Reassembling operative policing: The introduction of drones in the Norwegian police
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14613557231184693 |
| Author | Jenny Maria Lundgaard |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Technology in Policing |
Reassembling operative policing:
The introduction of drones
in the Norwegian police
Jenny Maria Lundgaard
The Norwegian Police University College, Norway
Abstract
Drones are increasingly being used in various areas of society, including in the police. The drone and its sensors make it
possible to collect live images of people, places and situations that are otherwise unavailable or hard to reach. Adding to
the already complex assemblage of operative policing, what happens to policing when drones are introduced? Drones
provide new forms of information to the police, connecting areas that were previously disconnected, and disconnec ting
what was previously connected. Recently, a small one-year trial with drones was carried out by the Norwegian Police
Service, resulting in drones becoming a permanent fixture in the force. Data for this article were collected through
approximately 380 h of ethnographic fieldwork during the trial period. This article explores how drones establish new
assemblages within police practices and thus work as reassemblers of operative policing. The technology forms new
entities and connections on multiple levels within policing, thus also constructing new dilemmas, as the drone can act
both as a problem-solver and a troublemaker.
Keywords
Drones, Policing, Assemblages, Decision-making, Ethnography
Submitted 8 Dec 2022, Revise received 16 May 2023, accepted 8 Jun 2023
Introduction
Remotely piloted aircraft systems, commonly called
drones, have been used for more than a century (Custers,
2016). The technology is now becoming affordable and is
expanding into new areas of society, including policing.
Drones combine three forms of technological innovation:
digitalisation; the production of reproducible and distribut-
able images; and, because they are airborne, a breach in the
connection between what used to be symbiotic –the camera
and the street level (Choi-Fitzpatrick, 2014). By distributing
live images of ongoing events, the drone facilitates new
connections and has been described as a prolongation of
human senses (Kaufmann, 2016). Drones give the police
gaze, a term describing how officers visually make sense
of and sort their surroundings (Finstad, 2000), a new pos-
ition from above and afar (Klauser, 2021). Drones establish
new connections within policing. These connections are
explored in this article, where actor–network theory
(Callon, 1990; Latour, 2005; Law, 2007) is used as a theor-
etical framework and methodology for the analysis of data
from ethnographic fieldwork during the Norwegian Police
Services’first drone trial period. This framework focuses
on the agency of material objects and technologies, thus
regarding technologies as not only tools used by people,
but also actors that shape and define practices. Within
actor–network theory, the focus lies in how networks, con-
sisting of both human and non-human components, work as
Corresponding author:
Jenny Maria Lundgaard, The Norwegian Police University College,
Slemdalsveien 5, 0369 Oslo, Norway.
Email: jenlun@phs.no
Special Issue: Technology in Policing
International Journal of
Police Science & Management
2023, Vol. 25(3) 313–323
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/14613557231184693
journals.sagepub.com/home/psm
To continue reading
Request your trial