Teen and Police Service (TAPS) Academy

AbstractWhat narratives can be fashioned by the historian from visual documents, and how might this relate to the narrative intention of those who created them? This paper explores the handful of surviving photographs recording the career of a British member of the Shanghai Municipal Police between 1929 and 1943. War and internment destroyed most of the visual records that former coalminer Frank Peasgood had collected during his police service, saving only those that had accompanied letters he had sent home to his family. The narrative he created with these can be clearly presented, and is discussed in the first part of the paper. Clearly, only visual documents could so powerfully demonstrate the transformation undergone by a man coming from his background, and provide the tools for showing that transformation. The photographs are then revisited and a further, complicating, layer of narrative is added, one which puts the policeman back into his place as a colonial subject.

Download Full-text

Safeguarding the Republic? The South African Police Service, Legitimacy and the Tribulations of Policing a Violent Democracy

Journal of Asian and African Studies ◽

10.1177/0021909620946853 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 92-108

Author(s):

Guy Lamb

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

South African ◽

Public Trust ◽

The South ◽

Police Service ◽

South African Police Service ◽

The Republic ◽

South African Police ◽

High Crime ◽

Excessive Use Of Force

Since 1994 the South African Police Service (SAPS) has undertaken various efforts to build legitimacy in South Africa. Extensive community policing resources have been made available, and a hybrid community-oriented programme (sector policing) has been pursued. Nevertheless, public opinion data has shown that there are low levels of public trust in the police. Using Goldsmith’s framework of trust-diminishing police behaviours, this article suggests that indifference, a lack of professionalism, incompetence and corruption on the part of the police, particularly in high-crime areas, have eroded public trust in the SAPS. Furthermore, in an effort to maintain order, reduce crime and assert the authority of the state, the police have adopted militaristic strategies and practices, which have contributed to numerous cases of excessive use of force, which has consequently weakened police legitimacy in South Africa

Download Full-text