filming civilians through body-worn cameras (BWCs) and closed-circuit television (CCTV). The growing presence of cameras, and the capacity to share videos on online platforms such as YouTube and social media sites like Facebook, has given rise to intensified scrutiny of police acts, especially of police misconduct (Goldsmith, 2010; Lum, 2021). Public (media) visibility in particular has increased the attention towards ‘just’ policing and sparked discussions about police accountability (Bekkers and Moody, 2014; Lister and Rowe, 2015; Walker and Archbold, 2019). Existing scholarship on visibility generally focuses on officers being filmed (Miller, 2016) and scholarly literature on police culture often departs from a narrative lens (Smith et al., 2014). Less, however, is known about how police officers themselves use videos to make sense of and account for their actions. In this article, I offer an empirical account of how videos play a role within police teams.

Building on studies on the tellability of policing (Schaefer and Tewksbury, 2018; Van Hulst, 2013), I explore by whom, to whom, when, where, and what kind of videos are shown. I examine what videos are showable, in which organizational settings officers show videos to one another, why they show them, and how this relates to extant insights on police culture. Empirically, I fill the gap between narrative and police visibility studies by showing that videos, like the telling of ‘war stories’ (Van Maanen, 1973a), perform a social and educational function. That is, officers use them to entertain as well as educate themselves and each other. The theoretical contribution is to shift the focus from police officers as objects of surveillance to how they appropriate video showing and sharing in occupational contexts, which allows us to see how videos are used in the (re)creation of occupational police culture. To denote this shift, I introduce the concept of showability. In terms of methods, the article illustrates that research into officers' use of videos necessitates longer-term ethnographic engagement; building rapport is indispensable to recognize and grasp the salience of informal practices around video showing and sharing. Finally, by illustrating under what conditions the showing of videos occurs, the article contributes to the tradition of research into police culture and to criminological scholarship on the era of ‘new visibility’ and visual criminology (Carrabine, 2015; Hayward, 2009). In sum, in this article, I clarify: (1) what kinds of videos are shown and why officers show them and (2) what the showing of videos tells us about the effects of visual technologies on policing behaviours in organizational contexts, and the reproduction or potential for transformations of police culture.

The ‘new visibility’ and police culture

There is now an abundance of research indicating that the police have entered a new era of (public) visibility (Sandhu and Haggerty, 2015). Brown (2016: 293–294) indicates this has been generated by (1) the ubiquity of camera phones, (2) people's awareness of their capacity and ability to engage in, document, and intervene in events, for instance through citizen journalism (Greer and Mclaughlin, 2010), and (3) the proliferation of new media and online interactivity. These three developments have transformed the formerly concealed police conduct and invisibility of policing activities (Manning, 2008) into a ‘new visibility’ (Thompson, 2005) of front-line police work. To Thompson (2005: 31) the development of communication media, which made previously hidden practices, actions, and events visible to the public, is not just the outcome of information flows, but also the public’s realization that ‘mediated visibility can be a weapon’. Goldsmith (2010: 930–931) revisited the concept of visibility in two case studies in London and Vancouver, noting that practices of sousveillance, ‘powered by video and internet technologies’, expanded the visibility of policing and will ‘almost inevitably’ lead to ‘more frequent, globalized spectacles’ of mis/conduct which the police will have to address. Moreover, the accelerated pace of CCTV video recording systems that now capture many public spaces enhanced the availability of footage of policing in public, increasing the potential for exposure to police mis/conduct (Doyle, 2006; Haggerty and Ericson, 2006). The introduction of BWCs further solidified this enhanced visibility (Rowe et al., 2018).

On the other hand, BWC and CCTV footage have become an everyday piece of police ‘kit’, for example, fundamental to predictive policing, police investigations, and serving as evidentiary value (Brucato, 2015). Videos are now an integral part of policing practices, indispensable for the surveillance and control of the public. Yet, the prevailing question in the field of visibility studies has been to understand what happens when the cameras used by the police to monitor ‘us’ are turned back to them (Monahan, 2006: 515). For instance, whether the use of BWCs leads to more self-awareness and accountability, or reduces use-of-force (Ariel et al., 2016; Newell, 2021; Wood and Groff, 2019). Goold (2003) argued that the ‘panopticisation’ of the streets makes officers more cautious and accountable as it's harder to avoid the public gaze. Huey et al. (2006) thus call the synoptic scrutiny of the police a form of ‘counter-surveillance’, viewing the new visibility as a resistance tool to ‘police the police’. For example, cell phone cameras are increasingly used in an attempt to counter the police–civilian power imbalance (Friis Søgaard et al., 2022; Newell, 2014). While Haggerty and Sandhu (2014: 11) nuance the suggestion of visibility as a resistance tool, the pervasiveness of cameras throughout Western societies is ‘changing the dynamics of policing on the ground’. Today's hyper-visibility of policing has encouraged citizens across the globe to critically engage with and challenge police practices and procedures. Highly publicized police brutality cases have caused tremendous controversy and public concern over the past few years, increasing societal demands for more oversight (Dunham and Alpert, 2021). However, the lens has not been turned to officers’ informal practices concerning videos. While scholars such as Fassin (2017a: 277, 282) and Rowe et al. (2018: 84, 86) also observed officers watching online amateur footage of police activities, the police's daily informal use of videos has not been theorized in relation to police culture.

