r/ProtectandServe: an exploration of the virtual canteen culture regarding police misconduct

ABSTRACT

This study examined a specific online community of verified law enforcement personnel to uncover how police officers frame issues of police misconduct among other law enforcement on the social media website, Reddit. This study engaged in three stages of grounded theory analysis on 223 posts from the subreddit, r/ProtectandServe. This study found four major themes that emerged from conversations within this subreddit of verified law enforcement personnel and their perceptions of police misconduct: (1) negativity towards the media and politicians, (2) trust in their police administrators and organisations, (3) solidarity with fellow police officers, and (4) scepticism (at minimum) towards civilians. How officers use the Reddit platform and what they gain is consistent with the characteristics of police culture found within the existing literature, including solidarity with colleagues, the ‘us versus them’ mindset, the code of silence, and ‘canteen culture’ at the police station but in an online format [Waddington (1999). Police (canteen) sub-culture. British journal of criminology, 39 (2), 287–309, Skolnick (2011). Justice without trial: law enforcement in democratic society. New Orleans, LA: Quid Pro Books, Van Hulst (2013). Storytelling at the police station. British journal of criminology, 53, 624–642, Alpert, Noble, and Rojek (2015). Solidarity and the code of silence. In: R.G. Dunham, and G.P. Alpert, eds. Critical issues in policing: contemporary readings. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc, 106–121, Kappeler, Sluder, and Alpert (2015). Breeding deviant conformity: police ideology and culture. In: R.G. Dunham, and G.P. Alpert, eds. Critical issues in policing: contemporary readings. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc, 79–105] – with some notable nuances. Likewise, these officers apply an aggressive scepticism toward the civilians with whom they interact online and within the stories they tell. In conclusion, police officers are using informal, online spaces to take control of certain police narratives different from official departmental pages while simultaneously cultivating a space where they can offer topical commentary on policing issues and build virtual solidarity. More research is needed in these informal, online spaces where law enforcement personnel are the focus.

KEYWORDS:

• Online
• forums
• policing
• police culture
• police misconduct
• virtual ethnography
• grounded theory
• Reddit

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Assumedly, this descriptor means that members of this subreddit can enjoy a certain level of protection, censorship, and, quite literally, control over their online space by forum moderators from whatever they define to be hostile towards police officers or other users. For instance, their ‘Rule #1’ states that ‘no ignorant cop bashing’, like calling officers ‘pigs’, will be tolerated, allowing the moderators to remove that content and/or ban that user (r/ProtectandServe 2018).

2 ‘Threads’ and ‘posts’ will be used interchangeably.

3 Initially, all comments pertaining to police misconduct within this subreddit were coded. An analysis of both verified and unverified users, however, quickly became too much for the scope of this project; therefore, only the posts, comments, and replies that came from verified users were analysed.

4 Reddit allows users to ‘upvote’ individual posts, comments, and replies if they find that content contributes to the conversation or if the user generally likes what is being said where the opposite is true for users that ‘downvote’ content (i.e., the content is irrelevant, or the user dislikes what is being said).