Public Order Policing: A Professional's Guide to International Theories, Case Studies, and Best Practices 3031438558, 9783031438554

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Bernd Bürger Tamara D. Herold Ryan Lee  Editors

Public Order Policing A Professional’s Guide to International Theories, Case Studies, and Best Practices

Public Order Policing

Bernd Bürger  •  Tamara D. Herold  •  Ryan Lee Editors

Public Order Policing A Professional’s Guide to International Theories, Case Studies, and Best Practices

Editors Bernd Bürger Institute for Further Education of the Bavarian Police Ainring, Germany

Tamara D. Herold Department of Criminal Justice University of Nevada, Las Vegas Las Vegas, NV, USA

Ryan Lee Assistant Chief of Police (Retired) Portland Police Bureau Portland, OR, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-43855-4    ISBN 978-3-031-43856-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Introduction

Successful public order management is critical to upholding democracy and maintaining the rule of law. Negative police–public interactions during assemblies can impact the safety and well-being of citizens and officers, as well as local and international perceptions of police legitimacy. As observed during events across the world, including assemblies in the USA, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and elsewhere, police mismanagement of mass demonstrations often instigates crowd violence and other harmful behaviors. The causes of violence at assemblies are complex and multifaceted. Failure to understand crowd dynamics that lead to violence limits police effectiveness and contributes to poor officer decision-making. This book offers an international review of public order management experiences and effective practices. Practical examples, grounded in multidisciplinary theory and science, offer a roadmap to improve police response and increase safety at assemblies in democratic countries. The diverse content, perspectives, and lessons learned presented in this volume will serve as a useful guide for all people working in the field of public order management, including police officials, policymakers, and researchers. This edited volume was written by and for practitioners, pracademics, and academics to review the complex and demanding task of policing public order. The following author and chapter introductions highlight the expertise, topics, and lessons offered to our readers. Chapter “Public Order Policing: From Theory to Practice” Bernd Bürger Dr. Bernd Bürger is a pracademic, a public order policing scientist, and a public order commander with over 20 years of practical experience. He was responsible for the 2015 and 2022 G7 summit camps and associated protests in Garmisch-­ Partenkirchen. He served on the frontlines as commander of a special evidence gathering and arrest unit during the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg. He holds two master’s degrees and a PhD and regularly publishes and lectures internationally on public order policing. Dr. Bürger describes theories of crowd dynamics and the role of police during public assemblies. Historical crowd psychology theories, which are now outdated v

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but still inform flawed police training and decision-making, are contrasted with recent theoretical developments. The most prominent theory, the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM), is presented, along with current typologies of assemblies and participants. Conflicts inherent in police duties at public assemblies are examined before defining the concept of escalation and examining these processes within the context of policing assemblies. To move the discussion from theory to practice, concrete strategies to avoid escalation and illicit positive public perceptions while policing assemblies are described in detail. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the mindset needed to effectively execute these strategies and achieve a modern, democratic, and community-oriented approach to public order management. Chapter “Preventing Crime at Assemblies” Tamara D. Herold and Bernd Bürger Dr. Tamara D.  Herold currently serves as Senior Advisor at the National Institute of Justice, US Department of Justice, and is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. She received her PhD with an emphasis on crime prevention from the University of Cincinnati, USA.  Herold researches, develops, and delivers police and security crowd management training across the world. She has published numerous practitioner-focused research papers, including two Problem-Oriented Policing Guides funded by the COPS Office on preventing crowd-related violence. Drs. Herold and Bürger (see Chapter “Public Order Policing: From Theory to Practice”) examine crowd dynamics from a crime prevention perspective. They describe how crowds create crime opportunities and present three theories—routine activity theory, rational choice theory, and situational crime prevention—which can explain crowd behaviors and help develop crime interventions. The RDFC international model and 4D tactic, two assembly-focused crime prevention and training frameworks, are offered to improve safety and police–crowd interactions. They conclude with recommendations that will help police take immediate steps to better prevent and respond to crowd-related crime. Chapter “How Collective Violence Emerges and Escalates” Otto M. Adang and Martina Schreiber Dr. Otto M. Adang is a behavioral scientist who has held a chair in Public Order Management at the Police Academy of the Netherlands since 2004. He is also Associate Professor of Security and Collective Behavior at the University of Groningen. He has conducted public order research since 1985 and has authored over 180 publications on security, use of force, and order maintenance. He is an internationally recognized expert on major events, public order and crowd management, hooliganism, police use of force, and police and human rights. He has been involved in training, consulting, and research related to police operations at soccer and protest events throughout Europe. Dr. Martina Schreiber is a psychologist who helped evaluate police practices at UEFA Euro 2004 in Portugal as a staff member of the University of Liverpool. As a research associate and member of the Public Order Expert Panel of the Netherlands Police Academy, she studied the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, the UEFA Euro

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2008 Austria/Switzerland, and numerous European soccer matches and demonstrations. In 2010, she received her PhD from Jacobs University Bremen on “Group Relations at Crowd-Events.” Drs. Adang and Schreiber link theory to public order management practices. They offer an evidence-based model for understanding the initiation and escalation of collective violence developed from systematic observations of mass gatherings where violence occurred (or was anticipated). They describe associated strategic principles, used successfully in several countries, for policing mass events. Chapter “Interpretive Regimes of Violence in Action. The “Welcome to Hell” Demonstration During the G20 Summit in Hamburg 2017” Chris Schattka Chris Schattka is a sociologist and PhD candidate at Bielefeld University and was previously a researcher at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. He studied sociology at the Bielefeld University and the Swedish Umeå University. As part of his dissertation, he has been conducting research on digital self-representation practices in violent situations. His recent research focuses on methodological problems of violence research and the sociology of interaction. Mr. Schattka examines the origins of violence during the so-called “Welcome to Hell” demonstration, which took place during the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg. Violence is explained by building upon evidence-based concepts, including mass, identity, and emotion. These concepts are each used to analyze unfolding events at demonstrations, but they vary in their inclusion and emphasis on reciprocal dynamics between police and crowd behaviors. Schattka argues that an “interpretative regime” supporting the use of violence developed prior to the Hamburg demonstration, among both police and demonstrators, and this perspective contributed to the outbreak of violence. Interpretive regimes supporting violence are grounded in shared experiences. They arise when the parties involved accuse each other of intending to use violence, which justifies and increases the likelihood of their own violent behavior. During the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration, these interpretive regimes persisted until the day of the event and influenced how police and demonstrators interpreted the actions of each other during the demonstration. Chapter “Almost Forgotten Experiential Knowledge of De-escalation” Udo Behrendes and Bernd Bürger Udo Behrendes, senior police officer (retired), served as an officer in North Rhine-Westphalia from 1972 to 2015, and most recently as head of the Cologne police headquarters management staff. Since the late 1980s, he led police operations during several hundred demonstrations. In the mid-1990s, he was a founding member of the “Bonner Forum BürgerInnen und Polizei e.V.,” an experiment that promoted dialogue between protestors and police. Senior officer Behrendes and Dr. Bürger (see Chapter “Public Order Policing: From Theory to Practice”) highlight the conclusions of experts in the mid-1980s. Experts found that the policing of assemblies did not consistently integrate past operational experience into current operational planning; thus, those experiences were continually lost and needed to be acquired anew. This includes assessments of

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the psychological effects of police tactics on those assembled and the larger public. The authors argue that contemporary experts would discover similar findings. They offer examples of historic police approaches that eased tensions in assembly conflict situations and identify related de-escalation tactics and training supported by scientific evidence. Chapter “The Role of Police in Assemblies: Ethical Implications, Imperatives, and Interventions” Werner Schiewek Werner Schiewek studied Protestant theology at the University of Hamburg and at the Westphalian Wilhelms University at Münster. Since 2001, he has served as a Pastor in the State Parish Office for Church Service in the Police of the Protestant Churches of Westphalia and as a police ethics lecturer of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany at the German Police University in Münster. In addition to his practice as a police chaplain, his teaching and research interests include applied ethics (professional and organizational ethics) with a special focus on ethical issues involving state security agencies (police and military). Pastor Schiewek highlights the importance of assemblies for a thriving democracy. As a democratic virtue, assemblies should not be prevented, but, in fact, facilitated. However, assemblies are associated with individual, social, and moral risks for all participants, and Schiewek describes these risks. To help mitigate risk associated with assemblies, Schiewek analyzes the moral expectations of police, including internal and external expectations, and the tensions between them. Awareness of these challenges can help police organizations better prepare officers. Schiewek also offers suggestions for personal and organizational planning grounded in different ethical approaches and the four classical cardinal virtues. Chapters “Differences in US and German Police Organizations with an Impact on the Policing of Public Assemblies”, “Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in Germany”, and “Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in the United States” focus on how police organization characteristics impact policing at assemblies. Chapter “Differences in US and German Police Organizations with an Impact on the Policing of Public Assemblies” Bernd Bürger, Gerd Thielmann, Alan Hanson, and Craig Dobson Chapter “Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in Germany” Bernd Bürger and Gerd Thielmann Chapter “Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in the United States” Alan Hanson and Craig Dobson Gerd Thielmann has 44 years of policing experience, including 28 years as a senior officer. He worked as a lecturer of police operations and leadership science at

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the Police University for Applied Sciences. His practical leadership experience includes two years as Deputy Head of European Union Police Mission in BosniaHerzegovina and Head of the Northern Hesse Police Department, which employs approximately 1800 officers. He conducted research as the Head of the Police Leadership Science Faculty at the German Police University (GPU). He served as Vice President of the GPU during the final three years of his policing career. Alan Hanson is a Captain with the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) in Virginia. He received a BA in Political Science and Russian Studies in 1989 and joined the FCPD in 1994. He currently serves as the traffic division commander, senior FCPD public order incident commander, and the Civil Disturbance Units (CDU) administrative commander. He has served as the incident commander for numerous CDU deployments. Most recently, Captain Hanson was FCPD’s primary incident commander during protests of Supreme Court Justices residences and deployments to support US Capitol Police in 2022. Craig Dobson is a police commander at the Portland Police Bureau, assigned to lead the strategic planning and managing of the Bureau’s downtown precinct. He also serves as the Senior Public Order Incident Commander for the Bureau, overseeing the Public Order Incident Commander Program. Additionally, Commander Dobson is the Police Bureau’s Instructor for Command personnel involving public order. He is responsible for developing and teaching Bureau command staff the principles and theory behind public order policing, including 1st amendment implications, crowd behavior, social identity, police capabilities, and appropriate tactical police responses. Prior to being a commander, he served for 15 continuous years in a detached assignment with the Rapid Response Team (RRT), the Portland Police Bureau’s all-hazards team, and helped develop and coordinate public order training for Oregon’s regional public order teams including Oregon Air and Army National Guard members. He served as the Overall Incident Commander during Portland’s civil unrest in 2020. These three chapters by Dr. Bernd Bürger (see Chapter “Public Order Policing: From Theory to Practice”), Brigadier Gerd Thielmann, Captain Hanson, and Commander Dobson seek to show how differences in society, law, standards, and education influence the policing of public order and common policing approaches. The first chapter, “Differences in US and German Police Organizations with an Impact on the Policing of Public Assemblies,” explains differences between Germany and the USA that are relevant to policing assemblies. Police institutions and regulations can be understood only if situated within a broader context (e.g., form of government, societal characteristics, and historical events), as contextual influences impact police structures and activities. The appendix offers a glossary to explain specific police terms and foster understanding of technical jargon used throughout this book. In “Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in Germany” and the subsequent chapter, “…the United States,” the authors highlight aspects of German and US police organizations and standards associated with policing assemblies or large-scale events. A fictitious case study is used to illustrate how an assembly

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might be policed. Both chapters provide a brief overview of cross-border police collaboration for assemblies and other gatherings. Chapter “Protection of Citizens’ Rights, Public Safety & Police Legitimacy: The Legal Equilibrium for Public Order” Jaclyn M. Keane and Anthony J. Raganella Dr. Jaclyn M. Keane is a Captain in the New York City Police Department and is currently assigned to the headquarters’ Operations Division. She plans, budgets, and negotiates all major New York City events for the department. She supervises the department’s Joint Operations Center during serious crimes, large-scale emergency incidents, and disasters. She was previously an attorney in the Criminal Unit of the NYPD’s Legal Bureau, being on call 24/7 to advise department members on criminal law matters, interpretation of statutes, and constitutional law. Dr. Keane was on the scene during active protests and civil unrest where she engaged in real-­ time coordination with incident commanders to provide decisive legal advice pertaining to arrests and constitutional issues. Anthony J.  Raganella is a retired 25-year decorated New  York City Police Department Deputy Inspector. While at the NYPD, Deputy Inspector Raganella spent 8 years as the Commanding Officer of the Disorder Control Unit, a citywide department unit responsible for planning, assessing, and ensuring the Department’s training and readiness in crowd management and disorder control operations for civil unrest, as well as major events, emergencies, and protests. As Commander of that unit, he regularly developed policy and evaluated and implemented training, equipment, and crowd management and control practices. He has been at the forefront of advocating for and developing national standards for personal protective equipment, tactics, and training for US public order policing. Dr. Keane and Deputy Inspector Raganella build upon previous chapters by focusing on legal issues associated with public order policing. They discuss the constitutional foundation of free speech and assemblies and related policing limitations and challenges. After considering the relationship between crowds and police, they use a London Metropolitan Police (Met) example to show how specific decisions (and possible alternatives) generated long-term negative effects on the Met’s relationship with their community. The authors conclude with a discussion of police legitimacy, specifically highlighting the concept of “policing with consent” and the importance of balancing the legal equilibrium. Chapter “Public Order Policing in the UK” Claire Clark Claire Clark is a former Chief Superintendent who retired from the Metropolitan Police Service in 2022, after serving for 31 years. During her career, she worked on emergency response teams, developing skills as a public order officer and loggist, and Police Support Unit (PSU) commander. After promotion to Chief Inspector, she was trained in public order command and spent numerous weekends at Arsenal’s Emirates stadium. As Superintendent, she led the department responsible for planning police response for all public order events in London which included protests,

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sporting events, festivals, concerts, and ceremonial events. She was one of the most experienced Public Order Commanders in London. Chief Superintendent Clark highlights the principles of public order policing in the UK and reviews relevant legislation and guidelines. She explains the system of public order public safety policing, focusing on the tasks of the overall strategic commander, referred to as Gold, and demonstrates the operationalization of public order policing concepts using several examples and case studies. Chapter “Specialized Public Order Units: Integrating a Community Policing Mindset” Bernd Bürger Dr. Bürger (see Chapter “Public Order Policing: From Theory to Practice”) shows how the Unterstützungskommandos (USK), full-time public order units specializing in evidence gathering and arrests during assemblies, have evolved over recent decades. Bürger describes events that accompanied and triggered these developments and shows how, after it became an organizational goal, community-­ focused policing served as the foundation for operational tactics, as well as personnel selection, development, and training. Chapter “Maintaining Public Order from a Military Police Perspective” Michiel Rovers and Tom van Ham Michiel Rovers graduated from the Royal Netherlands Military Academy in 2006 as an army officer. In 2013, he moved to the Royal Marechaussee and was deployed on several international and national public order and security-related missions. He combined his tactical experience with existing strategic (NATO) concepts, which resulted in the development of the Dutch Doctrine Publication 19–56: Stability Policing in Land operations. Tom van Ham obtained an MSc degree in both clinical neuropsychology and criminology in 2007. In 2021, he successfully defended his doctoral dissertation “Collective Violence Offenders and Offending: The Role of Individual Characteristics” at Leiden Law School of Leiden University. He provides guest lectures for police training and academic courses and has worked in both the private and public sector in various safety and security positions. Officer Rovers and Dr. van Ham describe public order management from a Dutch military police perspective. They briefly reflect on collective violence theory and the role of the Royal Marechaussee (gendarmerie type military police of the Dutch Armed Forces) in maintaining public order in a civil environment. They discuss the units’ characteristics, their deployment, and challenges. The authors highlight the policies developed to handle public order events. Furthermore, they identify military units’ challenges in establishing public order in a hostile, post-conflict environment and underline the necessity of international cooperation—not only between military units, but between all units deployed at public order events. Using the Dutch experience, the authors seek to inspire further discussion and to encourage the use of common language to describe crowd-related dynamics.

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Chapter “January 6th: A Challenge for Public Order Policing and Democracy” Eli Cory Eli Cory is the Deputy Chief of Police for Investigations for the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) in Virginia, USA. He has been a sworn member of the department since 1998 and served in the Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) as an officer, supervisor, and commander since 2001. Later in his CDU service, he held the position of overall CDU commander. During his tenure with the CDU, he was deployed on several Presidential inaugurations, International Monetary Foundation protests, Bilderberg protests, a Papal Visit, January 6th United States Capitol response, post-­ Floyd demonstrations, National Rifle Association protests, and a multitude of various protests within Fairfax County. Deputy Chief Cory provides insights into the events that unfolded on January 6th at the US Capitol in Washington D.C. from the viewpoint of a Public Order Commander on the ground. Cory explains the state of law enforcement in the USA before this event, considering the social contexts, peculiarities regarding jurisdiction, training, and equipment developments. Cory describes January 6th from his point of view; how events unfolded, the decisions made, and emotional aspects of the operation. The author concludes with lessons learned regarding training, equipment, and communication. Chapter “The ‘Yellow Vest Protests’: Challenge for Police and Democracy” Christian Ghirlanda Christian Ghirlanda is a Police Commissioner who began his career in 1985 as a police officer at CRS 45 (public order company) in Chassieu, France. He worked his way up through the ranks and within several CRS.  During that time, he was deployed to many significant, large-scale policing events. After he graduated from the Ecole Supérieure de la Police Nationale de Saint Cyr aux Monts d’Or and became Police Commissioner, he was appointed Deputy Director of Public Security in Ajaccio. He was responsible for policing Premier League football matches and organizing the arrival and departure of Tour de France cycling stages in Ajaccio. In 2014, he joined the Central Direction of the CRS in Paris as Deputy Director of Logistics. He designed the EGIDE water launcher with a capacity of 10,000 liters. In 2018, he took over the position of Deputy Zonal Director of the CRS in the Western zone where he manages 1650 police officers and administrative and technical staff. He frequently commands large-scale CRS operational groups of up to 2000 police officers in the field. Commissioner Ghirlanda describes the challenges posed by the Yellow Vest protests for both the police and democracy itself and explains how various stakeholders in France have attempted to overcome these challenges. He analyzes the characteristics of this new form of protest. Ghirlanda concludes by emphasizing the importance of continuous development and further education of the police profession to successfully adapt to and manage this new type of protest in an evolving liberal democratic society.

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Chapter “Public Order Policing 2.0. Addressing the Challenges of the Information Age” Ryan Lee Ryan Lee served nearly 20 years with the Police Bureau in Portland, Oregon, specializing in public order policing for nearly 17 years. He rose through the ranks of the public order unit, from line officer to senior leadership. He has deployed hundreds of times in public order operations, ranging from peaceful gatherings to riots. He served as a front-line supervisor during the 2011 Occupy Portland Protest and as the Operations Section Chief during the 2016 Election Riots and 2017 Inauguration Riots in Portland. Chief Lee has been a subject matter expert in public order policing for the National Institute of Justice, Center for Domestic Preparedness, International Association Chiefs of Police Collaborative Reform Initiative Technical Assistance Center, National Tactical Officer Association, and Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. Chief Lee argues that most public order policing practitioners focus on the immediacy of maintaining order within a physical space but fail to evaluate the role of legitimacy, narrative space, and the impacts of the information age. The author examines these issues, along with the evolving sophistication of criminal protesters and how they leverage communication. Lee concludes with strategies and tactics to help public order professionals navigate new and challenging protest dynamics and environments. Chapter “Intelligence in Public Order Policing” Loren (Renn) Canon, Jr. Renn Cannon is a public safety consultant focused on leadership development, investigation and intelligence, and integrated strategy development. With decades of public service, he last served in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Portland Division. In this role, he led the FBI response to numerous public order events including Occupy ICE PDX, protest clashes in 2019, and the 2020 Portland riots. SAC Cannon summarizes key research and reviews the fundamentals of the intelligence cycle to provide police leaders with useful frameworks and tools. Cannon shows how officers can lawfully develop crucial intelligence and effectively incorporate this knowledge into all stages and aspects of public order policing operations. Through a case study and real-world illustrations of successful public order intelligence efforts, Cannon provides contextually based and tangible examples to help practitioners develop and integrate public order policing intelligence. Chapter “The Importance of Police Public Relations in Assembly Situations” Jonas Grutzpalk and Stefan Jarolimek Dr. Jonas Grutzpalk is a political scientist and sociologist. He has served as Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Police and Public Administration since 2009. He was previously a research assistant for the project “Max Weber’s so-­called sociology of law” of the Max Weber Complete Edition and then a public

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relations officer at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Brandenburg. In this capacity, he developed, among other things, the educational simulation game “Democracy and Extremism.” He has published on knowledge stocks and knowledge management in security agencies, intercultural competence, the “New Right,” and sociology of religion. Dr. Stefan Jarolimek is a communication scientist. He has been Professor of Communication Science at the German Police University in Münster since 2016. His work and research focus on strategic communication, intercultural communication, extremism research, and professional field research. Since 2016, he has been responsible for education and training at the Office for the Coordination of Social Media of the German Police Forces. He has published essays and books on the future of the police, the professionalization of police communication, and online radicalization. Drs. Grutpalk and Jarolimek explain that police do not operate in a vacuum, but function within a media public. This public is difficult to understand, consisting of confusing echo chambers, fake news, journalism, social media, and rapid attention economies. Police are obliged to simultaneously explain their own actions and reinforce the public’s sense of security through the media. This mix becomes a challenge for the police, especially in assembly situations, when there are real-time media disputes about situations and their interpretation. The authors advise police public relations, from a German perspective, on how to position themselves within this media situation. Chapter “Mission Communication as an Integrative Overall Strategy in Protest 2.0” Carsten Schenk and Michael Bornhausen Carsten Schenk studied psychology before working as an operational psychologist in the Central Police Psychological Service of the Hessian Police (ZPD). Schenk is responsible for developing tactical and operational communication approaches for mass events/assemblies. He advised police leadership on communication during the ongoing large-scale operation for the further construction of the BAB (highway) 49. Today, he is Psychology Director and head of the ZPD’s Operations Support, consisting of the Behavioral Analysis Competence Center dealing with Threat Management and Criminal Psychological Investigation Support as well as the Communication and Crisis Management Competence Center with, among others, Operations/Crisis Communication/De-escalation, Negotiation Management, Psychosocial Crisis Management/Operations Section Support, Officers Crisis Support, and Acting and Deciding in Critical Situations. Michael Bornhausen worked for several departments of the Hessian Police, including an evidence-gathering and arrest unit. In 2009, he joined the Department of Police Operations. In addition to working as a specialist instructor, he assumed management of the Tactical Communication Coordination Unit. In 2016, he began working for the Central Police Psychological Service of the Hesse Police (ZPD) and is responsible for coordinating police operations and communication. Major Bornhausen is a certified social media manager and crisis manager. Starting in 2022,

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he became head of the Communication and Crisis Management Competence Center at the Hessian University of Public Management and Security in the Center for Police Psychological Services. He oversees tactical communication, operational communication, press officers, and psychosocial emergency care statewide. He has served as a section leader in numerous operations, including leading the Tactical Communications section in the large-scale operation that lasted several months to continue the construction of the BAB (highway) 49. Director Schenk and Major Bornhausen examine the importance of operational communication in assemblies using a case study of the operation at Dannenröder Forst, a forest area to be cleared for a highway expansion. They first explore emerging demands on police communication resulting from the use of social media during protests. Subsequently, the importance of Tactical Communication in operations is highlighted through various theoretical approaches and practical examples. They present goals, applications, and methods of Tactical Communication. The authors conclude with challenges that arise in, what they refer to as, the context of “protest 2.0,” including effectively understanding and executing mission communication. Chapter “Public Order Standards: Moving the Public Trust Needle Forward” Anthony J. Raganella, Jose M. Vega, and Peter Davidov Jose M. Vega is a retired 25-year veteran Sergeant Special Assignment of the NYPD and a graduate of the 253rd Session of the FBI National Academy. For 19 years, he was assigned to the Disorder Control Unit, NYPD’s main public order unit. Among his many responsibilities was the training of NYPD personnel in crowd control, as well as his real-time response to major protests and civil disturbance to provide incident commanders with on-scene tactical and logistical support. He provides public order presentations to US and international agencies and serves on the National Institute of Justice Special Technical Committee for the standardization of US crowd control training, tactics, and equipment. Peter Davidov, a Lieutenant with the Montgomery County Police Department, has specialized in police response to civil disorder and has trained for civil disturbance since he began his law enforcement career in 1992. He was a founding member and lead trainer of Montgomery County’s Special Event Response Team (SERT), which is responsible for handling civil disturbance. He has responded to many major events including IMF protests in Washington, D.C., the 2009 G20 protest in Pittsburgh, PA, Presidential Inaugurations in 1992, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, and 2017, and the 2015 Baltimore Civil Unrest. He was the CDU leader for Montgomery County’s SERT response to the Baltimore unrest. He is currently a member of the National Institute of Justice’s Special Technical Committee for CDU personal protective equipment standards. Deputy Inspector Raganella (see Chapter “Protection of Citizens’ Rights, Public Safety & Police Legitimacy: The Legal Equilibrium for Public Order”), Sergeant Vega, and Lieutenant Davidov emphasize the importance of established policing standards for public order tactics, equipment, and training. The existence of these standards, or lack thereof, has a profound impact upon police legitimacy and public trust in democratic societies. The authors explore how well-defined public order

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standards keep both citizens and officers safe and promote positive incident outcomes. Using examples and case studies, the authors demonstrate how public order standards influence law enforcement policy development and minimize risk to officer safety, as well as agency liability and credibility, thereby furthering police–public trust. They discuss why professionalization and specialization of public order policing matters, especially in countries such as the USA, where standards do not currently exist. Chapter “Building an Evidence-Based Training Curriculum for Public Order Policing: A Case Study” Jason Kepp Jason Kepp is Assistant Director at the Federal Protective Service, where he is a member of the leadership team responsible for training and professional development of sworn and non-sworn employees. Before starting with the Department of Homeland Security, his career encompassed all levels of organizational leadership, development, and management for emergency service organizations and educational institutions. He spent 25 years in the emergency services field, serving in the field and later as Deputy Director of Emergency Medical Services at Somerset County Emergency Services Academy (N.J.). His published works have included active threat response and training, incident management, health and safety, pandemic response, and tactical law enforcement operations. Assistant Director Kepp notes that public order policing is a critical aspect of law enforcement, tasked with maintaining peace and safety during protests and other public events. To effectively execute their duties, police officers require specialized training that equips them with the necessary skills and knowledge. However, not all training programs are created equal, and evidence-based training is increasingly becoming the go-to approach for public order policing. Kepp shows why evidence-­ based training for public order policing helps improve officer safety and reduce the risk of injuries to officers and civilians. When officers are well-trained and equipped to handle public order situations, they are more likely to act professionally and appropriately, earning the respect and trust of the public. As the demands of public order policing continue to evolve, evidence-based training will remain a fundamental approach to ensure officers are equipped to meet these challenges. Chapter “Public Order Policing: Use of Force” Spencer Fomby Captain (Ret.) Spencer Fomby is a former commander for public order, SWAT, explosive ordinance disposal, and training. He was previously employed by the Berkeley Police Department for 20 years and was the lead Berkeley Police Department public order instructor. He was responsible for equipment selection, tactical training, less-lethal weapon selection, chemical agent selection and deployment, and mission planning. Captain Fomby has been recognized as a subject matter expert (SME) in police tactics and works on several national projects. He is the section chair for the National Tactical Officers Association Public Order Section, is a member of the NTOA Public Order Standard Committee, and is assigned to a

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National Institute of Justice Special Technical Committee on crowd control equipment. He is an SME in crowd control equipment and tactics for DHS First Responder Resource Group. Captain Fomby states that public order policing is one of the most complex areas of modern policing and requires specialized training and expertise. When police intervene in a protest event, the focus is often on the use of force. While police in the other Western countries have invested considerable resources to improving public order policing, American police agencies have long neglected this specialty. By summarizing historical trends and current challenges, Fomby provides an overview of the current use of force landscape in American public order policing. Case study and real-world examples are offered as guidance for police leaders to develop effective use of force capabilities that conform with best practices, legal restrictions, and model policies. Chapter “Considerations for Personal Protective Equipment for Public Order Policing” Jason Kepp Assistant Director Jason Kepp (see Chapter “Building an Evidence-Based Training Curriculum for Public Order Policing: A Case Study”) shows the importance of protecting law enforcement officers when disorder occurs. A properly trained and protected officer will be better able to make critical decisions during intense situations. The author elaborates on the necessity of specific personal protective equipment (PPE) for public order policing and discusses the importance of standards and training. The specifics and interdependencies of distinct PPE, including impact protection, gloves and boots, outer garments, and eye, hearing, and respiratory protection, are discussed. Kepp concludes by emphasizing the role of law enforcement leaders, who must balance avoiding the perception of expecting disorder with being prepared to respond to it (by wearing PPE) while constantly assessing the need for personnel protection. For updates on possible further editions or to follow our blog visit https://publicorderpolicing.com.  Bernd Bürger   Tamara D. Herold  Ryan Lee

Contents

 Public Order Policing: From Theory to Practice������������������������������������������    1 Bernd Bürger Preventing Crime at Assemblies ��������������������������������������������������������������������   33 Tamara D. Herold and Bernd Bürger  How Collective Violence Emerges and Escalates������������������������������������������   61 Otto M. J. Adang and Martina Schreiber  Interpretive Regimes of Violence in Action. The “Welcome to Hell” Demonstration During the G20 Summit in Hamburg 2017������������������������   79 Chris Schattka  Almost Forgotten Experiential Knowledge of De-escalation ����������������������  101 Udo Behrendes and Bernd Bürger The Role of Police in Assemblies: Ethical Implications, Imperatives, and Interventions ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  129 Werner Schiewek Differences in United States and German Police Organizations with an Impact on the Policing of Public Assemblies��������������������������������������������  149 Bernd Bürger, Gerd Thielmann, Alan Hanson, and Craig Dobson  Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in Germany����������������  169 Bernd Bürger and Gerd Thielmann  Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in the United States��������  201 Alan Hanson and Craig Dobson Protection of Citizens’ Rights, Public Safety & Police Legitimacy: The Legal Equilibrium for Public Order������������������������������������������������������  231 Jaclyn M. Keane and Anthony J. Raganella  Public Order Policing in the UK��������������������������������������������������������������������  247 Claire Clark xix

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Specialized Public Order Units: Integrating a Community Policing Mindset����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  271 Bernd Bürger  Maintaining Public Order from a Military Police Perspective��������������������  291 Michiel Rovers and Tom van Ham  January 6th: A Challenge for Public Order Policing and Democracy��������  307 Eli Cory  The “Yellow Vest Protests”: A Challenge for Police and Democracy����������  323 Christian Ghirlanda Public Order Policing 2.0: Addressing the Challenges of the Information Age ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  341 Ryan Lee  Intelligence in Public Order Policing ������������������������������������������������������������  369 Loren (Renn) Cannon Jr  The Importance of Police Public Relations in Assembly Situations������������  399 Jonas Grutzpalk and Stefan Jarolimek Mission Communication as an Integrative Overall Strategy in Protest 2.0 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  413 Carsten Schenk and Michael Bornhausen  Public Order Standards: Moving the Public Trust Needle Forward����������  433 Anthony J. Raganella, Jose M. Vega, and Peter Davidov Building an Evidence-Based Training Curriculum for Public Order Policing: A Case Study������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  449 Jason J. Kepp  Public Order Policing: Use of Force��������������������������������������������������������������  465 Spencer Fomby  Considerations for Personal Protective Equipment for Public Order Policing��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  487 Jason J. Kepp

About the Editors

Bernd Bürger  joined the Bavarian State Police, Germany, in 1997 and has managed assemblies and large events since 2000. He was responsible for managing camps and assemblies at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen G7 summits in 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, he was the commanding officer of the Dachau special public order unit (evidence gathering and arrest unit) where he was also deployed “at the front line” at the Hamburg G20 summit. He has served as head of the Police Operations Department at the Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police since 2020. In addition to his practical experience, he is a renowned public order scholar, lecturing in various German and European states. He was also a speaker at the 2018 International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting and 2019 at the Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, together with Tamara Herold and Ryan Lee. He holds a master’s degree in criminology and police science from the Ruhr University Bochum (ECTS A), a master’s degree in public administration - police management (ECTS A), and a PhD in public administration from the German Police University. Tamara D. Herold  currently serves as Senior Advisor at the US National Institute of Justice and is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. She received her PhD with an emphasis on crime prevention from the University of Cincinnati, USA. She uses the crime science perspective to study the criminological impact of the design and management of places, as well as crowd and neighborhood dynamics associated with violence. Her publications translate theory and research evidence into practice and policy. Her co-edited book (with Johannes Knutsson), Preventing Crowd Violence, has been translated into foreign languages to guide international police practice. Herold researches, develops, and delivers police and security crowd management training across the world. She has published numerous practitioner-focused research papers, including two ProblemOriented Policing Guides funded by the COPS Office on preventing crowd-related violence.

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Ryan Lee  has served over 22 years in the policing profession. He served nearly 20 years with the Police Bureau in Portland, Oregon, USA, specializing in public order policing for nearly 17 of those years. He rose through the ranks of the public order unit from line officer to senior leadership. He has deployed hundreds of times in public order operations ranging from peaceful gatherings to riots. He served as a front-line supervisor during the 2011 Occupy Portland Protest and as the Operations Section Chief during the 2016 Election Riots and 2017 Inauguration Riots in Portland. Chief Lee has been a subject matter expert in public order policing for the National Institute of Justice, the Center for Domestic Preparedness, International Association Chiefs of Police’s Collaborative Reform Initiative Technical Assistance Center, the National Tactical Officer Association, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center through work with the Federal Protective Service. He was a keynote speaker at the International Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from California State University at Sacramento and a Master of Criminal Justice from Boston University.

Public Order Policing: From Theory to Practice Bernd Bürger

Abstract  This chapter describes theories of crowd dynamics and the role of police during public assemblies. Historical crowd psychology theories, which are now outdated but still inform flawed police training and decision-making, are contrasted with recent theoretical developments. The most prominent theory, the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) is presented, along with current typologies of assemblies and participants. Conflicts inherent in police duties at public assemblies are examined before defining the concept of escalation and examining these processes within the context of policing assemblies. To move the discussion from theory to practice, concrete strategies to avoid escalation and illicit positive public perceptions while policing assemblies are described in detail. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the mindset needed to effectively execute these strategies and achieve a modern, democratic, and community-oriented approach to public order policing.

1 Social Significance of Assemblies Citizens in a healthy democracy are free to express their political views through public assembly. People can gather to express dissatisfaction with government, its institutions and policies, political figures, or other “powerful” people. In Germany, freedom of peaceful and unarmed assembly is a fundamental right established in Article 8 of the Constitution.1 The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) also grants all EU citizens the right to peacefully gather and express their views

 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany in the adjusted version published in the Federal Law Gazette Part III, subdivision number 100-1, which was last amended by Article 1 and 2 sentence 2 of the Act of September 29, 2020 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 2048). 1

B. Bürger (*) Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police, Ainring, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; https://publicorderpolicing.com © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_1

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through Article 9 (freedom of thought, belief, and religion), Article 10 (freedom of expression), and Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association). The extent to which people can freely exercise their right to assemble without legal interference from authorities provides a litmus test for a healthy democracy. Police action at assemblies directly impacts citizen trust and perceptions of police legitimacy and has the potential to trigger state crises (Nägel & Lutter, 2021; Nägel & Nivette, 2021) and instigate further protests (Taub, 2021). Large numbers of people at assemblies render police action highly visible and subject to heightened scrutiny. Thus, the state’s handling of demonstrations can impact local, national, and international perceptions; consider recent and high-profile protests in Belarus, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Russia, and Turkey. As assemblies represent society’s most protected and valued forum for expressing public opinion, the actions of all public safety authorities, especially the police, are held to rigorous standards throughout the assembly process. Given the complexity of crowd dynamics, measuring the degree to which police actions can be considered effective, ethical, and equitable is a difficult task. Individuals’ or groups’ fundamental rights often collide at assemblies, and conflicting rights must be compared and mediated, which sometimes requires enforcement and restriction. For example, a national conservative group’s right to assemble and march to publicly express their views might collide with a liberal-oriented community’s right to express their disapproval of “Nazis” marching through “their” city. Charismatic propagandists can fuel hostile emotions, even when an opposing side is absent. It becomes “right” versus “left,” the marginalized against the establishment, the educationally distant against the educational elite, the “unconventional thinkers” against the “dictatorship of opinion,” or simply citizens against “the foreigners taking our jobs.” Such sentiments can lead to large-scale riots. Consider the 2001 Genoa G8 summit, the 2009 London G20 summit, or the 2017 Hamburg G20 summit. And who stands between those lines, not only figuratively, but also in the practical sense? The police. Police sit between stools of opposing interests. Officers must mediate conflicting freedoms (e.g., march vs. blockade) without taking a substantive position: “Social problems are to be solved by political and not by police means. In democratic conflicts, the police must remain thematically neutral; their intervention is only permissible and necessary if the content or the manner in which the conflict is carried out violates the law”2 (PDV3 100, 2021, p. 9, no. 1.1, public part). But police response in these situations goes beyond “problem-solving,” since such conflicts are more accurately characterized as dilemmas, meaning there is not one “correct” solution. When police act, they choose who will receive the specific disadvantages or advantages associated with their decisions. As Schulz von Thun has stated bluntly: police can choose from which side they want to be insulted afterward (2021, 49, 50).

 All German quotations are translated into English by the author.  Police Service Regulation 100, “Leadership and Deployment of the Police” is a binding instruction for German police. 2 3

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At the same time, German police are required to expose criminal offenses and conduct timely investigations (§ 163 StPO4). Officers who fail to do so can be prosecuted for obstruction of justice (§ 258, 258a StGB5). At public assemblies, officers often face a complex role, particularly when faced with emotionally charged crowd dynamics. To effectively police assemblies, officers must understand crowd dynamics and learn how to act with purpose, all while avoiding or mitigating unintended consequences. To accurately evaluate police action, assembly participants must understand the role and demands of police at assemblies. This chapter seeks to inform both parties and their perspectives.

2 The “Mob” When researching crowd psychology one will discover contagion theory. Briefly, contagion theory purports that people in crowds feel a sense of anonymity and become infected with emotions, thus rendering them unable to make rational decisions.6 This contention might resonate with personal experience. Why else would people at major demonstrations or soccer matches begin chanting, cheering, shouting, or behaving aggressively in unison? While current research debunks this perspective, its experiential plausibility continues to promote false narratives about crowd dynamics among practitioners. Contagion-related theories were commonly cited in official police manuals into the twenty-first century, as the following example shows: A crowd is a device for indulging ourselves in a kind of temporary insanity by all going crazy together. All psychologists seem to agree, that membership of a crowd results in a lessening of an individual’s ability to think rationally, whilst at the same time his/her more primitive impulses are elicited in a harmonious fashion with the emerging primitive impulses of all the other crowd members (Stott, 2011).

First published by Hippolyte Taine (1875, “Les Origines de la France contemporaire”), contagion theory is the foundation of historic nineteenth-century crowd psychology theories. Taine’s work was inspired by his support of the French king and frustration with the revolution’s mass protests and gatherings, Rousseau’s social contract, and France’s diminishing power (McClelland, 2011). He asserted that crowd emotions are feverishly infectious, making people suspectable to criminal influence and promoting spontaneous mob formations. The only remedy: Violence  Code of Criminal Procedure in the version promulgated on April 7, 1987 (Federal Law Gazette I p.  1074, 1319), as last amended by Article 49 of the Act of December 21, 2020 (Federal Law Gazette I p. 3096). 5  Criminal Code in the version of the announcement from 13.11.1998 (BGBl. I p.  3322), last amended by Act of 21.12.2020 (BGBl. I p. 3096). Status: 01.01.2021 due to law from 30.11.2020 (BGBl. I S. 2600). 6  See, e.g., https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massenpsychologie#Ansteckungstheorie, accessed on: 28.02.2021. 4

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to suppress the masses (Taine, 1876). Taine’s ideas, although unsupported by research, were quickly adopted by others and translated into several languages in pseudo-scientific works. The most widely read work in social psychology, Gustave Le Bon’s “The crowd” (1895), promoted Taine’s perspective. Le Bon’s writings significantly influenced Hitler and Mussolini (Farrel, 2004) and continue to exert a frightening influence on scientific analyses of current-day riots (Erz, 2019). Le Bon’s theories describe a plausible process in which everyday people transform into mobs through three central mechanisms. First, people in crowds experience a sense of anonymity and lose their individual identities. Like the Borg in Star Trek, people assimilate into a mass in which individuals are indistinguishable. Second, people fall into a hypnotic psychological state that disconnects them from their values and rational decision-making abilities, which makes emotional contagion possible. Individuals become less-intelligent group members and exhibit atavistic impulses and emotions. Third, allows ideas to spread uninhibited, as the masses become unthinking vessels of larger social influences. A mob evolves under a “law of mental unity”; people lose all self-control and contagious emotions spread like waves. Despite hesitation or objections likely to be raised by today’s readers, in the absence of rigorous research, Le Bon’s persuasive writings significantly influenced previous perceptions of crowds and their behaviors. A growing community of late-twentieth-century researchers strongly questioned Le Bon’s theories, noting, among other things, his failure to consider social framework conditions (Rudé, 1964), in-group processes, or evidence refuting the concept of deindividualization7 (Reicher, 1987). Postmes and Spears’ (1998) meta-analysis of 60 experimental studies revealed critical flaws in previous research supporting deindividuation. For example, in many studies, deindividualization measures were invalid (e.g., did not accurately measure what they intended to measure), researchers failed to measure key contextual factors (e.g., behaviors of those in power— including police, or the purpose of the gatherings), and research outcomes failed to explain why most gatherings were peaceful and did not generate outbreaks of violence perpetuated by mobs. Reicher et al. (1987; cf. also Reicher & Drury, 1982, Reicher, 1984) identified Le Bon’s most significant conceptual flaw, namely failure to distinguish between a physical mass (many people in one place) and a psychological mass (many people who are socially/cognitively/emotionally connected). Yet, understanding psychological transformations is central to understanding crowd dynamics. Reicher and colleagues succeeded in describing this process vividly in their Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) of Crowd Behavior.

 Phenomenon that when an individual is in a particular situation in a group, he or she is less likely to act according to social behavioral constraints than when alone in the situation; a. o., anonymity contributes to an individual’s loss of self-awareness and loss of concern for self-evaluation within a group setting, enabling the individual to participate in anti-normative or aggressive behavior (Diener et al., 1980; Festinger et al., 1952; Zimbardo, 1969). 7

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3 Understanding Crowds: ESIM The basis of ESIM, as inferred by its name, is social identify theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, 1986). In a nutshell, this model assumes that people divide their social environment into different categories or groups according to certain characteristics. For example, there are women, men, unemployed, managers, “left-wing people,” “right-wing people,” and so forth. Every person identifies with many different groups. When group membership is “activated,” people shift from egocentric actions based on personal values to actions based on the relevant group’s values. One’s actions are influenced by different social identity (group) values - imagine the same woman under different social circumstances: a mother at home with her family, a supervisor leading a team, an athlete competing in a soccer match, or attending an after-work party. In ESIM, “activation” of group belonging is called transformation (Reicher, 1996). The psychological process of transformation in large gatherings is important to understanding crowd behavior. A physical crowd (many people in one place at one time) often represents a collection of  (groups of) people with individual  (or group) social identities. To become a psychological crowd, or more precisely, a group with a common social identity, requires a so-called key transformation. Imagine sitting in a crowded suburban train headed to the airport. How does one behave? You look at your smartphone, trying to avoid direct eye contact and interactions, wanting to be left alone and in peace. You are focused on yourself; egocentric values guide your actions. Then it suddenly starts snowing. The train stops abruptly in the middle of nowhere. An announcement comes shortly after: “Dear passengers, due to a snow-related malfunction, we must stop here for an indefinite time. We ask for your patience.” What happens next? People start looking at and talking to each other. They might rant about the train company, discuss their own problems, or share food and drinks, depending on the delay’s duration. A physical crowd of people on the train has become a psychological crowd. Many individuals become connected to a shared social identity with a common concern (“arriving at the airport”) and a common enemy (“the incompetent train company”). Unlike the processes proposed by Taine, Le Bon, and the concept of deindividualization, people who experience transformation do not lose their rational decision-­ making abilities. In contrast, people simply experience a shift in the values guiding their actions, away from individual and toward group concerns. People remain distinct individuals who consciously make decisions based on their personal values, which have been adopted and internalized throughout their lifetime. However, the values of the larger group are considered in conjunction with their personal needs. Thus, not all passengers will start scratching or smashing the train windows (except in case of panic)8 just because someone else does. On the contrary, other passengers are likely to intervene, because property destruction is not a value that would likely  Important: All explanations in this chapter apply only to crowds in a “normal state”—in contrast to an (erupting) panic situation, in which very different processes arise. 8

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result from the circumstances that formed the train’s shared social identity. This type of intervention on the part of crowd members, by the way, is called self-­ policing. Acts of self-policing should also be used or encouraged at all event/assembly situations (cf. Sect. 7). The key transformation is accompanied by two others. The relationship transformation involves feelings of belonging to the social group and positive perceptions of physical proximity to others (versus repulsion). Solidarity emerges. People become more likely to agree, trust, respect, and help other group members. But here, too, no blind trust is formed; people remain independent thinkers and decision makers (Reicher et al., 2005; Reicher & Haslam, 2010; Novelli et al., 2010). The affective transformation involves an alignment between individual feelings and the group’s common goals. The phrase “crowds are passion” highlights the emotional response individuals feel during demonstrations or soccer matches. The group and its goals, to which people feel they belong, provide a sense of orientation, connection with others, and meaning. With this connection, people experience feelings of hope and real social power, that is, the ability to change something together (Drury & Reicher, 1999). Feelings associated with group belonging can lead to impressions that participants are actively writing history (e.g., changing a law and helping the team to victory) instead of passively watching world news. This explains passionate commitments to “the cause” among group members. This passion can invoke emotional or aggressive reactions by individuals who perceive hostility toward the group or violations of their rights. But again, unless under the influence or cognitively impaired, people are not irrationally controlled by emotions. Comparing “old” crowd psychology and ESIM makes the practical relevance of the theories’ differing principles clear: If authorities approach crowd risk assessments based on historical theory, negative and dangerous perceptions of the gathering are likely to emerge. Those tasked with policing assemblies will assume that the crowd’s anonymity will incite people to do things they would not do normally, as they lose their conscious self-control and rationality. Thus, every participant should be considered a potential troublemaker. Additionally, people will be easily influenced by agitators, making predicting future outcomes impossible. In this regard, the presence of any crowd poses a real and considerable danger to public safety. These perceptions encourage strong police measures, such as omnipresence, strict pre-controls, close accompaniment of the gathering, low-threshold intervention, and early or unnecessary deprivation of liberties. Police leaders who build mindsets around current crowd psychology research and theory are likely to choose a notably different approach (on the importance of the mindset, see esp. Sect. 8 and Schiewek, 2024). These leaders know that a very small proportion of crowd participants intend to cause trouble (more on this later) and that individuals continue to act as rational decision makers. As such, police interventions, grounded in rational choice theory, can effectively prevent harm (cf. Herold & Bürger, 2024). They also know that intimidating police measures are often not understood by crowd participants. These drastic police measures serve as catalysts for emotional and behavioral escalation and can heighten the influence of possible agitators in crowd. Knowing this encourages police leaders to engage in

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“smart policing”9 and to find clever and effective solutions to emerging problems that do not invoke feelings of unwarranted police intervention or harassment.

4 The Crowd Accurate determination of crowd composition is centrally important to understanding crowd dynamics as well as a holistic risk assessment and needs to be considered when developing the corresponding police strategy.

4.1 “Types” of Individuals and Offenders With very few exceptions, most individuals in a crowd are simply “normal” people, admittedly with a wide variety of attitudes and world views, but generally peaceful and not seeking conflict. However, those who engage in harm can be classified into three criminological types (Cornish & Clarke, 2003; Holgersson & Knutsson, 2011): First, the “antisocial offender,” also called “provocateur” or “agitator” in the context of assemblies, is goal oriented, mostly free of moral scruples, and is highly motivated to engage in criminal activity. They are notorious troublemakers who look for conflict, whether with police, opposing fans, or people with different opinions. These perpetrators incite confrontation. They also deliberately create situations that motivate others to engage in violent acts. However, studies show that usually no more than one percent of crowds are antisocial offenders (cf. Adang, 2011; Hylander & Granström, 2011). The second type is the “occasional offender,” also known as the “mundane” offender. Basically law-abiding, this person is willing to discard moral concerns and engage in crime if presented with an attractive opportunity. Unlike the antisocial offender who actively seeks conflict and to influence others, the occasional offender reactively responds to situational dynamics. If the antisocial offender smashes the supermarket windows and starts looting, the occasional offender might follow and “take” (steal!) something, too. In gatherings, events, and assemblies, this group also includes the so-called “experience-oriented youths” (“thrill seekers,” Hylander & Granström, 2011, p. 81). Police anticipate both antisocial and occasional offenders at large events, even if they struggle to accurately estimate their numbers (Granström, 2008). Granström  The term “smart policing” usually describes a police strategy or tactic that is based on (mostly) computerized data models. However, this might be more characteristic of AI (artificial intelligence) policing. Smart distinguishes humans from machines. We can develop theory-driven, clever, shrewd, even smart (all the literal sense of “smart”) strategies that align with theories, as well as shifting and highly volatile practical realities. In this respect, “smart” extends to results of the human mind and not the outputs of human-created machines. 9

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(ibid.) found that police substantially overestimated the numbers of these offenders at a Gothenburg assembly, after follow-up participant interviews found few if any of these offender types. Interestingly, when large assemblies are peaceful, police often conclude that “the hardcore weren’t there” (Hylander & Granström, 2011, p. 80) rather than associate positive outcomes with effective police action. Officers usually do not attribute the absence of crime and conflict to ESIM-based police operational measures when they prove successful in managing large assemblies. The third, the “provoked offender,” is not inherently motivated to commit crimes. Situational stimuli, often arising unintentionally and suddenly, provoke this offender type into criminal actions. For example, demonstrators watch as police stop a protest march, likely for some regulation violation. Standing close to the front, one person becomes trapped between demonstrators pushing from behind and the police line ahead. Without prior criminal intentions or motivations, the situational dynamics cause the demonstrator to become irritated, angry, and fearful. He starts pushing back, striking both other demonstrators and police. When assemblies turn violent, police must acknowledge the key role played by the (very few) antisocial perpetrators. Accordingly, police must identify these offenders (increasing their risk of detection) through visible and covert observation and make it more physically difficult for them to achieve their objectives (increasing the effort) by protecting targeted objects (cf. Herold & Bürger, 2024). This offender typology helps police to understand that crowds do not cause all members to become dangerous perpetrators, but a combination of individual dispositions and situational dynamics increase the likelihood of criminal behavior (Dezecache et  al., 2021; Madensen & Eck, 2011; van Ham et al., 2021; see also Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Schattka, 2024). Thus, police action plays an essential role in creating or avoiding the introduction of crime-triggering stimuli (cf. Sect. 7).

4.2 Types of Assemblies Assemblies can be classified into three types based on their “leadership style” (Hylander & Granström, 2011). This classification can be used to explain participant reactions to police, including levels of demonstrated trust and willing cooperation. Accordingly, these classifications are useful for planning and response purposes. First, the “leader-governed assembly” has a strong hierarchical structure and is usually controlled by dictatorial leadership. Nationalist assemblies typically fall within the guided classification. Police can negotiate with the formal assembly leader, and participants are usually obedient to the leader’s instructions. This dynamic can shift when counterdemonstrators are present, causing a breakdown in group discipline, which can lead to violent clashes. However, in principle, these demonstrations offer a mechanism (clear leaders and followers) for police to manage demonstration dynamics. The primary challenges involve preventing

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clashes between rival groups and avoiding police responses that might “provoke” groups within the assembly. Second, the “rule-governed assembly” has leadership, predetermined rules, different participant roles, and democratic decision-making processes. These assemblies have an explicitly peaceful agenda and often consist of large, socially committed, and established associations and parties (e.g., Green Party, Liberal Socialist Party, and Unions). Police typically encounter high levels of trust and cooperation at rule-governed assemblies. Third, protests led by ideals or beliefs are assemblies of individuals and groups, organized through loose networks, with absent or powerless leadership that has little to no influence over participants (cf. also Sommer & Haunss, 2018). These gatherings usually embrace an anarchist ideology, with participants sharing some common principles and provisions (e.g., tents, drums, food, cars, and music), but they speak often for themselves with no assigned or by all accepted spokesperson. Most participants seek peaceful demonstration but do so individually; they do not take responsibility for what others do. Consequently, there is no general attitude toward police: individuals decide for themselves whether and what violence against the state is legitimate and necessary. A 2017 G20 summit study highlights the impact of police action in these assemblies on future protest outcomes: “At the individual level, distrust towards the police is the strongest predictor of acceptance of confrontational forms of action. Throughout, violence initiated by the demonstrators is clearly rejected, while resistance against violence initiated by the police is definitely supported. In this context, distrust of the police based on past experience further increases the willingness to confront” (Sommer & Haunss, 2018, p. 13). Assemblies classified as protests led by ideals or beliefs often consist of three individual subgroups (derived from Hylander & Granström, 2011). Over time individuals can belong to more than one category and can also move from one to another. Activists are a generally peaceful group that believes in the right to self-defense and in some cases considers violence a legitimate means of protest, especially when defending their right to demonstrate against police action. The lack of a leader or contact person, coupled with perceptions of a chaotic organization, makes obtaining cooperation challenging for police. Protests involving activists are usually viewed as posing higher risks. Goal-oriented protestors have a clear objective (e.g., to stop a counterdemonstration, to stop a train, or to raise a banner from a building). The objective is often carried out with the overarching goal of attracting major media attention (e.g., Greenpeace). These assemblies are usually not violent, but “civil disobedience” is part of their repertoire. Protest actions are often planned secretly in small groups, so there is little opportunity for advance police negotiations or agreements. Moreover, taking police by surprise is often the only way to achieve their objective. Protestor–police interactions are shaped by protest goals and police response

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tactics. A non-violent solution is possible if police can temporarily tolerate protestors’ actions and allow time to engage in negotiations. The last subtype, individual protestors, is not politically organized. Their goals do not always include demonstrating. Often, young men show up as bystanders in small groups (2–4 people) and are also referred to as “thrill seekers.” They do not participate in demonstration activities but sneak around, stand around, and observe. They are generally amenable to conversation. When asked what they are doing, a typical response is to “see what happens.” Once something happens, they might also join in (cf. occasional offender). Accordingly, it would be important to identify these individuals or small groups, initiate contact, and engage them in conversation—a common task for communications officers (cf. Schenk & Bornhausen, 2024). It must be noted that the entire crowd does not usually adopt a common social identity. Not everyone interacts with every other participant, pursues the same goals, or holds the same perceptions regarding legitimate protest activities. “The crowd” does not exist, instead, there are many diverse subgroups with differing motivations, legitimacy assessments, and relationships to the state and its power. It is essential to differentiate between groups in assemblies since their subgroup goals will serve to solidify their shared social identities and shared actions. Neglecting group differences and treating crowds as a homogenous entity is a primary trigger of the psychological cohesion transformation process (i.e., forming a shared identity) that encourages people to unite against and resist police (cf. Sect. 6).

