Sociaal werkers die in aanraking komen met geweldsituaties worden geconfronteerd met hevige emoties en maken gebruik van emotie en lichaamswerk om situaties te de-escaleren. Maar wiens verantwoordelijkheid is het eigenlijk dat zij de juiste tools en technieken leren om met geweldservaringen om te gaan? Er is steeds meer aandacht voor hulpverl...
By no means am I providing any (in)definitive arguments or conclusions on the topic of (community) policing in South Africa, as this post is only based on preliminary orientation. This blog is an informative post on the kickstart of my quest for a new research topic while still working on my PhD project. It aims to highlight how topic formation and fieldwork come together due to both planning and coincidences; and how I went from a hunch to a potentially relevant research project.
It started back in August 2019 when I was reading the independent opinion magazine 'De Groene Amsterdammer' whilst enjoying the sunshine of one of Amsterdam's particularly hot but rare summer days. Turning the page, my eye fell on a piece by Dutch correspondent Fred de Vries on Cape Town's gang violence of which the final sentence caught my attention: "Bonteheuwel, [with] an average of two murders per week, experienced its first victimless month in July. That success is attributed to the Neighborhood Safety Team [NST], a combination of police and local residents, who patrol on foot". With a waterflood of questions running through my mind I hopped behind my laptop and started looking for more information: Was this number correct, and how did they measure that? What is the idea behind a NST? How do they operate and why did they contribute to the drop of local murder rates?
Zeven jaar lang werkte Laura Keesman in een daklozenopvang midden op de Amsterdamse Wallen. Een mooie plek om te werken, maar ook een plek waar ze met geweld te maken kreeg. Laura vroeg zich af wat dit met werknemers doet en hoe daar binnen hun organisaties mee omgegaan wordt. Inmiddels promoveert ze op onderzoek naar geweldsituaties bij de politie aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Volgens haar moeten we om hulpverleners te beschermen, beginnen met geweldsincidenten beter te registreren. [..]
Meer agressief gedrag tegen hulpverleners door de coronacrisis? Volgens Laura Keesman, die geweldssituaties tijdens politiewerk onderzoekt, is er juist een structureel probleem waar werkgevers al jaren onvoldoende antwoord op geven. [..]
A few days ago the Dutch police published new figures on how often police officers encountered violence in the year 2018. Several media outlets reported that violence against officers had increased to around 10.600 cases, which comes down to roughly 25 instances of violence a day. Incidents range from verbal violence (5.000 cases) to physical violence during resisting an arrest (2.600 times), followed by violent encounters during nightlife (1.400) and so forth (Nos.nl, 2019; Nu.nl, 2019). Some media outlets made the effort of talking to officers who experienced violence to share their story. In this blog I want to highlight that police officers experience are an absolute must to understand these new figures on violence. [..]
As I'm only at the beginning of the intriguing field work period of about 8 to 12 months, I'm wary about doing official statements on the world of event security1. This post does however introduce some thoughts and yet indefinite statements about the groups that I've started to observe the last two months....
There are many ways to study violence. The differences between them are most obvious when we consider the various kind of data that are used. But research data are never already there. What kind of data are produced by violence researchers? The prevailing material consists of discursive responses to discursive stimuli: the survey. However, there is a striking distance between this type of information and the reality of violence. Therefore, we take a special interest in data that allow for more close-up investigations of violent interactions. One obvious way to produce such data is to get out of the office, hang around and talk to people who use and experience violence, either as perpetrators, as victims or both...
"Man died after incident with the police in Waddinxveen [small-town]: 'Was possibly a confused man'." In red: 'Victim was supposedly hit hard by the police'
source: Telegraaf.nl
Imagine you are that police officer. You went to work this morning, probably hoping to arrive home safe at the end your shift. A call comes in: a confused man needs attention, and you are the officer send to respond. Minutes later you find yourself on top of this man, being called a 'motherfucker' and you're trying to restrain the individual. Not cooperating that well, you shout 'cooperate, now!' to the person and you feel you need to resort to other measures apart from verbal instructions. You punch the individual in the side ribs hoping he will lower his arm so that you can cuff him, and consequently move him to the police car. These are all strategies you learned in your police trainings of course. Then, all of the sudden, the personl stops breathing, and eventually dies.
