Social media, police excessive force and the limits of outrage: Evaluating models of police scandal

Abstract

Recent criminological research has developed a processual conceptualisation of scandal to analyse policing and criminal justice transgression and its attempted management. Through media content analysis and in-depth interviews with police and non-police respondents, this article applies criminological theories of scandal to a case of bystander-filmed police excessive force at the 2013 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade and uploaded to YouTube. The article renders scandal more complex than existing models, emphasising outrage and surprise in cases of bystander social media police scandals involving police excessive force, in conjunction with Mawby’s processual model. However, it argues that despite the mobilising force of outrage through social media, police capture of police complaint mechanisms and political opportunism can normalise police transgression and blur lines of responsibility. Individual transgressions can be linked to a macro, ‘chronic’ scandal of police excessive force, diminishing scandal’s conceptual and practical purchase as a police accountability lever.