Film the Police! Cop-Watching and Its Embodied Narratives

Abstract

Police accountability organizations known as "cop-watching" groups are proliferating thanks to smartphone penetration and the ease of video sharing on social networks. These groups use digital media technologies to challenge official accounts of events and encroach on the borders of traditional journalism. This qualitative project collected material over the course of 2 years, and uses participant observation and long-form interviews to explore the nature of this activism. Grounded analysis suggests that cop-watching represents a unique form of citizenship; one that combines text and practice to produce embodied narratives, which can give voice to the concerns of others. As a form of so-called sousveillance, cop-watching extends and complicates existing theories about surveillance, journalism, and visual evidence.

How to Govern Visibility?: Legitimizations and Contestations of Visual Data Practices after the 2017 G20 Summit in Hamburg

“…Visibility established through visual representations is considered particularly powerful for at least two reasons. First, the polysemic character and context-dependency of visuals notwithstanding (Müller and Özcan 2007), they are often designated as a form of knowledge and evidence (Bock 2016). Correspondingly, closed-circuit television (CCTV) is often characterized as an "objective witness" (Degli Esposti and Santiago Gómez 2015: 447).…”

“…Public spaces are thus saturated with visual technologies and are increasingly surveilled not only through ubiquitous government or private CCTV but also with the help of individuals' own (mobile) devices and activities (see, e.g., Timan and Oudshoorn 2012). This makes the gatherings and practices of different kinds of actors increasingly visible and trackable as Bock (2016), Ullrich and Knopp (2018), Schneider and Trottier (2012), and Trottier (2012) have shown with their studies on cop-watching practices and crowdsourced user-led policing.…”

Social media and policing: A review of recent research

“…In relation to policing, various organizations—the most famous being Copwatch—have mobilized to record police–citizen interactions, whether during routine patrols or protests and demonstrations (Bradshaw, : Huey, Walby, & Doyle, ; Monahan, ; Toch, ). The accessibility and penetration of smartphones has also encouraged incidental and spontaneous witnessing where unsuspecting bystanders react to and film events in progress (Bock, ; Brucato, ; Schaefer & Steinmetz, ). Videos and images of violent encounters, including the deaths of Eric Garner (USA), Ian Tomlinson (UK), Neda Agha‐Sultan (Iran), and Sammy Yatim (Canada) at the hand of law enforcement, underscore the significance of watching from below.…”

“…While the use of technology to “police the police” dates back at least to George Holliday's camcorder footage of the 1991 beating of Rodney King (Lawrence, 2000), its prevalence and impact is new, however, and attributable to social media (Bock, ; Doyle, ; Hockin & Brunson, ; Simonson, ). Social media offer alternative circuits of publicity, facilitating citizen journalism or instances where technologically literate and equipped individuals document abuse, expose corruption, and provide a check on power.…”

The Visual Citizen in a Digital News Landscape

“…Black Lives Matter activist movement has regularly drawn upon sousveillant documentation in its campaigns against violence and systemic racism, recognizing the raw power of imagery to focus media -and thereby public -attention on instances of alleged police shootings, brutality or misconduct (Allan & Dencik, 2017;Bock, 2016). In making such acts visible, nationwide protests resulted, federal investigations were launched and discussions of policy and attitudes on racial prejudice and discrimination came to the fore on media agendas (Stephen, 2015).…”