Canadian Rural Youth and Role Tension of the Police: ‘It’s Hard in a Small Town’

Introduction

The perceptions that youth – here operationalized to include those between the ages of 13 to 19 – residing in rural areas hold toward police remains an underexplored area for research. This lacuna in knowledge is particularly pressing when considering the connections between legitimacy and the increased likelihood of reporting crime and cooperating with the police, and seeking the police’s assistance for things not directly related to crime (Goldsmith, 2005; Sunshine and Tyler, 2003). Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of research on public perceptions of the police, including among youth, is based on samples drawn from urban populations. Moreover, studies that focus on rural areas often point to stronger and more informal citizen–police bonds and trust. Despite some mixed findings, and exceptions explicated below, views of the police among youth are to a lesser or greater degree more positive than those documented in urban regions (see below; e.g. Hinds, 2009; Hurst, 2007; Osgood and Chambers, 2000; Taylor et al., 2001; Weisheit et al., 1994b). Researchers also indicate that community-policing initiatives and views of the police beyond their formal role as law enforcement officials are reinforced in rural areas given the structure of their smaller and more spread out populations, which help encourage stronger citizen–police connections (Clairmont, 1991; Weisheit et al., 1994a).

Through focus group discussions, in this article, we examine the competing ways in which the police in rural Atlantic Canada are interpreted and symbolized by youth. Specifically, we highlight support for the informal view of policing which links to crime prevention and community policing, but show that this support is buttressed through a view of the police as formal crime fighters and law enforcement officials. This latter view, which is undergirded by support for the police’s capacity to deter crime, offsets the potential of the community-policing paradigm, youth cooperation, and trust. Following the literature review, we provide a brief discussion of the context of rural policing in Atlantic Canada and outline our methods. Next, we draw on analyses of focus group data to show the overall attitudes toward the police among the youth, which we follow with discussions centering on conditions engendering trust and distrust, respectively. Some recommendations for the police are also highlighted.

Literature Review: Rural Areas and Police Role Tension

Looking at the United States, Peter Manning’s early and influential work examining what the police symbolize and the broad cultural views on the police’s role highlights their commonly understood functions: to serve and protect; maintain social order and the public trust; deter, and where possible, prevent crime; enforce the law; and use legitimate force (Manning, 1977; see also Manning, 2010a, 2010b). Manning avers that so long as the public view the police along these formal lines, for example, as ‘crime fighters’, alternative paradigms of policing will be offset (e.g. crime prevention, community linkages). This paradigm is reinforced, moreover, by the police’s quest for public acceptance by tethering their success to solving criminal investigations. This, Manning (1977) argues, is often not accomplished in practice given organizational factors, limited resources, and so on. Nevertheless, there remains a strong identification of the police as primarily law enforcement and crime fighters, with other roles concomitant with respect to these functions.

The past few decades, however, have indicated a general shift in emphasis in North American policing to the community. Such community-oriented policing is defined as ‘an iconic style of policing in which the police are close to the public, know their concerns from regular everyday contacts, and act on them in accord with the community’s wishes’ (Fielding, 2005: 460). Community policing fosters ‘collaborative relationships between the police and community residents to enhance community safety, crime prevention, and quality of life at the neighbourhood level’ (Chow, 2012: 508). While well intentioned, in urban areas this has not supplanted the law enforcement onus of the police; rather it has firmly placed the emphasis on ‘reactive’ responses geared to crime prevention (Chow, 2012; Fielding, 2005; Forman, 2004). Some also argue that the concept of community is itself amorphous (Kelly and Caputo, 2011), emphasizing rhetoric over reality (Greene and Mastrofski, 1988), with others pointing to a sense of role ambiguity fostered by unclear guidance for the implementation of community policing (Roberg, 1994; Zhao et al., 2001).

Arguably, rural areas have a more natural affinity for community policing, with stronger and long-standing community bonds, reinforced by the relatively smaller population and geographic isolation (Weisheit et al., 1994a, 1994b). In Canada, Huey and Ricciardelli (2015) argue that the police tend to take up, and be seen through, expanded roles in rural areas, such as social workers and peacekeepers. This is further reinforced when other social services and community supports are deficient (Weisheit et al., 1994a), and especially in rural, Northern and remote areas, where some regions rely on the police for emergency services given the absence of local aid workers and fire departments. While studies of youth perceptions of rural police in Canada remain limited (though see Huey and Ricciardelli, 2015; Spencer et al., 2018), interviews with rural police in Canada highlight the role strain they experience in managing various competing roles associated with particular tasks. While most desired to embody a law enforcement or social worker role, many expressed frustration, dissatisfaction, even feelings of being ‘demoralized’ as their daily tasks gravitated more toward less desirable activities in line with peacekeeping and knowledge work tasks (Huey and Ricciardelli, 2015: 202; see also Manning, 1977).

