ABSTRACT
While police ethnography has grown in popularity within the academy, ethnography itself is still not a widely practiced research technique. Moreover, the ethnographic method and ethnographers are almost completely absent from policy debate, news and opinion, public discussion, and even fictional popular culture about policing and law enforcement. Such omissions seem especially egregious and destructive in the United States, where entire policing crises rise and fade without an ethnographer’s voice being heard. Here I argue that ethnographic conclusions and spokespeople should be part of the discussion on policing issues because ethnography produces useful insights vital to policing debates among policymakers, journalists, and the public. Ethnographic data have an authenticity that speaks to actionable solutions.
