Action accounts of police-civilian interactions: Using video elicitation to explore police officers’ how-to knowledge

Police work relies fundamentally on non-declarative how-to knowledge, such as embodied skills (Lizardo, 2017). While there is a longstanding tradition of research on forms of police culture, knowledge, and narratives, insights from cultural sociology have only recently been introduced in this tradition. Forms of police culture are predominantly studied through ethnographies and interviews to arrive at the (re)creation of meanings and experiences in situ, although recently, other researchers have introduced video-analysis to understand the situational dynamics of police work. Whereas the former methodology does not allow for showing sequences of bodily action, the latter does not focus on social meanings and officers’ lived experiences. This article addresses this problem by combining narrative and visual techniques through video elicitation to explore police officers’ bodily knowledge of how and when to act. In 24 video interviews I watched, discussed, and examined video footage with Dutch police officers who participated in violent situations recorded on camera. This method reveals how officers read bodies to generate incentives for taking action. Theoretically, this article draws attention to bodily action knowledge which has received scarce attention in cultural sociology and policing studies alike. It contributes to cultural sociology more generally by demonstrating that collective bodily know-how is learned and plays an important role in collective co-creation of situations. I conclude by discussing how analyzing violent situations through examining videos with those recorded in these events allows us to make explicit embodied understanding and knowing, thus furthering our understanding of situated, in this case police, action.