TY - INPR N1 - © 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. SP - 1 AV - public Y1 - 2025/02/25/ EP - 17 TI - The constructions of anti-Black anxiety: Operation Trident's ?as if? fictionalisms A1 - Nwonka, Clive Chijioke KW - Race KW - visual culture KW - crime KW - blackness KW - police KW - media JF - Ethnic and Racial Studies PB - Informa UK Limited UR - https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2025.2462706 SN - 0141-9870 N2 - The Metropolitan Police?s Operation Trident (1998?2012) was a key example of how Black criminalization was accentuated through the inferential narratives of the media. However, Operation Trident?s independent use of the media would see them exhibit a varied practice of community policing as part of its broader preventative measures that would use a variety of visual mediums in its crossmedia campaign strategy specifically aimed at London?s Black urban communities as an intervention into what was perceived as the natural allure of gun violence within the city?s Black symbolic locations. This article considers the modes through which Operation Trident attempted to structure public opinion. In conducting an underexamined analysis of Operation Trident, I apply the Neo-Kantianism of Vailhinger?s ?as if? philosophy to consider the means through which the Metropolitan Police?s antiBlack gun crime initiative instituted anxiety as a Black criminological visual culture, and in doing so, secured its legitimacy. ID - discovery10205874 ER -