Nightlife Partnership Policing - (Dis)trust Building Between Bouncers and the Police in the War on Gangs

Introduction

The ‘Nordic model of policing’ has traditionally been characterized by strong state organization and a reluctance to outsource core policing tasks and to form official partnerships with the private security industry (Høigård, 2011; Kruize, 2005). The organization of Nordic policing however, seems to be undergoing considerable changes due to an increased pluralization of policing (Gundhus, Larsson & Myhrer, 2007) and the growing popularity of partnerships both in Nordic contexts and beyond (Johnston & Shearing, 2003). In Denmark, which is the focus of this article, a recent example of this latter tendency pertains to the formation of a ‘strategic partnership’ between The Western Copenhagen Police Department and the private security industry in 2012 (Sjöberg, 2012). This partnership has not been driven by legislative changes, as has been the case in Sweden, where collaboration with ‘ordningsvakter’ is a statutory requirement for the police (Munck, Vilgeus & Carlberg, 2005). Instead, in Denmark, the strategic partnership is a bottom-up initiative driven by pragmatic concerns and the assumption that increased collaboration between the police and private security industry can reduce crime and disorder in selected areas. Initially, the strategic partnership was launched as a local experiment. However, it has been claimed that the partnership will spur a new epoch of Danish policing, as the Danish State Police (Rigspolitiet) is now considering expanding the partnership model throughout the country (Sjöberg, 2014). While this Copenhagen-based partnership may represent a new era of formalized cooperation between the police and the security industry, this article demonstrates how informal but highly influential police-bouncer networks, which emerged as part of the police-led ‘war on bikers and gangs’ of the 2000s (Volquartzen, 2009), have been crucial for the regulation of Danish nightlife areas (see Søgaard, 2013). Taken together, the emergence of formal and informal policing networks in Denmark raises important new questions regarding how to conceptualize the relationship between the state and other policing nodes, in addition to more practical questions regarding the internal dynamics and effects of policing networks such as; how do different network agents’ interactions and experiences with one another affect policing practices? What role does inter-agency trust building play in the establishment of sustainable network ties? Finally, what are the challenges to effective collaboration and network governance?

In contrast with the extensive body of research about private security and partnership policing in the Anglo-American context (Crawford, 2006; Dupont, 2004), Nordic research about policing has predominantly focused on state actors and has paid little attention to private security actors’ policing practices (Høigård, 2011).¹ In addition, few studies have investigated the formation and daily operation of police-private security networks (Gundhus et al., 2007; exceptions include Berndtsson & Stern, 2011). Through an ethnographic case study of Danish bouncers and the police-bouncer networks that regulate Aarhus nightlife in Denmark, this article aims to contribute to the Nordic research about policing and to our understanding of current transformations in the nature of policing by exploring key barriers to and the importance of trust building in the formation of sustainable and effective policing partnerships. The article more generally contributes to the study of trust in the police. While existing research has often used trust as a variable to measure public perspectives on the police and to suggest that Nordic countries represent high-trust societies (Kääriäinen, 2007), we argue that a processual understanding of trust can be used to explore key aspects of current policing partnership formations, and provide a more nuanced perspective on the dynamics of trust in Nordic policing, and elsewhere.

We draw inspiration from recent ethnographic studies that have been conducted on police-involved partnerships (Fleming, 2006; O'Neill & McCarthy, 2012; Meyer & Mazerolle, 2014). These studies argue that although inter-agency collaboration creates new opportunities for policing agents to break down barriers, share information and maximize their capacities, network collaboration also brings about challenges and is premised on organizational and personal trust building. According to this perspective, policing networks – their formation, organization and effects – are best understood as practical accomplishments that involve trust building, negotiation and compromise (see also Fleming & Wood, 2006; Rhodes, 2006). Existing research about network or partnership policing has primarily applied a police-oriented perspective to explore how police officers operate in networks and conceive of other partner agents (Gill, 2013). In this article, we argue that it is not possible to fully understand the dynamics of network policing without focusing on how private partners negotiate their relationship with the police and how they come to view the police as an (un)trustable partner. It is important to investigate how external partners’ (lack of) trust in the police influences the formation of collaborative networks because research has shown that trust building is essential to network actor commitment and collaborative behaviour (Fleming & Wood, 2006). In this analysis, we outline the historical and political circumstances that have contributed to the formation of informal collaborative relationships between police and bouncers in Denmark. Furthermore, we use the police-bouncer network as an ethnographic case to explore the importance of, and barriers to, trust building in the formation of crime-control ‘partnerships’ in urban nightlife zones. Finally, we draw upon our findings and make recommendations for policy, practice and future research on partnership policing.

Studying Network Dynamics: Outlining the Analytical Framework

In recent years, researchers have argued that the provision of policing is becoming increasingly pluralized, and that partnership arrangements have become important (Crawford, 2006; Dupont, 2006; Fleming & Wood, 2006). The collaborative turn in Western policing has been fuelled by factors such as the increased dominance of responsibilization policies, the emergence of problem-oriented approaches, and growing police dependency on external ‘third party’ partners (Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006). Research regarding plural policing and policing partnerships can be divided into two overall categories of studies. The first line of research has primarily been interested in developing conceptual models for understanding the structural relationship between state and non-state policing actors. The second line of research has investigated the everyday dynamics of policing networks. In the following, we provide a brief overview of common theoretical approaches, and we outline the analytical framework used in this article to understand police-bouncer relations.

