Watching the watchers: conducting ethnographic research on covert police investigation in the United Kingdom

Introduction

In recent decades, the nature of criminal investigation has undergone a number of important changes: investigations are increasingly anticipatory (investigators are no longer predominately reactive and incident-driven); actuarial (subjects are targeted according to a statistical estimation of the risk they pose); bureaucratic (resources are allocated according to a set of rules and formal procedures); and intrusive (investigators use sophisticated technology to access a vast array of personal information). These changes have been described by using a variety of labels – ‘proactive’, ‘intelligence-led’, ‘problem-solving’ – to depict the changing approach towards crime control (Reiner and Newburn, 1992: 361; Roberts, 2007: 99). While these changes are significant – and have drawn considerable interest from criminologists – there have been other shifts in the practice of policing that have garnered surprisingly less attention. Criminal investigation is now not only more proactive and problem-driven, it is also increasingly covert and deceptive (Loftus et al., 2016; Sharpe, 2002). ¹

The growing importance of covert police investigation has not, however, been matched by sustained interest from empirical researchers. While there is a relatively healthy body of literature on some of the theoretical and legal aspects of covert investigations (see, for instance, Wagner, 2007; Joh, 2009; Ross, 2007; Roberts, 2000), empirical coverage of covert investigation has been highly uneven. The pioneering work of Marx (1988) remains an important point of departure for any scholar of covert policing, but it has a narrow empirical and temporal focus and is based largely on documentary and media analysis. There is also a marked normative bias to the literature, which has focused heavily on the ethical dimensions of covert surveillance, questioning in particular whether surveillance in democratic societies is a ‘necessary evil’ (Marx, 1988: 77; see also Ross, 2008; Fijnaut and Marks, 1995; Wachtel, 1992). Our understanding of covert investigation, then, rests on an uneasy foundation of untested assumptions (Kruisbergen et al., 2011).

It is, perhaps, unsurprising that we know so little about the world of covert policing (compared to our knowledge of ‘mainstream’, overt policing), but the imbalance is nonetheless striking. The organizing principle of covert investigation – the need for secrecy and invisibility – inverts the logic of uniformed police work, which is defined by its visibility as a deliberate and highly public spectacle that routinely involves a striking visually display of power (Manning, 2003). This inversion places covert investigators in both a privileged and potentially dangerous position vis a vis the public. Covert policing tends to be more fluid and unpredictable than routine patrol and investigative work, which heightens the likelihood of error; its inherently secretive nature lessens the probability that errors will be exposed and offending officers held accountable (Marx, 1988). It is difficult to hold to account a set of employees who do not have a recognisable uniform, collar number, visible supervisor, or a fixed location for work. In sum, the dilemmas faced by police officers are compounded in the covert context.

These fundamental differences raise, in turn, a set of serious concerns about how the state, in a democratic society, can establish a regulatory system that reconciles civil liberties and police accountability, on one hand, with the requirement to prevent and detect crime, on the other (Bhatt, 2006; Ross, 2007). Ewing and Geary (1997: 7) summarize this concern neatly:

[S]tate powers of surveillance are exercised against the innocent as well as the guilty and are inevitably employed in great secrecy and without the knowledge of the target. They also constitute the most serious violation, not only of property rights recognized by the common law, but also of fundamental freedoms recognized by the European Convention on Human Rights. Even if judged to be necessary, such powers should be subjected to the most searching safeguards, limiting their exercise and protecting the citizen from their over-enthusiastic use.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) – an ‘enabling’ piece of legislation prompted by the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998 (Bhatt, 2006) – was intended to address these concerns (Bullock and Johnson, 2011). Most crucially, the Act altered fundamentally the basis of police authority for covert investigation, turning on its head the ‘common law principle that whatever is not expressly forbidden by law is permissible’ (Cheney et al., 2001: 87). RIPA ‘seek[s] to provide legality within a framework of accountability’, while requiring investigators to demonstrate that any interference with human rights is justifiable, pursuant to some legitimate aim, and necessary in a democratic society’ (Clark, 2007: 429). It is, however, an open question as to whether RIPA performs this function adequately. Critics insist that its passage is another – and particularly egregious – example of the UK ‘sleepwalking’ into a surveillance society (Lyon, 2007).

