Preparing for Future Pandemic Policing

First Lessons Learnt on Policing and Surveillance during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Law enforcement organisations have faced a wide spectrum of challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments positioned police and other security actors on the frontline in enforcing compliance with an incremental series of restrictive measures, demanding a new dynamic and distribution of policing across communities and spaces. In particular, as the pandemic was subjected to a simultaneous process of crisisification as well as securitisation, public policing has suffered a set-back in terms of community-relationships and social legitimacy. For instance, marginalising the role of public police organisations in preventive policing and pushing them towards the use of coercive measures. Even though the pandemic has not yet ended, the questions we seek to answer on the basis of media and evaluation reports, include the first lessons that can be learnt for the global law enforcement theatre as well as insights into a potential paradigmatic shift in policing.