Abstract
Considerable attention has been devoted to how police officers categorize the individuals they are tasked with monitoring and controlling, particularly in marginalized, crime-affected urban areas with high proportions of ethnic minority residents. This article reverses the analytical gaze by exploring typifications of the police among young people in such areas. Drawing on interview data from three research projects conducted in Sweden and Norway, we examine how young people describe and dramatize police encounters from a street culture perspective. We identify three recurring typifications of police officers—“bad,” “good,” and “silly”—and analyze how these types are narratively contextualized and used. Participants in these studies used subtle, evaluative distinctions, thereby performing nuanced cop-critical or cop-debunking portraits. The figure of the “silly cop”—often conveyed through humor or sarcasm—is particularly salient because it symbolically undermines police authority by portraying officers as lacking local knowledge, while simultaneously asserting the narrator’s superior street cultural competence.