Tears, shrieks and meticulously planned outfits: all hallmarks of Taylor Swift’s world-famous Eras Tour. Now in its sixteenth month, the tour has taken on a life of its own. The concerts are an astronomical production: playing exclusively at arenas and stadiums, attendance numbers range from approximately 50,000 to 100,000 people a night. With such enormous crowds, an increased police presence is an expected fixture at the concert venues.

However, what caught my eye as I attended the Eras Tour this summer is that police officers have become willing participants in a fan ritual: exchanging homemade friendship bracelets. I see these interactions between the police and concertgoers as having a softening effect on security and surveillance, which are part and parcel of community policing at concerts.

Behind the beads

One of the most popular traditions to come out of the Eras Tour is the trading of friendship bracelets. In the months leading up to concert nights, fans (known as ‘Swifties’) transform their homes into veritable jewellery-making factories, creating vibrantly coloured beaded bracelets that often contain references to song lyrics and inside jokes.

While it’s unclear who started this tradition, Swift’s song You’re On Your Own Kid does contain a reference to it in the line ‘So make the friendship bracelets, take the moment and taste it’. On concert night, fans fill their arms with a cache of bracelets – usually designating one arm as ‘bracelets to keep’ and the other as ‘bracelets to trade’.

At the venue, the bartering begins. There’s no agenda when initiating a trade: some are looking for a bracelet from a particular era (a specific Swift album), while others will take whatever they can get. But almost all are there to meet people who have travelled from near and far to experience the mayhem.

The ‘Swiftification’ of security

Amidst a sea of sequined and glittery uniforms, an actor in a totally different uniform stands out. From Kansas City to Dublin to Cardiff (to name just a few), viral images and videos have depicted local, state and national police officers gleefully trading bracelets with fans. Even the furry paw of Randy the police K9 was adorned with beads in Mexico City, where he was dubbed ‘El Perrito Swiftie’ (the Swiftie Dog).

But the seemingly simple act of trading bracelets is more than a gesture of goodwill from the police. While there may be genuine enthusiasm to participate, the decision to engage with citizens in this way is a strategic move by the police. By participating in informal, friendly interaction, they create a sense of camaraderie with those they are policing, thereby softening the barriers that often exist between the police service and citizens. By softening, I mean an active attempt to change citizens’ perceptions of police officers as impersonal, overly authoritative or illegitimate.

PR for police departments

Here, we can look to Tom Tyler’s seminal research on procedural justice, which maintains that when citizens perceive their treatment as fair, this not only enhances the legitimacy of legal authorities but leads to greater cooperation and compliance with the police.

Importantly, the interactions between police officers and fans do not just stay in the moment. Many interactions are captured on video and posted online, where they can be accessed in perpetuity and serve as excellent PR for featured departments. Take, for example, the comment left on a TikTok post showing a New South Wales officer trading bracelets with a fan: ‘Policing done right!!!’. Another comment in response to a TikTok post showing a Michigan State trooper trading bracelets with a young girl reads: ‘This makes me have more hope for there actually being good cops out there in the world’.

In lieu of a more militarised police presence seen at other concerts, I would question whether the response to this ‘wholesome’ phenomenon between police and fans would be quite so overwhelmingly positive if it were not for the typical profile of the Swiftie demographic: young, white and female. Notably, the Eras Tour has no scheduled concert dates in Africa or the Middle East.

The end of Eras

However, police officers at the Eras Tour still very much possess the power and discretion to arrest and detain. On 18 July, the German police arrested a man suspected of stalking Swift and making threats against her boyfriend, Travis Kelce. The suspect had a ticket for a show in Gelsenkirchen and was taken into custody at the venue’s security check area. On 7 August, Swift and her team cancelled all three of her Vienna shows due to an alleged planned terrorist attack.

With the Eras Tour established as the focus of the Vienna attack, will threats of this nature and the inevitable increased security presence change the dynamics between the police and citizens at future shows? Although Taylor Swift is still scheduled to perform the final five shows of her European tour leg at London’s Wembley Stadium, fans are surely waiting with bated breath to find out the fate of their beloved bracelets.