This article examines to what extent police officers’ use of videos in organizational settings reproduces and possibly transforms aspects of police culture. The extant literature on police occupational culture has listed several ‘core characteristics’ that shape officers’ everyday decisions and practices, such as a crime fighter image and masculine ethos (Bittner, 1970; Reiner, 2010). Other scholars have questioned the monolithic definition of culture in classic ethnographies and the dominance of such key cultural features, whilst asserting there may be a solid core to police culture (Cockroft, 2020; Loftus, 2010b, 2010a; Paoline III and Gau, 2017; Sklansky, 2007). Studies of police storytelling, in particular, have illuminated how police culture is shared through the telling of stories (Holdaway, 1983; Kurtz and Upton, 2017; Van Hulst, 2013). In this article, I demonstrate that showing videos is a new occupational practice that, in addition to storytelling and more related to the pervasiveness of visual technologies, both reinforces and refutes aspects of police culture. Newell (2019: 74) suggested that understanding the effects of the ‘new visibility’ on policing ‘is vitally important to our tasks of organizing, understanding, and overseeing the police’. The significance of understanding how showability relates to ‘visibility’ and to police culture lies in the role that it plays in the everyday functioning of officers and keeping the police accountable. This article extends our knowledge on the ‘everydayness’ of the use of videos. It thus addresses scholars’ appeal to examine the consequences of increased surveillance (Neyland and Coopmans, 2014) by exploring why, how, and when officers draw upon videos within organizational settings. This is relevant because the effects of camera phone technologies on police behaviours have largely been ignored (Farrar, 2013), and because existing research focuses largely on the police being filmed rather than how officers use videos.

In the coming sections, I first detail the used methodology. This is followed by a description of what kinds of videos officers show and in which contexts they do so. Next, I demonstrate that officers show videos to entertain and to educate themselves and each other, and in doing so reinforce and refute aspects of police culture. In the final section, I discuss the implications of the showability of policing for police legitimacy and accountability and explore avenues for future research.

Methodology

This article explores how the police show videos through an ethnographic account of the Dutch police force between 2017 and 2021. The study is part of a larger research project into the emotional and situational dynamics of violent interactions in policing. The main research sites include two police stations in two large cities, given the pseudonyms Chalk and Bone City, supplemented by stations in less densely inhabited areas. I accompanied officers from several ranks, divisions, and police teams, including specialized arrest units and the riot police, during the regular morning, evening, and night shifts. I went along during ride-alongs, surveillance, (un)planned arrests, attended meetings, meals, office work, and witnessed training sessions for recruits. I took brief field notes on interactions among officers and their daily practices. The next day I transcribed field notes into detailed narrative accounts. All officers were ensured confidentiality and anonymity through the use of pseudonyms.

During fieldwork, I noticed that the use of visual illustrations, notably videos, permeated many day-to-day interactions in various police teams. I frequently witnessed officers showing videos to one another as well as the showing of multiple videos in a row. Showing videos was a regular topic of conversation and many officers participated in this practice. Moreover, I was often invited to watch them. Officers from different police teams even texted and emailed videos to me, for example, ‘Hey Laura, last night I experienced a violent incident in which I was bitten by a suspect. There is footage of it. Seems an ideal case for your research into violence. Do you want to watch it?’. While showing videos to me as an outsider can be considered a form of impression management (Goffman, 2002), my prolonged immersion in their day-to-day life, hanging out in backstage regions such as vehicles but also out in public, indicated that officers frequently show videos amongst themselves in differing contexts and settings. Following the ubiquity of videos during fieldwork, I conducted 25 video elicitation interviews with police officers who were captured on camera. Previous analysis of this data revealed that officers re-perform their actions seen on video to explicate their embodied knowledge (Keesman, 2021). Video elicitation methods work well because they match the showing and watching of videos as a frequent and natural occurrence in their daily work, and thus connect to officers’ sociability.

In addition to the omnipresence of videos, many police stations had entire walls filled with newspaper articles and photoshopped pictures of officers in action. For example, of officers making an arrest, standing in a riot line-up, or conducting a search. Officers also frequently showed photos of crime scenes and sustained injuries. This confirmed to me that the policing profession is not only permeated with visual illustrations but that ‘looking at themselves’ is an integral part of the job. Long-term observations allowed me to comprehend the significance and implications of showing videos as a daily activity in police organizational settings. My fieldwork offered the potential to discover what was buried in routinized regularities, the ordinary and the (seemingly) mundane (Fassin, 2017b). Thus, the ethnography provided a unique opportunity to explore and theorize the salience of the showability of policing.