5 Crowds and the Police: Phenomenon-Intrinsic Conflicts Police are tasked with maintaining public safety and order. This extends to all types of public gatherings. Police are often involved in advance planning (e.g., conducting risk assessments) and are present at assemblies. Conflicts are inevitable given the role of police and participant reactions to unwanted police intervention. Awareness of these intrinsic conflicts allows police to proactively consider how to mitigate this challenge by reflecting on their purpose and how to best manage assemblies while maintaining perceptions of police legitimacy (cf. Sect. 7).

5.1 Functional Conflict People pursue a specific purpose when they come together to demonstrate for or against something. They express their opinions publicly to draw attention to their concerns and convince the public and politicians to support their goals. They

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sacrifice their time and resources (e.g., travel to protest sites and create posters and signs) to support their cause. Given that counter-protestors might also attend demonstrations to voice opposing opinions, there is always at least one party with distinct interests if not several. Police represent another central party at an assembly. Police are obliged to neutrality, at least in democratic states. For example, as stated in the German Constitution: Article 1, third para: The following fundamental rights bind legislation, executive power, and jurisdiction as directly applicable law. Article 3, third para: No one shall be discriminated against or given preference on account of sex, descent, race, language, country of origin, creed, religion, or political opinion (emphasis added by the author).

Police Service Regulation 100, “Leadership and Deployment of the Police,” a binding instruction for the German police, also states: In democratic conflicts, the police must remain thematically neutral (No. 1.1 PDV 100).

However, mere police presence representing the democratic rule of law can be perceived as an affront, depending on one’s attitude toward the state and its actors (Curtice & Behlendorf, 2021; Newburn et al., 2018). Yet, police are responsible for addressing dangers to public safety by protecting life and well-being. The combined responsibility of remaining neutral and preventing harm can foster perceptions of police bias, as police work to protect all participants. When a police line accompanies a right-wing gathering and protects it from interference by left-wing demonstrators, chants of “cops protect the Nazis” follow. And yes, police do, because they are obligated to protect everyone’s rights. Police do not exist to protect fascists, per se, but they do exist to protect all people’s fundamental right to peacefully assemble and publicly express opinions, no matter their perspectives if they adhere to the rule of law and order. At the same time, the police in some states like Germany, must uphold the principle of legality (§ 163 StPO). Police must pursue all recognizable crimes, or officers are liable to prosecution (§ 258, 258a StGB). Also, they must maintain law and order in public spaces (No. 1.1 PDV 100). Consequently, the police must intervene if protestors engage in unlawful conduct like blocking streets or wearing balaclavas (which is a misdemeanor in Germany). Ultimately, police “intervene directly in the political process” due to their responsibility to prevent harm and enforce the law (Winter, 1998, p.  430). And so, unavoidable and irresolvable functional conflict arises from the democratic and constitutional function of the police when opposing interests collide at assemblies  (Becher, 2019). To mitigate this problem, among other things, police should try to communicate and explain this challenge and foster positive stereotyping (cf Sect. 7.1).

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5.2 Legality-Legitimacy Conflict Legality-legitimacy conflict arises when socially established norms (laws) collide with the values and norms of groups that oppose the laws. It extends functional conflict by including a subjective-justificatory dimension. Here is a classic example. Local citizens assemble to oppose a right-wing march through their city. The locals’ goal is to prevent a recurrence where groups like the Third Reich rise to power. They feel a sense of obligation to intervene as early as possible. Lawviolating actions, like blockades, are perceived as legitimate means of exercising their “right of resistance” or are perceived as a non-criminal form of “civil disobedience” (cf. Behrendes & Bürger, 2024) considering their values. However, these actions are illegal. The law protects peoples’ freedom of peaceful assembly, but only if assembly actions remain lawful. Police are responsible for preventing or stopping illegal action, like blockades. If police must use force to accomplish this mandate, the use of force is legal. Police use of force in this type of situation is often perceived by the blockaders or bystanders as unnecessary violence since they strongly believe their actions are justified. Accordingly, it is important to be aware of legality-legitimacy conflict and attempt to mitigate it by first acknowledging the blockaders’ goals. Police “hardliners” who cannot sympathize with legitimacy perceptions should reflect on whether police also experience this phenomenon. Consider this example. Over several days, while policing a large demonstration, officers are attacked and continuously pelted with firecrackers, stones, and paint bags. They are at the end of their rope. On the fourth day, a single masked demonstrator approaches a small group of officers, insults them as “stupid wankers who can’t do anything to him,” shows them his middle finger, and dances around in front of them. He stays five meters away while officers hold the line, so they cannot even attempt to arrest him for the insult. When the demonstrator stands and waits for a reaction, an officer hits the hooded man with pepper spray and he runs away. Was this a legally justifiable use of force? Would a colleague or superior initiate a criminal investigation, or would they think that this action was legitimate since the demonstrator deserved the response? How the action is perceived will certainly depend on several factors, but it should demonstrate that everyone evaluates legitimacy based on their own experiences, in connection with their current social identity. One thing is clear: police officers must never act in this manner. Such behavior erodes the rule of law and the public’s essential trust in police. This example simply illustrates why it is critical for police officers to understand how assembly participants’ overarching values impact perceptions of legitimacy and react thoughtfully to their viewpoints.

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5.3 Communicative-Cultural Conflict Groups develop subcultures with their own norms and values. Officers experience at least two police subcultures and value systems. First is the cop culture, or simply, the operational or line level/patrol officer (“Street Cop Culture”) value system. Second is the value system sought or demanded by police executives (“Police Culture”; Behr, 2006, 2008). The police–community interaction style fostered by the “Street Cop Culture” can promote conflict, especially during assembly management. Here are two examples. Imagine a police checkpoint for arriving demonstrators. A young man dressed in black and wearing a black cap and sunglasses approaches bored and stern-looking officers behind a barrier. The officers inform him that they must search his backpack. The young man spits contemptuously in front of the police officers. He explains that, according to the Geneva Convention, police cannot control him. The outcome of this interaction is easy to imagine. But it is meant to highlight two levels of conflict. Non-verbally, the officers convey a certain image, with their facial expressions and body language and positioning behind a barrier. Their appearance and communication reflect the reality that checkpoint inspection is a normal, rather boring, task. The young man’s style of dress, common in his group, influences the officers’ perceptions, which they interpret in the context of their experience. The young man reinforces the officers’ impressions with his contemptuous spitting. Verbally, the officers express their position of power. The man’s response shows that he does not accept their position of power. The very different value and signaling systems of the parties, both non-verbal and verbal, collide and reinforce rapid stereotyping. It is critical that police officers recognize their signaling impact and strive for positive non-verbal effects, even during mundane interactions. As a second example, imagine a right-wing demonstration moving through the pedestrian zone of a university town. There are over ten registered counterdemonstrations, and half intend to form blockades. The traditional police approach would likely involve protecting the right-wing demonstration with numerous units, with many officers moving in front of the march, escorts on the sides, and officers at the back. While easy to implement tactically, is this the best approach, or are there better alternatives? The police formation non-verbally suggests that officers are only protecting the fascists. Further, since the officers are marching along with the right-­ wing participants, they look in the direction from which they expect hostile confrontations to originate: in the direction of the counter-protestors. Officers’ observational positioning unconsciously gives the impression that the police believe in protecting only the right-wing demonstrators. Since right-wing demonstrators follow orders and are unlikely to rebel against their leaders, looking in their direction might seem at odds with a practical-tactical viewpoint. Yet, based on an understanding of communicative-­cultural conflict, police should adopt an approach that allows them to look in the direction of all parties because of this tactic’s symbolic effect.

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5.4 Legitimacy-Perception Conflict Perceptions of police as “friend” or “foe” are based on assembly participants’ interpretation of police action. Some of the conflicts previously described hinder positive police reception. Moreover, individual police interventions can negatively influence an assembly’s trajectory if many participants view a police intervention as an unjustified (illegitimate) restriction of their fundamental rights. Since it is well known that the “recipient determines the message,” the intervention’s actual legality is irrelevant (Schulz von Thun, 1981). Events involving high levels of police coercion are particularly dangerous. While language like “use of necessary force” sounds quite sterile out of context, witnesses can perceive police action as pure violence. The more that participants perceive police use of force as unlawful, undifferentiated (unfocused police use force against an entire group), or excessive, the probability of behavioral escalation among participants increases (Sect. 6). Accordingly, it is critically important to carefully consider participant perceptions and interpretations of police actions when deciding which measures to deploy, as well as when and where. Further, police should identify various tactical options that will counteract negative interpretations and enhance perceptions of police legitimacy (Sect. 7).

6 (De)escalation The conflict sources between police and crowds set the stage to discuss the most dangerous phenomenon (besides panic) that can occur during assemblies and gatherings: escalation. The word escalation has two distinct and contradictory meanings. On the one hand, escalation can be used to describe a gradual increase in measures applied to maintain crowd safety. In this context, escalation involves continuously adapting to situational necessity through a consciously controlled and proportionate process. On the other hand, escalation can describe an uncontrolled intensification or increase in conflict. In this context, it is difficult to reverse course and reestablish order following uninhibited conflict escalation. Like a chemical reaction triggered by an initial spark, this process can only be interrupted using specific means. In crowds, both types of escalation can occur. Police can increase the number and strength of their interventions, and the severity of means used to deploy them, depending on situational context (e.g., decisions to show or use water cannons as disorderly conduct worsens). Conscious police decisions cause this form of escalation. The cause of the “other” escalation is harder to identify. This section aims to describe the causes of uncontrolled escalation processes for the purposes of prevention, situational intervention (de-escalation), and post-event assembly analysis. Accordingly, conscious escalation processes are discussed only indirectly when referencing police intervention. The term escalation is used primarily to describe unrestrained emotional interactions that escape conscious effort and control.

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Like escalation, the term “de-escalation” can be misinterpreted or misunderstood. It is not used here to describe the reverse process of escalation, nor it is used to imply passivity, even passive reactions can produce calming effects in individual cases (Schmalzl, 1996). De-escalation is used to describe behaviors that prevent conflict development or reduce conflict between parties. Described in this way, de-­ escalation can describe all types of police behaviors, including coercive police measures. De-escalation can describe overwhelming displays of police presence in riot gear or use of force to prevent continued violence (Kubera & Fuchs, 2011; Pfeiffer, 2014; Temme, 2011) depending on the context and outcomes (Pfeiffer, 2014). Context matters greatly, since highly coercive measures intended to prevent further violence carry a high risk of increasing conflict, especially if forceful tactics are not precisely targeted and police intentions are not properly communicated. Therefore, the use of coercive de-escalation tactics requires sensitivity to and understanding of complex crowd dynamics (more on this in the next section). Having defined escalation and de-escalation, the key factors causing situational escalation and how the process unfolds can be explored. Analyses of escalation reveal that the complexities and diversity of the actors, groups, and contexts involved do not permit explanations tied to a singular cause. The escalation/de-escalation model (Hylander & Granström, 2011) attempts to analyze assemblies in terms of behavior (actions and attitudes of actors), degree of organization (organized or chaotic, again referring to all actors, including police), and categorization (how participants and police label each other). However, these factors insufficiently describe complex interrelationships without a supplemental contextual analysis (Nägel & Nivette, 2021). Waddington (2011) promotes contextual analysis that considers structural (e.g., social grievances), political (e.g., democracies versus dictatorships), cultural (e.g. societal attitudes toward violence), institutional (e.g., behaviors restricted by established law, police civilian or military orientation), and situational (e.g., high-profile targets in the event vicinity) assembly characteristics. Contextual complexities preclude escalation explanations reduced to singular causes. But like nuclear power plants, where minor mistakes are enough to disturb a complex equilibrium and trigger an uncontrollable chain reaction (meltdown), such processes can occur within crowds. Police play a central role as (co-)catalysts of escalation reactions. Psychological crowd processes highlight the role of police as catalysts. Subgroups come together to support a variety of causes, including demonstrations against “right-wing” marches or to root for a soccer club, but examples involving protest assemblies are used here to illustrate the impact of police as escalation catalysts. Assembly participants gather for the overarching purpose of demonstration, but all feel belonging toward their subgroups. Participants associated with Antifa, the Green Youth, Greenpeace, or other parties do not share the exact same common goals (other than the desire to demonstrate in this particular matter), nor do they agree upon legitimate means to achieve their goals. Some are present to publicly oppose the “Nazis.” While some intend to block the march, others engage in less active forms of protest. Participants remain in subgroups, and these distinct

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alliances are likely to remain if police can avoid escalatory actions. Unfortunately, the tasks and roles of police place officers in a “conflict minefield” when policing assemblies (described in Sect. 5). Yet, avoiding conflict triggers is possible, and several promising strategies and tactics will be discussed later. In addition to inherent conflicts, police make mistakes. Police actions based on erroneous information, faulty assessments, disorganization, or failure to maintain composure are possible missteps that can accumulate and trigger escalation. Just a single particularly egregious and highly visible police action can trigger escalation. Most demonstration subgroups share one common goal, namely, to exercise their fundamental right to freedom of assembly and expression. Other group differences prevent the emergence of a common identity. However, if diverse groups simultaneously perceive that police are illegitimately restricting their fundamental rights (legitimacy-perception conflict), this can trigger psychological transformation. For example, observing disproportionate police use of force against parts of the crowd, particularly when the reasons for this response are not obvious or explained, can unite subgroups. They may form a strong common social identity around “We, who are deprived of fundamental rights” in clear demarcation from their adversaries, the police, who unlawfully interfere with those rights. As previously noted, the recipient determines the message, no matter the legality of police action. The importance of established police-community relations becomes clear in this context, as participants also interpret police action based on prior perceptions and knowledge (Goldstein, 2015; Mietzel, 1998; Schulz von Thun, 1981). Positive perceptions of police generated through initial interactions conveying officer approachability, friendliness, cooperative problem-solving, and open communication reduce the likelihood that an overarching social identity (“solidarization”) against the police will be formed. This likelihood increases significantly if, however, early police actions contribute to perceptions of officers as being unhelpful or threatening, whether the projected image is intentional or unintentional (Sommer & Haunss, 2018). This negative stereotyping can be fostered by various minor interactions that affect many people, including signs of partiality, confusing checkpoints, poor communication, or lack of transparency surrounding police decision-making. If negative stereotyping has occurred or if the solidarization process against police has started, even proportionate police reaction can be interpreted as a new illegitimate attack, strengthening the image of police as the enemy, and violence can spiral upward, possibly leading to a “worst case” scenario: The police also form a common social identity—against “the” assembly. Usually, many different units form “the” police. These, too, consist of subgroups. Although police subgroups are all united by the oath to the constitution and thus by a common set of values, groups will differ in crowd receptivity, attitude toward protests, and threshold for intervention, depending on (sub)organizational cultures. Distressing circumstances, for example, when several fellow officers are injured, increase the risk that police subgroups will “show solidarity” in the form of: “We the good guys who maintain law and order and protect the citizens against THE mob.” Simply being aware that police are susceptible to this group dynamic and

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mass-psychological phenomena (cf. also Graf, 2021), can help police to thwart this possible outcome.

7 The Role of the Police in Preventing Escalation There are great incentives for both protestors and police to avoid escalation. Media coverage of riots garners many “clicks” (including viewers and readers) but the protestors’ substantive issues and acts of police professionalism are overshadowed by the sensationalism of violence (cf. Grutzpalk & Jarolimek, 2024). For police, post-riot reporting can damage institutional reputation and trust among assembly participants and the public at large (Nägel & Nivette, 2021). Action to prevent small numbers of people who seek to use violence is vital to protecting democracy. Both police and assembly participants must work together to prevent escalation. Ensuring protestors’ messages are heard while maintaining public safety requires all parties to participate. Safety at assemblies is a task for all of society. Numerous studies show that mutual trust between police and (sub-)groups is a positive catalyst for future assembly outcomes (Reicher et  al., 2004). However, police must accept their role as professionals in this context. It is their responsibility to ensure safety and legal compliance while protecting the free exercise of fundamental rights. For this task, they must learn, train, and prepare. Or, as Becher (2019, p. 23) states: “Here it is important for the police as the professionalized [party] to lead the way. And it is actually not that difficult to take this step. The police only need to be aware of and actively use the various methods available to them in order to gain the trust of the participants and promote positive stereotyping. If they succeed, they can also rely on the groups to deal with disturbances internally and to keep their members in line (so-called ‘self-policing’).” The following examples show how police can gain and keep the public’s trust.

7.1 Conscious Verbal Communication The first step in building a trusting relationship is to initiate and establish communication and cooperation between the police and participants as early as possible. Working with fixed contact persons to maintain cooperation throughout all phases (planning, preparation, arrival, meeting, departure, and follow-up) is advisable (Madensen & Eck, 2006; cf. Schenk & Bornhausen, 2024). Police contact persons should be experienced negotiators who can directly compromise with assembly leaders within limits, or facilitate temporary agreements through operational police leadership approval (Holgersson & Knutsson, 2011). The act of communication for the purpose of negotiation will provide police with key social identity intelligence, and allow police to garner information about group culture, to which groups particular participants belong, and how specific individuals might react (e.g., whether

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they will obey the law, which proposals they are likely to accept, or their general reactions to police). The process allows police to build mutual trust, or as Reicher (2011, p. 18) puts it: “[... ] if public order policing put as much emphasis on cultural intelligence as on criminal intelligence, it would be in a far better position to preempt conflict rather than contain it.” Schmalzl (2011, p. 169) adds: “Without knowledge of the sociopolitical and ideological background, the motives, processes, and goals of a protest group, one is poking in the fog when looking for ways to de-escalate.” Designated (and trained) Communication officers should be tasked with continuous communication with individuals on their way to or at the side of an assembly. Their mandate allows police to explicitly demonstrate commitment to trust building, allowing more widespread, open communication and dialogue. Additionally, communication officers can pinpoint the locations of groups unwilling to engage in dialogue and persons exhibiting suspicious behaviors. Such intelligence could prevent subsequent violence or escalation and aid in post-event investigations. Communication officers can also direct strategic deployment of others, including uniformed officers (Holgersson & Knutsson, 2011), to block opportunities for criminal behavior. Communicating the “rules of the game” and rule-breaking consequences (Adang, 2011; Waddington, 2011) is another important function of communication officers. Officers understand the rules. If a blockade is established, those responsible could face misdemeanor charges. Police will clear the blockade, if necessary, and the persons involved might be temporarily arrested or taken into custody. However, police cannot assume that all (sub)groups know these rules or associated consequences. While ignorance does not excuse criminal behavior, police must communicate rules prior to enforcement so that no one gets carried away from a blockade while believing that this act of civil disobedience would be perceived as a simple expression of their civic duty. Police should briefly and clearly communicate assembly rules in advance, preferably with easily understandable pictograms,10 and through multiple channels, including social media. This communication officer activity reinforces participant perceptions of police as approachable, transparent, and predictable. No matter the parties communicating—operational commanders with assembly leaders, communication officers with protestors, line-level officers with members of the public—in-person communication should be initiated at the beginning and continuously throughout the event. Especially during an intervention (e.g., changing a march route or blocking a path), police should attempt to communicate the reasonableness and necessity of police actions. Police communication is critical to helping participants understand their perspectives. Including assembly representatives in finding problem solutions is also a promising communication technique (Lorei, 2020). The positive effect of tactical communication was even proven in an experimental study (Brandl & Bürger, 2022). Communicating through authority (“if not,

10

 Cf. e.g. Polizei Hessen, https://docbb.de/polizeihessen, retrieved on 02.03.2023.

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then I order”) should be a last resort because appreciation and respect involve a reciprocal process. Schulz von Thun calls this a “dilemma-conscious integral approach” (Schulz von Thun, 2021, p.  51) and emphasizes the need to combine respect, empathy, and powerful decisiveness in communication efforts. Finally, communication should be group- and situation-appropriate. An announcement over the loudspeaker, “Attention, attention, this is the police!” has a very different effect than, “Dear participants, we, the police, have a request...”.

7.2 Conscious Non-verbal Communication Police appearance also has significant effects (cf. Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Behrendes & Bürger, 2024). Beyond whether an officer is clean-shaven or wears an earpiece, officers displaying recognizable symbols on their persons, vehicles, or other equipment can suggest bias. Unofficial patches, emblems, stickers, or music played in official vehicles might raise questions concerning police neutrality, particularly if their symbolic nature implies that the public order unit is ready to use force. Inferences drawn from antagonistic police appearance can increase negative stereotyping (cf. Fig. 1). Pictures and videos often spread like wildfire via social media and require police to publicly defend themselves. Associated public narratives can reinforce images of police as opponents, instead of supporters who ensure free speech. Beyond symbols that suggest police bias, visible police presence, including the number, type of officers, and observable gear, must be situationally appropriate. If a (still) peaceful demonstration is met with a police force suited in protective Fig. 1  Symbol of a US Crowd Control Unit, photographed from the unit’s t-shirt (own photo)

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equipment, including balaclavas and helmets, such a display can promote feelings of intimidation rather than trust (Perry et  al., 2017; Sommer & Haunss, 2018). Additionally, the police has almost no more non-verbal means, to signal a higher state of readiness, because the number of officers and their worn equipment is already at a very high state. Displays of police authority and means of securing compliance, including water cannons, recording capabilities, and arrest units, are not negative in and of themselves, but it must be made clear that such measures will be deployed only, if less intrusive measures fail to maintain public safety and the rule of law. Brenneisen and Mescher (2011, p. 3) note that “both too many and too few police forces available in operations run counter to the idea of de-escalation.” Accordingly, it is important to deploy situationally appropriate measures and default to a “low profile” approach whenever possible (Adang, 2011; Adang & Cuvelier, 2001). In other words, police should initially deploy mainly communication officers and the fewest officers possible (preferably in normal uniform instead of personal armor and riot equipment) in crowds and adapt visible police presence and equipment based on situational assessments. “Through intentional and consequent use of signals, the police willingness to use force is continuously conveyed to the crowd [...] indicating a calm and friendly situation to a readiness to exercise maximum force” (Holgersson & Knutsson, 2011, p. 197, for further details, see also Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Behrendes & Bürger, 2024; Bürger, 2024). Additionally, controlled police unit movement is critical. Officers who move in a calm and relaxed manner reinforce the perception of a decelerated scenario. Running officers produce a “following effect” in which curious participants closely watch the officers and may follow them. Officers radiating calm, communicating openly, and moving steadily help to avoid escalation. “Small gestures,” within verbal and non-verbal communication, can dissuade negative stereotyping and convey positive police images (Plant & Scott, 2011; Sousa & Madensen, 2011). These include small interpersonal interactions that suggest a gentle person exists under the uniform and behind the helmet visor. Some officers are resistant or fearful of exposing their humanity for a variety of reasons, including insecurity, feelings of powerlessness, or socialization in the cliché of the tough law-and-order street cop. Accordingly, many stand around with folded arms with neutral, or sometimes even grim, facial expressions. What effect does such behavior have on the public? At minimum, police are not promoting friendly interactions or conversation. A simple smile can effectively dispel misunderstandings. And, if that works, a friendly conversation can build more trust. While talking to people who, from their viewpoint, have a completely abstruse or distorted worldview can be exhausting, this small gesture is likely to garner a more positive view of the engaged officer. In the communication context, the contagion effect has a special meaning: the smile and friendly conversation can change police stereotypes, even if only slightly and unconsciously. Such interactions can even promote positive stereotyping, but only if the officer is authentic. Most officers are kind and amiable people, aware of the special role they play in democratic societies, and able to handle potentially conflictual conversations involving other worldviews. Police leaders should

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encourage these interactions. And for officers who oppose or do not trust themselves to engage in these conversations, “giving a smile” is always possible. Furthermore, there are numerous other small gesture opportunities in crowds: a street chalk TicTacToe game with protesters,11 helping an elderly lady cross a street, or a spontaneous chin-up challenge with protesters that you just stopped from storming a mine: “On the trip of the green finger back towards Aachen (no idea why!!!), there’s a pull-up challenge between USK [a German special public order unit, cf. Bürger, 2024; note from the author] and #Endegelaende activists...despite an additional weight of 25 kg, the USKler wins.”12

7.3 Differentiated, Targeted, Timely, and Containable Intervention Behavior As discussed in Sect. 4, crowds contain many different groups. Violence by one group does not mean violence is being committed by the entire crowd. Thus, it is necessary to distinguish between offenders and their immediate and extended environments. Violent groups can gain influence over others if police act in an undifferentiated manner. It is critical that police always act as precisely and surgically as possible; following the guiding principle of “scalpel instead of baton.” But this is only successful if units have an appropriate tactical repertoire. Differentiation is not possible with irritant gas throwers or water cannons. Even units with protective shields are not likely to make their way through a crowd inconspicuously or without “collateral damage.” Participants unnecessarily “pushed away” by police can feel attacked and be provoked into acting against officers (cf. provoked perpetrators Sect. 4). More tactically demanding tasks, often carried out by evidence and arrest units, require higher levels of professionalism among executing officers and thus should be provided with advanced training (cf. Bürger, 2024). Before any high-profile intervention, especially an arrest within a crowd or the detention of a large group, it should be determined whether the measure is absolutely necessary in this situation and at this time. Acknowledging risks of escalation requires careful analysis to identify suitable, necessary, and appropriate measures. Further, appropriate deployment timing is needed to achieve balance with the overall goals of maintaining order, guaranteeing public safety, and prosecuting crimes. For example, photography and videography can be used to secure evidence when other forms of intervention are deemed too risky or inappropriate. An arrest in a highly volatile crowd, rather than securing video for later prosecution can raise questions of appropriate proportionality: “When using force, the effects on the population must also be taken into account” (PDV 100 - VS-NfD, 2021, No. 1.1).

11 12

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=251qvLpCCNk, accessed Feb 02, 2021.  https://twitter.com/Fotografie_JV/status/1309749435358994432, accessed Feb 02, 2021.

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However, immediate police action to arrest a protestor might be necessary, appropriate, and suitable to prevent further harm. Consider a ringleader actively trying to persuade crowd members to commit criminal acts (cf. antisocial offender). In these cases, intervention can produce a de-escalating signal effect since it conveys an increased prosecution risk for possible accomplices (cf. Herold & Bürger, 2024). However, when possible, such action should be communicated in advance via megaphone or loudspeaker. For example, police may announce, “The gentleman in the black sweater who is currently pointing his middle finger in our direction is about to be arrested by police forces because he has thrown bottles at us several times.” When not possible or tactically not advisable (like in case of the just given example), communication should take place immediately afterward so that bystanders know what happened and why (cf. Lorei, 2020). In general, it is better, if criminal behavior does not continue, or an active ringleader is not inciting the crowd, to postpone arrest and observe the person with appropriate tactical and technical means until an inconspicuous arrest is possible away from the demonstration events. But this decision carries consequences. Schulz von Thun (2021, p. 50) aptly describes the problem: “In the enforcement of measures, the police dilemma is, that robust decisiveness in action can contribute to a nasty escalation, while wait-and-see permissiveness does not put a stop to the violation of rules and thus endangers citizens in need of protection and weakens the rule of law. In both cases, it will have to accept criticism—and if it takes a middle course, it will even have to reckon with criticism from both sides: For some, it has been too passive and timid; for others, too heavy-handed.”

7.4 Support Legitimate Goals Embracing open communication and honest and equal cooperation aligns police intention and action with supporting legitimate goals of assemblies. Of course, the police cannot allow, permit, or assist with all assembly goals; their primary tasks are to prevent harm and prosecute criminal offenses—and must not vacate these duties. But police can start by being open, friendly, helpful, and communicative. And if, for example, one counterdemonstration has the goal of blocking another, there are various means to regulate conflicting fundamental rights within the practical concordance framework.13 Police can, for example, choose a different march route to circumvent the blockade. Police can allow the blockade for a few minutes, as a symbolic act, before it is voluntarily cleared by the protestors. Or police can simply drag people to the side and march through the blockade. The effects of different measures should be considered in the context of ESIM.

 A construct of German law: Practical concordance means that if two fundamental rights collide, police should try to allow both rights to every extent possible with the fewest restrictions. 13

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To support legitimate goals, police can (in some cases) also subsume the attitude of “looking the other way,” much like the tactics used by the Munich police at the demonstration against the 2021 Munich Security Conference. Due to the pandemic, the district administration department, as the responsible assembly authority, had granted permission for only 100 participants to assemble. The assembly organizer acknowledged and praised the police discretion used to manage the larger number of participants: “The police kept discreetly in the background, but observed very closely that both the mask requirement and the distances were meticulously observed. This was probably one of the reasons why the officers counted quite generously [...]. [The organizer] expressly praised ‘the moderate and today very good performance of the police’ in front of the probably 550 listeners. For his ‘very heartfelt thank you’ from the lectern to the surrounding police officers, there was applause throughout the Promenadeplatz for so much sense of proportion and mathematical flexibility in uniform. The hooded people and the police have probably never been so fond of each other at such a demo” (Soyer, 2021). Ideally, a police strategy of support is communicated before and during an assembly or event via various channels (e.g., social media). As a practical example, the small soccer club Bournemouth was in the finals. If they won, they would be promoted to the highest league in the club’s history, and fans would want to be close to the players. So it was communicated that there would be a victory parade, but only if fans stayed in the stands. When a few fans ran onto the pitch after a goal and tried to return to the stands, the other fans happily handed them over to police (Reicher, 2011). In principle, police press and public relations should communicate support of public assemblies and their legitimate goals (cf. also Sect. 8). Wording is critical; messaging should not reinforce media worst-case scenarios but should, ideally, defuse them instead. Headlines such as “High-security in the Alps”14 from the G7 summit in Garmisch-Partenkirchen 2015 or “Hamburg gears up for a week of rage”15 do not convey police willingness to support and cooperate with the tens of thousands of peaceful assembly participants (cf. also Grutzpalk & Jarolimek, 2024).

7.5 Avoid Chaos Chaos is often the final spark that sets uncontrolled escalation in motion (Holgersson & Knutsson, 2011; Hylander & Granström, 2011; Waddington, 2011; cf. Schattka, 2024). Unfortunately, avoiding chaos, especially at a gathering or event with large numbers of people, is not easy. Besides good planning, however, two things have proven useful to this practice:

14 15

 Deutschlandfunk, 29.05.2015.  Sueddeutsche Zeitung, 30.06.2017.

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1. Honest, open, and continuous communication. If one hand knows what the other is doing, police minimize the risks of misunderstanding and misinterpretation. This refers to both internal police communication and communication between the police, assembly organizers, and participants. Chaos occurs when, for example, a police unit on one side makes an arrest within the crowd and a unit on the other side is not informed. Uninformed officers might perceive the crowd’s movement as an encroachment on its own line and likely use force to push people back. Similarly, if a march is stopped by police in the front, the uninformed rear ranks might continue to push forward. Breakdowns in communication are particularly problematic when, for example, communication officers are negotiating with assembly organizers about a voluntary blockade dissolution. As they make progress toward a friendly solution, another unit is unaware of the negotiation progress and starts to forcibly clear the blockade. 2. Allowing experienced and well-trained unit leaders to lead using mission order tactics (management by objectives; cf. Bürger & Thielmann, 2024).16 These officers must be capable and authorized to make on-the-spot decisions within a defined area of responsibility, using integrated communication (so that everyone always knows what is happening). Using command order tactics17 creates long delays from action to reaction and, when faced with imminent danger, is not practicable. Command order tactics in these situations are a recipe for chaos. For example, consider if only the incident commander can approve the use of loudspeakers for public communication. This means that the unit leader at the assembly, who has the best feeling for the situation and crowd, may not initiate loudspeaker announcements (e.g., if forbidden flags are shown or to mitigate crowd reaction during a necessary arrest). Command tactics in this case are ill-­ conceived, considering the importance of communication in dynamic situations (cf. Adang & Schreiber, 2024, Lorei, 2020). Moreover, this leadership philosophy can become catastrophic when multiple flashpoints arise. Police leaders who cannot delegate decision-making authority cannot make all necessary decisions. This leads to paralysis and inevitable chaos when officers are deployed in multiple critical and dynamic parallel situations. There are also additional negative consequences on intraorganizational trust, cooperation, and the development of strong leaders capable of making decisions.

 Mission tactics involve command officers giving a mission to subordinated units, not specific commands with exact instructions about when to do what, as this would be considered as command tactics. 17  Command tactics involve officers being allowed to react to events only when ordered and with defined tactics. 16

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7.6 Regular Consideration of Others’ Perspective Perhaps the most important benefit of preventing escalation, which can be applied to all preceding points, is a regular consideration of others’ perspectives. Evaluating the effect of police actions requires putting oneself in the shoes of those directly affected. For example, police might consider the effect of staging patrol cars as a visual barrier between two opposing assemblies on each of the following parties: • • • •

Participants of group 1 Participants of group 2 Potential offenders Bystanders or the larger public

What effects would barricades have? What would be the effect of rapid emergency forces deployment, a close march escort, strong police presence, or displaying water cannons? What feelings might be invoked and how can police actions be (mis)interpreted from their point of view? This consideration of others’ perspectives coupled with consideration of ESIM findings, can make the unconscious conscious, and help to deploy forces and tactics with the necessary sensitivity and precision.

8 Conclusion A modern, democratic police should strictly observe elements of the ESIM and the here-described tactical approaches derived from them when policing crowds. Yet, there is a difference between meeting and embracing these requirements. As several chapters in this book emphasize, it is essential for all decision makers as well as the officers on the ground to internalize a positive mindset when policing assemblies. Police should view assemblies as opportunities to positively strengthen relationships with the public by supporting their rights and assisting them with their goals, as much as possible. This contrasts views of assemblies as threats to public safety, accompanied by a focus on control rather than support. This distinction is not trivial, as it has three important effects. First, internalized attitudes influence decisions. This is true for both analytical and spontaneous “gut” decisions (Bock, 2021; Kahneman, 2012; Pfister et al., 2017; Schulz von Thun, 2021). Second, attitudes influence authenticity and can impact communication with assembly leaders and participants. Reicher et al. (2004) describe a necessary mental paradigm shift from “frustrating to facilitating” a demonstration that contributes to perceptions of police as “friends and helpers,” thus laying the foundation for trust and cooperation. Third, leadership attitude will also influence the attitudes, views, and motivation of subordinate officers. The positive-supportive mindset called for here may be perceived as promoting a laissez-faire strategy, but this criticism is unsupported by practical experience. The

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advocated approach requires smart policing and actively demands finding “outside-­ the-­box” solutions. It is much more demanding than “zero-tolerance” strategies. It uses a variety of non-confrontational tactical options (see Fig. 2 for a summary) to prevent criminal behavior while creating space for substantive discourse, making it highly effective in avoiding escalation. Ultimately, it corresponds with the goals of modern policing in a democratic constitutional state. Still, one thing must not be forgotten: Despite this positive-supportive mindset, the fact remains that a police line is unambiguous. Anyone attempting to breach it will be met with immediate police reaction (the use of force). But this is also a predictable police reaction, which can be easily avoided just by not approaching the barrier. However, smart policing requires commanders to continuously assess whether established police lines remain necessary. Communication, cooperation, and consistency are not contradictory, but productive symbiosis. In conclusion, it is essential to communicate the possibilities summarized in this chapter to promote positive stereotyping at all levels of command and for the police officers deployed in the context of assembly/event situations. Examples have shown that police can work to avoid actions leading to escalation, consciously de-escalate, and positively stereotype. Only when all gears turn together it is possible to ensure peaceful assemblies! Written guidelines should make this mindset binding for all officers, for example: We expect all deployed officers to be friendly and courteous to all people, regardless of which group they belong to. Any positive interaction is expressly welcomed. We focus on cooperation and communication with all groups and participants from the very beginning. The use of tactical communication with and without loudspeakers as well as communication teams enjoy the highest priority. We do not take any measures without justifying them (if necessary afterward) and will announce (and justify) any measures beforehand as far as possible. We cooperate on an equal footing and use delegated authority only as a last resort. Communication, cooperation, and persuasion are the means of choice. The highest value is placed on creative resolution of conflicts and the avoidance of negative stereotyping, solidarization, or escalation. We consistently pursue any criminal offenses. Here, too, communication is of great importance. In the context of assemblies, the focus is on the videographic preservation of evidence and the detained arrest of suspects. Arrests or detentions from within an assembly of more than 20 people are to be avoided and are subject to the reservation of the section commander responsible for the entire assembly. Such measures are to be advocated in particular if the continuation of criminal acts that endanger people is to be expected with a high degree of probability or if the prosecution of a criminal act that has been secured with evidence cannot be ensured in any other way. Despite the theoretical power of guidelines, it is crucial that police are aware of the impact of their appearance and actions as described in this article so that these guidelines can be brought to life.

Debriefing

Self-Reflection

Specific Education & Training Reciprocal Trust Avoid Solidarization

Positive Stereotyping

Smile Helpful

Friendly

Be Aware of Own Impact & Make Conscious Use

Consider Others’ Perspectives

Fig. 2  Principles and mindset for professional crowd policing

Small Gestures

MINDSET & GOALS Assembly as a Chance Practical Concordance

Mission tactics

Predictable

Avoid chaos

Tactically Favorable Opportunities

Failsafe Communication

Use the Possible Area of Discretion

Innovative Solutions

Precise

Differentiated

Proportionally

Well Adapted Measures

Cooperative Attitude

BASIC PRINCIPLES Professionalism Appearance

Low Profile

Fitting

“Rules of the Game”

Neutral

Authentic

Calm

Reliable

Approachable

Honest

Transparent

Equal Footprint

Dialogue-orientated

Verbal & Nonverbal Communication

PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES

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Perry, G., Jonathan-Zamir, T., & Weisburd, D. (2017). The effect of paramilitary protest policing on protestors’ trust in the police: The case of the “Occupy Israel” movement. Law & Society Review, 51(3), 602–634. https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12279 Pfeiffer, P. (2014). Kommunikative Deeskalation. In C. Lorei & J. Sohnemann (Eds.), Grundwissen Kommunikation (pp. 189–210). Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft. Pfister, H.-R., Jungermann, H., & Fischer, K. (2017). Die Psychologie der Entscheidung: Eine Einführung (4. Auflage). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­662-­53038-­2 Plant, J. B., & Scott, M. S. (2011). Trick or treat? Policing Halloween in Madison, Wisconsin. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Crime prevention studies: Vol. 26. Preventing crowd violence (pp. 159–190). Lynne Rienner. Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (1998). Deindividuation and antinormative behavior: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 123(3), 238–259. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-­2909.123.3.238 Reicher, S. (1984). The St. Pauls’ riot: An explanation of the limits of crowd action in terms of a social identity model. European Journal of Social Psychology, 14(1), 1–21. https://doi. org/10.1002/ejsp.2420140102 Reicher, S. (1987). Crowd behaviour as social action. In J. C. Turner, M. A. Hogg, P. J. Oakes, S.  Reicher, & M.  S. Wetherell (Eds.), Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory (pp. 171–201). Blackwell. Reicher, S. (1996). “The Battle of Westminster”: Developing the social identity model of crowd behaviour in order to explain the initiation and development of collective conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 115–134. Reicher, S. (2011). From crisis to opportunity: New crowd psychology and public order policing principles. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Crime prevention studies: Vol. 26. Preventing crowd violence (pp. 7–24). Lynne Rienner. Reicher, S., & Drury, J. (1982). The determination of collective behaviour (Psychology of collective action). University of Bristol. https://books.google.de/books?id=UW25oAEACAAJ Reicher, S., & Haslam, S. A. (2010). Beyond help: A social psychology of collective solidarity and social cohesion. In M. Snyder & S. Stürmer (Eds.), The psychology of prosocial behavior (pp. 289–309). Wiley-Blackwell. Reicher, S., Haslam, S. A., & Hopkins, N. (2005). Social identity and the dynamics of leadership: Leaders and followers as collaborative agents in the transformation of social reality. Leadership Quarterly, 16, 547–568. Reicher, S., Stott, C., Cronin, P., & Adang, O. (2004). An integrated approach to crowd psychology and public order policing. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 27, 558–572. Rudé, G.  F. E. (1964). The crowd in history: A study of popular disturbances in France and England, 1730-1848 (Rev. ed.). Wisely. Schattka, C. (2024). Interpretive regimes of violence in action. The “Welcome to Hell” demonstration during the G20 Summit in Hamburg 2017. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Schenk, C., & Bornhausen, M. (2024). Mission communication as an integrative overall strategy in protest 2.0. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Schiewek, W. (2024). The role of police in assemblies: Ethical implications, imperatives, and interventions. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Schmalzl, H. (1996). Deeskalation: Entstehungsgeschichte, Irrungen und der Versuch der Klärung eines schwierigen Begriffs. Die Polizei, 10, 254–262. Schmalzl, H. (2011). Irrungen und Erkenntnisse der Polizei in ihrem Bemühen um Deeskalation im Protestgeschehen. Deutsches Polizeiblatt für die Aus- und Fortbildung, 5, 8–11. Schulz von Thun, F. (1981). Störungen und Klärungen: Psychologie der zwischenmenschlichen Kommunikation. rororo rororo-Sachbuch: Bd. 7489 Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verl.

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Schulz von Thun, F. (2021). Kommunikativer Klimawandel. Öffentliche Sicherheit, 7–8, 48–52. https://www.bmi.gv.at/magazinfiles/2021/07_08/interview_schulz_von_thun.pdf Sommer, M., & Haunss, S. (2018). Grenzen von Protest: Auswertungen von G20 Demonstationsbefragungen. https://refubium.fu-­berlin.de/handle/fub188/23092 Sousa, W.  H., & Madensen, T. (2011). The police and major event planning: A case study in Las Vegas, Nevada. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Crime prevention studies: Vol. 26. Preventing crowd violence (pp. 139–158). Lynne Rienner Publishers. Soyer, T. (2021, February 26). Braver als die Polizei erlaubt. Proteste gegen Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ siko-­muenchen-­polizei-­1.5212463 Stott, C. (2011). Crowd dynamics and public order policing. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Crime prevention studies: Vol. 26. Preventing crowd violence (pp.  25–46). Lynne Rienner Publishers. Taine, H. (1876). L’Ancien régime “les origines de la France contemporaine” (J. Durand, Trans.). Daldy, Ibster. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worche (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In W. G. Austin & S. Worche (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (2nd ed., pp. 7–24). Hall. Taub, A. (2021). From Colombia to U.S., police violence pushes protests into mass movements. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/19/world/americas/colombia-­protests-­police.html Temme, M. (2011). Mythos Deeskalation. Schlagwort von gestern oder gelebte Polizeipraxis. Deutsches Polizeiblatt für die Aus- und Fortbildung, 5, 5–7. van Ham, T., Blokland, A., Ferwerda, H., Doreleijers, T., & Adang, O. (2021). Determinants of persistence in collective violence offending. Deviant Behavior, 42(1), 37–53. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/01639625.2019.1649954 Waddington, D.  P. (2011). Policing the British G8 Protests: A contextualized analysis. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Crime prevention studies: Vol. 26. Preventing crowd violence (pp. 95–114). Lynne Rienner. Winter, M. (1998). Politikum Polizei. Macht und Funktion der Polizei in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Lit. Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 17, 237–307. Dr. Colonel Bernd Bürger  joined the Bavarian State Police, Germany, in 1997 and has managed assemblies and large events since 2000. He was responsible for managing camps and assemblies at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen G7 summits in 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, he was the commanding officer of the Dachau special public order unit (evidence gathering and arrest unit) where he was also deployed “on the front line” at the Hamburg G20 summit. He has served as head of the Police Operations Department at the Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police since 2020. In addition to his practical experience, he is a renowned public order scholar, lecturing in various German and European states. He also was a speaker at the 2018 International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting and 2019 at the Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, together with Tamara Herold and Ryan Lee. He holds a master’s degree in criminology and police science from the Ruhr University Bochum (ECTS A), a master’s degree in Public Administration—Police Management (ECTS A) as well as a PhD in Public Administration from the German Police University.

Preventing Crime at Assemblies Tamara D. Herold and Bernd Bürger

Abstract  In this chapter, assemblies are examined from a crime prevention perspective. We first discuss how crowds create crime opportunities. We then present three theories—routine activity theory, rational choice theory, and situational crime prevention—that can be used to explain crowd behaviors and develop crime interventions. The RDFC international model and 4D tactic, two assembly-focused crime prevention and training frameworks, are offered to help police improve safety and police–crowd interactions. We conclude with recommendations that will help police take immediate steps to better prevent and respond to crowd-related crime.

1 Introduction In this chapter, we examine crowd dynamics from a crime prevention perspective. While traditional criminologists examine why people commit crimes (e.g., due to biological, psychological, social, environmental, and political causes), environmental criminologists analyze how people commit crimes to identify disruptable patterns in criminal behavior. The field of environmental criminology focuses on developing (and testing) crime prevention interventions. Environmental criminologists study traditional crimes including robbery, burglary, and theft, as well as less common, less visible, and more complex crimes like terrorism, child sexual assault, and Internet fraud. Although less explored, we propose that environmental criminology offers useful theories for understanding complex crowd–crime dynamics. It also offers frameworks to develop prevention techniques aimed at disrupting dangerous crowd dynamics. T. D. Herold (*) Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA e-mail: [email protected] B. Bürger Institute for Further Education of the Bavarian Police, Ainring, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; https://publicorderpolicing.com/buerger © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_2

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We begin by explaining how assemblies create opportunities for crime. We then present three fundamental environmental criminology theories—routine activity theory, rational choice theory, and situational crime prevention—and demonstrate how they can be used to explain crowd behaviors and prevent harm. We offer two additional assembly-focused crime prevention and training frameworks, the RDFC international model and 4D tactic, to help police improve safety and police–crowd interactions. We conclude with four primary recommendations drawn from our discussions that will help police better prevent and respond to crowd-related crime.

2 Crowds and Crime Opportunities Felson and Clarke (1998) point out that opportunity makes thieves. Environmental criminology focuses on crime opportunities. Often referred to as a collection of “opportunity theories,” environmental criminology examines how crime opportunities arise and how offenders recognize and exploit them. Environmental criminologists devise prevention efforts by uncovering and altering the opportunity structures of specific crime types. To prevent crime at assemblies, we must first explore how crowd dynamics create particular crime opportunities. Taine (1876) and Le Bon’s (1885) early theories of crowd behaviors (e.g., the common soul and psychic contagion) promoted misguided interpretations of dangers within assemblies. Still, commonly referenced into the 2000s, these early theories do not capture the mechanisms that create dangerous crowd conditions. Collections of people, whether called assemblies, gatherings, or crowds, are not themselves a problem. But, specific crowd members can cause harm. Crowd members can perpetrate violence against others or engage in property destruction. And particular situational dynamics within crowds can promote harmful behavior. These situational dynamics are often referred to as opportunity structures in environmental criminology. The nature of crowds can create opportunity structures that encourage unwanted behaviors. For example, large, dense crowds can reduce the risk of police detection. Increased perceptions of anonymity among crowd members can reduce inhibitions toward criminal behaviors. Groups of people can band together to reduce the effort needed to defeat safety measures (e.g., breach barriers or walls). Crowd reactions (e.g., cheering) can encourage offenders and increase the rewards associated with engaging in destructive behaviors. Jostling, pushing, or shoving in dense crowds can provoke violent behaviors. And crowd dynamics can provide excuses for misbehavior and give potential offenders “permission” to engage in deviant or harmful behavior (e.g., lack of lavatory access can encourage public urination). Environmental criminology encourages police to analyze assembly conditions likely to encourage harmful crowd participant behaviors. Such an analysis uncovers critical intervention points. This chapter provides the theories and associated frameworks needed to conduct analyses, develop effective prevention tactics, and prepare police for positive crowd intervention. As we will explain, police can reduce crime

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and disorder in assemblies by blocking opportunities for misbehavior and aligning police response with specific behavioral principles. A detailed analysis of assembly opportunity structures is needed to effectively manage crowd behavior. Yet, police face a formidable challenge: every crowd is different. For example, gathering purposes and organizational structures vary from assembly to assembly. A crowd of soccer fans will encounter different opportunity structures than those present at a rock festival, a neo-Nazi concert, a trade union meeting, or a gathering like “Welcome to Hell” at the G20  in Hamburg (cf. Schattka, 2024). Crowd size and density also affect perceptions of opportunity structures. In small gatherings, particularly when most crowd members know each other, participants might share similar perceptions of what is or what is not acceptable behavior. They might also discover similar opportunities for misbehavior. In larger gatherings, people are less likely to know each other and less likely to share similar observations. People in large assemblies are likely to encounter different opportunity structures in different places within the crowd. For example, in a demonstration with several thousand people, participants on the periphery may directly observe the presence of police officers, while those in the center may not. These different situational dynamics can affect how participants in different parts of the crowd behave. Communication within a crowd can further influence participants’ perceptions. Both accurate and false information can spread through word of mouth. Megaphones and other amplification devices can help crowd members disseminate messages. Information in the form of texts, pictures, videos, and livestreams can be shared via smartphones in real time. Both direct sensory cues and information shared within a crowd will affect perceptions of opportunities (Madensen & Eck, 2011). The dynamic nature of crowds poses another challenge for crime prevention analysis. For example, assembly dynamics are continually altered by external influences such as police actions and weather conditions (from sweltering heat to pouring rain). Moreover, as explained earlier, the crowd is itself part of the opportunity structure. People behave differently as they move between different environments. A person is likely to make different decisions in a crowd than when they are alone, and they are also likely to make different decisions when attending different types of events. Given that crowds can generate crime opportunities, preventing crowd formation is one possible crime prevention tactic, and it is one that follows the spirit of Taine and Le Bon. However, this approach is not socially, politically, or legally enforceable, nor is it desirable in a functioning democracy. Preventing crowd formation must be reserved for rare and extreme cases (e.g., when the only purpose of the crowd is to cause harm) given people’s fundamental right of freedom of assembly. Accordingly, we focus on identifying specific crowd characteristics and interactions (including interactions with police officers) that can be influenced to increase safety. We cannot describe or account for all possible crowd dynamics. Opportunity structures in crowds are highly specific and vary throughout the course of events. Pre-assembly and real-time analyses of situational dynamics are needed to help police address crime and disorder at their local assemblies. We offer specific case

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studies to provide context and illustrations. But most importantly, we provide useful environmental criminology frameworks for police to conduct their own local analyses of specific assembly dynamics.

3 Routine Activity Theory Routine activity theory (RAT) explains that crime occurs when a willing offender encounters a desired target in the absence of an effective crime controller (Cohen & Felson, 1979; Eck, 1994; Felson, 1986). Figure 1 presents the RAT crime triangle. It applies the RAT components to crimes in an assembly context. The inner triangle includes the elements necessary for the commission of a crime: perpetrators, potential targets (e.g., people and buildings), and the location of the crowd. The absence (or removal) of any one of these elements is sufficient to prevent crime. The outer triangle describes the crime controllers. Each controller protects an inner element. One effective controller can prevent the commission of a crime. Handlers try to keep potential offenders out of trouble. In crowds, these can be people nearby, especially peers, but also the marshals, stewards, and other volunteers who aim to maintain order within the crowd. When crime is prevented by handlers other than police, this is often called “self-policing” within crowds (cf. Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Bürger, 2024a). Guardians protect targets. Within crowds, other crowd members who intervene to protect others or stop the destruction of property act as guardians. But guardians are also often police or security personnel, who, for example, protect a building.

crowd-related crime (e.g., violence)

Places Location of crowd Managers Local Government and property owners

Fig. 1  Routine activity theory crime triangle applied to assemblies (Knutsson & Madensen, 2011)

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When two opposing groups come together within an assembly, police often serve as both handlers and guardians—stopping would-be offenders and protecting peaceful participants from violent attacks. Managers protect places. Public assemblies, particularly protests, commonly occur in public locations, which means that local authorities are the place managers responsible for safety and security. For private assemblies, like large festivals or sporting events, organizers who rent or own property are responsible for place management. Managers ensure place functioning. They decide which activities and behaviors are allowed. For example, managers decide if alcohol is served, restricted, or prohibited, as well as how it will be served (e.g., serving sizes, glass bottles, or plastic cups). Managers design spaces. They decide whether to erect fences or barriers, provide trash bins, install lighting, or provide wayfinding signage. Private property and event managers also decide who is granted access to their places, which helps to determine whether handlers or guardians will be present. Therefore, it can be argued that manager decisions most directly shape the opportunity structure for crime at places. However, it is important to recognize the highly dynamic relationship between each element and controller. For example, a single police action can affect several other components. Overly aggressive action against a demonstrator can reduce informal social control within a crowd and produce new targets, including police officers or a nearby police station. Practical prevention approaches can be derived from the RAT framework. A thorough analysis involves gathering as much information as possible about each element: what are the characteristics of potential offenders, potential targets, and the assembly’s location? If high-risk elements are present, it is possible to remove or modify them? If not, can controllers be introduced to protect those elements? Ongoing assembly monitoring and information gathering will uncover changing dynamics between the six RAT components. The RAT crime triangle provides police with a tool to effectively organize intelligence and manage situational dynamics.

