Humour, trust, and tacit knowledge of police and border officers in international police collaboration

ABSTRACT

Previous studies have highlighted the significant role played by what is referred to as the ‘police gaze’, or the set of tacit skills that police officers use in their everyday work to scan the environment, to identify sources of threats or suspects on the streets. The present study suggests that the police gaze can also be used among police officers who do not know one another and do not know whom to trust and who not to trust. This is even more so in collaborative contexts that require the sharing of sensitive information and knowledge, such as in police intelligence work. The aim of the present paper is to suggest how intelligence officers use jokes and humour to identify whom to trust and whom not to trust. Not only is humour used as a social basis for building a sense of group identity and developing better interpersonal collaboration skills, but it is also used to test which colleagues are more trustworthy than others. The paper ends with conclusions, implications, and suggestions for further studies.

KEYWORDS:

• International police intelligence collaboration
• police gaze
• information and knowledge sharing
• jokes and humour
• trust

Introduction

Border management and border security, emergency preparedness, and migration management have become urgent issues that cannot be managed within the confines of national borders. Such international collaborative efforts to control and monitor borderlands and border crossings (Benyon, 1996) have posed new collaboration challenges to manage sensitive intelligence sharing issues (Reiner, 2010), prompting intelligence police officers to devise new forms of skills and practices that differ from those characterising traditional police work. For instance, studies of street level police work largely focus on the tacit knowledge of police officers that they acquire to spot trouble and potential suspects while on duty, what is often called the ‘police gaze' (Finstad, 2000; Holgersson, Gottschalk, & Dean, 2008). The police gaze is a skill that is culturally determined, serving as an analytic eye for the officers to process, categorise, and classify situations or people in their surroundings (Finstad, 2000). These skills cannot easily be explicitly taught but must be learned through experience and real-life events (Gundhus, 2009). Cross-border collaborations around sharing sensitive, intelligence information among colleagues from various cultural contexts pose issues of trust, as well as management challenges.

There has, of late, been an increased interest in cross-border collaboration, in international policing, intelligence policing, and police collaboration work that transcends national police jurisdictions as well as international borders. Such studies have sought to highlight the structural issues resulting from the complexity of international police collaboration as well as inter-governmental relations in general (Benyon, Turnbull, Willis, Woodward, & Beck, 1993; Bowling & Foster, 2002; Loader & Walker, 2007). However, less attention has focused on how the individuals inhabiting these structures cope with their everyday activities, how the actors who are brought together to work are affected by these collaborative practices (Dupont, Manning, & Whelan, 2017), as well as with how they develop interpersonal skills, and assess the commitment of their partners (Yakhlef, 2020). For instance, collaborating with international partners is challenging since the officers are trained to keep secrets regarding cases or organised crime groups that might reach corrupt officers. This makes the officers apprehensive of revealing what they know to outsiders, bringing front and centre issues of trust and suspicion among them – issues whose resolution is a crucial for the success of the collaboration (Yakhlef, 2020).

Police studies have rightly pointed out the significance of developing police culture as a mechanism of easing the pressure of working together in pressing situations. At a premium is the use of humour and jokes as a way of facilitating the process of sharing sensitive knowledge and creating a sense of group identity. The overall assumption is that humour is seen as a coping mechanism deployed to handle the stigmatisation of work identity (Schaefer, 2013) and to mitigate stress, and hardships of the job (Granér, 2014). Jokes and cynicism are used to release tensions of the job (Björk, 2008; Granér, 2014; Uhnoo, 2019), to alleviate pressure (Granér, 2014; Petersson, 2011) or to deal with job-related boredom (Gayadeen, Scott, & Phillips, 2016). However, in this study, humour is not only seen as mechanism for establishing an affective work context that eases the pressure of work and helps the officers to cope with the boredom of the task, but as a mechanism of testing which colleagues to trust with sensitive information and which ones not to trust. The point of departure for this article is an international collaboration project called Turnstone¹, with the aims of improving the collaborative efforts of police and border officers and analysing their understanding of international collaboration.

