ABSTRACT
This chapter presents findings from an ethnography of a police force control room and focus groups with frontline response officers in England. The study focused on frontline policing in the context of austerity, the role of police in responding to a variety of incidents, and the implications this had for officer and staff well-being and the management of emotions. Although there was recognition from staff of the range of social welfare incidents which police face on a daily basis, and while they spend relatively little time responding to criminal incidents, there was still an element of traditional police culture present where staff saw their role as assisting officers to catch offenders. Austerity policing (Lumsden and Black, 2018) impacted on their definitions of what was deemed to be ‘police work’ and increased emotional dissonance concerning the role of police at the frontline and their relationship with external agencies. In this chapter we present findings which focus on: 1. depersonalisation; 2. cognitive dissonance; and 3. self-preservation strategies and ‘communities of coping’ in order to deal with the stresses of the job.
