Violent encounters with private security guards in Sweden: mapping the juncture between public and private policing

ABSTRACT The aim with this article is to expand the understanding of current forms of professional arrangements that regulate coercive policing practices at the street level. The empirical material consists of in-depth interviews with individuals who have had violent encounters with security guards. Departing from experiences of being brutalised, the study engages with the moment when the police enter the narratives. The analysis highlights that the police can reinforce the authority of the security guards, but also [counter]balance their violence. There are occasions when the interviewees perceive that the police side with them, a matter that challenges simplified understandings of public and private policing agents exercising sovereign control in a unified way. The argument advanced is that the division of labour between the professional actors in some instances opens a window of opportunity where the police are positioned to decide whether they should implement either coercive or more consensual governing techniques.


Introduction
In July 2022 two security guards were arrested by the police after having strangled to death a 47year-old man in the subway system in Stockholm (Tv4 2022).While this episode was exceptional in the Swedish context in its deadly outcome, it points towards the importance of exploring more general experiences of brutality by those authorised to use violence in their profession.
The focus of this article is at the juncture between frontline policing agents.In pace with private security guards increasingly complementing and, in some regards, replacing the public police officers, scholars have turned their focus towards the renewed ways in which order is enforced (Fitzgibbon and Lea 2020).In Sweden, as in other parts of the world, the security sector is expanding and recurrently troubled by public scandals following violent interventions (Hansen Löfstrand et al. 2018).Beyond individual consequences, the situation risks eroding trust in societal institutions, producing a crisis of authority (Fielder and Murphy 2022).
A key area of research since the identification of the 'rebirth' of private policing has been the relation between the state-organised public police and market-oriented private policing institutions respectively (Shearing 1992).The formal arrangement in Swedenthe empirical focus of this articleis that most security guards are employed by companies but are obliged to obey the police when commanded to do so (Coetzee and Berndtsson 2023).It is also the police who train the security guards for 80 h, appointing them with limited policing powersthe mandate to apprehend, dismiss and remove people, with the use of violence if perceived necessary to avoid public disorder (Polisen 2023).
Theoretically engaging with questions of professionals' use of violence (Weber 1948), the aim with this study is to expand the understanding of current forms of power arrangements that regulate the coercive work of street-level policing (Hall 1984).Empirically exploring the relationship between policing bodies as they are perceived by those at the receiving end of the violence work exerted by authorities (Seigel 2018), the questions guiding the study are: How is the nexus between public and private policing experienced and understood by those exposed to the violence of security guards in Sweden?Which roles do the policing agents assume in the narratives of those victimised, and how do these roles relate to each other?
Drawing from qualitative interviews, the article offers a vantage point from which to assess the public-private work dynamic of policing actors in Sweden.Given that research on the expansion of the private security industry has 'largely ignored the targets of policing' (Saarikkomäki 2018, p. 167)a statement that applies even more to those perceived to be victimised by the brutality of security guardsthis article attends to an underexplored research field.
The article is structured in the following way: First, departing from the Swedish context, a background to the private security industry and its relationship to the public police is outlined.Then follows a theoretical discussion concerning understandings of public and private policing agents as enforcers of the state's legitimate monopoly of violence.That section is followed by the presentation of research design, interviewee participants and the narrative methodology employed in the study.The argument put forward in the analysis is that the interviewees perceive that the police enter violent situations in two main ways: as actors who reinforce the private security guards' authority, and as professionals who counterbalance their brutality.It is argued that the division of labour between the private and the public policing agents produces a moment when the police are perceived to take sides, which in some instances opens a window of opportunity to rearrange violent relations of dominance and subordination.

The relation between private and public policing
In Sweden the role of private policing started to change in the mid-1990s, a development that escalated during the 2000s, when the number of employees in security companies increased dramatically by 60 percent.In 2021 there were 7,830 appointed security guards in Sweden, and the current governmental plan is to expand their presence in society as well as their social and crime-prevention mandate even further (Brandén 2023).Nowadays, security guards patrol public as well as private spaces, making the sight of them in society 'so ordinary as to go almost unnoticed' (Coetzee and Berndtsson 2023, p. 6).