We carried out an extensive empirical investigation into how existing legislation aimed at governing police surveillance – most notably the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 – has affected the surveillance activities of police forces in the UK. The research, uniquely, also aims to produce the first comprehensive field account of covert policing. In this article, we seek to provide a detailed and reflexive discussion of the methodology employed in the first ethnographic study of covert police investigation in the United Kingdom. The article is divided into three sections. Firstly, we introduce how we applied the ethnographic method to our case. We contend that an ethnography is tailor-made for the study of covert policing because participant observation – conducted intensively over a prolonged duration of time – allows researchers to ‘circumvent the minefield of defenses that protect the concealed reality of police work’ (Punch, 1989: 178). Second, we discuss how we approached a challenge that is familiar to ethnographers of uniformed policing: the need to overcome suspicion of the outsider. Third, we reflect on how our ethnography of covert police investigators differed to corresponding studies of uniformed police officers. We discovered that the defining feature of covert policing, the imperative to maintain the ‘cover’ of surveillance officers, influenced heavily our ethnographic experience in a way which seems qualitatively different to ethnographies of overt policing. We had no option other than to participate actively in the maintenance of the ‘invisibility’ of the surveillance team, which eroded our status as non-participant observers and activated our gender as a useful component of our cover within the surveillance teams.

An ethnography of covert police investigation in the United Kingdom

The police, according to Holdaway (1983: 5) is ‘an extremely powerful organization which begs revelation of its public and private face by first-hand observation – risky as that observation may be.’ If this edict applies to uniformed officers, it is especially relevant to the secretive and concealed world of covert police investigation. Very little is known about the culture and organization of covert policing, which suggested that an ethnographic approach would be the most appropriate and effective means to penetrate the interior landscape of covert policing. ² At its core, ethnography involves prolonged and intensive observation of research participants in their ‘natural habitat’; it requires researchers to take part ‘in the daily activities, rituals, interactions, and events of a group of people’ (DeWalt and DeWalt, 2002: 1). Ethnographic approaches are particularly appropriate for studying the working assumptions and low visibility practices of officers because such assumptions and practices invariably operate beneath the presentational canopy of police organizations (Chan, 1996). By immersing themselves in their host society, the job of the police researcher is to pierce this structure and capture the informal face of the organization. This inevitably involves developing rapport with officers over a period of time in order to witness their ‘backstage’ performances (Goffman, 1969). Given certain key features of covert police working life – including the tendency towards secrecy and institutional isolationism – it can be argued that an ethnographic approach is not only appropriate for the study of overt policing, it is necessary.

It is, however, notoriously difficult for researchers to gain access to police organizations at the best of times (Fox and Lundman, 1974; Holdaway, 1983). External researchers, in particular, face a particularly steep hurdle – especially if their interests lie in the controversial and deceptive methods used by specialist investigators. We conducted our research between 2009 and 2011 in what we will refer to as ‘Summershire Police Service’. ³ As with all police research, the terms of our access to Summershire determined the parameters of our research. We did not receive unfettered access to observe every single covert unit operating within the force: Prison Intelligence and the Confidential Unit were off-limits, although we were granted permission to interview this latter group of officers. There was also a strict bar on access to intercepted communications (telephone calls, emails, etc.), although this was because Schedule I of RIPA (2000) places a legal restriction on who can access the product of a warranted interception of communications. Access to the Counter-Terrorism and the Professional Standards Department (where officers were themselves under investigation) was also prohibited. We provided a guarantee that all of our notes would be anonymised to protect the identity of officers and members of the public.

The project addressed several research questions, focusing on how the regulatory environment – which is laid out in a suite of legislation, most notably the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) and the Police Act (1997) – influences covert police investigation. Firstly, how do officers plan, resource and conduct covert investigations? Second, how have police officers interpreted the procedures and requirements set out under the legislation. Third, does the regulatory regime strike an appropriate balance between the need for police accountability and protection of civil liberties, on the one hand, and operational efficiency and the demands of security, on the other? There were a range of other methodological issues that arose in the study, particularly the ethical implications of such a project, which we address elsewhere (Loftus et al., 2016). In order to address the questions that deal primarily with how the regulatory environment influence the conduct of covert police investigation, we directed our time towards the five stages of a covert operation.

