“We Never Refer to Ourselves as a Lobby Group Because ‘Lobby Group’ Has a Different Connotation”: Voluntary Police Associations and the Framing of Their Interest Group Work

Abstract

The police, like other groups in civil society, have a vested interest in the outcome of government policy deliberations. Collectively, they often attempt to advance policy agendas through several lobbying techniques that suggest that their voluntary associations could be properly understood as interest groups. And yet, there is often ambivalence or a deep reluctance on the part of police organizations to characterize their politicking as interest group work. In the present article, we draw on interviews, media reports and various other materials to elucidate some of the rhetorical strategies used to recast police interest-group work. Further, we explain the reluctance of police leader groups to be seen as overtly political and contrast this to attitudes held by police rank-and-file groups that more openly characterize their interest group work as “lobbying.” The overall goal of this article is to contribute to a surprisingly thin literature on the politics of the police.