The Swedish situation reflects a global trend that has surprised many scholars.The rapid growth of the private security industry took place against the backdrop of a conjuncture where the state had (almost) monopolised the policing function (Fitzgibbon and Lea 2020).The framework that dominated until the 1970s presupposed the necessity for governments to have the exclusive capacity to use force (Kempa et al. 1999).From this followed that the state was seen as a 'unified, authoritative, exclusively public body, with an in-built capacity to exercise sovereign control' (Johnston 1999, p. 192).By contrast, the post-Keynesian, neoliberal political rationality has been based on the promotion of corporate providers of justice.In this arrangement, private policing has gone from being perceived as a threat to democratic principles to be viewed as an asset for societies where matters of securitisation are at the heart of political debate (O'Malley and Palmer 1996).
Within critical theory a debate has raged.Some have advanced arguments concerning neoliberalism as a political project determined to roll back the state (Farrall 2006).Others have underlined that neoliberalism was never about diminishing the influence of the present governing authority by outsourcing the responsibilities of the state.Rather, it is a strategy aimed at leaving 'the centralized state more powerful than before, with an extended capacity for action and influence' (Garland 1996, pp. 453-454).
Regardless of normative evaluation of this development, in the literature there is consensus on the importance of exploring what has been described as a gradual establishment of 'plural policing' (Jones and Newburn 2006).While some contend that it contains an adversarial relationshipthe public police versus private policingothers maintain that policing institutions should be seen as complementary (Charles and Mona 2020).Perhaps the most common terminology invoked is that of a private-public partnership.In this respect, questions are raised as to whether it is an equal partnership or if one plays the role of junior associate and the other the senior (Minnaar 2005, p. 92).
Instead of conceptualising it as a relationship regulated by subordination and dominance, notions of power being 'liquid' and flowing 'fluidly' have been advanced within criminology (Zedner 2006).The relationship has also been described as a 'merge' (Mulone 2011) where 'the functions, responsibilities and appearances of the private and public police are increasingly difficult to tell apart' (Joh 2004, p. 49).Based on this idea of 'fusion' of public and private policing institutions, a 'growing confusion' has been identified (Stenning 2000, p. 328).It can be concluded that there is a spectrum of descriptions that underline a 'blurred' and/or 'erased' dichotomy between public and private policing (Gimenez-salinas 2004, p. 159).
One factor explaining these diverse understandings is that scholars focus on disparate national contexts, and that the research examines different time periods.In the Swedish context, Hansen Löfstrand (2021) highlights that the relation between policing institutions is the result of negotiations.According to her, the division of labour between the police and security guards is the outcome of struggles between stakeholders within politics and among actors with economic interests.It is also a matter regulated by law and policies, where the security guards are sometimes tasked to do the 'dirty work' of frontline policing (Hansen Löfstrand et al. 2016).
Remarkably, analyses of the relationship between policing institutions seldom take as their empirical point of departure the perspectives of policed populations.Partly this is because it was only in the early 2000s that research commenced with the intention to capture citizens' experiences of security guards (Nalla and Gurinskaya 2020).Explorations conducted in Sweden indicate that the police and security guards are evaluated in overlapping ways (Schclarek Mulinari 2022).However, studies conducted in Finlandwhere the security guards have a similar role as in Swedensuggest that the public police are regarded as more trustworthy and procedurally fair (Saarikkomäki 2018).These contradictory empirical findings strengthen the idea that scholarship needs to attend to the ways in which these frontline policing actors are experienced at street level.A key matter to address in this regard is the use of violence: in the following section the power to do so is discussed as arising from the authority of the state and bound by policing ideals.

