Police perceptions of residents in a high-crime area in Trinidad and Tobago: Community framing and crime wars

Abstract

This article examines police perceptions of residents of a marginalized community in Trinidad and Tobago. The discourses of 40 members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service are examined to determine how they define residents of the community and situate them within specific interactive contexts. Results show that the officers typically have extremely negative views of the community and its residents, which amplify their perceptions of policing as difficult and dangerous. The potential impact of these perceptions upon police practices, officer well-being and police–community relations are discussed. The study contributes to the emerging scholarly dialogue on policing in the global South and highlights the benefits of discourse analysis within country case studies to elucidate country-specific nuances in police–community relations.

Keywords

Crime hotspots police/community interaction marginalized communities police perceptions Trinidad and Tobago

Introduction

Trinidad and Tobago (TandT) is a twin-island nation and former British colony in the Caribbean that lies just off the coast of Venezuela. The country ranks seventh among countries with the world’s highest crime rates (Carmichael, 2017). Although police-based statistics do not accurately measure the true extent of crime, it is widely acknowledged that the nation experiences major crime problems. Thus far, attempts by authorities to reduce crime appear to be unsuccessful (see Pino, 2016).

It is best to understand policing in TandT within the framework of its uneven economic development due to an over-reliance on its energy sector, weak governmental and political capacity and high violent crime rates that stem largely from high youth unemployment and its location as a major drug transhipment hub (see Pino, 2009). Currently the police operate at a centralized national level under the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS), subdivided into nine divisions across northern and southern branches (Kurian, 2006). The colonial legacies of policing are reflected in today’s TTPS (Pino, 2016). Colonial style training regimens are still employed, and citizens often have to go to a station to solicit services. The TTPS recruitment practices reflect favoritism, bias and nepotism as well (Police Service Commission, 2004). Those of African descent, who were exclusively recruited for policing during the colonial period, comprise approximately 90% of the current force. Physical entrance requirements such as height traditionally favoured those of African over Indian descent.

Citizens have questioned the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service’s ability to competently serve the public. Research indicates that residents view the police as unlawful, unconcerned about citizens’ welfare, excessively forceful, incompetent in terms of capturing major criminals while excessively targeting minor offenders (Deosaran, 2002; Maguire et al., 2008; Mastrofski and Lum, 2008). Likewise, TTPS officers contend that community residents are usually uncooperative and they make the arduous and thankless task of policing more dangerous. TTPS officers possibly face subcultural dislike for law enforcement, passed down intergenerationally, producing a community stance of distance, suspicion, animosity and non-cooperation (Mastrofski and Lum, 2008). Furthermore, officers perceive that residents believe that laws are biased, inapplicable and in conflict with their way of life.

Officers also believe in the locale under study for example containment at the community level is problematic because of the numerous escape routes, poor road surface conditions, open drainage and access from neighbouring communities that are also dangerous. The officers also identify illegal property renovations as obstacles for police access, specifically during search and rescue or high-speed pursuits (OSAC, 2016).

Social and local media accounts speak to police–community relations marred by violence and failed attempts at law enforcement. Broadcasted footage of police–community interactions shows recurrent depictions of community members’ stance of distance, suspicion and antipathy towards officers. Poor police–community relations are particularly apparent in marginalized, high-crime neighbourhoods termed ‘hotspots’. Reflecting the interface between transnational historical and contemporary economic and migratory dynamics, urban crime communities comprise descendants of enslaved Africans who fled the estates after emancipation on 1 August 1985 and settled in impoverished overcrowded communities in the hills overlooking the city. There are conversely Indian dominated crime networks in rural and suburban areas. In the post-indentureship period, the descendants of indentees retained connection with the land and vegetable production and sales. This created vulnerability in successive generations to the cultivation of illicit drugs and eventually to involvement in transnational drug transhipment networks, with attendant gun violence and white-collar corruption.

Despite relatively recent attempts to implement community policing within marginalized or ‘crime hotspot’ communities in Trinidad and Tobago, specialized tactical unit officers typically respond to calls for service. Officers explain that this is a precautionary measure, as anticipated threats are higher and tactical unit officers are considered better suited to respond to the ‘type’ of residents found in ‘those types’ of communities. Task Force Officers are primarily visible in ‘hotspot communities’. Even where regular Charge Room Officers respond to situations, they are often accompanied by Task Force Officers. Task Force Officers are trained ‘to get the job done by any means possible’ (Police Informant). These officers maintain a serious disposition during interactions and usually respond to riots and any situations which are deemed beyond the capability of regular Charge Room Officers. They usually serve as manpower support in instances where initial levels of interaction – physical presence and communication – prove ineffective.

