Purpose

This article explores officer use of suspicion before informal police-citizen encounters as a method to further understand police officer decision-making. There is a body of research focused on officer decision-making before formal “stop and search” encounters, yet, while the more informal “stop and chat” encounters are ubiquitous, they are a comparatively under-researched part of policework.

Design/methodology/approach

The research takes an ethnographic approach to explore police decision-making. It used participant observation (800 h over 93 patrol shifts) of front-line first response officers from New Zealand (n = 45) and South Australia (n = 48). Field observations were complemented with informal discussion in the field and 27 semi-structured interviews.

Findings

It reveals that officers applied three situational “tests” to assess the circumstances or actions observed before initiating an informal encounter. Officers then weighed up whether the circumstances were harmful, contrary to law, or socially acceptable to determine the necessity of initiating a police-citizen encounter. This process is conceived as suspicioning: deciding whether circumstances appear prima facie suspicious, how an officer goes about collecting more information to corroborate suspicion to ultimately inform a course of action.

Originality/value

The findings present a new perspective to understanding how and why police officers decide to initiate encounters with members of the public. Moreover, as the first ethnographic cross-national research of officers from New Zealand and South Australia, it provides a rare comparative glimpse of Antipodean policing.

中文翻译：

---

可疑的思想和怀疑：在警察工作中建立怀疑

目的

本文探讨了警官在非正式警民相遇之前使用怀疑作为进一步了解警官决策的方法。有大量研究集中在正式的“拦截和搜索”遭遇之前的警官决策，然而，虽然更非正式的“拦截和聊天”遭遇无处不在，但它们是警察工作中研究相对不足的部分。

设计/方法/方法

该研究采用人种学方法来探索警察决策。它使用了来自新西兰（ n  = 45）和南澳大利亚（n  = 48）的一线第一反应人员的参与观察（93 个巡逻班次，800 小时）。实地观察得到了实地非正式讨论和 27 次半结构化访谈的补充。

发现

它显示，官员们在开始非正式接触之前应用了三个情境“测试”来评估观察到的情况或行为。然后，官员们权衡了这些情况是否有害、违反法律或社会可接受，以确定是否有必要发起警察与公民的冲突。这个过程被认为是怀疑：决定情况是否表面上看起来可疑，官员如何收集更多信息以证实怀疑，最终为行动方案提供信息。

原创性/价值

这些发现为理解警察如何以及为何决定与公众进行接触提供了一个新的视角。此外，作为对新西兰和南澳大利亚警官的第一次民族志跨国研究，它提供了一个难得一见的对澳大利亚警务的比较一瞥。