Collaborating with international partners is challenging since the officers are trained to keep secrets regarding cases or organised crime groups that might reach corrupt police or border officers. This makes the officers apprehensive of outsiders, bringing front and centre issues of trust and suspicion among them – issues whose resolution is a crucial for the success of the collaboration (Yakhlef, 2020). Humour is used as part of the officers’ skills, normally used to scan, and identify criminals and suspects in the streets, in intelligence collaboration contexts to distinguish between trustworthy and non-trustworthy colleagues. In this way, the present study contributes to the body of extant knowledge by suggesting a new function of humour and jokes in the context of international police intelligence collaboration. From the perspective of the study, the concept of police gaze (Finstad, 2000) is seen as a strategy that operates through the mechanisms of jokes and humour to distinguish between those who are trustworthy and those who are not in a context where the sharing of intelligence knowledge is crucial for the success of the collaboration. The use of humour becomes part and parcel of the toolkit of cross-border collaboration officers.

Theoretical elaboration

The police gaze of police officers

The organisational environments of the police (as well as much popular and scholarly work regarding this subject) have created stereotypical images of police officers as featuring a disposition towards possessing a cynical worldview characterised by suspicion, pessimism, and prejudice. Being suspicious might help officers to spot trouble in advance and be more efficient in detecting and solving crimes (Chan, 1997; Holmberg, 2003; Yakhlef, 2018). As introduced by Finstad (2000), police officers need to acquire the ‘police gaze' (politiblikket) to be able to perform their job, that is, they must learn to spot all that is deviant from the norm that civilian citizens would not notice. This skill is also referred to as the ‘police eye' (Holmberg, 2003) or ‘police eying' (Paulsen & Frogner, 2017).² This ‘intuitive' knowledge is difficult to come by without experience and can, therefore, be described as practice-based work knowledge, or as an epistemology since it is shaped in the field through experience (Paulsen & Frogner, 2017). The police gaze is an analytic eye that filters, categorises, and classifies people and situations in the surroundings (Finstad, 2000).

The concept of ‘police gaze’ was developed by Gundhus (2009) in a study of work culture of Norwegian police officers, highlighting that ‘good' police work comes from experience, street knowledge, and real-life sources. On a similar note, Dahl (2019), focusing on police officers who conduct covet directed surveillance, suggests that the concept of the police gaze constitutes part of the ‘the directed surveillance gaze', which is both a proactive and preventive one as it is used both to prevent and detect crimes. This type of police work involves a component of tacit knowledge that differs from the knowledge obtained by street level police officers (Dahl, 2019).

There are various versions of the ‘police gaze' that are practiced by officers in different fields (Dahl, 2019). The police gaze is especially highlighted in connection with street level police officers’ surveillance of the public. Members of the public are the ones primarily targeted by the police eye and categorised as ‘good', ‘bad', ‘rough' or ‘respectable'. Although these studies have increased our understanding of the concept and practice of police gaze, they have given less attention to the use of the police gaze in connection with informal socialisation processes and international police collaboration where officers from various cultural and social contexts are brought together to work. There is also less scholarly attention to the culture and practices of management officers in general, despite a few note-worthy examples.³ Based on the findings of this study, I suggest a development of the police gaze regarding international police collaboration, mainly the intelligence gaze of police officers. This gaze comprises not only of the tacit knowledge of obtaining intelligence information geared towards spotting deviance among potential suspects, but also the tacit interpersonal knowledge of working together in a international context. As argued in this study, police humour and interpersonal socialisation are vital drivers for this process to develop.

Literature review

Police culture and police humour

Ethnographic research of routine police work has brought forth a wide range of norms and values taking place in the hierarchical structures of police organisations, often referred to as ‘police culture' (Cain, 1973; Manning, 1977, 2007). Reiner (2015) describes police culture as a set of norms, values, perspectives, and craft rules that informs police behaviour. Similarly, Manning (1977) sees police culture as the cognitions, skills, and affect which define good police work.