Scholars have used different theoretical models to conceptualize the structural relationship between the police and other policing actors. One early model is the ‘privatization perspective’, which argues that public and private policing actors are clearly separated and engaged in a competitive zero-sum game of tasks, authority and legitimacy (Abrahamsen & Williams, 2010). In Denmark, the privatization perspective dominates public debates as well as the few academic writings about the private security industry (see Stevnsborg, 2003). However, in recent years, this perspective has been criticized for being too simplistic to capture the complex relationship between state and private policing actors. One alternative model is the ‘nodal approach’ proposed by Shearing and Wood (2003). Inspired by the work of Castells (1996) charting the decline of hierarchical structures and the rise of horizontal networks, nodal approach theorists refuse to give conceptual or normative priority to state actors. Instead, they argue that the state is only one governing node among many in an increasingly diversified policing landscape. Consequently, the nodal approach has often been taken to imply that the state is losing its privileged position as we enter a phase of post-regulatory statism (Crawford, 2006). While scholars generally agree that a key advantage of the nodal approach lies in the fact that it allows for empirical enquiry into the complex relationships between different policing nodes, critics have argued that it underestimates the continued dominance of state actors. Against this background, other scholars have promoted what is often referred to as the ‘anchored pluralism perspective’. Although Loader and Walker (2006) initially introduced the ‘anchored pluralism’ concept to describe the normative necessity of state presence in security networks, other scholars have used this concept as an analytical prism to investigate how state actors continue to play a central role in the mobilization and orchestration of policing networks, at times using these to suit their own needs and interests (Crawford, 2006). In this article, we draw on the latter perspective to argue that Danish police-bouncer networks bear resemblance to a particular version of anchored pluralism that is often referred to as ‘third party policing’ (Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006; Meyer & Mazerolle, 2014). In the criminological literature, third party policing is described as a form of regulation whereby state actors enhance control in areas where their influence is ineffective or non-existent, by mobilizing and harnessing private actors’ resources and authorities through persuasion or coercion. Third party policing is based on organization of non-offending persons’ authority and access to legal resources that can be used to regulate particular spaces and individuals (Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006; Meyer & Mazerolle, 2014). More specifically, we demonstrate how the formation of informal police-bouncer networks has been driven by a police ambition to mobilize bouncers’ private authority as a lever to enforce the systematic exclusion of (non-offending) bikers and gang members from Danish nightlife districts, which to a large degree are constituted by privately owned venues over which police exert limited authority.

In recent years, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to the study of policing network dynamics. These studies have often been driven by an interest in how police operate in partnerships and by the notion that even the most top-down structured networks are also created through informal participant practices, troubleshooting and mundane routines (Fleming & Wood, 2006). This line of research has often used ethnographic methods to investigate how the police facilitate network formations (Meyer & Mazerolle, 2014), how the police often play a dominant role in networks through persuasion and coercion to further their interests (Ayling, Grabosky & Shearing, 2006), and how officers conceive of partners and display frustration and scepticism (Crawford & Jones, 1995; Gill, 2013), or embrace network structures (O'Neill & McCarthy, 2012). In addition, researchers have documented how network policing involves challenges and tensions that often emerge from unequal power-relations, competition between participants (Dupont, 2006) and differences in re-gulatory philosophies (Meyer & Mazerolle, 2014). Importantly, a key finding of these studies has been that flexibility, compromise and, not least, the development of trust-based relationships are essential to policing actors’ -collaborative behaviour, and to the effectiveness of networks.

Although this article also provides evidence of how the police operate in and through networks, the analysis gives primary attention to private security actors’ everyday experiences of collaboration with and (dis)trust in the police as partners. We argue that such a perspective is important because, although the police might play a dominant role, influence is always mediated, negotiated or resisted by private partners. We pay particular attention to issues of trust building and to challenges in police-bouncer relationships. Traditionally, interactions between bouncers and the police have often been characterized by avoidance, suspicion and antagonism (Hobbs, Hadfield, Lister & Winlow, 2003; Roberts, 2009). Against this background, we suggest that by exploring how trust is constructed, challenged and undermined between these unlikely (policing) bedfellows, we can highlight key aspects of collaborative policing that may also be found in other policing networks, although in more subtle forms. We make use of Dupont’s functional definition of security networks as a ‘set of institutional, organizational, communal or individual agents or nodes that are interconnected in order to authorize and/or provide security to the bene-fit of internal or external stakeholders’ (Dupont 2004, p.78). Furthermore, rather than using trust as a variable, we employ a processual understanding of trust as forged and negotiated in social relations (Khodyakov, 2007), to investigate the following: how bouncers come to see the police as (un)trustable partners through everyday interactions; how bouncers’ conceptions of police are shaped by on-going contestation regarding different network actors’ roles and responsibilities; and how bouncer-police trust building is challenged by the hierarchical and legal-bureaucratic frameworks that also structure their relations. Finally, we provide insights into how resolution of network tensions is attempted, though the staging of dialogue-based meetings between policing partners.