The project methodology was primarily ethnographic, but we also conducted semi-structured interviews with officers at all stages of the life-cycle of a covert investigation. We divided our time relatively evenly at each stage of an investigation, which were conducted at either the local-level by officers investigating what could be described as street crime (burglary, assault, and so on), or at the divisional level by officers conducting prolonged and intrusive investigations into serious and organized crime. The research sites at the first three stages of an investigation are divided relatively strictly between area and division. At stage one, we observed the Divisional Intelligence Unit (DIU) and their counterparts at the Area level (AIUs), in addition to local investigators (who write RIPA applications) and the officers of the Ground Intelligence Office (GIO) whose role is, inter alia, to write applications for more complex divisional investigations. At the third and fourth stages in the investigative life-cycle, we observed officers in the Central Authorities Bureau (CAB) and interviewed police Superintendents, who authorize the majority of applications made under RIPA. One of the fieldworkers attended a five-day residential training course for authorizing officers, which was provided by the National Police Improvement Agency. We also interviewed the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, Sir Christopher Rose, and one of the senior members of his team, who oversees the day-to-day functioning of the OSC. Finally, we carried out interviews with police managers and field officers from Summershire Police, as well as representatives from the Office of Surveillance Commissioners, Ministry of Justice, the National Policing Improvement Agency, and Liberty.

Penetrating fronts: inside the secret world of covert policing

Secrecy is an organizing principle that sets the occupation of covert investigation – and, we suspect, the occupational culture of covert investigators – apart from their uniformed counterparts. Secrecy, indeed, is embedded in every stage in the life-cycle of a covert investigation (Marx, 1980, 1988; Ross, 2008: 239–40). When investigators first identify a person of interest (a ‘target’), surveillance and property interference is either authorized by a senior police officer or, in the case of interception of communications and intrusive surveillance, authorized ex parte by the Home Secretary or the Office of Surveillance Commissioners. Over the course of the operation, covert investigators go to great lengths to conceal their presence and tradecraft from both criminal subject(s) and the general public. In the event of an arrest, investigators can continue to protect their sources and covert methods by seeking a court order – known as ‘public interest immunity’ – to allow the prosecution to refrain from disclosing details about the investigation to the defense. Finally, if a citizen challenges the lawful basis of surveillance, the legal proceedings at the Investigatory Powers Tribunal are held in private. Secrecy, in short, defines the occupation of covert investigation.

The question, then, becomes: how might an ethnography of such an ‘extreme’ environment differ to equivalent studies of mainstream (overt) sections of a police force. There is an established ethnographic literature that describes ‘cop culture’; one of its central characteristics is, of course, officers’ suspicion of outsiders (Cain, 1973; Holdaway, 1983; Loftus, 2012; Manning, 1977, 1989; Reiner, 1992). This cultural reflex to conceal their behavior from outsiders can be traced to officers’ general sense of isolation from the public (Skolnick, 1966; Reiner, 1992), but also has its roots in the distrust shown by ordinary officers towards their desk-bound superiors, who tend to use strict disciplinary measures to punish any lapses in ‘professional’ conduct (Brown, 1988). In short, the police organization is a forbidding site to research. In our ethnographic research, we expected officers working to display a significantly heightened level of suspicion and distrust – not simply because they are unaccustomed to external observation, but also because of the organizing principle of its tradecraft, which privileges the ‘hoarding’ of information (Ross, 2008).

Intelligence is the stock-in-trade of covert investigators, who are trained – and required by law in the case of intercepted communications – to restrict access to this information. A failure to maintain the security of this information is important for a number of reasons: loose control of intelligence can compromise the secrecy of a live operation, endanger the safety of cooperating members of the public (such as individuals who, for instance, agree to allow officers to set up an ‘observation post’ in their property), put the lives of informants and undercover officers at risk, and increase the likelihood of police corruption. It was no surprise, then, that we entered an environment that encouraged an ‘incessant paranoia’ (in the words of one police officer) about what and with whom information could be shared. As the following excerpt from fieldnotes demonstrates, officers access information on a strictly ‘need-to-know’ basis, meaning that investigators work inside units that are divided rigidly into mutually exclusive sections:

I arrive early at the headquarters of the Organised Crime Unit (OCU). The place is a hive of activity, and I bump into an Inspector who is handling one of the cases that is coming through tasking next week. There are four people in the room: a financial investigator, two detective constables (DCs) and the sergeant. I overhear Detective Sergeant (DS) Bracknell, who was on the phone. DS: That was [Sergeant of TSU]. We need to have a chat’. DC: ‘Shall we pop next door.’ I’m worried that they feel they have to leave the room to talk about anything and everything. Two hours later, the same thing happens. When they leave, I turn to the Inspector. I ask, ‘are they avoiding me?’ No, mate, they’re avoiding us all – they’re working on a job we’re not authorised to know about.’