Policing, violence and legitimacy
The notion of 'good policing' is that it is a craft, linked to the handling of problematic situations 'without resort to coercion, usually by skillful verbal tactics' (Bowling et al. 2019, p. 7).In line with this perspective, it has been stated that '"policing by consent" is easier, less stressful, less costly and less dangerous than policing by force' (Stenning 2000, p. 335).It might be added that it is probably also more common.Nevertheless, the exclusive power of those who police lies in their repressive mandate that also regulates their more consensual methods (Schclarek Mulinari 2019).The perspective advanced here is that, even if it is beneficial to explore the 'softer' governing techniques of security guards (Kammersgaard 2021), it needs to be complemented with studies of their coercive powers.
To explore the violence of private security guards as arising from the authority of the state is inspired by sociologist Max Weber and his well-known claim that 'a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory' (Weber 1948, p. 78).This classic formulation has given rise to interpretations that emphasise that the exercise of legitimate violence is a capacity of state actors (i.e. the police).However, a broader understanding is also possible.Weber clarifies in the same passage that the power of the state to use physical force can be delegated in the sense of being 'ascribed' to institutions and individuals, allowing these to use violence 'to the extent to which the state permits it' (ibid).Following this line of thought, state-market power can be regarded as constitutive of the violence work of private security guards (Seigel 2018).For Weber, at the core of the discussion is politics and that the modern state is a bureaucratic relation of 'men dominating men' that needs to be 'supported by means of legitimate (i.e.considered to be legitimate) violence'.Because there are 'diabolic forces lurking in all violence', Weber underscores the need for limitations to its use when employed by the servants of the state.In this respect, the tension between the right to invoke force and the power to do so is (un)resolved by the emphasis on the need for state-sanctioned violence to meet ethical and rational standards (for an extended analysis, see Loader and Walker 2001).
It should be noted that this understanding has in part inspired research on the importance of procedural justice in frontline policing.The basic idea is that if those controlled experience that it is done in a correct and fair manner, their support for the actions of the policing authorities will increase, and consequently also compliance.Fielder and Murphy have summarised it in the following way: If authorities are perceived to convey trustworthy and benevolent motives, treat citizens respectfully, are neutral in their decision-making, and offer citizens an opportunity for voice prior to decisions being made, then citizens will evaluate the authority as more procedurally just.(Fielder and Murphy 2022, p. 848) Even if critical perspectives tend to underline the unjust capitalist order in which policing takes place, there is some correspondence in the focus on violence and its legitimacy for state power.The cultural theorist Stuart Hall calls for caution towards the tendency to overemphasise the role of coercion and 'naked force' in the way that the system works.Nonetheless, neither should the use of direct violence be downplayed.He argues that 'no form of modern state so far encountered in history has totally renounced force or compulsion' (Hall 1984, p. 15).For Hall, the state is 'supreme'.He clarifies that other 'centers of power' can coexist within a state and that in liberal contexts there are constitutional limits to power.Nonetheless, it is the state who is at the top of the hierarchical 'chain' of command through its authority to define, among other things, the use and limits of violence.Following Weber, Hall underscores questions of legitimacy but from a perspective where it is understood as intimately linked to power: 'If the state regulates, directs, legislates and compels "legitimate", it is because it can lay claim to the authority to do so ' (ibid., p. 16).From this perspective, legitimacy is acquired exclusively by the claims of power.Yet, challenges to authority can produce a crisis of authority: moments when consent is exhausted and the 'normalised repression' of the state rapidly increases as a means to safeguard the hegemony of those in power (Hall et al. 1978, p. 186).Hall's line of thoughtdeparting from an analysis of the ways in which black youth were policedpoints towards the importance of attending critically to questions of policing and resistance, and how these matters are intimately structured and regulated by societal structures of dominance within the capitalist system.In this regard questions of racism are crucial, as well as other sources of oppression (for a critical appraisal, see Simon 2014).