To become part of the occupational culture of the police, officers must learn the craft of policing and what constitutes the behaviour of ‘good' or ‘bad' police officers (Chan, 1996; Chan, Devery, & Doran, 2003; Prokos & Padavic, 2002; Van Maanen, 1973). Researchers have especially identified humour as an important and symbolic feature of the socialisation process of police recruits, as well as coping mechanism of police officers in general (Charman, 2013; Granér, 2014). Although there are various and contested definitions of humour, in the present study, humour is treated as an emotional response ‘in a social context that is elicited by a perception of playful incongruity and is expressed through smiling and laughter' (Martin, 2007, p. 10). Accordingly, joking is considered as an act of engaging in social and communicative behaviour that is perceived as humorous (Martin, 2007; Vivona, 2014).

Previous studies assume that humour and jokes are part of a canteen culture (Waddington, 1999) of police officers used to cope with boredom and hardships during the job. Police humour is closely associated with police storytelling, which is often humorous, dark, ironic, or cruel in its nature. Police stories are often perceived as exaggerated and told as if true, even if there is no or little evidence that these events have occurred or how they unfolded (Smith, Pedersen, & Burnett, 2014). Humour is part of the emotional labour (Hochschild, 2003) of police officers to manage tragic events, coping with occupational stressors, as well as personal and emotional pressures experienced during the job (Gayadeen et al., 2016; Loftus, 2016; Pogrebin & Poole, 1991; Uhnoo, 2019). Humorous storytelling is also seen as a way for police officers to cope with repetitive and difficult tasks and to release tensions of the job (Granér, 2014; Petersson, 2011) and a necessary resource for the officers’ backstage (Goffman, 1959) handling of and managing emotionally charged, difficult or traumatic incidents that they encounter in their work.

Humour has also been used by police organisations to improve their image and reach out to the public. Drawing on Radcliffe-Brown’s (1940, 1952) theory of joking relationship, Wood and McGovern (2021) describe an Australian police organisation’s social media strategy as an attempt to establish symmetrical joking relationship between members of the public and the police. Joking relationships occur in situations between two people when one of them is allowed, or even required, to make fun of the other one. The recipient is in turn required to not take offence. In some situations, this relationship is symmetrical, meaning that one person makes fun of the other and the other does not retaliate. In other situations, the relationship is asymmetrical and both persons make fun of the other (Radcliffe-Brown, 1940, 1952). As noted by Wood and McGovern (2021), the officers’ self-described ‘meme strategy’ to increase the organisation’s social media following raised questions regarding the asymmetricity of power between the police and most members of the public. The relationship between the public and the police is mostly a contractual one, and not all members of the public are allowed to be on joking terms with the police.

Although the societal impact of police jargon and (ethnic) jokes towards the public has been noted (Uhnoo, 2019; Wood & McGovern, 2021), some of the joking behaviour of police officers can also be considered as ‘bullshit' rather than coping strategies or proof of immoral thinking (Sausdal, 2020). Bullshitting or humour can, however, be used to enforce, reject, or manage negative stereotypes of workplace identities (Dick, 2005; Schaefer, 2013). There is also a ‘dark side' to humour in organisations and Billig (2005) suggests that provocative jokes can never be just jokes, claiming that the social acts of teasing or laughing are activities of control; it can be an act of putting someone in his or her place or of avoiding self-criticism altogether. This leads us to another perspective, which is further elaborated on in this article, namely the role of humour, laughter, and humorous storytelling in a collaborative setting. Cruel mockery and dark humour do not only create work-related bonds but can also strengthen insider/outsider divisions and establish internal hierarchies between officers (Sausdal, 2020). Joking in police organisations has been described as a way of clarifying boundaries between in-groups and out-groups (Granér, 2014) functioning as a social glue that can create a collegial atmosphere (Charman, 2013; Fletcher, 1996; Kangasharju & Nikko, 2009; Uhnoo, 2019).

Previous research of police humour has focused especially on humorous interactions and tacit knowledge of street level police officers, surveillance staff, or other practitioners who work in the field and within specific police stations or units (Charman, 2013; Fletcher, 1996). In the present study, all previously mentioned strategies and functions of humour and humorous storytelling were prevalent. However, the officers participating in Project Turnstone originated from various national, organisational, and cultural contexts, claiming that humorous interactions were vital for them to identify trustworthy partners, and to see themselves as part of a team. Humour is also culturally specific and difficult to translate (Chiaro, 2010), which adds another dimension to the humorous interactions experienced in the project. This study aims to suggest humour as an important part of the officers’ occupational culture, of the police gaze, in a collaborative setting.

