‘Wait! Don’t touch me!’: Police uniforms, family anxiety, and rituals of purification in the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Emblematic power is entrenched in the uniform and bodily image of the police. The COVID-19 pandemic has afforded a new layer of understandings of ‘dirty work’ with police officers, and has shown how the police uniform is perceived to be an involuntary vehicle for physical contamination and symbolic taint. This article is based on interviews with 18 police officers from 11 UK police forces over the summer of 2020 and explores how the COVID-19 pandemic caused increased fear and anxiety about virus contraction, particularly when officers were not prioritised for testing and vaccinations at the time. The possibility of transmitting COVID-19 to family members motivated officers to treat their uniforms differently, and they undertook purification rituals to mitigate violations of the physical and symbolic space around the body. Fear and anxiety of ‘the unknown’ is a motivator for discussions about long-term effects of officer well-being, and the significance of learning to prepare for future pandemics.

KEYWORDS:

• Uniforms
• policing
• COVID-19
• contamination
• dirty work
• well-being
• anxiety

Acknowledgments

This article is dedicated, as always, to my late dad Pedro, who always read my articles and was my number one fan. Forever missed.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. The UK government released a Coronavirus Action Plan in March 2020 which detailed isolation rules that required people who had coronavirus symptoms to isolate at home for 14 days (10 if they had been named as a close contact by someone). These isolation rules were later relaxed in 2021 after new evidence emerged regarding transmissibility (Gov, 2020).

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 hour. Please DM [direct message] me if interested.’

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Camilla De Camargo

Camilla De Camargo is a lecturer in criminology at Lancaster University Law School, UK. She graduated with her PhD on neighbourhood policing in 2017 from The University of Salford, Greater Manchester. She has published in international journals on police uniforms, occupational prestige and dirty work, and most recently, how police officers in the UK have dealt with policing the COVID-19 pandemic.