4 Rational Choice Theory Crime prevention fundamentally assumes a (reasonably) rational offender. If this assumption were untrue, police and other controllers could have no deterrent effect. Environmental criminologists can effectively reduce crime because they assume that offenders are no more or less rational than other people (nonoffenders). To the extent that people are generally mentally healthy, they make conscious decisions (Cornish & Clarke, 1986; Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999). All decisions are attempts to improve one’s position. People are more willing to commit crimes or engage in any type of behavior if they believe that they will gain some benefit. Some crowd behaviors can appear irrational, which leads some people, including police, to believe that people go “mad” or “lose their minds” in crowds. For example, people pushing and trampling each other, causing injury and death, when there

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is no clear, identifiable threat. But we must remember, collective crowd reactions can be triggered by individual or small group decisions that are highly rational. Imagine hearing a loud bang and a person yelling “gun!” Few people in a large crowd might witness the true origins of the sound (e.g., a partition wall toppled over near a stage). The person who yelled “gun!” heard the sound and immediately mistook a cell phone for a firearm. The rest of the crowd, who did not see the wall or the cellphone, based their decisions on the information available to them. The stampede may appear irrational to outside observers, but this crowd behavior was an emergent outcome of highly rational decisions. No one orchestrated the stampede. The resulting outcome was unexpected and unwanted. Contemporary scientists agree that crowds do not cause people to lose their reasoning ability (see McPhail, 1991; cf. also Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Bürger, 2024a). People make decisions, both in crowds and elsewhere, based on perceptions of their immediate situation. Rational choice theory distinguishes between the general decision to want to commit a crime (e.g., cause a disturbance at an assembly) and the decision to commit a particular offense, at a particular time, and at a particular location (e.g., what type of projectile to throw at which officer and when). Both types of decisions are made rationally but often involve a different set of decision-­ making criteria. We primarily focus on decisions made by people in the crowd based on their immediate situations, regardless of their general reasons for attendance. Assemblies provide contexts in which people choose to act. Crowd members are influenced by an assembly’s social and physical characteristics, which provide opportunities for action. Thus, to proactively prevent crime, or subsequently understand why crimes occurred within an assembly, we must analyze the opportunity structure within the crowd context. Extensions of rational choice theory, most notably situational crime prevention (Cornish & Clarke, 2003), identify the dimensions of decision-making most relevant for understanding why people choose to engage in crime. Five dimensions of perception, created by the opportunity structure in the immediate environment, influence whether people are likely to engage in crime: effort, risk, rewards, excuses, and provocations (cf. Fig. 2). Effort refers to the physical energy required to perform the act (e.g., climbing over fences, breaking through locked doors). Crimes easily committed occur more often. Risk refers to the possibility of being detected. Lower risk encourages crime, higher risk reduces it. Reward refers to the gain to the offender, including money, power, status, and sex. Reducing rewards (e.g., security tags that release ink on stolen goods or money) reduces crimes. Excuses refer to justifications. Crimes more easily rationalized, either by the offenders or by those whose opinions the offenders value, are more likely to occur (e.g., stealing by illegally downloading movies rather than mugging elderly people). Finally, provocations refer to situational dynamics that instigate negative behaviors. People who feel provoked (e.g., experience aggression by others) are more willing to commit crime (see also “provoked offender” in Bürger, 2024a). Opportunity structures within immediate environments influence which types of actions are seen as easy, risky, rewarding, excusable, or provoking.

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Effort Reward

Risk

Rational choice

Excuses

Provocations

Fig. 2  Five dimensions of rational choice (own illustration)

5 Situational Crime Prevention Situational crime prevention (Clarke, 1980), or SCP, applies rational choice theory to crime prevention. It involves influencing the five dimensions of offender decision-­ making by increasing risk and effort, and reducing or removing rewards, excuses, and provocations. Derek Cornish and Ronald Clarke (2003) created a typology of 25 different prevention techniques: five for each dimension (see www.popcenter. org/25techniques). To select the most effective techniques, we must conduct careful analyses of specific crime problems. This allows us to identify the conditions that make particular crimes easy, safe, rewarding, excusable, and/or provoking, and what must be changed to prevent future occurrences. SCP has been used to successfully prevent crime at assemblies. Guides to help police manage two types of crowd problems, student party riots (Madensen et al., 2006) and stadium violence (Madensen et al., 2008), are based on the situational crime prevention framework. They offer guidance for conducting local analyses and offer evidence-based, situational prevention techniques. The Madison Police Department used these guides and the underlying situational crime prevention framework to effectively address problems related to student drinking at an annual Halloween event (Plant & Scott, 2011). We offer additional examples of situational techniques to prevent crime at assemblies (cf. Table 1). The success of any approach depends on the specific situation (which can change!). Thus, at first glance, some approaches appear contradictory. For example, “show police special units” can both increase perceptions of risk (a desired outcome) and be perceived as a provocation (an undesirable outcome). Yet, the goal remains the same: to block opportunities for crime. The success of the technique will depend on situational dynamics. Advantages and disadvantages of showing police special forces are discussed in detail in Adang and Schreiber (2024) and Bürger (2024a, 2024b). Other interventions can change two or more perception

Interventions that… Increase effort • Select assembly locations/routes/times to avoid unsecured/ vulnerable places • Remove objects from the assembly places/routes that can be used as weapons • Conduct preliminary checks to identify violent groups/seize dangerous objects • Encourage requirements for items carried in assemblies like length/ thickness of flag poles • Use barriers/vehicles to separate opposing groups • Prohibit public transport from stopping at certain stations • Physically secure objects/ buildings

Increase risk • Use plain clothes officers as crime observers within the crowd • Show/use special units (fast and targeted crowd access) • Visibly patrol the area/ communicate with groups prepared to use violence • Track movements of disruptive people and groups through police patrols or plain clothes officers • Make eye contact with potential troublemakers to reduce their feelings of anonymity • Show (special) forces when appropriate • Conduct video surveillance

Table 1  Situational crime prevention applied to assemblies Reduce rewards • Make absence/reduction of visible police presence contingent on “self-policing” • Work with media to reduce coverage of riots, deny notoriety for those seeking publicity • Avoid crowd member attempts to provoke officers (remain professional) • Ask assembly leaders to publicly distance themselves from violent perpetrators • Offer incentives to encourage lawful behaviors (e.g., peaceful march is allowed to go to desired areas)

Remove excuses • Use differentiated intervention—avoid imposing suppressive measures on larger (uninvolved) groups • Communicate positively though targeted communications (e.g., smiling/engagement) • Assist crowd leaders and members to achieve their legitimate goals (e.g., assist media coverage of a peaceful protest) • Humanize police officers (planned genuine gestures) • Clearly communicate rules and expectations • Provide access to public toilets

Reduce provocations • Use differentiated intervention—avoid imposing suppressive measures on larger (uninvolved) groups • Be transparent—explain the rules of the “game” and purpose for police reactions to certain behaviors • Provide media with complete/neutral information to avoid negative stereotyping • Arrest perpetrators after they exit the crowd (e.g., on their way home) • Avoid unnecessary escalating signals (e.g., special forces deployment, water cannons, riot gear) • Treat participants respectfully

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Table 2  Combination matrix for the analysis/prevention of crimes at assemblies Increase effort How SCP techniques be used to address high-risk.... How can ... be leveraged to block crime opportunities

Increase risk

Reduce rewards

Remove excuses

Reduce provocations

Offenders Targets Locations Handlers Guardians Managers

dimensions. For example, see the first situational intervention listed under remove excuses and reduce provocations (cf. Table  1). “Use differentiated intervention,” encourages police to intervene only against particular people or groups causing harm and not the entire crowd. This removes excuses (I had to defend myself against unjust police action) and reduces provocation (the police instigated the violence). One way to effectively use the SCP framework is to apply each of the 25 techniques (not presented here, but found at www.popcenter.org/25techniques) to address very specific known crime opportunities (e.g., throwing dangerous objects at police, vandalizing specific buildings, and vehicle intrusions into crowds). This exercise will help police to explore previously unconsidered intervention options, even if only one or two are selected for implementation. Another way to effectively use the SCP framework is to combine it with the RAT crime triangle. After conducting a preliminary analysis of the crime triangle’s elements and controllers, consider how you might use each of the SCP techniques to address identified vulnerabilities. Consider using a combination matrix that incorporates both frameworks (RAT and SCP) to increase assembly preparedness (cf. Table 2). As noted repeatedly, the specific situation or context surrounding an intervention will determine its effectiveness. Situational contexts are shaped by people’s perceptions of their social and physical environments. As such, both crowd member perceptions of police actions and the types of actions police engage in at assemblies significantly influence the outcomes of these events. We offer two frameworks to help improve both—the RDFC interaction model and the 4D tactic guide for advanced crowd training

6 The RDFC Interaction Model The RDFC interaction model developed by Herold (Eck & Madensen, 2017; Madensen et al., 2012; Sousa & Madensen, 2016) identifies four primary dimensions of police action that determine the quality (i.e., success) of police–crowd interactions. Crowds are more likely to respond positively to police presence and intervention when people perceive the police and their actions to be:

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Reasonable Disarming Focused Consistent

The four RDFC dimensions were extracted from evidence-based theories and frameworks, most notably reactance theory (Brehm, 1966), police legitimacy theory (Tyler, 1990), defiance theory (Sherman, 1993), the Elaborated Social Identify Model (Reicher, 1996; see also esp. Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Bürger, 2024a) and differential coercion Theory (Colvin, 2000), several of which directly support approaches presented in this book. The RDFC interaction model identifies factors that influence public perceptions of police interventions. The model helps police choose actions that increase cooperation (in the sense of voluntary collaboration) of the people (crowd). The RDFC interaction model, like all environmental criminology theories, assumes that environmental and situational factors influence human behavior. Consequently, the model explicitly recognizes that that the nature and quality of police intervention determines the trajectory and outcomes of police–crowd interactions. We now explore the four specific dimensions of the RDFC interaction model in detail. We will demonstrate how to improve police performance within each dimension, drawing from specific environmental criminology theories and strategies that can further enhance crowd management policies, training, and tactics.

6.1 First RDFC Dimension: Reasonable The perceived reasonableness of police actions is influenced by the extent to which crowd members believe that officers are acting with the intention to: 1 . Curtail only harmful behaviors and avert acute dangers 2. Protect fundamental rights As we will discuss, humans naturally resist interference or attempts to control behavior, particularly if such control is perceived as unnecessary or unwarranted. Given our natural inclination to resist interference, police must seek to restrict the fewest freedoms possible while maintaining public safety. Police can achieve this goal and enhance perceptions of reasonableness by aligning their primary crowd management mission with preventing harm, protecting people’s rights, and avoiding interventions strictly focused on the enforcement of laws. Police can address this dimension by answering the question, “Why am I asking others to do something?” Two criteria help to evaluate the answer: whether police intervention is necessary to maintain safety (intervention necessity) and if police clearly communicate their intent to protect civil rights during intervention (intervention objectives).

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Intervention Necessity Various studies show that many, if not most, people resist efforts made to restrict their individual freedoms. Consequently, resistance to police intervention becomes likely when people experience a form of psychological arousal known as “reactance” (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981). Reactance and subsequent resistance to police orders are strongest when people believe that the measures restrict harmless or legitimate behaviors and when police intervention is perceived as overly severe. Given people’s natural tendency to resist, police should seek to restrict the fewest freedoms possible, while maintaining public safety. This is best accomplished when police action is primarily aimed at averting danger (preventing harmful criminal behavior) rather than solely enforcing regulations, especially if enforcement is likely to be perceived as unjust in the immediate context. This is not to say that police should permit lawlessness; rather, it requires an understanding that forceful intervention should be used as a last resort and in proportion to importance of the regulation to be enforced. An example A spontaneous march takes place during a G7 summit. About 2000 people march through the city to the detention center. They want to protest the incarceration of “their” detainees. The march remains peaceful, despite the presence of potentially problematic groups. After about half an hour, protestors begin to tie banners together to create a visual shield. This violates an assembly regulation and is classified as a minor, administrative offense. Police are now faced with a decision. If they attempt enforcement, they are likely to incite crowd violence. If police forcibly remove the banners from participants, this could lead to injuries. Emotions will boil up, and people will question the legitimacy of police action. Police are not obligated to disregard the violation, but there is no immediate threat to safety. Intelligence reveals that the participants are not using the banners to prepare for an attack. They simply feel uncomfortable under direct police observation. And enforcement will quickly incite hostility toward police. Or, police could display actions that demonstrate cooperation, open communication, and an attempt to find creative solutions. Police could start with dialogue to explain why tied banners are forbidden and politely ask for compliance. This could be messaged to the entire crowd, or police could first attempt to communicate directly with assembly leaders. Should police not achieve initial compliance, they could impede protestor movement until participants comply with the regulation. Alternatively, if the march remains peaceful, lines of communication remain open, and no suspicious or harmful activities take place behind the banners, could the police use their discretion and not enforce the regulation? This example suggests that police can (and should) consider alternatives to enforcement when intervention is not immediately necessary to prevent harm. The “reasonable” dimension is intended to encourage those who police crowds to

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carefully consider the purpose of their actions and assess the benefits of potentially less intrusive alternatives: “Is this action (a) imperative and (b) proportionate, or are there other less intrusive alternatives?” The perceived reasonableness of police response to crowd behaviors will largely depend on whether crowd members believe that police intervention was necessary to prevent harm and police ability to successfully convey the necessity of their actions. Historical events show that when police actions are perceived as unjust, police can incite crowd hostility, further crimes, and strained police–community relations (Reicher et al., 2004, cf. esp. also Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Bürger, 2024a). An example One thousand marchers arrive in the city center. A speaker criticizes the government’s dictator-like response to the pandemic. The crowd is agitated. The protestors are mostly older than 50 and half are women. A young man, standing inside the crowd, throws a bottle at officers assigned to the assembly’s perimeter. The bottle misses an officer’s head and strikes his shoulder. What now? Should the commander order all officers to put on their helmets and forcefully breach the crowd to arrest the offender? Or are there alternatives? Can police identify the perpetrator? Where is he located in the crowd? Is he carrying any other projectiles? Was the incident captured on video? Are undercover officers able to monitor or identify the perpetrator and execute an arrest after the crowd disperses? The police are faced with several complex tactical decisions. The situation can be resolved in numerous ways. A calm analysis of the situation and observance of the reasonableness principle will likely lead to safe outcomes for both the crowd and police. Intervention Objectives The mission of policing is to protect fundamental rights and ensure public safety. Perhaps almost all officers today would agree that—like ensuring public safety— protecting human rights is an essential, if not a defining, aspect of police work. Yet, police intention to protect people’s rights is not always clearly conveyed or prioritized. Concern for officer safety may explain differences between police and public views about the reasonableness of certain police actions. For example, police leaders concerned with frontline officer safety might overestimate risks associated with a crowd event and prematurely deploy large numbers of officers dressed in full protective equipment (i.e., riot gear). Such an approach, particularly if coupled with aggressive officer behavior, would likely agitate previously peaceful individuals who are exercising their fundamental right to assemble. In addition, officers’ individual responses to perceived threats from the crowd can blur the lines between reasonable and unreasonable actions. Officers treating every interaction as dangerous can provoke normally law-abiding persons. For example, problems often arise when police interfere with the filming of police actions. People are legally permitted

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to film police, and they do so for a variety of reasons. Crowd members who anticipate unjustified police action or prosecution may film police action for protection. Police interference (e.g., blocking the camera, attempting to take the device, and ordering the person to stop) unnecessarily risks provoking a negative response from the person targeted and other crowd members who observe police violating this legal right. Countless examples of harsh and disproportionate force being used against peaceful people in crowds have been observed and recorded. Such instances would likely be avoided if police placed protecting people’s rights at the forefront of their crowd management mission. Police are more likely to be perceived as being reasonable when they explicitly message their intention to protect rights and act accordingly. If dilemmas arise, police must respond with transparency and engage in dialogue to ensure people’s rights are protected while maintaining officer and public safety. An example A group of about 200 demonstrators are marching. They have announced their route in advance, as required by local law. This is the largest of several other demonstration groups that have assembled. Another group of about 25 demonstrators decided to conduct a “sit-in,” blocking the larger group’s pre-announced demonstration route by forming a human chain and linking arms. Police now face a dilemma. On one hand, they are obligated to protect the “sit-in” demonstrators’ peaceful freedom of assembly. On the other hand, the marching assembly has, in principle, the right to follow the route it has announced. What should police do in this situation? Which solutions might arouse “reactance” on the part of either group of demonstrators, observers, or the public who later review the incident? Police could engage in dialogue with the sit-in demonstrators and explain the situation. Police could offer them a safe place along the side of the route. They could still protest in view but allow the marching demonstration to pass. Both sides will have to make concessions. The marching demonstrators will have to wait while the police negotiate with those seated, and the sit-in group will not cause the minor disturbance desired by blocking the right of way. The seated persons could refuse to move, and police will be faced with more decisions while the marchers continue to wait. Police could initiate legal action against the seated demonstrators, and calmly address one protestor at a time. Or police might work with the marchers to identify an agreeable alternative route to bypass the blockade. Alternatively, the police could initiate quick enforcement and physically move those seated to the side so the demonstrators can pass (see e.g., 24mmjournalism, 2022). Or, police could order a dispersal, deploy pepper spray, and then drag remaining sitters to the side of the route (vgl. bspw. Jütte, 2017; Perspektive Online, 2019). Crowds, and the larger public who witness crowd events, are more likely to see police as reasonable if officers demonstrate their concern for and commitment to

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protecting fundamental rights, both through their dialogue and tactical decisions. When faced with dilemmas or must intervene to prevent harm, police can promote better outcomes by choosing less intrusive tactics and engaging in active communication (using public information officers or designated communication officers) to convey their intentions and reasons for intervention. The second dimension of the RDFC interaction model offers further guidance to achieve these goals by focusing on the way police deploy crowd intervention tactics.

6.2 Second RDFC Dimension: Disarming The reasonable dimension of the RDFC interaction model clarifies why police should intervene in crowd behavior: to prevent harm and protect rights. But how can police achieve these goals without instigating conflict? The disarming dimension of the RDFC interaction model explains how police should intervene: intentionally promote positive police–crowd interactions. Being disarming helps police to avoid unnecessary conflicts and reduces the need for coercive tactics. It also can encourage self-policing in crowds, reducing the need for police intervention in the first place. In this section, we continue to explore how police can avoid crowd “reactance” and offer further direction for gaining public cooperation at assemblies. Police use of unnecessary or excessive force heightens crowd tensions. Police actions viewed as unfair or unjust reduce the crowd’s motivation to comply with rules or police orders (McCluskey, 2003; Pennebaker & Sanders, 1976). Disproportionate police aggression triggers crowd reactance (e.g., negative stereotyping, distrust, and solidarization against police), reducing police–crowd cooperation and provoking further crowd aggression (Colvin, 2000). These actions have consequences far beyond the immediate event. Strained relations between police and assembly participants, and often the wider public, reduce future cooperation. When intervention is necessary, police can take steps to minimize the risk of crowd reactance and escalation (cf. Bürger, 2024a). Mere officer presence at assemblies is sometimes perceived as coercive police action, particularly if wearing protective equipment, including helmets, face shields, and body armor (Stott et  al., 2008). Since the police themselves (often unconsciously and through presence alone) can provoke crowd reactance, it is important to recognize and actively counter this dynamic. Returning to rational choice theory (cf. Sect. 4), reducing provocations in crowds through positive interactions and avoidance of aggressive signaling (including displays of tactical equipment like armored vehicles and batons) can significantly reduce risks of escalation. The disarming dimension focuses on the way police go about seeking compliance. Both what police ask crowds to do, and how they ask them to do it are important. The wording police choose, and the person who delivers the message, can influence crowd cooperation. For example, ultimatums are more likely to trigger reactance. Saying, “DO NOT go into the street or you will be arrested,” is more likely to provoke aggression than a less confrontational message, like “Please stay

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away from the street to ensure your safety and the safety of those around you.” Additionally, messages from less authoritative sources (e.g., a trusted assembly leader, a group spokesperson, or a police liaison officer in soft uniform) are more likely to result in calm and voluntary compliance than harsh orders issued directly by unknown officials (Pennebaker & Sanders, 1976). Two key factors help police to be disarming: strategy and training. First, adopting an overarching strategy that promotes open communication and face-to-face contact between officers and the crowd can increase cooperation. For example, the Swedish police deploy a dialogue police unit to act as mediators between the incident commanders and the crowd (Holgersson, 2010; Holgersson & Knutsson, 2011). Police should seek similar strategies that promote mindsets and build accountability structures around de-escalation practices. Second, if we agree that positive communication is an essential tactical approach to promoting conflict resolution, then officers must be trained to successfully engage in these practices. Defusing conflicts through communication and relationship building is a skillset. Officers must be trained and empowered to engage in dialogue with assembly participants and develop creative solutions to calm potentially volatile crowd dynamics. Training content can be found in decades-old persuasion techniques, including the use of cleverness and humor to defuse tensions (Coates, 1972), in police de-­ escalation techniques known as verbal judo (Thompson & Jenkins, 1993), and in case studies of police operations that incorporate the pillars of procedural justice (fairness, transparency, citizen input, and impartiality; Mazerolle et  al., 2013; Tankebe, 2013). Police officers, like all other professionals, need to develop skillsets to gain compliance from uncooperative persons, particularly when facing antagonistic or hostile crowd members. In summary, we can measure attempts to be disarming by the extent to which police use noncoercive tactics and resolve conflicts primarily through skilled communication. Because there is often a difference between what the police can (legally) do and what they should do, police mindset and skillsets are particularly important in promoting peaceful interactions at assemblies. The adverse effects of police use of force are significant, particularly when less coercive measures have not been considered or attempted. While peaceful conflict resolution is desired, police use of force is sometimes necessary to prevent harm and protect rights. The third dimension of the RDFC interaction model explains how best to use force at assemblies.

6.3 Third RDFC Dimension: Focused The focused dimension of the RDFC interaction model guides police action when preventive, proactive approaches have failed to stop all crowd members from engaging in harm. Active threats require police intervention to protect persons and property. Yet, when police intervene to prevent harm at assemblies, they often face intense media scrutiny and public backlash when seemingly innocent parties are injured. So how should police address threats in crowds? Being focused requires

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police to carefully consider who will be the subject of intervention, particularly any use of force, and how to avoid impacting uninvolved or nonthreatening crowd participants. Police use of force against an entire assembly is rarely justified. Not every person in a crowd poses a threat, even if many participants are hostile or a riot breaks out. If police fail to use force only on those actively engaged in violence or other dangerous behaviors, their actions will inevitably incur unintended collateral damage. For example, when police deploy tear gas in the middle of a crowd or shoot less lethal weapons in the general direction of a crowd, all crowd members are at risk of injury, regardless of their individual behaviors. Negative public reactions (and costly lawsuits) follow news stories about vulnerable (e.g., paraplegic in a wheelchair), uninvolved (e.g., a person standing away from and observing a crowd), or peaceful (e.g., individuals conducing a sit-in) people who suffer serious physical injury because of police intervention. A focused approach is a differentiated approach. Crowds are complex. They consist of individuals and small groups of people who have different opinions and intentions. When police report that a crowd has become violent, they have likely observed many people actively engaged in violence. Yet, it is rare for all people in a crowd to behave violently or act in unison. Tactical use of force decisions that fail to differentiate between violent and nonviolent individuals often have disastrous consequences. Perceiving all people in crowds as “the same” promotes over- or misuse of high-­ profile policing tactics: heavy uniformed police presence, police in riot gear, and armored vehicles. It can also hinder communication and opportunities for positive interactions between police and crowd members (Reicher et al., 2007). It detracts from the need to remain focused, encouraging forceful tactics against all crowd members (e.g., throwing tear gas into a large crowd to attempt to disrupt a few agitators). This type of coercive police response escalates the potential for violence in the crowd. Overly aggressive and unfocused (indiscriminate) force tactics are likely to be perceived as unnecessary and unjust. Initially, peaceful crowd members become more willing to engage in confrontation and become hostile toward police. In summary, when police determine that forceful intervention is necessary, it is important that they first differentiate between offenders and those who are essentially peaceful (even if antagonistic). Police focus can be judged by the extent to which officers limit intervention (especially use of force) to those who are actively causing harm. A focused approach is more likely to be both legally and morally justifiable. It also prevents avoidable reactance and other processes that increase crowd aggression and the likelihood of targeted violence against officers.

6.4 Fourth RDFC Dimension: Consistent To reap the benefits of being perceived as reasonable, disarming, and focused, police must continually demonstrate their commitment to fair and just policing at assemblies. It is important that police align their approach with all dimensions of

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the model and answer positively when asked, “Do we always act according to the same principles?” The success of the RDFC interaction model depends upon consistent police action. Consistent action builds trust. High levels of public trust increase voluntary cooperation with police (Tyler & Huo, 2002). In highly volatile contexts, like assemblies, trust is particularly important. The public must trust that police will consistently act to ensure safety and protect fundamental rights (be reasonable), use the least intrusive measures possible while communicating openly and honestly (be disarming), and only use force against those who cause or attempt to cause harm (be focused). When police behave erratically, they erode public trust, particularly if they use highly coercive tactics. Like unfocused action, erratic responses inspire defiant and hostile behavior toward police. Erratic police intervention fosters confusion and decreases acceptance of personal responsibility. People are more likely to attribute police intervention against them as the result of luck or fate, rather than the consequences of their own behaviors (Colvin, 2000). Rather than believing, “I was arrested because I caused harm,” people attribute their circumstances to external forces, “I was arrested because I was unlucky and got caught this time.” Perceptions of inconsistency diminish the deterrent effect of police. Alternatively, predictable responses and consequences enhance police credibility (Tyler & Jackson, 2013). Police consistency better deters criminal action by potential offenders. By extension, it increases the effectiveness of police at assemblies. As such, it is important that police executives ensure consistency across all crowd management policies, trainings, and approved tactics to avoid officer confusion and repetitively reinforce the policing principles promoted by the RDFC interaction model. In summary, police consistency can be judged by the extent to which officers align their actions with the principles of the RDFC interaction model across time and circumstances. Being consistent allows police to foster trust and cooperation while reinforcing behavioral expectations and personal accountability. Steps taken to routinize reasonable, disarming, and focused officer actions (e.g., creating standards and training to align officer tactics and mindsets with these principles) can help police achieve better policing outcomes at assemblies.

6.5 Summary The RDFC interaction model draws from crime prevention theories to identify practical approaches for policing assemblies. The model supports evidence presented throughout this book and provides a framework to explain the success (or failure) of specific police action at assemblies. We offer a final example to illustrate the importance of the model’s various dimensions: Dimensions of the RDFC interaction model in practice Riots have been declared. But what does that mean? In this case, from within a gathering of 5000, people are throwing stones and bottles at police officers.

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Smaller groups are trying to breach barriers, presumably to attack another demonstration group. A ringleader—a person who is coordinating the group’s actions—is identified. Certainly, the police must act to prevent harm, in this case against officers, and protect the rights of other demonstration groups (reasonableness dimension). However, police might believe crowd cooperation and effective communication are no longer possible under these circumstances. Is this true? Self-policing has broken down in some parts of the assembly, but not all 5000 people are acting violently. It is more likely that most people do not approve of the violent behavior demonstrated by individuals and smaller groups, or at the very least, realize that this is inappropriate and punishable behavior. At this critical juncture, crowd communication is vitally important. Police must clearly communicate their reasons for intervention and plan of action (moving from a less coercive to a more coercive response, proportional to the immediate threat) to prevent misinterpretation of police action (disarming dimension). Police must only intervene against the people and conditions causing harm. Under current conditions, it will be difficult to catch and arrest every offender moving within the crowd. Chasing after them will likely provoke reactance from the larger crowd. Focusing on a few of the most violent individuals or the ringleader has a higher chance of success, particularly if police use special arrest teams who coordinate their efforts with undercover officers in the crowd (focused dimension). As a principle, even in such chaotic situations, the police must radiate calm professionalism. This is best accomplished by tactfully deploying forces to achieve targeted objectives (arrest the ringleader or, ideally, anyone involved in committing harm) without negatively impacting uninvolved persons or groups. Consideration of whether action is necessary, what type of intervention is most appropriate, and how to minimize collateral damage must occur throughout the course of events (consistency dimension). Overly aggressive and sweeping shows of force are yesterday’s tools; they strain police–community relations (Tyler & Jackson, 2013). These approaches are appropriate in such a small proportion of situations, that police must be able to execute smart, creative, communicative, and cooperative solutions. The RDFC dimensions offer guidance to achieve this objective. Table 3 presents a summary of the model’s dimensions and goals, as well as crowd perceptions and behavior stemming from the approach. The RDFC interaction model has wide-reaching applications. Although beyond the scope of our chapter, it can be applied to all police–public interactions. Every police encounter matters; even brief interactions can shape a person’s attitude toward the police (Mazerolle et al., 2013). To the degree that the model’s application helps to improve the outcomes of potentially volatile police interactions, it serves to protect officers and keep them out of harm’s way. Therefore, agency-wide adoption of these dimensions as guiding principles could improve the quality of police interactions beyond assemblies. Incorporating these principles across all police training is key.

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Table 3  RDFC dimensions at a glance according to Eck and Madensen (2017, p. 393) Dimension Goal Reasonable Restrict as few rights as possible Disarming Minimize the use of aggression and force Focused Target only perpetrators and specific threats Consistency Set and follow principles and standards Fig. 3  4D tactic (Herold, 2019)

Crowd perception Own rights are not threatened Response does not cause fear, tension, or anxiety Measures seem justified and are accepted Police act predictably and are trustworthy

Achieved behavior Laws are respected Calm, positive reactions to and views of police action Police intervention is not hindered or disrupted Cooperation and trust between crowd and police

Disarm

Detect

4D Deter

Defuse

7 4D Tactic The 4D tactic (see Fig. 3) is a guide for advanced crowd management training. It describes four officer skillsets that, when applied in the context of assemblies, can increase crowd safety. This guide promotes basic skills found in other police trainings, including terrorism prevention (Freilich et al., 2018) crisis intervention, and mental health response (Rogers et al., 2019). Moreover, in almost all other chapters in this book, you will find these tactics as examples of good practice. The 4D tactic seeks to increase officers’ abilities to: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Detect conditions and behaviors likely to lead to violence Disarm crowd members to elicit assistance and ongoing cooperation Deter harmful behaviors by focusing on numerous “touchpoints” Defuse tensions that can instigate negative police–public interactions

7.1 Detect We argued earlier that police can use crime prevention methods to address dangerous crowd behaviors. But police first need training to identify (detect) dangerous crowd conditions before they can identify and implement the most appropriate crime prevention measures. Proactive intervention first requires officers to detect when and where crowd violence is likely to occur. These skills develop from experience, as officers directly observe crowd dynamics that lead to violence and how crowds react to different police interventions. This experience creates useful cognitive models that enable

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experienced officers to assess complex situations quickly and correctly, (i.e., to intervene before a situation escalates or recognize that a situation is not dangerous). However, experienced officers and novice officers assess situations differently (Ho, 1994), and therefore police training to identify potentially harmful conditions and behaviors can help improve police response in the crowd. For example, research shows that place characteristics like temperature, noise level, and seating arrangements can influence crowd behavior. Event characteristics like crowd demographics, assembly duration, and crowd density matter. Security personnel experience and communication skills can also impact crowd dynamics (see Madensen et al., 2008 for a more comprehensive list of potential triggers of violence). Misinterpretation of crowd behaviors due to stereotyping or heightened officer arousal (Kahn et al., 2018) can be avoided by training officers to recognize and react to genuine violence indicators. Officers who can quickly detect potentially harmful conditions and behaviors can better address dangerous crowd dynamics.

7.2 Disarm Julius Erving, known as Dr. J, was a famous U.S. basketball player. He once said, “With the crowds on your side, it’s easier to play up to your potential.” The same is true for those who police assemblies. If a large portion of the crowd unites against officers, police crowd management efforts are more likely to fail (Stott & Reicher, 1998). When crowds side with police, it is easier for police to ensure crowd safety. Police who gain crowd support are better able to prevent or quickly stop crowd violence and other dangerous behaviors. To achieve this support and build trustful relationships, officers must be trained to intentionally communicate with participants in a disarming manner by being open, friendly, and honest. During the crowd process (during assembly, gathering, and dispersal), positive police–public interactions can create “force multipliers” (Ayling, 2007). Force multipliers include people who directly assist police, openly support police intervention, or act on their own to discourage others from committing a crime (i.e., engage in self-policing). Brief positive personal interactions between police and crowd members, including friendly acknowledgment (e.g., “Hello”), polite conversation (e.g., “Who are you rooting for? Good luck at the game today.”), and assistance (e.g., “Do you need help finding your way?”) are opportunities to cultivate force multipliers, assess suspicious persons, and garner intelligence from crowd members. Thus, police engagement is a remarkably powerful tool and should replace less effective policing approaches, including silent and distant observation. Training officers to positively communicate with people, particularly when outnumbered in large assemblies, is an effective policing strategy, strongly aligned with community expectations of modern policing (cf. esp. also Bürger, 2024b).

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7.3 Deter Problem-oriented policing, or POP, (Goldstein, 1979, 1990) helps police apply environmental criminology principles to prevent (deter) crime. This policing strategy encourages police action beyond strict application of the law. POP instructs police to identify a specific problem, conduct detailed analyses of the problem’s causes and conditions, explore creative solutions—including those that do not involve police intervention, and then assess whether the solutions worked. POP offers a particularly helpful method for deterring problematic crowd behavior. It draws police attention to the two reasonableness criteria (from the RDFC interaction model). First, police focus on preventing harm. Police intervene when necessary to ensure public safety, including before crimes occur, rather than simply reacting to crime and disorder. POP’s basic assumptions underscore the idea that reactive crowd monitoring and response (crowd control) is less effective than proactive intervention (crowd management). Second, emphasizing analysis-driven solutions almost always requires early and on-going engagement with crowd members and other stakeholders. The goal is to avoid traditional crowd control tactics in favor of measures that leverage external partnerships (e.g., involving assembly leaders or concert promoters in the problem-solving process). Working together to find common, creative solutions, will ultimately build trust and positively impact all involved parties. The SCP framework, introduced earlier in this chapter (cf. Sect. 5), can help guide POP analyses and identify ways to deter unwanted behaviors. SCP focuses on how people perceive their immediate environment and is used to block criminal opportunities. Based on rational choice theory and supported by extensive empirical evidence, SCP attempts to prevent crime by altering five dimensions of perception (increasing effort and risk, reducing rewards and provocations, and removing excuses, cf. Sect. 4). Crowd member perceptions can be actively reshaped using one or more of the 25 SCP techniques (Cornish & Clarke, 2003; see also www.popcenter.org). The most effective SCP interventions are highly tailored to well-defined problems and can be implemented at one or more of the five assembly formation stages: 1. The initial planning stage involves early steps and decisions taken to organize assemblies, including the date, time, and other arrangements made by event organizers. 2. The pre-assembly preparation stage occurs immediately prior to the event and involves organization activities needed to carry out plans developed during initial planning. 3. The assembly process stage involves the movement of people to a pre-planned location, typically on the day of the event. 4. The assembled gathering stage occurs when the crowd has gathered, and event activities are taking place. 5. The dispersal process stage is the reverse of the assembly process and involves the movement of people away from the event location.

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Rather than simply focusing on policing at the gathering location and during the event, Table 4 shows how SCP interventions can be used to address various hazards at each assembly formation stage and deter criminal behavior. The row headings show the five SCP dimensions, and column headings describe the five crowd stages. The examples show the benefits of partnering with other groups, including event planners, crowd organizers and leaders, and property or building owners who plan the activities and control the environmental conditions where people gather. The table shows prevention approaches that are applicable to some gatherings but not others, emphasizing the need to train police to adopt a problem- and event-specific approach. A more advanced approach to identifying intervention points, beyond the five general crowd stages, involves using crime scripts (Cornish, 1994). A script analysis, used to analyze and prevent various crime types (Leclerc, 2017), identifies each “step” an offender takes in the course of committing a crime. In crowds, each step is a “touchpoint,” or an opportunity for police or others to deter a potential offender (or disarm crowd members, as discussed in the previous section). For example, crowd movement at a large sporting event. The participants’ script might include nine or more intervention points during the assembly phase alone, including: Table 4  Situational crime prevention at events on the phenomenon of assaults SCP dimensions Increase effort Increase risk Ban entry Gain owner for certain permission to groups conduct camera surveillance Preparation Select Set up camera reliable systems in service/ suitable security locations personnel Crowd stages Planning

Assembly

Search bags at entrance

Point out monitoring

Gathering

Confiscate prohibited items (large flags/glass bottles) Protect barriers between rival groups

Deploy security personnel in the area

Dispersal

Deploy security and cameras along departure routes

Reduce rewards Deny assembly permits for inappropriate social media messaging “Scrub” assembly area of hazards (e.g., removeable or ignitable items/ structures) Monitor and consistently enforce compliance (remove disruptive participants)

Remove excuses Establish clear rules: anyone who “makes trouble” is expelled Broadcast rules

Reduce provocations Ensure adequate space for anticipated crowd size

Provide clear signposting, friendly security staff Prohibit alcohol serving and consumption

Monitor separate use of arrival routes

Create visual and structural separation between rival groups

Prevent group mixing

Clearly identify Monitor dispersal routes separate use of dispersal routes

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1 . Being directed by a traffic officer. 2. Paying a parking attendant. 3. Being directed to a particular parking space by parking personnel. 4. Interacting with parking security. 5. Encountering police securing the venue entrance. 6. Passing through metal detectors. 7. Passing through security personnel using a hand-held detection wand. 8. Having bags checked. 9. Having admission tickets scanned. Police training can demonstrate how to conduct script analyses and consider how common crowd activities, including pedestrian movement (Crociani et  al., 2016) and checkpoint access (Aros-Vera et al., 2020), can be designed to minimize hazards. Identifying additional intervention points gives police additional opportunities to deter harmful crowd behaviors.

7.4 Defuse We, as many other authors in this book, have already emphasized the importance of communication as a de-escalation strategy, especially when dealing with large crowds. De-escalation involves more than seeking cooperation. It involves purposefully defusing conflict. Research on effective police de-escalation is still relatively sparse (Engel et al., 2020). Still, we know that such techniques have been successfully applied in other fields, including nursing—a field traditionally dominated by women requiring unarmed staff to regularly manage agitated people with mental illness, in pain, or in crisis (Price & Baker, 2012). Recent research reports that officer de-escalation training has significantly reduced officer use of force, suspect injuries, and officer injuries (Engel et  al., 2022). Advanced training to help officers apply de-escalation techniques to avoid and defuse crowd tensions is essential. In summary, the 4D tactic offers a blueprint for advanced frontline and supervisory police officer crowd management training. It recommends skill-building to increase officers’ ability to detect potential harm, disarm crowd members, deter unwanted behaviors, and defuse volatile situations. Using evidence-based practices will improve officers' reactions to dynamic situations and reduce crime in crowds.

8 Conclusion Preventing crime is a challenging and complex task. In the context of crowds, it becomes even more complex. We acknowledge that not all police efforts, no matter how closely they align with the theories and frameworks we have presented, will prevent all crowd violence. However, these ideas bring us closer to engaging in

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police work that will be most effective in preventing crime at assemblies and improving officer safety, while promoting public perceptions of police legitimacy. We end our chapter with a short discussion of four key approaches for effective crowd policing. These approaches are drawn from the crime prevention literature and associated theories, as well as the RDFC Interaction Model and 4D Tactic for police training presented in this chapter. The following offers immediate steps police can take to improve crowd crime prevention and response: Key Approach #1: Block opportunities with non-enforcement mechanisms whenever possible From the crime prevention perspective, police should seek alternatives to punitive police responses, including arrests and use of force, to maintain crowd safety. Situational crime prevention offers 25 techniques for blocking crime opportunities by changing individuals’ perceptions of the effort, risk, reward, provocations, and excuses associated with engaging in harmful behaviors. A review of these techniques and the selection of interventions after systematic crowd analyses, allows for prevention efforts that remove the need for police enforcement and costly criminal prosecution. Often these prevention techniques require partnerships and encourages dialogue between police, crowd attendees, and other involved parties prior to assemblies. These interactions offer additional opportunities to build rapport and trust between police and the public. Key Approach #2: Align policy, training, and tactics with the RDFC interaction model The goal of the RDFC interaction model is to draw attention to the dimensions of police action that influence police–crowd interactions. To the degree that police action is perceived to be rational (reasonable), cooperative (disarming), differentiated (focused), and predictable (consistent), people are more likely to voluntarily cooperate with police, and motivation for resistance and aggression is reduced within crowds. Consequently, efforts to revise police policies, modify training, and improve crowd intervention tactics should be conducted with the goal of closely aligning police action with the four dimensions of the RDFC interaction model. Increased alignment will improve the quality of police–crowd interactions and avoid outcomes that hinder police efforts to build trust and cooperation with the public. Key Approach #3: Analyze crowd dynamics and crowd scripts to direct police interventions Using the problem-oriented policing approach, careful analysis of crowd dynamics will help to identify the most effective police interventions. Nuisances and context matter when dealing with the complexities of policing large crowds. Detailed analyses of the conditions facilitating specific problems will offer insight into which crime prevention techniques can block opportunities for harmful behaviors. To further expand opportunities for intervention, crowd attendee script analyses can identify additional touchpoints or situations in which police and others can act to deter potential offenders. Crowd dynamics and attendee script analyses

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promote proactive intervention and lessen the need for reactive forms of crowd control. Key Approach #4: Make crowd management goals explicit to gain public cooperation and trust Police risk miscommunication and generating distrust among crowds if they fail to effectively communicate their primary intentions. If actions are aligned with the RDFC interaction model, police will be engaged in efforts to prevent harm and protect rights (be rational), de-escalate volatile situations (be cooperative), protect public safety (be differentiated), and build public trust and confidence (be predictable). These intentions must be explicitly communicated. Every event is an opportunity to make these intentions known, both internally (through agency policies, trainings, and briefings) and externally (through the type of tactics used to maintain crowd safety). Officers trained to adopt the skillsets highlighted by the 4D tactic will be more effective at maintaining crowd safety and demonstrating a commitment to positive police–crowd interactions and outcomes.

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Madensen, T. D., Eck, J. E., & United States Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (2006). Student party riots. U.S.  Dept. of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Madensen, T., Eck, J. E., & United States Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (2008). Spectator violence in stadiums. U.S.  Dept. of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. Madensen, T., Heskett, C., & Liebermann, D. (2012). Predicting crowd behavior: A response– reaction matrix. Präsentiert auf: International seminar on environmental criminology and crime analysis (ECCA) 21st international symposium, Stavern, Norwegen. Mazerolle, L., Antrobus, E., Bennett, S., & Tyler, T.  R. (2013). Shaping citizen perceptions of police legitimacy: A randomized field trial of procedural justice. Criminology, 51(1), 33–63. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-­9125.2012.00289.x McCluskey, J. (2003). Police requests for compliance: Coercive and procedurally just tactics. LFB Scholarly. McPhail, C. (1991). The Myth of the Madding Crowd. Aldine. Pennebaker, J.  W., & Sanders, D.  Y. (1976). American graffiti: Effects of authority and reactance arousal. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2(3), 264–267. https://doi. org/10.1177/014616727600200312. SAGE. Perspektive Online. (2019). Polizeigewalt in Kassel (20.7.19): Polizist spritzt Pfefferspray auf passive Sitzblockade. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F913bK_hEcs. Abgerufen am 29.01.2022. Plant, J. B., & Scott, M. S. (2011). Trick or treat? Policing halloween in Madison, Wisconsin. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Preventing crowd violence (Crime prevention studies) (Vol. 26, pp. 159–190). Lynne Rienner. Price, O., & Baker, J. (2012). Key components of de-escalation techniques: A thematic synthesis. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 21(4), 310–319. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1447-­0349.2011.00793.x Reicher, S. D. (1996). “The Battle of Westminster”: Developing the social identity model of crowd behaviour in order to explain the initiation and development of collective conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 115–134. Reicher, S., Stott, C., Cronin, P., & Adang, O. (2004). An integrated approach to crowd psychology and pubic order policing. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 24(4), 558–572. Reicher, S., Stott, C., Drury, J., Adang, O., Cronin, P., & Livingstone, A. (2007). Knowledge-based public order policing: Principles and practice. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 1(4), 403–415. https://doi.org/10.1093/police/pam067 Rogers, M.  S., McNiel, D.  E., & Binder, R.  L. (2019). Effectiveness of police crisis intervention training programs. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online. https://doi.org/10.29158/ JAAPL.003863-­19 Schattka, C. (2024). Interpretive regimes of violence in action. The “Welcome to Hell” demonstration during the G20 Summit in Hamburg 2017. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Sherman, L. (1993). Defiance, deterrence, and irrelevance: A theory of the criminal sanction. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 30(4), 445–473. Sousa, W. H., & Madensen, T. D. (2016). Citizen acceptance of police interventions: an example of CCTV surveillance in Las Vegas, Nevada. Criminal Justice Studies, 29(1), 40–56. https://doi. org/10.1080/1478601X.2015.1088230. Routledge. Stott, C., Adang, O., Livingstone, A., & Schreiber, M. (2008). Tackling football hooliganism: A quantitative study of public order, policing and crowd psychology. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 14(2), 115–141. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013419. American Psychological Association.

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Stott, C., & Reicher, S.  D. (1998). Crowd action as intergroup process: Introducing the police perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 209–529. Taine, H. (1876). L’Ancien régime “les origines de la France contemporaine”. Tankebe, J. (2013). Viewing things differently: The dimensions of public perceptions of police legitimacy. Criminology, 51(1), 103–135. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-­9125.2012.00291.x Thompson, G. J., & Jenkins, J. B. (1993). Verbal judo: The gentle art of persuasion. Quill Morrow. Tyler, T. (1990). Why people obey the law: Procedural justice, legitimacy, and compliance. Yale University Press. Tyler, T. R., & Huo, Y. J. (2002). Trust in the law: Encouraging public cooperation with the police and courts (Trust in the law: Encouraging public cooperation with the police and courts) (p. xvi, 248). Russell Sage. Tyler, T. R., & Jackson, J. (2013). Future challenges in the study of legitimacy and criminal justice. In J. Tankebe & A. Liebling (Eds.), Legitimacy and criminal justice. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198701996.003.0006 Dr. Tamara D.  Herold  currently serves as a Senior Advisor at the U.S.  National Institute of Justice and is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA.  She received her PhD with an emphasis in Crime Prevention from the University of Cincinnati, USA. She uses the crime science perspective to study the criminological impact of the design and management of places, as well as crowd and neighborhood dynamics associated with violence. Her publications translate theory and research evidence into practice and policy. Her co-­ edited book (with Johannes Knutsson), Preventing Crowd Violence, has been translated into foreign languages to guide international police practice. Herold researches, develops, and delivers police and security crowd management training across the world. She has published numerous practitioner-focused research papers, including two Problem-Oriented Policing Guides funded by the COPS Office on preventing crowd-related violence. Dr. Colonel Bernd Bürger  joined the Bavarian State Police, Germany, in 1997 and has managed assemblies and large events since 2000. He was responsible for managing camps and assemblies at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen G7 summits in 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, he was the commanding officer of the Dachau special public order unit (evidence gathering and arrest unit) where he was also deployed “on the front line” at the Hamburg G20 summit. He has served as head of the Police Operations Department at the Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police since 2020. In addition to his practical experience, he is a renowned public order scholar, lecturing in various German and European states. He also was a speaker at the 2018 International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting and 2019 at the Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, together with Tamara Herold and Ryan Lee. He holds a master’s degree in criminology and police science from the Ruhr University Bochum (ECTS A), a master’s degree in Public Administration—Police Management (ECTS A) as well as a PhD in Public Administration from the German Police University.

How Collective Violence Emerges and Escalates Otto M. J. Adang and Martina Schreiber

Abstract  The chapter links theory and practice of public order management. Based on systematic observations of mass events where violence occurred (or was feared), an evidence-based model for the initiation and escalation of collective violence is presented. Based on this model, strategic principles for the police management of mass events are described, which are already successfully applied in several countries.

1 Introduction In every society, there are sporadic and sometimes violent outbreaks of collective violence, whether in the form of “urban riots” (e.g. the widespread riots in France in 2005, the 2011 England riots), “soccer violence”, escalated demonstrations (e.g. in the context of lockdown protests against restrictive measures taken in several countries to mitigate the COVID-19 epidemic), and festivities or celebrations (e.g. in the context of New Year’s Eve) that get out of hand. Over the years, analyses of what are considered excesses in the realm of “crowd behaviour” have generated controversy (Adang, 2011a). As early as 1972, the American sociologist Richard Berk noted that the previously extensive social science literature on so-called crowd behaviour was mostly based on limited information and unsubstantiated interpretations (Berk, 1970). Nearly 20 years later, American sociologist and collective behaviour researcher Clark McPhail (1997, p. 35) pointed out that: “For more than a century, the study of crowds has been stymied by the methodological stereotype that ‘systematic research is not possible.’” Similarly, Frosdick and Marsh (2005), in O. M. J. Adang (*) University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands Police Academy of the Netherlands, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] M. Schreiber Meschede, Germany © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_3

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their excellent review of the literature on soccer hooliganism, note how little of this literature is based on direct observations, let alone systematic observations of soccer violence. As Frosdick and Marsh (2005, p. 31) aptly note, “this lack of objective facts in theory and research on soccer hooliganism has bedevilled the debate since the 1960s.” And it is not just the lack of objective facts. Little attention is paid to the fact that collective violence occurs in an intergroup context. Following several other authors (e.g. della Porta & Reiter, 1998; McPhail et al., 1998; Waddington, 1987), Stott and Reicher (1998a, p. 510) point out that: “When it comes to psychological explanations for crowd behaviour and—in particular—crowd violence, there is a tendency to focus almost exclusively on one party: the crowd itself. Psychological studies of the police or the army in such encounters are almost entirely conspicuous by their absence.” Stott and Reicher (1998a, b) point to the need to study the intergroup dynamics of crowd events and to include the role and perspective of the police in doing so. From a theoretical perspective, explanations for collective violence have traditionally focused on its supposedly pathological, irrational, and seemingly chaotic nature. According to various theories, people in a crowd lose their “ego consciousness” and the usual moral inhibitions and restraints are dropped. According to Sighele (1892) and Le Bon (1895), it was—and is—often assumed that in a crowd or mass of people there is no longer rational behaviour, but on the contrary a (primitive) tendency prevails to do what others do. Suppressed desires come out in the behaviour. A transformation is said to take place in which people change their behaviour simply due to the fact that they are part of a crowd. In this context, the so-called de-individuation theory by Zimbardo (1969) is often cited. According to the de-individuation theory, the excitement and anonymity of the group lead to uninhibited behaviour and the normal limits that people impose on themselves are lost. Through the assumed psychological processes, individual identity should be lost and individuals should become extraordinarily susceptible to suggestion and incitement by “leaders”. Characteristic of this view is that any crowd (a collection of people) can become a “mob” through the actions of leader figures, the appearance of a hated person or object, acts of violence, police action, or lack thereof. In many countries, over time, these ideas have become the basis for the education and training of police units deployed in (potential) riot situations (e.g. Schweingruber, 2000). Against this background, Adang (1998) reported on an observational study of collective violence in the Netherlands. The focus of the study was on how violence emerges in collective settings, especially soccer or protest events, and on the conditions that promote escalations. To study collective violence, interactions around protest events and soccer matches were systematically observed. The word interaction is important here because the basic assumption was that violence always involves at least one actor and one target and that behaviour cannot be understood without considering the interaction between them. Aside from the focus on interaction, the study differed from previous work in a number of other aspects due to its quantitative and comparative nature. For example, the study was not limited to

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escalated riot situations, but included a range of comparable events that were considered threats to public order and where violence was seen as a real possibility. Some resulted in rioting or unrest, while others did not. A total of 700 hours of direct observations of crowd behaviour and interactions were tape-recorded. The first aim of the study was to provide a structured and contextualized description of violent interactions surrounding protest and soccer events. The second objective was to analyse factors in the interaction and its immediate context that appeared to be associated with the emergence (or initiation) and escalation of collective violence. There was no assumption that the factors associated with the initiation of violence would necessarily be the same as those associated with the escalation (Adang, 2011a). Adang (2018) details the methodological aspects involved and how particular attention was paid to issues of sampling and measuring behaviour. This included overcoming the challenges of structured versus participant observations of collective events such as demonstrations and soccer matches. It proved possible to conduct meaningful systematic observations of episodes of collective violence in a reliable manner (more complete and detailed than police logs or newspaper reports) without compromising the physical safety of the observer. Although direct outbreaks of violence are relatively rare, it proved possible to select events for observation that have an increased risk of collective violence. Direct systematic observation of collective violence provides data that cannot be obtained by other means (such as surveys, interviews, and participant observation), data that are critical to understanding how collective violence is triggered and escalates. A limitation of the methodology, of course, is that structural causes or the psychology of collective violence are not considered. The current methodology focuses on the short-term processes associated with violent behaviour in collective situations (Adang, 2018). The results of the systematic observations: 137 events that were considered a threat to public order can be summarized as follows: Although protest events and soccer matches represent very different situations for collective behaviour, there are clear similarities: In both soccer and protest events, even in highly escalated incidents of collective violence, the relative number of people belonging to one of the groups involved actually engaging in violence is small. Collective violence rarely involves more than 1% of a group becoming violent (in extremely escalated situations, up to 10% of the same group may be actively involved in the violence), suggesting that violence is always the result of a (conscious or unconscious) decision-making process. In addition, the targets of violence do not appear to be randomly selected (suggesting that there is some meaningful relationship between the violence and the targets chosen), and in about half of the violent incidents there was no discernible potential “trigger” for initiating violence in the immediate context (Adang, 2011a). Based on these observational studies, we will present a model for the initiation and escalation of collective violence on the one hand (Sect. 2) and the implications of this model for public order policing on the other hand (Sect. 3). I will illustrate these implications with some practical examples (Sect. 4).

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2 The Initiation and Escalation of Collective Violence 2.1 The Initiation of Collective Violence With regard to the emergence and escalation of collective violence, we suggest that two types of violence must be distinguished in the initiation of collective violence (Adang, 2011a): 1. Violence that is associated with a clearly identifiable trigger. This type of violence is reactive—it is a response to specific elements or tensions in a situation, whether provocations by other fans or third parties, events on the field (in the case of soccer), police action, or some other identifiable trigger. Theoretically, this type of violence can easily be linked to familiar theories of aggression, e.g. aggression out of frustration (e.g. Berkowitz, 1989), competition for limited resources, or in response to threats. As with other forms of aggression, males are more likely to respond aggressively than females, and adolescents/young adults (persons aged 15–25) are more likely to respond aggressively than persons from other age groups. However, males from other age groups and females may also occasionally respond aggressively to certain triggers. The targets of violence may vary but are usually related to the trigger that preceded the behaviour (except in cases of redirected aggression). 2. Violence that is not associated with a clearly identifiable trigger. This type of violence is not reactive but seems to occur rather spontaneously. It is almost exclusively perpetrated by groups of male adolescents/young adults and is specifically directed against similar, rival groups of young men. The individuals and groups involved appear to actively seek opportunities to confront rival groups. Theoretically, this type of violence can be seen as another expression of the so-called young male syndrome (Wilson & Daly, 1985), the tendency of young men to take risks and be violent because they disregard the future in favour of short-term gains. Evidence suggests that this tendency is primarily a male attribute and is socially facilitated by the presence of peers who share the same goals. Violent confrontations between men are really about “face”, the dominance status, and what Goffman (1959) calls “self-expression in a highly competitive social milieu”. The involvement of young men in particular in episodes of collective violence is well documented in the literature. The distinction between the two types of violence is not absolute, and an obvious overlap arises from the fact that young male syndrome can also occur in response to triggers that may seem trivial to outsiders.