Methods

This study draws on material gathered in the context of a European collaboration project called Turnstone. The project was co-funded by the EU, the Stockholm Police, Sweden, and the Police and Border Guard board, Northern prefecture in Estonia and took place between January 2014 and December 2015. The data underlying the analysis draws on of interview material and field notes from observation sessions collected in 2014–2015 (Yakhlef, 2018, 2020; Yakhlef, Basic, & Åkerström, 2016, 2017). The participating border agencies were (1) the Police and Border Guard Board in Estonia, (2) the Helsinki Police, (3) the Gulf of Finland Coast Guard District in Finland, (4) the State Border Guard of the Republic of Latvia, (5) the State Border Guard Service at the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Lithuania, (6) the Stockholm County Police, Border Police Division, and (7) the Swedish Coast Guard, Region Northeast.

As the goal of the project was to increase and enable collaboration among members of the different organisations a specific ‘investigation group’ was formed. The group consisted of intelligence officers⁴ from Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden. The idea was that this selected group of people would work together during different work-related activities, establish close personal relationships, and hopefully would become a ‘special international criminal analysis team'. The officers participated in joint work weeks referred to as ‘power weeks' by the officers. The power weeks usually lasted between five and seven days and took place at the different border agencies. During 2014 and 2015, eight power weeks took place and between 8 and 20 (or in some cases more) police members, border or coast guard officers participated. Most of the participating officers were male, with only one to six female participants in each week.⁵ The officers interviewed for this study stem from different national, cultural, and organisational backgrounds and mainly worked with intelligence analysis. They had an ambiguous position between rank-and-file officer (when patrolling in harbours) and office worker (conducting intelligence analysis within an office setting).

My task as a researcher was to conduct participant observation during the joint work weeks and to conduct interviews with these officers from the participating organisations. The material was collected using an ethnographic observation technique and interviews with the participants. Seventy three interviews were conducted with 66 members from the participating organisations. Between 6 and 15 people were interviewed from each participating organisation. In total, 13 interviews were conducted with female officers and 53 interviews with male officers. The relatively proportionally low number of female interviewees is due to the generally low number of female employees in the participating organisations. Some of officers were interviewed twice or three times. The reason for this was mainly to ask follow-up questions. Each interview lasted about an hour, but some were a bit longer and some were only short field interviews. From the outset, the officers were informed that participation was voluntary and that all gathered data would be made anonymous.⁶ All officers who were asked to participate agreed to be interviewed except for two people.

As this is a qualitative ethnographic study the interviews were semi-structured and took the form of active interviews in which the interviewees were considered narrators who, together with the interviewer, co-constructed a story or a description of a phenomenon (Holstein & Gubrium, 1995). An interview guide was used comprising of questions focusing on collaboration, the officers’ previous experiences and stories of successful and unsuccessful collaboration. As the fieldwork and project progressed, several other relevant topics emerged and questions regarding issues of trust, suspicion, espionage, humour, and tacit knowledge were added to the interview guide. Conversations and interviews with informants were conducted in English or Swedish. Field observations were made during work sessions, coffee, lunch and dinner breaks, everyday border guard or police work, project-related meetings, and day-to-day work.

The analysis and interpretation processes were undertaken before, during, and after fieldwork (Atkinson, 2014). I have engaged in a cyclical relationship between data and ideas, using a method which Atkinson (2014) refers to as ethnographic abduction. The material amassed was then transcribed, integrated with the field notes, then carefully read, and manually coded. During the coding process, I asked a combination of questions such as what do we have here, and which categories, concepts or labels are needed to account for the phenomena occurring in the ethnographic data? What might this be a case of, and what patterns or figurations are present in the data (Atkinson, 2014)? After a first examination, I focused on a few recurring topics, amongst others hands-on collaboration, trust, humour, jokes, suspicion, espionage, tacit knowledge, skills, and practices performed by the officers during the collaboration processes.