The current study explores language as a source of insight on problematic relations between the police and the community. It examines police perceptions of citizens and the communities in which they live. Using data collected for a larger study on power relationships between police and residents in a community labelled a marginalized crime hotspot¹ in northern Trinidad, we examine the discourses of police officers to determine their perceptions about the community, its residents and police–resident interactions. We identify descriptors for the community and residents, examine the framing of these descriptors within their discourses and eventually discuss how they may impact police relations with the community.

Literature Review

Much research has been conducted on residents’ perspectives of police. While some findings show that the public is generally supportive of police, other findings indicate that residents, particularly those from socio-economically disadvantaged communities, can be quite critical of police (Lim, 2017). Comparatively little research has been conducted on police views of residents, particularly in the Caribbean (Bennett and Moribito, 2006). Unsurprisingly, research reviewed herein shows that residents and police officers tend to differ in their perceptions of criminality. Divergent or conflicting expectations between officers and residents play a major part in police–community interactions that turn violent. In incidents involving use of force, residents’ and officers’ accounts will often differ, and both parties relay their biased, divergent accounts within their respective social networks, thereby facilitating the disconnect in police–community relations (Rojek et al., 2012).

Officers’ views of residents are based heavily on personal interactions, which involve disrespectful resident behaviour. Thus, although community or neighbourhood-based policing has the potential to build positive relations, it also has the potential to create more negative interactions that produce mutually negative perceptions (Pizio, 2014). Officers may anticipate negative behaviour by residents, and thus act in an unpleasant or aggressive manner which elicits negative responses (Pizio, 2014). A survey of London Metropolitan Police officers suggests that officers perceived that physical disrespect was more likely to occur in unpredictable, potentially dangerous encounters (e.g. domestic disputes) or when citizens’ sobriety is questionable (Pizio, 2014). If officers are socially isolated, demoralized and antagonistic towards citizens, they will provide few if any unsolicited police services. As a result, the reciprocally antagonistic relationship between citizens and the police evolves into a police culture of alienation (Bennett and Moribito, 2006).

Officers also often have perceptions of neighborhoods that differ from those who live in them. In particular, officers may be more likely to over-rate problems in socio-economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Officers may base their perceptions of a community exclusively on their experience when policing. Residents base their perceptions on their broader everyday experiences (Stein and Griffith, 2017; Sun and Triplett, 2008). In relation to police–civilian interactions, officers and residents may differ in their perceptions of cordiality and cooperation (Nalla et al., 2018).

Unwarranted negative perceptions of neighborhoods and residents are destructive in that they guide officers towards using overly aggressive or otherwise unjust policing practices. According to Reiss (1971) when citizens question or resist an officer’s legitimacy or authority, abusive behaviour by officers when making arrests is more likely, exacerbating problematic relations. Citizens’ experiences with police procedural justice (basically, if their rights are respected and they are treated with dignity) may heavily impact their perceptions of the police as legitimate authorities. Aggressive, unjust, practices increase citizens’ perceptions of police as illegitimate which could translate into hostile behaviour towards officers, which may then affirm officers’ beliefs that they are confronting problematic people (Brunson and Gau, 2014; Reiss, 1971).

Further, officers are often sceptical of residents’ perspectives on policing. They may be suspicious of ‘outsiders’ – non-officers who intrude on their professional space. Residents may not understand the demands of the officers’ job and do not possess officers’ particular field knowledge and expertise (De Angelis and Kupchik, 2007; De Guzman, 2004). Thus, officers may view themselves as much more qualified to determine the nature of crime problems and appropriate actions for crime control. Studies have shown, for example, that some officers can be highly critical of citizen complaints and may view citizen oversight as illegitimate, inaccurate and biased. Since officers function within a fairly insular subculture, they tend to put more faith in internal police agency reviews. However, other studies show that officers are not universally opposed to resident input (De Angelis and Kupchik, 2007; De Guzman, 2004).

Researchers have also attributed troubled police–community interactions to cynicism. Niederhoffer (1967) characterized police cynicism as officers’ loss of confidence in themselves, citizens and society in general. It is thought to be rooted in the professionalization of policing with its hierarchical structure and rigid accountability methods, leading to a disconnect between what officers are expected to do in the police role and what officers think they can realistically accomplish (Bennett and Schmitt, 2002; Niederhoffer, 1967). Skolnick (1993) noted three features that can lead to cynicism: the need to exercise authority; the exposure to danger; and the pressure to produce. Cynicism can be directed both at the public and towards the policing profession (Regoli et al., 1990). Hierarchical and centralized policing systems that focus on punishment such as the TTPS can create a ‘siege mentality’ where citizens are defined as the enemy (Manning and Van Maanen, 1978: 79). The police develop an us versus them approach to citizens, associating less often with people outside the police community (Haarr, 2001). Additionally, political environments internal and external to the police organization impact cynicism (Bennett and Schmitt, 2002). Cynics view police work as unrewarding, and oppressive (Niederhoffer, 1967). Cynics assume that only the worst behaviour will be exhibited by residents, and this can trigger or reinforce a negative police subculture characterized in part by frustration, disillusionment and hopelessness (Graves, 1996; Hickman, 2008).

