Reflective communication for a professional police

Abstract

According to Watzlawick (2017), one cannot not communicate (p. 59). However, when humans interact, they are not always aware of the way they communicate with each other. Interpersonal communication has a broad theoretical and empirical foundation in modern social scientific literature, which reflects its complexity as a concept at the center of our understanding of social practice. In police sciences and the study of law enforcement, communication has not yet been examined and acknowledged at that level. To address this shortfall, this contribution presents a pragmatic argument to understand interpersonal communication at the center of all police-citizen encounters. As a consequence, the public can expect police to be aware of the crucial impact their communication has and perform at a level of corresponding professionalism.