Given the serendipitous character of the data, the analysis took an abductive approach. Abductive analysis concerns ‘a creative inferential process of producing new hypotheses and theories based on surprising research evidence’ (Timmermans and Tavory, 2012: 170). This analytical strategy fits the ethnography well because it is attentive to observational unexpected findings. The analysis began with identifying themes, categories, and contexts in which videos were shown by examining recorded field notes. Through this first exploration, I generated initial codes of when videos were discussed. This included recurring contexts and topics such as ‘meal-time’, ‘office room’, and ‘use-of-force’. I then identified similarities and overlaps between these issues. Next, I explored the content of the types of videos that were shown and analysed the accompanying explanations to generate (sub)themes, for example, ‘reflection’, ‘scrutinizing’, ‘humour’, and police culture themes such as ‘thrill seeking’ and ‘superiority’. To organize the data, I attached these codes to the transcripts in Atlas.ti. To check inferred hypotheses, I iteratively moved back and forth between data and theory. More specifically, I explored existing theories on police visibility, tellability, and culture to develop a novel conceptualization of inward visibility, that is, of showability. The following sections illustrate what kinds of videos officers show and share, and how showing videos plays a key role in officers’ sense-making of police action.

What is showable and how is it shown?

Police officers of all genders and backgrounds whom I encountered in my fieldwork have videos of various policing events such as (car) chases, arrests, shootings (of people and dogs), and use-of-force events, stored on their work and personal phones. I witnessed officers showing videos of being victimized, for example, getting stabbed or shot at, of shoplifters and drug dealers being arrested, undercover operations, drunk and disorderly people, and domestic violence situations. These videos, sometimes even from years ago, come from BWCs, CCTV, police helicopter cameras, local media coverage, and bystander videos uploaded online. Most times, officers are in possession of videos of themselves and/or of their closest colleagues. Officers film pc-monitors at the police station to obtain BWC or CCTV footage, transfer or download videos, and visit online platforms that publish police action. They regularly share videos of themselves, their fellow officers, and of national or local events in group chats and app groups. When critical events are recorded locally, the officers in that region have usually seen the video. When a use-of-force incident hits national news, many officers of all ranks, including superiors and trainers, are aware of or have seen the video. Officers edit videos by adding songs and Photoshop pictures. For example, I saw pictures of officers’ faces pasted onto other bodies, and of officers who were on the phone, or vacuuming, photoshopped in pictures of riots covered in smoke, fire, and fighting scenes. The officers’ ‘relaxed attitude’ amid escalating circumstances is considered funny.

Officers show videos in various locations and contexts such as the canteen, briefing rooms, office spaces, the parking lot, squad cars, and out on the street. For showing videos, the police station as-a-whole functions as the canteen (Waddington, 1999). Showability thus differs from tellability in that specific locations do not dictate or prohibit the showing of videos, that is, there is no single front stage or site of performance. Videos are shown at police festivities such as Christmas drinks, presentations, and in training settings, but notably during moments of relative inaction. Police work is not always full of action, drama, and danger, but includes long periods of relative inactivity (Fassin, 2017a; Phillips, 2016). In what follows, I demonstrate that, in addition to storytelling, officers engage in video-sharing practices to break with the boring times in policing, to socialize and perform occupational and organizational cultural activity to better understand the job (Rowe and Rowe, 2021).

To be showable a video must display effective police actions, for example, smooth, strong, dominant, and controlled policing, or questionable police actions, for example, (unintended) mistakes, errors, and transgressions. Showable videos are those that include a notion of victimness or rare happenings such as the use of guns or violence. The video needs to show a ‘reason’ for the negative or positive events and outcomes. Similar to tellability, this can be something or someone that then bears the blame (Schaefer and Tewksbury, 2018). Videos of highly publicized police violence incidents repeatedly shown in the media are often shared. Videos of use-of-force incidents not only warn officers about the dangers of policing but emphasize the potential for danger. In showing such videos, officers fortify the job as inherently dangerous (Punch, 1979). While their perceived risk is disproportionate to the actual risk (Cullen et al., 1983), they cultivate an image of violence as always looming and thus having to ‘maintain the edge’ (Paoline III, 2003). In this way, they keep each other oriented towards a ‘danger imperative’ (Sierra-Arévalo, 2021). Moreover, officers reinforce their superior position and emphasize the police's singular right to use force, both classic themes in police culture (Westley, 1970). Additionally, videos that gained notoriety within police teams are shown and re-shown. For instance, officers arresting infamous criminals, or – on a smaller scale – behaviours that go against police procedure. For example, while standing in a hallway of Bone City's police station, an officer asks Officer Lewis if he has ever shown me ‘the backhand’ video, bursting into laughter. Lewis, now also laughing, takes me to the parking lot to watch a video, off of his phone, of him hitting a suspect with his baton. The video gained notoriety as ‘the backhand’ because Lewis uses the baton as a backhand stroke, like in tennis. It is showable because the hitting is opposed to how officers learn to use the baton but effective: the suspect backs off. This is considered funny. Lewis even shows another video from a different CCTV camera to re-show it from a contrasting angle.