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2.2 The Escalation of Collective Violence However, different mechanisms are responsible for the further escalation of violence (Adang, 2011a): 1. First, there is the (perceived) risk of retaliation. It is clear from the observational data that only a small minority of a group engage in the riskiest behaviours, while the majority of participants choose lower-risk alternatives (yelling, gesturing, running away) or do not engage at all. Even among those who are violent, objects are thrown much more often than physical fights are fought, and aggression is directed at inanimate objects (fences, buses, trains) rather than people who can fight back. There is something contradictory about this, because the Young Male Syndrome is characterized by risk-taking behaviour, and the perpetration of violence involves just that. However, within this framework, individuals seem intent on avoiding “unnecessary” risk and reducing risk. The fact that young men, when violent, act in groups is in itself a form of risk reduction, as is the fact that they avoid or flee from confrontations they seem unable to win, as observed on several occasions. In some respects, the data show that violence became more likely when police were not present at high-risk locations. In addition, police were more often avoided than confronted, and, especially among fans, most confrontations with police occurred only after police had taken some type of coercive action. Violent fans and protesters regularly took steps to conceal their faces to make detection more difficult and to avoid identification and arrest. During the latter part of the study period, surveillance cameras were introduced in soccer stadiums. It was clear that violent fans rejected these cameras, preferring to remain anonymous to authorities who might hold them accountable for their behaviour. These risk-reducing attempts to maintain “anonymity” (to authorities, not to fellow fans!) should be distinguished from the so-called de-­ individuation effect of “anonymity”, for which there is no evidence (Postmes & Spears, 1998). Evidence for bounded rationality theory (“bounded rationality”, McPhail, 1991) combined with the relevance of opportunities to be violent with limited risk of escalation provides a link between collective violence and situational crime prevention principles (Clarke, 1995). 2. The second important escalation mechanism is the existence of “us versus them” antagonism. The more antagonistic the relationships between different groups, the higher the frequency of observed violence. In the context of this study, this was clearly the case for the relationships between rival fan groups and for the relationship between certain groups of demonstrators (“autonomous”/”black bloc”) and the police. Stott and Reicher (1998a, p. 510) claim that other studies show that: “[…] Crowd conflict characteristically arises when official agencies such as the police or the army intervene against unofficial mass action […].” Although the results of the observational study suggested that collective violence was not characteristically triggered by police action, collectively applied police coercive measures were often associated with an escalation of violence on the opposing side. The collective nature of these measures contributes to or

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e­ xacerbates (or may even create) an “us versus them” perspective, which can lead to more explicit ingroup/outgroup behaviour and more violence by individuals. Theoretically relevant here is the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM), which points out that collective “disorder” is enabled by the psychological salience of a common social identity among participants in a crowd (cf. also Bürger, 2024). The defining dimensions of this identity explain the normative boundaries of collective action (what people do) and the extent of participation (who participates and who does not) during a crowd event. It is argued that the dynamics of intergroup interaction are an essential component of the psychology of larger disputes. Stott and Reicher (e.g. 1998a) point out that when an originally heterogeneous crowd is treated as a homogeneous whole by the police, this causes members of the crowd to reconceptualize themselves as members of a common category, setting in motion a cycle of tension and escalating conflict.

2.3 Intermediate Conclusion: the Behaviour of People in Crowds These observations lead to the following conclusions regarding the behaviour of people in collective settings (Adang, 2011a): –– The agency in collective violence is clearly at the individual level: people make individual decisions and do not behave more or less uniformly (the “illusion of unanimity” mentioned by McPhail, 1991). This does not change the fact that individuals are fundamentally social beings and that their decisions are influenced by their social environment. In both protest events and soccer matches, the relevance of the immediate context and the interactive “action-reaction” nature of these processes is obvious. –– There is no reason to believe that in collective contexts the mere presence in a crowd increases the likelihood of violence: The vast majority of people in the observed cases of collective violence (which included some serious riots that made media headlines) were not violent at all. The literature indicates that there are reasons to believe that many of those who actively seek violence in collective settings are also more likely to use violence in other situations (see e.g. van Ham et al., 2017, 2019), and, of course, violence does not occur at all in most collective situations (the study described focused specifically on situations in which violence was considered more likely). –– There is no reason to believe that people in collective settings show a higher tendency to so-called emotional or irrational behaviour. On the contrary, even in violent collective situations, people clearly made choices and behaved in ways that made sense to themselves. The choices people made seemed consistent with the model of (bounded) rationality (cf. McPhail, 1991): they prepared, pursued goals, and clearly considered risks. There is every reason to believe that people’s behaviour in collective settings is influenced by the same factors that influence

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their “normal” everyday behaviour. Rather than behaving without norms, the data suggest that even in violent situations, certain norms seem to be considered, as shown by restrained behaviour (all-out violence is very rare), choice of “appropriate” goals, and examples of self-control. Moreover, both violent protesters and violent fans adhered to certain rules, the most important being to stick together and support each other during confrontations. In this respect, the results are consistent with Reicher (1984, 1996), who convincingly show that (perceived) norms become more rather than less important in collective situations, although the nature of the norms may vary.

2.4 The Predisposition Debate There is theoretical debate among various explanations for collective violence (Reicher, 1996; Stott & Reicher, 1998b), with one side arguing for the importance of predispositions. This perspective suggests that collective violence is a result of the gathering of violence-prone individuals (e.g. “hooligans”). This approach does not explain how and why collective violence erupts in some circumstances and not in others—despite the presence of these individuals. The other side argues for the need for a contextual, group dynamic understanding of collective violence. The arguments presented here on the initiation/escalation model support this latter approach in terms of the relevance of context, intergroup interaction, and intergroup relations. At the same time, it is clear that there are variations in individuals’ willingness to engage in violence, with some actively seeking opportunities to become violent without the need for external triggers (other than the presence of a rival group). The initiation/escalation model of collective violence is a first step towards combining these different theoretical approaches (Adang, 2011a). Work by Van Ham, Adang et al. (Adang & Van Ham, 2015; Van Ham et al., 2017, 2019) shows that each riot situation represents a unique intergroup context. In terms of the initiation/escalation model, there is a unique and dynamic mix of different (sub)groups with different social identities and with the presence or absence of young men with different inclinations and social backgrounds in situations with (potential) tensions and opportunities. Van Ham et al. (2019) examined the criminal careers of 438 individuals involved in acts of public violence. Using group-based models, they distinguished different criminal careers. Many of the violent offenders had no criminal history. In addition, there was a small group of violent offenders who had a high frequency of offending, both individual and group violence, and were violent in a variety of settings. Although differences in criminal career characteristics and violent offending between perpetrators of public violence are not in themselves sufficient to explain public violence, the findings make clear that a developmental life course perspective may be helpful in explaining involvement in collective violence. Van Ham et  al. argue that there are different categories of perpetrators of public violence whose behaviour is triggered by different processes. This helps explain the seemingly

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contradictory findings of previous studies and points to new avenues for future research on the intra- and intergroup dynamics of public violence. This would strike a middle ground in the group dynamics versus predisposition debate, in which both concepts have their place.

3 Implications for Police Work 3.1 Terminology Practitioners use different terms for public order interventions in connection with crowds. In order to understand police measures and to enable a holistic understanding, the strategic-tactical elements behind them are first briefly illuminated here. Crowd control and riot control are terms frequently used to refer to measures to limit or control the behaviour of groups of people, possibly with the use of force. It is however an illusion that one could completely control the behaviour of large gatherings of people. Crowd management is a better term, defined (by Fruin, 1993) as the systematic planning and monitoring of the orderly movement and assembly of people. When crowd management involves taking steps to restrict or limit the behaviour of crowds, it is known as crowd control (restricting or limiting group behaviour). Crowd management is required whenever large groups of people gather in a place, not just after incidents. When incidents or violent confrontations occur, these riots must be brought back under control (riot control). This way of dealing with riots is the traditional way of maintaining law and order, using force to try to restore order when it has been lost. Today’s public order professionals are concerned with public order management, which (by analogy with crowd management) encompasses much more (cf. Fig. 1). It can be defined as the systematic planning for (by definition especially in advance) and influencing of (especially during) gatherings and events in public spaces (regardless of the number of people gathering/gathered) where there is a certain risk of disturbing public order. The goal of public order management in this context is to prevent any conflict, especially riots. From this perspective, crowd management is a part of public order management. Crowd control (as a subset of crowd management measures) comes into play when restrictive or controlling interventions are needed. In a small minority of cases, these interventions involve the use of force to contain and stop riots. It is important to recognize that these concepts are not distinct temporal phases. They are intertwined and coexist. Public order management aims to maintain a state of general “order”, while riot control’s starting point is a specific incident of disorder. As Adang (2011b) indicates, the results of the studies described above have clear implications for the management of public order. To prevent collective violence, tensions should be avoided wherever possible and feasible. This requires supporting the legitimate activities and intentions of participants as much as possible and

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Public order management

Crowd management

Crowd control

Riot control

Fig. 1  Terminology explained (own illustration)

identifying potential tensions at an early stage. In addition, real-time monitoring and observation of events serve to notice instances where friction arises. Measures should be taken to prevent tensions or minimize their consequences as early as possible. This includes communicating with and informing participants in order to find out what moves them, to avoid misunderstandings about the measures taken, and to achieve conformity with the rules. Regarding groups of young men who seek confrontation, it will be important to identify and get to know them in order to be able to act on them at an early stage and make it clear to them what limits are set to their behaviour. Therefore, direct communication should also be made with these groups. For their risk perception, it should be clear to them (and others) what effective actions will be taken if they cross these boundaries. By getting to know them, their anonymity to authorities is reduced. As much as possible, one should avoid actions that would make confrontational ingroup/outgroup behaviour more likely by creating, emphasizing, or reinforcing an us-versus-them situation. Interaction and communication are important tactical tools in this regard. When violence does occur, it is critical to act in a timely manner and not wait for the situation to escalate and get out of control, and to do so in a focused and targeted manner that specifically targets those who cross boundaries.

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3.2 The Four Key Principles The observations of crowd behaviour and collective violence have led to the formulation of four knowledge-based key principles for public order and crowd management (Reicher et al., 2007), often referred to as strategic principles or conflict-reducing principles: be informed, facilitate, communicate, and differentiate. These now form principles for police action in various European countries, e.g. the Netherlands (Adang, 2009), Sweden (Adang, 2012; Holgersson & Knutsson, 2011), and the United Kingdom (HMIC, 2009). The four key principles for public order and crowd management can be described as follows: Be informed: Since groups act on the basis of social identities, and gatherings of people typically consist of multiple groups, it is of great practical importance to be informed (and educated) about the respective social identities: their values and norms, their goals and intentions, their understanding of what is right and appropriate, their prejudices and expectations of other groups, the history of interaction with these groups, and anything (dates, places, objects, forms of action) that has particular symbolic meaning. Information should focus not only on the plans of violent individuals (the typical goal of police intelligence), but also on understanding the social identities of the groups that will gather to understand what their goals are, whether and how to support them, and what actions would challenge them and make them sympathize with violent individuals in the crowd. The same efforts made to identify violent individuals should be made to understand group identity. Similarly, both factors should be given similar priority in briefings. Facilitate: Rather than preventing people from doing what they want to do and thereby frustrating them, the emphasis should be on support at all stages of the operation: Mission planning must identify the legitimate goals of the crowd (e.g. safely attending an event, protesting, expressing opinions or emotions) in order to consider how best to design interventions to help achieve those goals. If for some reason these objectives cannot be achieved, it is important not to simply react negatively, but to find creative ways (that will be perceived as such) to achieve them. If potential or actual risks force the police to set limits on the crowd, it is especially important to make this clear. At the same time, alternative ways should be shown how the legitimate goals can still be achieved. This is why communication is so important (see also below). Especially when violence breaks out, the temptation to control and restrict can become greater. At this point, a clear indication that the police facilitate collective goals and that violence threatens them can make the difference between escalation and de-­ escalation. Of course, this assumes that those responsible for security are not only trying to facilitate the goals of the crowd, but that the crowd sees it that way. This again points to the importance of communication. Communicate: One of the contradictions in public order management is that it is increasingly important to communicate with the crowd if you want to avoid a

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potentially conflictual situation, but that it is in these circumstances that the crowd is least likely to trust what security officials say. Especially if there is a long history of conflict, even attempting to explain facilitating measures can be perceived as dishonest and increase hostility. Therefore, how communication is done is also important. For example, instead of relying solely on police communication teams, one could also use individuals who are trusted and respected by groups within the crowd—preferably as “one of us”. Of course, it will be almost impossible to find individuals who are accepted by all groups in the crowd, but it is critical that they are not “self-appointed” or chosen for their connections to the authorities but are seen as representative by significant portions of the crowd (again, cultural knowledge of the groups in the crowd is critical; for a practical example of this, cf. Bürger, 2024). To be truly effective, these communicators or facilitators should be available and active from the beginning (or even before the event, cf. Schenk & Bornhausen, 2024). It is indicative of the balance between repressive and mediating strategies that there are large reserves of armored vehicles, batons, etc. that are rarely used, while far less attention is paid to communications technologies. Large screens, mobile communication systems, and social media communications could be more useful than water cannons at many mass events. Differentiate: It is important to be aware of the different identities of the gathered groups and their different ways of acting and reacting. It is even more important to act on this awareness and not treat all members of a crowd the same. A basic distinction that should be made is between what people actually do and not based on the category to which they (supposedly or not) belong. It is precisely when some people in the crowd begin to act in a hostile manner that it is important to treat the people in the crowd in a friendly manner. Just to stop the violence of the few, you have to be lenient towards the many. This is difficult because people tend to view other groups as homogeneous, so if some among them behave negatively, all will be viewed negatively. It is also difficult because the cost to the individual police officer (who is first in line) of treating someone with trust who is actually hostile is higher than treating them with hostility when they are actually trustworthy. To differentiate, more sophisticated tactics must be developed than it is normally the case, and differentiation is a consideration that should be incorporated into every tactical or strategic decision, training, planning, equipping, and crowd deployment.

3.3 The Appropriateness of Police Action One of the central factors in participants’ decisions (whether or not to engage in violence) is their perceived adequacy of police actions and interventions during events (Stott & Adang, 2009). Participants themselves are acutely aware of the risk they pose to public order, and often these assessments accurately reflect the actual level of risk and the overall level of disruption observed—ideally, the police also

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arrive at a similar assessment. The most effective way to prevent violent outbursts is to create a “balance” between the level of risk (as perceived by the participants themselves) and the police response (which hopefully reaches a similar conclusion with respect to the risk assessment and deploys appropriately coordinated measures). When such a balance is achieved, a culture of self-control emerges among participants, with violence-prone individuals marginalized and isolated. Anti-social behaviour is then not encouraged (in fact, it is often actively discouraged) and efforts are generally made to avoid conflict. If the balance is not achieved, this also has corresponding consequences: the perception of the inappropriateness of police action and increasing support for anti-social activities, and the emergence of uniform and comprehensive aggression.

3.4 Professional Risk Assessment The basis for appropriate police action is a professional risk analysis. Adang (2011b) found in a comparative study of England, Germany (North Rhine-Westphalia), and Sweden that none of the countries studied had a well-developed risk model. It was speculated that maybe police forces and authorities are looking in the wrong direction when they are trying to find a practicable model. The quest for an ever more elaborate and refined model that includes all potential risk factors inevitably leads to an unwieldy instrument that is not and will never be used in practice other than as a bureaucratic exercise on paper. Invariably, the “risk analysis models” turn into a long list of real or imagined “risk factors” with little structure and little or no theoretical foundation. In this respect, the initiation/escalation model of collective violence could serve as the basis for a more practical risk assessment model. Applying the model to a specific event, the following questions should be asked and answered by way of risk analysis in relation to collective violence: –– What are potential frictions in this event that could lead to irritation or frustration? –– Is there any information that known groups of young “habitual offender” males intend to attend the event and, if so, what are their intentions? –– In relation to this event: what seem to be opportunities for offending/violence? –– What are the social identities of the different (sub)groups attending the event, what are the relationships between these different (sub)groups and between these (sub)groups and police, authorities, or organizers, and what sensitivities/ antagonisms are involved? In answering these questions and performing the risk analysis, the specific nature and context of the event should be considered, such as infrastructure, types of individuals attending, and consumption of alcohol and drugs. When planning safety and security measures, the effects of these measures on the outcome of the risk analysis should be evaluated explicitly to avoid taking measures that are ineffective or counterproductive. As an example: applying measures intended for habitual offenders in an undifferentiated way to all participants/visitors may well lead to a perception of

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disproportionality and illegitimacy that can contribute to the initiation or escalation of incidents. Due to the dynamic nature of events and of developing risks, events and participants should be monitored continuously to: –– Identify actual and potential frictions manifesting themselves –– Identify whether known young “habitual offender” males are present and manifest themselves in a way that shows their intention to initiate incidents –– Identify opportunities for offending/violence and individuals manifesting themselves in a way that shows their intention to take advantage of these opportunities –– Identify the presence of different (sub)groups and their interaction As is evident from the nature of the questions and the items to be covered, a one-­ sided focus on habitual offenders should be avoided, as this ignores several important factors that contribute to the risk of an event. An approach should be taken to public events that reduces opportunities for violence to the greatest extent possible. To this end, it is worth exploring the potential of applying situational crime prevention principles to public events (cf. Herold & Bürger, 2024). The pre-event risk analysis should continue during the event. This requires the involvement of dedicated and competent analysts.

4 Influences of Research on Practice In the police preparations for the European Football Championship Euro 2000, which took place in the Netherlands and Belgium, a “Police Behaviour Profile Euro 2000” was drawn up and approved by the authorities on the basis of the results of the observational studies and the practical expertise of the officers involved in the binational police project preparing for Euro 2000 in order to ensure uniform police action in the various host cities. At the core of this profile was the idea that a friendly but firm, low-key approach was most appropriate. Adang (2001) and Adang and Cuvelier (2001) reported the results of research on the implementation of the behavioural profile in all host cities and were able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the friendly/determined “low-profile” approach. Characteristic of the “low-profile” approach was a substantial but limited number of police officers in daytime uniforms patrolling in pairs or small groups and interacting with fans. These interactions were friendly, but infractions by fans were responded to quickly. In the “low-profile” approach, police operations were based more on information provided by the spotter teams. In the contrasting “high-profile” approach, more than three times as many officers were visible in the streets. These officers were more often dressed in riot gear and accompanied by their riot vehicles; they formed larger groups, which made it less easy to approach them. It is important to note that the distinction made here is much more subtle than the distinction between paramilitary and non-paramilitary styles of public order maintenance (Jefferson, 1987, 1990; Waddington, 1987, 1993). In both “high-profile” and “low-profile” approaches, there was a clear command and control structure, and intervention units with their

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equipment could be used. To varying degrees, these experiences were later used during Euro 2004  in Portugal (Stott et  al., 2007, 2008), the 2006 World Cup in Germany (Schreiber & Adang, 2010), and Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland (Adang & Brown, 2008). The studies by Adang and co-workers were also relevant in other practical applications. The city of Arnhem in the Netherlands was one of the host cities of Euro 2000, and for the tournament, the Arnhem police had paid particular attention to the quality of information gathering and information analysis. Following the tournament, beginning in 2002, the Arnhem police took initiatives to improve their information management and intelligence regarding soccer violence. Based on knowledge of the “young male syndrome” and the fact that violent soccer offenders are more likely to become violent on other occasions, they collected and analysed targeted information to better identify individuals and groups involved in inciting violent incidents. However, the approach was not just a traditional “hooligan” approach aimed at repression. From the beginning, the goal was to facilitate a tailored approach to policing fans, both at the individual and group level. In this way, the Arnhem police were less likely to be surprised by sudden incidents, were able to deploy fewer police (and especially fewer riot police) around soccer matches, and made more “better” arrests (in the sense that arrests led more often to successful prosecutions). At the individual level, specific approaches were developed in collaboration with the soccer club and youth workers to encourage individuals not to engage in violence (Ferwerda & Adang, 2005). The methodology was piloted in 17 other police departments and subsequently implemented in all Dutch police departments. Other practical applications involve reforms in public order management in Sweden and the Netherlands. In Sweden, following disturbances during the EU summit in Gothenburg in 2001, the Swedish police adopted a new concept, called special police tactics, for the policing of public order. In 2006, the Swedish National Police Board decided to start a 3-year project to develop a long-term strategy for knowledge development with regard to these tactics, integrating research, training, and practice. The project provided a theoretical foundation for the special police tactics and a practical evaluation method for continuous knowledge development. The project methodology contributed to a developmental climate in the special police tactics organization. The project work also reinforced the basis for public order policing of crowds and contributed to upholding constitutional rights of assembly and freedom of speech (Adang, 2012). In the Netherlands, the organization and training of so-called mobile units (units composed of officers with dedicated riot control training) was radically changed following a study into public order policing in the Netherlands (Adang, 2009). The “new concept”, as it was called, was premised on the four strategic principles.

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5 Conclusion This chapter intended to demonstrate the importance of crowd dynamics in escalating collective violence. It is important to understand that it is primarily these dynamics that are responsible for a larger number of people engaging in collective violence, particularly those people who did not originally intend to engage in violent behaviour, who do not have a criminal record, and who would be described as casual offenders. At the same time, in each of these cases, only a small minority of those present were actively involved in the violence, suggesting that not all individuals are influenced in the same way. Although the specific contexts in which collective violence occurs may vary from place to place or country to country, as may the ways in which it is expressed, this should not detract from the fact that the underlying mechanisms are the same for both ideologically and non-ideologically motivated actors. The initiation/escalation model provides a comprehensive framework for understanding why and how collective violence occurs. Importantly, the model also allows us to determine what types of interventions may be effective (or counterproductive) in preventing collective violence from occurring or escalating and what types of interventions are not. Thinking through the model yields a whole toolbox of options based on the four key knowledge-based strategic and tactical principles for crowd policing as articulated by Reicher et al. (2004, 2007). As Maguire (2015; Maguire & Oakley, 2020) who examined protest policing in the USA found, these four principles—being informed, facilitation, communication, and differentiation— form the basis for a new vision of protest policing, and I would say more generally for public order and crowd management.

References Adang, O. M. J. (1998). Hooligans, autonomen, agenten. Geweld en politie-optreden in relsituaties. Samsom. Adang, O. M. J. (2001, August 30–September 2). Friendly but firm: the maintenance of public order. Paper presented at the 2001 meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco. Adang, O. M. J. (Ed.). (2009) Boven de pet? Een onderzoek naar grootschalige ordehandhaving in Nederland. Reed Business, Den Haag. Politiekunde nr. 28. Adang, O. M. J. (2011a). Initiation and escalation of collective violence. In T. D. Madensen & J. Knutsson (Eds.), Preventing crowd violence. Lynne Rienner. Adang, O.  M. J. (2011b). Managing collective violence around public events: an international comparison. Reed Business. Adang, O. M. J. (2012). Reforming the policing of public order in Sweden: combining research and practice. Policing. https://doi.org/10.1093/police/pas050 Adang, O. M. J. (2016). Nonadversial peer reviews of policing operations: fostering organizational learning. European Journal of Policing Studies, 4(2), 195–216. Adang, O.  M. J. (2018). A method for direct systematic observation of collective violence and public order policing. Sociological Methods & Research, 47(4), 761–786.

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Adang, O. M. J., & Brown, E. (2008). Policing football in Europe. Experiences from peer review evaluation teams. Politieacademie. Adang, O. M. J., & Cuvelier, C. (2001). Policing Euro 2000. Dutch Police Academy. Adang, O. M. J., & Van Ham, T. (2015). Contextual and individual factors determining escalation of collective violence: Case study of the Project X Riot in Haren, the Netherlands. British Journal of Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azv024 Berk, R. (1970). The controversy surrounding analyses of collective violence: some methodological notes. In J. F. Short & M. E. Wolfgang (Eds.), Collective violence. Aldine/Atherton. Berkowitz, L. (1989). Frustration-aggression hypothesis: Examination and reformulation. Psychological Bulletin, 106(1), 59–73. Bürger, B. (2024). Public order policing. From theory to practice. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Clarke, R. V. (1995). Situational crime prevention. In M. Tonry & D. Farrington (Eds.), Building a safer society: strategic approaches to crime prevention. University of Chicago Press. della Porta, D., & Reiter, H. (1998). The policing of protest in contemporary democracies: an introduction. In D. della Porta & H. Reiter (Eds.), Policing protest. University of Minnesota Press. Ferwerda, H., & Adang, O. M. J. (2005). Hooligans in beeld. Van veel blauw naar slim blauw. Tijdschrift voor de Politie, 12, 18–20. Frosdick, S., & Marsh, P. (2005). Football hooliganism. Willan. Fruin. (1993). The causes and prevention of crowd disasters. http://www.crowddynamics.com/ Easingwold/Acrobat/Fruin%20Causes.pdf Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin. Herold, T., & Bürger, B. (2024). Preventing crime at assemblies. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. HMIC. (2009). Adapting to protest—Nurturing the British model of policing. The Central Office of Information. Holgersson, S., & Knutsson, J. (2011). Dialogue policing: A means for less crowd violence? In T. D. Madensen & J. Knutsson (Eds.), Preventing crowd violence. Lynne Riener. Jefferson, T. (1987). Beyond paramilitarism. British Journal of Criminology, 2, 47–53. Jefferson, T. (1990). The case against paramilitary policing. Open University Press. Le Bon, G. (1895, trans. 1947). The crowd: A study of the popular mind. Ernest Benn. Maguire, E.  R. (2015). New directions in protest policing. Saint Louis University Public Law Review, 35(1), Article 6. Maguire, E.  R., & Oakley, M. (2020). Policing protests. Lessons from the occupy movement, Ferguson & beyond: A guide for police. Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation. McPhail, C. (1991). The myth of the madding crowd. Aldine de Gruyter. McPhail, C. (1997). Stereotypes of the crowds and collective behavior: Looking backward, looking forward. In D. E. Miller, M. A. Katovich, & S. L. Saxton (Eds.), Constructing complexity: Symbolic interaction and social forms. JAI Press. McPhail, C., Schweingruber, D., & McCarthy, J. (1998). Policing protest in the United States: 1960–1995. In D. della Porta & H. Reiter (Eds.), Policing protest. University of Minnesota Press. Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (1998). Deindividuation and antinormative behavior: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 123(3), 238–259. Reicher, S. D. (1984) Social influence in the crowd: Attitudinal and behavioural effects of de-individuation in conditions of high and low group salience. British Journal of Social Psychology. 23(4), 341–350. Reicher, S. D. (1996). “The Battle of Westminster”: Developing the social identity model of crowd behaviour in order to explain the initiation and development of collective conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 115–134. Reicher, S., Stott, C., Cronin, P., & Adang, O. M. J. (2004). An integrated approach to crowd psychology and public order policing. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 27, 558–572.

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Reicher, S., Stott, C., Drury, J., Adang, O. M. J., Cronin, P., & Livingstone, A. (2007). Knowledge-­ based public order policing: principles and practice. Policing, 1(4), 403–415. Schenk, C., & Bornhausen, M. (2024). Mission communication as an integrative overall strategy in protest 2.0. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Schreiber, M., & Adang, O. M. J. (2010). Fiction, facts and a summer’s fairy tale—mixed messages at the World Cup 2006. Policing and Society, 20, 237–255. Schweingruber, D. (2000). Mob sociology and escalated force: sociology’s contribution to repressive police tactics. The Sociological Quarterly, 41(3), 371–389. Sighele, S. (1892). La foule criminelle, essai de psychologie collective. Alcan. Stott, C. J., & Adang, O. M. J. (2009). Policing football matches with an international dimension in the European Union: Understanding and managing risk. Bavnebanke Press. Stott, C., Adang, O. M. J., Livingstone, A., & Schreiber, M. (2007). Variability in the collective behaviour of England fans at Euro 2004: Intergroup relations, identity content and social change. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(1), 75–100. Stott, C., Adang, O. M. J., Livingstone, A., & Schreiber, M. (2008). Tackling football hooliganism: A quantitative study of public order, policing and crowd psychology. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 14(2), 115–141. Stott, C.  J., & Reicher, S. (1998a). Crowd action as intergroup process: Introducing the police perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26, 509–529. Stott, C. J., & Reicher, S. (1998b). How conflict escalates: the inter-group dynamics of collective football crowd ‘violence’. Sociology, 32, 353–377. Van Ham, T., Blokland, A. A. J., Ferwerda, H. B., Doreleijers, T. A. H., & Adang, O. M. J. (2017). Jekyll or Hyde? Examining the criminal careers of public violence offenders. European Journal of Criminology., 14(4), 415–433. Van Ham, T., Blokland, A., Ferwerda, H., Doreleijers, T., & Adang, O. (2019). Determinants of persistence in collective violence offending. Deviant Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163962 5.2019.1649954 Waddington, P. A. J. (1987). Towards paramilitarism? Dilemmas in the policing of public order. British Journal of Criminology, 27, 37–46. Waddington, P. A. J. (1993). The case against paramilitary policing considered. British Journal of Criminology, 33, 353–373. Wilson, M., & Daly, M. (1985). Competitiveness, risk-taking and violence: the young male syndrome. Ethology and Sociobiology, 6, 59–73. Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: individuation, reason and order versus de-­individuation, impulse and chaos. In W. J. Arnold & D. Levine (Eds.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. 1). University of Nebraska Press. Prof. Dr. Otto M.  J. Adang  is a behavioural scientist. He has held a chair in Public Order Management at the Police Academy of the Netherlands since 2004. Since 2016, he is also a professor by special appointment in the field of “Security and Collective Behavior” at the University of Groningen. He has been conducting research in the field of public order since 1985 and has published over 180 papers, book chapters, books, and other publications on the topics of security, use of force, and maintenance of order in the following fields: social psychology, investigative psychology, social simulation, criminal justice, criminology, police research, human rights, sports science, ethology, and primatology in English, German, and Dutch. Translations have been made into Catalan, Norwegian, Ukrainian, Russian, Swedish, and Spanish. Otto Adang is recognized far beyond the Netherlands as an international expert on major events, public order and crowd management, hooliganism, police use of force, and police and human rights. He has been involved in training, consulting, and research related to police operations at soccer and protest events throughout Europe.

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Dr. Martina Schreiber,  graduate psychologist. After studying in Constance, Glasgow, and Bonn, she was involved in the evaluation of police measures at UEFA Euro 2004 in Portugal as a staff member of the University of Liverpool. Subsequently, she became a research associate and member of the Public Order Expert Panel of the Police Academy of the Netherlands. Her research work included the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, the UEFA Euro 2008 Austria/Switzerland, numerous soccer matches, and demonstrations in Europe. In 2010, she completed her PhD at Jacobs University Bremen on “Group relations at crowd events”. She has publications in peer-reviewed journals and textbooks, presentations at congresses, conferences, seminars of fan-, human rights organizations, ministries, and police organizations. Her special commitment is the scientific monitoring of collegial consultation processes and organizational learning in police agencies. She has been a counsellor and therapist (CBT) since 2017.

Interpretive Regimes of Violence in Action. The “Welcome to Hell” Demonstration During the G20 Summit in Hamburg 2017 Chris Schattka

Abstract  The following chapter examines how violence occurred during the so-­ called “Welcome to Hell” demonstration, which took place during the 2017 G20 Summit in Hamburg. Violence during demonstrations is usually explained by building upon concepts, including mass, identity, and emotion. These concepts are each used to analyze unfolding events at demonstrations, but they vary in their inclusion and emphasis on reciprocal dynamics between police and crowd interpretations. It is proposed that an “interpretative regime” with an affinity for violence developed in the lead-up to the Hamburg demonstration, both among the police and the demonstrators, and this perspective contributed to the outbreak of violence. Interpretive regimes supporting violence are based on shared experiences. They arise when the parties involved accuse each other of intending to use violence, which justifies and increases the likelihood of their own violent behavior. During the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration, these interpretive regimes persisted until the day of the event and influenced how police and demonstrators interpreted the actions of each other during the demonstration.

1 Hamburg July 2017 The summits of the 19 most important industrialized and emerging countries, including the European Union (G20), are usually accompanied by numerous protests, especially in democratic countries. The forms of protest vary and include art performances, formally announced demonstrations of various sizes, actions of civil disobedience, and also street fights between police units and the so-called black

C. Schattka (*) Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_4

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block. Especially for left and anti-capitalist activists, these summits are important events with great mobilization potential, which draw not only the citizens of the respective city or country to the demonstrations but also people from surrounding countries, some of whom arrive by chartered trains and are accommodated in self-­ organized protest camps. In 2017, the G20 Summit took place in Hamburg. For the police, the meeting was, as they put it, an “operation of superlatives” (Polizei Hamburg, 2017a, p. 4; all citations translated by CS). With around 30,000 officers, the police were tasked with ensuring the summit’s smooth running, but also with facilitating protests and attending demonstrations (Malthaner et al., 2018, p. 23). Although most demonstrations and protest actions in Hamburg were peaceful, and the summit took place as planned, the events remembered most were those in which violence occurred. Images of burning cars, looted and destroyed stores, or injured demonstrators and police officers dominated the news coverage. One of these demonstrations was the so-called “Welcome to Hell” demonstration. The “Welcome to Hell” demonstration was mainly organized by members of a left-wing self-governing project called the “Rote Flora,”1 and was widely covered in the media before taking place. Both police and organizers expected violence during or after the demonstration. Both sides watched each other for weeks prior to the demonstration and perceived the statements and preparations made by the other as indicative of their intention to use violence. The demonstration was previously stopped by police because masked demonstrators led the procession.2 Water cannons were brought to the front of the demonstration. Violence broke out as police attempted to separate the masked demonstrators from the unmasked demonstrators. In the weeks and months following the summit, the events were discussed from different perspectives by journalists, politicians, lawyers, and sociologists. These discussions focused on the question of who was responsible for the violent outbreak. Depending on whether one’s sympathies lay more with demonstrators or police, those who entered the debate identified either a “repressive police strategy” or “left-wing extremism” as the cause.3 An alternative analysis of the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration might uncover a cause of the violence distinct from the supposed motivations of those present.4 Following situationist approaches in sociological research on violence, this investigation places the course of demonstration events at the center of the analysis and takes into account both the interactions and the interpretations of police and demonstrators. It is argued that prior to the

 The “Rote Flora” is an autonomous center in Hamburg’s Schanzenviertel, which is of great importance for the local scene (Matthies & Schuhmacher, 2018). 2  Masking is illegal during demonstrations in Germany. 3  For examples, see Assall (2018), Hunold et al. (2018), or Stolle (2018). 4  There is a well-established skepticism within sociology about the assumption that motivations translate into corresponding actions (Lohman & Reitzes, 1954; Mills, 1940; comparing Lohman and Reitzes and Mills see Knöbl, 2018). 1

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demonstration, both actors formed an interpretive regime with an affinity for violence (Sutterlüty, 2007), which impacted the course of events during the demonstration. This interpretive regime is based on the mutual experiences of the actors and reinforces the perception that the actions of the other indicate an intention to use violence, increasing the likelihood that violence will be seen as a justifiable response. First, the demonstration’s course of events are reconstructed (Sect. 2) to discuss existing situationist research approaches that explain collective violence. The development of these approaches is critically examined (Sect. 3). Subsequently, an analysis shows how the interpretive regime with an affinity for violence, which is observed in participant self-reports prior to the demonstration (Sect. 4), is relevant during demonstration encounters and creates a confrontational atmosphere highly conducive to violence (Sect. 5). Finally, how the research result can guide further inquiry into the Hamburg summit protests and inform future police actions during demonstrations is explained (Sect. 6).

2 The “Welcome to Hell” Demonstration5 The “Welcome to Hell” demonstration begins with a kick-off rally in the afternoon of July 6, 2017, at the Hamburg Fish Market. There are bands and presentations from national and international speakers. The atmosphere is relaxed and festival-­ like. Arriving demonstrators see water cannons and armored police vehicles positioned on all streets leading to the Hamburg Fish Market. Around 4:00 p.m., the police chief in charge of the demonstration and the organizer6 of the demonstration speak to each other. The police chief tells the organizer that police will use the  The reconstruction of the course of events of the demonstration was carried out in the research project “Mapping #NoG20” (https://g20.protestinstitut.eu/). The aim of the project was to examine the escalations during the protest week from a social science perspective and thus find an explanation for the violence (Malthaner et al., 2018). More than 20 scholars from different institutions were involved. Data used included videos, photographs, observation logs, internal police documents, and interviews with participants. For the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration, several lengthy videos were available that recorded the  entire demonstration from  a  high position overseeing the whole area. These videos formed the starting point of the data analysis, as the footage could be used to determine at what time and at what exact location the scenes from the numerous other shorter videos, but much closer to the action, took place. The data from the videos were supplemented by eyewitness accounts. The  eyewitness accounts came from  journalistic sources, academic interviews, or field protocols from demonstration observers. The use of these different types of data allows for a multi-perspective view of the events. This reconstruction with all sources can be obtained from the author upon request. 6  The whole demonstration was, of course, not organized by a single person but by a whole group of people. The individual referred to here is the person who formally registered the demonstration at Hamburg’s department for assembly and is therefore the main contact person for the police chief in charge. He has also been the main spokesperson regarding this demonstration before and after it took place. 5

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“usual strategy” to prevent pyrotechnics or protestor masking, but they will not act against the entire demonstration when responding to individual violations. The “usual strategy” is a well-known Hamburg police approach involving strict enforcement of violations. In hours that follow, the Fish Market fills with hundreds of demonstrators. Around 6:00 p.m., the police chief asks the organizer to do something to stop demonstrator masking. About half an hour later, several vehicles with loudspeakers, which lead the procession, drive at walking speed through the crowd from the Fish Market in the direction of the Hafenstraße.7 Several hundred people dressed in black, some masked, walk behind. At this point, the police count 12,000 demonstrators. At 6:46 p.m., an entry in the police operations protocol system notes that the “black block” is planning an “escalation from the middle of the procession.” Police reconnaissance reports numerous maskings. At about 6:54 p.m., the demonstration procession comes to a standstill, as it is met by several hundred police officers in riot gear. All police officers put on their helmets. A gap, consisting of mainly journalists and parliamentary observers, but also onlookers, forms between the demonstration and police units. In this gap, the police chief and demonstration organizer again speak to each other. As he puts on his helmet, the police chief informs the organizer that he has observed masked demonstrators mostly at the front of the procession and two of the vehicles and that these are “serious crimes.” He also tells the organizer that he should tell the demonstrators to take off their masks, because only then can the demonstration continue, and that police have already begun prosecution by video recording. The police estimate 1000 masked demonstrators in two blocks at this moment. Six lines of action now take place partly simultaneously. (1) Additional people join the demonstration. (2) Many people also gather on the floodwall looking down on the Hafenstraße. (3) Police forces regroup shortly after 7:00 p.m., and several water cannons move toward the demonstration. From the banks of the Elbe, a police squad moves toward the “Park Fiction” bridge, which is located at the gap separating police units and demonstrators. (4) The demonstration organizer and police chief speak to each other again. Both have different impressions of the conversation: while the demonstration organizer sees it as a negotiation, the police chief interprets it as cooperation, in which the police demand how the demonstrators must behave. (5) The organizer directly addresses the demonstrators, whereupon some take off their masks, which is also noted by the police. (6) At 7:13 p.m., police leaders observing the events from their headquarters discuss how the blocks with the black-­ clad and partially masked people could be separated from the rest of the demonstrators to let the unmasked demonstrators continue with the demonstration. Police reconnaissance units relay intelligence that wooden slats are being distributed into the demonstration. At about 7:30 p.m., the police decide that the blocks dressed in black should be separated from the rest of the demonstration. Subsequently, police units move past

 This is a street known for its legalized squats.

7

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the demonstration. There are minor scuffles because the space between the demonstration and the adjacent buildings is full of people. Around 7:46 p.m., police units separate the blocks with the black-clad and partially masked people, by slowly pushing themselves between the demonstrators at the third and fourth speaker vehicle. Demonstrators react verbally and engage in small scuffles, but not mutual attacks. Shortly thereafter, about twelve police officers run toward a block of demonstrators and more police officers follow. Together, they push the demonstrators against the floodwall. Demonstrators and police start to attack each other; two demonstrators spray fire extinguishers at the police. Demonstrators in the separated blocks begin to climb the floodwall, while bottles are thrown at the police officers from above the wall. Demonstrators in the rear are crowded together by the police officers and climb onto the floodwall. At the same time, a squad of police officers runs toward the demonstrators in the front and stops shortly before them, without the demonstrators retreating. Shortly thereafter, police officers standing in front make room for two water cannons, which drive within a few meters of the demonstrators. An officer’s hand signal moves several police officers toward the demonstrators. The demonstration organizer first stands between the two groups, arms outstretched and facing the police officers, but then moves away. The demonstrators back away slightly and are then pushed by police officers in the direction of the floodwall with baton blows and pepper spray. While the Hafenstraße is slowly cleared by police units and water cannons, other incidents occur on the floodwall and at the Fish Market. Here, smaller police units pursue people dressed in black or disperse larger crowds. At 8:11 p.m., the demonstration is formally ended by the organizer by calling the police. Even though the organizer officially ended the demonstration, this has little impact on the events at the Hamburg Fish Market and in the surrounding streets. Smaller police units try to clear the Fish Market and adjacent streets with the help of water cannons and repeatedly run toward groups of people. A short time later, a spontaneous assembly is formed to protest against police violence.

3 Explaining Violence in Demonstrations: Mass, Identity, Emotion Social science research on events such as the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration (as well as violence and crime beyond protest events) has produced varying explanations. There are at least two strands of distinct research, which are commonly presented as opposing approaches (Adang and Schreiber present an approach to combine the theories in Adang & Schreiber, 2024). One set of studies falls under dispositional theories. The cause of violent action is believed to stem from the

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personality or character traits of participating individuals.8 Other studies fall under situationist approaches, which closely examine situational characteristics present when people commit violence against each other. Situational approaches advocate to criticize dispositional-based research based on findings that not all people with dispositional characteristics commit violence or become criminals (Birkbeck & LaFree, 1993). They argue that situational conditions are most important in determining whether or not individuals engage in violence.9 Situationist approaches and concepts are discussed in the sections that follow to demonstrate their usefulness for interpreting the events in Hamburg. While previous scholars have focused on the interpretations of those present during a demonstration, this analysis suggests that attendee interpretations should receive greater emphasis in situationist studies. Gustave Le Bon, an early crowd philosopher, discussed the situational conditions of crowds long before the establishment of situationist approaches. His arguments, first published in 1895, still provide an important reference point for the study of collective violence during demonstrations or riots, and fall under the umbrella term “mass psychology.”10 Le Bon did not propose or pursue his ideas purely for scientific interest. He believed the civilizational achievements of his times were in danger of being destroyed by “the masses” (Le Bon, 2001, p. xi). Accordingly, his concern with understanding crowds or masses stemmed from his desire to control them. This effort earned Le Bon the applause of both Joseph Goebbels and Benito Mussolini (Reicher, 1987, p. 176, 1996a). Le Bon’s main argument is that large gatherings of people experience a transformative mechanism that leads to the development of collective consciousness, regardless of people’s individual differences. The collective consciousness robs those present of their intellect and individuality and transforms them into a homogenous violent mass (Le Bon, 2001, pp. 4–6). As a result, people in gatherings are driven only by instincts and are no longer able to act independently, since the actions of the mass are solely determined by external stimuli. Moreover, those in masses are capable of actions that they would never consider as individuals, including violence (Le Bon, 2001, pp. 8–11). This mechanism, which turns individuals into a mass, is a process of contagion “in the brains of all assembled” (Le Bon, 2001, p. 14), which reduces the intelligence of each individual—at least while they are part of the mass—by a considerable amount (Le Bon, 2001, p. 24).

 Another strand of research uses the theory of relative deprivation (Gurr, 2012) and has been criticized by situationists for the same reasons. An overview of other influential approaches, not considered here, is given by Donatella della Porta (2002) and Dieter Rucht (2002). 9  These situationist approaches have been discussed several times in social science research, for example, in the USA at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s (e.g., Birkbeck & LaFree, 1993; Katz, 1988), but also in Germany, especially by Trutz von Trotha (1997), who demanded violence research that deals with the violence itself and not with data that is far away from it. Today a few studies follow these premises and address the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration but strive for a relatively rigid form of analyzing situational dynamics (Klinge, 2021; Utz, 2021). 10  For an overview of the different mass conceptions, see Axel T. Paul (2015, p. 25). 8

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Le Bon’s arguments have previously been deeply criticized, but it is helpful to examine a few of his argument’s shortcomings. First, Le Bon does not explain de-­ individuation, or the process by which people lose access to their consciousness while in a large crowd. Second, he does not address why so many people gather in the same place at the same time in the first place (Paul, 2015, pp. 24–25). Third, Le Bon’s argument steers toward overpredicting violence in mass events. Thus, he is unable to explain why most gatherings remain peaceful, with violence occurring in only a fraction of these events (Drury et al., 2020, p. 176). Fourth, considering the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration, Le Bon is unable to explain why actions within the supposedly homogenous crowd are different. The numerous demonstration video recordings show frightened people who do not participate in the attacks against police. It also shows that demonstrators engage in violent acts at different times. While demonstrators in the rear were already engaged in attacks, demonstrators in the front remained behind their banners until pushed back by police. Critical examinations of Le Bon’s arguments led to further theoretical developments in the field of collective violence. An influential critic of Le Bon is Stephen D. Reicher (1984), who almost 100 years later identified deficits in Le Bon’s theory with his Social Identity Model.11 Reicher notes that it is important to consider the context in which Le Bon’s book was written, as it was intended for elites to keep the socialist opposition in check. This purpose is inscribed in the theoretical premises fundamental to Le Bon’s psychology of the masses. Le Bon was not interested in the conditional factors for protests, such as an injustice perceived by demonstrators. Le Bon ignores the social contexts in which the situations of collective violence arise. Reicher (1984) shows the relevancy of contexts in a case study of the so-called St. Paul’s Riot. In Bristol (England), riots broke out on April 2, 1980, after two plainclothes police officer confiscated the beer and arrested the owners of a café frequented mainly by people of color.12 This circumstance is central to Reicher’s argument, which builds on Henri Tajfel’s and John C. Turner’s concept of social identity. They argue that crowds consist of individuals who see themselves as part of a group, sharing a similar condition or trait, and thus develop a shared social identity (Tajfel, 1979; Turner, 1982; as cited in Reicher, 1987). The social identity as a “St. Pauls’ community member” legitimizes the actions of those present.13 Using interview data, Reicher shows that those involved saw themselves as part of a community in opposition to the police. Individual members of this group reacted to police actions partly through violent actions, with other group members participating. It should be noted here that actions were constrained by the identity reference, and not a matter of random destruction (Reicher, 1984, pp. 18–19), as Le Bon predicted.

 At the same time, he also criticized those who adopted Le Bon’s arguments (e.g., Allport, 1924; cited in Reicher, 1987, p. 176). 12  For a detailed description of the events, see Reicher (1984, pp. 6–10). 13  In a similar vein, but without reference to Reicher, argues André Armbruster (2016), who focuses on the Soweto uprising in South Africa. 11

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Reicher (1996b) further developed the Social Identity Model, later called the Elaborated Social Identity Model, using another case study. He investigated the broader question of how conflicts arise and develop over time in gatherings. In this elaborated version, he extends the Social Identity Model in two respects. First, the examination extends beyond the crowd and includes police in the analysis. Second, Reicher further explains how individuals construct the social categories to which they feel they belong. He self-critically suggests that these extensions are necessary because the Social Identity Model has two limitations. First, identity is taken for granted. Without grasping how identity is constructed, his model also amounts (like Le Bon’s) to explaining conflict and violence as a crowd-specific phenomenon. Second, the previous focus on behavior within crowds excluded the perspective of the police14 and their behavior, as well as the reciprocal relationship between police actions and those of the crowd. The dynamics of the event are significantly influenced by how the actions of the opposing side are interpreted and reacted to. Reicher’s data show that both sides regard their actions as legitimate, but also as reactions to the actions of the other side. Furthermore, Reicher notes that when police react to (anticipated) individual offenses by acting against the entire gathering of people, this can unite people who previously felt they belonged to different groups before police treated them as a single group, thus enabling them to react collectively to the actions of the police. Therefore, he argues, it would be inaccurate to explain violent conflicts based solely on the actions of small subgroups. Further, when a large proportion of crowd members are willing to engage in confrontation and violence, this can sometimes be attributed to police actions, particularly when taken against the whole gathering of people out of fear of “troublemakers.” Le Bon’s and Reicher’s perspectives, as described, can be considered situationist explanations (Malthaner, 2019, pp. 154–155) since they focus on situations in which actors interact with each other. They differ, however, in the concept they place at the center of their argument and in their theoretical underpinnings. With Le Bon, it is the mass transferred into those present that causes violence. With Reicher, it is the common identity adopted by those present that allows individuals to justify violent actions. Randall Collins (2008) proposes a foundational sociological theory, expanding explanations by emphasizing the importance of emotions. He, too, opposes dispositional theories. He criticizes approaches that assume that so-called background factors, such as motivation or poverty, are sufficient to explain violence (Collins, 2008, p. 20). Collins’ main argument is that opponents are only able to engage in violence if they manage to build up emotional energy sufficient to overcome a barrier of tension and fear (Collins, 2008, pp. 29–30).15 According to Collins, tension and fear build up in confrontational situations because they violate everyday routines that are designed for cooperation (Collins, 2008, p. 82). In confrontations, a

 On the role of the police, see Clifford Stott and Reicher (1998).  For critical discussions of the concept of emotional energy, see Jens Greve (2012) and Laura Wolters (2019). 14 15

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situational moment is needed for opponents to find a way around this barrier. One of these he calls attacking the weak.16 Weak does not refer to physical abilities or the absence of weapons, but a situational moment: one person falls, turns his back, or does not expect an attack and is taken by surprise. Anne Nassauer (2019) uses Collins’ theory to examine violence in demonstrations.17 Similar to other studies that follow a situationist approach, she begins by pointing out that factors, such as “societal grievances; the people’s strategies, cultures, or motivations; the police-protester ratio; or the presence of violently motivated individuals” (Nassauer, 2019, p. 7), do not influence whether violence breaks out during a demonstration. These factors are so prevalent that they are found in demonstrations where violence occurred as well as those that remained peaceful. She takes this finding as an opportunity to take a case-comparative approach and examine peaceful and violent demonstrations. Nassauer finds that—contrary to widespread assumptions—the outbreak of violence did not depend on violent motivations or a particularly repressive police strategy, but stem from certain situational patterns present in violent demonstrations and absent from peaceful demonstrations. Central to her argument are five situational conditions: territorial encroachment, police organizational difficulties, signs of escalation, property damage, and communication difficulties between demonstration organizers and the police. In certain combinations and sequences, these situational conditions encourage interpretations by both actors that instigate an emotional state that enables them to use violence against each other (Nassauer, 2019, pp. 169–170). Using this approach, she discovers three unique conditional paths in her cases that lead participants toward violent confrontations during demonstrations. Her analysis suggests that outside non-situational factors have no explanatory relevance for the emergence of violence (Nassauer, 2019, p. 71). At the same time, however, she emphasizes the importance of the interpretations of those present for these trajectories (Nassauer, 2019, pp. 170, 176–177). Nassauer calls one of these violent trajectories “loss of control,” which is characterized by the coupling of police organizational difficulties with territorial encroachment. She points out police training and prior operational experience influenced what officers interpreted as a sign of escalation or loss of control during demonstrations (Nassauer, 2019, pp.  63–70). Thus, Nassauer acknowledges that non-situational contextual factors can also influence demonstration outcomes. Two things can be said about the explanations presented so far. First, all the explanations suggest that a detailed look at the situational course of demonstrations events can be useful, and it is ill-advised to start analyzing evidence with strong assumptions. The authors’ different focuses produced different explanations of how violence occurred, was carried out, and, if necessary, justified by those involved. Second, the focus on mass, identity, or emotion across authors’ analyses varies in

 On the various “pathways” into violence, see Collins (2009).  Her study is based on previously published papers (Nassauer, 2011, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2016, 2017, 2018a, 2018b). 16 17

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inclusion and emphasis on reciprocal dynamics between police and crowd behaviors. This may sometimes result from methodological challenges. As noted by Reicher, it was not possible to interview those present during the riots (Reicher, 1984, p. 5, 1996b, p. 131). Nassauer, too, emphasizes that interpretations are crucial to the emergence of emotional conditions necessary for violence. Nevertheless, she does not pursue this idea further. Critiques of situationist-oriented research note that measures of demonstrator interpretations and their prior experiences are largely absent from situational studies. Ferdinand Sutterlüty (2015, 2017) is one of many critics of situationist violence research and has argued for contextualization of the events under investigation. He sees the risk of a “mechanistic and reifying understanding of the violent situation,” which in a sense leads to “situational metaphysics” if all contextual factors are excluded from analyses (Sutterlüty, 2015, p. 60). Using the riots in Paris in 2005 and London in 2011 as examples, Sutterlüty shows that understanding requires consideration of their contexts of origin. For example, the Paris riots were triggered by the deaths of two African-Maghreb youths who were electrocuted while fleeing a police stop-and-search. Rioters interpreted the incident as a violation of the democratic state promise of equal treatment for all people. The perceived violation of equality was reflected in shouts of “Liberty, equality, fraternity, but not in the suburbs!” (Castel, 2009, p.  32 cited in Sutterlüty, 2015) and was reinforced by politicians’ defamatory statements during the riots, which had an animating effect (Sutterlüty, 2015, pp.  65–71). “A convincing theory of collective violence,” according to Sutterlüty, “must provide insight into how cultural patterns of interpretation and social-structural conditions become situationally relevant to action” (Sutterlüty, 2015, p. 75). According to Sutterlüty, actors bring their own experiences or patterns of interpretation into the situation, so they do not emerge on the spot (Sutterlüty, 2017, p.  154), as suggested by a strictly situationist approach. Sutterlüty rejects strict and thus reductionist implementation of situationist explanations and argues for analyses on how the actors themselves make references to contexts, how they relate to them, and how this changes the interactional dynamics (Sutterlüty, 2017, p. 142). Sutterlüty’s critique amounts to a fundamental assumption that those present in violent riots always interpret what happens to them and act in relation to these interpretations.