This treatment of information sets covert police investigation apart from its mainstream counterpart. In the next section of this article, we explore how the two primary fieldworkers in our project (Loftus and Mac Giollabhuí) accessed and navigated this secretive environment. In some ways, we encountered a set of challenges familiar to other police ethnographers – tests of allegiance, and the charge that we were working as management spies – but we also encountered some marked dissimilarities between our experience and the experience of other ethnographers of uniformed police officers.

Maintaining cover: Participation and gender in the world of cover policing

We also discovered, however, that a defining characteristic of the work undertaken by the Mobile Surveillance Teams exerted a significant effect on our ethnographic experience, which we believe is in many respects quite novel. There is, as we mentioned earlier, an obvious difference between overt and covert policing: unlike their counterparts outside the covert world, surveillance officers do not need to retain the authority of the constable, which is a staple of the police officer’s working personality (Bittner, 1974). Surveillance officers, instead, must keep their identity as police officers hidden from public view. This aspect of covert police investigation – the overriding priority to retain cover and remain invisible – places the surveillance officer in a qualitatively different relationship with the public. It also placed the two fieldworkers in a different position to our research participants. We, no less than the officers, had to participate actively in the maintenance of the surveillance team’s cover. The following excerpt demonstrates the (everyday) risk of ‘getting burned’:

The subject vehicle is homeward-bound, our convoy winding its way in pursuit. As Nelson and I approach the outskirts of town, we follow the van into an estate, before handing it over at a junction to the back-up vehicle. Malcolm speeds up a short grassy hillock to gain a view of the subject vehicle, which has disappeared. Meanwhile, Nelson and I pull up around by the back of the housing estate. Just as we pull in to park, the subject vehicle appears ahead. The tension in the vehicle ratchets higher and Nelson emits a plaintive expletive as the vehicle parks directly in front of us, about 10 metres away. We are in plain view of the subject, if he decides to look up. I continue eating my lunch as nonchalantly as I can manage, while Nelson sits quietly with his eyes cast down. Neither of us move a muscle as the subject bounds away from the vehicle and walks up a set of stairs. He is, thankfully, on the telephone and pays no attention to his surroundings.

The shared risk of exposure fostered a close bond of trust within surveillance teams, but it also raised a question about the precise nature of the role we played during our time with the MST. How did the imperative to conform to the cardinal rule of covert surveillance – the need to maintain cover – influence our ethnographic experience? We found that in moments of crisis – when the team’s ‘invisibility’ relied on our active cooperation – we had no real choice other than to participate in precisely the same way as other police officers in the maintenance of that cover. Moments of crisis were few and far between in the course of our fieldwork. Indeed, the prevailing memory of our time with covert units is the boredom of waiting around in surveillance cars and vans on what officers term ‘dead plots’. However, on the occasions when the cover of the team was threatened, we discovered that our status as non-participant observers eroded entirely.

The following fieldnote demonstrates how in a moment of crisis one of the field-workers (Mac Giollabhuí) had no choice other than to follow police procedure to preserve the ‘invisibility’ of the surveillance unit. In this incident, the Mobile Surveillance Team and a firearms unit had been deployed to observe the transfer of goods and money between the target of our surveillance operation and a second group of criminals. The intelligence about this transfer had been received from an informant from within the group, who had also warned that members of the gang would, in all likelihood, be armed. The following excerpt from fieldnotes begins at the point when the MST follows the subject into a housing estate:

We’ve got a view of Subject 1. There’s a gap of about 50 metres between us, but we have no car cover (there aren’t any vehicles between us and the subject, which is risky). I’m in the car with Alicia and we watch as Subject 1 overtakes a slow-moving vehicle. As we approach the back of this second vehicle, I see a small blonde-haired head peek out from the back seat. The child stares directly at us. The head disappears and the red car makes a sharp right-hand turn. Subject 1 takes the next left into a small cul-de-sac. Alicia passes control of the subject to the back-up vehicle in the team, who continues to provide commentary on Subject 1’s movement inside the estate. We continue on ahead to take up a position controlling the northern exit of the estate and I turn inquiringly to Alicia, who has also noticed the suspicious behavior of the red car. Have we been burned? We pull into a side-road and come to a stop right at the entrance to a primary school.

