Police officers' views and fears about some criminals' threatening reactions to police investigations

auteur Fien Gilleir
tijdschrift GofS (ISSN: )
jaargang 2010
aflevering EU and International Crime Control. Topical Issues
onderdeel Artikelen
publicatie datum 24 februari 2010
taal English
pagina 169
samenvatting

The main aim of this article is to gain a thorough image of the way in which members of criminal organizations avail themselves of the technique of ‘intimidation and violence’ against police officers. Police officers as a victim of intimidation is a subject that is often ignored by researchers. The main focus of the present research emphasizes the need to analyse intimidation as an interaction between the criminals, on the one hand, and the police on the other hand. Special attention is paid to the position of the police officers, who, because of their crucial function in the criminal justice procedure, hold precarious positions. Police officers are working in the frontline of a public service with a repressive task in regard to criminal activities. It is inherent in their job to be confronted in a direct way with people who have malicious intentions. Within that context it is definitely of major interest to analyse how the interactions between police officers and criminals take place. Which forms of intimidations take place? What is the result of harassment at the level of an individual police officer? In this article we pay attention to the subject of organized crime and the work of frontline police officers. Therefore, we made use of the ‘reports about organized crime’ collected by the Belgian Federal Police, as a basis for the empirical data. The items we examined are numerous. By means of ‘reports about organized crime’ and thanks to some privileged witnesses employed at the management level of the Belgian Federal Police, we were able to make a selection of 29 criminal records (from the 56 cases), where the presence of this counterstrategy was reported. These resulted in 36 in-depth interviews, spread over eight court districts in Flanders as well as in the Walloon provinces. On the basis of those data, we tried to refine the form of the image of organized crime.