Police and Bounces as Unlikely Bedfellows: Network Policing in the Shadow of the Gang War

Traditionally, research on nightlife policing has focused either on the work and practices of police officers (Buvik, 2014) or on the regulatory practices of bouncers (see Hobbs et al., 2003; Monaghan, 2002). With the exception of Rigakos’ analysis of the use of police-for-hire at venues in Halifax (2008) and a recent study of how emerging police-bouncer collaboration in the Netherlands affects bouncers’ involvement in the policing of (public) nightlife spaces (van Liempt & van Aalst, 2016), researchers have devoted little attention to police-bouncer collaboration. A key reason for this pertains to the fact that much research has documented how the relations between bouncers and the police have traditionally been characterized more by avoidance, distrust or outright antagonism than by collaboration. Police officers’ reluctance to collaborate with bouncers has often been rooted in views of bouncers as ‘licensed thugs’ who use disproportional levels of physical force. Bouncers’ reluctance to collaborate originates in a subcultural tendency to solve conflicts through private and retributive justice rather than through public justice (Lister, Hobbs, Hall & Winlow, 2000); in beliefs that officers dislike them and are keen on arresting them (Hobbs et al., 2003); and in the fact that bouncers at times instructed by venue owners to contact the police only as an absolute last resort, to avoid drawing undesirable attention to their venue.

Though mistrust continues to exist, police-bouncer collaboration is becoming more common both in Denmark and elsewhere (see also van Liempt & van Aalst, 2016). In Denmark, this development has been driven by several structural processes. Such processes include the development of official white papers by the Union of Police Chiefs at the turn of the millennium, which recommended that police should strengthen their collaborations with venue owners and other governing bodies nightlife to limit violence, illegal drug use and disorder (Politimesterforeningen, 1998, 2002). Contributing to this process was the implementation of national license schemes for bouncers in 2004. These schemes have institutionalized a hierarchical relation between the authorizing police and private security providers, which in turn has created a greater incentive for bouncers to cultivate positive relations with the police (see also Hobbs et al., 2003). Furthermore, cooperation with the police is today also encouraged in mandatory educational programmes for bouncers, in which police are referred to as ‘the most important external collaborative partner’ (Efteruddannelsesudvalget, 2010, p.78). Some security company owners also embrace cooperation in an attempt to project a company image of responsible security professionals (see also van Liempt & van Aalst, 2016). In Denmark, the collaborative turn has however also been fuelled by the fact that police, since the early 2000s, have been very eager to cultivate closer relations with bouncers as part of a so-called ‘war’ on outlaw bikers and criminal gangs.

Over the past three decades, Danish towns and cities have been the sites of three major violent conflicts involving bikers and criminal gangs. During the late 1990s, the Danish police developed a gang suppression approach often referred to as the ‘stress strategy’ (Høyer, 1999; Volquartzen, 2009). The stress strategy involves intensified surveillance, house searches and the constant use of stop-and-search methods targeting individuals who are believed to be affiliated with biker organizations or gangs. Importantly, the stress policy has also involved large-scale attempts to systematically exclude individuals affiliated with biker organizations or gangs from nightlife venues, even if these individuals do not engage in disorderly or offending behaviours. In line with this, the Union of Police Chiefs published a white paper in 2002 emphasizing that it was essential for police to maintain good relationships with bouncers and venue owners to reduce the influence of bikers on nightlife districts (Politimesterforeningen, 2002). Police efforts to transform Danish nightlife into a no-go zone for bikers and gangs have however faced a number of obstacles. First, venues are private properties over which the police exert only limited authority. Second, in Denmark, there are no legal grounds for banning individuals from entering venues solely on the basis of their membership or affiliation with a biker organization or gang (Høyer, 1999; Kriminalretten i Hillerød, 2003). Therefore, to implement an effective nightlife stress policy, police have cultivated collaborative relations with venue owners and bouncers to make them use their private authority, granted to them by private property rights, to perform the exclusionary work that police cannot engage in themselves (for a more elaborate account of this process, see Søgaard, 2013). This arrangement today constitutes an obvious case of ‘third party policing’ in the Danish context.

Since the late 1990s, these structural processes have contributed to the gradual formation of informal collaborative relationships between bouncers and police officers in Denmark. Due to its informal format, the degree and nature of collaboration varies across different cities and police districts. In Aarhus, from which the data for this article were obtained, one section of the local police (the so-called ‘special unit’ or riot patrol) has developed close collaborative relationships with local bouncers because such special units in most Danish police districts are tasked with street-level drug control and nightlife policing. Fieldwork showed that collaboration between bouncers and riot patrol officers involves regular face-to-face exchanges of general information regarding local nightlife conditions; nightly oral or SMS-based exchanges of warnings about the whereabouts of known troublemakers, gang members and bikers; and re-gular afternoon meetings during which regulatory strategies are discussed and coordinated. More generally, collaboration between bouncers and the police involves friendly interactions on weekend nights; bouncers contacting the police for assistance with aggressive individuals, officers helping bouncers identify biker- or gang-related individuals inside venues, and joint ventures for targeting drug law offenders. In this article, we focus specifically on joint efforts made to target bikers and gang-related individuals.

Although much collaboration occurs between the riot patrol and different security companies engaged in Aarhus nightlife, relations between the security companies are characterized more by distrust and competition than by collaboration. In Aarhus, policing networks are thus organized more along vertical police-bouncer lines than along horizontal lines of cooperation between the different security companies. In this context, the police function as an ‘anchoring node’ (Crawford, 2006; Loader & Walker, 2006) that both influences and ties together parallel police-bouncer relationships, thus forming the larger police-bouncer network.