Over the radio, Lee – who has deployed in a bush [I recall him being covered in scratches at the debriefing later on ] – is describing the movement of Subject 1. He has parked outside a house and rang the doorbell. In a terse broadcast, Lee tells us ‘the person living here has compromised surveillance before.’ Alicia is now tense and hyper-alert. We are parked about 100 metres from the subject’s location with a view – through the tinted rear windows of our vehicle – of the mouth of the road leading to the house. Lee describes movement: two men emerge from inside the house and stand talking to Subject 1. Subject 2’s car pulls into the cul-de-sac, one of the men suddenly breaks ranks, and starts walking towards the mouth of the road. I can see him now. He is holding a telephone to his ear, the right elbow held high in the air. I count his steps, wondering in a very abstract way what he is up to. He is small, stocky and as he moves his shoulders sway with menacing purpose. I realise with a shudder that he is coming straight towards our position.

Alicia calmly describes the subject’s movement towards us over the radio. I feel weak at the knees. Quietly, Alicia turns and says ‘we may need to cuddle here.’ I swivel slowly in her direction, letting my arm loop around her head rest. The man is now less than 30 metres away and I see through our tinted rear window that he’s making straight for us. I dip my head closer to Alicia and she turns her body away from the driver’s door. Too much time passes, and when I peek again from the corner of my eye, the subject has turned on his heels – satisfied, I wonder, by the innocence of our innocuous canoodling? – and is walking back towards the house, telephone still locked to his ear. A wave of relief washes over me. Alicia turns the radio back up. (I hadn’t even noticed her turn the volume down). We listen to the commentary: the firearms unit is swooping, making the arrests.

This incident raises a number of questions about our status as ‘observer’. First, what would have happened had Mac Giollabhuí left the car? Had he left the vehicle, it would have put the police officer in danger and, course, compromised effectively the surveillance operation – but it would also have compromised effectively his position as an ethnographer. The choice at this critical juncture was precisely the same for both ethnographer and police officer: stay in the car and put up a ‘front’, or walk away from the job (of ethnography and surveillance). This alignment between the demands of both roles demonstrates how the ethnographer’s status as a non-participating observer eroded.

The following vignette demonstrates a similar brush with exposure. The episode takes place during a stint by by one of the field researchers (Loftus) with Alf (a member of a Local Surveillance Unit), who had been tasked with picking up several of the ‘trap cars’ from various locations, replacing the batteries in the covert cameras and then reparking them at different locations. ⁶ As the extract shows, the ability of the female researcher to portray a sense of normalcy was crucial in protecting the secrecy of the operation:

The plan was to drive this car to a different location in the countryside and swap it with another car that had been parked for the last two weeks. We drove for over half an hour before arriving at a typical English village. Just outside a large house, a Volkswagen Golf was parked on the side of the road. Colin gave me the keys and told me to get into the passenger seat. He was going to park the car we were currently in about half a mile away, and then walk back to me. Despite a Satellite Navigation System being placed on display, the vehicle did not show any signs of forced entry. Within five minutes, a man in his 50s wearing a suit came over to the car and knocked loudly on my side of the window. I wound it down and he asked me sternly if this was my car. Not wanting to give the game away, I had no option but to lie. I said that it was my car and asked why he wanted to know. He asked why it had been parked outside his house for the last two weeks, telling me that he had rang the police and reported it as stolen. I acted surprised and replied that my husband and I had been away on holiday and had left the car here because we had friends in the village. I added that my husband would be back in a moment if he wanted to chat more about it, but that I could assure him the car was not stolen. He accepted my story and then became friendly. When Colin returned to the car and drove off I told him what had happened. He was impressed, saying I had done well to lie. […] This incident was retold to several of the officers and afforded me some respect within the team.