In this article, we contribute to knowledge regarding youth perceptions of the police role in rural regions of Atlantic Canada. Rural regions are often placed in contrast with urban regions in terms of increased reliance on informal social controls, especially the police (e.g. Websdale, 1998). No doubt the findings of research conducted in Western liberal democracies, especially in the United States, indicate that significant proportions of the youth experience negative encounters with the police, and hold negative views of them, undercutting the likelihood of their cooperation (Fine et al., 2003; Flacks, 2017; Nayak, 2003; Yates, 2006) and debasing their sense of citizenship and respect for the police (Novich and Hunt, 2017; Sharkey and Shields, 2008). In the long term, such antagonistic relations may yield entrenched stigma and crime recidivism (Bradford, 2015; Deuchar, 2009, 2010; Wortley and Owusu-Bempah, 2011). Youth are thus often positioned as a population of ‘permanent suspects’ (McAra and McVie, 2005). Such studies are, as may be expected, often centered on urban areas, and Canadian studies – either in the West or Central provinces – are no exception to this trend (Cheng, 2015; Chow, 2011; Wortley and Owusu-Bempah, 2011).

While it is important to avoid essentializing the differences between the urban and rural regions (elaborated below), the few studies of attitudes and experiences of the police among youth residing in rural regions indicates the centrality of community policing as a central framework for policing and citizen–police interactions. Atlantic Canadian police, contracted out with the federal Royal Canadian Mounted Police, has embraced community policing since the 1970s. Some researchers have pointed to particular positive results in the decades since, such as reductions in residential crime (Clairmont, 1991), and youth expressions of confidence based on informal familiarity with the police in small communities (Adorjan et al., 2017). In addition, positive results have been found in research centered on youth participating in community-policing initiatives, where participation lends to enhanced views of police legitimacy (see Hinds, 2009). Officers in rural areas often have strong community connections, enabling them to respond informally to youth transgressions, for example, working out appropriate punishments informally with a youth’s family (Osgood and Chambers, 2000; Weisheit et al., 1994b). Brick et al. (2009) found that strong community connections decrease the likelihood of youths holding negative views of the police. Similarly, Hurst (2007) found the majority of surveyed youth living in a rural region held positive views of the police’s ability to provide community services and support, despite that fact that only 34 per cent expressed confidence in the police’s ability to stop crime in their neighborhood.

Despite the undoubtedly positive benefits of deeper and interconnected social bonds salient in the rural regions, they carry with them potential negative effects, including those related to the relationships between citizens and formal agents of social control. Crime reporting, for instance, may be inhibited, including especially disclosing victimization from personal networks (e.g. domestic violence) to authorities (Donnermeyer, 2015). Ironically, some researchers have found that rural communities with high levels of ‘collective efficacy’ and dense networks of relations may serve to inhibit reporting of crime (Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy, 2013). In many respects, these studies point to the role ambiguity that the rural police have from the perspective of youth. We show that in the Canadian context these same role conflicts emerge and problematize any unitary view of the best practices regarding policing in rural regions.

Methodology

Researchers studying public perceptions of the police, including Canadian studies, often draw from either quantitative survey data or official statistics (e.g. Chow, 2011, 2012; O’Connor, 2008). Focus group research, a qualitative alternative, goes beyond attitudes and opinions, generating knowledge about participants’ lived experiences and reflections on those experiences (Morgan, 1997; Stewart et al., 2007). Focus groups produce knowledge that interprets attitudes and opinions within dynamic group interactions (Madriz, 2000; Morgan, 1997), and elicit ‘a level of frankness that is seldom achieved through survey questionnaires’ (Madriz, 1997: 3). While focus groups impose a ‘minimum of artificiality of response’, they ‘have a certain ecological validity not found in traditional survey research’ (Stewart et al., 2007: 39). Others examining youth perceptions of the police have also advocated focus groups ‘to identify obstacles that hinder the cultivation of positive police-community relations and to explore factors that contribute to post-secondary students’ development of attitudes toward police officers’ (Chow, 2012: 518). Focus group research also helps contextualize and elaborate upon previous research examining citizen trust and fear of crime. Cancino and Enriquez (2004: 324), for instance, held focus groups with patrol officers to push beyond examining strict ‘causes and correlates’ of police–citizen retaliation, focusing instead on officers’ experiences with peer (i.e. other officers) retaliation. Such studies respond to Goldsmith’s (2005) suggestion that questions of police–citizen trust must be addressed with respect to the subjective experiences of people within particular contexts.