Findings

When analysing the empirical material several themes emerged, resulting in two categories of humorous interactions and their respective effect on collaboration activities during the project: (1) humour described as ways of testing colleagues’ trustworthiness; and (2) the feedback on and responses to jokes are considered ways of increasing one’s tacit knowledge, of developing one’s intelligence collaboration gaze. To illustrate the context of the social interactions taking place during the officers’ joint work weeks, I describe a few situations in which humoristic stories, jokes, and anecdotes were shared among the participating officers, and the ensuing responses to and feedback on such jokes, depending on whether they were perceived as rude, improper, or merely amusing.

Testing your (new) colleagues through humour: suspicion and distrust

For intelligence officers, using the police gaze to spot trouble or misconduct is an endeavour that takes place both on the streets when encountering suspects, but even more so in the office while emailing, texting when collaborating with international partners. Achieving good collaboration with international partners was considered a policing skill that demands a lot of ‘work' related to social ‘behaviour, timing, and personality' (Yakhlef, 2018). When asking officers about how they achieved successful collaboration, many maintained that informal socialising was the most vital element for bilateral exchange and trust-based interactions. As noted in previous studies, the concept of joking relationships can be adapted to workplace contexts where it serves the function of mediating competition, tension, or conflict in work-related social relationships (Apte, 1985; Radcliffe-Brown, 1952; Wood & McGovern, 2021). In the workplace, joking relationships can help workers form group identity, social relations, and ease social interaction by engaging people in playful practices of joking, teasing or humorous aspects of their work (Apte, 1985). In similar ways, the officers under consideration consider joking as one of the most important aspects of informal socialising, especially in the context of collaborative work: ‘Trust is important. When it comes to exchange information, you want to know who you are talking to. After some jokes, a drink, or a conversation it is easier to get to know a person', says one officer. Others saw joking as a way of building a good social foundation that enables them to find out things that they had in common, and to ‘test' their partners regarding their commitment to the work as well as their political orientation and moral proclivity. One officer explained in an interview that they regularly tested collaboration partners in various ways, sometimes by sending inaccurate intelligence information or sometimes by making sensitive or risky jokes to see their reaction. Some jokes were sexist or homophobic, for example, when the officers joked about ‘feeling gay' when they had dressed up to attend a formal meeting, or racist as they joked about the proneness of criminal behaviour among some ethnic groups. A few officers took offence when homophobic or racist jokes were made, stating that these types of jokes were discriminating and reflected badly on the group.

However, the most common jokes focused on the officers’ skills and work performances, as well as their political views. One example is when a high number of immigrants had arrived in Finland. As soon as a large group of non-EU travellers were investigated, the Finnish officers, in sarcastic way joked, let us send all these non-EU travellers to Sweden, since no one there would notice their arrival. The officers thus implied that the Swedish immigration and border control were badly organised, taking in too many refugees and migrants without any ‘control'. Some of the Swedish officers laughed when such jokes were made, whereas others seemed a little offended. Similar jokes were made when a few other Finnish officers had caught a suspect who was forbidden to enter Sweden. One of the Finnish officers said (with a smile and an ironic tone of voice) that he ‘will inform his colleagues to help the man to travel to Sweden so that Finland does not need to take care of him'. The Swedish officers who heard this joke responded with laugher saying, ‘you are so friendly!’.

From the onset of the project, several officers mentioned cultural differences as an obstacle to successful collaboration. The dilemma that the officers face in the Baltic Sea area is that geographical proximity requires collaboration, but at the same time, structural, cultural, financial, political, and social differences can make collaboration difficult. The potential ‘risks' of intelligence work and its association with ‘secret agents protecting their nations against bad guys' was often present in the officers’ jokes. One situation that generated much laughter was one officer’s account of a small USB memory stick that was placed in a cabinet in one of the border offices. The host officers said that the cabinets mostly included various gifts brought by visiting law enforcement officers. One of the items at display was a seemingly random USB stick that was a gift from a Chinese organisation. ‘We were very apprehensive of the USB and immediately placed it in the cabinet as we don’t want our state secrets to spread (…) this USB might be one of our most dangerous items', the host officers said while smiling at the ridiculous thought of using a USB stick from an unknown partner, risking infecting their computers with viruses. This conversation draws our attention to the officers’ construction of their collective knowledge and is an example of an ‘us and them’ construction: ‘us' (the smart intelligence officers) versus the (potentially) ‘criminal other' collaboration partner.

