Creating “Windows of Opportunity”: How Police Officers Sense and Generate Momentum for Gaining Control in Police‐Civilian Interactions

Abstract

This article examines how police officers generate momentum and create opportunities for gaining control in—what they perceive as—potentially violent interactions. Theoretically, the article aims to add to interactionist sociology by illuminating the mechanisms through which participants anticipate and create shared meanings of future possibilities for an encounter. I build upon insights into the function of social interaction for future configuration proposed by interactionist scholars since the 1960s. The empirical contribution is to challenge explanations of officers' attempts to gain control as mere cognitivist decision‐making, ignoring the embodied dimension of anticipating. Drawing on ninety‐four elicitation interviews with Dutch officers on violent events and field work observations of police‐civilian interactions, findings show that officers argue they sense opportunities through an awareness of civilian distraction. To create opportunities for actions that enable gaining control, they refocus civilians' attention. Officers do this by acting in ways a civilian does not readily anticipate through bodily spatial positioning and by using material objects, what I refer to as “positional play.” By detailing how officers act upon momentum, I illustrate that embodied sense‐making and attunement toward serendipitous circumstances is key for police action. The article enriches interactionist scholarship by showing the mise en scène of how the police realize control on an embodied level.