While some videos are shared more frequently and over longer periods of time than others, and some officers – those who work more hours or in busy city centres – are more likely to be recorded, showing videos is not limited to those with a certain kind of privileged status who merit the right to show them. Whereas Schaefer and Tewksbury (2018) argue that those with sufficient social standing are usually granted the role of storytelling, for example, those who enjoy a level of authority within the group, both rookies and seniors show videos because they ‘do the talking’ for them. The practice of showing videos thus flattens out a sense of hierarchy. Nonetheless, like telling ‘tales of the field’ (Van Maanen, 1973b), showing videos is rewarding because the humour and boldness of those who show them are celebrated. The following analysis further illustrates how showing videos serve a social and educational function and reinforces as well as refutes police cultural aspects.

Entertaining

First, officers show and watch videos because they showcase the thrill and excitement of police work. Through showing videos, they accentuate the ‘craziness’ and unpredictability of the job. For example, while driving in a squad car, Officer Charlie puts his phone in my hands to show a video of him racing his bike towards an ongoing fight, calling himself a saviour: ‘I heard dispatchers say “Quickly they’re kicking him to death!” I cycled like a madman, it was really a record time. You’re the only one that can save him in that moment’. While exceptional occurrences are also tellable, watching themselves on film reinforces their embodied existence and foregrounds the corporeality of their work. In videos, officers are no longer ‘corporeally absent’ (McKay and Lee, 2020). In the words of an officer: ‘It makes it a lot livelier when you see your colleagues doing their work on the streets’. Reliving moments thus not only occurs via discursive practices, but takes shape through visual practices. I witnessed officers showing videos to one another of themselves at riots in the 1980s via YouTube, of Christmas tree bonfires that escalated, and infra-red footage from a police helicopter of a mortar bomb being thrown under a police van an officer was in (resulting in hearing loss). Officers show these videos to ‘shock’ and impress each other, and to illustrate how they navigate dangers. Those witnessing typically respond with ‘WOW!’, ‘That's insane!’, and laughter. Such videos are entertaining because they stress an ethos of bravery, a central component in police culture (Gaines et al., 2008). Moreover, they relate to representations of police work associated with action, crime, high-speed chases, and arrests in the act (Fassin, 2017a: 269). Films and television series also convey this image of constant excitement and riveting adventures (Fassin, 2017a: 269). This is what officers may think the police ought to be and why they fancy watching themselves on film. Through showing videos then, officers maintain the illusion of the policing profession as thrilling and full of action.

The entertaining aspect of showing videos also comes to the fore in the finding that videos are shown at gatherings. For example, Officer Tom showed two videos, which he edited, at the New Year's drinks:

While the rock music plays, several pictures of different arresting situations are shown, but also talks amongst officers, police–civilian interactions, and short videos of officers dancing and laughing together. Tom: ‘I do try to arouse a certain feeling with this.’ [Fieldnote evening shift Bone City]

Showing videos at police gatherings reminds officers of their extraordinary position in society and reinforces their group bond. Tom attempts to strengthen these feelings by displaying the caption: ‘we’ve had to defend ourselves in the media’. With this, he emphasizes an ‘us versus them’ mentality (Waddington, 1999) and reiterates the public cannot fully understand the police or their work. Importantly, in producing and editing videos, officers create a form of authorship and their own visual world in which stories and interpretations are shared. They generate a form of inward visibility as opposed to civilian visibility, offering an alternative to media framing. Vernacular soldier-produced videos also offered an alternative to military-media control during the Iraq conflict (Smith and Mcdonald, 2011). Showability is thus a form of (narrative) response – or can even be seen as an act of resistance – against public visibility.

Officers also find it entertaining to watch videos that emphasize a sense of superiority and demarcate their authority. While sitting in the operational room of Chalk City, I notice a female officer is showing a video from a CCTV camera that recorded 20 University students entering a student's house for a party. This is against COVID-19 regulations in February 2021 when a lockdown was instated and one visitor a day was allowed. She added music and captions to the video:

Six officers are standing packed together to watch the video. The video shows the students one-by-one entering the student house. Then, two colleagues of this team pull up in their squad car to the front door. The song ‘Oh No’ by Capone (TikTok remix) blasts: ‘Oh No… Oh No… Oh No No No No No’. The female officer smiles and the officers watching the video start laughing. The song heightens the sense that the students are busted. Officer David steps out of the squad car and knocks on the front door. The officers watching the video now smile at David, who is also watching the video with them. After a few seconds the door opens and David instructs all students to exit the student house. He patiently waits in the doorway while the students one-by-one – somewhat embarrassed and disappointed – make their exit. The officers watching the video again burst into laughter. [Fieldnote evening shift]

