By Lee Antony Johnson

Assaults against police officers are an enduring aspect of the risk posed to police officers, with the underlying risk of conflict prevalent in all encounters with the public. Egon Bittner (1975) highlighted that police officers hold the threat of and ability to use force to resolve conflict between and with citizens. As a result, police officers put themselves in situations where there is an increased risk of being assaulted or injured. Police officers make quick decisions to interfere in the lives of others, deciding whether to use force and on how best to control potentially violent individuals. The main research questions for this thesis focused on the impact of the police role and the informal rules of the ‘occupational police culture’ on the risk of conflict escalation. It explored the importance of cultural talk as a way of making sense of the police role but also in guiding the way in which officers approach future incidents. To provide this detailed understanding of cultural traits, the study concentrated on the observation of police officers in action at live incidents as well as their behaviours and actions in the parade room and police vehicles when discussing and explaining incidents of violence. The thesis explored how both male and female officers engaged with gendered discussion and the differences between officers in how they approached incidents and reacted to facing aggressive non-compliance. In doing so, the study moves away from quantitative overviews of assault data, including location and temporal analysis towards understanding the realities of policing, the dynamics of incidents, how officers support each other and the influence of informal cultural values in explaining some assaults and the general reactions to being attacked.

Leeds, UK: University of Leeds, 2019. 220p.