Mapping experiences of violence
The empirical material of the article is based on 12 semi-structured individual interviews and one group interview conducted with three participants.The 15 interviewees were recruited to the study with the stated aim of capturing experiences of violent encounters with policing agents in general, and of security guards in particular.The selection process has relied both on purposive and snowball sampling techniques.Through court judgments' media reports, six interviewees were identified based on the criteria that they had described violent encounters with security guards, expressing being victimised by them.Five interviewees were identified through calls on social media platforms and to civil society actors to provide participants for the project.Furthermore, four research participants were identified through chain referral by the interviewees.In addition, interviews have been carried out with police officers, security guards and representatives of the security industry, as well as parents.These interviews are not used directly in this analysis because of the focus of the article.Nonetheless, they have informed the understanding of the phenomenon in question.
The interviews with the targets of policing were conducted in seven different localities in Sweden.These differ in terms of size: Stockholm, Malmö and Gothenburg make up Sweden's three largest cities, while the other localities arein a Swedish perspectivemid-size or small communities.Of those interviewed, ten are men, of whom one is a transman, four are women, and one identifies as non-binary.Their ages range from 16-45 years.Five are white, while the others are Afro-Swedes and belong to a group that previous studies have identified as particularly vulnerable to discrimination in the criminal justice system.With respect to the class position of the interviewees, it varies.There are two social workers, two students, two unemployed, an electrician, an artist, a personal assistant, a nurse, a journalist, a youth worker, a medical doctor, a social entrepreneur and one on sick leave.
The interviews have been scrutinised using narrative analysis, a methodology well suited to exploring how people construct meaning, grounding their perceptions on experiences.It allows scholars to investigate the building blocks of stories, zooming in on the chronological sequencing and logical connection of narratives (Franzosi 1998).The basic idea is that narratives follow recognisable patterns, both regarding the role of actors and the way that actions are portrayed.According to linguist William Labov (1997), stories are comprised of the following components: (1) The abstract is the initial element of the narrative.
(2) The orientation provides context, giving relevant background information.
(3) The complicating action is the moment when a new event or conflict is presented.(4) Evaluations can be introduced at any time.They consist of assessments that guide how a story can be appraised.(5) The resolution is the moment in the narrative when it reaches the end.(6) The coda terminates the narrative.
Criminologist Sveinung Sandberg (2022, p. 212) summarises it by saying that the 'elements of the story do not necessarily have to take place in this order, and some of them may be missing altogether, but according to Labov, they are explicitly or implicitly present in all stories'.
Regarding matters of how to represent the narratives ethically without exploiting research participants' vulnerability, aware that there is a 'violence implicit in processes of accounting' (Macías 2016, p. 21), it has been important to focus on general accounts rather than on dramatic details (Liebling and Stanko 2001).Specifically, departing from an analysis of the ways in which targets' experiences of security guards that end in violence are narrated, the focus is on the moment that the police enter the story.
Reinforcing authority: 'they hold me, twist my arms' One topic that unites the empirical material is descriptions of what the interview participants themselves perceive as disproportionate violence on the part of the security guards.The triggering factor in the situations differs.In some cases, the interviewees do not remember exactly what happened.However, it mainly occurs upon their questioning verbally, often while under the influence of alcohol, the exercise of authority by the security guards: I went into the restaurant to say goodbye [to my friends] because I was heading home.When I am talking to them a guard comes and taps me on the back and says that I am not welcome there: 'You have to leave now.'I answered, surprised, 'I'm going anyway, so it doesn't matter.''You must go now' [he responded].Then I replied, 'Calm down, I'm just going to finish talking.'I go out, and there outside I confront him: 'Excuse me, why is it that I am not welcome?' 'Leave now, you're not fucking welcome here.'[He indicates how the security guard put his hand on him.]I take out my phone: <bip> [it starts recording].'I just want to understand why?' I don't know exactly what happened, but suddenly they've called the police.I didn't have time to think.The police came up from behind and lifted me away to their car.The security guard is also there.They hold me, twist my arms in this grip.It still hurts [more than a year later].I tried to ask them, 'What have I done?' (Man,42,Lund) In the abstract of the narrative, the interviewee situates the story in a restaurant where he is saying goodbye to some friends.The sequence that follows this presumably innocent act highlights the relation between professionals' violence and the role of different policing agents.The moment of complicating action in the narrative is captured through the recapitulation of the dialogue that culminates when the interviewee 'confronts' the security guard: 'Excuse me, why is it that I am not welcome?'It is apparent that the interviewee does not only want 'to understand why' he has been asked to leave.The phone can be regarded as a weapon of a victimised subject that aims to document domination beyond its perceived legitimate grounds.The interviewee wants to hold those in power accountable for overstepping their mandate.He has an understanding that he has not done anything wrong and therefore should not be banished from the premises.An interpretation is that this act of resistance in the face of the violent ordering produces a crisis of authority (cf.Hall et al. 1978).'Leave now, you're not fucking welcome here.'The language described in the narrative underlines the lack of professionalism and also verbal escalation that the interviewee experiences.These aspects can be conceptualised as enhancing the experience of being treated procedurally unfairly (Fielder and Murphy 2022).