In the interviews, the officers expressed great concern with ‘Russian spies' infiltrating the police and border organisations. The Soviet heritage of the Baltic states was a source of worry for the Swedish and Finnish officers. Estonian, Lithuanian, and Latvian officers similarly expressed concern regarding corrupt officers who sold information to organised crime groups, as well as the risk of some of their Baltic colleagues being ‘too friendly' with Russia. Sensitive issues such as espionage, alcohol consumption during work, bribery, or the Russian annexation of the Crimea peninsula in early 2014 were difficult topics to talk about, according to some of the officers. As mentioned in interviews during the power weeks, the officers often chose to make jokes about such issues instead of talking about them in a serious manner so as not to offend colleagues. One example took place when the officers were scheduled to have their lunch break. One officer said that he had a problem with his laptop and needed to stay behind in the office. Two other officers immediately asked him if he wanted to stay so that he could ‘hack' their laptops and steal ‘state secrets'. The officer laughed, assuring them that he would not try anything like that. One of the suspicions officers muttered that he would keep ‘a close eye' on him and check his laptop ‘extra carefully' when he got back. The officers also engaged in various ‘pranks' during the joint work weeks, such as hiding vodka bottles in the bag belonging to one of the senior officers.

Practical jokes and pranks seemed to lighten the mood during long workdays and gave the officers ‘something to talk about' afterwards. Additionally, joking and making ironic remarks on sensitive issues, such as accusations of espionage, alcoholism, or the annexation of the Crimea area in 2014, were ways for the group to make sense of and diagnose the situation together (Basic & Yakhlef, 2022; van Hulst, 2013; Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). Partners who showed resentment towards some of the group’s joint understandings did not continue to work with the group or participate in the joint work weeks. By engaging in joking relationships regarding sensitive issues, the officers thus affirmed that they were on the same page and their identity as a group fighting common enemies (Apte, 1985; Basic & Yakhlef, 2022), that is, criminals as well as untrustworthy or corrupt border police officers.

Developing the intelligence collaboration gaze through humour

As we have seen, the informal aspects of the power weeks, in which the officers shared stories and teased one another, were means of increasing group identification and managing suspicion. This process did not always go easily, and some were annoyed or offended by the jokes. Opposing political views was, however, not the only reason why collaboration might not go smoothly. A few of the officers who had previous work experience in international collaborations described the process of building good partnerships as difficult and time consuming. Not everyone had the skills, knowledge, or social capacity to achieve successful collaboration. This was also one of the reasons why the project initiators wanted the project to incorporate hands-on joint work weeks, not only formal training, and meetings. According to one of the project initiators, the officers had to learn how to talk to people, how to become personal without being too private, how to assess the trustworthiness of colleagues and how to maintain personal contacts. These collaboration skills were difficult to learn during training at the police academy and could only be attained through experience.

One way of practicing the collaboration skills was to work side by side with international colleagues, as well as sharing previous experiences amongst one another. During the power weeks, the officers often joked about their previous experiences invoking anecdotal stories of ‘national work characteristics' of the officers. Kin-based metaphors were used in this asymmetrical process of joking relationships between the officers (Apte, 1985). Each ‘group' (for instance, Swedish officers, Estonian officers, etc.) had its preferred ‘target' group of whom to joke about. Recurrent topics revolved around teasing Finnish officers for their fondness of sauna, the Baltic nationalities of drinking too much vodka, or the Swedes for their ‘long and boring meetings’. Such jokes were experienced as acceptable jokes, always met with laughter or polite smiles. One Latvian officer joked about Estonian police officers who had a ‘long telephone line', as they rarely answered their phones when their collaboration partners called them. Not answering the phone and not responding to request from partners might cause serious delays or even hinder the arrest of suspects, as the officers might not get the information needed in time. In this way, this joke implicates important information about the work practices of the officers, as well as allegations of a serious collaboration issue that needed to be resolved. The officers claimed that they were continuously ‘gathering' new knowledge about their collaboration partners, accumulating a library of information, personal experiences, and intelligence police knowledge. In this sense, stories and anecdotes played an important role in providing information regarding possible scenarios that the officers might encounter. Police anecdotes have occasionally been dismissed as inaccurate stories of police conduct, as well as uncriticised mythology passed on from officer to officer (Shearing & Ericson, 1991).