Cynical officers feel that the government in general, and the courts and citizens in particular, are against them. Cynicism is engendered from the frustration stemming from the perception that criminals are not being punished in the courts after being arrested (Cebulak, 2001; Graves, 1996). Police leaders in TandT complain of criminals they have arrested being released on ‘technicalities’, and confronting them after they are released (Watson et al., 2018). The criminal justice system in TandT has numerous deficiencies, including trial delays and insufficient resources. The country has one of the highest rates of prisoners awaiting trial in the Caribbean, and the judiciary is ill informed about the prison system, which has fewer resources than the police (Klein, 2004; Singh, 2004). Approximately 30% of TandT’s prison population consists of drug offenders, mostly for petty dealing and possession of marijuana.

Residents in disadvantaged communities are particularly critical of police and are more likely to believe that police use force excessively (Lim, 2017). In turn, police officers may view lower socio-economic status citizens more negatively than higher status citizens, and thus be more likely to use excessive force against lower status citizens (Birkbeck and Gabaldon, 1998). In strained police–community relationships, unfavourable perceptions and accusations of illegal or improper behaviour are reciprocal between police and residents.

In an ethnographic study, Ilan (2018) found that tense or hostile interactions between street-based police officers and disadvantaged youth in Dublin are guided by cultural scripts that place them in confrontation with each other. Their class and gender-based cultural scripts tend to make them perceive the other side’s behaviour as morally illegitimate and deserving of forceful reaction. This competitiveness is then animated by intense emotions. Describing each other with terms like ‘scumbag’, their behaviours towards each other could be driven by frustration, humiliation, disdain and the potential for elation. The groups of officers and youth are thus engaged in an iterative cycle of interpretation and action–reaction that encourages aggressive policing practices, youth perceptions of injustice and mutual antipathy.

Mutual violence may also characterize poor police–civilian relations in disadvantaged communities. While officers are apparently more likely to use violence in disadvantaged communities, they may also be more likely to be victimized by violence in these areas. Gibbs et al. (2018) found that in the city of Baltimore (USA), assaults against officers on duty that resulted in injury or occurred with firearms were more likely to occur in neighborhoods with concentrated socio-economic disadvantage.

However, residents in disadvantaged areas are not unanimously antagonistic towards police. Past research shows that while these residents may be aware of problems with the police in their communities, they may perceive the police as legitimate and be willing to cooperate with them, especially if they have positive direct and vicarious experiences with police (Brunson and Gau, 2014; Sargeant and Kochel, 2018) and perceive a need to depend on them for protection from victimization in the community (Kochel, 2018). What remains under-examined is how officers make sense of interactions and situate community members for policing purposes.

Methods

Data were drawn from officers policing a community labelled as a high-crime area in northern Trinidad. This community shares boundaries with high-crime areas, but does not have as many violent crimes as they do. Surrounding areas are characterized in part by persistent poverty; a mixture of formal and informal settlements; dilapidated infrastructure; environmental pollution, littering and frequent flooding; and high levels of gang activity and violent crime (see OSAC, 2016). The target community does not have the same informal, dilapidated infrastructure or similar environmental problems.

We examine extracts from structured interviews with 40 of the 93 police officers currently or previously assigned or dispatched to one of the nine policing divisions in Trinidad and Tobago. All officers interviewed interacted with the community’s residents. Participants included 10 Charge Room Officers, 25 Task Force Officers and five Guard and Emergency Branch Officers. Officer traffic in and out of the station made it unrealistic to identify a fixed number of individuals from each eight-hour rotation. Emphasis was instead placed on interviewing individuals from each of the three types of units. Interviews were restricted to evening hours and weekends as these were the most appropriate times for the research team and the preferred times indicated by the Station Sergeant. The study employed an availability sampling approach – officers were selected based on their willingness to participate in the study and their availability during the designated interview periods. Because our focus is on discursive representations of police perceptions and justifications of their forms of interaction with community members, emphasis is not placed on officers’ age, gender, length of service or duty assignment.