The security guard's attempt to rely on his repressive mandate to generate consent (Schclarek Mulinari 2019) in the sense of making the interviewee walk away without the security guard resorting to coercion proves fruitless.The security guard starts grabbing him, escalating the situation.The narrative reaches its resolution once the security guard has 'called the police'.This action is followed by assisting his public counterpart when they 'lift', 'hold' and 'twist' the arms of the interviewee.It can be assessed as an effective post-Keynesian, neoliberal policing method (O'Malley and Palmer 1996).Order, rather than the principles of the law, is secured without complications for those permitted by the state to use physical force.
The interviewee is not given any time to 'think', and thereby has no room to react or respond to whatever he is accused of before he is in a painful 'grip'.In this moment of the narrative the relation between the private and the public street-level policing actors is described by the interviewee as a merge at the level of praxis, with the police as the central protagonist, and the security guard 'also' being 'there'.It is 'they' together who are doing the violence work (Seigel 2018).As such, it is not an exclusively public policing institution that holds the state-sanctioned monopoly of violence.Rather, the actors work in a unified way, exercising sovereign control through a state-market collaboration (cf.Johnston 1999).Even though the interviewee represents the policing actors as separate entities at the level of appearance as well as task, the police and security guard are described as acting as one authority with a united professional front.
A conclusion to be drawn is that the powers of the different policing agents are experienced as intertwined, complementary and overlapping.Although this phenomenon is narrated in different ways by the interviewees, descriptions recur in the empirical material concerning the joint effort of the policing institutions.The following extract is part of a narrative where the interviewee describes how he verbally called into question an extended control exerted over him on a commuter train.He had provided a valid ticket and felt discriminated against.After a short discussion, the security guards decided to physically drag the interviewee out of the carriage.
It's so crazy that they took me into the toilet [at the train station].The security guards put me on the floor and locked me up.I asked if it was necessary.I was scared and in a lot of pain.It didn't smell fresh.I couldn't contact anyone, do anything.The police came, maybe after half an hour.They opened the door.
And what happened there?When the police came … I felt really happy.But then they asked, 'Why are your eyes so red?' I was shocked.I replied, 'I was born this way.This is how I look.' […] They drove me away and dropped me off somewhere.(Man,19 years,Falköping) The extract from the narrative captures the moment when the police 'opened the door' to a locked toilet where the interviewee has been held.He has been left there 'scared' and in 'a lot of pain'.He is totally stripped of power: he cannot 'do anything'.This description is a clear-cut illustration of Weber's (1948) conceptualisation of the state as a violent relation of 'men dominating men'.In contrast to the previous example, it is in this moment, after the direct physical violence, that the police enter the narrative, bringing it to resolution: they drive the interviewee 'away' and drop him 'off somewhere'.As such, it is essentially the security guards who are responsible for the direct violence.However, like with the previous narrative, the street-level policing agents exercise sovereign control in a unified way.