4 On the Emergence of Interpretive Regimes with an Affinity for Violence18 The concept of “interpretive regimes with an affinity for violence” (Sutterlüty, 2007) is used here to illustrate the role of both actors’ past experiences for the course of the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration events. According to Sutterlüty,

 The analysis follows the  methodological assumptions of  a  context-sensitive micro-sociology. This is an approach that Tabea Koepp and I (2020) have developed. By a context-sensitive micro-­ 18

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these regimes reflect patterns of perception acquired through the actors’ socialization. Based on past violent experiences, they lead to the interpretation that any action by their opponent indicates a readiness for their opponent to use violence (Sutterlüty, 2007, p.  278). The actors examine all actions, statements, and even objects for their violence potential so that, under certain circumstances, an overinterpretation can occur and violent intentions are assumed, even if untrue at the time of the assumption. Sutterlüty uses the term “interpretive regime” because, first, he assumes that the perception of a potentially violent situation is always based on actor interpretation. And second, he assumes that the actors do not necessarily decide this consciously but interpret the situation based on prior experiences (Sutterlüty, 2007, p. 278). Both the interpretations and the reactions are “overdetermined” and based on these experiences, he argues, make “a violent response seem the most logical” (Sutterlüty, 2007, p. 278). Furthermore, “affinity to violence” suggests that violence might not always occur, even if the actors’ experience equip them with such interpretive regimes, because situational conditions still play a supporting role (Sutterlüty, 2007, p. 278). Concerning the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration, the police’s interpretive regime with an affinity for violence is reconstructed from various documents and public statements made in interviews or press conferences. Also, internal police documents assessing the summit’s protest and risks, which were used to establish a temporal and spatial corridor within which no assemblies or demonstrations were allowed during the G20 Summit, are analyzed. The internal police assessment document was written by police officers preparing for all summit operations. It identifies, evaluates, and predicts potential protest dangers for the summit and delegations. This document also contains an assessment of potential threats posed by “politically motivated crime,” which are grouped under the keywords “left-wing,” “right-wing,” and “foreign.” The term “Islamic terrorism” is also used. Thus, for the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration days, the police expect not only the “entire left-wing extremist / autonomous spectrum of Hamburg” but also “a large part of the violent left-wing extremist clientele” of Germany will come to Hamburg “to bring violent protest against the G20 summit to the streets by means of militant actions” (Polizei Hamburg, 2017b, pp. 24–25). Furthermore, protestors would perceive the decision to have Hamburg host the summit as “pure provocation,” so that “serious violent crimes by militant demonstration participants are to be expected, e.g. [to the detriment of] the police” (Polizei Hamburg, 2017b, p. 25). This prognosis is supported by past demonstration experiences. The demonstration “Selbstorganisation statt Repression! Refugee-Bleiberecht, Esso-Häuser und Rote Flora durchsetzen!” on December 21, 2013, was broken up due to “violent sociology we mean a methodologically open research approach that is based on detailed micro-­ sociological reconstructions of the events of interest. For this purpose, different data materials can be used and, in the best case, combined: interviews, documents, videos, photographs, transcripts from  court hearings, or ethnographic field protocols. The  reconstructions made draw attention to situational elements that are relevant during the event but do not arise in the situation itself, since they refer to social contexts outside the event.

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riots by the participants in the assembly,” which included “about 4,000 left-wing extremists who were prepared or oriented toward violence” (Polizei Hamburg, 2017b, p. 25).19 This demonstration is used in the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration predictions. Due to protestors’ mobilization efforts, “a participation of 7,000 to 8,000 violent left-wing extremists in the march is likely” (Polizei Hamburg, 2017b, p. 25). Also, in the general order for the police forces published on June 1, 2017, the “Flora Demonstration” is mentioned under the heading “Events and gatherings with comparable disruptive potential,” and it is pointed out that after police units stopped the demonstrators “immediately massive, targeted throwing of pyrotechnics and smoke pots from the procession at the police forces” began (Polizei Hamburg, 2017c, pp. 13–14). Protest predictions are made, not only in the internal police assessment, but also in public statements. In an interview, Hamburg’s Senator of Interior estimates that the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration will be the most difficult “with clearly the highest potential for violence” of all demonstrations taking place, since the “extremist scene” has called on everyone coming to the city for militant protest to participate (shz.de, 2017). “There will be violence either during or afterward—with very, very high probability” (shz.de, 2017), said the Senator of Interior. A press conference two days prior to the demonstration provides another example of how police interpreted the potential for violence and how it can lead to overinterpretation. Police showed various items confiscated during police raids and videos demonstrating their dangerousness.20 These items included fire extinguishers (some filled with bitumen), slingshots, steel balls, fireworks, gas masks, baseball bats, caltrop, arson materials, laptops, hard drives, telescopic batons, and knives. Knives and baseball bats are undoubtedly dangerous weapons, but they were not mentioned in the videos intended to demonstrate the potential danger to police forces. It can be assumed that despite their potential to cause severe harm, these items were not displayed in the videos because they are not typically used in demonstrations by the militant left in Germany. In the press conference videos, a firecracker is placed on a police helmet and destroys it, a slingshot shoots a Styrofoam head, and a police uniform jacket smeared with bitumen is ignited by a firecracker. While the federal police director showed the destroyed helmet to press conference attendees, he explained that it was quite unlikely that a firecracker would explode directly on a police officer’s helmet. However, the destroyed helmet shows the potential danger. The video intended to show the danger of bitumen is an overinterpretation because bitumen-filled fire extinguishers are mainly used in the graffiti scene. At demonstrations, normal fire extinguishers are used against police forces. Unlike the police, the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration organizers are repeatedly asked by the media about their use of violence and whether they are planning violent attacks on the police. The organizers take a somewhat ambivalent position since they emphasize that no violent attacks on the police are planned, but do not

19 20

 This demonstration is hereinafter referred to as the “Flora Demonstration.”  See DER SPIEGEL (2017), Polizei Hamburg (2017d), and Ruptly (2017).

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completely reject using violence.21 When confronted with questions about their intention to attend specifically to engage in violence, one organizer answers that they decide how to best manage their protest. Their main objective is militant resistance, but not harming other people (ZDF, 2017, sec. 03:34–04:09). Another organizer comments: “That it [violent protest] is wanted, I cannot say in my function” (GRANVISTA Media GmbH, 2018), but it could come to that. There are no plans to start street fights, but they will strongly defend themselves if the demonstration is attacked. The primary goal is to arrive at the final rally point near the exhibition halls. He could not say whether there would be a “bang” afterward, but for autonomists, militancy is always an option. They note that they do not have a ruling structure that could endorse, plan, or commit organized violence but “what we do is resist, and we do that with different means” (GRANVISTA Media GmbH, 2018). The demonstration organizers also interpret the December 2013 “Flora Demonstration” events differently than the police. From their perspective, the police attacked, and they point out that if such an attack were to happen again, they would defend themselves (Freundeskreis Videoclips, 2017). Police preparatory actions for the demonstration further reinforce the violent interpretative regime. That the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration was approved without conditions by the department of assembly represents a contentious issue. On the day of the demonstration, during an interview and press conference, the organizer states that the organizing group was the target of “denunciatory stigmatization with baseless violent scenarios” (FCMC, 2017a, sec. 30:30–32:20). The organizer argues, if there had been evidence to suggest demonstrators would use excessive violence, the department of assembly would have noted these conditions and formulated a response, including noting consideration of banning the assembly. Since this did not happen, the organizer does not feel obligated to comment on “any fantasies of violence [...] that are completely baselessly claimed by the police [...] to delegitimize and stigmatize political protest [...]” (Lopez, 2018, sec. 54:10–55:49). Since conditions were not placed on the demonstration, the organizer argues, police “denunciation of critical protest” demonstrates their confrontational intentions. He mentions “very clearly” that they are not looking for a confrontation with the police but want a militant demonstration. He states that the police have shown “anti-assembly” behavior, he has little hope for “measured” police actions, and he anticipates “big problems” getting the demonstration through to the end (FCMC, 2017b). However, he also says that the right of assembly applies, and if the police find law violations, the organizers must and will comply. He also notes the police interventions would have to be proportionate, given the 10,000 people on the street (Berliner Zeitung, 2017).  Other protest groups, which also carry out protest actions during the G20 Summit, do so. For example, the organizers of the protest group “Colour the Red Zone” point out that for their sit-in blockades, which they understand as actions of civil disobedience, an agreed plan of action excludes the use of violence and that this agreement binds them to not use violence throughout their actions (see Malthaner et al., 2018, pp. 58–62). 21

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This interpretive regime with an affinity for violence described here, collected from various sources, is present on demonstration day and influences how those present interpret their situations and influences the course of events. The stability of the interpretive regime is displayed in the organizer’s statements made on the day of the demonstration, as well as those made the same day by the opposite side. The Hamburg Senator of the Interior recommends that his citizens not participate in the demonstration, “because it will most likely take a violent turn” (WELT, 2017). These statements demonstrate that nothing has occurred to inspire a new, non-­ violent interpretation for either the police or organizers. Rather, both sides stick to their interpretation that, on the one hand, they will have to deal with an actor who harbors violent motives during the demonstration and, on the other hand, they maintain the right to react with “coercive measures” or “resistance” to these assumed violent intentions.

5 Interpretive Regimes in Action While Reicher discussed research obstacles associated with using only post-­incident material to analyze demonstration actors’ interpretations (Reicher, 1996b, p. 131), new technologies can capture data concerning participants’ interpretations as the situation unfolds. These data come from video, social media, and the police protocol system. The following analysis focuses on three moments during the demonstration to explain the consequences of the interpretive regime with an affinity for violence. These include demonstrator masking, reference to the 2013 “Flora Demonstration,” and the interpretation of a banner as “wooden slats.” While loudspeaker trucks push through the crowd toward Hafenstraße and numerous black-clad and partially masked people follow them, the police reconnaissance reports: “Black block plans escalation from the middle of the procession.” About ten minutes later, around 6:55 p.m., the reconnaissance reports again “strong masking in the procession.” Whereupon the demonstration is stopped shortly after. While the demonstration stands, the police chief and demonstration organizer talk to each other in between the demonstrators and police units. The police chief points states that demonstrators are masked and that these are “serious crimes” and that the organizer must counteract the masking. The organizer asks the police chief for time “to be able to influence the participants of the assembly, before you drive up here now with your water cannons” because they would both agree “that we do not want a scenario here like in December 2013 [at the ‘Flora demonstration’].” The police chief also alerts the organizer that he is positioning his police units to not be “surprised” “if anything gets started back there”22 At 7:18 p.m., the police tweets that

 The reconstruction of the conversation is based on different videos (ARD, 2017, sec. 02:32–02:45; left vision clips, 2017, sec. 01:00–01:10; Taranis News, 2017, sec. 04:41–05:52; #WDR360, 2017, sec. 03:14–03:36). 22

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they had found 1,000 masked people in the demonstration, which is not in line with a “peaceful protest.”23 The masking, as the statements show, is interpreted by the police as a readiness to use violence. Thus, it is interpreted by the reconnaissance as the planning of an “escalation”. The tweet by Hamburg police is also noteworthy. Here, too, it is assumed that masked people have no interest in “peaceful protest.” This is also expressed by the police chief, who takes the masking as a reason to stop the entire demonstration and classifies them not only as criminal offenses but as “serious” crimes. Rainer Paris (1991) analyzes masking beyond the assumption that it is only a matter of “preventing identification by the police during criminal acts” (Paris, 1991, p. 117). Paris sees masking during demonstrations as “an expressive self-­presentation of radical political deviance” (Paris, 1991, p. 119). By deliberately overstepping the rules, the maskers can stage themselves “as indomitable fighters against the hated ‘system’” (Paris, 1991, p. 122). This interpretation is not shared by police, as shown by the police chief’s statements made during the special committee of the Hamburg parliament to deal with the summit protests, including the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration. He stated, on record, that he believed masking only made sense if criminal acts were imminent (Bürgerschaft der freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2018, pp. 56–57). The reference to the 2013 “Flora Demonstration” by the demonstration organizer clarifies his interpretation of the situation. The comparison to “the scenario in 2013” makes it clear that he sees the demonstration at a turning point toward riots, like those in 2013. From the organizer’s point of view, disproportionate police intervention is imminent, which will lead to an equivalent demonstrator response. That is precisely why he asks for more time to influence the demonstrators without police’s use of water cannons, which demonstrators perceive as an indication of imminent police violence. Another overinterpretation example involves the interpretation of a banner as wooden slats. Thus, around 7:12 p.m., “wooden slats” were reported for the first time in the police’s operation protocol system, with later notation that they were handed into the demonstration. These wooden slats were apparently a banner, which was initially handed by partially masked demonstrators from a loudspeaker truck. This rolled-up banner consisting of wooden slats was then handed into the demonstration and unfolded. For about eight minutes, the banner with the inscription “HOORAY THE WORLD IS ENDING! For an end of violence” remains rolled out.24 This banner is also interpreted through the interpretive regime with an affinity for violence, so that it is seen as wooden slats instead, and another sign of a readiness for violence for the police chief (Bürgerschaft der freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2018, p. 60).  The tweet of the account of the police Hamburg read: “We detect about 1000 hooded people in the elevator. Peaceful protest looks different.n#G20HAM17.” See: https://twitter.com/polizeihamburg/status/883012373396770816. 24  See Studio 1 HD News (2017, sec. 33:55–34:16 and 44:00). 23

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As noted earlier, interpretive regimes with an affinity for violence do not necessarily lead to collective violence. Situationist-oriented violence research indicates that it is useful to meticulously trace how these situations build up. Thus, at the start of the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration, after police stopped the demonstration’s formation, a few people were throwing objects, as is noted in the police protocol system and captured on numerous videos. However, most demonstrators did not participate in the throwing. Also, police actions, such as the water cannon or the separation of the two demonstration blocks, are accompanied by appropriate demonstrator chants (“All of Hamburg hates the police”) and broadcasts from the loudspeaker trucks (“Fuck off from our demo”).25 However, the situation turns into an increasingly chaotic situation over time and after a police unit abruptly runs into the rear demonstration block. While the demonstrators in the front block observe this and some flee over the floodwall, they do not attack nearby police officers, remaining behind their banners until pushed by officers to the floodwall (on the subject of chaos, see also Bürger, 2024).

6 On the Tensions of Police Actions Sociological research can be considered a pessimistic endeavor for several reasons. First, many scholars deal with undesirable events, such as financial crises, pandemics, and terrorist attacks. Second, scholars refrain from issuing definitive conclusions or recommendations, given that social scientists deal with probabilities. Everything could always turn out differently, and only in retrospect can we surmise why events occurred. Unfortunately, this analysis does not offer a master plan to prevent violent outbreaks at demonstrations. Nevertheless, attempts should be made to address the tensions and challenges officers face when policing demonstrations, as identified by this study. As the analysis showed, an interpretive regime with an affinity for violence also formed among the protest actors.26 Thus, they are also part of the interpretive dynamics that continued during the “Welcome to Hell” demonstration and significantly influenced its course of events. However, this volume deals with the role of the police; thus, only police actions are addressed here (with the goal of continuous police professionalization with regard to public order, cf. Bürger, 2024). Following a narrow situationist approach, consider moments when the process could have taken a different turn: Would the demonstration organizer perhaps have managed, with a little more time, to convince enough demonstrators to remove their masks, prompting the police chief to let the demonstration continue? Would a  See both abendblatttv (2017, sec. 55:40–55:42) and RT Deutsch (2017, sec. 2:54:06).  This is not always the case. Simon Teune (2017) points out that the militant groups within Germany do discuss their own use of violence. Voices that questioned the militant approach within the “Rote Flora” have so far been rejected as lacking solidarity so militant groups have been able to stabilize there for many years, which was not possible in other places in Germany. 25 26

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different location have changed events, if over ten thousand people were not crowded into a confined space? Would police announcements from a vehicle other than a water cannon have resulted in different demonstrator behavior? This remains a thought experiment, since each of these variants can create new and unforeseen conflict dynamics, which could also have negative outcomes. It should also be acknowledged that to see these substitute scenarios as viable alternatives and possibly change the course of events, a different interpretive dynamic would be needed prior to these actions. However, this is presuppositional for at least two reasons. The first reason deals with the core tasks of the police, and the second with the role of (social) media. A violent interpretive regime is inscribed in the organizational structure of the police. This is because police are authorized to use violent means to achieve core law enforcement tasks and prevent public risk (Dosdall, 2023). Passages from the internal police assessment document and the police organizational structure established specifically for the G20 Summit show how the anticipation of protestors’ willingness to use violence, coupled with the police authority to counter this with violent means, guides the organization’s actions and the interpretative categorization of the protest actors. And this has consequences beyond the police. Police are only one actor in an interpretative dynamic, which they influence by fulfilling their core task while being perceived by others as willing to use violence. Thus, as previously shown, police preparations and statements are interpreted by the protest actors against the background of shared experiences. In this situation, the protest actors only conclude that the police have no interest in allowing “critical protest.” The same applies to the police, who primarily read a willingness to use violence into the protestors’ statements and preparations. Further research results show that both journalistic media and the possibilities of digital communication contribute to the emergence and maintenance of such interpretive regimes with an affinity for violence. An analysis of national newspaper articles about the protests shows a high degree of variation in coverage, including the extent to which reporting is dedicated to demonstrators’ motives or focused on violence (Sommer & Teune, 2019). The analysis also shows that each newspaper reflects its own consistent interpretation of events (Sommer & Teune, 2019). Newspaper readers who only have one subscription are only shown one perspective on the protest against the summit. A similar result emerged when analyzing tweets during the summit protest week. Eddie Hartmann and Felix Lang (2020) show that the issue of violence has a polarizing effect, creating relatively closed discourse spaces, between which hardly any exchange takes place. This study suggests that the police are also part of these dynamics, as they provide content through their numerous interviews, press conferences, and written statements, which are disseminated via the media or shared on Twitter and other channels (cf. Grutzpalk & Jarolimek, 2024; Schenk & Bornhausen, 2024). If these findings are accurate, the police operate in a contentious field with different, if not conflicting, expectations, making it difficult to navigate. In the context of the G20 Summit, police faced a mandate to ensure that the summit could take place as planned, facilitate demonstrations and gatherings, and only minimally

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restrict public life. It will be difficult to clarify the extent to which it is possible to meet these expectations in the context of protest events without becoming entangled in an interpretive dynamic in which protest actors and police accuse each other of violence. Not only is further analysis needed, but also greater exchange between social science scholars and the police. It is hoped that this analysis and the other contributions in this volume are steps in this direction. Acknowledgement  I would like to thank all members of the research group “Macro Violence” at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research as well as the members of the research group “ORDEX” for an intensive discussion of a previous version of this chapter. I would also like to thank Bernd Bürger for very insightful comments on the final draft and Tamara Herold for tidying up my English.

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shz.de. (2017). Hamburgs Innensenator Andy Grote über Schlafcamps während des G20-Gipfels. Retrieved October 29, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei_A9eRVZss. Sommer, M., & Teune, S. (2019). Sichtweisen auf Protest—Die Demonstrationen gegen den G20-­ Gipfel in Hamburg 2017 im Spiegel der Medienöffentlichkeit. Forschungsjournal Soziale Bewegungen, 32, 149–162. Stolle, P. (2018). Zielkonflikte, “Kontrollverluste”, Verselbständigung. Einige Anmerkungen zum Polizeieinsatz beim G20-Gipfel in Hamburg. Kriminologisches Journal, 50, 54–65. Stott, C., & Reicher, S.  D. (1998). Crowd action as intergroup process: introducing the police perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28(4), 509–529. Studio 1 HD. (2017). Anti-globalisation protesters demonstrate against G20 #g20 #g20hh #g20hh17. Retrieved December 16, 2021, from https://www.pscp.tv/Studio1_HD/1gqGvbNYjNqGB. Sutterlüty, F. (2007). The genesis of violent careers. Ethnography, 33, 267–296. Sutterlüty, F. (2015). What the situation explains: On riotous violence. In D. Ziegler, M. Gerster, & S. Krämer (Eds.), Framing excessive violence: Discourse and dynamics (pp. 59–79). Palgrave Macmillan UK. Sutterlüty, F. (2017). Fallstricke situationistischer Gewaltforschung. WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 14, 139–155. Tajfel, H. (1979). Differentiation between social groups: Studies in the social psychology of intergroup relations. Academic Press. Taranis News. (2017). #NoG20 @ Hamburg • Day5: “Welcome to Hell” (Day). Retrieved December 16, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_1Sd-­kiTPw. Teune, S. (2017). Das Scheitern der “Hamburger Linie”. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, 8, 9–12. Turner, J. C. (1982). Towards a cognitive redefinition of the social group. In H. Tajfel (Ed.), Social identity and intergroup relations (pp. 15–40). Cambridge University Press. Utz, R. (2021). Die Gewalt der Situation. Eine soziologische Deutung der kollektiven Gewalt im Kontext des Hamburger G20 Gipfels 2017. In U. Bachmann & T. Schwinn (Eds.), Theorie als Beruf: Festschrift für Wolfgang Schluchter (pp. 225–241). Springer Fachmedien. von Trotha, T. (1997). Zur Soziologie der Gewalt. In T. von Trotha (Ed.), Soziologie der Gewalt (pp. 9–56). Westdeutscher. #WDR360. (2017). Gewaltbereite Linke vs. Polizei—Teil 1—Zwischen den Fronten “Welcome to Hell”. Retrieved December 16, 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xqYCPVVvzU. WELT. (2017). G 20  in Hamburg: Wasserwerfer stoppen “Welcome to Hell”—Demonstration. Retrieved December 16, 2021, from https://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article166363676/ Wasserwerfer-­stoppen-­Welcome-­to-­Hell-­Demonstration.html. Wolters, L. (2019). Vorwärtspanik am Wickeltisch? Zum Verhältnis von Emotionen und Gewalt. Mittelweg, 36(28), 177–204. ZDF. (2017). Dunja Hayali, 05.07.17—Gespräch mit Otto Schily und Emily Laquer. Retrieved December 16, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZpSrNRNlBw. Chris Schattka  is a sociologist and PhD candidate at Bielefeld University and was previously a researcher at the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. He studied sociology at the Bielefeld University and the Swedish Umeå University. As part of his dissertation, he has been conducting research on digital self-representation practices in violent situations. His recent research focuses on methodological problems of violence research and the sociology of interaction.

Almost Forgotten Experiential Knowledge of De-escalation Udo Behrendes and Bernd Bürger

Abstract  In the mid-1980s, a group of experts concluded that those who policed assemblies did not consistently integrate past operational experience in current operational planning, thus those experiences were continually lost and needed to be acquired anew. This includes assessments of the psychological impacts of police tactics on assembly participants and the larger public. Evidence suggests that contemporary experts would discover similar findings. This chapter examines examples of (historic) police approaches that eased tensions in conflict situations at assemblies. The authors identify related de-escalation tactics and training supported by scientific evidence.

1 Initial Situation: Orientation Toward “Weimar Conditions” and Le Bon In the early phase of the Federal Republic of Germany,1 also known as West Germany, police repressed protests (cf. Kraushaar, 2020, p. 41). Police viewed demonstrations as state threats and attempts to initiate government overthrow, not as a democratic function (cf. Schulte, 2019). Police were distrustful, dismissive, and confrontational in their approach to assemblies, and officers engaged primarily in surveilling, suppressive, and militaristic actions (cf. Ott, 1967).

 This chapter does not deal with the parallel development in the former GDR (East Germany).

1

U. Behrendes Lohmar, Germany B. Bürger (*) Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police, Ainring, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; https://publicorderpolicing.com/buerger © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_5

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Since the Weimar Republic2 it was believed that people in masses develop a collective, or shared, identity characterized by irrationally, and their mindsets could be directed and shaped by “ringleaders” (cf. Weinhauer, 2001, p.  315). Gustave Le Bon’s (1895) book, “Psychology of the Masses,” introduced and supported these assumptions, and has remained influential until today (Le Bon, 2021; for more on this see esp. Bürger, 2024). Police believed that crowds would comply with officer directives if “ringleaders” could be isolated (cf. Michels, 2017; Weinhauer, 2020). “Gripping squads,” dressed in civilian attire, infiltrated the crowd, located, and arrested protest leaders (cf. Steinert, 1984). Rather than achieving compliance, these raids often initiated further escalations.3

2 The “Munich Policy” as an Initial De-escalation Strategy Police in the 1950s and 1960s were also confrontational and suppressive in their handling of non-political protests and youth scenes.4 Public debate following police intervention in the 1962 summer “Schwabing Riots”5 (cf. Fürmetz, 2006) prompted gradual change within larger city police departments. Like the mid-1950s nationwide “teenager riots” (cf. Kawelovski & Mecking, 2019), the Schwabing summer nights conflicts escalated following disorderly and provocative behavior by members of the “party crowd” and disproportionate and undifferentiated reactions by police (cf. Sturm, 2006). The Munich police were accused of indiscriminate action against all people present (including onlookers and bystanders) and excessive baton use. A sense of solidarity formed amongst those gathered, and escalation followed (see Hemler, 2006). Manfred Schreiber assumed the office of Munich police chief shortly thereafter, and using lessons learned, proposed training, organizational innovations, and a new communication strategy to improve police response (Schreiber, 1965a). The resulting “Munich Policy” approach was arguably the first professional German (federal and state) police de-­ escalation strategy. At Munich police headquarters, police executives and students received “mass psychology”  training focused on methods to manage officers’ personal emotions (Schreiber, 1965a). Police public relations work intensified. Police proactively sought dialogue with the public, particularly youths and students, through lectures, guided tours, and participatory discussion events (cf. Schreiber, 1965b). External evaluations found that the “Munich Policy” institutionalized escalation prevention

 Officially known as the German Reich.  The tragic events of June 2, 1967, in West Berlin, in which a student, Benno Ohnesorg, was shot by a police officer, occurred in the aftermath of such an operation. 4  These are groups of young people that adopt a shared identity or cause. 5  Schwabing is a nightlife district in Munich. 2 3

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by creating innovative police structures, procedures, and philosophies (Goerschel & Schmidbauer, 1971, p. 168). In the mid-1960s, Rolf Umbach, the first Munich police psychologist, critically examined the idea that crowds quickly develop into homogeneous “acute masses” that mindlessly follow “ringleaders.” Umbach concluded that Le Bon’s assertations were “unscientific, fanciful half-truths” and aligned explanations of protest crowd structures with recent social psychology findings. He maintained that, generally, only a small  minority of crowd members directly promote aggression. Further, crowds consist of a larger group of potential sympathizers and an even larger group of curious people  without any intention to cause trouble (Umbach, 1965). This interpretation remains the basis of social science crowd observations today (cf. Schwalb & Paul, 2015, p. 383 f.).

3 1968: Police Tactics Between Escalation and De-escalation Historic events provide valuable insights regarding current police escalation and de-escalation challenges. Pivotal escalation events (e.g., 1967’s “Shah’s Visit,” 1968’s “Easter Riots” and “Battle of Tegeler Weg”) dominate historical analyses and discussions. Yet, there is much to be learned from often forgotten de-escalation events. These events are the focus of the following analysis.

3.1 De-escalation by External Mediators at the “International Vietnam Congress” The 1986 “International Vietnam Congress” held in West Berlin with around 5000 international participants, was the era’s most significant student movement project (cf. Kraushaar, 2018, pp. 60–66), and thus became the center of a worldwide protest movement (Gassert, 2018, p. 124). A demonstration march to the Berlin-Dahlem U.S. barracks was planned for the final day. However, the demonstration was forbidden, and governing mayor Klaus Schütz, threatened to “clear illegal participants out of the way” (Sack, 1984, p. 206). Rudi Dutschke, spokesman for the “Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund” (SDS; translated as the German Socialist Students Association) publicly announced intentions to disregard the demonstration restriction. The U.S.  Army subsequently announced that attempts to enter the barracks would be met with live fire (cf. Schneider, 2008, p. 252 ff.). Concerned about violent confrontations, several prominent figures of civil society (organizations that are not associated with the government such as schools and universities, advocacy groups, professional associations, NGOs, churches, and cultural groups that advocate for marginalized communities or other disaffected groups

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on social issues),6 convinced the SDS organizers to announce an alternative march route, avoiding the U.S. facilities. Nevertheless, the assembly authorities7 upheld the ban as ordered by the West Berlin Senate. An emergency decision obtained from the West Berlin Administrative Court lifted the demonstration ban. A letter from the Protestant regional bishop Kurt Scharf assured the court that demonstrators would not deviate from the newly announced route. The approximately 15,000 participants subsequently adhered to the assembly stipulations and held a peaceful demonstration (see Mesenhöller, 2017, p. 36 f.).

3.2 De-escalation Through Cooperation at the “Star March on Bonn” After a suspected right-wing extremist’s assassination attempt on SDS spokesman Rudi Dutschke, the April 1968 “Easter Riots,” starting in West Berlin, led to tumultuous police–protester clashes in 26 German cities.8 In Munich, a student and a press photographer were killed. These were considered the Federal Republic’s most serious street battles since the Weimar Republic, which ended in 1933 (Kraushaar, 2018). A few weeks later, more violent confrontations were expected during the “star march on Bonn.” On November 5, 1968, several tens of thousands of people from all parts of the Federal Republic (and also by train from East Germany) came to the federal capital (cf. Kleßmann, 1997). The large “Extra-Parliamentary Opposition” (APO) rally protested the imminent passing of the “Emergency Laws” (cf. on the history of their development Werkentin, 1984). Before the APO’s “star march,” the Junge Union9 advised Bonn citizens to barricade their windows (cf. DER SPIEGEL, issue 21/1968). In the midst of a heated domestic political climate and against colleagues’ advice, the head of police operations, Police Superintendent Tonis Hunold, designed a de-escalation strategy (cf. Bothien, 2021) that aligned with the later issued Federal Constitutional Court’s 1985 “Brokdorf Decision.” Hunold invited demonstration organizers to cooperation talks, established consensus for assembly conditions, and secured the largest inner-city open space—the

 In particular, state bishop Kurt Scharf, theologian Helmut Gollwitzer, and former governing mayor and pastor Heinrich Albertz. 7  In most German federal states, assembly authorities, who set conditions for registered demonstrations, and the police who later manage the demonstration, are organizationally distinct. In some federal states (e.g., in the largest federal state North Rhine-Westphalia), the local police authorities are wholly responsible for assemblies system; cf. also Thielmann and Bürger (2024). 8  Clashes began with attempts to prevent deliveries of the BILD newspaper, which was held responsible for Rudi Dutschke’s assassination. Parallel riots in almost all major cities of the Federal Republic of Germany remain a unique phenomenon to this day. 9   Youth organization of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU). 6

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Hofgartenwiese—for the final rally.10 At the event, police appeared predominantly as “traffic police,” wearing white caps instead of helmets, and withdrew the visible presence of approximately 4000 officers deployed near the demonstration. Arriving demonstrators received handouts with a welcome greeting. Police also addressed the local population of Bonn, appealing for tolerance toward the demonstration. The North Rhine-Westphalian Minister of the Interior, Willy Weyer, assumed political responsibility for the de-escalation strategy prior to the event (cf. Hunold, 1968b). The event proceeded largely without disruption, despite the concurrent street battles and barricade fights raging between the student movement and the police in Paris (cf. Frei, 2008, cf. Hunold, 1968a). A subsequent “spontaneous demonstration,” consisting of several hundred participants signifying solidarity with Parisian students, traveled a few kilometers and protested peacefully at the French embassy in Bad Godesberg (cf. Kraushaar, 1998). The police union federal chairman stated, “Thus, through reasonable and prudent action on both sides, the dreaded friend-foe relationship could not arise in the first place. On the contrary, the organizers and the police worked closely together before, during, and after the rally and thus had the protest demonstration in their hands at all times. In Bonn, standards have been set which cannot be disregarded in the future without further ado” (Kuhlmann, 1969, p. 351 f.).

3.3 De-escalation Through Communication: “Integrated Officers” in Munich, “Discussion Squads” in West Berlin In the 1960s, police agencies began developing ideas for improving police–protest group communication to complement emerging de-escalation strategies. In Munich, police psychologists recommended training officers in “integrated operations” (cf. Sieber, 1968). Uniformed officers mingled and spoke with demonstrators, while a few marched with participants at the procession’s front. One of several goals was to ensure the march followed registered, or pre-authorized, routes.11 In West Berlin, police superintendent Werner Textor’s cabaret-like loudspeaker announcements loosened the atmosphere at “Kurfürstendamm sit-ins” (cf. DER SPIEGEL, issue 45/1967, p.  104 f.). Police chief Klaus Hübner, who came into office in 1969, adopted the “Textor method” (cf. Harms, 1970, p. 81 f.) and integrated a “discussion command” into his demonstration operational strategy. Although now a familiar tactic, the approach was innovative at the time. Police previously considered dialogue with “potential disruptors” as showing weakness  The Hofgartenwiese in Bonn is owned by the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität. In the early 1980s, it became a symbolic site during large peace movement demonstrations. 11  The police chief inspector Rudolf Mayer (“Unterhak-Mayer”; translates as “underhookingMayer”) became the symbolic figure—see DER SPIEGEL, issue 47/1969, p.  116 et  seq. The police role as a neutral authority was, however, at least visually counteracted by the incident commander marching in lock step and linked arms with protesters in the front row (cf. Merkur, 2010). 10

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(cf. Mecking, 2020). Almost 50 volunteer officers (“Group 47”) received 140 hours of training. The officers attended Free University Berlin psychology seminars and learned Marxist theories to converse with student demonstrators “on an equal footing” (cf. Strencioch, 2014). Police learned to see student movement participants as “human beings and thoroughly critical citizens” and students learned that police is not “as a homogeneous mass of uncritical servants of the state.” The approach created personal, and often friendly, relationships between the officers and students. Yet the officers faced insults from colleagues who called them a “surrender group” and “shirkers” (Werner, 1970, p. 56). Student movement “hardliners” disliked dialogue with the new friendly “enemy.” They labeled the “Group 47” officers as “psycho cops” (Füchsel, 2007) and discouraged conversation. Other police departments followed the Munich and West Berlin dialogue approach. For example, after a student was shot by an officer during a June 1967 riot, Bochum police chief Wilfried Graf von Hardenberg participated in a Ruhr University law school discussion. He invited students to conduct ride alongs, and 144 students accepted the invitation (cf. Petzolt, 2020, p. 153 f.). Berlin Police Pastor Klaus Harms summarized the nationwide dialogue approaches: “It has turned out that these sinister images of ‘acute masses’ and ‘hermetic blocks’ very soon loosen up when, you start talking with each other. This formation of discussion groups for the purpose of reducing mutual aggression is an unheard-of advance in the strategy of police behavior and the humanization of a specific social process. Psychology thus opened ways of dismantling the friend-foe mindset” (Harms, 1970, p. 80).

3.4 Broadening Perspectives The handling of non-political protests and youth scenes also offered new lessons for police. For example, the “Guide to Psychology for Police Officers” in North Rhine-­ Westphalia states: There are situations in which it is advisable for the police not to make any appearance at all, in order to deny the demonstrators “sparring-partners”, i.e., to deprive them of the “opponent” against whom they want to “rub up” against.12

Hamburg Senator of the Interior, Heinz Ruhnau, directed police executives and societal leaders to form a “planning group” and jointly develop strategies to manage volatile demonstrations. Adopting this dialogue structure was a courageous and exemplary step toward a community-oriented police culture that has only recently

 The guide (ed.: Direktor der Bereitschaftspolizei NW, 1st ed. 1968) was given to all officers in basic training. The quotation is from the 3rd edition, November 1971, p. 65. 12

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been widely embraced, given police leaders’ previously non-collaborative and esprit de corps mindset (cf. Weinhauer, 2003, p. 300 f.). The Hiltrup Police Institute’s13 invitation to “police-critical” academics in the late 1960s attracted famed psychoanalyst Alexander Mitscherlich to police training seminars. He lectured on police handling of the student demonstrations. Mitscherlich encouraged executives to see police as demonstration moderators and mediators and to resist political demands for “tough action” (Mitscherlich, 1968, p. 43). Lessons were learned from police operations in other countries. In October 1968, the Munich police chief and another officer traveled to study London police operations during a large Vietnam War demonstration. The German observers found that British police did not place operational equipment (e.g., blocking equipment, water cannons, and prisoner transporters) in view of demonstrators, “let the demonstration run free to the utmost limit” and refrained from acting against “ringleaders,” even during minor clashes. Police primarily focused on protecting the American embassy, the British parliament, and government buildings. The Germans noted the “objective and extremely calm intervention” of the London “Bobbies,” and concluded that the operation was “a complete success” (cf. Schreiber & Haimerl, 1969). The emerging strategies and broadened perspectives did not represent “mainstream” police approaches at that time. The statement of one witness remained generally valid: “Police and university members stood in an antagonistic relationship to each other; communication in the street was predominantly non-verbal and confrontational” (Clobes, 1998, p. 93).

4 Anti-nuclear Movement and Civil Disobedience Today’s climate change protests resemble the “anti-nuclear movement” protests in their objectives, organization, and tactics. In the 1970s and 1980s, protests against the risks of nuclear power plants and “nuclear waste” storage mainly took place at plant construction sites (cf. brief overview in Beinhauer, 1999). Since the 1990s, German police have faced protests against CASTOR (atomic waste) transports (cf. brief overview in Behrendes, 2020). While nationwide confrontations at symbolic sites (e.g., Grohnde, Brokdorf, and Wackersdorf) are remembered by both protesters and police as “battles” (cf. Holecek, 2017), the Federal Constitutional Court’s “Brokdorf Decision” explicitly references the successes of de-escalation and dialogue approaches at these protests. It is the successes that are often forgotten.

 This nationwide training and advanced civil service training center was later renamed the Police Leadership Academy and is now known as the German Police University. 13

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4.1 The Development of the “Stuttgart Policy” Early 1970s nuclear power plant protests planned for Wyhl in Baden are regarded as the “birth” of the “anti-nuclear movement” in Germany (Gaumer, 2021). In February 1975, hundreds of people, mainly local women and children, initially occupied the construction site. Two days later, pressured by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior (cf. Augustine, 2018), police cleared the site using water cannons, batons, and police dogs. The squatters did not actively resist. Participants and observers believed the police used unnecessary force, and the protest grew (cf. Gassert, 2018). A few days later, over 10,000 demonstrators gathered at the construction site (cf. Augustine, 2018). Several thousand people entered and occupied restricted areas (Rucht, 1980). Two days later, new eviction preparations were completed. A police commander, who was personally against the nuclear power plant construction, feared serious police–protester confrontations. He refused to participate in the operation and turned to a local pastor, who called the Protestant bishop. The bishop immediately contacted the Minister President of Baden-Württemberg, Filbinger, who then stopped the eviction operation (cf. Weide, 2016, p. 251). The construction site was subsequently occupied for 9 months. After the initial confrontations, police demonstrated restraint. Following the Wyhl protests, the “Stuttgart Policy” was developed and practiced in Baden-Württemberg. Geared toward de-escalation, police stopped using water cannons, service dogs, and batons to manage non-violent acts of “civil disobedience”14 (cf. Sternstein, 2011). After initial confrontations, the years-long Wyhl nuclear power plant protest15 was characterized by widespread non-violence. Historical research attributes this to the agreements made by the broad alliance of residents, external environmental activists, and nearby Freiburg’s “left-wing alternatives,” in conjunction with the calm and restrained “Stuttgart Policy” police strategy (cf. Gassert, 2018).

4.2 “Stuttgart Talks” In the autumn of 1982 and spring of 1983, three “de-escalation talks” took place between representatives of environmental associations, the peace movement, other social groups, and the police, as encouraged by the “Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Umweltfragen e.V.” (Working Group for Environmental Issues). The “Stuttgart

 In the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, “civil disobedience” is usually viewed as morally legitimized law violation used to draw public attention to a (supposed) state or societal grievance. “Civil disobedience” activists seek to avoid physical injuries and accept (criminal) legal consequences for their actions (cf. for 1980s topic-related literature Willems et al., 1988). 15  After construction was halted in the 1980s, the area was designated as a nature reserve. 14

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Paper” summarized the results (cf. Stümper, 1985) and was quoted by the Federal Constitutional Court in its “Brokdorf Decision” (BVerfGE 69, 315, No. AI, 2): The fundamental willingness to talk on the part of all those involved, and the resulting ongoing contact are particularly important. This promotes mutual understanding, makes it easier for all those involved to assess the situation and carry out their tasks, and leads to a more relaxed approach to conflict situations. The police cannot accept breaches of the law but try to avoid escalations by reacting flexibly and proportionately to the situation, exercising restraint in exercising the state’s monopoly on the use of force and adapting to new forms of non-violent action by adopting a correspondingly defensive approach and intervening. All participants should strive to avoid the following measures: [...] aggressive appearances of demonstrators and police forces, unnecessary, excessive, or incomprehensible police deployment measures, unnecessary demonstrations of power on the part of the police or the organizers, but also of politicians.

4.3 Bremen’s “Long Breath” Strategy Police have faced protest “sit-ins” and similar “civil disobedience” or “non-violent actions” for decades (cf. Kueß, 2013). The Federal Constitutional Court’s 1986 “Mutlangen” ruling (BVerfGE 73, 206) clarified that these activities are not “unpeaceful” as defined within Article 8 of the Basic Law.16 Nevertheless, they are often unlawful and sometimes require police to prevent (e.g., avoiding or breaking up a blockade) or respond (e.g., taking reports to criminally prosecute protesters17). Especially in the 1960s and 1970s, police did not always distinguish between “only” unlawful (non-violent) and violent protests. It was common to use water cannons against sit-in demonstrators in many places (cf. Behrendes, 2020). Since the mid-1960s, protests against local public transport fare increases involving road and rail blockades repeatedly led to violent clashes between mostly young demonstrators and police. In January 1968, after 5 days of street fighting between the police and 3000 demonstrators in Bremen, a parliamentary inquiry committee investigated the police response. In its final report, committee criticisms included inadequate police psychology training and failure to incorporate lessons learned in other cities from police operations (cf. Paschner, 1970). Based on the committee’s report and evaluations of other police agency experiences, Bremen police developed the “long breath” strategy to manage anticipated rail and road blockades a few years later. Police, working with the Bremen tramway company, adopted prevention measures and built diversion networks to reduce  Article 8 (1) of the Basic Law reads (unchanged since 1949): “All Germans have the right to assemble [...] peacefully and without arms.” 17  On the interaction between a blockade’s lawful dissolution and the fulfillment of the element of coercion (accessoriness of administrative acts), cf. Deiseroth (2020, pp. 837–841). 16

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public transport obstructions. Police operations did not focus on blockades, which carried escalation risks, but on arresting those engaged in serious offenses. Plainclothes officers pursued identified suspects and used the “velcro tactic,” detaining them temporarily, with uniformed “arrest squad” assistance, away from protest focal points. The Bremen police practiced this strategic approach during 16 demonstrations in the winter of 1976/1977, arresting 183 suspects and initiating 510 criminal proceedings.18 During the 16 days of action, individual blockades lasted approximately 30–60 min. The longest sit-in, with several hundred participants, lasted about two hours. Police dispersals or mass arrests would have extended public transport obstructions. Bremen Police leadership used this information to counter public and internal criticisms of the de-escalation tactic. In addition, executives called attention to the number of arrests made, which significantly exceeded that made during the previous “tram riots.”19 Bremen police evolved into a “learning organization” which, drawing from previous lessons learned, developed an effective strategy to minimize risks of violent protest interactions.

5 The “Brokdorf Decision” of the Federal Constitutional Court In the 1980s, West German police confronted its country’s most violent protest in history (cf. overview in Behrendes, 2020). The Federal Constitutional Court’s decision (BVerfGE 69, 315), which holds today, was issued within an extremely tense social climate. The decision was triggered by an assembly authority’s February 1981 demonstration ban around the Brokdorf nuclear power plant construction site. The ban was initiated in response to the expected participation of violent groups during a planned large-scale demonstration. The court used their overturning of the ban as an opportunity to issue fundamental constitutional statements on the freedom of demonstrations and obligations of organizers, assembly authorities, and police—particularly during large demonstrations with heterogeneous groups of organizers and participants.

 Criminal proceedings were initiated when suspects were secured on scene without needing arrest or if an offense occurred and the suspect was unknown, which German law mandates. 19   These descriptions are from “Erfahrungsbericht über die Demonstrationen gegen die Fahrpreisanhebung der Bremer Straßenbahn AG im Dezember 1976 / Januar 1977” of the Stadtund Polizeiamt Bremen, 1977. 18

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5.1 Key Statements of the Brokdorf Ruling Regarding “De-escalation” The court called upon demonstration organizers to protect participants by encouraging peaceful behavior and isolating violent perpetrators. The court recommended that police, acting as the state’s agent, use restraint, avoid excessive reactions, and if necessary, form police-free areas to avoid conflict. The court essentially demanded that assembly authorities and police work to facilitate assemblies, given the numerous examples of largely peaceful demonstrations, and not to interfere without sufficient reason. To achieve cooperation and manage potentially unforeseen conflicts, the court recommended establishing early contact to build relationships and exchange information. The constitutional judges concluded that thoughtful preparation and cooperation would reduce the risk of conflict during demonstrations. They saw “confidence-building measures” between the assembly authority, police, and protest as the key to peaceful protests.

5.2 Implementation of the “Brokdorf Decision” The “Brokdorf Decision” led to new police policies. The North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior, for example, developed the “NRW Policy.” It promoted talking to all participants before, during, and after demonstrations to build trust and cooperation. Recognizing that militaristic police uniforms and equipment make it easier for activists to build narratives that police are the enemy, new guidelines encouraged reducing displays of intimidating operational clothing and equipment whenever possible (Ruckriegel, 1987, p. 289). The Rhineland-Palatinate Ministry of the Interior set similar priorities and argued: “More than ever before, we must direct our police measures not primarily at the perpetrators of violence, but above all at the large majority of critical but peaceful assembly participants, who have received too little attention up to now” (Ludwig, 1987, p. 294). The “Brokdorf Decision” was incorporated into basic and advanced police training—but reflections of the Federal Constitutional Court requirements in police regulations remain rudimentary after more than 35 years. Police Regulation 100 (PDV 100) on “Leadership and Deployment of the Police” specifically states: “With the organizer and the leader of the assembly [... police are] to cooperate closely at an early stage and in principle.” However, an abstract requirement concerning the role of police follows: “The police are required to proceed in an assembly-friendly manner” (No. 5.4.3.1 PDV 100 VS-NfD, 2012—specific section not classified).

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6 Developments After the “Brokdorf Decision” The “Brokdorf Decision” triggered and influenced various developments, including the following.

6.1 The “Motivation” Working Group In 1986, the inter-state “Motivation” Working Group set up by Working Group II of the Conference of Ministers of the Interior (AK II; cf. Thielmann & Bürger, 2024)20 investigated the causes and outcomes of past violent demonstration confrontations to identify possible solutions and actionable strategies to improve police operations. Finding that police leaders and their staff lacked historical knowledge, and an absence of experts available to assist with operational planning, the working group recommended a systematic and scientific nationwide collection and analysis of operational experience, to establish common professional knowledge about mass demonstrations. The working group also called for establishing a “culture of democratic dialogue” to combat adversarial, “enemy” stereotypes and seek cooperative and constructive solutions. They suggested initiating talks with critical population groups to demonstrate, through police, the state’s willingness to communicate and engage. They saw action against violent perpetrators and efforts to promote understanding through communication as complementary and necessary actions in a unified strategy. The working group suggested that police adopt a “socio-psychological framework” involving symbolic communication in addition to individual participant conversations. While violent protester actions motivated police to use militaristic protective gear and equipment, their use can hinder peacekeeping efforts. Officer efforts to foster conversations, on any topic, with as many demonstrators as possible produce de-escalating effects. The working group further advised that all officers receive communication training, not only specialized units. Significant de-­escalation effects only occur if all officers support and engage in widespread conversations. Otherwise, demonstrators might see attempted engagement as artificial or another control tactic. The working group also suggested that contacts made prior to and during demonstrations continue afterward (e.g., hold debriefings and information events).

 In the Federal Republic of Germany, “police sovereignty” (i.e., responsibility for implementing relevant legislation), basically lies with the individual state. The Conference of Interior Ministers coordinates overarching issues between the 16 states and the Federal Government. This political body usually meets twice a year. In addition, various working groups and specialist committees work to prepare and perform work subsequent to the Conference of Interior Ministers meetings (cf. also Thielmann & Bürger, 2024). 20

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In its conclusion, the working group maintained that police had generally failed to explain their task of upholding the rule of law and safeguarding peace and had adopted a hostile approach to demonstrations. Intentional communication was needed to remedy this situation. The group advocated for early and continuous contact with event leaders, establishing complaint and information processes, and actively demonstrating intent to promote peaceful demonstrations.21

6.2 Social Science Studies on “Demonstrators and Police” At the end of the 1980s, a German Youth Institute research project (Willems et al., 1988) and Federal Government (Anti-)Violence Commission discussions (Eckert et al., 1990; Lösel et al., 1990) studied self and external perceptions of demonstrators and police officers, including perceptions of each other’s behaviors and event escalation conditions. The findings (cf. overview in Kniesel & Behrendes, 1996) are still relevant today, as no comparable broad-based studies have been conducted and subsequent studies support the earlier findings (cf., for example, Hillebrand et al., 2015). Perceptions of demonstrators and police officers are influenced by their physical appearance and willingness to communicate. Demonstrators view large police unit deployments, particularly, those with helmets and protective shields, as frightening and provocative (Willems et  al., 1988). However, more subtle symbols of police power like displays of arrogant, nonchalance, and “macho” behaviors are also viewed as aggression and can create solidarity between peaceful participants and groups with an affinity for violence (Lösel et al., 1990). Police officers willing to talk are seen as individuals whom demonstrators can distinguish from anonymous “helmet cops” (Willems et al., 1988). An absence of aggressive symbols and restrained police behavior is likely to be seen as an effort to build trust and rewarded (ibid.). Escalation is likely when police intervene against protests involving “civil disobedience.” The threat of escalation increases if demonstrators perceive police tactics against non-violent rule-breakers as “unfair” or inappropriate. As a rule, blockade participants accept being carried away as an appropriate police response, but not the use of police dogs or water cannons. These are seen as targeted and intended provocations leading to feelings of indignation and solidarity (Willems et al., 1988). Similar to demonstrator assessments, police officers use the external appearance of protest groups to classify demonstrators as “peaceful” or “unpeaceful.” Those with “alternative,” and especially “autonomous” black block outfits, are perceived as ready to use violence (Eckert et  al., 1990). Even positive experiences with

  All indirect quotes are taken from the (unpublished) final report of the “Motivation” Working Group. 21

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demonstrators dressed in this manner rarely help to correct or revise this classification. The stereotype is largely immune to alternative experiences and interpretations (Willems et al., 1988). Officers legitimize lowering their personal threshold for violent action, believing that they must react and defend themselves (ibid.). Action-reaction spirals are triggered by demonstrator and police officer behaviors, as well as how each interprets the others’ (anticipated) behavior within a given context. These attribution processes develop their own dynamics, especially in mistrusting and uncommunicative conflict situations (Willems et al., 1988, cf. also esp. Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Bürger, 2024; Schattka, 2024). Demonstrator–police clashes cause heterogeneous demonstration subgroups to unite and experience solidarity. Solidarity can become the dominant norm that overrides other individual intentions. Demonstrators report intense, sometimes euphoric feelings of group solidarity (Willems et al., 1988). Police can also experience an esprit de corps while working together in dangerous situations. This can produce “sanction immunity” for officers who use unlawful force and imitation effects. Solidarity can create pressure and compel action on “both sides” (cf. Bürger, 2024; Willems et al., 1988). Scientific evidence shows that police can control their participation in escalation processes and decide “not to join in the game” (Willems et al., 1988). Studies find, as did the Federal Constitutional Court, that communication is key to de-escalation. The PDV 100 contains only one citation of this important concept: “A communicative influencing of group-dynamic processes is to be strived for.”22 Police practice has also largely ignored research findings (which have been tersely summarized in this paper). Hamburg State Police Directorate research assistant, Rüdiger Bredthauer, stated: “For a social science consultant, it is always as astonishing as it is frustrating when fundamental research results of the social sciences, which should have been known to the police for years because of their practical relevance, are blatantly disregarded as a matter of course.” Findings today would likely be the same for many police agencies (cf. Kueß, 2019, p. 28 f.).

6.3 Peaceful Integration of Groups with Affinity to Violence at a Large Demonstration in Bonn Practically implementing the Federal Constitutional Court’s “Brokdorf Decision” requirement to isolate groups prepared to use violence in large-scale demonstrations usually proves incredibly difficult for both organizers and police. However, it is sometimes possible to foster responsibility and trust between organizers and police that instead assimilate potentially violent groups into the larger peaceful crowd.  Cf. No. 4.4.3.3 of PDV 100, as of 1999; for this quotation, reference is not made (as is otherwise customary in this chapter) to the currently valid version of PDV 100 VS-NfD (2012), as the relevant parts relevant were classified as VS-NfD and was not released. The 1999 version of PDV 100 was not yet classified. 22

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Over 30 organizations, together with several hundred other support groups, called for a large demonstration in Bonn on November 14, 1992, to “Defend fundamental rights—protect refugees—fight racism!”23 In a tense political climate, shortly after a Rostock-Lichtenhagen refugee shelter arson attack and immediately before an SPD (social democrat party) special party conference on the question of amending Article 16 of the Basic Law (right of asylum), more than 100,000 demonstrators came to Bonn which, no longer the federal capital, remained the seat of parliament and government. Of particular concern to both the organizers and police was the “anti-fascist/ internationalist bloc,” in which some 3500 participants of “autonomous” groupings from across Germany planned their own march to a separate final rally on Bonn’s Münsterplatz.24 The National Intelligence Service issued an advance public warning (which is relatively rare) about the extreme militancy of these groups, some of which were close to the “RAF.”25 The primary organizer was Manfred (“Mani”) Stenner, managing director of the Bonn-based “Netzwerk Friedenskooperative” (translated as “network of cooperating the peace”), who had many years of large demonstration organizing experience.26 Based on previous demonstration experiences in Bonn, Stenner sought safety through communication and cooperation: “We do not want people to come to harm during demonstrations—neither people with banners, nor people in uniform.” Before the event, Stenner stated his “professional” goal as the organizer’s spokesperson: “I want the ARD Tagesthemen (a major German TV news show) to show the 100,000 people on the Hofgartenwiese in the evening and to report our substantive demands—and not rioting on the Münsterplatz.” Stenner mediated a meeting with “autonomous block” representatives at a Bonn police station prior to the demonstration. A precondition for the meeting included preserving representatives’ anonymity by accepting the wearing of sunglasses and PLO scarves during the conversation, as they expressed fears of hidden cameras. Through Stenner’s moderation of a laborious exchange lasting several hours, they reached a consensus on conditions for a “political” (equal to non-violent) demonstration of this “autonomous block.” Police agreed to limit visible police presence accompanying the approximately 3500 marching “autonomous” to about 30 officers in normal uniform without protective equipment. Marching from the north of Bonn to the Münsterplatz, police agreed to primarily focus on traffic control along the route. The agreement also made clear that about 1000 additional police officers with protective equipment would be on standby as a “Plan B” in case of violence.