Interviews were conducted from July to September 2013, and were coordinated by the principal researcher with the help of two trained research assistants. The principal researcher approached officers individually, requesting a brief interview and outlining the purpose of the study. They were made aware that their contributions were being included in a study about police/community interaction in their assigned division. Research participants were also individually given the opportunity to verify that the principal researcher’s interpretation of their responses was accurate. Although the majority of officers expressed initial hesitance, they eventually agreed to participate in the study. In response to a request by the Station Sergeant, officers were given the opportunity to peruse the interview protocol before the interview commenced. This was also deemed necessary since police officers in Trinidad and Tobago are a low accessibility population and tend to be very distrustful of outsiders. Interviews lasted between 45 and 60 minutes, resulting in approximately 40 hours of data. None of the interviews went uninterrupted, owing to the spontaneous calls for service. Some interviews had to be continued on other days and even over multiple days in some instances. Since officers do not adhere to a fixed lunch period while on duty, attempts were made to conduct interviews on officers’ personal days. This also proved difficult as officers were often called to report for duty to accommodate staff shortages and limited manpower.

Interviews were either recorded and/or transcribed. Five Guard and Emergency Branch Officers preferred not to be recorded, which meant sole reliance on interview notes for data provided by them. In four instances, officers requested the non-use or cautioned against the direct quoting of transcribed data. The interview protocol comprised 20 questions geared towards eliciting officer responses about the community they serve in their line of duty and their actions in the field. For the last question, they were all shown samples of recordings taken from community recorded footage uploaded to YouTube of their colleagues – two of whom were under investigation for misuse of force in the line of duty – and asked their opinions about what was depicted. This instrument was piloted prior to data collection and revised to capture significant discoursal representations of the researched community. The direct question approach to controlling discourses used in similar studies (Fairclough, 1992; Haworth, 2006; Heydon, 2005) was not well suited to our context. Trinidad and Tobago’s history of problematic police/community relations necessitated flexibility to allow participants to provide information deemed significant based on institutional context, social identities and perceived relevance. Our analysis focuses on responses to 10 questions inquiring about the officers’ perceptions of the community and its residents:

How would you describe residents from [that community]?

What is your opinion about the attitude of residents towards police officers?

What are the major problems encountered during interaction with residents?

Do you know of any labels (names) attached to individuals from the community?

Describe an example of a difficult type of person/resident you have to deal with as a police officer.

Describe an example of a helpful person/resident you have dealt with as a police officer.

What powers do you have as an officer?

What powers do communities have when interacting with police officers?

Give me an example of police work where you had to use force to resolve a difficult situation.

As a professional police officer, what are your thoughts about this piece? (Officers shown a recorded video of their colleagues attempting to make an arrest in the community.)

We acknowledge that the perceptions offered by participants vary widely and are not necessarily representative of the views of the TTPS. Officers’ perceptions about interacting with the community may directly contradict sanctioned acts of policing and are documented solely for informational purposes. It is also important to note that although perceptions and professional responses may align, they are not the same and should not be considered as such.

We took a hybrid discourse analysis approach to analysing data. It is ‘hybrid’ because it draws on ideas from Cultural and Critical Discourse Analysis to uncover possible biases and value assumptions imbued in discourses of police officers (Carbaugh, 2007; Shi-xu, 2009, 2015), while also acknowledging possible unconscious subscription to the discursive elements determined and propagated by the dominant group within society (Fairclough, 2003; Phillips and Jørgensen, 2002; Wodak, 2000). We see the construction of discourse as underscored by social action, individuals’ conceptualization of interactions and the ideological workings of these conceptualizations in the support of socially organized relational power manifestations during interaction with community residents. Here we focus on how officers’ conceptions as evidenced in their discourses affect their social and professional actions, while also depicting ideas about dominance, discrimination and control.

Data were examined with particular emphasis on how police officers describe community members and their behaviour. We identified labels used by officers and examined the discursive context framing these labels to determine themes based on what we identified as overarching ideas reflecting the focus of this article (Fairclough, 2003). We refer to three types of discourses emerging from the data – perception discourses, community framing discourses and crime war discourses. Perception discourses refer to instances where personal opinions about community members are expressed. Community framing discourses describe generalizations made about all residents irrespective of non-interaction with police. Crime war discourses refer to opinions reflecting strong conflicts between police and community members, as well as positions presenting the community as an opposing force to be contested.

Results

Policing divergents: Perception discourses

The prevailing discourse type that emerged can be described as divergent positioning discourses. These discourses reveal police expression of low tolerance for so-called parasitic elements believed to be plaguing the community and to be responsible for the introduction, promotion and continuance of criminality and moral decay. Officers claimed that such community members were defying accepted social norms governing human interactions. Relatively few responses presented residents as having a sense of camaradarie or a shared humanity with the police.

