Disrupting the Cycle of Hostility: Exploring the Nature and Consequences of Anti-Police Sentiment towards Police Officers

Katie Davenport-Klunder

doi:10.25907/01088

Policing has entered a period of sustained legitimacy crisis, denoted by a rise in public anti-police sentiment. Although dissatisfaction with police authority is not novel, modern anti-police attitudes are characterised by their emotional intensity and persistence, amplified through traditional and social media, and shaped in the context of broader political, social, and institutional tensions. Rising conflict poses a complicated challenge not only for immediate police-citizen interactions and overall relations, but for the personal wellbeing of police officers themselves. The burgeoning field of research highlights some immediate risks of this rising negative sentiment; however, academic conceptualisations of anti-police sentiment remain fragmented and underdeveloped, with limited exploration of the drivers of anti-police sentiment, and less exploration of how this interactional hostility is experienced and understood by officers themselves. Currently, there is no clear definition of what constitutes anti-police sentiment, what motivates its use and how it is expressed, or how exposure to such sentiment presents occupational and identity-based harms for police officers. This doctoral thesis aims to address this knowledge gap by examining the formation, expression, and internalisation of anti-police sentiment, including analysis of how this process influences police-community relations through its impact on police officers in an Australian context. This inquiry is underpinned by a central research question: How do the emotional, motivational, and identity-threatening processes associated with anti-police sentiment sustain cycles of hostility between the police and the public? This central inquiry was explored through the development of three guiding research questions: (1) What are the emotional and experiential factors that underpin the formation and expression of anti-police sentiment in public discourse? (2) What are the motivational drivers and contextual influences of anti-police sentiment expressed through public discourse? (3) How do police officers conceptualise, experience, and respond to anti-police sentiment and under what conditions does it constitute an identity threat? A multi-methods approach, comprising three complementary studies, was adopted to interrogate the nature, dynamics, and consequences of anti-police sentiment within the context of Australian policing. Study One examined the emotional foundations of anti-police sentiment by drawing from Plutchik’s (1982) psychoevolutionary theory to explore the emotions underpinning anti-police sentiment. To do this, a sentiment analysis was conducted on social media discourse to objectively assess the emotions that characterise negative discussion regarding Australian police. Results highlighted anger, fear, and frozenness (i.e., a freeze response) as key emotional factors associated with citizen anti-police sentiment. Study Two moves beyond emotional underliers to examine the motivational constitution of anti-police sentiment. Braithwaite’s (2014) motivational posturing theory was adapted to conceptualise anti-police sentiment as a form of citizen defiance towards police. Utilising the same social media dataset as Study One, Study Two complemented the sentiment analysis with a hybrid discourse analysis technique, harvesting additional context and nuance from the dataset. The second study established that anti-police sentiment functions diversely as a socially and politically motivated tool of resistance, a statement of psychological detachment from police, or quiet disillusionment in the possibility of police reform. The third study examines how anti-police sentiment is understood and experienced by officers themselves and how this internalisation influences officer wellbeing and ongoing practice. Adopting Workman-Stark’s (2025) framework of identity work, semi-structured interviews were conducted, with transcripts analysed using a hybrid discourse analysis to harness the perspectives of former Australian police officers. Results highlighted the leading triggers for identity threats and recurring social and psychological tools that officers utilise to protect their identity. Findings from this doctoral research are brought together to answer the central research question, conceptualising anti-police sentiment as a perpetual cycle of hostility between the police and the public. It is argued that anti-police sentiment is more than a negative attitude towards police, it is a dynamic and ongoing social process which evolves throughout police-citizen interactions. The synthesised findings identify four main interrelated components that sustain this cycle. First, public experiences of police injustices manifest into citizen emotions and motivational postures towards officers and policing institutions. These emotions and attitudes then influence citizen behaviour in the community and during police-citizen interactions, and consequently impact police identity, internalised as occupational and identity threats by police officers. When managed insufficiently, such threats influence the ongoing conduct of officers when interacting with the public, further harming and frustrating community members and perpetuating this cycle of hostility. This cycle illustrates the consequences of anti-police sentiment as far broader than simple negative public attitudes towards police. The process triggers distress in citizens, affecting officer wellbeing, the legitimacy of policing as a public institution, and the nature of future police-citizen encounters. Overall, this doctoral thesis argues that when left unaddressed, anti-police sentiments pose an escalating threat to police-citizen relations, jeopardising the safety and wellbeing of police officers and the citizens with whom they interact. The findings presented in this doctoral thesis offer Australian, and international, policing jurisdictions a new approach to conceptualising the harms that officers experience and the community frustrations that drive anti-police sentiment, emphasising how each provoke and perpetuate the other, while highlighting evidence-based techniques to disrupt the cycle.

Disrupting the Cycle of Hostility: Exploring the Nature and Consequences of Anti-Police Sentiment towards Police Officers

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