Background

Informant is the uncle of the Interviewer from the mother’s side. Informant has lived in Hawaii for all their life and has worked as a police officer for 6 years.

Context

Informant discusses practical jokes played in the police force. When the interviewer asked about hazing they were told that does not happen in the police force. Interview takes place at the Interviewer’s grandmother’s house during a family dinner gathering.

Transcript

Informant: “I dunno, we do stuff like, uh, as if, if you want to go as far as HAZING… sometimes on the printers, we’ll put a note that says: “Printer upgraded to new voice activated more”. So they’ll be there like “print! Print!” like stuff like that.

Interviewer: Aww that’s cute!”

Informant: “Yeah, yeah, but nothing like hazing though. It’s um, Our department has over 2,000 police officers and you don’t know everybody so like people come and go, what we have is called “personal movement” and it usually happens every month, so, we-we meet and, people come and go so often, and you really can’t get close to anyone, cause like, work with so much different people, uh, that’s all.”

Thoughts

I had no idea there were over 2,000 police officers on the island of Oahu, let alone in a single department, so that caught me off guard. I also had no idea about how quickly police officers come and go, and how they’re moved around by the police themselves for “personal movement”. My Uncle didn’t elaborate on that further, but my guess is that maybe the police force wants to keep things pretty strictly business oriented given the nature of the job, so getting close to others may be somewhat frowned upon and practical jokes or hazing totally not tolerated. I is interesting to hear that practical joking does take place in the workspace still takes place, even if on a minor scale. I would imagine that having a practical joke played on you from one person you most likely don’t know with 2,000 coworkers is a much different experience than a practical joke in a tighter-knit workspace.