The ‘Oh No’ song produces a ‘gotcha’ feeling. It strengthens the idea that the officers are there to enforce the rules, and that people cannot escape them. The camera footage is not just used to (quickly) detect violators and to do their job, but reinforces their ‘law enforcing’ role and a power imbalance. Laughing together about it strengthens their group bond (Garner, 1994). Videos of catching people in the act of violating COVID rules, especially of people running to make curfew, were shared more frequently during COVID times because they provided excitement at a time when the job became quite tedious. For a brief moment, the video disconnected them from their routine and connected them with their imagined mission (Fassin, 2017a). As an officer argued: ‘It's a cat-and-mouse game, like Tom and Jerry’. Showing videos also allows officers to express support and brings about a sense of belonging to the same group, that is, ‘that could have been me’. For instance, an officer showed a video of a colleague who witnessed an individual getting shot by the police because he was wielding a knife (due to psychosis). He sympathises with his colleague when he sees him putting his hands on his head after the shot: ‘It really hurt me seeing that. That he thinks like what the fuck. I felt so bad for him’. With such reflections, officers emphasize they’re a caring community, crucial to maintaining police culture elements of group solidarity and loyalty (Paoline III, 2003).

Showing videos is also entertaining because they display real-life humorous events. For example, while hanging out in a police station, Officer Lee shows a bystander video uploaded online and police helicopter camera footage of himself chasing a suspect. Lee laughs when he sees himself jumping over a fence, but laughs more loudly when he sees his colleague in need of help to jump: ‘Look he can't do it, he needs a hand from a citizen [laughs]’. He finds this funny because officers are expected to be fit and skilful. Instead, here a civilian physically aids the police, indicating a sense of failure. Scholars have long demonstrated that police officers use humour to interpret work experiences, cope with tragic events (Progrebin and Poole, 1988), and build social cohesion (Holdaway, 1988). However, humour is also an instrument that produces knowledge and templates for performance to other officers because comedic-lived experiences provide lessons that are coded in humour (Gayadeen and Phillips, 2016). In this sense, showing videos is a regulatory practice that reproduces components of traditional police culture such as fitness and goal-orientedness. Relatedly, I witnessed officers show videos of colleagues that were too late in noticing a suspect had already been taken hold of, laughing and reflecting: ‘This is not acceptable, and when we saw this we joked about it. I said to him “Hey were you sleeping or something?”’ First, joking about ‘being late’ is not merely entertaining but reminds officers that they should always be alert and action-ready. Second, in emphasizing action-readiness officers (re)produce a masculine ethos, similar to storytelling (Kurtz and Upton, 2017). While hanging out in the operational room of Bone City's police station, officers are also laughing about the (in)efficacy of their colleagues’ actions captured by local media. The video shows this officer repeatedly hitting a suspect with a baton in an attempt to make him lie on his stomach:

One officer argues: ‘The suspect doesn't turn around, hitting repeatedly is ridiculous: it doesn't help anything. [laughter in the room]. Everyone watched the video and thought pppffff. Look at him!’ He points at his colleague in the – now playing – video on his phone. Others exchange disapproving looks and laugh when someone repeats their colleagues’ instructions in a giggly tone. Another officer engages in the conversation: ‘He goes up and down with his baton, but it's ineffective’. [Fieldnote morning shift]

Through joking about the actions of others, officers entertain as well as regulate themselves and each other. Thus, the showability of policing is not just about displaying the comedy of their work or a means to express humour, but about reproducing aspects of police culture such as thrill-seeking, superiority, and action-readiness. However, showability challenges police culture when videos are used to learn from police behaviours, the argument to which I turn now.

Educating

Whereas officers usually refrain from giving outright critique, videos capture an undeniable reality that opens up space to talk about what is (in)correct policing. Officers show videos because it provides a way to make their acts and perceptions intelligible. Videos confront officers with their (bodily) acts, cooperating efforts, and subtle mistakes. They then try to interpret their behaviours, for example, why they acted the way they did, by discussing them alone and together. In this way, officers learn and convey knowledge about what is good and bad policing. Thus, similar to storytelling, showing videos is about capturing and transmitting knowledge (Shearing and Ericson, 1991).

Officers show videos of others to reflect on (in)correct and (in)effective police behaviours. For instance, Officers Waldo and Sylvester show a video of a colleague who puts his open hand into a suspect’s face to pull him towards the ground. They argue: This is rough grabbing, pulling him back by his face. What if he has a weak neck? Then it's broken or injured in an instant. You can't pull someone downwards like that’. The video appeals to a certain proportionality: it confirms there is a right and wrong way to use force. In another example, a bystander video of three officers failing to control an aggressive man gained notoriety in national media and police teams. I witnessed officers from different teams show this video to learn that coordination is key to gain control. One officer reflected: ‘They don't really push through in uniformity. They’re working individually. They’re doing stuff solo and that doesn't work. Communication is missing. They should’ve stood there together, come up with a plan together and then do it’. Similar to this situation, Officer Kurt, a trainer at Chalk City's Police Academy, shows a bystander video over lunch of two officers who, according to him, are wrongly conducting an arrest:

Look here he still has his booklet in his hand. He's doing two things at the same time; he's screwing around with his booklet with his left hand and with his right hand he has a cuff on the suspect. You need two hands to cuff, that's just how it is. Also problematic is that he will now experience squeeze reflex, he's gonna start squeezing that cuff with his hand because of stress and it will only get worse. [Quote from fieldnote]

By pinpointing the officers’ failures Kurt finds evidence for police procedure; needing two hands to cuff. More importantly, everyone at the table witnessing the video and Kurt's discussion is now reminded of what the correct way is.