Taking up this direction, semistructured focus groups were conducted for this study, helping to capture the reasoning and meanings behind participant responses. Between July 2015 and November 2016, we conducted 20 focus groups with 59 participants aged 13–19 (average age of 15) in rural Atlantic Canada, with a minimum of two and a maximum of four per group. ¹ Groups of four to six have been found to be optimal to ameliorate the effects of participants who may dominate a discussion as well as participants who may feel intimidated and become silent within larger groups (Morgan, 1997; Twinn, 1998). Although we aimed for groups with no less than four participants, some groups were smaller, with two or three participants. A total of 27 females and 32 males participated. Most groups were held with youth of the same gender and age/grade levels. Doing so helped minimize the risk of any participant feeling intimidated to speak out and facilitated Mutual experiences and connections among participants (Madriz, 1997; Morgan, 1997). Discussions lasted from 30 to 120 minutes and, with all participants’ consent, were audio-recorded to preserve their accuracy.

We employed a purposive snowball sampling design, whereby initial contacts in various sectors, such as schools, helped refer additional participants. Middle and high schools, from the English-speaking school district, participated in the project, and arrangements with participating schools ensured that focus groups were held in private settings to help protect participant identities. Focus groups were conducted by the first author as well as trained research assistants. Data were analyzed using an inductive, comparative approach aided by NVivo qualitative analyses software. Concepts and theories emerged naturally through analyses of the dynamic interaction of participants (Berg, 2004; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). The initial stages of ‘widely open inquiry’ involved the ‘open coding’ of the data (Berg, 2004: 278). Prominent themes emerged through the tracking of coding ‘nodes’ across and within groups. Regular research meetings between the investigators ensured that thematic development emerged in a consistent manner, and helped to inform a hermeneutically attuned validity of the data (Twinn, 1998).

The discussions highlighted in this article are drawn from a wider project examining youth perceptions of online risk (Adorjan and Ricciardelli, 2018; Ricciardelli and Adorjan, 2019), including their responses to policing in general and with specific reference to social problems such as cyberbullying, sexting, and relational aggression online. Questions at the beginning of focus group discussions often asked about overall views and perceptions, including circumstances of trust and distrust. Any quoted excerpts from transcripts included are edited for speech fillers (e.g. ‘ums’) and readability, but otherwise are reproduced verbatim.

School Resource Officers and the Formal–Informal Spectrum

Given the amount of time spent by most youth in school, it is no surprise that many of the youth in our sample drew their perceptions of the police based on experiences in school. The discussions often centered on the police role, especially the question of whether informal social connections help reinforce confidence in the police. Comparable to school resource officers (SROs) in the United States, SROs in Canada are not often referred to as responding to criminal incidents; rather, they are referenced as an ongoing, sometimes relatively informal presence, for example, giving presentations, advising on safety, and using the opportunity to become acquainted with students and staff (Jackson, 2002; James et al., 2011; Travis and Coon, 2005). In the regions of Atlantic Canada included in our study, police officers are each assigned schools that they support as SROs. Some SROs went above and beyond in their school outreach, by coaching sports teams or increasingly their involvement in school events, while others were reported to have rather infrequent contact at the school. Such variation in the SRO role is likely because, although some Canadian schools have SROs, their presence is not as formalized and systematically institutionalized when compared with the United States.

Groups often added further context to explain their views of the police role by expanding upon the reasons underpinnings their positive views of police engagement in their communities. For instance, Valerie and Kimberly’s group, when asked if they have had any positive experiences with the police, emphasized their friendliness and openness to community engagement and opportunities to build positive ties:

A third member of the group, Julia, when asked what she thinks in response to Kimberly and Valerie, agrees, ‘I think the same’. Here the respondents weigh the safety aspect of policing with the efficacy of the police for community building and policing.