Mac Giollabhuí and Loftus faced a similar choice in both encounters: follow police procedure, put up a front – or expose the surveillance operation and compromise our access to the surveillance units. The point, in short, is that if we wished to observe at first-hand the activities of the surveillance teams, we had little choice other than to participate fully in the surveillance team’s ‘front’. This dilemma is, we think, a particularly novel experience for the police ethnographer.

These episodes also highlight the importance of the demographic characteristics (in this case, gender) of ethnographers studying covert policing. The salience of our gender reflected the interesting gender dynamic at work inside surveillance teams. A female-male pair of officer is an obvious asset, because the officers can pose easily as a couple. Female officers are also highly valued inside surveillance teams for other reasons. ‘A good girl’, according to one (male) officer, ‘is worth two men because [because] girls have the ability to be a chameleon.’ Another (male) officer argued that ‘women are equally as good [as men] and you could argue that they’re better: people are less suspicious of women.’ It is important to note that in these statements, there was no normative commitment to the spirit of ‘diversity’. Rather, women (and, by extension, ethnic minorities) were prized for their usefulness – or, in other words, their ability to penetrate criminal environments and thereby extend and enhance the capabilities of the surveillance operation.

These findings suggest that our experience as ethnographers differed significantly to those of other ethnographers of uniformed police officers. Secrecy is the defining characteristic of covert police investigation, which influenced our ethnographic experience. The risk of exposure – and the corresponding imperative to retain cover and participate actively in the daily grind of surveillance – facilitated our integration into our environment and eroded our status as non-participant observers. Second, it activated our identity – specifically our gender – in a novel way. There is a trope in the ethnographic literature that a female researcher working in a male dominated environment is problematic: at best, a ‘useful incompetent’ (Lofland, 1971: 100) and, at worst, either subject to ‘sexual hustling, fraternizing and paternalistic attitudes’; or in need of help and protection (Brewer, 1991). In our fieldwork, Mac Giollabhuí was considered useful, particularly when paired alongside a female officer; he would have become a potential liability had he been partnered with a male officer. Loftus, equally, was almost invariably partnered with male officers – and considered at least as useful, if not more so because of the innate advantages that came with her gender.

Conclusion

There is marked imbalance in our academic understanding of the police, which is tilted heavily towards the organization and culture of uniformed officers. We still know very little about the values, attitudes and informal rules that apply in the world of covert policing. There is, as Punch points out, a pressing need for ‘ethnographers to scrutinize detective work and specialized units’ (cited in Marks, 2004: 866). In our research, we set out to redress this imbalance by conducting the first comprehensive ethnographic field study of covert police investigation in the UK. We undertook an ethnography of the subject because this method has ‘special qualities suited to dealing with controversial topics in sensitive locations, for it entails a gradual and progressive contact with respondents over time, and for researchers to participate in the full range of experiences involved in the topic’ (Brewer, 1991: 18). This study provides an important contribution to our understanding of covert police investigation, not only because it provides a situated account of the controversial world of covert surveillance, but also because it provides an insight into how an ethnography of covert policing might differ from equivalent ethnographies of uniformed officers.

We set out to penetrate fronts – in Douglas’s (1976) memorable phrase – during our time with Specialist Operations and other units in the Summershire Police service. And, in the course of our investigation, we discovered that our experience as ethnographers of covert policing had some interesting similarities to other police ethnographers. We faced a similar set of challenges, building trust with our research participants, who viewed our presence with a great deal of suspicion. We also negotiated the highly secretive environment in a way that is familiar to all police officers: dealing with tests of allegiance, engaging in ‘easing behaviour’, and confronting the conventional suspicion among ordinary officers that we were management spies. In other respects, however, our experience was distinctly novel: we became active participants in the conduct of surveillance operations – not because of any creeping desire to act as ‘fan’ or ‘voyeur’ of our research participants (Van Maanen, 1988) – but, instead, because the job demanded it. We also discovered that our active participation in the maintenance of the surveillance units’ cover activated our own demographic characteristics in an unexpected way: our gender became an important component of our cover within the surveillance teams and, in turn, an essential part of our reflexive experience as ethnographers.