Hur ofta har man haft en biljakt på en Fiat Punto? : Polisers egeninitierade fordonsstopp

Sammanfattning: The study asks what factors first captures police officers attention and what other factors are added to the decision to stop a specific vehicle in a self-initiated vehicle stop. The methods used to examine the questions are interviews and participant observations with twelve policeofficers on active patrol duty in the Stockholm area. During the study twelve interviews were conducted and a total of twenty-five vehicle stops were observed and the data was thematically analysed. The results show that a number of differents factors are taken into account when deciding to stop a specific vehicle. The conditions surrounding the stop was afactor taking other traffic and light conditions into account. Incongruences in the persons behavior and reactions to the police officers as well as displaying aggressive or irregular driving were factors. Additional factors that were taken into account during the profiling were the time and place and the condition of the vehicle. Furthermore, factors concerning the persons in the vehicle were added. They could be perceived as interesting based on gender, age and how they dressed. No theme describing ethnicity as a factor has been found. The fact that a vehicle was in an area deemed to be of special interest for the officers was also acommon theme. What first caught the attention of the officers in regards to a specific vehicle would vary based on the conditions in the specific situation. The most common theme when it came to the first factors was that something was perceived as being incongruent when it came to behavior or driving style or that the vehicle itself signaled that a stop could be interesting, usually a high-status car or an older car with defects. The fact that a vehicle was found in an area of interest was also a common first factor. Parallells drawn to previous research och theory show that the they are consistent with the result presented in the study. Special focus is given to social schema-theory and theories concerning social cognition and attention.