‘It's tough shit, basically, that you're all gonna get it': UK virus testing and police officer anxieties of contracting COVID-19

ABSTRACT

Policing is a high-risk occupation that can cause a myriad of psychosocial problems to its workers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, officers have experienced increased rates of anxiety around contracting the virus, and these fears have been mirrored by their families, due to the largely unknown nature of the virus and mounting reports of police deaths across the world. Using data from 18 police officer interviews from a range of roles and forces in early summer 2020, this paper explores officer experiences of policing the pandemic, the emotional labour involved, and the detachment and displacement of anxiety and fear of working a global pandemic with little support from management.

KEYWORDS:

• Policing
• COVID-10
• coronavirus
• emotional labour
• stress
• anxiety
• police

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The first lockdown in England started on 23 March 2020, with restrictions easing on Saturday 4th July. The second lockdown began on 5 November 2020, with all areas in England entering ‘tiered’ restrictions. The tiered restrictions for each area were decided based on five factors:

case detection rates in all age groups, case detection rates in the over 60s, the rate at which cases were rising or falling, the number of positive cases detected as a percentage of tests taken, and pressure on the NHS including current and projected occupancy. (O’Reilly 2020)

The third lockdown started on the 4th January 2021 and was yet to end at the time of writing.

2 ‘Call for participants: I am looking to interview front-line police officers policing the pandemic (ethics approved). I am interested in the fears and anxieties of contracting COVID-19 during this time – Interviews will take place over Zoom and will last approximately 1 h. Please DM [direct message] me if interested. I am looking for around 20 officers as it is an exploratory/pilot study. Please retweet to your policing networks.’

3 Conversely, several officers asked for reassurance that their interviews would be anonymous – interestingly these same officers also asked for the link to my university profile to ‘check credentials’ even though my job, university workplace and real photo is on my Twitter profile.

4 Several blogs and dedicated resources for key workers have emerged, including those for police officers, to help support the mental health of workers during the pandemic. Dr Jess Miller, Police Care UK’s Director of Research, advised on various techniques and practical advice for frontline officers. She noted the ‘shared anxiety’ about the safety of police spouses and family as ‘they risk bringing home the virus after each shift’ (PolFed 2020). Gradually constabularies have made available well-being interventions aimed at improving officers’ coping mechanisms (Bullock and Garland 2020).