Methods and Data

This article is based on data generated over 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted by Søgaard in 2010/2011 in Aarhus, a Danish city of 300,000 inhabitants. The fieldwork formed the basis of a PhD project about the intertwining of bouncers’ embodied masculinity, network policing and the political economy of security in the Danish night-time economy (see Søgaard, 2013). To explore these issues, Søgaard conducted 163 full nights of observations of bouncers’ nightly work.

On weekend nights, Søgaard observed bouncers and made informal enquires into co-experienced situations. As bouncers in Denmark spend most of their time regulating access ‘in the door’ as the Danish expression goes, Søgaard positioned himself at the side of a nightclub entrance right next to the bouncers. During nightly observations, he occasionally retreated to an area out of sight to take notes. These notes were later used to reconstruct actual field notes with descriptions of bouncers’ activities, their bodily appearances, their conversations with co-workers, their concerns and their interactions with patrons and police officers. Søgaard also conducted 54 qualitative interviews with security company owners, head bouncers and bouncers. These interviews were used to generate data about the bouncers’ regulatory practices, their concerns pertaining to the police and the relationships between the different security companies in Aarhus.

Aarhus was chosen as the study location because local authorities over the past two decades have invested considerable energy and resources into regenerating and securitizing the inner-city nightlife scene. This action has involved increasing inter-agency cooperation and attempts to responsibilize venue owners and bouncers. As an example of this, public authorities have played a key role in the establishment of a formal ‘preventive partnership’, locally referred to as the Bar Owner Network, which involved representatives of the municipality, police officers and 22 local venue owners at the time of the fieldwork (for description of similar networks see also Tutenges, Mikkelsen, Witte, Thyrring & Hesse, 2014). In parallel with the formal partnership structure, an informal partnership structure also emerged between riot police officers and security companies in Aarhus. As part of the fieldwork, Søgaard participated in five meetings of the Bar Owner Network and in four meetings between riot patrol officers and bouncers from different security companies. Søgaard also participated in two meetings with municipal representatives, police officers and bouncers, and he interviewed five police officers who either actively participate in what we refer to as the ‘police-bouncer network’ or who work in the nightlife sector. Observations of meetings in the two networks provided insights into local-level organizations and negotiations of inter-agency collaboration, regulatory objectives and priorities. These observations also provided insights into how network partners utilized different strategies to further their interests and to build trust but also how networks can act as sites of tension and disagreement between participants. All interviews lasted from one to two hours and were recorded, and most were transcribed later. Field notes and interviews were thematically coded and analysed using established ethnographic iterative techniques of continuous comparison, grounded theory and data triangulation. To retain participant anonymity, pseudonyms are used throughout the article.

Creating a Wall of Closed Doors: Organizing Third Party Policing in the War on Gangs

Over the past ten years, the inner-city nightlife in Denmark has become the locus of numerous governmental measures aimed at excluding individuals who are perceived as threats to other consumers’ security and sense of safety. As part of this process, police officers in Aarhus have played a key role in promoting the view that bikers and gang-related individuals have no place in nightlife, regardless of whether they refrain from wearing club tags or disorderly conduct. In an interview, one riot patrol police inspector explained this view by arguing that the mere presence of bikers and gang-related individuals within venues would cause ‘normal people’ to feel intimidated and lead to a heightened risk of violence and drug-related offences. Furthermore, the inspector explained the exclusion of bikers and gang-related individuals by saying, ‘It should not be fun to be a biker or a gang member in Aarhus.’ In Aarhus, as this indicates, attempts to enforce a total exclusion of gang-related individuals have been made partly as a crime reduction measure and partly as a means of suppressing local outlaw bikers and loosely organized criminal groups identified by police as gangs, often described with the general label ‘gang-related’. In the following section, we too make use of the term ‘gang-related’ as a generalized term pertaining to outlaw bikers and to individuals who are loosely affiliated with organized street gangs.

The establishment of a de facto nightlife ban on gang-related individuals has been more dependent on the cultivation of collaborative relationships with bouncers than on police use of curfews issued on the basis of specific actors’ conduct. From the perspective of the police, bouncers are attractive third-party partners because their policing function is accompanied by legal powers – rooted in private property rights and laws against trespassing – and much discretionary freedom, which may be used to prevent entry of non-offending gang-related individuals at nightlife venues. Though the bouncers we interviewed generally agreed that the presence of unruly or intimidating gang-related individuals within venues was problematic, convincing the bouncers to prioritize the exclusion of apparently orderly and consuming gang-related individuals has been an on-going project for the police. In the following section, we describe how police officers have made use of different tactics to ensure bouncers’ collaboration. We argue that the use of persuasive tactics by police officers seemed to foster trust and collaborative behaviours from bouncers. By contrast, when police made use of coercive command tactics, outcomes were more ambiguous as the use of such tactics at times led bouncers to engage in deliberate non-collaboration.

Police Use of Persuasive Tactics

In our interviews, riot patrol officers emphasized the importance of being part of a collaborative network, and they often expressed a pragmatic and instrumental view of their relationships with bouncers:

Well, ten years ago we didn’t have the support from bouncers that we do today. We didn’t have the tools that we have today … Like our strong -collaboration with the venue owners and bouncers is a really useful tool to keep the troublemakers away … If you don’t have collaboration, the way I see it, you lack an important tool. (Interview, police inspector).

