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Paper short abstract

On their duty belts, German police officers carry tactical leather gloves and medical gloves. By gloving-up with one or the other, police officers set the tone of the interaction, desensitise their bodies, protect themselves from perceived pollution and enable transgressions towards citizens.

Paper long abstract

Police operations are often sensorially overwhelming. When leaving their patrol car, police officers find themselves in cacophonic, dynamic, difficult to visually parse and emotionally tense situations. If the use of violence is necessary and legal, they are expected to employ it in a professional, neutral and distant manner. The course of most violent interactions, however, leads rather to emotional and bodily entanglements, with severe consequences for all involved.

One practice by German police officers to deal with this sensory overload and these insecurities is the donning of gloves. On their duty belts, they carry tactical leather gloves and medical gloves. Immediately after leaving the car, or at certain points in the interaction, gloving-up with one or the other sets the tone of the interaction – for themselves, for citizens and for their colleagues. Police officers choose gloves based on their perception of the person encountered. Policing is a practice of categorisation, and police officers routinely differentiate citizens based on age, class, deviancy, gender, legal classifications and race/culture/ethnicity. Selecting gloves emerges more from implicit perceptions by officers: filth, an atmosphere of potential violence, the comfort of routines.

Based on several months of participant observation during patrol shifts in a German police organisation, this paper will study the moral ambivalence of policing and the use of violence through the lens of police gloves. Gloving-up desensitises police officers’ bodies, protects them from perceived pollution and empowers them by allowing transgressions towards citizens.