Three perspectives emerged. First, there was a balanced view which indicated that there were ‘the good and the bad like everywhere else; cooperative and uncooperative’. Second, some officers attributed such difference to behaviours that were ‘normal for ghetto people’ who were ‘sufferers, illiterates and glad to stay so’, which seems to place the onus on the adverse social conditions as determinants of negative perceptions and dangerous action. Only two officers put the onus for fostering positive interaction on themselves rather than on the residents. Third, far more responses attributed community problems to some inherent attributes mysteriously shared by all. These regularly deployed terms such as: ‘criminals, vagabonds and troublemakers, cockroaches, pests, mad’ often qualified by obscenities: ‘fucking pests, real cunts, regular fuckups’. The assigning of these descriptors allowed for the emergence of discourses framing assigned divergent tags of non-conformity, non-cooperativeness and threat to social order and prescribed societal manners of speech and behaviour. Here we present and discuss three assigned descriptors – criminal, pests and gang member – that extend beyond the scope of denoted meaning to include generalizations in the service of the discourse.

Criminal

Officers assigned this tag to residents they deemed as non-cooperative, presenting residents as crude, barbaric, prone to involvement in illegal activities and filled with contempt for officers:

them is criminals! You could tell me you watch ah man shoot ah next one in the face and find that kinda behaviour normal and live with that person like is ah kiss he give ah man? That is real criminal thing. That is how them does roll.

This is exemplary of a range of discourses which referred to residents failing to volunteer information, persons believed to be ‘wasting police time on stupidness’ such as ‘fights’, ‘man and woman bacchanal’ and ‘loud music’, propensity for unrest at a moment’s notice and individuals believed to be involved in activities involving the sale of narcotics and firearms. These discourses reflect the othering and social distancing of residents, and notions of dysfunctionality in the community as a whole.

Officers also strongly assert that within the community, diverse behaviours which would otherwise be seen as aberrant, anomalous and socially deviant have become normalized: ‘I watch one hit ah next one with a two by four [piece of wood] and walk off normal normal.’ ‘Normal normal’ is a slang term that has been used in everyday conversation in TandT for quite some time. One recent popular usage is in a 2016 hit song by Trinidadian Soca Artiste Destra which promotes female dissimulation and two-facedness, as a cover for covert sexual relations, advising to play it cool and act ‘normal normal’ to avoid discovery. The interviewee’s use of the term implies both a measure of understanding that the community colludes to practise self-protective duplicity, making the crime hotspot communities conceptually and physically impenetrable.

The discourses dismiss the attachments, motivations, virtues and codes of conduct of individuals. An officer attributed his antipathy to the propensity for violent eruption at a moment’s notice. He indicated the need for hypervigilance when dealing with ‘criminals’ or ‘them kinda people’. Other interviewees also framed discourses of ‘othering’ and social distance as reflective of a cycle of dysfunctionality at the community level. For these officers, criminality transcends individual actions, rather it viewed as the outcome the communal socialization process. It is well established that violence is a normal feature of socially disorganized, poor communities, and that summary justice by police in these areas is relatively common (see Brunson and Weitzer, 2009). The interviewees in this study anticipated deviant behaviours from residents and scenarios which would require extreme force.

Pests

A substantial cross-section of responses produced names associated with insects and infestation – such as cockroaches and pests – along with explanations as to why such allegations were accurate. We identified dual connotation for deviant discourses framing the label ‘pest’ – persistent infestation and high nuisance value. Officers suggest that despite their best efforts, undesirable individuals continue to reside within the community, produced by the unwholesome environment, which ensures constant ‘infestation’. One officer stated ‘like as soon as we get rid of one set, another batch does come. We don’t know from where! Like they does just appear and pick up where the old set left off with a pack of assness.’

Other references spoke to learned distrust and dislike of officers, the unwillingness to cooperate and instigation of retaliation against police all creating a continuous supply of ‘pests’. For example, in 34 of the documented uses, discourses framing the label ‘pest’ referred to individuals inciting group retaliation to obstruct acts of policing. These included but were not limited to onlooker ‘sensationalizing’ during an arrest, alerting other residents of approaching police presence, inciting riot action or an attack on a police vehicle and engaging in unlawful protests in an attempt to have a community member released from police custody.

Gang members

Officers’ descriptions of gang members closely matched the description provided by Tita and Papachristos (2009) and the United States Department of Justice (2015). Police categorize ‘gang members’ based on their age, seniority within the community and documented involvement with criminal activities. Individuals with a history of criminal offences over the age of 30 are referred to as ‘guntas’. This categorization also extends to alleged gang leaders, individuals under police surveillance for suspected major offences and senior members of the Jaamat al Muslimeen.