Many of the focus group participants also referred to the effective presence of the police, including SROs, in their schools. Some recalled presentations about drugs that were received positively. Groups pointed to the ‘no B.S.’ approach taken by the police, which they found refreshing compared with a predictable lecture to abstain from illegal substances. For instance, a group of three 13-year-old males responding to a question about whether the police come into their schools, reflected on their presentations about drugs:

The words of these youth reveal that the police presentation was informative, and provided reasons to be caution about drug use and exposure (i.e. each substance, legal or not, may not be as pure as one may believe when purchasing or consuming it). In another group of three 13-year-old males, Kevin reflects on a question about their impressions on police presentations about drugs in their school. He says, ‘I think they’re useful; [it helps] people understand, like what the cop’s for, [what] their job [is] and why they do it’. Caleb adds that police messages have ‘the kind of effects that things [drugs] that they’re talking about can do to you’. Kevin agrees, adding, ‘yeah, they tell you what smoking weed or something can do to you, so then next time you go to think about doing it, you’ll think maybe I don’t want to end up like that in 10, 20 years’. It is clear that practical and applicable advice is preferred among our participants rather than more generic and predictable messages about keeping safe and, in relation to drug use, abstinence.

Positive views of presentations about drugs in the school, here, reflect an alignment with the role of the police, including their SRO, as law enforcement officers who are providing practical knowledge about illicit substance use and abuse in order to deter future transgressions among youth. Another factor linked to presentation effectiveness is the age when they are first encountered. Some groups suggested that younger students are more likely to internalize the seriousness of the talks, in line with a formal view of the police as law enforcers. Willa, aged 19 in a group of two other females, commented that presentations are ‘more effective like, ‘cuz well, when we were younger and you see police come in, you’re like oh my god!’ Rosemary agrees, ‘you’re scared of that’; Willa: ‘you gotta pay attention’.

Notably, some discussions highlighted ambiguity regarding the role of police officers providing presentations in schools. For instance, one group of three female teens, all aged 17, were asked where they obtained their views about the police, in general terms. Lina replies, ‘school presentations’ and Zoey agrees. Lina adds, ‘that’s the only time I like cops’. Ally: ‘Yeah, they be nice to us at school’. Asked about the effectiveness of the school presentations, this group expresses positive views, referring to knowing a particular officer, the SRO in this case, by name and seeing him in the community (Zoey: ‘cuz he’s a hockey coach’). Zoey adds, ‘Yeah, like, it’s, we don’t view him, I don’t find [him] as an authority figure’ (added emphasis). The group proceeds to reflect upon this particular officer’s presentations in schools, finding ‘he tells so many stories’ which are ‘amazing’, and declaring ‘I love him’. Despite positively receiving the messages from this well-known police officer during school presentations, his informal role, for Zoey, countermands his authoritative status, alluding to his law enforcement role.

Notably, Brown and Benedict (2005) found that specific questions regarding police effectiveness in controlling illicit substance use as well as gang activity elicited less positive views than more general or global questions about the police. Such findings suggests the need for methodological care to help produce comparable findings, and also, theoretically, the distinction between specific and diffuse support of the police (Brandl et al., 1994; Brown and Benedict, 2005). Here, questions about specific interactions in schools led to reflections about particular officers whose informal familiarity became a central point of contention over confidence. Contention about the pros and cons of knowing the police more informally continued outside of the ambit of schools, especially during conversations of youth using skidoos in public spaces, which we turn to next.

Skidoos and the ‘Problem’ of Informal Police Interactions

It would be oversimplifying our findings to suggest that, during focus group discussions, the youth in our sample expressed a clear preference for either a law enforcement or community-policing role. Indeed, preferences for both of these ideal types were espoused. Nevertheless, despite the widespread embracing of more informal, community policing, youth balanced this view against the ‘master status’ (Becker, 1963) of the police as enforcers of the law. A perception primarily driven by faith in the police’s deterrent efficacy vis-a-vis their more formal positioning as crime fighters and law enforcement officers. For instance, a group of three 13-year-old females from a Northern community were asked if they found ‘that officers are accessible to you here?’ Kimberly replies succinctly, ‘some’. Valerie agrees, ‘yeah some, somewhat yeah’. Asked to elaborate, Valerie says,

I find . . . there’s a couple [of police officers], maybe 2 or 3, that are really strict and the whole like, dirt bikes and ski-doos and stuff like that, and I know there’s one police officer here that no one in [area] likes, because if he catches you, like going fast down the road or something, he’ll pull you over and give you [a] warning or give you a ticket, and once he took someone’s dirt bike! I know that was a big problem here once.

