Police leadership and legitimacy in the context of a global pandemic

This article provides original insight into police legitimacy through the lens of senior police leaders using interview data from 26 police practitioners in leadership positions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploring situational contexts affecting their perceptions of self-legitimacy, it highlights competing legitimacy expectations from public audiences and elite powerholders that are exacerbated in prolonged periods of crisis. When faced with seemingly irresolvable tensions threatening their legitimacy, it demonstrates that police leaders promote audience legitimacy over the expectations and demands of elite powerholders. Cultivating their self-legitimacy by reflecting on internal audience stressors and seeking to preserve the public legitimacy of the police, this article highlights the importance of understanding police leader sense-making and self-legitimacy as highly contextual and situational. This raises questions about how police leaders conceptualise public legitimacy and normative expectations of the police role and community relations, suggesting these might be malleable and dynamic across different complex and demanding circumstances.