Arguably the term ‘guntas’ is derived from the Spanish term junta which means a military government which has taken power in a country by force and not by election. This lines up with the association with the Jammat Al Muslimeen who retain notoriety in Trinidad and Tobago as instigators of the failed 1990 coup in which some 24 persons died and millions of dollars were lost through property damage.² The common characteristics identified in all discourses framing the label was skin complexion and ethnicity: all individuals sharing this label were of Afro-Caribbean descent and of dark complexion. Other characteristics identified included attire resembling that of American rappers, significant gold accessorizing and ‘unkempt’ personal appearance reflected in lack of facial hair grooming. One officer associated ‘guntas’ with foul odour. Others guaranteed at least one ‘gunta’ would be involved in cases of possession of illegal firearm and narcotics, or injury of a ‘young black male’. These individuals were perceived as ‘mid-level puppet masters’ and ‘shot callers’ at the helm of the gang hierarchies. Although discourses categorized ‘gang members’, no data were given to confirm involvement in gang activities beyond an assumption and witnessed public gatherings of such individuals.

Policing the ‘unpoliceable’: Community framing discourses

The officers’ discourses tended to present policing as an impossible task conducted amid socially marginalized misfits. Such community framing discourses present police disdain for groups deemed socially and ideologically different. The community and all of its residents are branded as a collective. These police discourses loosely blame all residents for generating anomie and antipathy. Discourses of this nature frame individuality as a by-product of group identity and secondary to any operationalized response to threat from an ‘othered’ group. The police in this context represent the ‘othered’ group to be resisted, avoided, scrutinized or opposed. Officers used generalized identifiers such as ‘them’ and ‘all’ to refer to community residents. For example, a perceived major obstacle was community solidarity and family networks which protect criminals from police intervention:

Yuh see once ah mother, father, brother, sister, cousin, aunty, dog or cat show up, yuh know not to waste yuh time and ask nothing. One shouting he doh live her, next one shouting, he gone away, mammy saying she aint see him for the year… is a million different story and none eh adding up. This time the man right inside watch yuh through ah bedroom window eh.

The police perceive the working of this network as gendered in a peculiar manner. Although men tend to be the perpetrators, women emerge as their strident and aggressive defenders. Women become even more dangerous if they combine forces:

You see dem woman in dey, is the worse kinda terrorists…. terrorists ah say. They would know the child father or brother or whoever terrorizing people and they creating a scene if you go for them. You see once a set of women gather, is always problems.

We now discuss three instances of community framing discourses – perceived collective distancing, perceived dangerousness and perceived propensity for law-breaking – believed to adequately depict police generalizations about the community as a collective.

Collective distancing

The categorization of residents as deviants and misfits justifies officers’ position of distinguished ‘otherness’. The officers’ social distance from residents translates to discourses saturated with stigmatizing lexicon intent on highlighting how problematic residents are. An example is highlighted in one officer’s description of residents: ‘They just annoying! They always have a problem! Everything is ah problem. They just different.’ For this officer the annoyance presented by the group is as a result of its collective distance. Officer discourses also present residents as different because of their thought processes. Illiteracy was repeatedly cited as a major problem. One respondent states: ‘They so simple-minded that sometimes the easiest thing they don’t understand. You asking them one thing and they telling you something completely different.’ Another officer pointed to the incapacity to understand:

I could give you many [examples] just trying to talk to them. You see them kind of ghetto people, it very difficult dealing with them kind of illiterates. You ask them one thing, they telling you everything but that one thing. They so illiterate is like sometimes they talking ah next language cause they have no kind of schooling so they can’t even talk proper English. […] No disrespect mam but trying to get them from in there to understand anything is like reciting Shakespeare to ah jackass.

Some respondents justified their own verbal violence as the only language residents understand, reducing residents to a group of illiterate, simple-minded, difficult and significantly different people: ‘yuh hadda talk dey language fuh dem to understand… yuh say mam step out the road, she still dey cussing and getting on like a cunt but yuh bawl move out the fucking road and she hush and move.’ Consideration is not given to alternative interpretative processes, intentional attempts to be difficult or a choice to provide information believed to be relevant. Instead, assumptions about residents’ abilities are made to reduce the group to illiterate, simple-minded, difficult and significantly different people. An officer supports this assumption with his statement: ‘Mam them kind of people just difficult all round. They illiterate and like they proud.’

Perceived dangerousness

Officers’ discourses highlighted the constant anticipation of a threat. Residents were described as having an angry disposition at all times. One officer explained, ‘they have a kind of angry way like they want to fight you all the time’. Another officer stated, ‘the slightest move you make could trigger them off’ and went on to suggest that residents were better armed than police. Third-person plural markers and determiners are used to include all members of the community. The category assigned to all members of the community seemed based on residents’ anxiousness and discomfort with police presence. Residents were seen as ‘antsy, cross all the time, hostile, tense up tense up’. For some, this is attributed to an environment which generates wildness: ‘like the jungle air have them jus… wild’. More so, because the residents have mastered jungle law, they have no need for police:

they have this kinda vigilante way that they could make them own justice and they doh need police. You know how vigilantes operate… grass root justice… hand for hand, foot for toe kinda mindset. That is how it is in the jungle.