Julia recalls, ‘there would be one [officer] on the trail going over and over [patrolling the trail]’. Kimberly adds, ‘yeah, they go around the trails and make sure that everything is ok and no one’s doing this and that and what they’re not supposed to be doing’. Julia agrees, ‘I guess it is a good thing’. Notably, numerous references to skidoos and dirt bikes by youth across our focus groups indicate how much they rely on these modes of transportation in the rural areas they live; particularly among participants living in the North. The law enforcement role of the police is highlighted here in reference to seizing a youth’s dirt bike, which is taken with exception; indeed it is viewed as rather unfair. However, upon further discussion these youth come to an agreement that such police activity serves a deterrent purpose – ‘it is a good thing’. Other groups had a decidedly more negative view of the police targeting them on their skidoos (again, a particular aspect of growing up in rural, snow-covered areas). Youth are restricted from riding skidoos according to their age and may experience increased police scrutiny as a result (e.g. youth under the age of 13 cannot legally drive a motorized snow vehicle in Newfoundland and Labrador; however, the age of operation varies by territory and province, often depending on engine size, with exemptions in certain regions to any laws). ² Victor, aged 13, suggests the social significance of access to a skidoo:

like everyone, I’m always nagging my Mom, can I go on dirt bike, ‘no you’re underage’, but I think I’m allowed this year, ‘cuz this year I’m in high school, she’s like yeah I’ll let you go this year, so I’m on a dirt and skidoo this year, cuz like all my friends used to be going out, like mom I’d be really mad [if she says no].

Some youth complained about being harassed by the police for riding ‘on a skidoo without a helmet’ (Peter, aged 17), though others suggested it is relatively easy to avoid them:

See the cops try to chase you, but in this town there’s just about as many trails as there is roads, so if you get the cops after you, just dart into any trail, anywhere and disappear . . . they can’t follow up bumpy trails, so you can just vanish in the middle of nowhere. (Brian, aged 17)

Such police do not receive much sympathy:

The words of these youth not only reveal their views of the police as interfering with their transportation, but also suggests they have yet to place a primacy on safety precautions when operating snow vehicles.

Many of the youth we interviewed had personal connections with police officers in the rural communities they reside in – often a parent or a parent of a friend, an uncle, or cousin. The personal connections often helped facilitate positive associations with these police officers in particular, but also the police in general. For instance, a group of three males, aged 17 and 18, when asked if the police are accessible and if they feel comfortable approaching them, referred to personal connections. Edward responds, ‘I’m friends with quite a few people that have dads, parents who are police officers, so I think I’m good, I’d feel comfortable, I talk to them . . .’. Riley adds, ‘yeah my cousin’s a police officer, and he was, he was going to talk to me about how weed’s bad and I shouldn’t be smoking’. When pressed – that is, if they would still feel comfortable approaching the police about any situations like drug possessions (small amounts of marijuana) ³ – this group maintained their stance. Edward says in response, ‘I don’t know if there’s any situations where I’d feel really uncomfortable talking to the police’.

Personal connections, however, could also sour the view of police officers, especially in relation to the policing of skidoos, as highlighted above. Peter, for instance, revealed he got caught by a relative who is a police officer while riding his skidoo in a restricted area. ‘He’s a douche bag when he comes to that, he’s a prick . . . he tried to give me a ticket one time at Christmas supper’. Further into the conversation Brian admits ‘there’s some cops that alright, eh’. Peter agrees, contributing an example,

My neighbor, I always hang with cops that live next door to me, always, if I get [police after me], the cop that lived near door last year, even before he moved, he’d let me know, . . . he said keep your [skidoo] away because they’re looking for you, I said ok.

Graham, also 17 in the same group of four, adds,

yeah like, my uncle’s a cop, and like he was next door to my friend, she’s always having parties, . . . and like, he like as long they’re not doing anything like really bad, disturbing the peace or anything, he’s fine with it.

This group was then asked if living in a small town where ‘everyone knows everyone’ is a ‘good thing or not?’ Peter replies ambivalently ‘it’s good and bad’. Two other group members agree, repeating ‘good and bad’, ‘pros and cons’. Peter elaborates on police responses to a custom-built skidoo:

Yeah and then a lot of [police] though, if I got my skidoo in the back of my truck, if I’m stopped somewhere, they’ll pull over ask me about my skidoo, and then ever since then, they’ll start waving to me or talking to me or whatever.