Humorous ‘storytelling at the police station' can be seen as ‘a social practice in which the group members ask about and tell one another what has been going on’ (van Hulst, 2013, p. 636). Storytelling amongst the officers was not just a way to kill time but helped ‘educate' other officers regarding consequences of various actions but was also a joint practice where officers provided comments, and analyses of stories. This was particularly important for the power week members given the participants’ different socio-cultural backgrounds and work experiences. By the end of the project, most the officers said that the project had exceeded their expectations as they had gotten to know one another better and strong bonds and work relations based on trust had been formed.

Even though much of the officers’ informal interaction and jokes seemed to be ‘bullshit', as phrased by Sausdal (2020), conversational rituals of this kind are important exchanges among individuals that allow for a great amount of shared meaning (Collins, 2004). Sharing stories of experienced situations indicates a willingness from both sides to act as an audience to these stories and to take turns in telling the stories. Practices or rituals of this kind can thus generate and cement social ties (Collins, 2004) and expand the officers’ knowledge of their partners. The officers become a form of folk ethnographers (Claycomb & Mulberry, 2007; Wästerfors, 2004) gathering data and observations of their international partners. Truly successful networks of officers who trusted one another could only be achieved through skilful interpersonal collaboration and social interaction, and especially after sharing a few good laughs.

Discussion

This article has highlighted how police and border officers can amplify their police gaze, using humour and jokes as they perform their tasks in an international collaboration project. I have argued that the concept of the police gaze needs to expand its application to international intelligence police collaboration contexts where trust is crucial among the parties involved. As discussed, the use of humour and jokes are instrumental in the process of acquiring interpersonal skills. In the context of international intelligence collaboration, I suggest that the officers acquire an intelligence collaboration gaze while working with partners from various national contexts through humoristic interaction. The gaze is enriched by learning how jokes and humour are used to test their partners’ commitment, trustworthiness, or political orientation. Considering that the tacit knowledge of police work is mostly highlighted in studies of street level policing (Holgersson et al., 2008), this study adds to the body of knowledge of the practice of humour as a way of increasing officers’ stock of intelligence knowledge, providing a window into colleagues’ views, predispositions, and social and political proclivity. Hence, this article’s main contribution has been to provide a further role to the practice of humour and jokes in police collaboration and police cultural knowledge research.

The findings of this study have similarities with previous research focusing on the role of humour when establishing group identity and in-groups and out-groups (Charman, 2013; Fletcher, 1996; Granér, 2014; Kangasharju & Nikko, 2009; Uhnoo, 2019) but differs from it in that it gives a new perspective on humoristic practices. The officers did not only use humour to identify colleagues with similar values, opinions, and understandings of social situations, but also to test whom to trust and whom not to trust with sensitive information. This skill of using humour to scan new colleagues and categorise them on a dimension of trust expands the scope of the police gaze and enlarges their knowledge horizon.

Another important finding relates to the nature of police culture change. Previous scholarly accounts have claimed that police culture witnesses an aversion towards change and the adaptation of new technological equipment, and new methods of working (Reiner, 2010; Van Maanen, 1973). ‘Police culture', is perceived as a set of values plagued by conservatism and pragmatism, often being regarded as the key barrier to implementing change in police organisations (Loftus, 2010; Reiner, 2010). The present study features an eagerness and willingness by the officers to become experts on collaboration through informal interaction and humour. Even though the officers celebrated ‘real hands-on police work' and complained about new managerial implementations, they evolved into learning new intelligence-based policing practices. The findings of this study encourage us to rethink some taken for granted aspects of police culture as conservative and resistant to change and inter-organisational collaboration.