In addition to learning about police behaviours by scrutinizing others, officers use videos as a tool to reflect upon their own actions. As an officer put it: ‘It helps to explain better what you’re doing. That's why watching videos on your phone is helpful because in that way we can learn from it ourselves’. For example, Officers Neil and Lewis watch a CCTV video of their attempt to arrest and realize they should’ve communicated better:

Neil: It was educational because now I saw that I did not apply a controlling technique when Lewis asked me ‘Got him?’ to which I said ‘Yes’. But actually I should have said: ‘Yes, but I don’t have him under control yet’.

Lewis: Yyeah and maybe my question was also not the right one. ‘Got him?’ is apparently not a good question. Next time I should ask ‘Do you have him under control?’ So my question should be different and your answer should be different. [Excerpt from fieldnote morning shift Bone City]

Officers show videos to learn where situations ‘went wrong’ and how they should have or could have acted differently. Officer George thus watched his colleagues’ BWC footage to understand why he got kicked in the squad car. First, the video concerns a notion of ‘victimness’ as he is hit. Second, George learns that the situation resulted in violence because he gave the suspect ‘too much room’ and notices how he could have prevented this: ‘First we should have slid the passenger seat backwards to limit the suspects’ physical space, and second when my buddy felt the suspects’ knee wiggle we should have intervened’. Correspondingly, while having a coffee break with a Special Arresting Unit, Officer Stan shows BWC footage of himself drawing his gun to illustrate his misjudgement:

In the video we see that after answering some of Stan's questions, the suspect stands up from the table he's sitting at and calmly walks over to the kitchen with his glass of water. Then, we hear ‘ZING’ and see that the suspect pulls out a large knife from the sink. Stan immediately draws his gun, aims and repeatedly yells in a calm tone: ‘Don't do this’. The man then lays the knife on the kitchen counter, laughs and walks back to the table. Stan immediately puts his gun back in the holster, grabs the suspect by the neck and pulls him towards the ground. [Fieldnote evening shift]

The video is showable because it highlights the unexpected circumstances officers work in. Stan has now learned to better check for knives next time. In showing the video to his team, he warns others to do the same.

More important is that officers also show videos to reflect upon their transgressions. This finding is particularly relevant in contemporary times where police brutality and racist incidents receive significant attention, and because here the potential for transforming aspects of police culture arises. I frequently witnessed officers show videos of their transgressions to each other. I was also invited to watch recordings of excessive use-of-force such as kicking and hitting suspects. Contrary to storytelling where negative stories of police rarely occur, specifically those that fail to reinforce a hegemonic image of the police or blame officers for use-of-force (Schaefer and Tewksbury, 2018: 45, 51), officers do not ‘shut out’ bad videos. Chan (1999) showed that police organizations have difficulty in dealing with videos of misbehaviour, but some officers watch and discuss their illegitimate actions captured on film. For example, Officer Perry shows his own BWC footage to understand why he used excessive force. He ‘called a suspect names and punched her twice’ while she was sitting handcuffed in the police car. The video first shows him laughing and complaining to colleagues: ‘She's not normal, she just scratched the inside of my mouth’. Then, he quickly re-opens the car door because the woman is punching fellow Officer Sef sitting in the driver's seat:

Perry: ‘HEY ACT NORMAL! ACT NORMAL! Fucking whore, sit down, sit down! Bitch’. She screams ‘OUCH, OUCH! That hurts, it hurts!’ Perry: ‘Yeah that's Karma’. Perry now looks at me [author] with a guilty look in his eyes and smiles somewhat. ‘You can't see it here but when I saw that she was hitting Sef, I hit her here [pointing and circling around his right eye] full on twice, really with full power on her eye. She had already scratched me, right’. He then looks at fellow Officer Alex who is watching the video with us and says: ‘Yeah really hard man, it was not ok, I shouldn't have done that, because it's a woman you know, you don't do that, but she hit Sef, I was so over it’. He talks with a guilt-ridden voice, looks crestfallen and repeats: ‘I shouldn't have done that, it was wrong, normally I’m not like this. She was hitting Sef you know and she was at it for such a long time. She just couldn't act that way. But it was actually my own fault’. I ask him why to which he replies: ‘Because I should have put the cuffs on better. She could exit them easily with her hand because women have thinner wrists. So if I would have cuffed better (tighter) then she wouldn't have been able to free her hand, hit Sef and then this wouldn't have happened’. [Video elicitation interview]

Through watching the video Perry learns that if he had cuffed the suspect properly he could have prevented her from hitting Sef and himself by using force. Alex questions whether it was his fault in an attempt to legitimize it, ‘There was no other way right?’, but Perry repeats it's not correct police behaviour. However, he then emphasizes his mouth was bleeding and that he knows the woman: ‘But she did fully deserve it, I would do it again with her’. In saying this, he refocuses the blame on the civilian and ensures why the force was necessary, justifying his actions. Despite this, showing videos allows for self-reflection and discussion of counter narratives that question police action. This goes against a cover-your-ass attitude (Fielding, 1994) and encourages accountability. In the words of an officer: ‘You judge your own actions and you can accept feedback from each other better’. Similarly, Officer Earl argues that showing videos works to hold themselves accountable:

The police should be open and transparent. If you hit one too many times then you have to report that truthfully because if there are five videos that show you did that and you keep denying it, that's not a good situation.

