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Book Cover
Book
Author Perlmutter, David D., 1962-

Title Policing the media : street cops and public perceptions of law enforcement / David D. Perlmutter
Published Thousand Oaks, California : Sage Publications, [2000]
©2000

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Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  363.20973 Per/Ptm  AVAILABLE
Description xv, 159 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Contents Viewing and picturing cops. Looking back through the viewfinder. Wanting something to happen. Here's a good shot. They'll think we're boring -- All the street's a stage. The dramaturgical metaphor. Approaching cops as viewers. The fog of the street -- Prime time crime and street perceptions. Televisual content. Street perceptions : police responses to the screen. Level of action. Level of violence. Heroes and villains. The status of the cop. Omniscience. Closure. Focus. Exceptionality. Gravity. Deliverers of justice, keepers of the peace. Activities of the back stage. Chronology of events. Being there -- Ethnography and police work -- Observing the street. The front stage. The public eye. Time spent on the front stage. The back stage. Talking about colleagues. Talking about superiors/complaining about work. Making moral and mental judgments about the public. Rationalizing back-stage transcripts. Star power and control. Failed expectations and value judgments -- The (real) mean world. In the same boat. Everyone is innocent. No respect from the audience. The system is against them : statistics as bullshit. Tales of decline. Conclusions : rebels against the public? -- Get Along? Perceptions as effects. The struggle continues
Summary "Policing the Media is an investigation into one of the paradoxes of the mass-mediated age. Issues, events, and people that we "see" most on our television screens are often those we understand the least. David D. Perlmutter examines this issue as it relates to one of the most frequently portrayed groups of people on television: police officers. Policing the Media is his ethnography of a police department, which included riding on patrol with officers and joining the department as a reserve policeman."--BOOK JACKET
Notes Policing the Media is an investigation into one of the paradoxes of the mass-mediated age. Issues, events, and people that we "see" most on our television screens are often those that we understand the least. David Perlmutter examined this issue as it relates to one of the most frequently portrayed groups of people on television: police officers. Policing the Media is a report on the ethnography of a police department, derived from the author's experience riding on patrol with officers and joining the department as a reserve policeman. Drawing upon interviews, personal observations, and the author's black-and-white photographs of cops and the "clients," Perlmutter describes the lives and philosophies of street patrol officers. He finds that cops hold ambiguous attitudes toward their television comrades, for much of TV copland is fantastic and preposterous. Even those programs that boast gritty realism little resemble actual police work. Moreover, the officers perceive that the public's attitudes toward law enforcement and crime are directly (and largely nefariously) influenced by mass media. This in turn, he suggests, influences the way that they themselves behave and "perform" on the street, and that unreal and surreal expectations of them are propagated by television cop shows. This cycle of perceptual influence may itself profoundly impact the contemporary criminal justice system, on the street, in the courts, and in the hearts and minds of ordinary people
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [149]-157) and index
Subject Saint Louis Park (Minn.). Police Department.
Television cop shows -- Social aspects -- United States.
Police and mass media -- United States.
Police in mass media.
Police -- United States -- Attitudes.
Police -- United States -- Public opinion.
LC no. 99050428
ISBN 0761911049 (alk. paper)
0761911057 (paperback: alk. paper)
Other Titles Street cops and public perceptions of law enforcement