Nevertheless, in this narrative there is a moment where matters are not settled, and the teamwork of the policing actors is an uncertain feature.The reason why the interviewee feels 'really happy' when the police arrive 'after half an hour' is that he thinks it is a window of opportunity that will change the course of events.At stake during the short moment when the police evaluate the situation by asking questions are the roles that the different policing agents will play.An interpretation is that the interviewee expects that the police will side with him because they are regarded as more trustworthy and procedurally fair (cf.Saarikkomäki 2018).This is not, however, what he experiences.Rather, he is met with a comment that he finds humiliating: 'Why are your eyes so red?' Instead of being understood as a victim who has been crying, he is treated as a suspect.The 'shock' produced is that the police reinforce the private security guards' authority, legitimising the perceived abuse of the interviewee's rights.This is carried out at the expense of his feeling of justice being upheld, an experience in line with understandings of legitimate violence as intimately linked to power (Hall 1984).
Regarding the relation between the policing actors, several interpretations are possible.One understanding is that it is the police who hold the power and the private security guards who play the role of junior partners, because it is the police who speak and formulate the critical questions, assessing whether it is true or false that the interviewee 'was born' with eyes that 'look' in a particular way.This understanding strengthens descriptions of neoliberal governance as a technique that has left the centralised state more powerful than before, and that the outsourcing of policing has extended the capacity as well as influence of state agents (Garland 1996).A directly contradictory interpretation is also possible.In the coda of the narrative, the public police are depicted as a transportation service that drops the interviewee off.Analysing this moment of the narrative, it can actually be argued that the security guards are at the top of the chain of command.The role of the police has been reduced to upholding a predefined order, thereby reinforcing the authority of the security guards and legitimising the violence that the interviewee has been subjected to.This interpretation challenges simplified understandings of the public police as senior associates and the private counterpart their junior collaborators (Minnaar 2005).
Apparently, depending on where the focus is on the narrative, different understandings can be advanced regarding how the professional dynamics are experienced.The conclusion drawn here is that power is a negotiated force that flows between the policing actors as the narrative evolves (cf.Zedner 2006).The following section clarifies even further why this element is key to the way that the interviewees experience the juncture between the public and private policing actors.
Disrupting authority: 'I hear how the guard is defensive' In the empirical material there are interviewees who describe how police officers, in connection with violent interventions by security guards, reinforce the security guards' (ab)use of power.However, there are also examples of the opposite: We were drunk.We got to the subway.I had a card [season ticket] but my friends didn't.So, I blipped myself in and kind of just held up the latches […].Two guards came and I started arguing.Then they decided to handcuff me -I think it was handcuffs, but it could also have been just cable ties.They kind of pushed me to the ground so that I hit my skull very hard there on the cement floor.I think I kicked with my legs.Then it takes off: they took out their batons and hit me all over … everywhere.[…] After a short while, the police came and then, like, it calmed down immediately.A police officer approached me.He talked to me and was very kind.They drove me to the emergency [clinic] because I was completely shattered.(Women,30 years,Stockholm) The narrative can be broken down into dramaturgical sequences that end with the interviewee being 'completely shattered'.It starts with the abstract: 'We were drunk.'Then follows the orientation: the interviewee is in the subway when she holds 'up the latches' for her friends.Offering an evaluation of the situation, she underlines that it is she who 'started arguing'.She also acknowledges that she 'held up the latches', thereby enabling each of her friends to avoid paying 39 SEK (approximately 3.30 Euros) for their journey.What follows in the narrative shows the coercive powers of the security guards in response to, first, the perceived disruption of order because of a misdemeanour, and then violence as a response to verbal confrontation.One expectation is that coercion in democratic settings will arise as the outcome of a gradual process where authority is challenged (Hall et al. 1978).In this narrative the turn to repression seems to happen fast.The interviewee's head takes a hard hit when the security guards decide to 'push' her down onto the cement floor.The complicating action of the narrative is reached when she kicks to defend herself.The security guards then hit her 'everywhere' with their batons, even though she is lying down with her hands tied behind her back.
