ABSTRACT
The aftermath of a police shooting is a messy matter. The consequences of a shooting are felt and acted upon at several levels within police organizations. Official, collegial, and individual versions of a particular shooting often contrast in both form—external/internal/private—and content—representation/symbol/feeling. Based on one’s commitment to the police role and one’s social position within a department, an officer will attempt to build an account for a shooting that will protect his sense of self as shaped by the relationships he has with his colleagues and organization. Because shootings are to a degree “routine matters” within many police agencies, especially large ones, individual accounts are worked out in line with mutually held background understandings of what constitutes proper police conduct before, during, and after a shooting. That such accounts are only partial indicators of “what really happened” is a point well understood by the police.
