The last policeman : On the globalisation of local policing

Sammanfattning: Global threats, such as cross-border crime and terrorism are on the rise! At least, this is a popular notion amongst politicians, policy makers and the police, who are therefore advocating a need for policing to become as peripatetic and pervasive as these criminal developments. This has led to a rise in transnational or international police collaborations, notably through institutions such as Interpol, Europol, Frontex, UNPOL and many bilateral partnerships. In criminology, this ‘globalisation of policing’ has been richly documented and discussed. However, studies have mostly taken an interest in these new institutions, paying less attention to how local police work has been affected by increasingly having become part of a more global world order. Given this lack of knowledge, this thesis discusses what Bowling has also termed ‘the globalisation of local policing’. It does so on the basis of 900 hours of participant observation at two Danish police task forces engaged in policing cross-border crimes. More specifically, it examines the everyday practices and perceptions of the task forces’ detectives. In doing so, the thesis demonstrates that the globalisation of local policing has led to a considerable amount of concern among Danish detectives. It was this concern that led the detectives to sarcastically, but to some extent also seriously, proclaim that they might be the last real policemen.