RT Article
T1 Police sergeants and disaster management during Australia’s Black Summer bushfire crisis
JF Policing and society
VO 35
IS 6
SP 733
OP 752
A1 Hendy, Ross
A2 Miccelli, Maegan
A2 Blaustein, Jarrett
A2 Hutton Burns, Kate
LA English
YR 2025
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/193204244X
AB The police sergeant, or equivalent supervisor, is the glue that binds police units together, assigns workloads, and distributes organisational power from ‘above’ to ensure that those in the field play fairly and by the rules. Yet very little empirical research has been undertaken to examine the work of sergeants or consider how these roles impact the ability of police and their partners to manage critical incidents, including complex disasters. Drawing on a case study of disaster policing during Australia’s Black Summer bushfires, this paper examines how police sergeants with two distinct emergency management roles leveraged their authority, relationships, and knowledge to support the effective management of this incident. Using composite accounts, it illustrates how both sergeants drew upon and adapted traditional understandings of their role to negotiate the perceived deficiencies of command-and-control and networked features of complex disaster management systems. The case studies illustrate how the officers’ positionalities (organisationally, geographically, and systemically) enhanced their sensemaking abilities during the crisis, and they utilised their recognised authority, relationships, and soft skills to inform, nudge, and influence a wide range of stakeholders. The paper reveals that police sergeants may be uniquely positioned to assist with the coordination of increasingly complex disaster management assemblages at a time when the neoliberal state’s ability to even ‘steer’ these effectively is increasingly called into question.
K1 Australia
K1 command and control
K1 emergency management
K1 bushfires
K1 police sergeant
K1 Policing
DO 10.1080/10439463.2024.2405747