Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper explores the ways in which police organizations conceptualize and operationalize their sense of responsibility for officers’ online safety and privacy. Police officers and organizations are increasingly the targets of cyber-attacks and technology-facilitated surveillance. Similarly, incidents of officer misconduct are captured on video and shared widely across social networks. These patterns raise questions about how employees of police organizations and their dependents are impacted and navigate these issues in their everyday Iives. 3PO is a multi-institutional research project exploring these questions with six policing organizations across the UK. Drawing on a documentary analysis of extant training, policies and procedures, alongside interview data generated with police managers, we examine how supervisors of operational staff interpret their responsibility for their staff's privacy and security online, and how this manifests in routine practice. We explore how visions of privacy focused practice and response may conflict with organizational goals, or where procedures may get lost in translation on the ground where risk, surveillance, and harm manifests. We argue that the operational context, as well as specialist functions, are crucial to understanding the ways risk is experienced and managed by police organizations. This has implications for the development of policies, training and supervisory practice