The premise that the police should be transparent is staked by showing videos. Coudert et al. (2015; see also Rowe et al., 2018) therefore argue that video footage may be suitable as an accountability tool by apportioning responsibility and encouraging learning.

In fact, to encourage accountability, trainers show videos. I witnessed trainers showing videos of officers using tasers, of police negotiators at work, and of officers conducting chokeholds to warn about the dangers of experiencing tunnel vision. Trainer: ‘This suspect is not resisting, he's floundering and choking right now but the officer doesn't notice’. I also attended ‘feedback sessions’ wherein trainers use live streams of recruits practicing various scenarios to enable others to reflect upon police strategies and techniques. At Bone City's Police Academy, Trainers Ricky and Frank show a video of an officer who hits a civilian who is videotaping him (conform to the new visibility) to discuss whether this is justified. The recruits argue the officer may have hit him accidentally. Ricky disagrees:

Ricky: ‘Emotionally I understand that you’re saying this, but if you look at the framework of standards [used to check whether Dutch officers’ use-of-force is justified] then it's not ok. Being filmed is very annoying, but according to the framework it's not right to use force here’.

Recruits protest this interpretation: ‘But he could be dangerous’, ‘He can pull something [a weapon] unexpectedly!’

Ricky: ‘But is he threatening you or is he just annoying? He's coming close to you but he's not hindering you in your work is he? Not fully at least. You have to have legal grounds to intervene. I don’t think you can here. He hasn’t crossed a line yet, but it is annoying. [Fieldnote]

The video helps officers to reflect on legal grounds for use-of-force, on how to deal with police visibility, and on how to cope with upcoming emotions such as anger. Videos are thus systematically used as an instrument to discuss police legitimacy and justice issues. In fact, Virtual Reality is now used at Dutch Police Academies to combat ethnic profiling and discriminatory practices. Similar to narratives, visuals work as a vehicle for learning in police education. In sum, officers show videos to gain a sense of what is and isn't good policing. It is a means of policing the internal group by reinforcing what is correct police behaviour, consequently socializing (young) officers.

Discussion

My findings indicate that showing videos is a fundamental part of everyday police life. To denote this practice, I introduced the concept of showability which captures officers’ ability to show videos and how showable videos shape and express police culture. Officers show, watch, share, and discuss videos of routine police actions, being victimized, and use-of-force events. They do this in various locations such as the canteen, squad cars, and office spaces, and during mundane times, when they gather in groups, and in training sessions. Showing videos serves a social and educational function. First, officers show videos to entertain themselves and others. Second, they use videos as a tool to interpret and reflect upon police work by scrutinizing officers’ behaviours, such as the efficacy of body techniques. The paradox is that entertaining videos also work to educate officers and vice versa. Showing videos is not only a means through which officers vent about (the dangers of) police work, but is also used to convey knowledge, cultural norms, and values about what is good and bad policing. In this way, it is a powerful means of socialization. Third, through showing videos, officers bond and learn about their discretionary powers (Waddington, 1999).

This article has contributed to existing scholarship in several ways. First, empirically, this is the first ethnographic study and examination of video watching in police organizational contexts. I have demonstrated that showing videos has become an important social practice in police professional sense-making and that showability is a key feature of the (re)production of police culture. While I did not intend to duplicate the clichés of police culture and storytelling, the findings do mirror earlier research. Like in telling stories, officers use videos to make sense of their work environment, to provide meaning, and to shape organizational identity (Van Hulst, 2013). Showability reproduces various elements of police culture, for example, a crime fighter ideology, understanding of community and solidarity, and distributes police ethos. My analysis has contributed to criminological scholarship on police boredom by demonstrating that during periods of inaction, officers use videos to engage in organizational cultural activity and fill in the gap between the tedious routine and imagined life of policing, that is, the idealized world and its wearisome reality (Fassin, 2017a).