The increased police attention here, while unwanted, leads over time to a more informal and ostensibly positive set of relational dynamics – for example, small talk and inconsequential interactions. It is hard to escape the impression, however, that Peter would rather avoid both positive and negative interactions altogether, and enjoy his skidooing without police monitoring.

Distrust and the Structural Context of Rural Towns and Being Young

Whereas most groups expressed rather positive views of the police, in terms of accessibility and trust, the expression of distrust in the police most often reflected conditions beyond the direct control of officers. For example, nuances tied to the rural area in which a youth was living or the antagonisms that accompany teen-adult authority figure interactions. One group highlighted the ironic tensions placed on trust in small towns where the police are highly visible and informally accessible. One group of three 17-year-old females reflected that the police are accessible ‘most of the time’ (Ally), though she qualifies by adding ‘takes a long time’. Lina notes that it ‘depends on the situation’; Zoey agrees, ‘yeah depends on how urgent it is’. The group was then asked if they find the police generally accessible and helpful when needed, and Ally and Lina agreed, both replying ‘yeah’. Zoey, however, adds the qualification:

It’s hard in a small town where you know them personally as well, like, if I call the cops, 9 chances out of 10 I know them and their children, and it’s just, I guess it’s harder to maintain the trust, ‘cuz you don’t want to tell someone [you know]’.

Ally is persuaded by Zoey’s remark, agreeing, ‘It’s hard to ask for help when you know like, people will know about it, everybody knows when something happens here’. Proxemics and amicable associations, in this sense, disinhibits youth from coming forward to report crimes or issues. In the context of rural community policing, knowing the police personally compromises the trust youth have in officers, as youth fear that they may be shamed if they come forth. Moreover, youth appear to question the extent of their confidentiality if they were to consider making a police report or requesting help.

Some groups expressed doubting the ability of police officers to effectively respond to certain criminal behaviors, such as illicit substance use, which they believed was beyond the scope of the police to detect and deter. Some female participants recalled experiences with peers who dealt with abuse in their relationships, arguing that the police are not able to effectively respond. For instance, in a group of four female teens, aged 15 and 17, Patricia discloses that while she hasn’t had personal encounters with the police, she recalls a friend ‘who went to them for help with relationship abuse and things like that’. Asked about the outcome of this, Patricia replies,

they’ve done nothing. . . . One of my friends was getting abused by her boyfriend, and she was getting stalked by him for months after she ended things, and she went to the police about it, and they took her statement, but they didn’t do anything about it. . . . just had to deal with it herself.

She continues to explain that the frustration she and her friend experienced only relinquished after the victimizer ‘found a new woman to stalk, and moved on’. Here distrust is conjoined with broader concerns about the insufficiency of police responses to violence against women, whether it be in the form of intimate partner violence or other forms of gendered violence (see Maier, 2014; Spencer et al., 2018). Such poor responses to victims, however, further promote distrust of the police among the community.

While long-standing gender norms (see Connell, 1987, 1995; West and Zimmerman, 1987) more implicitly influence youth perceptions during our discussions, more direct references to age suggests more explicit contemplation over maturation and trust. For instance, one group of two males, aged 19, referred to younger teens being generally more antagonistic toward the police than older teens. David reflects,

yeah well like, the way I look at it as a kid, whatever you do, like say, I would say every kid our age drinks underage, so most of the time, when you see a cop you run away. . . . but really, as you get older you realize that the cops probably wouldn’t even do anything to you as long as you’re acting normal, they ain’t, like you got.

Donald interjects, ‘they’re just looking [out] for you’. David elaborates further,

The attempt of you running [away from the police] is automatically assuming that you’re doing something wrong, so they’re going to be rough on you (Donald: ‘that’s right’), you know what I mean, right but as you get older and you look at it, look back on it, they were just checking to see if we were ok, they’re not trying to get us in trouble, they’re not trying to bring us to the drunk tank, they weren’t trying to bring us home; they were just trying to see if we were ok, right, you know what I mean and the running made them think we weren’t ok or that we were doing something bad. Right, I realized that after I got older.

