The Urban Surveillance Script: Beat Cop and the Policing of Diversity

This essay argues that the scripting of the urban geography in Beat Cop (2017) complicates the subversive potential ascribed to the everyday practice of walking by Michel de Certeau in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984). Walking constitutes the predominant mode of movement in the game, thereby placing limitations on the players’ policing powers when chasing suspects. Because players step into the shoes of a police officer and play as the disciplining authority themselves, however, the use of walking in the game thwarts any direct sense of what de Certeau describes as “eluding discipline.” The depiction of the urban space in Beat Cop furthermore perpetuates long-standing prejudices about black communities and communities of color in the United States as in particular need of surveillance. This racist coding finds expression in the narrative, the gameplay mechanics, and especially the visual focus of the game with players monitoring their game space from a wide-angle camera position. Beat Cop thus maps uncomfortably onto existing surveillance models driven by the expansion of CCTV technology and resonates with the first trials to patrol neighborhoods with robots as well as forms of distant surveillance using drones.