Police Beat: The Emotional Power of Music in Police Work By Simone Dennis

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

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Introduction

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Australian governments of all persuasions have deceived the public into believing that they can enjoy the same, or better, police services by paying less tax and by generating ‘efficiencies’ … in the process, … notions of the public good and public service have been undermined by a narrow emphasis on economic efficiency although the public now understands its public services have not been maintained or improved. (pp. 6–7).

Trueman goes on to discuss the ways in which this situation has impacted on officers, who, according to Trueman, generally believe that members of the public understand that the police department cannot provide services (i.e., be proactive) but can only provide a police force to deal with criminals (i.e., be reactive). Furthermore, according to Trueman, officers think that members of the public cannot reconcile the reactive law enforcement policing they experience with the proactive police services that are advertised. In general, Trueman found, as did I, that officers felt that they took the rap for reactive underfunding and proactive overadvertising and that they consequently classified themselves as ‘victims’ of both the government and of public opinion:

[as police] we do not believe that we are valued by contemporary government because it values us against market criteria which are alien to a policing tradition based upon civics … we do not believe that we are valued by society generally, because … it [society] is feeling vulnerable due to a general decline in public services—including policing (Trueman, 2000, p. 7).

Grounds for victim status at the hands of members of the public were well-founded according to Grayville cops, who cited a variety of insults that had been hurled at them in the course of duty. These insults cast them variously as insensate ‘robots’, ‘robocops’ and ‘cogs in the Government’s rip-off wheel’. These were understood by Grayville cops as a disturbing progression of the already well-established insult ‘pig’ since both kinds of insult are linked by their shared membership in a category of nonhumanness.