Donald and David add that younger teens are ‘very opinionated’ yet simultaneously ‘gullible’, arguing that these traits bias their view of the police at younger ages. A group with three females, all aged 17, echoed these sentiments. Asked whether there is anything that can be done to improve relationships between the youth and the police, Lina contends that ‘not really because like teenagers are teenagers and cops are cops and like . . .’; Zoey interjects, ‘teenager’s kind of don’t like authority’. Ally agrees, ‘they tend to rebel and like, it’s always going to happen at some point’. While this group does not refer to a specific age, it is implied that these anti-authoritarian teens are younger than themselves.

Despite our mid-sized sample and the inherent limitations in generalizability of qualitative data regarding trends related to age and gender, our discussions reflect a wide body of research suggesting that younger teens present as more antagonistic toward authority figures (including parents, educators, etc.) than older teens. This, of course, has policy implications which we will turn to below.

Discussion and Conclusion

One study conducted in the Southeastern United States found increased positive attitudes among students toward SROs, while simultaneously decreasing feelings of school connectedness (Theriot, 2016). This may indicate that despite goals toward implementation of a more informal, community-policing paradigm for SROs, the mere presence of the police is enough to offset this view among students.

Whether residing in rural or urban areas, a challenge to instilling positive views about the police among youth remains the ontological distance between youth and adult society. Hogg’s and Reid (2001) work on social identity, for instance, argues that police authority is judged based on the extent to which the police represent the values of the broader group. Social psychological research has well established, of course, that teens often fail to identify with adult society and wider communities, however these are conceived. This calls into question the degree to which community policing, with its emphasis on interactive process and the experience of ‘doing trust’, plays as significant a part in rural youth’s perceptions of the police, compared to more traditional assessments of crime control and deterrent efficacy. Jackson and Bradford’s (2010) advocacy of procedural fairness is based on the presumption that ‘fairness encourages the idea that citizens and the police are “on the same side,” and by treating people justly and equitably, police communicate to citizens that they are valued members of the social group that the police represent’ (Jackson and Bradford, 2010: 246, see also Bradford, 2014). Yet, wider questions of police legitimacy and trust are problematized among the rural youth we spoke with both due to the particular geographical and social realities of living in rural regions. The dominance during our discussions of police monitoring of skidoos highlights the significance of how the public spaces used by youth harbor important impacts on youth personal and collective identities, including youth subcultures (Gray and Manning, 2014). Public spaces are often perceived as intrinsically adult spaces, and youth appropriation of them can lead to increased scrutiny from law enforcement (Kennelly, 2011; Valentine, 1996, 2017; cf. Groves et al., 2012).

Our research demonstrates that rural youth offer complex and sometimes contradictory views of the police. We show that the youth view the police, including SROs, as agents of community safety and building, through their roles as both law enforcers and social workers in rural areas. At the same time, focus groups with the youth indicate that the embeddedness of the police in the community in rural areas undermines the youth’s willingness to cooperate and come forth to report incidents to the police. Here, we contribute to existing discussions regarding the salience of trust in youth policing and the need to move beyond the doxa that community embeddedness is a natural good. Furthermore, our research highlights the need for interventions that are based on young people’s conceptions of need and danger. We show that focus group, and related qualitative research approaches, unearth the tensions that manifest in police–youth interactions, tensions that are oft overlooked in quantitative approaches. Future researchers, we urge, should inquire into youth perceptions of school-based initiatives responding to cyberbullying and other transgressions which involve the police, including restorative practices and more formal criminal justice responses. We also do not know enough about the best ways to help facilitate greater social capital and community cohesion in schools, especially those that have gravitated toward zero-tolerance responses to bullying and other deviant behavior.

One of the Stockholm youth interviewed in Peterson’s (2008) study of youth–police interactions is instructive and speaks of our results. She writes that one youth, ‘while chatting to me he admitted that the police officers from the local police office “seemed nice, but I hate all the other cops. Cops are bloody pigs”’. Her study, alongside earlier ones (see Peterson, 2008) found that the youth often distinguish ‘between the community police officers with whom they were personally acquainted with and “other cops”’ (i.e. patrol officers). While community police officers in previous studies are presented as ‘all right’, youth are much more critical about ‘other’ police officers they are less or unfamiliar with personally. Among our own sample of rural teens, familiarity led sometimes to positive views, but, we argue, given the ongoing saliency of the ‘law enforcer’ role for the police, too much familiarity is often seen negatively, or at least is less appealing. These findings certainly highlight a number of intersecting aspects – rural life, community policing, and tensions of the police role, but they are in no small part also a reflection of adolescence and the perhaps unavoidable antagonism with the police that results, regardless of its level of informality.