 Cf. on the documentation of the “FriedensForum” demonstration 7/1992.  The author of this article (Udo Behrendes) was responsible for this “autonomous” demonstration as the police operation’s “section leader.” 25  “Red Army Faction (RAF)” was the self-designation of a left-wing extremist terrorist organization founded in the 1970s (self-dissolved in 1998) that was responsible for numerous assassinations and explosive attacks on state representatives and institutions. 26  Cf. on the peace policy vita of Mani Stenner, who died in 2014: “FriedensForum” 6/2014. 23 24

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The demonstration proceeded largely without incident (cf. also Bothien, 2009). The “taz” (a typically police-critical German tabloid) reported in its November 16, 1992, issue that even the “internationalist anti-fascist block” was not provoked by the countless unguarded department store windows during their rally on the Münsterplatz. “Antifa” car loudspeakers repeatedly reminded the approximately 4000 persons dressed in black to remain calm: “Here, no one has an interest in anything going on.” The “FAZ” (one of the largest German newspapers) wrote on the same day that police and demonstration organizers’ agreements paid off. Municipal police dismissed the national intelligence service’s “worries” over violence as unjustified. An autonomist who claimed to speak with the police commander called police leadership “cooperative.” “Die Welt” (another large German newspaper) reported that, “The police showed discreet presence—white caps instead of hard hats.”

6.4 The “Bonn Forum Citizens and Police e. V.” The Bonn Police developed a trusting relationship with members of the peace and civil rights movement based on numerous positive mutual experiences over many years. Nevertheless, many protest actors continued to be critical of the police, in general. An unannounced PKK27 protest in August 1994,28 which ended in violent clashes with the police, prompted a public discussion organized by Stenner’s “Netzwerk Friedenskooperative.” Public order police officers, PKK sympathizers, and local “Antifa”29 representatives participated. Despite diametrically opposing viewpoints, the groups listened to and conversed with each other in a heated but generally respectful atmosphere. This positive experience led to deliberations about how this dialogue-based approach could be regularly conducted. After intensive exploratory talks, the “Bonner Forum BürgerInnen und Polizei e.V.” (translated as “forum of citizens and police of Bonn”) was founded in 1995 as a “dialogue experiment” between police officers and “police-critical” people representing political initiatives. The association’s statutes established “rules of the game” for fair discussion and dispute.30 The first project involved organizing citizens’ perceptions of

 The Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK) was banned from operating in the Federal Republic of Germany in November 1993 after numerous violent actions. 28  The author of this article (Udo Behrendes) was the police officer in charge of this event. 29  Antifa (Antifascist Action) is a name referencing various loosely structured left and extreme left political groups. 30  Mani Stenner, executive director of Netzwerk Friedenskooperative, was elected spokesperson for the “citizens’ side,” and Behrendes, an author of this article, was elected spokesperson for the “police side.” 27

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everyday police work. Identified concerns affecting relationships between “police-­ critical” citizens and the police were discussed.31 Following the CASTOR transport protests,32 which mainly took place in another German state, the “Bonn Forum” moderated a 1997 public discussion between the responsible police officer from Lüneburg (Lower Saxony) and the citizens’ initiative spokesperson, after direct dialogue between police and nuclear power opponents had come to a standstill. Prior to the March 1998 CASTOR transport to Ahaus, the “Bonn Forum” produced an idea for a “clearing house.” After exploratory talks with the citizens’ initiative Ahaus and the Münster police chief, the “Bonn Forum” proposed to organize an independent advisory and mediation body composed of equal numbers of experts from the protest movements and the police. Its intent was to support constructive communication between police command and organizers, to minimize false reports and misinterpretations of events, and to develop proposals to resolve conflicts. After intervention by the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry of the Interior, the police chief refused to implement the proposal. The “clearing house” model was later discussed prior to other large demonstrations, but it has not (yet) been tested. After significant activity between 1995 and 2000, the “Bonn Forum” subsequently entered a “stand-by stage” rarely being asked to activate its mediation function with any public awareness. However, the contacts on both sides were repeatedly used before large-scale police operations throughout Germany (e.g., the 2007 G8 summit in Heiligendamm) to initiate or support cooperation between demonstration organizers and the police. Most police officers were rather indifferent, skeptical, or dismissive of the initiative and regarded active “Bonn Forum” members with suspicion. “Citizens’ side” members also faced mistrust and rejection in their respective groups. Overall, this discussion circle never achieved majority support on either side, but their successes were often acknowledged (Behrendes & Stenner, 2008).

7 Modules of a De-escalation Concept The following describes essential components of a potential de-escalation strategy developed from empirical knowledge, key research findings, and Federal Constitutional Court requirements.

 “Racism in the police?” and “Do we need a police commission?” were among the late 1990s discussion topics. 32  “Cask for Storage and Transport of Radioactive Materials.” 31

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7.1 Examination of One’s Own Role in the Interactive Events of a Demonstration German police perspectives of escalating events have remained the same since the 1950s: An officer’s own behavior is reactive (cf. Winter, 1998) or legally required.33 Careful analysis of interactions by officers is uncommon (cf. Bredthauer, 1996). As a result, police can (unintentionally) create incentives for aggression through their appearance and behavior. Officers do not always recognize the proper situations or places for intervention, and they do not always take action that is differentiated and appropriate. Police know that most demonstrations are peaceful and lawful34 and even within “problematic” demonstrations, just a subgroup is usually responsible for violence. Despite this knowledge, police often focus during planning and operations on “problem groups” and react legally and tactically based on this perspective. Officers then (unintentionally) signal to peaceful participants that they are also considered potentially dangerous or are seen as “stirrup holders” for violent groups. This undifferentiated approach can lead to mistrust, frustration, and ultimately solidarization with actual “problem groups” (cf. Bredthauer, 1996, p. 62 f.; on this, cf. esp. also Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Bürger, 2024; Schattka, 2024).

7.2 Recognition of the Contradicting Effect of “Self-Protection” Police tend to think and plan around worst-case scenarios. For members of “riot police” units at demonstrations, “self-protection” is the highest priority. They prepare for all possible outcomes and expect police leadership to do the same. Anecdotal accounts regarding experiences with assemblies suggest that exceptional cases receive the most attention and are remembered longer. Since bottles have been thrown during otherwise peaceful events, officers prepare for this atypical development, even if the demonstration is expected to be peaceful. Boots, protective body armor, and helmets are usually regarded as standard demonstration equipment, even if there is no indication of expected violence. Police officers are universally concerned about “officer safety” and “self-protection.” In public order events, officers are often reluctant to deploy without donning specialized protective gear. Even a helmet can signal to assembly attendees that police expect confrontation. While designed for officer safety, the militaristic appearance of protective equipment can  The police “principle of legality” stems from § 163 of the Criminal Procedures Code. Police are tasked with prosecuting all known criminal offenses without exception. 34  From 1970 to 1996, the Federal Ministry of the Interior kept nationwide demonstration statistics. During this period, police classified around 1% of all demonstrations “violent”—cf. Kubera et al. (2013, no. 4.4, p. 7). 33

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become a catalyst for conflict or a barrier to peaceful dialogue. The need for “self-­ protection” must be balanced by the challenges militaristic police appearance creates. Police leaders developing a communicative, dialogue-based approach, that protects officers, must not be hindered by unwarranted personal safety concerns. Today, following the example of the 1960s Berlin “discussion squads” (cf. Sect. 3.3), special “communication teams” in regular uniforms are increasingly used to address “self-protection” concerns while simultaneously signaling a readiness for dialogue. However, this organizational division reinforces impressions that public order police are primarily interested in physical conflict resolution, given their much larger numbers relative to the communication-focused units. The use of technical equipment and personal protective equipment has increased exponentially in recent decades. Public order police often wear fire-protection masks (“balaclavas”) under their helmets, so only their eyes are seen. The entire, usually black, uniform, is quite similar in appearance to militant “autonomist” clothing and can signal that physical confrontations are to be expected. Additionally, many officers simply concerned with personal safety fail to understand why their uniforms are perceived as intimidating, distancing, and hostile (cf. Deiseroth & Kutscha, 2020), or why an intimidating appearance invites the very aggression officers seek protection from (cf. Herrnkind, 2017).

7.3 Sensitivity to the Ambivalent Effect of the “Show of Force” Like personal protective equipment, police technical equipment, can invite escalation. This includes the visible presence of water cannons, clearing vehicles, and video squads. The Federal Constitutional Court acknowledged the potential aggression-­provoking nature of police appearance intended to signal power and strength in its “Brokdorf Decision” (cf. Sect. 5). These negative effects were again supported by late 1980s research (cf. Sect. 6.2). Nevertheless, police operations continuously fail to address this issue with the necessary sensitivity. Ultimately, the deliberate presentation of evidence gathering, arrest, or rapid intervention units, along with intervention equipment like water cannons and clearing vehicles, can deter protests and thus constitute interference with freedom of assembly (cf. Hunold & Wegner, 2018). For example, the Federal Administrative Court determined that intimidation caused by a low-flying German Armed Forces Tornado fighter aircraft over a demonstrator protest camp posed an impermissible interference to the freedom of assembly.35

35

 Federal Administrative Court, NJW 2018, p. 716 et seq.

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7.4 Counteracting a Weakening of the De-escalation Principle The rule of law requires police to strive for appropriate appearance and action in every situation. Since the 1960s, the “de-escalation principle” has been continuously promoted to achieve this goal (cf. Schmalzl, 1996). The German Police Regulation PDV 100 defines de-escalation as “Strategic guideline in conflict-prone operational situations with the objective of preventing or reducing threatening or existing confrontations in such a way that a sustainable pacification of the situation becomes possible, in particular through target group-oriented mitigation of readiness for  the use of force” (cf. ibid., annex 20, p.  6, non-confidential section). However, de-escalation is not again directly mentioned in the specific operational PDV 100 policies for handling demonstrations. The PDV 100 wording around de-escalation in demonstrations is derived from the Federal Constitutional Court’s “Brokdorf Decision” (Kubera et al., 2013, No. 4.4). Both “offensive” and “defensive” approaches are presented as tactical options based on the de-escalation principle. Under “offensive action,” tactics like visibly deploying a large number of police officers, use of all available resources, displays of authority, intensive checkpoints staffed with many officers, and escort and containment provisions are listed. “Defensive action” is described as using restrained action, visibly deploying only a small number of officers , non-display of police, and restraint in equipping and arming officers (ibid., No. 4.4, p. 31 f.). The descriptions of offensive and defensive actions show that police can interpret and use de-escalation relatively arbitrarily. De-escalation is defined so that any and all operational philosophies are supported. This arbitrariness (and thus devaluation of the de-escalation principle) could be corrected if the PDV 100 “defensive approach” was prescribed as the default or normal operating procedure supporting the de-escalation principle. This approach would correspond with the original intentions of the Federal Constitutional Court and the reality that most demonstrations are peaceful. Of course, “de-escalation through strength” (offensive action, like visibly deploying a large number of officers in full riot gear) can be necessary in certain situations, but should only be used in exceptional cases and require justification.

7.5 Avoidance of “Violence Traps” There is always a danger that a non-violent but possibly unlawful protest (e.g., like the sit-in demonstrations that began in the 1960s) could turn violent. However, the legal complexities surrounding assemblies provide police with options. Police can conduct holistic assessments of non-violent situations and take an “unexcited” approach, because “how” police intervene is more important than “whether” they take action in these situations (cf. Sinn, 2015). Furthermore, since the 1980s “ban on mummery” (covering of the mouth and nose to avoid identification—punishable as misdemeanor), which was then included

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in the Federal Assembly Law (BVersG), has represented a “violence trap” for police. If police take action against persons engaged in mummery in non-violent situations, the intervention can cause a violent and riotous response. The scenarios the ban was designed to prevent often cause such scenarios to arise. It can harm as much as help the peacefulness of a situation. Some federal states addressed this problem through state assembly laws, which were passed after the 2007 federalism reform (cf. in principle Kniesel & Poscher, 2021, p. 1540 ff.), by either providing an intermediate step (e.g., requiring warnings) or by classifying the violation as an administrative offense, so police have prosecutorial discretion.36 In general, if criminal action is suspected in an assembly, police are not legally or tactically compelled to act as if they are mechanistic state actors. Police generally have discretion as to when, where, and how they intervene, particularly when deploying preventive and repressive measures (cf. Kniesel, 2019). Especially early on during protest events, the police must avoid falling into the “violence trap” of a militant minority. If a deliberate provocation elicits police intervention that can be described as an undifferentiated approach, attack, or overreaction, this often triggers solidarity against the police among initially peaceful participants. Early destructive dynamics can develop and negatively influence the entire event (cf. Bredthauer, 1996, pp. 83–87; cf. esp. also Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Bürger, 2024; Schattka, 2024).

7.6 Comprehensive Dialogue Orientation All de-escalation examples presented in this chapter are based on dialogue-oriented concepts. The Federal Constitutional Court’s “Brokdorf Decision” also asserts that constructive dialogue between organizers and assembly authorities or police is key to peaceful demonstrations. However, trust between organizers, assembly authorities, and police is not always achieved in practice. Since protests are often directed against the state or a state decision, organizers may reject efforts to build trust and engage in dialogue with state representatives. In addition, police are often confronted with distrustful participants within demonstration groups who reject communication and cooperation with police for fundamental or ideological reasons. Nationwide, the (formal) offer of cooperative talks after registering a demonstration has long been standard for assembly authorities and police, but no standard exists regarding the design of such talks. “Create a friendly atmosphere” is certainly well-intentioned advice (Kubera et al., 2013, No. 4.4), but this alone will not succeed in establishing partnerships or accepted responsibility. This is especially true if the assembly authority or the police conduct such discussions in the style of an

 Police are required to prosecute all penal offenses. An officer who is aware of a crime and fails to act may be charged with obstruction of justice, a misdemeanor offense. 36

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applicant hearing (cf. also Stolle, 2016) and deliberately shift the resolution of contentious issues to the administrative court. Communication with organizers must go beyond explaining planned police interventions and legal processes. The Schleswig-Holstein Assembly Act states, “It is the task of the authority to support the implementation of a permissible assembly according to the provisions of this law [....]”37 thus calling for the assembly authority and police to first see themselves as the organizers’ service provider and assist them with exercising their fundamental rights. They must also assist unpopular organizers, including right-wing political protesters (cf. Lembke, 2020) and the “lateral thinker” groups that increasingly appeared during the COVID-19 pandemic. Police must publicly reiterate that, neutral to protest’s purpose, they must also stand up for the fundamental rights of marginalized groups. In dialogue on an equal footprint, responsible demonstration organizers and leaders will learn that they can influence police situational assessments and approaches. Corresponding “successes” that do not result in administrative court disputes, will also improve police-critical groups’ perceptions of cooperation talks. However, cooperation can only succeed if it benefits both sides, the dialogue partners have “authority” over their organizations, and the dialogue is conducted with mutual respect and empathy. All parties must cooperatively listen, discuss, and negotiate to achieve coordinated and sustainable results with implementation at the end of the dialogue process. Ultimately, all non-violent demonstration actions must be considered “negotiable” (cf. Kueß, 2013, cf. also Bürger, 2024). One goal of cooperation talks during the planning phase is establishing communication channels between organizers and police command to quickly de-escalate potentially problematic situations (cf. Kniesel & Poscher, 2021). Many conflicts arise from mutual misinterpretations and spreading rumors. Establishing a “clearing house” (cf. Sect. 6.4) can minimize these causes of escalation. In addition, it can sometimes be appropriate to first offer informal “exploratory talks” before official cooperation talks to build trust. When authorities learn of plans for demonstrations lacking formal registration, they should seek to establish communication with organizers through intermediaries, whenever possible. Partners cooperating “on the ground” must remember the Federal Constitutional Court’s principle that demonstration organizers are first obliged to take action against individuals or groups engaged in disturbances and unlawful conduct. Police, unless facing acute danger or acts of violence, should only intervene if organizers are unwilling or unable to minimize the problems (cf. also Lembke, 2020). Mutually positive experiences can build trust, especially between frequent organizers of protest assemblies and responsible authorities (cf. Behrendes, 2016 for more details). The reverse effect can also occur, as recurrent negative experiences reinforce mutual mistrust. Following negative events, an informal dialogue, possibly guided by mediators, may help to move past these experiences and focus anew on building sustainable cooperative relationships.  The legal text in § 3 para. 2 of the Freedom of Assembly Act for the State of Schleswig-Holstein of 18.6.2015 stems from the Working Group on the Right of Assembly’s model draft, cf. Enders et al. (2011, p. 19 ff). 37

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8 Conclusion Police experiential knowledge, research findings, and 1960 to today’s legal developments provide an essential foundation for policing assemblies. Police have developed extensive protest experience and had opportunities to review positive and negative case studies. Thus, talk of “new phenomena” and “new consequences” after significant events, including commentary after violence at the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg, is disappointing. Political demands for tougher laws and police representative demands for additional equipment and armament are not helpful to solve the challenges. In the magazine “Die Polizei,” a (emeritus) Hamburg University professor recommended using firearms in violent demonstrations like the G20 summit (Schwabe, 2017). In this context, civil rights activists fear the “militarization of protest policing” (Kirsch, 2017). Recognizing parallels between past and current events to draw and expand upon lessons learned through prior experiences is a better alternative to reactionist tightening of laws, debates on rearmament, or calls to revive the paramilitary policing approach of the German Reich. Calls for establishing a “police research center” to study and disseminate lessons learned were made in the 1960s (cf. Giese, 1968). The transnational “Motivation” Working Group (cf. Sect. 6.1) called for scientific nationwide data collection and analysis of assembly operations in the 1980s. They suggested creating expert committees to advise authorities in operational planning. These proposals, which have not yet been implemented, are still relevant today. Dealing with political protests is not only an internal police matter. Like other social issues, approaches and solutions should extend beyond police response (cf. also No. 1.1 PDV 100 - VS-NfD, not classified section). Police should welcome and promote the involvement of other authorities, civil society actors, and academics in pre-event situational assessments and the handling of demonstrations. Inviting external expertise and reflecting on the impact of officer appearance and ability to engage in dialogue are the key competencies of professional protest policing and protecting fundamental democratic rights. This is not just about officer safety, but also peace in our society.

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Paschner, G. (1970). Was ist – was soll – was kann – was darf die Polizei. Boldt. PDV 100 - VS-NfD. (2012). Polizeidienstvorschrift 100. Führung und Einsatz der Polizei. VS-Nur für den Dienstgebrauch. Stand: 08/2021. Petzolt, L. W. (2020). Die nordrhein-westfälische Polizei und die Studierendenproteste der 1960er und 1970er Jahre. In S. Mecking (Ed.), Polizei und Protest in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (pp. 143–164). Springer. Rucht, D. (1980). Von Wyhl nach Gorleben. Bürger gegen Atomprogramm und nukleare Entsorgung. Beck. Ruckriegel, W. (1987). Politische Aspekte bei Polizeieinsätzen zur Verhinderung von Gewalt anlässlich von Demonstrationen. Die Polizei, 89, 285–290. Sack, F. (1984). Die Reaktion von Gesellschaft, Politik und Staat auf die Studentenbewegung. In F.  Sack & H.  Steinert (Eds.), Protest und Reaktion. Analysen zum Terrorismus 4/2  (pp. 387–603). Westdeutscher. Schattka, C. (2024). Interpretive regimes of violence in action. The “Welcome to Hell” demonstration during the G20 Summit in Hamburg 2017. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Schmalzl, H. P. (1996). Deeskalation – Entstehungsgeschichte, Irrungen und Versuch der Klärung eines schwierigen Begriffs. The Police, 98, 254–262. Schneider, P. (2008). Rebellion und Wahn. Mein '68. KiWi. Schreiber, M. (1965a). Die “Schwabinger Krawalle”. Die Polizei, 67, 33–37. Schreiber, M. (1965b). Aufgaben und Arbeitsbereich eines Psychologen im praktischen Polizeivollzugsdienst. Die Polizei, 67, 71–74. Schreiber, M., & Haimerl, F. (1969). Die "Oktober-Revolution" fand nicht statt! Die Polizei, 71, 6–11. Schulte, W. (2019). Die Bedeutung der Menschenrechte für die Polizeiarbeit in der historischen Entwicklung. In D. Kugelmann (Ed.), Polizei und Menschenrechte (pp. 73–87). Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Schwabe, J. (2017). Der Hamburger G20-Gipfel. Die Polizei, 119, 310–312. Schwalb, B., & Paul, A.  T. (2015). Nicht-organisierte kollektive Gewalt. In B.  Schwalb & A.  T. Paul (Eds.), Gewaltmassen. Über Eigendynamik und Selbstorganisation kollektiver Gewalt (pp. 383–408). Hamburger Edition. Sieber, G. (1968). Zur Situation des Psychologen in der deutschen Polizei. In B.  Doerdelmann (Ed.), Die Polizei und die Deutschen (pp. 98–109). Delp. Sinn, A. (2015). Die Nötigungsstrafbarkeit von Protesthandlungen. In M. Löhnig, M. Preisner, & T. Schlemmer (Eds.), Ordnung und Protest (pp. 115–131). Mohr Siebeck. Steinert, H. (1984). Sozialstrukturelle Bedingungen des „linken Terrorismus“ der 70er Jahre. Aufgrund eines Vergleichs der Entwicklungen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, in Italien, Frankreich und den Niederlanden. In F.  Sack & H.  Steinert (Eds.), Protest und Reaktion. Analysen zum Terrorismus 4/2 (pp. 387–603). Westdeutscher Verlag. Sternstein, W. (2011). Der Kampf um Wyhl. FriedensForum, 2, 43–44. Stolle, P. (2016). Die Versprechungen der Versammlungsfreiheit und ihre tatsächlichen Grenzen. Ein Erfahrungsüberblick aus der anwaltlichen Praxis. Vorgänge, 213, 37–43. Strencioch, E. (2014). Von “Gruppe 47” zum “AKT”—15 Jahre Anti-Konflikt-Team. Deutsche Polizei, Landesjournal Berlin, 5(2014), 10. Stümper, A. (1985). „Stuttgarter Gespräche“  – Überlegungen zur Handhabung von Konflikten anlässlich von Umwelt- oder Friedensdemonstrationen. Die Polizei, 87, 345–347. Sturm, M. (2006). „Wildgewordene Obrigkeit“? Die Rolle der Münchner Polizei während der „Schwabinger Krawalle“. In G. Fürmetz (Ed.), „Schwabinger Krawalle“. Protest, Polizei und Öffentlichkeit zu Beginn der 60er Jahre (pp. 59–105). Klartext. Thielmann, G., & Bürger, B. (2024). Police organization and the policing of assemblies in Germany. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer.

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Umbach, R. (1965). Das Bild von der akuten Masse. Die Polizei, 67, 110–112. Weinhauer, K. (2001). Innere Unruhe. Studentenproteste und die Krise der westdeutschen Schutzpolizei in den sechziger Jahren. In G.  Fürmetz, H.  Reinke, & K.  Weinhauer (Eds.), Nachkriegspolizei. Sicherheit und Ordnung in Ost- und Westdeutschland 1945-1969 (pp. 303–325). Ergebnisse. Weinhauer, K. (2003). Schutzpolizei in der Bundesrepublik. Zwischen Bürgerkrieg und Innerer Sicherheit: Die turbulenten sechziger Jahre. Ferdinand Schöningh. Weinhauer, K. (2020). Zwischen organisatorischen Wandlungen und kulturellen Kontinuitäten. Polizei, Jugendprotest und Demonstrationen in den 1960er bis 1980er Jahren. In S. Mecking (Ed.), Polizei und Protest in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (pp. 165–184). Springer. Werkentin, F. (1984). Die Restauration der deutschen Polizei. Innere Rüstung von 1945 bis zur Notstandsgesetzgebung. Campus. Werner, H. U. (1970). Erfahrungen und praktische Folgerungen aus Einsätzen bei Demonstrationen. Die Polizei, 72, 53–58. Willems, H., Eckert, R., Goldbach, H., Loosen, T., & Woesner, B. (1988). Demonstranten und Polizisten – Motive, Erfahrungen und Eskalationsbedingungen. Deutsches Jugendinstitut. Weide, H. (2016). Rote Sonne, dunkle Nacht. Tredition. Winter, M. (1998). Protest Policing und das Problem der Gewalt. Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen, 4, 68–81. Udo Behrendes,  senior police officer (retired), served as an officer in North Rhine-Westphalia from 1972 to 2015, and most recently as head of the Cologne police headquarters management staff. Since the late 1980s, he led police operations during several hundred demonstrations. In the mid-1990s, he was a founding member of the “Bonner Forum BürgerInnen und Polizei e.V.,” an experiment that promoted dialogue between protestors and police. Dr. Colonel Bernd Bürger  joined the Bavarian State Police, Germany, in 1997 and has managed assemblies and large events since 2000. He was responsible for managing camps and assemblies at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen G7 summits in 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, he was the commanding officer of the Dachau special public order unit (evidence gathering and arrest unit) where he was also deployed “on the front line” at the Hamburg G20 summit. He has served as head of the Police Operations Department at the Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police since 2020. In addition to his practical experience, he is a renowned public order scholar, lecturing in various German and European states. He also was a speaker at the 2018 International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting and 2019 at the Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, together with Tamara Herold and Ryan Lee. He holds a master’s degree in criminology and police science from the Ruhr University Bochum (ECTS A), a master’s degree in Public Administration—Police Management (ECTS A) as well as a PhD in Public Administration from the German Police University.

The Role of Police in Assemblies: Ethical Implications, Imperatives, and Interventions Werner Schiewek

Protest isn’t per se a good or bad thing (Nassehi, 2020, 7). (All German quotations are translated into English by the author.)

Abstract This chapter highlights the importance of assemblies for a thriving democracy. As a democratic virtue, assemblies should not be prevented but in fact facilitated. However, assemblies are associated with individual, social, and moral risks for all participants. To help mitigate risks associated with assemblies, the moral expectations of police, including internal and external expectations, and the tensions between them are analyzed. Awareness of these challenges can help police better prepare their organizations and officers. Suggestions for personal and organizational planning are grounded in different ethical approaches and the four classical cardinal virtues.

W. Schiewek (*) Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD), German Police University (DHPol), Münster-Hiltrup, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_6

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1 Ethical Implications of Assemblies 1.1 Social Dimension: Demonstrations as Democracy Generators Assemblies and demonstrations1 are high-risk forms of social action. The societies in which assemblies take place and the individuals who promote their causes using this social form bear these risks. At the society level, demonstrations represent a basic form of willful political expression. Their importance is illustrated by demonstration events held in response to historic political issues and conflicts in the Federal Republic of Germany (Langebach, 2021; Mecking, 2020a). Other diverse concerns, with less historical impact and significance, have inspired demonstrations, suggesting a “low threshold” for this form of social action. The right to assembly is protected by Article 8, in conjunction with Article 5, of the German Constitution, and is further defined in the German right of assembly as a “right of everyone.” Demonstrations are considered “the lifeblood of democracies.” Between the extremes of “luxury good” (i.e., good, but not necessary to have) and “survival good” (i.e., living without it means accepting great sacrifice or loss), freedom of assembly clearly falls toward the “survival good” category. Freedom of assembly represents an essential public good.2 No matter what an assembly’s intended purpose is, its use is available to everyone. Even those who have not directly participated in this form of political expression have benefitted from it. The question arises, do larger interests in this form of social action exist beyond specific individual interests? Or, to put it another way, what is the social benefit of this risky form of social action? This is an important question because demonstrations often interrupt social processes and thus “disrupt” social life. Demonstrations often pose an “imposition” or a risk for the societies that defend them (Möllers, 2012, para. 159).3 In the words of sociologist Armin Nassehi (2020, p.  151), “Democracy is risky—it includes the democratic possibilities of antidemocrats.” High legal protection combined with low social threshold and associated social costs and risks serves to increase the significance and impact of dissenting opinions. Demonstrations thus represent a special form of strengthening dissent, which is of fundamental importance for forming political opinions in democracies. Democracies  The colloquial term “demonstration” is used because it emphasizes the inherent conflictual nature of this social form of action more than the legally correct but still somewhat formal-sounding term of assembly. 2  The Federal Constitutional Court states that in “democracies with a parliamentary system of representation and few plebiscitary rights of participation [...] the freedom of assembly has the significance of a fundamental and indispensable functional element” (BVerfGE 69, 315 - Brokdorf, RN 66 emphasis W. S.). 3  Prominent historical evidence of this perspective can be found in Max Weber, who forcefully warns against the irrationality of the “unorganized ‘masses’” in the form of a “democracy of the street” (1980, p. 868). 1

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are constantly determining anew what is the “collective good,” or the rights (claims) and duties (contributions) which all people agree should be collectively observed. It creates the conditions needed to pursue our individual ideas of a good life. What constitutes “collective good” and the contributions others are expected to make is always subject to debate. In democracies, majorities temporarily decide this issue, while minorities can draw attention to emerging or insufficiently recognized problems, pointing out what has been overlooked or questioning existing consensus. While there can be no objective measures to determine the validity of dissenting opinions, ideologies offer claims of “right” and “wrong,” making them highly attractive and equally dangerous. Democracies, on the other hand, are intentionally ignorant in answering these questions. What belongs in the “collective good” portfolio must be repeatedly argued for. In this process, what previously passed the test might prove itself again—a quite fortunate example is the respect and protection of human dignity, but its proving involves allowing itself to be questioned again and again, despite prior success. Consensus on the existing and future “collective good” results from recurring dispute and constant argument. It is democratically prudent to maximize the range of differing ideas and opinions about the “collective good.” Today’s minority opinions are often tomorrow’s majority opinions. But not every minority opinion will eventually be favored by the majority—this is precisely what is unknown, and at the same time, what cannot be known. What is known is that increasing the options to be discussed and to consider different viewpoints and divergent opinions is democratically wise. Many instruments are available for generating opinions, and sources include political parties, elections, media, interest groups, referendums, citizen petitions, polls, and lobbying. These, and others, have played a role in public struggles to determine the “collective good.” The assembly is arguably the most low-threshold or easiest way of introducing dissenting opinions and dissent in efforts to shape public opinion. Therefore, “public discussion is not only conducted in the media, associations or at regulars’ tables, but also precisely on the street and through assemblies” (Schröder, 2020, p. 114). Demonstrations’ low threshold makes their themes unpredictable, often appearing arbitrary in focus or as only representing particular interests. These perceptions are unavoidable. The unique strength of this high-risk form of social action lies within its almost “anarchic” openness, making it is a fundamental generator of democracy (Nassehi, 2020, pp. 132–152).

1.2 Individual Dimension: Demonstrations as Courage Generators Analogies arise between the society and individual level expressions of this social form of political action. People have the right, but no obligation, to engage in demonstration. A 2017 survey in Germany asked the question “Have you participated in a demonstration in the last five years?”

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• About 10% answered “Yes, I took part in a demonstration.” • About 38% answered “No, I have not taken part in any demonstrations, but I could imagine it.” • About 52% answered “No, I have not taken part in any demonstrations and could not imagine doing so” (Ipsos, 2017). These findings could be interpreted to mean that about half of the German population is open to participating in demonstrations. What would motivate them? Participation will likely depend on the issue or problem’s subjective importance in relation to perceived drawbacks in taking such a personal step into the public sphere. The special nature of this social form of action is also likely to play a role, with individuals simultaneously experiencing the elaborate and non-elaborate qualities of demonstrations. Demonstrations are elaborate because they require the expenditure of individual resources, including time and personal image. It is about the public “use” of one’s own body, or in the words of the German Federal Constitutional Court in its so-­ called “Brokdorf decision”: “Demonstrations [are, W. S.] the joint physical visualization of convictions, whereby the participants, on the one hand experience an assurance of these convictions in the community with others and, on the other hand outwardly—already through the mere presence, the manner of appearance and interaction with one another or the choice of location—take a stand in the true sense of the word and testify their point of view” (BVerfGE 69, 315 - Brokdorf, RN 63, emphasis W. S.). Demonstration participation gives a body the ability to speak, simply through its presence and its conscious public presentation (Butler, 2018, p. 112). This presentation involves effort. An individual has to be physically present. Unlike digital forms of protest action and communication (Nassehi, 2020, pp. 122–131),4 people cannot represent another’s presence in public space with the same effect. At the same time, the physical presence of a person’s body introduces vulnerability. Participants are exposed to “potentially violent physical attacks or repressive measures of bodily harm” (Terwiel & Förster, 2018, p. 424). There are personal risks inevitably associated with demonstration participation. Demonstrations are non-elaborate since there are intentional low-threshold participation conditions. If someone wants and is motivated to participate, they usually can. Mobilizing like-minded people is a helpful but not necessary condition. A specific concern, willingness to assemble in public space, and knowing the assembly time and location are sufficient. There is considerable personal agency in deciding to participate. Moreover, this action enjoys public protection, which is legally assured and, where necessary, government enforced—especially by the police. Accepting the associated risks and raising the energy necessary to participate gives demonstrators an opportunity to intensely and directly experience self-­ efficacy by:  In this view for the particularity of digital communication Armin Nassehi (2020, p. 123): “Low-­ thresholdness is already promoted by the fact that participation in this kind of communication is associated with invisibility and non-perceptibility of the participant.” 4

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• Abandoning passivity (often in the form of perceived discomfort) and becoming active. • Advocating for important causes that appear worthy of support beyond their personal interests; often these interests are linked to a moral component, such as a commitment to “good” or a matter of “justice.” • Feeling rewarded and encouraged by social support and public attention for publicly expressing their opinions and actions, thus reinforcing belief in their cause, strengthening self-esteem, and fostering personal pride. Furthermore, demonstrations bolster justifications for personal opinions by allowing them to recede behind the strength of shared social opinions and convictions. Physical co-presence alone signifies collective agreement without explicitly voicing personal beliefs (adopting demonstration chants or slogans also offers such relief). Crafting personal justifications is unnecessary and potentially undesirable, as details could be susceptible to dissent among members of the larger group.5 Joint action in the form of demonstrations offers a substitute for the trouble of individual reflection. At the same time, the elaborate and non-elaborate characteristics of demonstrations require courage, to publicly share personal opinions and risk the physical and psychological impacts of doing so. Thus, demonstrations promote courage through their low-threshold nature and associated social support. The latter arises primarily from physical co-presence on site. As a result, assemblies can make people act more courageously than they would dare on their own. The encouraging function of assemblies is necessary to counter fears of physically encountering direct governmental or non-governmental resistance. Dissenting opinions are essential for democracies, yet would not likely manifest if individuals could not draw upon social resources that encourage the public expression of dissenting opinions. Assemblies are preeminent courage generators.

1.3 Police: Demonstrations as Risk Generators From the perspective of a “reflected police practitioner,” former German Deputy Chief Constable Udo Behrendes points out that demonstration operations “are part of the everyday business of the police today” (Behrendes, 2020, p.  220). Major demonstration events form important reference points for contemporary German history and are also landmarks in German police history (Mecking, 2020b, pp. 3–10)  The empirical study by Florian Buchmayr (2019) on handling content-related differences at demonstrations fed by conspiracy theory motives is relevant. The sometimes considerable differences among the participants are put aside in favor of a unified critique of dominant knowledge. Buchmayr describes how theories are used to make one’s own differences quasi-invisible. “While actors outside the field take conspiracy theories literally but not seriously, they are taken seriously but not literally inside the field. Conspiracy theories are traded as theories, mere speculations and propositions for thought” (2019, p. 383). 5

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and many professional police biographies. The personal and collective stresses, existence of dangerous situations, and successes experienced in these operations form identity anchors in the individual and collective memories of police officers. Internally, they stimulate officer social cohesion and provide impressive proof of their effectiveness, and sometimes of their powerlessness. They also form an important pool of experience—mostly in the form of narratives—that emphasize the meaning and purpose of officers’ actions. At the same time, however, demonstrations are also seen as requiring excessive police resources and effort and pose the potential for danger. This perspective promotes ideas that demonstrations are camouflaged “events” with arbitrary political themes, or that socially explosive conflict situations should be resolved someplace other than “the street.” The Federal Constitutional Court again made history with its Brokdorf decision addressing police handling of demonstrations . It reflected a shift from a dominant control and prevention paradigm to an enabling paradigm: “It is a primary task for the police to ensure the unhindered exercise of the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, which are important for the regulation of conflict in society” (BVerfGE 69, 315 - Brokdorf, no. 14).6 The unimpeded exercise of freedom of opinion and freedom of assembly usually involves the obstruction or disruption of public life due to the use of public space. Conflicts are inevitable (Winter, 1998, p. 19). The Brokdorf decision called on demonstration organizers to “cooperate in a demonstration-friendly manner” (BVerfGE 69, 315 - Brokdorf, head note 4 and no. 84), but this attitude should be demanded for the general public, as well as police, to defuse demonstration tensions and conflict potential. In Germany, “well over 95 percent of all demonstrations are peaceful” (Behrendes, 2020, 223), but there remains a latent risk of spirals of escalation—sometimes intentional but often situational and unintentional.7 Spirals of escalation involve intensifying rule violations and emotions. Emotional escalation takes diverse forms, including increasing fear, greater annoyance, easier irritability, feared inferiority and loss of control, desire for superiority, desire for punishment, feared loss of reputation in the public, fear of excessive demands, and fear of appearing incompetent. Emotional escalation can affect police and all other parties involved in demonstrations, increasing risks of interpersonal dynamics that negatively impact behaviors. Thus, to extend “demonstration-friendly cooperation” to all involved in and affected by demonstrations addresses mental escalation spirals on all sides, with the objective of minimizing escalation spirals. Methods to achieve control and minimization are challenging and case dependent. Inevitable conflicts and spirals of escalation increase the risk of undesirable individual and group behavior, on the part of police, participants, and others affected. Assemblies are risk generators. Assemblies create social constellations that can negatively influence behavior and elicit unexpected actions that surprise everyone.  Klaus Weinhauer illustrates the control paradigm in terms of the power to place people or things in “spaces, to decide on their movement in space, to control them” (2020, p. 168). 7  In this context Armin Nassehi points to an “increasing logic of protest” and an accompanying “attractiveness of violence” (2020, pp. 111–121). 6

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2 Ethical and Moral Aspects Moral and ethical challenges and issues arising from demonstrations are examined and discussed using a stakeholder analysis (Siller, 2017; Schiewek 2008, pp.  138–145). A stakeholder analysis is a suitable method for screening moral claims—claims that something is morally “good” or “bad”—and resulting tensions (Bleisch et al., 2021, pp. 32–36; Göbel, 2020, pp. 135–170). Although often reflected in laws, moral claims extend beyond legal requirements. As genuine professional ethical challenges, they often arise in areas of tension between competing moral-­ ethical “ought” requirements. What is (prima facie) desired or legally required in current situations can face pressure when entering moral-ethical fields of tension. Such fields require contemplation of the question: “How should I act here and now in view of moral reasons?” Three classical ethical perspectives are relevant to fields of moral-ethical tension The ethical aspects considered are the attitude of persons (virtue ethics), the immediate action itself (duty ethics—deontology), and the consequences of action (consequentialism) (Wagener, 2019, pp. 204–214). Law focuses on moral action based on duty ethics and a virtue-ethical attitude, which focuses on the (respect for) legal obligations and willingness to obey the law. The interdependence of the three perspectives is apparent in theory and practice. While they can be mutually affirming and reinforce mutual moral judgment, they also often result in divergent and conflicting moral judgments. The latter will escalate, particularly if these affect more than one person (intrapersonal) and result in tensions between persons or groups of persons (interpersonal). People simultaneously experience external (interpersonal) and internal (intrapersonal) tensions and must answer questions like: Who is morally right? What would be morally right to do? These tensions often produce personal moral conflicts or moral dilemmas (for a distinction, see Boshammer, 2008).

2.1 Morally Relevant Police Stakeholder Relationships in the Context of Assemblies. Figure 1 depicts police stakeholders in assemblies. The list is not exhaustive. Stakeholder analyses involve case-specific dynamic processes—but the list identifies some of the most important and familiar assembly stakeholders. The analysis uses Edward Freeman’s broad definition of stakeholder, which is “any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives” (1984, p. 46). The twelve stakeholders are divided into two groups: police-internal stakeholders (shaded circles) and police-external stakeholders (unshaded circles). Some assignments could be debated. For example, although “own family” is assigned as an external stakeholder, the officers’ relatives have an emotional connection to police and could be seen as internal stakeholders. Government is assigned as an

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internal stakeholder to emphasize the perspective of police representing the state, again not fully illustrating their differences. But these assignments generally characterize the respective relationship between the police officer (the middle position in Fig. 1) and their internal and external stakeholders. The moral-ethical aspects of these relationships and resulting tensions are further explored.

2.2 Moral Aspects of Internal Stakeholder Relationships (in the Context of Assemblies) Table 1 lists the five police internal stakeholder relationships (nos. 8–12 in Fig. 1) and includes three direct social relationships (subordinates, colleagues, superiors) and two relatively abstract social relationships, mediated through organizations

12. Government

1. Assembly parcipants

2. Pedestrians / residents / bystander 3. Public media

11. Police

10. Superiors

4.

Police(wo)men

Society

9. Colleagues

5. Polics 8. Subordinates

7. Own family

6. Law / Jurisdicaon

Fig. 1  Morally relevant police stakeholder relationships (in the context of assemblies)

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Table 1  Internal police stakeholder relations and potential moral-ethical tensions (in the context of assemblies) Stakeholder relationship (12) Government➔    Police(wo)men

(11) Police ➔    Police(wo)men

(10) Supervisors ➔    Police(wo)men

(9) Colleagues ➔    Police(wo)men

(8) Subordinates ➔    Police(wo)men

Moral expectation(s) of the stakeholder • Inward/personal legal obedience • External law enforcement • Loyalty to the state • State protection • Professional external law enforcement • Maximizing the sense of security • Minimization of disruptions • Control of disruptors • Maintaining police authority • Conservation of police resources • Willingness to obey • Willingness to perform • Assertiveness • Faultlessness • Legally compliant procedure • Support • Encouragement • (Unconditional) trust • Solidarity inward • Loyalty • Assumption of responsibility • Backing • Readiness for support • Caring • Clarity • Transparency • Justice • Willingness to learn • Communication orientation • Adequate education and training • Adequate equipment

Potential areas of tension in view of the stakeholder-relation ↔ Internal law enforcement ↔ External law enforcement as a substitute for “failed policies” ↔ Perceived government disloyalty due to lack of support (equipment, legal basis) ↔ Police guidelines vs. implementation in the context of cop culture (“file culture” vs. “action culture”) ↔ Primacy of citizen orientation ↔ Pressure to succeed ↔ Need for risky decisions in the face of unclear dynamic situations ↔ Delegation of responsibility (successes to the “top,” failures to the “bottom”)

↔ Fault tolerance ↔ Backing up in case of mistakes ↔ Recognition and reward expectation

↔ Self-criticism ↔ Stubbornness ↔ Solidarity opposite to the outside ↔ Career orientation ↔ Self-protection ↔ Willingness to take responsibility for personal actions ↔ Self-control ↔ Dealing with personal limits ↔ Dealing with personal mistakes ↔ Dealing with misconduct by colleagues

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(police) and institutions (state). Moral expectations associated with these relationships in assemblies are presented, but these examples are not exhaustive.8 Internal stakeholders place a multitude of moral expectations on police. These produce tensions in assemblies, often in the form of “mixed relationships,” since moral expectations are always present during police–citizen interactions. Police officers experience moral expectations as internal conflicts on three levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal. Intrapersonal tensions/conflicts refer to personal attitudes, feelings, and actions. The tension between the elements of police professionalism—remaining citizen-oriented while also enforcing rules—is likely to invite tension in long, dynamic operational situations. Personal expectations are challenged in real-life situations. Self-control can be tested by feelings of insecurity, aggression, and fear, and negatively influence personal behavior. If experienced mental vulnerability is interpreted as personal weakness, officer efforts to prevent it by imagining or demonstrating strength can invite danger. While logical, this reaction risks creating an escalating spiral of “always having to become stronger” or “not being allowed to show any weakness.” Courage is necessary to face personal vulnerability without using denial or suppression to solve the problem. Developing a more honest approach to personal vulnerability would not jeopardize officer safety, but would serve to strengthen it. Interpersonal tensions/conflicts refer to the attitudes, expectations, emotional states, and actions of others. One challenge, which can be described as a conflict of loyalties, results from tension between one group’s given promise (personal commitment, success orientation, conformity to rules, support, etc.) and a perceived transgression. How do individuals react—with acceptance? Reproaches? Denunciation? Complaining? Revenge? Recalibrating personal expectations? Interpersonal conflicts become more acute when colleagues violate formal rules. Here, the question is not what should be done (this is usually governed by formal regulations), but rather how a person should react. Ignore? Criticize? Admonish? Warn? Report? Denounce? Loyal relationships require putting aside resistance to act in the interest of the person who transgressed (Schiewek, 2022, p.  28f. with reference to Kleinig, 2014). Police value collegiality, as loyalty is expected among those who serve in a “community of risk.” Loyalty expectations play a prominent role in assemblies, and officer allegiance to colleagues is more likely to be questioned in assemblies than any other operational situation. Loyalty is “tried” and challenged by personal conscience in specific cases. If an officer fails to experience a “crisis of conscience” when challenged, the officer’s and organization’s moral integrity is questioned. Finally, transpersonal tensions/conflicts relate to the expectations of state actors. A loyalty component is often present in transpersonal tensions/conflicts. These conflicts arise at the societal level when officers are expected to balance a citizen orientation and enforcement orientation while representing the state during  German Police University students helped to inform many of the identified areas of tension by reporting their experiences during peaceful and unpeaceful assemblies. 8

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political debate.9 The “dilemma of symbolic protest action and de facto criminal act” (Schmalzl, 2004, p. 110) makes legitimate protest action sometimes difficult to distinguish from illegal action and impacts the dual police mandate. Feelings that police favor of one side at the expense of the other leads to perceptions of injustice. This latent ambivalence causes discomfort in an organization accustomed to operating based on unambiguous rules and clear distinctions (Schiewek, 2006). Moreover, police serving as a state proxy makes officers feel that they are held accountable for political mistakes (Walter, 2022, pp. 43f.). Officers feel it is unfair for others to see officers’ willingness to work for, or act as instruments of the state as deserving of this responsibility (instrumentalization). Feelings of injustice are accelerated if police officers feel they receive insufficient operational or legal resources from the state to satisfactorily manage demonstrations.

2.3 Moral Aspects of External Stakeholder Relationships (in the Context of Assemblies) Table 2 lists the seven police external stakeholder relationships (nos. 1–7 in Fig. 1). External stakeholders also place numerous moral expectations on police. The associated areas of tension are similarly diverse. Internal conflicts are again presented from officers’ perspectives at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and transpersonal level. Intrapersonal tensions/conflicts with external stakeholders stem from assembly purpose and interactions. An internal dichotomy can result when officers hold personal convictions that align (or are in conflict with) the demonstration’s purpose. Officers must protect opposing opinions, which outsiders might interpret as approval of the opinion. Or officers might come into conflict with demonstrators who share their opinion while dutifully protecting those with opposing opinions. The legal requirement of neutrality should help to soothe this tension. Officers’ well-­ established duty of neutrality is of great importance. However, people seldom feel neutral, so the required and necessary (self-)obligation to neutrality does not resolve this tension—it becomes permanent (Hüttmann, 2005). The obligation of neutrality is demanded, but it underestimates the self-commitment needed for officers to engage in this strenuous form of “emotional work in police service” (Szymenderski, 2012). It necessitates considerable self-control, particularly when officers are confronted with provocations (for related challenges during the so-called “clowns army” protest, see Staack & Schwarzer, 2010). While the illegality of provocations is questionable, their effects are real. Slights, belittling, and being ridiculed, dehumanized, or baited for amusement have intense psychological impacts. Threatened  According to Erhard Denninger, the police mission is based on “the idea that there can be no (internal political) danger situation before which the police may resignedly ‘lay down their arms’. This unconditionality of the task belongs to the state monopoly on the use of force.” (2018, no. 141 without emphasis of the original). 9

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Table 2  Police-external stakeholder relations and potential moral-ethical tensions (in the context of assemblies) Stakeholder relationship (1) Assembly participants    ➔ Police(wo)men

Moral expectation(s) of the stakeholder • Respect for concerns and person(s) • Citizen orientation • Neutrality requirement • Honest communication • Protection of physical and psychological integrity • Support

(2) Pedestrians/ • Minimization of residents/bystander restrictions    ➔ Police(wo)men • Protection of personal freedom of action • Protection from assaults • Property protection (3) Public media • Preservation and    ➔ Police(wo)men protection of the  – Freedom of expression  – Freedom of assembly  – Freedom of the press  – Informational self-determination • Information orientation • Openness • Honesty (4) Society • Guarantee of    ➔ Police(wo)men controversy • Securing social peace • Maintenance of legal peace • Protection of high-­ ranking legal interests • A sense of proportion • Assertiveness (5) Politics • Consideration of    ➔ Police(wo)men political guidelines

Potential areas of tension in view of the stakeholder-relation ↔ High level of organization (police) vs. crowd (assembly) ↔ Setting and enforcing boundaries ↔ Understanding and reliability of agreements ↔ Identification of persons (on both sides) ↔ Dominance vs. subordination ↔ Control orientation vs. freedom orientation ↔ Personal political beliefs ↔ Dealing with provocations and aggressive behavior ↔ Implementation of the requirement to distinguish ↔ Prevention of breaches of the law ↔ Prosecution of breaches of law ↔ Use of coercion ↔ De-escalation orientation vs. escalation sovereignty ↔ Weighing of reasonable restrictions on personal freedom of action ↔ Dealing with restrictions and threats to public life (e.g., blockades)

↔ Dealing with information—obligations and rights ↔ Struggle for sovereignty of interpretation ↔ Dealing with criticism ↔ Influencing the media self-image ↔ Interest of the public vs. secrecy interests ↔ Possibilities and limits of tactical communication ↔ Information restrictions due to access limitations ↔ Prevention of abuse of the right of assembly ↔ Compensation of competing claims to exercise freedom of assembly ↔ Prevention of escalation spirals ↔ Ensuring the non-violent resolution of conflicts of interest, if necessary, through the use of force (enforcement of the state’s monopoly on the use of force) ↔ Determining the relationship between political and legal requirements ↔ Dealing with conflicting interests and interest groups (national and international) (continued)

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Table 2 (continued) Stakeholder relationship (6) Law/Justice    ➔ Police(wo)men

Moral expectation(s) of the stakeholder • Prosecution of breaches of the law (internally and externally)

(7) Own family • Protection of body and    ➔ Police(wo)men soul • Caution • Care of the employer

Potential areas of tension in view of the stakeholder-relation ↔ Weighing of competing fundamental rights claims ↔ Dealing with rule deviations or violations (internally and externally) ↔ Distinction between perpetrators and bystanders ↔ Dealing with offenders in personal ranks ↔ Dealing with bystanders who protect perpetrators ↔ Dealing with civil resistance ↔ Full dedication at work vs. personal responsibility for the family ↔ Dealing with professional experiences in the private environment ↔ Effects of the professional activity on the private environment (e.g., in the form of praise or criticism, but also in the form of physical or psychological injuries/stress)

self-esteem transforms into psychological self-defense. Intense feelings of shame, anger, and aggression can reduce officer self-control, enabling dangerous reactions. The antidote, self-control, is expected of police despite its high emotional demands. Officer self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-respect must be continuously cultivated to meet this demand.10 Interpersonal tensions/conflicts in assemblies stem from differing interests of the people involved. Conflicts become harmful when translated into action. Participants use their physical presence (bodies) to maximize attention for their concerns, with the “disruption” of public life being a powerful attention generator. “Disruptions” range broadly, from taking over streets and squares to acts of civil disobedience (Müller-Franke, 2018; Reuter, 2013, pp.  271–276). Opinions are loudly expressed in efforts to be heard and recognized. Counter-demonstrators use the same tactics. Demonstrators’ degree of effort is correlated with their perceived importance of the cause. Alternatively, uninvolved groups seek to minimize disturbances, and those most affected have the most interest in receiving protection from demonstrator actions. Police must address both concerns. In helping all involved, they offer the impression: “The police. Somehow, they are always in the way” (Hüttmann, 2005, p. 202). Therefore, perceptions and dynamics can develop that create conflict between police and those calling attention to an important social problem. This encourages an “us-them” way of thinking, which can lead to quick  Martin Krolzig’s argument is valid: “An institution like the police which is particularly committed to the principle of human dignity, must first and foremost practice this in its dealings with its own personnel. [...] In the daily routine of internal police operations, the proof is either provided or destroyed” (1999, p. 102).

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(moral) typification (“us” = the good guys versus “them” = the bad guys) and images of the other as a mutual enemy (Schiewek, 2012; cf. also Bürger, 2024). Seeing “the other” as an enemy legitimizes violence. Associated escalation dynamics create an inherent danger (Terwiel & Förster, 2018, p. 428) and constitute the basis of an assembly’s risk structure. The requirement to differentiate (Behrendes, 2020, pp.  223–225) between participants helps to prevent harmful police response. It counters the “us versus them” or “the good guys versus the bad guys” typification by focusing on the behavior of individual persons. Police experience tension when they encounter demonstrator masking (Ullrich & Wernthaler, 2021a, RN 451–481) but are held accountable for identifying and differentiating between protesters (Walter, 2022). This attribution of responsibility for individual action on both sides finds its moral justification in valuing human dignity.11 The low threshold needed to use social media creates another area of tension. Social media is used by demonstrators, bystanders, media representatives, and police (on the latter, see Ullrich & Wernthaler, 2021b). Social media can attract public attention for the demonstrators’ cause. It can also be used to control or monitor demonstrator behavior communicated through social media platforms. This can trigger another spiral of escalation. Potentially incriminating images can be countered by other exonerating images in the struggle for interpretive sovereignty, or control over the interpretation of events. Posted images can reinforce mutual distrust and the “us-them” dichotomy or used to demonstrate power or victim status. The truthfulness and sincerity of social media posts are rightly questioned. This involves communication ethics. A social media post can trigger de-escalation when there is consensus about its honesty, but contentious posts act as conflict generators that can have tremendous social reach and impact. Transpersonal tensions/conflicts are created by police actions to secure social peace in democratic societies, which themselves are formed by permanent disputes and social conflicts. Martin Winter states that “protest policing is the area of the police work which stands out by its greatest political character. It is here that the police intervene directly in the political process” (1998, p.  443). Fritz Werner’s statement that police are “the most political of all administrations” applies (Gintzel & Möllers, 1987, p. 14). David Bayley argues more dramatically: “The police are to government as the edge is to the knife” (1985, p. 189). If the right of assembly is applied constitutional law, then constitutional law must be used to interpret assembly situations and events. The constitutional norms and values that apply to assemblies can be understood according to conventional moral judgments (Wagener, 2019, pp. 196–198 with reference to the work of Lawrence

 Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act in such a way that you use humanity, both in your person and in the person of everyone else, at all times simultaneously as an end, never merely as a means” (Kant, 1785, BA 66f. [1975, p. 61]), whose point in the present context is to represent something general (“humanity”) in each of its parts (“in your person, as in the person of everyone else”) where no part is substitutable. In other words, groups and individuals are always to be distinguished. Someone can belong to a group but does not completely merge into it. A person always bears individual moral responsibility. 11

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Kohlberg). Nevertheless, assemblies find their deeper moral-ethical justification only at a post-conventional moral judgment level,12 which is reached by only 10–15% of adults. At this level of judgment, constitutional law can be seen as extending beyond norms and values to include moral justifications and constitutional goals. This requires competency beyond the ability to apply the law and involves the ability to interpret the law. This is a high demand that, in practice, can lead to uncertainties concerning appropriate police action. Ambiguity encourages conflict avoidance behavior and delegations of responsibility to others. But given the many areas of tension that arise from law, politics, and society in the context of assemblies, a deep understanding of the constitution is necessary. It acts as a legislator, and adherence to law involves free understanding, while acknowledging that injustices will occur. Tension is felt between our conscience’s moral imperative and our restricted possibilities to realize it in practice. Repeatedly confronting this requires courage, and humility is needed to resolve this tension.