Though most bouncers were generally supportive, officers made use of several tactics to ensure continued collaboration. One of these tactics involved persuading bouncers to collaborate by sharing important information with them regarding the identity and whereabouts of gang-related individuals. One officer explained this in an interview:

At the end of the day, it’s not us who can decide who gets in or not. I don’t decide who is allowed to be at a party at your place. But, I can whisper in your ear that if you don’t know it, then I can tell that those guys who you invited in are really bad company. That’s what we do.

This sharing of information was often performed during officers’ nightly patrols of venues and in their routine interactions with bouncers. While the sharing of information generally served to build an atmosphere of trust and relatedness between officers and bouncers, the distributed knowledge also came with expectations that bouncers should act on this information if they were to be deemed responsible professionals. At police-bouncer meetings, officers have also tried to persuade bouncers to enforce strict door policies on gang-related individuals through the use of rhetoric that emphasizes shared interests, collaboration and the importance of creating ‘a wall of closed doors’:

It has never been this good before. That is not due to us [the police]. That is due to the fact that we cooperate. If we continue to cooperate, we can close off the city to the types of guys who don’t know how to behave. When they go out, we want them to meet a wall of closed doors (…). We are still seeing some gang members trying to get in, but many of them don’t bother anymore – that’s because you are strong in the door. So keep up the good work. (Officer at a police-bouncer meeting, field notes).

Officers also utilized more commercially grounded arguments to persuade bouncers to adopt a collaborative position. They did so by challenging the claim that criminals spend considerable sums of money and thus benefit business:

No one benefits from having biker-related or gang-related [individuals] inside, never ever. Some might say, ‘Yeah, but they buy whole bottles [of expensive liquor]’. They do that in the beginning, but it will become less and less, and the nice people will leave. (Officer at a police-bouncer meeting, field notes).

Interviews with bouncers showed that they generally welcomed police encouragement and that many willingly cooperated with the police in enforcing a ban on gang-related individuals. Several did so because they have come to accept the point of view that gang-related individuals are threats to their clients’ commercial interests rather than a source of profit. Many, however, have also acted so because they have developed a more positive and trustful view of the police. Essential to this has been officers’ appeals for inter-agency collaboration and for the staging of regular dialogue-based meetings, in which bouncers can build more personalized relations with officers and familiarize themselves with their views. Furthermore, officers’ decisions to share their private phone numbers with bouncers have also contributed to the development of public-private trust building. To the bouncers, being able to contact officers directly in situations in which they need immediate assistance with violent patrons, has been observed as an indication that officers are willing to make an extra effort to help them. These factors, along with bouncers’ friendly interactions with officers, have all served to build a trustful relationship that has motivated bouncers to help enforce the nightlife ban.

Police Use of Coercive Command Tactics

As discussed above, the establishment of a trust-based relationship has encouraged bouncers to help police ban gang members from nightlife venues. However, this relationship has been in constant danger of evolving into one of mutual distrust and antagonism. There has been a widespread concern among bouncers that if they chose not to collaborate, the police might sanction them. As an example of this, one bouncer named Jacob voiced his concern that if he and his colleagues were to fail to collaborate, officers may deliberately stall their assistance in situations of crisis.

I know the police are pissed off at us because they say we are letting too many gangsters inside … I don’t know … I just think it’s striking that when we call for assistance it’s always, ‘Sorry, all officers are busy right now, they’ll come as quickly as possible’. It gets you thinking, right? (Interview with Jacob, bouncer).

Other bouncers also expressed concerns that if they were to fail to collaborate, the police might interfere with their work situations. For example, one bouncer named Torben explained how one officer had contacted the owners of the nightclub where he worked after he had admitted two individuals, who according to Torben were no longer part of the local Trillegaard gang, into the nightclub:

You know what they’ve [the police] done. They went directly to the managers of The President [nightclub] and said: ‘Yeah, your bouncers are not doing a good job. They are letting in this and that guy. Maybe you need some new bouncers’. Then, of course the President people get concerned. [Pretending to be the officer]: ‘Yeah but Torben, he let in those guys from Trillegaarden, we think maybe he is rotten.’ (From field notes).

Although officers may have good reasons for contacting and informing venue owners of their concerns, to the bouncers, this has at times been viewed as a method used by officers to ‘put pressure’ on them. For bouncers, such police practices are a source of much frustration and distrust, leading some of the most critical bouncers to describe the police as a ‘mafia organization’ that enforces its will through secret and coercive measures. While much research has documented how coercive command tactics used by police can effectively ensure third party actor collaboration (Ayling et al., 2006; Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006; Meyer & Mazerolle, 2014), police usage of such tactics can at times also lead partners to lose motivation and a sense of ownership over network objectives, as clearly expressed by one bouncer named Rezam, who in a conversation with his colleagues stated that: ‘There is no cooperation. We are just doing their dirty work. They [the police] just use us as levers to put pressure on the gangs. They exploit us’.

