The management of had feelings

Institutional means for focusing these bad feelings into areas where they can be dealt with arc necessary. The explanations given for some of the more unpleasant aspects of canteen culture', such as racist and sexist humour, often involve the notion that they are ways of dealing with stress. They remain expressions of hatred none-thc-less. If hateful humour can be a form of stress management then presumably so can other forms o f projection and hatred. In this sub-section I shall attempt to suggest a few of the ways in which these, and other, bad feelings arc channelled and managed'

4.1.4.1 Resentment and low moral - the impact on "police property"

This accumulation of anxiety and frustration is combined with further frustration at seeing certain faces and names over and over again They lose patience and often become bitter about this "minority" o f people

"ruining" things for everyone else. Police officers express a desire that society should in a sense wake up and realise what is really going on and deal with these people accordingly.

The overall effect is a difficulty in maintaining morale and an ever increasing resentment directed towards the "troublemakers", the "vob element", the persistent petty offender, the "pathetic", "nuisance" element (these, and other, objects of suspicion and contempt will be analyzed in detail in PART 2). The patterns of beliefs and feelings amongst police officers suggest that not only are certain sections o f society placed at a potential disadvantage in terms of surveillance and treatment but that this tendency is reinforced by growing anxiety, frustration and a drop in morale in the job.

4 1 4 .2 Disgust with Idleness

One example o f feelings which seem to be totally disproportionate are those relating to work and unemployment.

Do you think that unemployment is a significant factor?

I think, actually, the majority o f youngsters down there in ***♦*, or ***** or ****•: the majority who are unemployed don't seem to want to be employed. Now whether that's come about over a lQng period or not, 1 don't know. But they seem to have become unemployable

You aren't sure why?

No. I am not sure why. 1 feel that some of them are out-and-out idle.

Do you find that objectionable?

I do. And as much as I try to explain to myself that a lot o f this is down to social circumstances. I still find it very annoying when people won't do anything for society and yet they expect an awful lot back. Holding out a grubby little hand saying, "give me more", when they won't actually do anything for anyone else. V4

it an obsession. I shall be elaborating on it in some detail in PART 4. on threatening mechanisms'. For the moment I simply wish to suggest that perceived threatening objects' (such as repeat offenders) and mechanisms' (such as idleness) are operating as a affective Tightening conductors' for other anxieties and frustrations. In psychoanalytic terms a process of displacement' or projection' is taking place leading to unjustifiably paranoid feelings about the unemployed.

4.1.4.3 When someone is nasty it makes you nasty

One very reflective and articulate officer makes the point that when people are threatening in some way it is very difficult not to respond in a threatening manner oneself. Indeed he is clearly suggesting that this is what often happens in everyday policing situations.

Once you actually get out there, and you are dealing with situations where tempers are high and people are getting violent then a lot of training tends to sort o f fly out of the window.

You simply react, your animal instincts take over. Someone is very unreasonable, very- nasty to us we are gomg to be nasty to them and that's the human element of it which is very difficult to get over. V4

Suppose we replace his "someone is very unreasonable, very nasty " with " if we perceive that someone is being very unreasonable, very nasty". Suppose then we assume that those "perceptions" can be affected by the kind of projection and displacement processes suggested above. If we then throw in all of the sources o f anxiety, frustration, fear, and so on mentioned above (together with the others 1 shall be cataloguing in this project, and many I have not) we have a potentially very volatile mixture.

4 14 4 Perception of hatred and danger of violent attack

Many police officers work with a very real sense of danger. Working on a predominantly white working- class council estate they may feel a barrier of suspicion between them and the community, a feeling o f being unwelcome and a sense o f "them and us", even hatred. This becomes further exaggerated when working in areas with large ethnic minority groups, especially Afro-Caribbcan. Here many officers believe that there is a real danger of being killed. This fear docs not of course mean they arc in any real' danger of being killed but then the relationship between perception and reality is ambiguous. How docs a police officer's fear of being attacked and possibly killed, influence the creation of tension leading to real hostility?

4.1.4.5 Cynicism

Overall the police officer develops an extremely cynical view o f the world. This of course is a fact repeated in much of the police studies literature, as I pointed out in Chapter 2. What has not been registered, however, is that this is a state of feeling.

Do you think that Policing, on the whole, gives you a more realistic view of the world than most people?

Far more cynical view of the world. 1 think it will probably come out with thinking society is far more dangerous than - I'm sure you do. I think you become more defensive, or you can do. You are more likely to be sceptical. T1

4.1.4.6 The badness of human nature

This bleak view o f the world is mirrored by a very cynical view of human nature.

I've never believed that human beings are intrinsically good if you like I think there is a selfish aspect to all of us. There is a lot of bad in all o f us. Not to say that there isn't some good as well, but I think we're all inherently selfish and some people seem to never do things for the good of others... I always thought that people were selfish but I didn't realise just how bad they could be, or not how bad, because there has always been violence and nastiness in society, but how unreasonable people could be. how totally unreasonable people can be. V4

How does this officer respond to someone who just might be having a joke at his expense, who just might

not have the required respect for his authority?

4.1.4.7 Human stupidity

Not only arc people fundamentally bad, but they arc mostly stupid as well. A question about domestic disputes brought the following response

know the difference between right and wrong and can understand if there is - 1 know it sounds basic, but can fill in forms without being puzzled by them or whatever. And there are that 10% that are illiterate and cannot cope with life at all. There is that bit in the middle where people live and get by and are confused by forms, can't really think for themselves. They are pointed in the right direction and they walk in that direction like clockwork toys or whatever and follow other people. V3

Around 60% o f the population are defective according to this officer. What sort of effect does this feeling about these people have on his respect for their rights, on his expectations of deference from them, on the way he speaks to them?

4.1.4.8 General feelings o f threat

This combined feeling that the world and human beings are thoroughly bad leads to a universal feeling of threat on the part of the police officer

1 mean for a fact that when you came in the car with me, my attitude was guarded to say the least because it's not that I want to hide what's going on, I wanted to know why it was going on. You will obviously be wary that people, that some people are out to get you. T3

It is important to note the adjustment made in the final sentence. What he actually starts out to say is that "people are out to get you". This seems to be an affective premise central to police occupational culture.