3 Conclusion Assemblies are inextricably linked to conflicts and tension. This high-risk form of social action itself represents a form of conflict used to champion personal interests, which invites further conflicts and disputes. Police must defend low-threshold access to the use of assemblies, which serve as generators of democracy and courage. Police are tasked with de-escalating potential spirals of escalation. An examination showed that many spirals of escalation stem from the nature of police relations with internal and external stakeholder groups. Unmoderated group interactions would increase conflict potential; thus police must work to regulate them. Self-awareness, while challenging, is key to understanding conflict dynamics, recognizing challenges, and identifying solutions (which can be found throughout this book). A “virtue ethics” orientation is a helpful mindset since it assumes “a direct connection between attitudes and ways of acting” (Wagener, 2019, p. 206). The four classical cardinal virtues—prudence, courage, temperance, and justice—are used to organize the ideas presented in this chapter. Prudence promotes an understanding of the function and significance of demonstrations, including the associated social, individual, and moral risks. Understanding “why” demonstrations are important impacts how an assembly is seen and managed. If the meaning of assemblies is understood, the associated risks become comprehensible. Furthermore, Courage is required in demonstrations, by officers and participants. It involves the willingness to accept these risks and justify and defend personal decisions and actions through internal and external communication.

 Based on Kohlberg’s theory, this reasoning is based on principles and ideas deeper than self-­ interest or commitment to laws. 12

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Temperance is needed to contain destructive escalation dynamics. Since escalation is mirrored and reinforced, de-escalation is critically important. However, de-­ escalation must be coupled with a simultaneous police readiness to escalate in a proportionate and targeted manner.13 A context-sensitive balance of both options for action gives police the ability to address underlying tension between peaceful and destructive behavior. Justice is found in the neutrality requirement, which guarantees procedural justice. Officers must endure potential tensions between their personal political convictions and those advocated by those in assemblies, not only for practical reasons but also to serve justice. Justice demands balancing rights and restrictions for everyone involved. Finally, justice requires a self-obligation to address concerns and participants with respect, particularly cases of conflict. A question that many police officers repeatedly ask is: “Why am I doing this to myself?”—a completely justified question in the context of assemblies. The effort involved is considerable, the demonstrators’ concerns are sometimes difficult to comprehend or appear to be of little public relevance, and the political impacts of assemblies are frequently hardly discernible. The meaningfulness of assembly operations is questionable on the surface. Thus, police executives must create meaning for officers, since this is the point in their careers where they are most challenged as “creators of meaning in their professional activities.” Many organizations now acknowledge the importance of meaning or “purpose” behind professional work. It is increasingly recognized as a key factor for motivation, retention, and employee health (Badura et al., 2018). But purpose cannot be ordered. While purpose must be personally constructed by each individual,14 it is rarely constructed in isolation. Purpose is formed through discussions, suggestions, pressures, and signals from others. The creation of meaning requires interaction. Therefore, discussions of meaning can be supportive and helpful, especially when people no longer recognize or recall the meaning behind their work. Reflecting on meaning also requires understanding of the reasons, motivations, goals, and (conflict) dynamics that drive an officer’s own and other’s behaviors. Hans Lisken, ­former police chief of Düsseldorf (a city in the federal state North Rhine-Westphalia), points out the importance of meaning behind police action (1996, p. 51). He argues that police officers should be able “to grasp and analyze social conflicts in their inner and outer structures, and to do so with heart and mind, by putting themselves in the role of the person concerned in order to grasp his or her concern and incapacity” to “react appropriately on this basis” (ibid., p. 50). This ability is not only helpful in facilitating positive interactions with external stakeholders but also in promoting positive internal stakeholder relations.

 Hartwig von Schubert, for example, sees the paradoxical task of state violence precisely in “maintaining the authority to escalate and at the same time having a de-escalating effect” (2021, p. 29). 14  The same applies to values and attitudes (Behr, 2006, p. 96). 13

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Müller-Franke, W. (2018). Art. “Ziviler Ungehorsam”. In M. Möllers (Ed.), Wörterbuch der Polizei (2670). Beck. Nassehi, A. (2020). Das große Nein. Eigendynamik und Tragik des gesellschaftlichen Protests. kursbuch.edition. Reuter, H. (2013). Widerstand/Widerstandsrecht. In Ders. (Ed.), Recht und Frieden (pp. 268–278). Evang Verl-Anstalt. Schiewek, W. (2006). Weiße Schafe—Schwarze Schafe. Dichotomische Weltbilder im polizeilichen Alltag. In J. Christe-Zeyse (Ed.), Die Polizei zwischen Stabilität und Veränderung. Ansichten einer Organisation im Wandel (pp. 105–133). Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft. Schiewek, W. (2008). “Governance through Metaphors” in der Polizei ? Gibt es das? Braucht man das? Eine governanceethische Betrachtung der metaphorischen Konstruktion von Stakeholderbeziehungen in Polizeiorganisationen. In J.  Wieland (Ed.), Die Stakeholder-­ Gesellschaft und ihre Governance. Management, Netzwerke, Diskurse (pp.  137–163). Metropolis. Schiewek, W. (2012). Hat die Polizei “Feinde”?. Die “Freund-Feind-Unterscheidung” und die polizeiliche Arbeit. In T. Meireis (Ed.), Gewalt und Gewalten—Zur Ausübung, Legitimität und Ambivalenz rechtserhaltender Gewalt (pp. 91–111). Mohr Siebeck. Schiewek, W. (2022). Ethische Dimensionen der Stabsarbeit. In G. Hofinger & R. Heimann (Eds.), Handbuch Stabsarbeit. Führungs- und Krisenstäbe in Einsatzorganisationen, Behörden und Unternehmen (2. Aufl.) (pp. 23–29). Springer. Schmalzl, H. P. (2004). Das Protestgeschehen, seine Eskalationsanfälligkeit und seine Mythen und Dilemmata für die Polizei. Die Polizei, 95(4), 108–113. Schröder, U.  J. (2020). Geschichte des Versammlungsrechts der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Polizei, Jugendprotest und Demonstrationen in den 1960er bis 1980er Jahren. In S. Mecking (Ed.), Polizei und Protest in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (pp. 71–116). Springer. Siller, H. (2017). Stakeholder-Management. Die Kunst des Ausbalancierens von Anliegen von Interessengruppen. In J. Stierle, D. Wehe, & H. Siller (Eds.), Handbuch Polizeimanagement. Polizeipolitik – Polizeiwissenschaft – Polizeipraxis (Band 2) (pp. 1019–1034). Springer Gabler. Staack, D., & Schwarzer, T. (2010). Die Clownsarmee. Neue Protestformen im Lichte des Versammlungsrechts. Die Polizei, 101(6), 172–178. Szymenderski, P. (2012). Gefühlsarbeit im Polizeidienst. Wie Polizeibedienstete die emotionalen Anforderungen ihres Berufs bewältigen. transcript. Terwiel, D., & Förster, A. (2018). Demonstrationen. In R.  Voigt (Ed.), Handbuch Staat (pp. 423–430). Springer. Ullrich, N., & Wernthaler, M. (2021a). Verbotenes Verhalten. In I. N. Boesenberg, C. von Coelln, A. Heusch, et al. (Eds.), Handbuch Versammlungsrecht (pp. 139–181). W. Kohlhammer. Ullrich, N., & Wernthaler, M. (2021b). Beobachtung von Versammlungen. In I. N. Boesenberg, C. von Coelln, A.  Heusch, et  al. (Eds.), Handbuch Versammlungsrecht (pp.  181–207). W. Kohlhammer. von Schubert, H. (2021). Nieder mit dem Krieg. Eine Ethik politischer Gewalt. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt. Wagener, U. (2019). Polizeiliche Berufsethik. Ein Studienbuch (2. Aufl.). Verlag Deutsche Polizeiliteratur. Walter, B. (2022). An ihren Nummern sollt ihr sie erkennen—die Endlosdebatte um die Notwendigkeit einer polizeilichen Kennzeichnung. Die Polizei, 113(2), 80–84. Weber, M. (1980 [1925]). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie (besorgt von Johannes Winckelmann) (5., revidierte Aufl., Studienausgabe). J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Weinhauer, K. (2020). Zwischen organisatorischen Wandlungen und kulturellen Kontinuitäten. Polizei, Jugendprotest und Demonstrationen in den 1960er bis 1980er Jahren. In S. Mecking (Ed.), Polizei und Protest in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (pp. 165–184). Springer.

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Winter, M. (1998). Politikum Polizei. Macht und Funktion der Polizei in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Stand 1. Juli 2007). http://www.mar-­win.de/Winter_Martin_Politikum_ Polizei_1998.pdf Werner Schiewek  is a State Police Pastor who studied Protestant theology at the University of Hamburg and at the Westphalian Wilhelms University at Münster (WWU). Since 2001, he has served as a Pastor in the State Parish Office for Church Service in the Police of the Protestant Churches of Westphalia (EKvW) and as a police ethics lecturer of the Council of the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD) at the German Police University (DHPol) in Münster, located in the federal state North Rhine-Westphalia. In addition to his practice as a police chaplain, his teaching and research interests include applied ethics (professional and organizational ethics) with a special focus on ethical issues involving state security agencies (police and military).

Differences in United States and German Police Organizations with an Impact on the Policing of Public Assemblies Bernd Bürger, Gerd Thielmann, Alan Hanson, and Craig Dobson

Abstract  In this chapter, we explain some differences between Germany and the United States that are relevant to policing assemblies. Some police institutions and regulations can only be understood if one knows a broader context, e.g., the form of government, society, or history, and can thus classify how this may impact police structures or activities. As an appendix, we also offer a glossary that explains some specific police terms to foster the understanding of some technical terms used within the chapters of this book.

1 Introduction In democracies such as the United States of America or Germany, the fundamental rights of the people to assemble peacefully and the freedom of speech are guaranteed (First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States; Artikel 5 and 8 Basic Law  =  Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland). Although there are some differences considering possible restrictions of assemblies, there is a common base: those rights are guaranteed as fundamental rights, and any limitations by any authority can be checked and overturned by court. However, there are some significant differences between the United States and Germany considering the form of B. Bürger Institute for Further Education of the Bavarian Police, Ainring, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; https://publicorderpolicing.com/buerger G. Thielmann (*) German Police University, International Consultant for Police Leadership Science and Academic Police Training in the Middle East, Münster, Germany e-mail: [email protected] A. Hanson Captain, Fairfax County Police Department, Fairfax, USA C. Dobson Portland Police Bureau, Portland, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_7

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government, governmental cooperation, societal attitudes toward the state’s powers, and history of the states. Thus, there are differences between police structures, training and education, equipment, powers, and fundamental standards. Due to the complexity of this topic, we will focus on the most relevant differences between those two countries that have a particular impact on the policing of assemblies.

2 Size Matters It is obvious that the size and expanse of the United States imposes different requirements on US police cooperation than in comparatively small Germany—which is about the size of a state like New Mexico or Montana (cf. Fig. 1). Distances between metropolitan areas in the United States increase the more distant they are from the coasts of the United States. For example, in the state of Idaho, the state capital of Boise, with a population of about 225,000, is the only major city within a 6-hour drive or an hour’s flight. In Germany, on the other hand, there are 40 major cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants and four cities with more than 1.0 and up to 3.5 million inhabitants—as already mentioned, within the area of a larger US state.

Fig. 1  Comparison of sizes United States—Germany. (Illustration based on the size representation by https://www.thetruesize.com and the map of the United States (with adaptions) from https://d-­maps.com/m/america/usa/usa/usa/usa24.svg and the map of Germany (with adaptions) from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Karte_Bundesrepublik_Deutschland.svg by David Liuzzo, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Germany license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-­sa/2.0/de/deed.en)

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3 Density Makes the Difference The population of the United States is around 331 million, while Germany, with around 83 million, has ¼ of its population. Statistically, 33 people live per square kilometer in the United States, compared to 233 in Germany. If you look at the densely populated East Coast of the USA, the areas of the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, as well as Washington, D.C., and the area of New  York City are roughly the size of Germany. Approximately 52  million people live there—in Germany, 83 million live in about the same area. For the United States, this wide population distribution explains the very different police densities, the number of officers per capita. In the United States, the average is 2.2 officers per 1000 inhabitants, although this varies widely by region. For example, the smaller the communities in the United States, the greater this ratio— up to 6.2 (FBI, 2021). In Germany, there are approximately 2.7 police officers per 1000 inhabitants, distributed relatively equally across the country; only in the city-states of Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen are there 5.3 officers per 1000 (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2021 June 22). Due to the more homogeneous police density and shorter distances, mutual assistance between police forces is faster in Germany. In the United States, this is a challenge that can only be met through closer regional cooperation—at least in more dense areas.

4 History Characterizes Perception of Democracy On one hand, when it comes to assemblies and police operations, the attitude of the population toward the state, and especially the police, always plays a role. On the other hand, the perception that prevails in societies about democracy, the individual liberties it ensures, and how they may be exercised, also has an impact. The United States has been a democracy since 1776 and emerged from a struggle for freedom against its colonial master (bpb, 2021). At that time, the majority of the population, mostly from Europe, had fled from authoritarian despots, sought and found their personal freedom in America. A popular perception that dates back to that time is that the state should stay out of the lives of its citizens as much as possible. However, Americans also emphasize law and order, and expect this to be enforced by the law enforcement authorities. Germany experienced a real democracy for the first time after 1945, when it was introduced by the Allies, first and foremost the United States (bpb, 2017). However, the long history of authoritarian forms of governance makes acceptance of the state as a regulating hand more palatable among the German population. This applies both to social benefits such as mandatory health and unemployment insurance and

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to regulatory measures such as rules, laws, and orders, although the latter has declined rapidly in recent years (cf. Habeck, 2022). There is less acceptance of the military and strict law and order due to the experiences of the Nazi Regime and World War II, and as a result, the German police act more like a civilian administration, and the military has been reduced more and more (the attack on Ukraine seems to put the latter on reversal). These different perceptions have implications for the respective tactical approaches as well as the equipment of the law enforcement authorities in the United States in comparison to Germany.

5 Different Forms of Federalism Both the United States of America and the Federal Republic of Germany are federal states; the United States is a Federal Presidential Republic, while Germany is a Federal Parliamentary Republic. Those kinds of states require cooperation at various levels in the state system (bpb, 2013), and we want to point out the three most important differences: 1. In Germany, there is close coordination and cooperation from the level of the Federal Republic with the individual states. In Germany, this is ensured by the fact that there are permanent conferences of the states’ prime ministers with the chancellor and permanent conferences of all federal ministers with the corresponding states’ departmental ministers (e.g., ministers of culture, justice, the interior, etc.). These coordinate political and legal activities throughout Germany. 2. The second difference is that the aforementioned bodies also ensure cooperation among the individual states. These cooperation agreements have binding and obligatory effects. 3. The third difference that must be emphasized: In Germany, there are 19 police authorities; if you count the customs as a law enforcement authority, there are 20. Apart from the tiny police force at the parliament (Deutscher Bundestag), the smallest police forces in Germany have a strength of about 3500 (Saarland, Bremen), the largest 51,000 and 45,000, respectively (North Rhine-Westphalia, Bavaria). In the United States there are almost 18,000 different law enforcement agencies nationwide, 9 out of 10 of those agencies have less than 50 sworn members, and nearly half of all agencies have fewer than 10 sworn members. This is one of the issues that makes the two countries different and why their approaches are so different. The reason there are so many law enforcement agencies in the United States is that, overwhelmingly, communities want local control of their law enforcement. Prior to the United States becoming an independent nation, law enforcement agencies were not locally controlled, in fact, the role was often filled by the military, and thus were seen as an occupying force under which the community members had no say or control. Therefore, when police agencies

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developed in the United States, local control and Peelian principles (LEAP, 2023) were paramount. In considering internal security, and focusing on the police, there are many levels of coordination between the states in Germany (cf. Fig. 2). This level of formal coordination between states is not seen in the United States, though it is occasionally seen within particular states in the United States (e. g., California POST, cf. https:// post.ca.gov/). In Germany, there is the Permanent Conference of Ministers of the Interior. All 16 interior ministers of the states take part, and the federal interior minister is a participant but not entitled to vote. This conference meets at least twice a year and makes crucial policy decisions on internal security issues, mainly police matters of nationwide importance. It has several working groups, which focus on several aspects; in our context, the most relevant is the “Working Group II Internal Security”: its members are the heads of the state police forces, the head of police department for the Federal Ministry of Interior and the head of the Federal Criminal Police. This working group implements political decisions into strategic decisions. For these strategic decisions, operational measures are developed at the next level in subworking groups: • There is a subworking group for “Coordination Criminal Investigation Affairs”, the members of which are the heads of the 16 state criminal offices and chaired by the president of the Federal Criminal Police Office. • Another subworking group is responsible for “Leadership, Operation, Crime Control”, the members are the heads of the uniformed police. • There is a subworking group for “Information and Communication Systems”, members are the senior officers for Information and Communication of the police forces. • In the subworking group “Law and Administration” the chief lawyers of the police forces are members. • Of importance to our subject matter is the Regulations and Guidelines Commission, which is also a subworking group. This commission develops reg-

Permanent Conference of the Ministers of the Interior in Germany

Working Group II ”Internal Security“

(Working Committee of the Ministries of the Interior – Head of Polices)

Sub-Working Group Coordination Criminal Investigation Affairs

Sub-Committee Leadership, Operation, Crime Control

Sub-Committee Information- and Communicationsystems

Sub-Committee Law and Administration

Project-Group Crime Prevention Programme

Temporary Task Force

Permanent Task Force: Protection and Security of Nuclear Facilities

Plan- and Goal Conference Extrapol

Temporary Task Force

Commission Policing Crime Prevention

Fig. 2  The System of Coordination Security in Germany (own illustration)

Sub-Committee Regulations and Guidelines

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ulations and guidelines for police operations and command, including advanced training in tactical and technical matters (e.g., firearms training, use of water cannons, securing police facilities, or technical communications systems (cf. Table  1)). These regulations are submitted to the Permanent Conference of Ministers of the Interior for approval. If the regulations are approved, they are subsequently introduced as binding regulations in all state and federal police forces. The above coordination ensures that police tactics, terminology, and technology in Germany are largely the same and that the organizations are very similar, albeit with local peculiarities. The consequences of the above-mentioned Regulations and Guidelines Commission, namely the nationwide standardization of policing should be emphasized. Table 1 gives an overview of the regulations and guidelines. Sincerely, there are still differences between the various police forces in Germany in the aforementioned areas. However, they are not so serious that they could hamper or even prevent cooperation across states boundaries, especially in the case of larger assemblies and events.

6 All That Is Right Significant differences between the two countries in the law relevant to the police can be found in criminal law, criminal procedure code, and police laws. Criminal law and criminal procedure codes are federal laws in Germany; there are no criminal laws or criminal procedure codes at the state level. Thus, all police officers in Germany are trained in criminal prosecution under the same law and to the same standard. The police laws, i.e., the laws that regulate the tasks and structures of the police as well as the powers to prevent danger (only those powers, because, as has already stated, criminal procedures are based on federal law), have been enacted by each of the 16 states themselves (there is also a separate police law for the federal level). However, the coordination described above ensures that these laws are very similar and differ only in minor details. This is another reason why officers in Germany can also act as police in other states, and transfers between the police forces are possible as the training certifications are reciprocated. One aspect worth highlighting is that in the United States, outside of constitutional and federal law, there may be significant variations in the law depending on the venue and jurisdiction. Laws can vary widely from city to city or county to county within a single state, not to mention the variation between each state. This can present a challenge for law enforcement officers, particularly when assisting other agencies out of state. In the United States, this is overcome through the use of an Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC; https://emacweb.org), or regional Mutual Aid Agreements (MAA), or Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between law enforcement agencies.

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Table 1  Significant Police Regulations (PDV) and Guidelines (LF) LF 003 PDV 100 classified PDV 102 PDV 122 PDV 129 classified PDV 130 PDV 131 classified PDV 132 classified PDV 133 classified PDV 136 classified PDV 145 LF 150 PDV 201 classified PDV 202 PDV 211 PDV 230 LF 290 PDV 291 PDV 300 LF 355 LF 371 classified PDV 382 PDV 384.1 classified PDV 384.2 classified PDV 386 PDV 389 PDV 403 classified PDV 415 LF 450 classified PDV 550 PDV 800 PDV 810.1 PDV 810.3

Catalog of the Police Regulations and Guidelinesa Leadership and operation of police Tactical signs/characters Use of water cannons Personal protection- and object protection Operation of the police during state visits and other official visits Police operation during kidnapping cases Police operation during hostage cases Police operation during cases of outstanding extortions Police operation during attacks and danger of attacks Transport of operational units and equipment Maintenance/supply of the police during operations Education and training for use in operational units Basic and advanced training on equipment of the operational units Shooting training in basic and advanced training Exercises Sport in the police Police competition rules about sport in the police Medical assessment of medical fitness for police service and the ability to perform police duties Guidelines on cross-border police cooperation, Schengen implementing convention Self-safety (of police officers) Handling of juvenile cases Manhunt Police monitoring (of suspects) Exchange of information on drug-related crime Missing persons, unknown dead persons, unknown helpless persons Blasting Diving service Hazards due to chemical, radioactive and biological substances Aviation service Telecommunication service Formal electronic communication (electronic mail) Police radio service (continued)

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Table 1 (continued) LF 003 PDV 870 classified LF 900 PDV 982 LF 983

Catalog of the Police Regulations and Guidelinesa Crypto service Firearms of the police Marking of the pistols, submachine guns, and rifles Inspection and repair of weapons and equipment

All police terms in this article were translated by Gerd Thielmann and Bernd Bürger

a

7 Education Is a Capital for Life The profession of being a police officer in Germany is usually a lifelong career. There are various reasons for this. One reason is the special and comprehensive education to become a police officer. Anyone who joins the German police must complete at least two and a half and up to 3 years (depending on the state) of theoretical and practical training with a final state examination—only then are they a certified police officer. They also take a special oath that, as a police officer, they will serve the country conscientiously. In about 40% of the police organizations (which represent about 70% of all German police officers), basic police training is an academic study. The police students are studying at police-affiliated universities of applied sciences and earn a bachelor’s degree in “Public Administration—Police Operation.” To complete the picture, all mid-level managers (from Lieutenant up) and 70% of all basic-level police officers are required to have this bachelor’s degree. Senior Police Officers at the upper leadership level (from Major on up) must have a master’s degree “Public Administration—Police Management.” Prospective senior police officers from the various police forces in Germany complete a two-year master’s degree study program together at the German Police University in Münster. This joint course of study also has the positive consequence that the senior officers of the various police forces are not only trained to a uniform standard but are also networked with one another. This system of harmonization and high standards of academic education leads to a high degree of consistency and professionalism in policing. It also shows society’s and the state’s investment in and appreciation of the police profession. The other reason for a lifelong career is the pension system in Germany. Anyone who joins the police force at a young age must, in principle, serve there until the age of 62. Then the officer retires and receives a pension of 71% of his/her last salary. If the officer leaves the police force earlier, he/she loses this entitlement; the officer separating from service early is only entitled to a significantly smaller annuity, which they will not receive until reaching the general retirement age of 67. This lengthy academic education and lifelong career yields a high standard of professionalism and commitment from police officers and to the organization. These factors also facilitate police cooperation within Germany.

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8 Right of Assembly Article 8 of the German Constitution states briefly and succinctly in its first paragraph: “All Germans shall have the right to assemble peacefully and unarmed without prior notification or permission.  In the case of outdoor assemblies, this right may be restricted by or pursuant to a law.” (German Basic Law, Art. 8, 1949). Additionally, it was established by Supreme Court case law that this civil right applies to every resident in Germany, regardless of nationality, i.e., not just Germans. In the US Constitution, this civil right is enshrined in the First Amendment as follows: “Congress shall make no law [...] abridging [...] the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (Bill of Rights—First Amendment, 1791). But the Second Amendment of the Bill Rights points out the serious difference with Germany: “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (Bill of Rights—Second Amendment, 1791). For Americans, owning and carrying firearms is a civil right. In Germany, however, weapon laws are very restrictive. Carrying firearms in the German public is authorized for the police, military, licensed security contractors, and particularly vulnerable individuals with special permits only. Holders of hunting licenses may only carry firearms in their assigned hunting district. Owning firearms themselves, i.e., on private property, in addition to the aforementioned persons, is only allowed for sport shooters who have an official license to possess them. And carrying weapons, any kind of weapons, such as knives or batons, not only firearms, at public gatherings or on the way to them is a criminal offense in Germany. The risk of someone carrying and using firearms at an assembly is very low in Germany. There has been only one case in Germany in the postwar period where a firearm was used against police officers at a demonstration: In 1987, during protests against Frankfurt Airport’s West Runway, which was under construction, 14 shots were fired in the dark at a unit of Public Order Police. Two officers died, seven were injured, some of them seriously. The perpetrator was arrested the next day. The murder weapon had been taken in a robbery of a plainclothes police officer by several perpetrators at a demonstration in Hanau a year earlier. These fundamentally different views on the carrying of firearms and the different police experiences naturally have a considerable impact on the tactics and equipment of the police. Also of significance is that in Germany, there is the following provision from Article 8 for outdoor assemblies: “(2) In the case of outdoor assemblies, this right may be restricted by or pursuant to a law.” (Basic Law, Art. 8 par. 2, 1949). Based on this regulation, a law on assemblies was passed in Germany by the Federal German Parliament in 1953, which was and is valid throughout Germany. Since 2006, the states have been able to pass their own assembly laws, of which some states have made use. But these laws are also very similar because of the aforementioned cooperation and standardization between the states. In Germany, open-air assemblies require notification 48 hours in advance to the local assembly authority (depending on the federal state, assembly authorities are

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the district police authority or municipal regulatory authority), with some exceptions for spontaneous assemblies. The assembly authority can impose conditions on these assemblies (e.g., on the route, duration, number of stewards, etc.) or ban them altogether if public safety is significantly endangered. The organizers can have these conditions or bans reviewed by the administrative courts. For the police, it is relevant that they must enforce compliance with the conditions or the bans; however, this is subject to the principle of proportionality, which places high demands on the professional approach of the police. Additionally, all policing of assemblies in Germany is influenced by the “Brokdorf Decision” (Brokdorf = planned site of a nuclear power plant and hotspot of countless demonstrations) ruling of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1985. Rulings of this court are binding for all constitutional bodies and all courts and authorities (§ 31 Abs. 1 Bundesverfassungsgerichtsgesetz). The ruling emphasized, that assemblies are an indispensable element of a functioning democracy. Therefore, all authorities need to act in favor of an assembly, and they need to try to build a trustful relationship and to cooperate with the persons responsible for an assembly. The intensity of cooperation needs especially to be considered when restricting the assembly in accordance with the relevant legislation. Also, the authorities need to differentiate between violent perpetrators and peaceful protesters and try to allow the latter to continue their assembly even when violence occurs. As this ruling is valid, all police forces within Germany need to act according to those imperatives when it comes to policing an assembly in public spaces. In the United States, the legal situation differs from Germany. Basically, the right to free speech and to assemble is granted by the First Amendment. This right can only be limited under certain circumstances, e.g., to protect the rights of others (cf. Keane & Raganella, 2024). There is no special federal or state law about assemblies, like in Germany, where the general rights and duties of the organizers or participants as well as restriction options by the assembly authorities, are regulated. In principle, the right to assemble in public places is not subject to any restrictions and does not need to be notified to an authority as in Germany. But depending on the jurisdiction and the exact place, where a protest takes place, it might be necessary to get a permit in advance from the competent authority (which in fact might not be easy to find; e.g., if someone wants a permit on county property in Fairfax, one would address the Cable and Consumer Services, on a state road, the Virginia Department of Transportation, on private property, the Department of Zoning). There is no need for a permit to march in the streets (in some states) or on sidewalks, as long as marchers do not obstruct car or pedestrian traffic. If protesters do not have a permit, police officers can ask them to move to the side of a street or sidewalk to let others pass or for safety reasons. However, certain types of events may require permits. These include a march or parade that requires blocking traffic or street closure. While this (and other cases) may require applying well in advance of the planned event, police cannot use those procedures to prevent a protest in response to breaking news events (ACLU, 2023). However, without a permit, the police may have more authority to strictly limit what people do or where they intend to march.

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9 Conclusion This chapter has shown that the size, the density of population and, foremost, the historical evolution of the United States and Germany have led to quite different police systems in regard to structure, cooperation, education, and powers. Within the next two chapters, we will further highlight the impact of those differences on the policing of assemblies with some more detailed information on the police organizations themselves. Furthermore, we will show how police in the United States and Germany prepare, conduct, and debrief police operations like an assembly and illustrate that with the same fictitious example as it would be policed in two different countries. To aid the understanding of some technical police terms and to foster the exchange of knowledge, we also provide a glossary as an appendix to this chapter.

Appendix: Glossary As an appendix, we offer a glossary that explains some specific police terms. Often, technical terms from other languages are translated into English verbatim. However, this does not guarantee that they will be interpreted in the same way by the other parties involved. In this glossary, some technical police terms are explained to provide assistance in their understanding. As we experienced ourselves while writing this and editing in each case the chapters of the authors from the other nation, those technical terms are often complex constructs and even if we try to find or use a common name, the exact content might still differ a little bit. That is why we have added some more information to the glossary as just a translation. Nevertheless, at least for us, it was a great help to understand each other, and it will hopefully be the same for our readers. Some terms/descriptions from FEMA (2018), some were translated from PDV 100 (2012). English Operational procedure

Deutsch/German Ablauforganisation

Section

Abschnitt, Einsatzabschnitt

Description Describe and define the workflow in the organization, i.e., which person or what unit is responsible for what tasks, how to do the tasks, with whom to coordinate, and to whom to report. The Section (SEC) is a part of a Incident Organizational Structure (IOS) in which tasks are bundled and under unified leadership of a section chief, who is responsible for implementing tactical incident operations described in the Inicident Action Plan (IAP). It may include subordinate branches, divisions, and/or groups.

B. Bürger et al.

160 English Block, cordon, sealing off, perimeter Emergency

Deutsch/German Absperrung

Ad-hoc Lage, Sofortlage

Standard organizational structure

Allgemeine Aufbauorganisation

Check point

Anhaltekontrolle, Kontrollstelle

Reconnaissance

Aufklärung

Task, assignment

Auftrag

Mission order tactics, management by objectives

Auftragstaktik

Order, command; Befehl Incident Action Plan (IAP) Befehlsstelle Command Post, Incident Command Post (ICP), Emergency Operations Center (EOC), Command order Befehlstaktik tactics

Escort protection

Begleitschutz

Description Stopping people, vehicles, animals or objects from crossing a line or crossing it in an uncontrolled and unchecked manner. An incident, whether natural, technological, or human-caused, necessitates responsive action to protect life or property. Describes the organization regarding the structure, the chain-of-command, the network of the communication channels, and designates the tasks as well as the names of units. A location where people and vehicles are stopped and a determination is made as to whether they can proceed along their intended route, enter a secured area, or take an alternate route. The overt or covert surveillance as well as collection of information in given areas, properties or buildings by police forces as well as collecting information from open sources in order to get full picture about the situation. An instruction to a person or unit to perform certain tasks. It specifies the activity, the time frame, and the goal to be achieved without giving details about the way. The order is generally issued. It describes generally what is to be done, the time frame and the goal/s. the details of the execution of the individual activities are left to the assigned person (opposite: Command order tactics). Assignments, given verbal, written or by signs by virtue of explicit statutory, regulatory, or delegated authority. The physical location (room, large vehicle, etc.) equipped with communication and working devices where the coordination of information and resources to support incident management activities normally takes place. The order is very detailed. Every detail is fixed in the order as to what is to be done, the time frame and the goal/s. if the executor wants to deviate from this, he must ask the order giver (opposite: Mission order tactics). Defense against dangers for the public order from or for a rally, transport, or any other mobile events. Forces can be deployed at the top, sides, or end of such events.

Differences in United States and German Police Organizations with an Impact… English Deutsch/German Besondere Incident Aufbauorganisation Organizational Structure (IOS), Incident Command System (ICS)

Analysis of situation

Beurteilung der Lage

Preservation of evidence De-escalation

Beweissicherung Deeskalation

Search

Durchsuchung

Self-protection, officer safety

Eigensicherung

Intervention forces Eingreifkräfte

Mission, operation Einsatz Planning meeting Einsatzbesprechung

Public order unit

Einsatzeinheit

Operation forces

Einsatzkräfte

Debriefing, after-­action report

Einsatznachbereitung

161

Description A standardized approach to the command, control, and coordination of on-scene incident management, providing a temporarily common hierarchy within which personnel from multiple organizations can be effective. ICS is the combination of procedures, personnel, facilities, equipment, and communications operating within a common organizational structure, designed to aid in the management of on-scene resources during incidents. It is used for all kinds of incidents and is applicable to small, as well as large and complex, incidents, including planned events. Collecting of information, analyzing them and draw conclusions for police activities. It can be done temporarily for a certain occasion or permanent in the daily work organization. Searching and securing evidence. Strategic guideline in conflict-ridden events to prevent clashes and in order to stabilize or calm the situation, normally it requires a restrained approach of the police. Quarry for persons or items or evidence. A person can be searched (clothes and body surface) for items or traces. Buildings, vehicles, properties, grounds can be searched for people, animals, or things. All measures taken by the police for their own protection (persons, vehicles, buildings, facilities). Police forces, usually specially trained, who act against the disruptors during violent actions. All police activities in a police incident. A meeting held, as needed, before and throughout an incident to select specific strategies and tactics for incident control operations and for service and support planning. Police officers specially trained in public order, grouped together (squad, group, platoon, company, battalion) and deployed as a unit. Most often this is understood as a platoon. A term used to define police officers who are involved in a particular operation. Systematic checking and analyzing all police activities after a specific event or incident to gain experiences, lessons-­learned, and give transparency about decisions of the leaders.

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English Intervention threshold

Deutsch/German Einschreitschwelle

Decision

Entschluss

Alternatives of decisions

Entschlussmöglichkeiten

Preliminary investigations on crime scenes

Erster Angriff

Search, tracing

Fahndung

Leadership, management, commanding

Führung

Supervisor

Führungskraft

Command staff, general staff, Incident Command (IC)

Führungsstab

Hazard

Gefahr

Prevention

Gefahrenabwehr

Hazard area

Gefahrenbereich

Hazard situation

Gefahrenlage

Description The police commander’s specification of how the police should react in the event of certain incidents. This is to achieve a uniform assessment of situations and consistent action of the forces. After analyzing the situation and facts, weighing alternatives, the police commander’s decision on the way to cope with an upcoming or ongoing operation. After analyzing the situation and facts, various options for dealing with an upcoming or ongoing situation are presented to the police commander. The advantages and disadvantages of each option are then assessed. Unpostponable investigations and measures on crime scenes to collect or preserve perishable evidence to further the investigation of unlawful acts or actions. Search for persons or for items, e.g., cars, weapons, stolen properties, documents. All activities of a person (a) To lead a person or group and/or, (b) To manage an organization and/or, (c) To command a police operation. Incident command system title for an individual, who is leading others, managing units, or commanding a (part of a) police operation. A group of specially trained staff who support a police commander either permanently or only in one operation as an assistant. This group has no authority to issue directives to subordinate units but provides input to the leader to help them make more informed decisions. Something that is potentially dangerous or harmful, often the cause of an incident. The prevention of the occurrence of threats to public security and order, the population, or individuals. In the case of already existing dangers, the further spread of the dangers is prevented. A designated area where threats, especially because of weapons, explosives, dangerous chemical, biologic or nuclear substances, debris after blasting etc., exist to police forces and/or the public. Conclusion about all the facts that cause a hazard.

Differences in United States and German Police Organizations with an Impact… English Deutsch/German Prisoner collection Gefangenensammelstelle point Information management

Informationssammelstelle

Incident personnel Kräfte Situation

Lage

Situation report (SitRep) Guideline

Lagebild

Control center / dispatch

Leitstelle

Postoperations surveillance

Nachaufsicht

Protection of objects Public Relations (PR); Joint Information Center (JIC)

Objektschutz

Leitlinie

(Einsatzbegleitende) Öffentlichkeitsarbeit

Protection of Personenschutz persons Police regulations, Polizeidienstvorschrift which (PDV) 100 also — among others — contains regulation about incident management. Comparable somehow with: National Incident Management System (NIMS)

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Description Temporarily installed location with staff and equipment to collect and process arrested persons. Temporary location with staff and equipment designed to collect, analyze, organize, and control the structure, processing, and delivery of information from one or more sources and distribution to one or more audiences who have a stake in that information. All individuals who have roles in incident management. All facts, findings, development about an event or situation that the police must cope with. At a certain point in time, the representation of the situation with all details. The specification of the police commander, which serves as an action orientation for tactics and behavior of the forces and can have a binding effect. Staff deployed in rooms equipped with communication and information technology, especially radio systems, to coordinate or to command the police officers or units at work. Patrol after an operation to determine that there are no aftereffects, especially caused by roaming persons. Police measures for the security of immobile or mobile objects. All measures by which the police informs or dialogues with the public and the media. A JIC is a facility in which personnel coordinate incident- related public information activities. The JIC serves as the central point of contact for all news media. Public information officials from all participating agencies co-locate at, or virtually coordinate through, the JIC. Police measures for the security of persons. A systematic approach to guide incident management to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from the effects of incidents. It provides the shared vocabulary, systems, and processes to successfully manage incidents and provides a consistent foundation for dealing with all incidents, ranging from daily occurrences to incidents requiring a coordinated federal response.The PDV 100 also contains regulation about the daily work of police, their role and self-conception as well as about leadership.

164 English Emergency operations plan

B. Bürger et al. Deutsch/German Planunterlagen, Planentscheidung

Incident Polizeiführer commander, police commander, commander-incharge Area protection

Raumschutz

Raid

Razzia

Immediate, Sofortmaßnahmen responsive actions

Special weapons and tactics teams (SWAT.)

Spezialeinheiten

Special operations Spezialkräfte units

Staff working procedures

Stabsarbeit

Troublemaker

Störer

Perpetrator Route protection

Straftäter Streckenschutz

Concealment Camouflage

Tarnen

Description For police situations that may occur, e.g., airplane crashes, hijackings, demonstrations, etc., plans are made and “if-then” decisions are defined in writing and stored in the communication systems. The respective police commander then only must check whether the situation that then exists corresponds to the preconceived decision. The individual responsible for on-scene incident activities, including developing incident objectives and ordering and releasing resources. The incident commander has overall authority and responsibility for conducting incident operations. A bundle of measures taken by police forces in a defined area to maintain public safety and order there. Planned, surprising control of an undefined group of persons within a cordoned off location that takes the target group by surprise. Urgent measures that must be taken immediately after an event becomes known. They are to be prioritized and intensified as the availability of forces increases. Special weapons and tactics teams. In Germany, this would only be used for the following teams: SWAT. (Spezialeinsatzkommando = SEK), Mobile special tasks forces (mobiles Einsatzkommando = MEK) of the state polices and the unit “GSG 9” of the Federal Police. Police staff with very specific qualification and equipment, e.g., negotiation groups, advisory groups, technical task forces, (all for serious crime cases), also disarmers, experts, communication experts, or scientists. Activities of a command staff to advise and support of the police commander (see: Führungsstab = command staff). Someone who intentionally causes unlawful problems for the public order or other individuals. Individuals, who are committing a crime. Police measures for the security of routes, transport ways. Measures to (a) prevent forces, police equipment or objects from being recognized or seen, e.g., by concealing them, blending in with the surroundings. (b) Transforming essential parts of information according to coordinated procedures.

Differences in United States and German Police Organizations with an Impact… English Surveillance, supervision, monitoring

Deutsch/German Überwachen

Branch

Unterabschnitt

Liaison officer

Verbindungsperson

Assembly; rally, march

Versammlung; sich fortbewegende Versammlung

Preoperations surveillance

Voraufsicht

Planned event

Zeitlage

Logistics section

Zentrale Dienste

Arrest action Planed arrest action Emergency arrest action

Zugriff Zugriff — Geplanter Zugriff Zugriff — Notzugriff

Arrest action at opportunity

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Description Monitoring a specific space, object, or process in order to detect threats to public safety or order or disturbances and, if necessary, to initiate measures. The organizational level having functional or geographical responsibility for major aspects of incident operations below an operational section. A member of the command staff responsible for coordinating with representatives from cooperating and assisting agencies or organizations. An event in which more than two people come together to express their opinion or to have an impact of the public; rally, march = moving assembly. Preliminary measures in an area where an operation is pending to ensure that police control of the area is in place when the operation begins. An incident that is a scheduled nonemergency activity (e.g., sporting event, concert, parade, announced demonstration). Organizational unit or operational section with cross-sectional tasks, which predominantly performs supportive functions, among others support and maintenance. Arresting one or more persons. Arresting one or more persons where the arrest has been prepared in a planned manner. Arresting one or more persons where the arrest must be made without much planning due to a current emergency. Arresting one or more persons where access to the persons is suddenly possible due to an unexpected change in the situation.

References ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union. (2023). Know your rights. Protesters’ rights. Retrieved January 6, 2023, from https://www.aclu.org/know-­your-­rights/protesters-­rights. Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (1949  – state 2020). Translated by: Professor Christian Tomuschat, Professor David P. Currie, Professor Donald P. Kommers and Raymond Kerr, in cooperation with the language service of the German Bundestag. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.gesetze-­im-­internet.de/englisch_gg.

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Bill of Rights. (1791). Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.archives.gov/founding-­docs/ bill-­of-­rights-­transcript#:~:text=Bill%20of%20Rights.%22-­,Amendment%20I,for%20a%20 redress%20of%20grievances.. bpb. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. (2013). Informationen 318. Föderalismus in Deutschland. 1–2/2013. Bonn, bpb. bpb. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. (2017). Informationen 332. Demokratie. 1/2017. Bonn, bpb. bpb. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. (2021). Informationen 349. Das politische System der USA. 4/2021. Bonn, bpb. FBI  - Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2021). Crime data explorer. Full-time law enforcement employees by region and geographic division by population group number and rate per 1000 inhabitants, table 20. Retrieved January 23, 2023, from https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/ webapp/#/pages/home. FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2018). Glossary of related terms, extracted from – e/l/g 0300 intermediate Incident Command System for expanding incidents, ICS 200, March 2018. Retrieved January 31, 2023, from https://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/icsresource/assets/glossary%20of%20related%20terms.pdf. Habeck, R. (2022). Von hier an anders. Eine politische Skizze. KiWi. Keane, J., & Raganella, A. (2024). Protection of citizens’ rights, Public Safety & Police Legitimacy - the legal equilibrium for public order. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. LEAP, Law Enforcement Action Partnership. (2023). Sir Robert Peel’s Policing Principles. Retrieved January 25, 2023, from https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/peel-­policing-­principles/. PDV 100 - VS-NfD. (2012). Polizeidienstvorschrift 100. Führung und Einsatz der Polizei. VS-Nur für den Dienstgebrauch. Stand: 08/2021. Statistisches Bundesamt. (2021 Juni 22). Vollzeitäquivalent der Beschäftigten im Aufgabenbereich Polizei in den Kernhaushalten des Bundes und der Länder. Retrieved April 30, 2021, from https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Staat/Oeffentlicher-­Dienst/Tabellen/beschaeftigten-­ polizei.html;jsessionid=8EDC68A0E12A810BD99652DF8D8DC2D3.live722?nn=212936. Dr. Bernd Bürger  joined the Bavarian State Police, Germany, in 1997 and has managed assemblies and large events since 2000. He was responsible for managing camps and assemblies at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen G7 summits in 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, he was commanding officer of the Dachau Special Public Order Unit (evidence gathering and arrest unit), where he was also deployed “on the front line” at the Hamburg G20 summit. He has served as head of the Police Operations Department at the Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police since 2020. In addition to his practical experience, he is a renowned public order scholar, lecturing in various German and European states. He also was a speaker at the 2018 International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting and 2019 at the Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, together with Tamara Herold and Ryan Lee. He holds a master’s degree in criminology and police science from the Ruhr University Bochum (ECTS A), a master’s degree in Public Administration—Police Management (ECTS A) as well as a PhD in Public Administration from the German Police University. Gerd Thielmann  has 44 years of experience as a police officer, including 28 years as a senior officer. He started his career as a patrol officer, before he became an investigator—later he was the head of a crime scene investigation team, and he also completed the education to become a certified forensic expert. As a senior officer, he worked as a lecturer of police operations and leadership science at the Police University for Applied Sciences. Afterward, he worked at the strategic level in the Ministry of the Interior, where he was responsible for the training and further ­education of the 20,000 employees of the Hesse Police. He intensified his practical leadership experience as

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head of various units, including 2 years as Deputy Head of the European Union Police Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Head of the Northern Hesse Police Department with approx. 1800 officers. As the Head of the Police Leadership Science Faculty at the German Police University (GPU), he also worked scientifically. For the last 3 years of his police career, he served as Vice President of the GPU.  For the last 8 years, he has been working as an international consultant for Police Leadership and Academic Education in the North Africa and Middle East region for various international organizations such as CEPOL (EU-Agency for Law Enforcement Training), OSCE, GIZ (German Society for international cooperation), and FRONTEX (EU-Agency for Border- and Coast Guard). Currently, he is a consultant at Naif Arab University for Security Science in Riyadh/KSA, an institution of the Arab League. Alan Hanson  is a Captain with the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) in Virginia. Alan received a BA in Political Science and Russian Studies in 1989 from Gustavus Adolphus College after which he joined the US Navy and served as a Cryptologic Officer. He joined the FCPD in 1994 and is currently serving as the commander of the traffic division. In addition, he is the senior public order incident commander for the FCPD and serves as the Civil Disturbance Units (CDU) administrative commander. He has served as the incident commander for numerous CDU deployments, most recently he was primary incident command (IC) for the FCPD for the protests of Supreme Court Justices residences as well as deployments to support US Capitol Police in 2022. Alan is one of the founding members of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) CDU subcommittee and served there for several years as chairman and vice-chairman. He is also a founding member of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) CDU Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Special Technical Committee (STC) and traveled to the United Kingdom and Germany on a research trip for NIJ in 2017 to observe European public order standards and best practices in CDU equipment, tactics and training, and report back on the findings. Alan also served as the chairman of the Incident Management Subcommittee for the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Craig Dobson  has 24 years of law enforcement experience and is assigned as a police Commander at the Portland Police Bureau, assigned to lead the strategic planning and managing of the bureau’s downtown precinct of 146 sworn and professional staff. He also serves as the Senior Public Order Incident Commander for the Bureau, overseeing the Public Order Incident Commander Program. Additionally, Craig is the Police Bureau’s Instructor for Command personnel involving Public Order—Responsible for developing and teaching Bureau command staff the principles and theory behind Public Order including first amendment implications, crowd behavior, social identity, police capabilities, and appropriate tactical police responses. Prior to being a commander, he served continuously for 15 years in a detached assignment with the Rapid Response Team (RRT), the Portland Police Bureau’s all-hazards team, and helped develop and coordinate Public Order training for Oregon’s regional Public Order teams including Oregon Air and Army National Guard members. Commander Dobson served as the Overall Incident Commander during the civil unrest of 2020 in Portland.

Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in Germany Bernd Bürger and Gerd Thielmann

Abstract  In this chapter we highlight some aspects of the German police organization and standards that matter when policing assemblies or large-scale events. Hereafter, we will show an example of how an assembly would be policed, using a fictitious case study in a fictitious city. Finally, we will provide a brief overview of cross-border police collaboration in Europe considering assembly or event situations.

1 Introduction In this chapter, we will first focus on police organizations in Germany. Unique among state and local government, law enforcement agencies have the mission and are empowered to keep the peace in the society. They accomplish this primarily through communication and coordination, but if conditions deteriorate, may be required to use physical force to defend or restore order. Law enforcement agencies have a significant role in policing assemblies because they are responsible for the safety and security of the community members and all other parties involved in an assembly as well as protecting the rights of property owners, uninvolved community members, and the government. However, police organizations around the world differ in terms of organizational structure, training and education, equipment, powers, and even fundamental standards. These differences are also evident in an international comparison of the police management of large-scale public assemblies, where it is important to act professionally and with particular mindfulness to public B. Bürger Institute for Further Education of the Bavarian Police, Ainring, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; https://publicorderpolicing.com G. Thielmann (*) German Police University, International Consultant for Police Leadership Science and Academic Police Training in the Middle East, Münster, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_8

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sensitivity. In instances of larger events, police units from several regions often need to work together and cooperate to successfully manage them. In this chapter, we will highlight some aspects of the German police organization and standards that matter when policing assemblies or large-scale events. While in the first part of our chapter, one will find significant differences between police organization in Germany and the United States (for a more general comparison cf. also Bürger et al., 2024), when we explain how German police would handle the same fictions assembly that will also be presented in the chapter of our US colleagues (cf. Hanson & Dobson, 2024), you see more similarities and less differences to the respective approaches.

2 Police Organization in Germany We will turn our attention to the structures and organizations of the police in Germany and relate them to the policing of assemblies in public areas in this section.

2.1 Organization of Police Forces in Germany There are 16 state police forces and 3 federal police forces in Germany. Since the fundamental responsibility for the police lies with the states (Länder), we will first discuss the structures of the state police forces. The organization of the 16 state police forces are not the same but are very similar (cf. Fig. 1). At the top of each state there is always the respective Ministry of the Interior, where the headquarters (HQ) with the police chief for that state is also located.

Ministry of the Interior

Upper Level Ministry with Police HQ State Level overarching tasks

Regional Level Police Authorities

State Criminal Police Office

Authority for police equipment, logistics and administration

Public Order Police

Police Academy/ Institution for inservice training

University of Applied Science

Police Authority A

Central Departments

Regional Units

Fig. 1  General Organization German State Police Forces—simplified (own illustration)

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Below that are the police authorities which are responsible for overarching tasks for the entire state, these are: –– –– –– –– ––

State Criminal Police Office. Authority for police equipment, logistics and administration. Public Order Police—this authority will be explained in more detail (cf. 2.2.2). Police Academy/Institution for in-service training. University of Applied Science for police students.

At the regional level, there are the police authorities, each of which is responsible for a large region or big city. These authorities are then divided into central departments (Criminal Investigation Police, Traffic Police, Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT), Maintenance & Support, Administration) and decentralized units (uniformed and plainclothes officers) on districts or precincts with 24/7 shift service including investigation teams for mid-level and petty crime. The regional police authorities are responsible for policing assemblies in public areas. If, however, these events reach size, scale, or intensity that police authorities can no longer handle at the regional level, the State Minister of the Interior orders and coordinates support from other police authorities or, if the event reaches exceptionally large dimensions, support from other state police forces or the federal police. In the case of larger-scale events the Ministry can order which authority will be responsible and name the “commander-in-charge” i.e., “Police Commander”. Distinct from the police, but important partners in public events, are the municipal authorities for public order. At the federal level, there are two police agencies with specific responsibilities. First, there is the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt = BKA), which is, in a nutshell, responsible for investigation and intelligence regarding serious crimes that are best dealt with on federal level, like international Terrorism. They also coordinate the international exchange of police-related  intelligence (National Central Bureau of the Interpol, National Central Office for EUROPOL, Office for Schengen Information System and, host of international liaison officers) and are the central police agency in Germany for electronic data processing, collection and analysis of police intelligence, transmission of information, identification services, and thereby connect the states’ police. The roles of the BKA, in relation to public gatherings, are as follows: By operating the electronic data network, the Federal Criminal Police Office ensures that information about possible incidents and potential criminals can be exchanged between all police authorities as well as with intelligence agencies—the later under strict data protection rules. Then, through its networking at the European and international level, the Federal Criminal Police Office ensures that information from other countries, be it police or intelligence information, e.g., about arriving foreign participants or potential threats, reaches the local police authorities. It is also responsible for the information sharing at the Schengen Information System, which is very important because of the open borders and free traveling in the Schengen area (which consists of 27 European countries).

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Second, there is the Bundespolizei, the uniformed Federal Police, which is responsible for the following tasks: –– Border control (air and sea border; land border only if the Schengen System is temporarily suspended). –– Airport and Aviation Security (all international airports in Germany and Sky Marshalls). –– Railway Police (including the infrastructure of the railway network). –– Part of Coast Guard (together with Customs, Sea Authority and Fishing Authority). –– SWAT Team (GSG 9). –– Protection Federal Governmental Facilities (including embassies abroad). –– Coordination of international Police Missions (deploying Federal and State Police officers). –– International Liaison Officers (regarding the border control and documents). –– Civil Protection (Support of the responsible Civil Protection Authority in disaster cases). –– Public Order Police Units (Federal). The Federal Police have important responsibilities at public assemblies. On the one hand, it guarantees the border control of arriving foreign participants for public assemblies, especially if there is intelligence that they could endanger public safety. Additionally, the Federal Police monitor and control travel via railways to areas of public assemblies and exchanges information with the responsible police authorities. It is also responsible for assemblies that take place on federal government property or railroad facilities. However, in such cases, they must cooperate very closely with the respective state police, since these assemblies always cross property lines and thus come under the jurisdiction of the state police. The most important role is played by the Federal Police when they send Public Order Police units to support the state police forces during public assemblies.