Although this study provided unique insight into the daily hands-on collaborative work of intelligence officer not easily accessible for social researchers, it is important to acknowledge that it has its limitations. It is concerned with a specific project taking place in a European context in the Baltic Sea area during a specific period. The officers working in this collaborative project had previous experiences of collaboration since the EU enlargement in the 1990s. Most of the officers who participated were volunteers and had a personal interest in collaboration. The officers interviewed in this study consist of a rather small sample that would need to be extended to gain more insight into collaboration practices in other contexts. This study does not take into consideration how the collaboration evolved after the project had been terminated.

It is in this connection that more research is needed to further investigate how informal, humoristic practices impact interpersonal relationship, knowledge, and the police gaze within an international police collaboration context. To what extent can humoristic practices change and be a mediator of culture? Various aspects and implications of the humorous interactions taking place in collaborative settings could be interpreted in novel ways. The dark side of police humour, as being racist, sexist or homophobic has warranted some attention in previous research (Uhnoo, 2019), but more research on the implications of such jokes in a collaborative police setting is needed. Although most of the joking that occurred during the power weeks was asymmetrical (Radcliffe-Brown, 1940, 1952), more focus on the recipients’ reactions might provide other aspects of power and rank among the officers. More scholarly attention focusing on intelligence police work that takes place beyond the street is needed to expand our understanding of police cultural knowledge and tacit understandings of their work, their collaboration partners, and the society that they serve. Given the social and political climate in Europe and elsewhere, issues of international security, collaboration, espionage, and distrust seem more urgent than ever.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Goran Basic, Malin Åkerström, and David Wästerfors for inspiring collaboration and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The data underlying this study was initially gathered by three researchers (Sophia Yakhlef, Goran Basic, & Malin Åkerström) (Yakhlef et al., 2016, 2017; Yakhlef, 2018, 2020; Åkerström, Wästerfors, & Yakhlef, 2020; Basic & Yakhlef, 2022). Some parts of this text were published in the doctoral dissertation United Agents: Community of Practice within Border Policing in the Baltic Sea Area (Yakhlef, 2018), and in the book Cross Border-Police Collaboration: Building Communities of Practice in the Baltic Sea Area (Yakhlef, 2020).

2 The concept of politiblikket in Norwegian is often translated into the police gaze or the police eye but does not to my knowledge have one agreed upon English translation. In Norwegian, Finstad describes the concept as ‘et konstruert og årvåkent» blikk som kan «oppdage, avsløre, være til hjelp for publikum, gripe inn mot straffbare forhold (…). For politiet er denne måten å observere på selvsagt' (Finstad, 2000, p. 60).

3 See for example Waddington’s (2013) A ‘kinder blue’: analysing the police management of the Sheffield anti-‘Lib Dem’ protest of March and Brown, Cooper, and Kirkcaldy’s (2000) research regarding stressors and methods of coping among senior police managers at a time of organisational and management change.

4 Most of the criminal analysts participating were originally coast guard, border guard or border police officers who had been trained to qualify as criminal analysts or intelligence officers.

5 The number of participants in each power week is difficult to estimate as several other officers outside the power week ‘office' assisted the power week team and conducted surveillance during the power weeks. The power weeks were attended mostly by male officers except for a few female officers at each event. Most of the female participants joked in a similar manner as their male colleagues did. Although the female officers joined the group in laughing when the male officers teased one another, few female officers prompted such jokes and few shared stories with the whole group during the power weeks.

6 The interviewees and participants in the fieldwork process were informed about the purpose of the study, anonymity, and that participation was voluntary. I have followed the guidelines of The Swedish Research Council (Etikprövningsnämnden, 2020) and all gathered data has been made anonymous. I have also changed details (such as names of places, objects, or people) in personal accounts and stories without changing anything that might affect the outcome of the analysis. I have never interacted with potential suspects and the empirical data does not include any personal information about suspects or convictions.