Doctoral Dissertation Research: Police Technology and Urban Governance

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This dissertation research project explores the role of technology in urban policing. Anthropology doctoral student, Elliott Liu, under the supervision of Dr. Jeff Maskovsky at the City University of New York Graduate Center, will study the arrangement of technical and governmental relationships through which knowledge about disorder, crime, space, place and other social characteristics are produced. Today technology not only informs police patrol and investigative activities, but also broader discussions of the mission, effectiveness, and legitimacy of police institutions and city governments. Yet not enough is known about the use of the spatial, demographic and statistical knowledge produced by police departments, the circulation and effects of this knowledge in other governing institutions, and how this has changed over time. The research will be undertaken in New York city. The researcher will combine archival and ethnographic methods in his investigation. He will undertake participant observation at public meetings and ride-alongs with officers in four precincts currently targeted for city intervention. He also will conduct interviews and focus groups with former police department officers and civilian employees about past technology use. Finally, he will evaluate these data against the backdrop of archival research tracing the development of police technologies from the automation of data processing in the 1950s to the analytics-driven policing model developing currently. Findings from this research will broaden insights into the role of technology in shaping police practices and public perception of police, safety, and urban governance. Conclusions will advance anthropological theory by extending work on actor-network theory and techno-politics to the study of urban governance and spatial management.