The Police on Camera: A Case Study of Police Perceptions of and Responses to Cameras and Photographers in Edmonton Alberta

• Author / Creator

  Sandhu, Ajay

• This project contributes to our understanding of police visibility through a case study of Albertan police officers’ perceptions of, and responses to, the growing network of cameras targeting law enforcement agents. Contrary to what many readers might expect, my research participants did not uniformly resent or resist cameras. Instead they expressed diverse perspectives about being on camera, which I categorize as the apathetic perspective, strategic perspective, and camera-shy perspective. This dissertation provides insights into the perspectives that my participants aligned themselves with as they experienced higher visibility, how these perspectives influence their behaviour, and the implications of these perspectives for the popular assumptions that raising police visibility can contribute to police accountability, and incite a war against photography.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Surveillance
  • CopWatch
  • Accountability
  • Photography
  • Edmonton
  • Qualitative
  • Visibility
  • Police

• Graduation date

  Spring 2016

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R30R9MF42

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.