Other respondents reported the community-wide response of outright hate for police and ‘pure hate’ at that, which elicits similarly hostile responses on the part of the officers: ‘It not no secret that it have plenty criminals there. So you know when you going in to put on yuh game face cause if they sense weakness they will eat you alive.’

The expectation of constant danger is presented as an indicator of how ‘unpoliceable’ the community is. An officer states: ‘Them is fuckin terrorists. I does tell them boys flat, the faster we get the thing over with is the faster we out ah it. Out they not nice mam. Is anything could happen at any time.’ Another officer attributed the perceived danger as normal in ‘the jungle’, presenting the community as a dangerous terrain with unpredictable wild animals that can catch one unprepared.

Propensity for law-breaking

Residents are also described as having a higher propensity for law-breaking. Officer discourses present them as naturally bad or more specifically ‘born bad’. They are described as deriving pleasure from engaging in unlawful acts such as marijuana and firearm possession, unlawful protests, preventing due process of law, noise pollution and causing bodily harm to others. They are also believed to enjoy obstructing officers. Additionally, the respondents reason that the residents’ sense of community justice supersedes state laws eliciting the rejection of policing acts as contrary to their ideologies. Conflict between residents and officers is therefore an anticipated occurrence as the latter represents an opposing force intent on disrupting life at the community level.

Policing normalized conflict: Crime war discourses

Police discourses describing conflict, hostilities and regular confrontations with members of the community were identified. These discourses allude to an anticipated level of threat or the propensity for eruption of conflict during acts of policing. For the officers interviewed, the likelihood of experiencing some form of occupational hazard is higher during interactions in the community space, and they expect situations to escalate readily. A small minority of officers gave balanced responses with an inclination towards cooperation and understanding, but the vast majority of discourses presented the anticipated conflict with community members as normal and an accepted shortcoming of policing a group deemed problematic by virtue of assumed difference.

Officers’ discourses are imbued with frustration and violent hostility towards residents. Some lamented a lack of love and appreciation for their challenging high-risk jobs: ‘No love for the Po Po… we lacking love Mam.’ Another officer shares:

Imagine police gone to hold ah man for murder. You hear what ah say? Yes murder! Them fuckin pest block the road and talking about advantage and police brutality. Ent is just to open fire on all ah them?! The man kill a man and allyuh defending him? I don’t have no conscience for terrorists mam.

The outrage over residents’ behaviours led the officers to give residents the exaggerated label of ‘terrorist’ and state, perhaps figuratively and out of frustration, that residents deserve to be killed or that killing them would be the only way to solve the problem. Some officers even believed that these othered residents did not deserve basic civil and political rights: ‘None! Hush they fucking mouth and listen but them in x Drive… like they don’t even understand that.’

Conclusion

The officers in the current study typically portrayed the community they served as disordered, dysfunctional and dangerous and perceived that criminality was a community norm transmitted across generations. They typically portrayed residents as interfering, uncooperative, disrespectful towards police, annoying, unreasonable and lacking in intelligence. In addition, they often referred to residents as pests, wild animals, trouble-makers, criminals, gang members or gangsters, or terrorists. The officers found policing the community and residents to be difficult, and that their safety was continuously threatened. While data were not collected explicitly on the officers’ treatment of residents, the information on perceptions of the community and its residents have important implications for their policing.

Conceivably, harshly negative views of residents increase officers’ likelihood of mistreating them, including using excessive force (Hoggett and Stott, 2010). For example, if officers believe that crowds of people are inherently irrational and dangerous, and easily steered into riots by a few ‘troublemakers’, they may too quickly engage in indiscriminate use of force. Officers may perceive the crowd’s hostility as an affirmation of their view of crowds as inherently irrational and dangerous, especially if they lack reflexivity about their own potential impact upon crowd dynamics (Hoggett and Stott, 2010). Interview data revealed instances of police officers wishing to engage in excessive force to deal with the ‘pests’ and ‘animals’ in the ‘jungle’. This resembles the USA’s overly aggressive ‘urban warfare’ practices that have been associated with officers’ perceptions of the inner city and its residents (especially young minority males) as high-crime places and dangerous people (Brunson and Gau, 2014).

