‘We need to use the entire toolbox’ storytelling in the unarmed Norwegian police

ABSTRACT Norway is one of the few European countries in which the police, in the course of their normal duties, are unarmed. Based on a risk assessment, Norwegian police were permanently armed from 25th November 2014 and 3rd February 2016. This was the longest period during which the police in Norway had been routinely armed, and an evaluation of their experience was required, the aim being to collect police officers’ own experiences from this period. The police interviewees (n = 30) answered specific and detailed questions. Surprisingly, they answered more than the questions asked of them, they told stories before, during and after the interviews which highlighted uncertainty in the service indicating the need to be armed. The evaluation found that these stories were repeated in every police district used in the data collection. They described observable phenomena; they meant something central to those who were interviewed. The question was: What were the stories about? Which challenges did these stories point to? What forms of justification for the arming of the police do we find in them? In the article we see storytelling through a (cultural) sociological approach as attempts at justification and legitimation