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'Policing the Crisis'? Still ‘Policing the Crisis’? Black and mixed-‘race’ experiences of policing in West Yorkshire Lisa Jane Long Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Sociology and Social Policy Centre for Ethnicity and Racism Studies (CERS) May, 2016 - ii - The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Lisa Jane Long to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2016 The University of Leeds and Lisa Jane Long - iii - Dedication For Christopher Alder. And My friend Janet Alder-his strong, determined, truth seeking sister and warrior for justice without whom my life would have taken a different path. I am humbled and inspired by her fighting spirit in the face of multiple injustices. No Justice-No Peace - iv - Acknowledgements I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my research participants. It was an honour and a privilege that they agreed to share their stories with me and I hope I have done them justice here. I acknowledge with thanks the University of Leeds for the Teaching and Research Scholarship which enabled me to complete this project. Also, I would like to thank Dr Paul Bagguley and Dr Yasmin Hussain for their supervision and feedback. I would also like to thank my examiners Professor Shirley Tate and Professor Colin Webster. Thanks also to Professor Paul Ward and Dr Jodie Matthews at University of Huddersfield who secured funding for my MA by Research and made me feel capable of attempting PhD study. Their encouragement and the fee waiver gave me an opportunity I would not have otherwise had and for that I will always be grateful. I am hugely grateful for the support of colleagues and friends. Thank you to Lewis Simpson for his help in developing the title at the start of the project; Still ‘Policing the Crisis’ has stuck, and seems more relevant than ever. Special thanks to Lynley Aldridge, Claudia Paraschivescu and Remi Salisbury for their support in developing my ideas and their honest, constructive and encouraging feedback; an additional thank you to Lynley for help with the arduous task of formatting the thesis. Thank you to my children Zachary and Jasmine for putting up with me not always being available. I am proud of your achievements and resilience. Thank you also to my beautiful granddaughter Rose who guaranteed weekend nana cuddles and smiles to keep me going towards the end of the PhD journey. To all friends and family whom I have neglected, particularly over the last year, I thank you for your patience and understanding. - v - Abstract Black people in Britain have historically been over policed and under protected. Legislative and policy intervention in the past three decades has not brought about any significant change and, as evidenced by the post-August 2011 riots research, those racialized as Black still have low levels of confidence in the police. Contemporarily, most of what is understood in the field has emerged from statistical analyses of survey and statistical data on stop and search. Qualitative understanding is limited to the experiences of young people across Black and other ethnic minority groups. Within the existing research there is scant attention given to the racializing processes which shape police encounters. This research, grounded in a Critical Race framework, seeks to prioritise the stories and counter- stories of those marginalised by racializing processes. Based on semi structured interviews with twenty individuals who identified as Black or Black and white mixed-‘race’ the emerging counter-stories enable an understanding of ‘race’ and processes of racialization in police/citizen contact. This thesis examines both police initiated and citizen initiated contact and analyses ‘race’ contextually as it intersects with class, gender and Black masculinities. It illuminates how the whiteness of the police institution and processes of institutional racialization and racism, evident within contemporary policing practices, shapes police encounters. Further, it proposes that an activist agenda which makes racism visible can contribute to disrupting power structures and surviving racist affects. - vi - Table of Contents Dedication .................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements................................................................................................... iv Abstract...................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ..................................................................................................... vi Terms of Reference ................................................................................................viii Chapter 1 Introduction............................................................................................. 1 1.1 The Race-Crime Nexus; defining and policing the ‘colour problem’.......... 3 1.2 Still ‘Policing the Crisis’? ............................................................................ 8 1.3 Resistance and Riots .................................................................................. 12 1.4 ‘Race’ and intersecting oppressions........................................................... 20 1.5 Structure of the thesis................................................................................. 25 1.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 2 Policing the Racialized Other .............................................................. 29 2.1 Stop and Search.......................................................................................... 33 2.2 Force and Lethal force ............................................................................... 39 2.3 Institutional Racism ................................................................................... 43 2.4 Cop Culture and the Policing Diversity Agenda........................................ 46 2.5 Policing Black People ................................................................................ 50 2.6 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 54 Chapter 3 Methods.................................................................................................. 55 3.1 Critical Race-Grounded Theory: Black Ontology and Epistemologies of Ignorance ............................................................................................ 56 3.2 Reflexivity: Researcher positionality and white privilege......................... 61 3.3 The qualitative interview as a research tool............................................... 65 3.4 Sampling .................................................................................................... 67 3.5 Analysis...................................................................................................... 72 3.6 Ethics.......................................................................................................... 75 3.7 Conclusion ................................................................................................. 78 - vii - Chapter 4 ‘Babylon remove the chain, now they’re using the brain’: The pervasiveness of ‘race’ in the post-Macpherson police............................... 79 4.1 'Planting the seed of fear' ........................................................................... 80 4.2 Racialized policing: ‘It’s them against us’................................................. 83 4.3 Expectations and Perceptions..................................................................... 91 4.4 Altered Lives: Living with police presence ............................................... 97 4.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 104 Chapter 5 The Racialized Victim of Crime and the Police ............................... 107 5.1 Becoming/un-becoming the victim.......................................................... 109 5.2 Victimological othering and justice denied.............................................. 114 5.3 The racial affects of victimological othering ........................................... 123 5.4 Conclusions.............................................................................................. 129 Chapter 6 Gendered Experiences of Racialized Policing .................................. 131 6.1 The threat of the ‘big Black man’ ............................................................ 132 6.2 Hypo-masculinities and ‘race’ ................................................................. 137 6.3 Black women and the police .................................................................... 140 6.4 Transgressing white femininity................................................................ 146 6.5 Performing deservingness ........................................................................ 151 6.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................... 154 Chapter 7 ‘Race’, Class and Belonging..............................................................
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