An illuminating aspect of this narrative is that the situation reaches resolution when the police arrive, one of these being 'very kind'.Clearly, the interviewee distinguishes between the frontline policing agents, experiencing the professional actors as having different roles.When the public police arrive, the situation is 'directly calmed down'.It is described as the public police taking charge.They are represented as holding the power in the situation, and they use it to tilt it towards consensual grounds: 'He talked to me.' Rather than resorting to coercion, the police assume the role of de-escalation by employing a less conflictual tactic based on verbal work, what has been conceptualised as good policing (Bowling et al. 2019).An interpretation is that the interviewee experiences that the police through their seniority and dialogical manner resolve the Weberian tension between the security guards' right to invoke force and these professionals' power to do so by assuming control over the situation (cf.Loader and Walker 2001).As such, rather than the public and private policing authorities presenting a united front, this narrative highlights the importance of differentiating between the street-level violence workers, acknowledging that the police have the power to draw a line between legitimate and illegitimate state-sanctioned violence.When this power is used, the police have the possibility to reorder situations, disrupting the authority of security guards after their interventions.
The empirical material suggests that, once the police arrive, power is negotiated.While the result of this negotiation is an uncertain feature, the narrative of the interviewee indicates that the premise of the public-private relationship is neither challenged nor questioned, an element that maintains the policing partnership intact.In the coda of the narrative, the police assume the task of implementing the order decided by the security guards: as with the example in the previous empirical section, they end up being a transportation service, in this case driving the interviewee 'to the emergency [clinic]'.A critical interpretation is that the public police restore legitimate authority to the state at the expense of the security guards, who are tasked to do the dirty work of frontline violent ordering (cf. Hansen Löfstrand et al. 2016).If thought of as a 'good cop/bad security guard' governing strategy, hegemony is reinforced by the division of labour among the professional actors that allows the public police to assume the role of intermediary.However, it also has the consequence that those brutalised by security guards may get a chance to be treated more fairly.It is apparent that in some of the interviewees' narratives the public police do not side with the security guards in any clear-cut way, thereby disrupting the authority of the security guards, and also counterbalancing their power: When the police open the door and look at me, they get a look that goes something like: 'What is this person doing here?'And I hear how the guard is defensive, saying that I was drunk and violent.Meanwhile, the police are correct and nice, or, like, at least completely neutral towards me.[…] Before putting me in the car they ask me if I'm going to resist.'If you are calm or want to keep calm, we will take the handcuffs off you.' […] I think he's reacting a little to my outfit and kind of to the fact that I don't look like a person who normally sits there.I had kajal, jewellery.I had a shirt with a zebra or giraffe print.It was apparent that the image the police had got of me did not match the one they had been told [by the security guards].(Man,30,Malmö) The extract from the narrative captures the aftermath of a situation at a club where guards have placed the interviewee in a locked room after having broken his arm.From the perspective of the interviewee, what follows the actions of the security guards can be conceptualised as 'correct and nice, or, like, at least completely neutral' policing.The moment of complicating action ends when the police verbally ask if he is 'going to resist' or if they can take off the handcuffs.It is an example of a soft governing technique (Kammersgaard 2021).But why does this interviewee experience that the police side, if not exactly with him, at least not with the security guards?According to the interviewee's narrative, the process that leads to the resolution of the situation is initiated the moment that the police take a 'look' at him, understanding that he does not fit the profile of 'a person who normally sits there'.The way that the police manoeuvre in the situation makes one of the security guards become 'defensive'.The 'door' that the police open can therefore literally be seen as a window of opportunity during which the course of action can be settled in a way that redefines the way order is enforced, strengthening the position of those targeted.