Command Policing and Third Party Resistance

Among the various policing actors operating in Aarhus nightlife, the term ‘gang-related’ is an inherently fuzzy category. As indicated in the above listed episode with Torben, police use of command tactics appears to be particularly evident in cases where officers and bouncers disagree about whether specific individuals are in fact gang-related. In the aftermath of the incident with Torben, bouncers employed with Torben’s security company decided that it was time to reclaim ownership over the door policy, albeit only for a short while as the following description shows. Some weekends after the episode with Torben, the bouncers decided that they would allow selected members of the Trillegaard gang to enter the Green Pidgin nightclub because the nightclub was hosting a Christmas party arranged by a local fitness club that the Trillegaard individuals were members of:

At about three o’clock in the morning, four police officers dressed in civilian clothes [riot patrol] arrived at the Green Pidgin. The officers patrolled the inside of the nightclub. Once outside again, one of the police officers turned to Siad [bouncer] and said, ‘You let in the Trillegaard?’ Siad: ‘Who?’ Police officer: ‘Don’t be stupid, they are right there in the bar’. The officer then pointed at three muscular men in the bar. Siad: ‘They are members of the fitness club’. Officer: ‘Yeah, but you shouldn’t fucking let them inside!’ An argument grew. While the police officer scolded Siad for not running a proper door and hinted that Siad had allowed them inside because they were his friends, Siad provocatively challenged the officer by asking him: ‘What have they done? What have they done?’ The officer did not answer. Embarrassed by the public scene, the head bouncer Johannes interrupted, and while he tried to calm down the two parties, he ordered the bouncers Christian and Stig to bring out the guys from Trillegaarden. Without much quarrel, the three individuals were escorted outside and soon after left the premises. (From field notes).

The above example is interesting because it demonstrates that although police use of command tactics may prove effective, it can also undermine network relations of trust and lead partner agents to lose motivation or to even engage in deliberate practices of non-collaboration to regain their sense of authority or as a means of expressing their distrust and dissatisfaction with the police. Just as mutual respect, trust and fairness are crucial to citizen compliance with the law (Saarikkomäki, 2015), these principles are also central to third party partners’ motivations to collaborate with the police in the long term.

Contesting Network Roles, Responsibilities and Procedures of Exclusion

In their study about third party policing partnerships, Meyer and Mazerolle (2014) argue that a crucial component of successful collaboration involves having clear and, at best, written agreements regarding governmental aims, procedures and network actors’ roles and responsibilities. In the following section, we explore how police-bouncer networks, due to their informal nature, are characterized by an inherent lack of clear roles and responsibilities, which leads to disagreements regarding appropriate ‘procedures of exclusion’ and significantly influences how bouncers perceive the police. The following section also highlights a potential shortcoming of emerging third party policing structures of Danish nightlife, namely that they may expose bouncers to a heightened risk of violent attacks.

Officers’ and bouncers’ operations in nightlife are structured by different legal frameworks that authorize and set boundaries for their practices. While private property rights and laws against trespassing authorize bouncers to exclude non-offending gang-related individuals from venues on the basis that they are undesirable customers, a court verdict passed in 2003 clarified that officers cannot evict individuals from privately owned venues solely on the basis of their membership of a biker organization or gang (Kriminalretten i Hillerød, 2003). However, officers are legally mandated to deliver information about patrons’ gang affiliations to bouncers and venue owners (Rigsadvokatens Beretning, 2005). Fieldwork showed that the legal framework structuring the exclusionary powers of the different policing actors translates into a number of procedural rituals. For instance, when officers want a non-offending gang-related individual who is also not subject to a police curfew to leave a venue, they must contact a bouncer or another representative of the respective landlord, who will either perform an eviction or permit the officers to evict the individual. Another procedural ritual that must be performed is that, when bouncers are asked by an excluded individual why they have been excluded/evicted, bouncers must take full responsibility and not state that they merely enforce police orders. While the competent performance of these procedural rituals serves as protection against outside legal critique, the latter ritual also places bouncers in a position where angered and potentially violent gang members may come to view bouncers as solely responsible for their exclusion. As a consequence, some bouncers have been reluctant to accept sole responsibility for exclusive actions, especially when they feel that such actions are not warranted.

While legislation is clear on the division of jurisdiction between public and private authorities, we demonstrate in the following how the informal nature of the police-bouncer network has caused the de facto procedures of exclusion and the practical roles and responsibilities of officers and bouncers to be fraught with inconsistencies and to be the subject of considerable debate.

Sometimes I just get disappointed with police … I don’t understand their policy … they don’t want us to let the gang-related inside … but also they don’t want to cooperate either? Like last weekend I let in these two guys. I know they’ve been criminals, but they are more easy-going now, so I decided to give them a chance because I felt I could vouch for them 100 per cent… However, then the police came by and said; ‘Those two, you know you shouldn’t let them inside, they are gang-related’. Well, OK if you say so. So, I went inside and got them out. Then, one of them asked, ‘Why? Is it something personal [between us]?’ I said, ‘Listen, we don’t have a beef, it’s the police, they don’t want you here’. The way I see it … why should I make enemies when it’s the police that say, ‘Him, him and him … they are not allowed inside’. Also, I actually thought that it was all right that I told them: ‘Listen, it’s the police that don’t want you inside’. However, these guys, they went to the police station to complain, but the police just told them, ‘No, we never said you couldn’t get in’. What…? That’s what we are going to talk about at the next [police-bouncer] meeting. They [the police] want us to exclude them [the gang members], but then they also need to back us up … and again I don’t understand why the police can’t just give us a piece of paper with the names of people they don’t want inside. Then, we could show that paper to these persons when we say ‘No’ [at the door]. That would be so much easier for us. (Interview with bouncer Søren).

