A study of female police de-escalation tactics in frontline policing in Mainland China

Abstract

The excessive use of force by police has been frequently covered by all kinds of media during recent years, drawing a lot of public attention around the world to this matter. This issue creates a wide range of valuable discussions about what kinds of responding tactics can be adopted to de-escalate the conflicts raised by the excessive practices of the police force mentioned above. The existing literature has discussed the methods used by police to de-escalate conflicts and the use of force by female police officers. This dissertation is designed to study the tactics of de-escalating conflicts used by female police officers in frontline policing in mainland China, in order to provide guidance for the police-citizen interaction in the Chinese mainland's frontline policing. Through semi-structured interviews with 14 female police officers from mainland China to analyze police-citizen conflicts, skills and trainings to de-escalate conflicts in frontline policing, this dissertation demonstrates the value of the corresponding de-escalation tactics, and explores the current situation of female police officers in the use of weapons, the useful tactics of de-escalating conflicts, the applicability of tactics about different types of conflicts, and the limitations of the previously mentioned tactics, and finally offers some suggestions for de-escalation trainings.