Policing the Media : Street Cops and Public Perceptions of Law Enforcement

by David D. Perlmutter

• ISBN13: 9780761911043
• ISBN10: 0761911049
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-02-10
• Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc

Summary

Policing the Media is an investigation into one of the paradoxes of the mass media age. Issues, events, and people that we see most on our television screens are often those that we understand the least. David Perlmutter examined this issue as it relates to one of the most frequently portrayed groups of people on television: police officers. Policing the Media is a report on the ethnography of a police department, derived from the author's experience riding on patrol with officers and joining the department as a reserve policeman. Drawing upon interviews, Perlmutter describes the lives and philosophies of street patrol officers. He finds that cops hold ambiguous attitudes toward their television characters, for much of TV copland is fantastic and unrealistic. Moreover, the officers perceive that the public's attitudes toward law enforcement and crime are directly influenced by mass media. This in turn, he suggests, influences the way that they themselves behave and perform on the street, and that unreal and surreal expectations of them are propagated by television cop shows. This cycle of perceptual influence may itself profoundly impact the contemporary criminal justice system, on the street, in the courts, and in the hearts and minds of ordinary people.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xvi
Viewing and Picturing Cops	1	(20)
Looking Back Through the Viewfinder	2	(4)
Wanting Something to ``Happen''	6	(2)
``Here's a Good Shot''	8	(6)
``They'll Think We're Boring''	14	(7)
All the Street's a Stage	21	(12)
The Dramaturgical Metaphor	21	(5)
Approaching Cops as Viewers	26	(4)
The Fog of the Street	30	(3)
Prime-Time Crime and Street Perceptions	33	(21)
Televisual Content	34	(5)
Street Perceptions: Police Responses to the Screen	39	(15)
Ethnography and Police Work	54	(9)
Observing the Street Cop	54	(9)
Front Stage and Back Stage	63	(36)
The Front Stage	64	(6)
The Back Stage	70	(17)
Star Power and Control	87	(4)
Failed Expectations and Value Judgments	91	(8)
The (Real) Mean World	99	(22)
In the Same Boat	99	(3)
Everyone Is Innocent	102	(4)
No Respect From the Audience	106	(4)
The System Is Against Them: Statistics as Bullshit	110	(5)
Tales of Decline	115	(3)
Conclusions: Rebels Against the Public?	118	(3)
Real Cops and Mediated Cops: Can They ``Get Along''?	121	(12)
Perceptions as Effects	122	(5)
The Struggle Continues	127	(6)
Appendix	133	(16)
References	149	(9)
Index	158	(2)
About the Author	160