Second, and also empirically, the concept of showability demonstrates significant differences with tellability. It differs from tellability in that it foregrounds the corporeality of police work, is not dependent on specific contexts or officers’ social standing and allows for critiques and problem-solving discussions. In confronting themselves with real-life footage, officers are less able to rely on informally instituted behavioural codes (Campeau, 2015) told through stories. Videos restrict how officers shape behaviours post hoc as they must account for them, for example, show remorse, regret, or rationalize their actions. With stories, officers can choose to never tell of events or describe them in a way that justifies their actions. Showability thus has the potential to transform traditional police culture because it opens up a dialogue about transgressions, and legitimate and proportionate police action, stimulating reflexive thought and encouraging accountability. This is relevant given officers’ extraordinary powers to use coercive force, the need to be viewed by the public as legitimate, and in light of ever-growing pressures to account for their work exacerbated by heightened visibility (Deuchar et al., 2020). Therefore, this analysis is also useful to understand how the police legitimize misconduct, for example, excessive force (Skolnick and Fyfe, 1993), and build trustworthy public–police relationships (Goldsmith, 2005).

Most importantly, the concept of showability offers a theoretical shift. It refocuses existing scholarship on the era of ‘new visibility’ which tends to view officers as rather passive objects of filming practices. Showability instead emphasizes officers’ agency using videos themselves. Police forces around the world increasingly experiment with online media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, to boost transparency, create affective relations (Walby and Wilkinson, 2021), and communicate their own messages, for example, solicit information regarding certain crimes. However, criminological scholarship has focused almost exclusively on how increased police oversight has contributed to globalized spectacles of misconduct. But being watched is only one part of visibility: officers are watched but also watch themselves. Through showing videos, police officers engender a form of ownership. Showability is thus a form of inward visibility in which officers appropriate the showing of videos, assign meaning to them, and generate a visual world that fits and shapes their professional vision, the way they perceive policing (Goodwin, 1994). Following this, we can hypothesize that officers may become desensitized to the feeling of being observed all the time as they themselves observe each other through videos on a regular basis too.

Finally, my findings add to visual criminology and sociological literature on the effects of current visual technologies on policing behaviours more broadly (Carrabine, 2012). The concept of showability can be used in microsociological studies of policing to further understand officers’ everyday practices and daily activities. It can also be deployed in macrosociological research into policing to show how and to what extent types of videos, their contexts, functions, meanings, and consequences, vary across time and space. The concept of showability is thus beneficial to wider socio-political understandings of contemporary policing, and, like visibility, a fully entitled sociological category (Brighenti, 2007).

However, these results raise various ethical issues. First, officers can be put in vulnerable positions when others show videos without their consent. While I did not observe this, showability does increase visibility and the potential for scrutiny by colleagues in addition to surveillance by the public. Officers voiced they feel apprehensive about (or even refrain from) watching videos because they are ashamed about their actions captured on film, that is, will ‘feel stupid’. Others argue that they relive emotions such as sadness and anger, and that visibility ‘requires a high level of professionalism’ because the public sometimes ‘wants them’ to use force ‘so they can frame it in a certain way’. Officers feel unhappy with this because the availability of video footage to vast public audiences undermines the typical narratives they use in legitimizing their violence (Lawrence, 2000). Another ethical consideration regards officers celebration of their superior – morally and ethically – position in society. This has implications for criminal justice matters such as policies around video watching. For example, policies on video sharing within occupational settings are largely lacking. The lack of supervision on how videos are produced and distributed runs the risk of them being used for other purposes than permitted within police organizations. In the Dutch context, scandals of sharing photos and videos of suspects in police app groups have already occurred. This issue should be addressed by those in policymaking and senior positions. Finally, on the part of the researcher, an ethical challenge presents itself in watching videos of officers engaging in potentially unlawful violent acts.

To conclude, the concept of showability raises new questions and opens up a new domain of inquiry. My data indicated that not all daily recorded events were circulated which raises the question of what kinds of videos are considered uninteresting or unshowable. Uninteresting material can have much to say about which videos have unique value and how stories attached to videos become a dominant narrative of, for example, an event. A related question is whether there can be conflicting stories attached to the same video. If so, how does this get resolved? Exploring which videos are deemed (un)interesting can also tell us how showability is related to cultural narratives. Do officers predominantly select videos that reinforce their cultural beliefs, such as those that buttress masculine ideals, or can they also undermine them? For instance, do officers share videos of using empathy, emotional intelligence, or so-called ‘soft skills’ to reduce conflict and defuse violent encounters? Another line of inquiry for additional research is to examine how showing videos relates to peer acceptance. Following the finding that showing videos is not limited to those with a privileged status, the question remains how this practice rewards some officers and potentially excludes others. This research also offers a starting point for analyses on how showability affects police behaviour. To what extent do officers modify their behaviours, that is, police themselves, based on watching videos? Does showability, in addition to omnipresent visibility, generate risk aversion to front-line police practices? Finally, more research is needed to understand how gender and racial dimensions, that characterize controversial policing and brutality cases, appear in the showing of videos. How are videos used to reinforce broader social divisions of class, gender, and race in policing, and how do such structural arrangements shape stories attached to videos? Hence, the concept of showability provides opportunities for future empirical research and yields theoretical implications. Engaging with officers’ use of videos in organizational contexts would help to broaden the conceptual understanding of police visibility, its relationship to police culture, and the role of visual technologies therein.