Police Beat: The Emotional Power of Music in Police Work By Simon ...

Band members are classified by the department as ‘sworn officers’, which means that they are employees of the department untrained and unqualified to carry out ‘regular’ policing duties but must nevertheless abide by the department’s codes of conduct and deportment, which, as I have already mentioned, specifically include information on the production of ostensibly unemotional bodies. Band members are strictly subject to precisely the same rules of bodily conduct as are operational officers and are required to wear standard issue general duties police uniforms for the bulk of their work and ‘ceremonial duties’ uniforms for marching and other parade work. The general duties uniform worn by band members varies in no obvious way from the general duties uniform worn by operational officers but does include a small embroidered label located on the jacket which indicates that the wearer belongs to the band unit. This label is apparently not visible or noticeable to members of the public, who frequently mistake band members for operational police. This, as I argue below, is a crucial misrecognition upon which the success of the band as a public relations unit is ultimately based.

The fact that band members do not consider themselves police officers runs counter to the image that members of the public have of the band—that it is made up of operational police officers who have joined a departmentally endorsed activity group. That members of the public are largely under what band members call this ‘insulting delusion’ is regularly confirmed for band members when citizens approach them when the band is in public for performance purposes. While they are in the mall, at a shopping centre, in the park or in any of the other public places in which they regularly perform, members of the public often approach band members to ask for street directions, to report traffic problems, offences or the loss of property, or to hand in found articles. Because band members have received no practical police training, they are sometimes not qualified to assist members of the public, and in these cases they explain their inoperational status and the nature of their association with the department. Members of the public are almost always surprised to learn that band members are not involved in other areas of policing and are usually astonished to hear that band members concentrate solely on rehearsing and performing music. Members of the public very often unwittingly insult band members by expressing their disbelief at the idea that band members are paid for ‘sitting around playing music all day’ or by articulating the misconception that this job might be ‘fun’ or, even worse, ‘easy’.⁹