The above case is a good illustration of how network roles and responsibilities are contested in police-bouncer networks. While field observations showed that the police used network meetings to try to convince bouncers to claim sole responsibility for the exclusion of non-offending gang-related individuals – often through the use of highly masculine rhetoric urging bouncers to ‘man up’ and take responsibility (see Søgaard, 2013) – bouncers at times accused the police of talking with two tongues and for hiding behind their backs. Network collaboration, as this indicates, is infused with different interests and perspectives. The bouncers’ frustration with the police was rooted in what they viewed as a discrepancy between the practical and at times even commanding roles played by the police in determining which patrons bouncers were to exclude, and officers’ official denial of this approach. Officers’ official denial of responsibility and refusal to produce a written list of individuals to be excluded, is viewed by some bouncers as evidence that the police are more concerned with trying to avoid allegations of abuse of power and with maintaining their public image as legally accountable, than with ensuring that bouncers are not left at heightened risk of violent attacks. As a consequence, some bouncers, such as Søren (in the above example), have taken positions where they, either as acts of defiance or as means of ensuring their own safety, have refused to claim personal responsibility for denying gang-related individuals access in situations when they felt that this was not the case. The result of this has been a recurring potential practical undermining of the legal legitimacy of the exclusionary nightlife stress policy, in that bouncers’ claim that officers have ordered them to exclude identified non-offending individuals leads to a situation where officers can be accused of abuse of power.

In the existing literature regarding policing partnerships, it has often been described that police sometimes express frustrations that partner agents are unwilling to assume an equal level of responsibility (Fleming, 2006; O'Neill & McCarthy, 2012). Complementing these findings, the above cases show how private security actors can also grow frustrated with the police when they feel that the police are ‘passing the buck’ to them (in this case making them ‘burden-bearers’ of the nightlife stress policy (see also Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006)), and are not showing sufficient understanding of their partners’ concerns and dilemmas. The above also shows how networks are sites of contestation and power struggle (see Dupont, 2006) and how subordinate actors can engage in resistant behaviours to further their interests when they do not feel that their concerns are taken seriously. More generally, the above cases show how a lack of shared agreement about governmental procedures and network partners’ roles, responsibilities and dilemmas can come to undermine trust-based network relations, collaborative behaviours and effective third party governmental arrangements.

Trust, Police Diversity and Conflict Resolution in Networks

In this section, we explore how trust building and collaboration in police-bouncer networks are also challenged both by the hierarchical legal-bureaucratic relationship that formally exists between bouncers and the police, and by bouncers’ uncertainties regarding the degree to which the larger police organization supports collaborative arrangements. In exploring these issues, we demonstrate how police officers can be difficult partners to collaborate with for private security actors. Not only do the police hold the authority to legally sanction network partners but also ‘the police’ form a diverse organization whereby some branches may commit more to collaborative arrangements than others do.

In his overview of the key challenges of partnership policing, Rhodes (2006) has argued that networks thrive where hierarchy fails, thereby pointing to the difficulties of combining hierarchical legal-bureaucratic relations with network collaboration based on trust and values such as loyalty, solidarity and -reciprocity. In police-bouncer networks, this structural tension is of particular salience. Officers function both as collaborative partners and as law enforcers with an obligation to sanction the illegal activities of partners. Moreover, some bouncers expressed the viewpoint that since they help the police by evicting non-offending gang-related persons, officers should reciprocate this by showing leniency towards bouncers when they were involved in violent fights while attempting to exclude such individuals. Interviews also show that bouncers’ perceptions of their relationships with police officers vary considerably. Many reported that they generally felt that they had sustained good and constructive relationships with riot patrol officers. Not only did these officers, according to some bouncers, engage in regular casual conversations with bouncers, they were also lenient when bouncers were involved in physical confrontations. However, according to the bouncers, this was not always the case for officers from other police departments.

Unlike riot patrol officers, who often work in civilian clothes and who routinely patrol the nightlife, bouncers feel that it is difficult to establish more personalized and collaborative relationships with uniformed officers. One key reason for this pertains to the fact that these officers form part of an organizational rotation system where they only occasionally patrol nightlife events. Furthermore, one bouncer named Benjamin also blamed younger uniformed officers for treating bouncers disrespectfully and ‘just like any other citizen’. Allegedly, some officers interacted with bouncers in a strictly formal manner with little or no displays of personal trust, solidarity or reciprocity. The bouncers also regularly expressed frustrations that young uniformed officers are too rigorously obsessed with the law in their judgements of bouncers’ practices and that they show little understanding for the difficult nature of work as a bouncer (see Tutenges, Søgaard, Krøll, Bloomfield & Hesse, 2015).

Whereas officers’ display of solidarity and lenience have served to stabilize police-bouncer networks, officers’ prioritization of their legal-bureaucratic role is often interpreted by bouncers as a failure to live up to codes of collaborative solidarity and mutual support. This failure was particularly evident when one uniformed officer charged a bouncer named Tommy with violent assault after he had a violent encounter with a leading member of the local Brabrand gang. In the weeks after the incident, other bouncers employed with Tommy’s security company were furious with the police, and several viewed this event as the end of their cooperative relationship. As an attempt to avoid this outcome, a meeting was held between riot patrol officers and roughly 25 bouncers employed at Tommy’s security company, which at the time was the largest security company operating in Aarhus nightlife. At the meeting, bouncers were invited to voice their views, and many did so. Minutes into the meeting, one bouncer named Johannes asked the question that had been discussed among his fellow bouncers since the incident with Tommy occurred: why had Tommy been charged with a violent assault on Ahmed from the Brabrand Gang? Before the two officers could answer, one bouncer named Daniel interrupted:

Listen, the man is a notorious criminal. Two years ago, he bashed down a bouncer with a baseball bat, and then you take his side against Tommy. This is way off.

