Street-level bureaucrats under COVID-19: Police officers’ responses in constrained settings

Collective action during the Covid-19 pandemic: The case of Germany’s fragmented authority

“…Lastly, our analysis focuses on the public health system; however, the COVID-19 pandemic poses a myriad of challenges (Hall, Zavattaro, Battaglio, & Hail, 2020). For instance, closing national borders reduces international trade and travel (Garrett, 2020), certain ethnic groups have been stigmatized as alleged carriers of the disease (Roberto, Johnson, & Rauhaus, 2020), closing schools and universities has complicated the provision of education (Blankenberger & Williams, 2020), and crime control has become more difficult, especially in financially and institutionally constrained settings (Alcadipani et al, 2020). Moreover, the repercussions of lockdown on the economy (Goodell, 2020) and, consequently, on public budgeting (Maher, Hoang, & Hindery, 2020) are manifold and serious.…”

Organizações policiais frente à pandemia: sensemaking, liderança e discricionariedade

“…That is, fighting crime depends upon symbolic content shared among police officers. However, the symbolic dimension of fighting crime tends to limit the police's reaction to the pandemic, because usually the police have facing risk as a constructed sense, as opposed to what should be done in order to deal with the virus (Alcadipani, 2020a;Alcadipani et al, 2020). Therefore, the chaotic situation resulting from the pandemic requires new frameworks to make sense of organizational processes and actions.…”

“…Public emergencies require rapid adaptation to unstable conditions, management of distribution of information, bilateral coordination and emerging collective action (Nowell, Steelman, Velez, & Yang, 2018). In Brazil, the lack of political coordination contributes to the decentralization of the work of the police forces in fighting the virus, and imposes political, material and cultural constraints that immobilize corporations and undermine their work with the population (Alcadipani et al, 2020;Lotta et al, 2020).…”

“…The current scenario of the COVID-19 pandemic requires a change in perspective in terms of police operations, which are currently focused on the "fighting crime" operating model. In this context, it is felt that there is a need to discuss the adoption of internal management models and practices that are more appropriate and directed at humanitarian actions (Alcadipani, 2020b;Alcadipani, Cabral, Fernandes, & Lotta, 2020). "Frontline" organizations, such as the police, urgently need to implement organizational changes in order to cope with the pandemic, taking into account a multiplicity of factors, with the highlight here going to biological, social and political ones.…”

Editors’ introduction: Since last We spoke…

“…Using the Los Angeles County jail system as an example, they explain the social justice implications of such treatment. Alcadipani et al (2020) use an ethnographically inspired approach to gather feelings about Brazilian law enforcement officers' reactions to COVID-19. Political, organizational, and social conflicts have created different responses to the virus among streetlevel officers.…”