The study’s findings echo the substantial existing literature on police culture in the western world including perceptions of citizens as non-human animals, crime as war, collective distancing and the like (Crank, 2014). In particular we see parallels with the concept of police cynicism (Niederhoffer, 1967). Officers’ discourses reflected a loss of confidence in society in general and citizens in hotspot communities. Policing becomes an impossible task. The current study aligns with other policing research in TandT which indicates that police have lost faith in the community in police leadership and the government, arguing that the country is unpoliceable, authorities are too corrupt and incompetent, and far too aligned with criminal gangs (Bennett and Schmitt, 2002). Senior officers feel powerless to stop crime owing to a lack of resources, a corrupt and ineffective judicial system and lack of confidence in the competence of junior officers (Watson et al., 2018). These feelings of powerlessness contribute to cynicism. Cynicism negatively impacts quality of life for officers, and their families, and can lead to various emotional difficulties, loss of commitment or motivation to work, absenteeism and brutality (Graves, 1996; Hickman, 2008; Richardsen et al., 2006). As police officers associate with fewer non-officers, they may experience an anomic condition characterized by alienation and a lack of commitment to conventional norms (Graves, 1996), making excessive use of force more likely to occur (Pfaff and Bennett, 2008).

Outside of the sphere of law enforcement, the scapegoating of residents of crime hotspots continues apace in the nation’s media and institutional discourses and its educational and other systems. Caribbean Cultural Analyst Gordon Rohlehr (2013), characterized the relational dynamic between TandT’s mainstream society and vilified hotspot communities, as a deeply rooted clash of norms and the outgrowth of divergent educational systems. This, Rohlehr argues, has persisted since the nation’s first Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams’s failed attempts to build consensus around middle strata Eurocentric norms, aspirations and values in the 1960s. Police officers who face the daily requirements to maintain law and order, and bear the brunt of responsibility for not doing so effectively, occupy a front-line position which greatly exacerbates their vulnerability, stress and frustration. A major issue which emerges is the incapacity of policing interventions – in the absence of broader strategies – to restore social organization and community-building within deeply traumatized communities.

Community-oriented policing has been offered as a strategy for improving police–community relations, but it may take some time before it creates changes. Kuhns et al. (2011) found that an implementation of a pilot community policing programme in a disadvantaged Trinidadian neighbourhood did not improve residents’ experiences with and perceptions of police regarding mistreatment of citizens. Other attempts at police reform also failed to improve police–community relations, or result in meaningful systemic changes in police culture or behaviour. Problems with implementation and evaluation aside, this may have occurred because community policing simply does not specifically impact perceptions of police mistreatment particularly in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Sustained changes in multiple areas of policing and improvements to the wider economic and social context over time, such as social capital and community-building in marginalized communities, may be needed before community policing improves police–community relations and perceptions (Kuhns et al., 2011).

In the current study, hybrid discourse analysis elucidated some of the country-specific dynamics influencing police officers’ attitudes towards residents, which can inform future studies on police/community relations, police cynicism and related subjects. More research is needed on police cynicism in the global South, as factors impacting cynicism and police/community relations will differ by country and between northern and southern contexts. Even if there are some general similarities in the causes of police cynicism, the particular post-colonial political context helps explain the systemic nature of police cynicism in TandT (Bennett and Schmitt, 2002) along with other factors such as the country’s role as a transhipment hub in the international drug trade.

This study reveals the power of police discourses to express cynicism, articulate toxic perceptions of residents and potentially negatively impact police–community interactions. Conversely, this study invites another line of enquiry into the potential of discourse to be deployed positively. Arguably, community policing initiatives – which are predicated on sensitivity to negative discourses, assumptions and perceptions and designed to redress toxic police–community interactions – can indeed emerge as a valid and effective facet of police intervention in marginalized crime hotspots. For community policing and other approaches intended to improve police–community relations to work, strategies must be developed to change negative police officer perceptions and discourses about communities and their residents, and although beyond the scope of this study, negative resident perceptions and discourses about officers and policing.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Notes

ORCID iD

Danielle Watson

Author biographies

Danielle Watson is the coordinator of the Pacific Policing Programme at The University of the South Pacific, Fiji. She conducts research on police/civilian relations on the margins with particular interests in hotspot policing, police recruitment and training as well as many other areas specific to policing in developing country contexts.

Lee Michael Johnson is associate professor and program director of Criminology and Criminal Justice at William Paterson University in New Jersey, USA. He has researched and published journal articles and book chapters on topics in juvenile delinquency and justice, criminal victimization, corrections, policing and perceptions of criminal justice system effectiveness.

Nathan Pino is professor of Sociology at Texas State University. He conducts research on policing and police reform in an international context and forms of violence. He is co-author of Globalization, Police Reform and Development: Doing It the Western Way? and co-editor of Democratic Policing in Transitional and Developing Countries.

Paula Morgan is a professor of West Indian Literature and Culture at The University of the West Indies. Her primary research looks at domestic violence and constructions of masculinity and femininity in Caribbean literature. She has published numerous books, the latest being: The Terror and the Time (The UWI Press).

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