One of the officers replied that although it may sometimes appear strange, the police are obligated to investigate all reports of violence, even when someone like Ahmed makes the report. The officer tried to calm down the bouncers by saying that the case would most likely not go to court. However, this did not resolve the matter, and Daniel continued,

I can’t see why it has to be so difficult. When a new officer starts, he should just be told, ‘Look, there are these different groups of bouncers. Those are shit, but those are really good. With those we have, and we also want to continue to have good collaboration. When you talk to them, you do it decently and with respect because they do a good job. Maybe don’t give them special treatment. Well yeah, maybe you should.’ Why is this so difficult to say, ‘When you drive out to those bouncers, you know that they will back you up, and if you want anyone out of the nightclub, they will do it. So those [bouncers] you also back up’. Mutual respect! If that’s missing, then how can we collaborate?

As a response to this, one officer assured the bouncers that riot patrol officers regularly used briefings at the police station to remind their uniformed colleagues that local bouncers were doing good work. The officer, however, also reminded the bouncers that ‘it’s our job to uphold the law and that also applies to you.’

This incident is interesting because it demonstrates how the development of trust-based and collaborative relationships between bouncers and some branches of the police has not necessarily translated into an organizational relationship, which in turn has left some bouncers questioning whether uniformed officers, who do not have nightlife as their primary field of responsibility, view them as trustworthy and responsible security professionals or as thugs to be policed. In addition, the meeting provides insight into attempts being made to resolve and mediate network conflicts and structural tensions through dialogue. In Aarhus, meetings such as the one described above have been held not only to allow bouncers to voice their opinions and frustrations but also to create a place for officers to address what they view as unfair judgements of their uniformed colleagues and as unrealistic expectations regarding the degree of leniency bouncers can expect. In this manner, such meetings constitute an opportunity for the different parties to become more knowledgeable and accepting of other network partners’ perspectives and limitations. This was most clearly illustrated by a bouncer named Johannes, who, after the above-mentioned meeting, made the following remark to his colleagues about the police, ‘They try to back us up. Of course, sometimes they can’t.’

Conclusions

The proliferation of both formal and ad hoc policing partnerships raises new questions regarding how to conceptualize such developments and how to understand everyday dynamics of network policing. Whereas scholars have traditionally stressed the importance of distinguishing between public and private policing in terms of the different mentalities, aims and authorities underlying their respective practices (Johnston & Shearing, 2003; see also Lomell, 2005), more recent research suggests that partnership developments mark not only a shift in the organization of policing but also a transformation in mentalities of policing. As such, Lewis and Wood (2006) argue that it is no longer the case that private security actors are solely interested in client- and profit-oriented risk and loss reduction, and the police with justice and law enforcement. Rather, partnership arrangements can lead to hybrid mentalities and practices whereby police officers adopt more risk-based mentalities, and private security companies are influenced by criminal-political agendas and a punishment mentality. A key factor fuelling the latter process is that, in partnerships (particularly when they involve third party policing), private partners often find themselves to be targets of governance by dominant state partners (Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006). In following these insights, this article has explored how the formation of informal police-bouncer networks in Aarhus has led to a gradual blurring of boundaries between public and private policing. In Aarhus, bouncers are increasingly taking on a policing role that extends beyond regulating drunken patrons and protecting the commercial interests of their clients. In turn, bouncers are more heavily involved in exclusionary and punitive practices targeting gang-related individuals. Furthermore, in contrast with the conclusions of nodal approach theorists, who view the increased pluralization of policing as involving a withdrawal of the state, our findings complement the work of Crawford (2006) and Mazerolle and Ransley (2006) because we find that it is through collaboration with private security actors that state actors have been able to strengthen their influence over privately owned nightlife spaces and over those who may ‘legitimately’ enter these spaces. In other words, ‘network governance’ does not necessarily entail a reduction of state power, but rather a reconfiguration of how it is exercised.

In this article, we have used a bottom-up approach with a focus on network policing as accomplished through participant interactions, trust building, and negotiation of tensions and challenges. We have outlined how officers utilize persuasive, commanding and coercive tactics to enrol bouncers as third party partners in the policing and suppression of gang-related individuals. Furthermore, we have described collaborative challenges that arise when police use command tactics against bouncers, when there are unclear distinctions between network actors’ roles and responsibilities, and when there is a clash between the logics of a legal-bureaucratic system and the ethos of trust- and solidarity-based partnerships. Finally, we have demonstrated how bouncers’ views of police officers as trustworthy partners are shaped through on-going interactions and that inter-agency trust building is crucial to bouncers’ collaborative performance and their enforcement of nightlife stress policies.

Although we acknowledge that policing networks are always shaped by local contexts, histories, crime problems and agendas (see also Fleming & Wood, 2006); the findings of this study may feed into international debates regarding policies and methods to build successful partnerships with private security actors. We propose that effective collaboration is best achieved when actors actively invest in inter-agency trust building and when room is provided for open dialogue about involved actors’ differing interests, perspectives and concerns. To minimize the risk of conflict between network actors, it is important that objectives and participants’ roles and responsibilities are made clear, preferably through written agreements and guidelines for collaboration (see also Mazerolle & Ransley, 2006). It is furthermore crucial that state actors consider the dilemmas and potential dangers faced by their collaborators. This consideration is particularly critical in situations in which civil citizens as third party partners may be exposed to heightened risks of violent attacks.