The confused police gaze offers a piece of the puzzle to understand how the interviewee thinks that the situation is evaluated by the police.Dressed up with 'kajal', 'jewellery' and a shirt with an animal pattern, he is identified by the police as a queer man.'It was apparent that the image the police had got of me did not match.'Who is considered a legitimate target for the violence of professional actors, and who should be governed by more consensual policing techniques, must be understood in relation to societal structures of dominance (Hall 1984).In the first example in this empirical section, it is a young white woman.In the second example, it is a black transman who wears makeup.Within a conjuncture where a particular racialised working-class masculinity is linked to crime and violence, it can be argued that in some contextual settings the antithetical identities of the two interviewees are a protective factor to be read as its opposite (cf.Simon 2014).However, as the empirical material indicates, even in situations when the police seem to make a different evaluation of the situation from that of the security guards, they first enter the situation after violence has erupted and the interviewees have been brutalised.

Summarising reflection
In this article, the relation between policing agents in Sweden has been explored as it is experienced by those perceived to have been victimised by security guards.The empirical material shows that in some instances the public police and the private security guards carry out the state-sanctioned violence work together, reinforcing state-market power (Seigel 2018).There are situations when they act with a united front, under the leadership of the police.Exploring narratives such as these adds to interpretations that in the neoliberal governance era the partnership between public and private policing forces has strengthened the power of the centralised state (Garland 1996).
However, the analysis also shows that the policing agents can assume different roles and occupy different positions of power, both in relation to each other and to those brutalised.In several accounts, the police enter the narratives of the interviewees late, and only to implement the decisions of the security guards who have carried out the street-level frontline violent ordering.In these situations, it is argued that the policing agents also work as a team, but under the direction established by the security guards.This arrangement complicates an understanding of the partnership between the police and the security guards as being composed of senior and junior associates respectively, underlining the importance of exploring this matter empirically (Minnaar 2005).Depending on which moment in the interviewee's narrative the analytical focus is directed, competing understandings can be advanced, from those asserting that the security guards are the decisive authority to those who maintain that it is the police who are at the top of the chain of power.A conclusion can be drawn that power is a negotiated force that flows between the professional actors at street level (cf. Zedner 2006).
In contrast to the narratives that represent the work of the policing agents as a merge at the level of praxis, there are situations where the interviewees' experiences point to the policing agents acting as separateeven conflictingbodies.Specifically, there are accounts where the 'good' police are experienced as siding with the interviewees, challenging the authority of the 'bad' security guards.The verbal work of the police is key in these circumstances.Even if the 'good' police first engage in talking to the interviewees only after the latter have been brutalised, it is apparent that, to those victimised, a sense of justice being upheld in this situation is vital (Fielder and Murphy 2022).
Nonetheless, even in these situations, the police end up implementing order as it has been decided by the security guards, reinforcing the partnership between public and private policing.This element highlights that Sweden has a state-sanctioned monopoly of legitimate violence but that there are different centres of power that coexist, a component that has theoretical as well as practical consequences.It seems as if the division of labour between the professional actors in some regards opens a window of opportunity where the police are positioned to decide whether they should implement either coercive or more consensual governing techniques (Kammersgaard 2021).From the perspective of those who suffer from what they themselves perceive as disproportionate violence from security guards, it is a moment to be strategic, accentuating one's own vulnerability and need for protection: this is, of course, not always possible, and the possibility looks different depending on several factors which are important to explore in future studies.
For police officers, it should be a moment for reflection.In a context where public scandals following violent interventions seem to haunt the security industry (Hansen Löfstrand et al. 2018), it is of paramount importance to underline that the public police have flexibility when they are called to assist the security guards.This position allows the police to reorder matters.At stake when deciding how control should be exercised are the fundamental principles of any democratic society.Stuart Hall's (1984) understanding that in current society the legitimacy of the monopoly of state-sanctioned violence is acquired exclusively by the claims of power is an empirical, not a normative, evaluation.In this regard, Weber's (1948) notion that the power to invoke force does not equate to the right to do so is better suited to guide the practical work of frontline policing officers.