Hegemonic Shorthand: Technology and Metonymy in Modern Policing

Western police forces have always been institutions powered principally by the efficient accumulation of information, from the oral histories that defined the earliest foot patrols, to the communicative velocity of modern mobile data terminals. As these technologies evolve, however, the more the police devolve to become a data mining entity in earnest. This article interrogates the genealogy of a disciplinary nomenclature the author coins hegemonic shorthand—a formulaic meta-language grounded in a culture of standardization and interpolation among the police that flourishes in paranoid times under the pretense of public protection.