2.2 Public Order Policing In Germany, all state police forces and the Federal Police have a specialized public order component called the “Bereitschaftspolizei”. The literal translation means “standby police”, but that does not describe the tasks and capabilities of this specialized police unit accurately enough. A brief historical outline leads to a better understanding of why and in what kind of organization this police force was established. After WW II, Germany had no army for understandable reasons, but the Cold War was on the rise and in the middle of Germany ran the border between the Eastern Bloc and the West. To provide a first line of resistance to a possible attack from the USSR or Warsaw Pact States, two special police forces were created as a stop gap until the Allies had enough time to

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put their military capabilities in place. These two special police forces were the Bundesgrenzschutz, Federal Border Guard at the national level, and the Bereitschaftspolizei in the states. They each had partial military training and armament as well as combatant status. They could also be tasked with countering communistic terror groups or riots inside Germany which were orchestrated by communist countries. These police units were structured in the same way nationwide, similar to the military, in squads, platoons, companies, and battalions (called departments) and also housed in barracks. The training was primarily in police operations, as they trained the police cadets for the respective police forces to become police officers, but they also trained in military tasks with training on machine guns, hand grenades, armored vehicles, and cross-country combat. All equipment was paid for by the federal government, and the states paid for the salaries and housing of the personnel. There was and is an administrative agreement between the federal government and the states about this (not publicly available), which regulates organization, strength, structure, and deployment within an internal emergency and in case of defense (GdP, 2010). The agreement and all Public Order Police from the states are even inspected by an Inspector of the Public Order Police, who is based in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, to ensure that the agreed standards are being met. Those standards are defined in a special regulation (BRAS 140.1 Bestimmungen, Richtlinien, Anweisungen und Sammlungen von Katalogen und Nachschlagewerken = Regulations, Directives, Instructions and Collections of Catalogs and Reference Works; not publicly available). In time, military tasks were taken over by the later founded Federal Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) and military training was completely abandoned. The structure of the units and the equipment were adapted to police needs as the units were transformed into civilian police organizations responsible only for police duties. On July 1, 2005, the Bundesgrenzschutz Federal Border Guard changed its name to the Bundespolizei (Federal Police). What has remained, however, is the agreement that the units are all structured in the same way, have the same tactical training and the federal government pays for the equipment—which also meets purely police standards. Most importantly what has remained is the mutual pledge that these police units will deploy nationwide to provide mutual support if a state or the federal government requests such support. Today, modern Public Order Police are comprised of four different types of units and are structured as follows: Type 1 First, there are regular Public Order Units comprised of approximately 120 officers. These Public Order Units, “companies”, are divided into three platoons, each with three groups (squads). The units having support groups for the company leaders, which support with documentation of issued orders and taken measures, listening to relevant radio channels, gathering information about the situation in the area, making suggestions to the company leader regarding strategic or tactical aspects, taking care of

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a­ dministrative and logistic tasks. These units are tactically trained for largescale events, have special body protection equipment, among other things. Type 2 Second, there are Technical Operations Units. The equipment of these units includes water cannons, armored vehicles, boats, diving, and lighting equipment, etc. In addition to tactical training, the officers are also trained in the use of the technical equipment. Type 3 The third type of units are the Evidence Gathering and Arrest Units (cf. Bürger, 2024a). The officers of these units are specially selected, trained and equipped for special tasks at assemblies and events that turn violent. These units have special tactical training, such as infiltrating a violent crowd to arrest an offender, but also have the training and equipment to document the behavior of offenders for evidence, observe the offenders, and later arrest them at another location. Type 4 The fourth type of unit are standing units (Tactical Units) comprised of police officers of the local police authorities trained in public order policing. Since in many states the strength of the Public Order Police was not considered sufficient, almost all states have established these kinds of units according to the same principles and structures as the aforementioned type 1 units. These units are integrated into the local police authorities. These officers perform day-to-day police duties supporting the local departments or do special training when no events or deployments are pending. However, if an event or deployment is pending, these officers can be deployed to tactical units within a short period of time (less than 1 hour). The personal protection equipment, like helmets, limb guards, outer layers, boot, gloves, etc., are the same as the regular type 1 Public Order Police (Bereitschaftspolizei). There are approximately 16,400 Public Order Police officers (counting only types 1, 2, and 3) deployed at the state level (BMI, 2022a; GdP, 2010). All of these officers are subject to the aforementioned administrative agreements and are deployed to provide mutual support on federal territory as needed. Over the last decade, they have also performed new tasks to support other European Countries within the framework of the EU or through bilateral memorandum of understanding. Add to this the more than 4000 Federal Public Order Police officers and in total there are more than 20,000 specially trained and equipped Public Order officers available in Germany. If there are no public order or crowd events and unit training has already been completed for that week, the Public Order Police officers support the regular police in various duties like traffic enforcement or directed patrols. The Federal Police Public Order units are assisting with border duties or at airports or train stations. The failsafe for public order policing is that officers from precincts, stations, and other departments are trained to deploy to tactical units, organized and equipped as the before mentioned units. Accordingly, these so-called “Alert Units” need several hours to be ready to deploy to an event, but in situations with longer lead times,

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these units can be called up and deployed alongside standing Public Order Police units.

2.3 Education and Training of Operational Officers and Leaders As described in Bürger et al. (2024), the training and continuing education of officers is broad in terms of time and largely academic in nature. The majority of new police recruits complete a three-year course of study at a Police University for Applied Science, earning a bachelor’s degree in “Public Administration—Police Operation”. In some states and the federal government, there is also training that takes place at police academies and usually ends after two and a half to 3 years with a state examination as a “Sworn Police Officer”. In both types of training, extensive modules are taught on law (criminal law, criminal procedure code, and police law), social sciences (psychology, communication, sociology, and ethics), technology (weapons, vehicles, communication, and IT), sports (fitness, self-defense, and arrest techniques) as well as operational theory (tactics and operational units) and leadership theory (leadership content also for co-­ workers!). The education with regard to operational theory is mainly based on the PDV 100 (Polizeidienstvorschrift 100  =  Police Service Regulation 100), the German-­wide standard for Police Operations. It is a kind of Standard Operation Procedure (SOP) relevant for all German Police Forces. Among other things, this provides the advantage that all police officers talk and understand the same specialist language—nationwide (some of those technical terms are explained within the glossary in Bürger et al., 2024). Most of the young officers serve in the Public Order Police units after their education, and they are further trained in tactics, law, and the technical equipment specific to the missions of Public Order Police. For example, within the Bavarian State Police, after joining a regular Public Order Unit, the officers will have 6 days of initial training and further mandatory modular trainings, which must be fulfilled within the first 6 weeks. Permanent training is required and integrated into the duty time. Additionally, scenario-based training where platoon and squad leaders, as well as members from different units, are intermixed guarantees a mutual high standard. Moreover, there are elaborate, annual exercises with hundreds of “disrupters” (role players performed by officers from other police units) where the exercising units such as companies and technical units need to cooperate closely. One of the main objectives is to give the leaders of the platoons and companies the opportunity to improve and to get feedback about their leadership and operational skills. Members of the special Public Order Units (Evidence Gathering and Arrest Units) need to pass an entrance examination followed by an initial six-months of physically and mentally challenging training, which some fail. After this initial

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training, officers assigned to these units need to spend 30% of their duty time training. Leaders of the Public Order Police units are recruited from the ranks if they have both the skills and motivation for leadership roles. These officers then attend special seminars that focus on either leadership theory or operational theory specifically tailored to Public Order Police. These leaders are assigned as squad, platoon, or company leaders, up to the rank of Captain. The path to the upper leadership level, generally above major, begins with a two-­ year master’s degree program. The first year takes place at their state Police University of Applied Sciences under the supervision of the German Police University (GPU) in the federal states. The second year, all students are sent to study together at the GPU in Münster for the entire year which ends with the examination and award of the degree “M.A. Public Administration—Police Management”. In addition to law, the course content includes a large part of operational and leadership theory. When these officers then return to their police units, they usually undergo further training on the job. There are also seminars for Public Order Police leaders on state or federal level (e.g., at the GPU) as well as nationwide network of events where Public Order Police leaders from the states and the federal police share their experiences and discuss the latest developments.

3 Policing of Assemblies in Germany To demonstrate the measures taken by the police during assemblies in the respective countries, we have prepared the following fictitious case study, which in this chapter takes place in Germany, whereby in Hanson & Dobson (2024) the exact same case takes place in the United States.

Initial Situation The assembly takes place in X-city with around 400,000 inhabitants. There are few government properties in the inner-city. The city has an international airport, and a train station and is accessible via several interstate highways that lead to a ring highway. The city is crossed by a river on which commercial shipping and sport boating takes place. The local police authority includes about 2000 officers. In the authority, there is a department for 24/7 shift service, a department for criminal investigation, a department with a unit of maritime (waterborne) police, canine squad, and a unit of specialized resources (beyond public order units), such as a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit. 3 weeks before the day of operation.

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Through posts on social media, the police become aware that a well-known “right-wing group” is calling for a large demonstration. The aim is to protest “restrictive government measures against conservative values”. X-city was chosen as the location for the demonstration because some government agencies are located here. The “right-wing group” has previously appeared several times as the organizer of such events, during which there was at least one clash with an opposing group.

3.1 Preparation Phase The police authority sets up an “Information and Intelligence Collection Hub” specifically for this event and instructs subordinate units to send information about the event that they become aware of to this hub. Possible police informants and other individuals and groups will be approached to see if they have any information. The hub itself actively seeks information from other agencies and departments. This hub will be located either in the State Protection Unit within the Criminal Investigations Department (those units, which exist in all German states, that is summary, investigate crimes which are being committed against the state/state authorities as well as crimes of extremists) or within the Command Staff of the Police Operations Department. All information obtained will be evaluated according to the following grid (cf. Table 1): The police authority informs the superior authority, the State Police Headquarters in the Ministry of the Interior about the situation and the upcoming planning. It also contacts the City’s administration, the Mayor’s Office, and the following institutions to coordinate further planning with them. –– The Assembly Authority, because notification of the assembly must be done there and only this authority can impose restrictions on it before the start (if the assembly has started, then this is within the jurisdiction of the police; but those responsibilities differ a little from state to state). In Germany, notice of an open-­ air assemblies must be given to an assembly authority at least 48 hours before the assembly, exception can be made for spontaneous meetings after a significant and sudden event. It must be emphasized that only notification must be given, organizers are not applying for approval. These authorities are located at the Table 1 Reliability-check Reliability of source A absolutely reliable B usually reliable C unreliable D not tested so far

Classification of information A1 – A2 – A3 – A4 B1 – B2 – B3 – B4 C1 – C2 – C3 – C4 D1 – D2 – D3 – D4

Reliability of information 1 undoubtedly 2 mostly secured 3 not assured 4 completely insecure

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local level in the civil administration of a city or district and are under the authority of the mayor or district administrator. The staff are administrative lawyers. In cooperation with police, they check whether the assembly could pose a threat to public security and order. If this is the case, the authorities can impose conditions, such as the location of the meeting, the routes, the duration, and the number of stewards. If a considerable danger is perceived, an assembly can be banned. These conditions imposed by the authorities can be reviewed by the organizers in administrative courts. The conditions are also binding for the police and must be considered when planning operations. The Fire Department and Rescue Services, in order to ensure safety, especially on the day of the event. The Road Traffic Authority, to agree and coordinate on the traffic routing and measures. The Public Transport Agency or Company, which is responsible for public transport, to coordinate transport options and routes. The Water Agency as well as the Power Supply Agency, to inform them about the event and to secure their installations. The Waste Management Authority, to ensure the removal of waste on the day of the event and disposal during the event.

Contact will be made with the following supra-local authorities, agencies, and organizations: –– –– –– ––

–– –– –– ––

The Railroad Company and its security service. The Airport Management and its security service. The administration of the federal government buildings and its security service. The Federal police, which has police jurisdiction over (a) railway-stations, trains and tracks, (b) aviation security and responsible for border control regarding international flights, (c) protection of federal government buildings. The Water and Shipping Directorate. Association of Merchants. Local Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Potential Event Organizations like sport clubs, trade fairs and exhibitions, music and art events,

It is also very important to contact the Public Prosecutor’s Office. It is responsible for the judicial processing of criminal cases committed during the demonstrations. The responsible District Court is informed that for the day of the event, the accessibility of a judge, who must authorize measures subject to a judge, is guaranteed. The most important contact is with the State Office for the Protection of the Constitution, one of the 16 German inner-state intelligence agencies, to obtain both local and national intelligence about the event and its organizers. This Office is

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c­ onnected via the intelligence networks with the other states as well as with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Besides this classic intelligence work, police would try to reach out to the organizers of the protest, to establish a reliable communication channel, to gain cultural intelligence (cf. Bürger, 2024b), which means to learn about the motives and the attitudes of the organizers and corresponding groups and to be able to get police and the counterpart known. 2 weeks Before the Day of Action In the meantime, it has become known that posts in social media for participation in the rally have been detected nationwide. The right-wing group has notified the Assembly Authority of the assembly and rally. The organizers expect around 10,000 participants. At the same time, it was detected that a coalition of left-wing groups had launched a large mobilization on social media in the country and neighboring countries. They call for a counterdemonstration with the slogan “Stop the right-wing fascists”. A radical leftist group has notified the Assembly Authority of the rally. According to the organizers, they expect 5000 to 6000 participants. In the past, there have been acts of violence and resistance against the police at assemblies of this group. The two assemblies are being intensively discussed in the local and national media.

An Incident Organizational Structure (IOS) is set up at the local police authority to deal with this operational situation. An IOS is defined as follows, according to the rules of the Police Service Regulation 100  in Germany as: A temporary form of organization that is established for particularly complex and extensive tasks and consists of a Police Commander (i.e., Commander-in-charge or Incident Manager), a command staff, and sections. The police authority, in consultation with the Ministry of the Interior, determines the Police Commander. It is an experienced high-ranking officer of the uniformed police who has been in command in a number of incidents and has appropriate advanced training for the function of a Police Commander. 3.1.1  Commander and Command Staff The Police Commander has the overall responsibility for the preparation and execution of the entire incident plan. The preparatory work is carried out by the command staff set up for the incident response. In Germany, there are police authorities that have a permanent command staff with a core team that is reinforced by other trained officers of the authority if necessary. Other police agencies have so-called standby staffs. The officers on these staffs regularly practice working in staffs in addition to

180 Table 2  Structure of the Incident Action Plan (IAP) for Police

B. Bürger and G. Thielmann IAP number xx, authority, place and date 1. Situation (situation report) 2. Already deployed and neighboring forces (who, where, when, what tasks, communication) 3. Mission, intention (general objectives)  4. Staff (units) and resources (technical equipment) 5. Single orders for tactical measures (for each deployed sections) 6. Other measures and information (legal notices, other authorities, media, maintenance) 7. Communication (chain of communication, canals, networks, devices, reports) 8. Command structure (police commander, command staff, command post) Signature, distribution route, time, type of transmission

their main police duties. These command staffs are called in and established when necessary. All major police authorities have specially equipped rooms for staff working (working places, IT networks, communication devices, screens, projectors, maps, etc.). The command staff does not have command authority over subordinate sections that are deployed but are the advisory and support body of the Police Commander. Of course, due to their tasks, they are in the core area of the communication process. They collect and evaluate all information, document it, advise the commander in the process, prepare decisions, draft the “Written Order” (cf. Table 2) based on the decisions, and then implement the instructions of the Police Commander through the subordinate sections, document the progress of the response and the results. This type of command staff in the police force is also regulated in Germany in Police Service Regulation 100 and is structured as shown in Fig. 2. The command staff also includes liaison officers to neighboring agencies and organizations such as the fire department, emergency services, public utilities, etc., as well as sometimes consultants who come from outside the police, such as scientists. There will also be a prosecutor from the relevant Public Prosecutor’s Office on the command staff, who also will be present on the day of the events. The Police Commander, with the help of the command staff, develops an Incident Organizational Structure (IOS). The sections (SEC) will be organized according to three principles. 1. Space-related: In a defined space (e.g., quarter, downtown, between defined streets), various tactical actions are carried out under a single command and control. 2. Object related: Various tactical measures are carried out at stationary or mobile objects (e.g., buildings and buses) under single command and control. 3. Deployment related: This form comes into question when special units or units with special training and/or special equipment are deployed, or cross-sectional

CSS 34 Psychosocial Support

CSS 24 Forensics

Fig. 2  Command Staff Command Post structure in Germany (own illustration)

CSS 33 Medical Service

CSS 23 Weapons and Devices

CSS 13 Traffic Affairs

SR 3 Documentation

CSS 36 Staff Internal

CSS 35 Law

CSS 32 Budget and Maintenance

CSS 22 Vehicles

CSS 12 Criminal Investigation

SR 2 Situation display

CSS 31 Human Resources

CSS 3 Central Services

CSS 21 Communication

CSS 2 Equipment

CSS 11 Security/Public Order

Command Staff Section 1 Operations

SR 1 Collection, Evaluation, Steer Information

Situation Room

Consultants Liaison Officers Prosecutor

Head of Command Staff

CSS 43 Social Media

CSS 42 Internal Release Situation Reports

CSS 41 Press/Media

CSS 4 Public Relations

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tasks for all other sections (e.g., Reconnaissance and Public Relation) are to be performed. In an IOS, usually all three principles are applied, but only one principle is primarily used as a basis for each section. However, this structure is flexible and can still be adapted to the findings and the assessment of the situation up to the day of deployment. Based on these findings, the command staff has intensified cooperation with the following authorities: –– The Federal Police and their relevant departments responsible for the airport, for the train stations, railroad trains, and government buildings. On the one hand, it is a matter of recognizing and, if necessary, sending back violent troublemakers entering the country at the border control, to escort and monitor demonstrators on the trains and to make arrests if weapons are found or if it is learned there are planned acts of violence. This must be done while the Federal police also need to protect the aforementioned facilities. –– The State Criminal Police Office and the Federal Criminal Police Office for Intelligence are coordinated to get information on troublemakers arriving from Germany or abroad or known perpetrators, which they query via the national and international police information systems. –– The Office for the Protection of the Constitution to intensify intelligence gathering efforts on both right-wing and left-wing groups. Contact is also made with other police authorities, and it is discussed whether the findings are sufficient within the framework of police laws to set up checkpoints at known departure points for potentially violent participants, to search for weapons there before, during and after departure or to detain people who have a ban on staying in X-city during the demonstration. This approach has proven to be very effective but, appropriately, has high legal requirements for these measures to permissible. Of great importance are verifiable findings of a willingness to use violence or planned unlawful actions by individuals that may be in attendance. Hopefully, in addition to these efforts, contact with the organizers of the rallies can be further established. The goal of these contacts is to build trustful relations. 3.1.2  Decision-Making and Special Operation Structure In Germany, the preparation of an incident takes place in a “Planning and Decision-­ making Process for the Operation”, which is also defined in Police Service Regulation 100: 1. Information Collection: All available information will be collected and evaluated as described above. 2. Situation Report: Preparation of a Situation Report, determination of existing orders as well as specifications or guidelines (e.g., from the laws, by authority management, the Ministry of the Interior).

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3. Analysis of the Situation: Individual facts are evaluated in various situation fields (e.g., mission, population, resources, hazards, forces, media, space, weather, law, traffic, etc.). The facts are addressed one at a time, each fact is evaluated, and conclusions are drawn from the evaluation. In this process, one methodically goes through each fact. At the end, all conclusions are synthesized, i.e., a general conclusion for the incident response is drawn from the overall view of the conclusions. 4. Decision Options: These conclusions lead to alternative proposals for a decision on what actions could be taken for the upcoming situation. In doing so, the advantages and disadvantages of the measures are to be addressed and weighed. The decision options also already contain drafts for guidelines, the tactical objectives, the tactical and organizational measures. 5. Decision of the Police Commander: The Police Commander makes his/her decision. Either he/she adopts one of the proposals of the command staff or combines parts of the proposals, in the worst case, he/she instructs the command staff to work out new decision options. 6. Implementation Planning: The command staff prepares a graphic and tabular overview of the planning, i.e., what tactical and organizational measures are required to achieve the tactical objectives formulated in the Police Commander’s decision. 7. Incident Action Plan (IAP); the German term used in this context, “schriftlicher Befehl”, would be literally translated as “written order”: The command staff prepares the IAP for the incident. The structure and organization of such an IAP is also regulated in Police Service Regulation 100 (cf. Table 2) and is uniform throughout Germany. A graphical organizational chart will be created in addition to the written IAP. The organizational chart is an overview of the structure of the IOS with the respective leaders but will also include the tasks and communication channels (it is very similar to Fig. 3, but the tasks are described more precisely, and among other minor details, there are the names and communication channels of the Police Commander and the Section (SEC)-Leaders on the chart). In the first step, all information about the two upcoming rallies is collected and consolidated into a Situation Report in step 2. In the Analysis of Situation, one of the conclusions drawn in step 3 is that violence from within the groups may occur in both demonstrations. For these cases, sufficient, specially trained intervention units (type 3: evidence gathering and arrest units) must be requested and deployed. Consideration is being given to whether these units should be combined and deployed in one section under unified command, or whether the units should be deployed in the two planned sections, “Right-Wing Rally” and “Left-Wing Rally”, each in a subsection under the command of the respective section commander. In step 4, Decision Options, the Command Staff will propose these two variants for an IOS to the Police Commander. During the presentation of the variants, the staff will discuss in detail the pros and cons. (a) The type 3 police companies are combined into a separate SEC “Intervention Forces”. Three subsections are formed, one for each of the two rallies (“Rally

Tactical Communication

Block/Cordon

Reconnaissance Land

Reconnaissance Air

Water Cannon Squadron

Block/Cordon

Tactical Communication

Escort of the Rally

SEC 3 Left-Wing Rally

Fig. 3  Incident Organizational Chart (own illustration)

PostSurveillance

Police Intelligence

Reconnaissance Water

Escort of the Rally

SEC 2 Right-Wing Rally

PreSurveillance

SEC 1 Intelligence Reconnaissance

Area Protection

Protection Government Premises

Evidence Gathering and Arrest Unit Company II

Evidence Gathering and Arrest Unit Company III

Protection Objects at Risk

Protection Public Buildings

Checkpoints Arrival Routes

SEC 5 Protection

Evidence Gathering and Arrest Unit Company I

SEC 4 Intervention

Command Staff

Police Commander

Reserve

Investigation Proceedings

Identification of Persons

Asset Collection Center

Traffic Interstates / Highways

Traffic River

Detained Person Center

Detained Person Transport

SEC 7 Detainment

Traffic Inner City

Traffic Rallies Route

SEC 6 Traffic

Maintenance

Logistic/Service

Psychosocial Support

Medical Service

Equipment

SEC 8 Central Service

Tactical Communication

Visitor/VIP Support

Communication Citizens

Social Media

Press/Media Relation

SEC 9 Public Relations

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Right-Wing” and “Rally Left Wing”) and a “Central” subsection, whose units will be on standby at strategic spots. And to be deployed across the field in rapid response to hotspots as needed. This, in a nutshell, has the advantage that all intervention units are combined under one command and the subsections can easily be coordinated if there is a hotspot, such as when the two marches encounter each other. The disadvantage of this approach is, that if the intervention force needs to work at just one assembly, there is the danger of two commanders being in charge—the section commander of the assembly and the commander of the intervention unit. Although this normally does not pose a real problem, because the intervention unit’s commander usually will not intervene without an agreement of the commander of the relevant section or deployed resource, this is something that must be considered. (b) Each type 3 company is assigned to one of the two sections responsible for the two rallies as subsections. Now the command structure is clear, the intervention units are under the direct command of the commander responsible for the areas where problems may arise. But the disadvantage is, that if there is one big incident, where all those specialized units need to cooperate very closely, e.g., when the two marches collide, there is no unified leadership. For this example, the solution is a separate SEC “Intervention Forces”. In our experience, this additional SEC, with an experienced commander, can be a great asset if things go south. This is a shortened example of how structural decisions need to be prepared and discussed, and it shows how much expertise (based on experience as well as on training) is needed to allow for a profound planning and decision process. This kind of discussion could be continued within all sections, but the example discussed above was intended as an illustration of the entire process. In step 6, Implementation Planning, based on the decision of the Police Commander, the detailed planning for type 3 police forces is being developed: how many units are needed, how they will be requested, when and where they will be on duty, where they will be accommodated and catered for, what equipment is still needed, etc. 3.1.3  The Incident Action Plan (IAP) The whole procedure then results in the issuance of the IAP (cf. Table 2). The “Decisions of the Police Commander” related to the Intervention Forces is reflected in paragraph number (pno.) 3. In pnos. 4 and 5, the more specific details, rosters, and assignments for the individual units can be found. In pno. 6, “other information” of the IAP, there can be, for example, information on the restrictions for the assembly, location of toilets or catering in X-city, and in pno. 7, the communications plan for all units is addressed. The IAP is written in police terminology as regulated by Police Service Regulation 100 and in a defined sequence (cf. Table 2). Regulation 100 defines and describes all tactical measures that the police can perform both in daily service and in such special events. There is also a glossary of police terminology. Since the

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police regulation applies to all police forces nationwide, the IAP “can be read and understood” by all deployed forces in the same sense and implemented accordingly. The single orders to the deployed sections and units are predominantly issued in the form of “mission order tactics”. The form of “command order tactics” is chosen only where special circumstances require it. To illustrate it with an example: The subsection “Area Protection” in SEC 5 (Protection) receives the following order including the tactical objectives as a “mission-order-tactic”: In the defined area “City Center” from xx to yy o’clock, ensure that no acts of violence against persons and property occur and that no demonstrations occur in this area. The Assembly Authority has excluded this area from demonstrations and this exclusion has been declared lawful and permissible by the administrative court.

Additionally, the section has the overall mission to “protect the city center area”, which is also a mission-order-tactic. The section commander can autonomously determine the manner in which the mission is carried out. They can, for example, order squads to patrol the area with vehicles and as needed, deploy additional squads on foot. Other units can set up checkpoints at certain points or can set up cordons at particularly vulnerable points. Typically, specialized officers will also conduct reconnaissance on the ground and from the air. The use of tactical communications to communicate with the crowd and troublemaking groups might be another operational measure. When units encounter violent individuals, they can decide whether to surround and search them, and whether to make arrests. When peaceful demonstrators are encountered, officers can escort them back to the demonstration marches, and so on. As an example of “command order tactic”, the SEC 6 (Traffic) can be ordered to use one motorcycle to block x-road, one patrol-car on y road to block traffic—and so on. Those are very detailed orders with no or almost no space for variations. This is not advisable because the situation can change (e.g., a march can spontaneously use a new route). In this case, the commander of the SEC 6 needs to react, regroup his officers and vehicles quickly and without getting affirmation for every change. Another disadvantage is that with this specificity, the Police Commander and the command staff would be highly occupied with details as opposed to the strategic view. This is why the “mission-order-tactic” is the defined standard (by German Police Regulation 100). Such a command in this case could be: “SEC 6 takes care of redirecting incoming and outcoming traffic and tries to keep traffic flow as smooth as possible.” In the case in question, the Police Commander chose a “command order tactic” only for the Water Cannon Squadron. He/she has ordered that the use of the water cannon—except in the case of emergency—may only be carried out on the orders of the section commander. Should the use of tear gas (admixture to the water jet) appear necessary, it can only be ordered by the Police Commander. The reason for this restriction is the often-unavoidable exposure to indirectly involved or peaceably assembled participants. Through this command order tactic, the threshold is set high, and the responsibility is not left with the squadron or deployed section leader but is instead placed at the highest on-scene level, the Police Commander.

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3.1.4 Cooperation The already established cooperation with the organizers is being continued with meetings to discuss the current situation and work out solutions for arising problems. During the meetings, the organizers of the right-wing rally showed a certain degree of willingness to cooperate and accepted some of the police’s suggestions on how to organize the rally and how to communicate with the police.1 Naturally, there is no guarantee that those promises are being kept, but it offers the opportunity to discuss many critical things in advance. For the organizers of the right-wing demonstration, two permanent police points of contact will therefore be appointed. These two officers will also be on-site on the day of incident, one of them constantly near the responsible assembly leader. The person, notifying the assembly and the other organizers of the leftist rally refuse any cooperation with the police. They deeply distrust the police, as they express. Despite this, the Police Commander continues to seek dialogue and permanently transmits necessary information from the police to the organizers, even if they do not respond. However, it is made clear by the police that the refusal to cooperate could have the effect that the Assembly Authority may impose restrictions that would not have been necessary if they had cooperated. 3.1.5  Further Preparations Public relations are in full swing. These activities are carried out by the SEC 8 (Public Relations) in close coordination with Staff Sect. 4 of the Command Staff (cf. Figs. 2 and 3). The Police Authority maintains a constant presence on social media, regularly issues press releases, and the Police Commander, and public relations staff frequently give media interviews. There are also contact points for citizens who have questions on social media and a telephone hotline. Permanent communication channels are established with the Association of Merchants and the local Industry and Trade Chamber. The planning of the IOS continues and is being adapted to the developing situation. The necessary reinforcements are planned, and the corresponding Public Order Police units are being requested through the Ministry of the Interior. The logistical tasks are performed with the same intensity. This is done in close cooperation between the Command Staff Sect. 3, the regular Support & Maintenance Services of the police authority, and the Police Logistics Authority at the state level. On-site accommodations are rented for the reinforcements, supplies are organized before and during the incident, sanitary facilities are rented and provided during the operational phase, missing equipment is requested.  It must be emphasized that it is known that for the right-wingers this cooperation only serves to put on the cloak of the law-abiding citizen, but in reality, they pursue their own anti-democratic goals. When they feel that they are in a strong position vis-à-vis the police, they immediately abandon cooperation. 1

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The police radio network is expanded with local repeaters/amplifiers and the establishment of additional radio channels. As there is a nationwide police radio-­ system-­standard, all digital radios from all involved units are compatible, this means that public order units i.e., from Hamburg could use their equipment in Bavaria and communicate with all the other units from different states. 1 Week Before the Day of Incident There is verified knowledge that potentially violent left-wing groups from Germany and abroad are planning to travel to the counter-demonstration. In response, the right-wing groups have publicly stated that they intend to be peaceful, but if the left-wing groups were looking for a fight, they would fight. Based on the findings, the Assembly Authority has issued restrictions to both assembly leaders: large number of stewards, assigned routes separating the two events, time limit. The organizer of the left-wing grouping has lodged an objection against these conditions, which is now before the Administrative Court. However, a ruling is not expected until the day before the event.

The command staff developed the preceding IOS (cf. Fig. 2), but the latest inputs highlight the need for the plan to be flexible so that the decisions of the administrative court can be taken into account. For example, the separation of the two events can be judged as unlawful because, with it, the counterdemonstrators cannot articulate their intentions—namely, opposition to the gathering of the right-wing groups. Thus, a larger police force would be required between the two events. Due to the escalating nature of the situation, the Police Commander has requested additional forces through the Ministry of the Interior. The request would include the number of personnel and type of units required (based on the analysis of the situation and the scale of the incident), the type of equipment, and the special expertise required. This situation-related calculation of required officers was made by the staff in Sect. 1 of the command staff (cf. Fig. 1). Based on the requirements, Public Order Police units from the state, neighboring states, and the federal police will be deployed to X-city the day before the incident or on the day itself, depending on the time required for transport of the police units. There will also be Technical Operation Units (with water cannons and barricade equipment) and Evidence Gathering and Arrest Units, both from the Public Order Police. The deployment of state police helicopters (2) as well as the state’s squadron of mounted police (15 officers with horses) is also authorized.

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3.2 Operational Phase Day of Incident On the day of incident, a Saturday, the weather is dry and warm. The city is bustling with walkers and shoppers. The participants for the two rallies have arrived. The predicted number of demonstrators is correct: about 10,000 people for the right-wing march and about 5000 for the left-wing march. Through controls in other cities, checkpoints on the outskirts of the city and at the train station, police were able to prevent about 25 people from the left-wing spectrum from entering the city, who were prepared to use violence (covert-carrying of gas-masks, protective gear, balaclavas, slingshots; carrying these kinds of things on the way to or during an assembly is a crime according to German law). The restrictions ordered by the Assembly Authority have been confirmed by the Administrative Court: The two routes of the rallies must run separately, there is no confrontation of the rallies at any point.

All units work as described in the IO and IAP. The main measures at this point are taking care of the traffic detours SEC 6 (Traffic), informing the public about the event and any obstructions, such as detours, through SEC 9 (Public Relation); sustain contact between SEC 2 (Right-Wing-Rally) and the leader of that particular assembly and accompany the march; the same applies for SEC 3 (Left-Wing-Rally), and to coordinate the measures of SEC 4 (Intervention), if needed. Other measures are being implemented to protect and to surveil the area SEC 1 (Intelligence/ Reconnaissance) and SEC 5 (Protection) and to establish a positive communication with participants and public (e.g., affected businesses) by liaison / communication officers deployed in SEC 2 (Right-Wing-Rally), SEC 3 (Left-Wing Rally) and SEC 9 (Public Relations). Incident A In the rally of left-wing groups, posters are held up with “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards) and individuals repeatedly shout, “Fight the cops”.

The described behavior is a criminal offense (insult). The commander of SEC 3 (Left-Wing Rally) or their liaison officer will ask the leader of the assembly to talk with the participants to stop this. The section commander will assess who is exhibiting these behaviors. Are they a few “cocky” students or are they violent, cohesive activists dressed in black? Are preparatory acts of violence being seen or is it just some youths chanting the slogan “Fight the Cops”? In any case, as a precautionary measure, type 3 police units (evidence gathering and arrest units) from SEC 4 (Intervention) are brought to the scene. Also dispatched

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to the scene are a loudspeaker-vehicle and backpack-loudspeaker team, who are ordered to communicate to the crowd and explain the police measures that have been taken or are intended to be taken. Depending on the result of the interventions (intervention by the leader of the assembly, communication of the police, showing of the intervention forces), a determination will be made on the need for further police action. As long as the situation stays calm, the police forces will not wear their helmets, mitigating concerns of an intimidating image or presentation, but other personal protective equipment for the body is worn. This serves to protect the officers, and this type of equipment cannot be donned very rapidly. Incident B In the rally of the right-wing group, a group of about 50 participants dressed in black suddenly forms into a block. They set a perimeter boundary for the block with long ropes and in the front display a sign with the slogan “Now the fight against this corrupt government begins”, which extends over the whole width of the street.

Forces from SEC 4 (Intervention) are being dispatched to the location and will be on standby for immediate intervention (probably already with helmet on). Additionally, a loudspeaker-vehicle or backpack-loudspeaker team are deployed to the scene and are prepared to communicate to the crowd and explain the taken or intended police measures. SEC 5 (Protection) units that protect close by government buildings will be reinforced with additional forces. Also, water cannons might be dispatched to those buildings to show readiness, already present barricades might be reinforced by vehicles (optical and physical barrier). Incident C In the pedestrian zone (outside the areas of the demonstrations), one by one, a few inconspicuously dressed people with shopping bags and sacks approached the right-wing group’s rally. Suddenly, about 25 of these people gathered, shouted slogans “Away with the fascists” and began to throw tomatoes, which were in the bags, at the participants of the right-wing march.

Forces from SEC 4 (Intervention) will video-record and take photos of the incident; at the same time they enclose the group and quickly push them out of sight of the right-wing assembly to avoid further escalation. The enclosed persons will be prosecuted (throwing tomatoes is an assault and therefore an offense) therefore taken by SEC 7 (Detainment) officers to the Detained Persons Center for further processing.

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Incident D At the outer cordon in front of a government building, the right-wingers’ procession stops. Slogans like “Down with this government” or “Fight now” are shouted. Water bottles and stones are thrown from the crowd in the direction of the building, thereby also endangering the police officers. The water cannon will be used to spray water at the group. Additionally, the escorting police units of SEC 2 (Right-Wing-Rally) will quickly and decisively push the crowd back and are rapidly reinforced by intervention forces of SEC 4 (Intervention). The situation will be video-recorded, and photos will be taken. As soon as the violence has stopped and the situation is under control or is calming down, the units will analyze their videos and photos in order to identify perpetrators. The perpetrators will be arrested as soon as the situation allows. This may be quite a while later at another location—the individual perpetrator will be under surveillance until there is an opportunity for a smooth arrest. Final Stage of the Day The two demonstration marches are otherwise largely peaceful. There have been occasional verbal insults or small items are thrown, but no people were injured, or property damaged. Both rallies end with a final demonstration, after which the assemblies dissolve and most of the participants start their return journey home. Some small groups were still on the move in the city center—monitored by police squads—but then dissolve.

Throughout the day, SEC 1 (Intelligence/Reconnaissance) units continued to gather and assess information on the behavior and discernible intentions of the participants and relay it to the command staff as well as the other deployed sections. In the broader environment, reconnaissance was conducted on situations regarding the population and traffic. This was done primarily by visible reconnaissance patrols on foot or in vehicles. However, plainclothes teams were also deployed for concealed reconnaissance. All these units were supported and supplemented by reconnaissance from the air (helicopter squadron) and on the water (maritime police). In parallel, the Police Intelligence unit was busy checking and evaluating all information in the police and intelligence systems and immediately passing on findings to the deployed units. Forces from SEC 2 (Right-Wing Rally) and SEC 3 (Left-Wing Rally) escorted their respective rallies from the sides, front and rear. Additional forces were deployed at the spots where the rally of the left wing approached the route of the right wing. As soon as criminal offenses occurred, the forces from SEC 4 (Intervention) were deployed. The actions were stopped, and some of the offenders were arrested and handed over to forces of SEC 7 (Detainment) including the evidence (photos,

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videos, reports, confiscated objects). The forces of the Tactical Communication unit successfully intervened with various measures (including individual approaches to persons, clearly visible communication teams, and loudspeaker announcements). When attempts were made to deviate from the prescribed march route and violate restrictions imposed by the Assembly Authority, the forces of SEC 2 (Right-Wing Rally) prevented smaller groups from continuing along the non-permitted routes by encircling them. Some arrests were made by forces of the SEC 4 (Intervention) in close coordination with the relevant SEC 2 (Right-Wing Rally) or SEC 3 (Left-Wing Rally). In the responsibility area of SEC 5 (Protection) they intervened during the incident D and pushed back the crowd. After the incident, they observed the same perpetrators and arrested them “quietly” in other places. The arrested people were handed over to the units of SEC 7 (Detainment). The most efficient effects were at some hot spots via a “show of force”, where the arrival of the units calmed down the situation. The units of SEC 5 (Protection) had set up checkpoints around the city prior to the demonstrations. People and vehicles were checked who were either known to be arriving based on intelligence, who were obviously attending the demonstration based on preceding reconnaissance or officers at the checkpoint. The units confiscated some prohibited items and pushed corresponding criminal charges. A ban was announced against certain people, due to available corresponding evidentiary knowledge, and they were not allowed to stay in the assembly areas. The units of SEC 5 (Protection) repeatedly spotted groups in the inner-city area who wanted to form up, this was prevented either by Tactical Communication or measures such as surrounding or barricading the individuals. At the various government buildings, public buildings, or objects at risk, the unit commanders on site deployed the forces in each case as the situation on the ground required. This could be simple cordon lines by officers, barricades such as barrier grids or in some cases by deploying the water cannon vehicles. SEC 6 (Traffic) diverted all on-coming traffic away from the march routes and, allowed source traffic to exit. For inner-city traffic, detour routes were put in place, some intersections were manned by traffic control forces and close cooperation was maintained with the city’s traffic authorities. Public transport was diverted around the march routes by the transport companies, this was done in consultation and cooperation with the police. Intercity traffic was routed via the ring highway. On the river, shipping ran without interference, there were neither disturbances nor arrivals of participants on the waterway. Officers from SEC 7 (Detainment) were engaged in taking over the persons arrested by the Intervention Forces, including the related evidence, and transporting them to the Detained Person center. There, the persons were searched and subjected to an identification process. Evidence and confiscated items were forwarded to the Asset Collection and registered there. When legally permissible, arrestees were placed in cells. Criminal charges were forwarded to the Investigation Proceedings unit. If the reason for detention no longer existed, the individuals were released. Members of SEC 8 (Central Services) were extremely busy supporting the deployed units. Missing or damaged equipment was brought to the units.

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Maintenance was busy bringing fuel, batteries, accumulators, consumables, etc., to the units as well as doing equipment repairs. The Logistic/Service unit had to organize accommodation and catering for hundreds of officers. On the day of the incident itself, a mobile catering service had to be set up, including the necessary sanitation (e.g., toilets, garbage). The Medical Service had to care for a few slightly injured officers; most of the injuries were a result of accidents and not caused by violent criminals. Psychosocial support was fortunately not needed that day, as there were no traumatic incidents. All units of SEC 9 (Public Relations) were also busy on the day of the incident. The press and media representatives were received (Press Center with communication installations, press releases, interview partners, and photo/video material) and provided with information both at a central location as well as various decentralized points. Social media was constantly monitored by the staff, and information was also actively posted online (cf. also Grutzpalk & Jarolimek, 2024; Schenk & Bornhausen, 2024). The community was informed about the incident and the traffic situation through various means, which also included the deployment of Tactical Communication officers. Constant dialogue was held with the Association of Merchants and the Industry and Trade Chamber. A special visitor center was operated for high-ranking visitors and interested representatives of other authorities. This section is one of the last sections that can shut down its operations. The Federal Police had set up checkpoints for arriving participants not only at the train station in X-city, but also at the train stations in other cities where it was known that groups of participants were planning to arrive. At the checkpoints, several illegal items were confiscated, and some people who could be shown to have the intent to commit acts of violence were banned from the area. In the arriving trains, strong forces were deployed to prevent clashes between right-wingers and left-wingers. At the airport, border control measures succeeded in identifying some people who were classified as ready to commit violent acts. These individuals were either given a warning or, in some cases, were also banned from the area. The federal police forces protecting the government buildings cooperated closely with the forces of the state police, which were deployed in the area surrounding the buildings as protection forces.

3.3 Debriefing Phase After the end of the two demonstrations, the Police Commander successively released the police forces later in the evening. The post-surveillance was first carried out by the troops of SEC 1 (Intelligence/Reconnaissance) but then handed over to the regular service police authority officers. In cooperation with the authorities of the city administration, all the devices, temporary facilities, and structures are dismantled, and the normal state is re-established. The SEC 9 (Public Relation) handed over its task in the late evening to the regular Public Relation Office of the Police Authority.

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The command staff is still active with reduced staffing levels. All documentation is checked, reporting duties to the superior authorities—the Ministry of the Interior—are completed, and a final situation report is given to all involved police agencies and other authorities involved. There is also a comprehensive evaluation of the media reports and reactions in the social media. After all field reports have been received from the various section commanders, subsection commanders and unit commanders, a comprehensive field report will be prepared. Due to the size of the incident, a one-day meeting was also organized, to which all the aforementioned commanders, the members of the command staff, representatives of the authorities that had sent forces to the incident, as well as members of the superior authorities are invited. The purpose of the meeting is to systematically discuss not only successful police actions but also the unsuccessful ones. The aim is not to determine who was to blame for mistakes but to learn from them—lessons learned in the best sense. At least, that is how it should be—it must be admitted that this form of professional follow-up is not always achieved. Debriefing meetings will be held with all external interlocutors: The leader of the “Right-wing-Rally”, the leader of the “Left-wing Rally” (if they agree), representatives of the Association of Merchants, the Industry and Trade Chamber, and all other authorities and organizations, which have been contacted. In the debriefing meetings, it will be discussed what lessons were learned and how satisfied the interlocutors have been with the police.

4 Policing of Assemblies in the European Union Finally, we would like to add some insights on how the sovereign states of the European Union (and cooperative nations like Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, etc.) work together considering the policing of assemblies. Article 3(2) of the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (2012/C 326/01) is the foundation of any police cooperation. It states: “The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.” Based on this article, several institutions, some even with powers of enforcement have been founded, like Eurojust (European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation), Europol (European Union Agency for Enforcement Cooperation), Frontex (European Border- and Coast Guard Agency), European Agency for the Operational Management of large-scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (eu-LISA), and the newest institution: European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO). Furthermore, the EU Council in Brussels has established Council Preparatory Bodies to prepare Council decisions. One of these bodies is the Law Enforcement Working Party (LEWP), which deals with legislative activities as well as cross-border policing and related operational issues. One of the main topics is the strengthening of cooperation

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between specialized law enforcement agencies, including networks and expert groups.

4.1 Common Training Of particular importance in this context is CEPOL (Collège Européen de Police— French for European Police Academy), the agency of the European Union dedicated to developing, implement, and coordinate training for law enforcement officials. Since July 1, 2016, the date of its new legal mandate official name of CEPOL is “The European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training”,, and it brings together a network of training institutes for law enforcement officials in EU Member States and supports them in providing frontline training on security priorities, law enforcement cooperation and information exchange. For instance, each year CEPOL (2022a) offers an on-site course “Public Order—Crowd Management and Security during Major Events”, for senior and chief specialists of law enforcement staff engaged in the planning, tactical direction, and evaluation of large-scale public order operations. “The aim of this activity is to: • enhance public security and order by increasing the competencies of public order specialists on the level of security requirements for large scale events and the related cross-border cooperation; improve threat assessment and management of major public events in order to prevent or effectively contain attacks carried out by lone-actor terrorists or violent lone criminals” (CEPOL, 2022a). Usually, each of the 27 states of the European Union can send law enforcement officers to such on-site seminars. However, there are other seminars regarding assemblies and gatherings like “Pan-European Football security”, “Policing Major Events” (online), “Crowd control: policing demonstrations in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown” (online), and “Supporters management in the context of sports events with a focus on football” (online). The module “Policing Major Events” can be accessed without costs by any police officer within the European Union (credentials will be granted by the state in which the officer serves) and consists of several chapters (cf. CEPOL, 2022b): 1. a brief introduction to the historical background, international context, and widely recognized definition for major events, 2. outline of the widely accepted theoretical framework of managing major event security in the EU, 3. organizational leadership and command and control aspects of major event security operation, 4. theoretical and operational overview of the gathering, analyzing and dissemination of information and intelligence, 5. overview of the types of major events and the applicable strategies and tactical options of both event-related and non-event-related security,

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6. overview of contingency planning activities for major event security operations, and of risk, crisis and a range of possible responses, 7. description of the intra- and inter-agency and mass communication options during the preparatory, execution and post event phases of major event security operations, 8. introduction to operation support issues such as logistics, human resources, public-private partnerships (PPPs) and research and development, 9. discussion of operational debriefing and accountability, and of psychological intervention, 10. overview of the education and training needed for police decision-makers regarding the policing of major events including a brief discussion of the contents and methods of learning and training. Unfortunately, the on-site training is only available to very few officers. However, online courses are a valuable asset when it comes to the education of senior leaders regarding the policing of public order. Not only is the course updated regularly, but it is also available to an indefinite number of officers.

4.2 Common Research and Knowledge Furthermore, the EU funds different kinds of projects to improve policing within the EU.  One outstanding project, in our context, was GODIAC: “Good practice for dialogue and communication as strategic principles for policing political manifestations in Europe”, the findings of which are basically the fundamentals of the aforementioned CEPOL courses. GODIAC was a pan-European project that ran from August 1, 2010, until July 31, 2013, with financial support from the “Prevention of and Fight against Crime Program” of the European Union—European Commission— Directorate General Home Affairs (HOME/2009/ISEC/AG/182). The Swedish National Police Board was the project coordinator with 20 partner organizations (12 police and 8 research/educational organizations) in 11 European countries actively participating (Hilton, 2011). The purpose of the GODIAC project was to contribute to the development of a European approach to policing political manifestations, to identify and spread good practice in relation to dialogue and communication as strategic principles in managing and preventing public disorder at political manifestations in order to uphold fundamental human rights and to increase public safety at these events in general. The overall idea of the project has been to integrate operative police work, research, and training within the field and to build international and institutional networks (GODIAC, 2013a, 2013c). “The strategic objectives of the GODIAC project were: • Analyze and disseminate good practices of applying research-based principles focusing on communication and dialogue as strategic principles for de-escalation and prevention of public order disturbances at political manifestations in Europe.

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• Increase knowledge on the social identities of demonstrators and activists, their motivation, mobility, and strategies. • Stimulate the use of research-based knowledge in policing political manifestations. • Promote evaluation of policing major events at a European level. • Stimulate lessons to be learned, disseminated, and used nationally and internationally. • Develop institutional cooperation and networks at a European level between practitioners, researchers, and trainers. • Facilitate collaboration between law enforcement agencies and research networks. GODIAC addressed the following overall research questions: • How can communication and dialogue strategies contribute to preventing public order disturbances or help de-escalate tense situations in demonstrations? • What are the motives of, and the different tactics and strategies used by different kinds of protest groups? • What police strategies and tactics can be seen as good examples?” (GODIAC project, 2013c, p. 5). Probably the most important result for practitioners was the booklet on recommendations for policing political manifestations in Europe (GODIAC, 2013b). Additionally, there is a researcher volume with 238 pages which presents research produced during the course of the GODIAC project, along with the experiences of police and protesters (GODIAC, 2013c). Moreover, there is a handbook (GODIAC, 2013a), that describes the peer review methodology that was applied at the GODIAC project field that was initiated by Otto Adang in the Netherlands and further developed in a European football context (Adang & Brown, 2008).

4.3 Common Policing There is, however, even more than common education programs or research. Considering practical police events, there are “Common Centers”, e.g., from the perspective of Germany, there are such centers in Kehl (with France), in LuxemburgCity (with Luxemburg, Belgium, and France), Padborg (with Denmark), Passau (with Austria), Petrovice and Schwandorf (with the Czech Republic) and Swiecko (with Poland) as well as similar institutions in Kerkrade (with Netherlands and Belgium) and in Basel (with Switzerland). In those centers, police officers from different countries work together and ensure the reciprocal exchange of information, forms of common patrols, and even cross-border police deployments (BMI, 2022b). ­Considering public order events, those centers make sure that the information about traveling groups of perpetrators is being shared. They also support deploying officers from one country to another. Considering public order events, currently, it is

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standard that officers from Austria, Italia, or France are teamed up with German officers in Germany for events such as Oktoberfest and at the G7 summits in Garmisch-­Partenkirchen, especially in communication teams to help mitigate any conflicts. Vice versa, German officers are deployed to other countries, e.g., Hungary, to serve as points of contact for German tourists. Finally, as most European countries have Public Order Police units, they can even assist when one country needs the help of another in the case of major events. Some examples: based on bilateral treaties (BMI, 2022c), the Bavarian Public Order Police have sent units to Switzerland and Austria. The latter was particularly sensitive, as a whole evidence gathering and arrest unit with about 150 officers in black overalls was sent to Klagenfurt by request of the Austrian police for support and was under the command of the WEGA (Wiener Einsatzgruppe Alarmabteilung, an Evidence Gathering and Arrest unit from Vienna, Austria). This was especially sensitive because 70 years earlier, during the Nazi regime in Germany, there had been German units (in black uniforms) in Austria, and it was thought that this might lead to problems with the public. But in fact, it was a full success (Bürger, 2010, 2013). Vice versa, the WEGA also was deployed in Germany for the G7 Summit in Garmisch-­Partenkirchen in 2015 and 2022, as well as at the 2017 G7 summit in Hamburg. However, the support of other countries with Public Order Police units is an exception, and the success of this assistance is clearly dependent on the culture, the training, and professionalism of the units (Bürger, 2010, 2013). Further evidence of the robust European police cooperative activities was the establishment of the European Gendarmerie Force in Vincenza, Italy, which was decided on September 17, 2004, and realized with the Treaty of Velsen on October 18, 2007 (Eurogendfor, 2023). It comprises approximately 2300 officers (as of 2022). France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Romania have seconded members of their gendarmeries to the force, while Lituania is partner with Public Order Units and Turkey has an observer status. The unit is intended for crisis operations to restore public security on behalf of the EU but also NATO, UN, OSCE, and other international organizations based on a clearly defined mandate. In blended military-police missions, executive and protective tasks are performed, and local police forces are monitored, built up, and trained.

References Adang, O., & Brown, E. (2008). Policing football in Europe. Experiences from peer review evaluation teams. Policieacademie. BMI, Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat. (2022a). Bereitschaftspolizeien der Länder. Retrieved September 18, 2022, from https://www.bmi.bund.de/DE/themen/sicherheit/ nationale-­und-­internationale-­zusammenarbeit/ibp/bereitschaftspolizei-­node.html. BMI, Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat. (2022b). Übersicht bilateraler Polizeiverträge. Retrieved September 18, 2022, from https://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/ downloads/DE/veroeffentlichungen/themen/sicherheit/uebersicht-­p olizeiabkommen. pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=5.

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BMI, Bundesministerium des Innern und für Heimat (2022c). Zusammenarbeit über Grenzen hinweg. Retrieved September 18, 2022, from https://www.bmi.bund.de/DE/themen/sicherheit/nationale-­u nd-­i nternationale-­z usammenarbeit/grenzueberschreitende-­p olizeiliche-­ zusammenarbeit/grenzueberschreitende-­polizeiliche-­zusammenarbeit-­node.html. Bürger, B. (2010). Einsatzeinheiten der BRD im europäischen Ausland. Eine Analyse von Auslandseinsätzen geschlossener Einheiten anhand des Einsatzes deutscher Bereitschaftspolizeieinheiten bei der UEFA Fußball-Europameisterschaft 2008 in Österreich. Bürger, B. (2013). Der Einsatz Deutscher Bereitschaftspolizeieinheiten im Europäischen Ausland – ein Erfolgsmodell? In: Thomas Feltes (Hrsg.): Polizei und Fußball. Analysen zum rituellen Charakter von Bundesligaspielen, S. 101–123. Bürger, B. (2024a). Public order policing. From theory to practice. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Bürger, B. (2024b). Specialized public order units: Between communicative conflict resolution and robust intervention. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Bürger, B., Thielmann, G., Hanson, A., & Dobson, C. (2024). Differences in U.S. and German police organizations with an impact on the policing of public assemblies. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. CEPOL.  European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training. (2022a). 83/2022/ ONS: Public Order  - Crowd Management and Security during Major Events. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.cepol.europa.eu/education-­training/what-­we-­teach/ onsite-­activities/832022ons-­public-­order-­crowd-­management-­security. CEPOL. European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Training. (2022b). Policing Major Events module study content v1.2.1. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://leed.cepol.europa.eu/mod/ scorm/view.php?id=38638. EUROGENDFOR. (2023). EUROGENDFOR Operational Concept. Retrieved Oktober 09, 2023, from https://eurogendfor.org/egf-­concept/. GdP, Gewerkschaft der Polizei. (2010). Operative Bereitschaftspolizei. Positionspapier der Gewerkschaft der Polizei. Retrieved August 18, 2022, from https://www.gdp.de/gdp/ gdpcms.nsf/res/2AFC6101A0EAE22EC1257FFD00344923/$file/2016_Operative_ Bereitschaftspolizei_Web.pdf. GODIAC Project. (2013a). Field Study Handbook. Good practice for dialogue and communication as strategic principles for policing political manifestations in Europe. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.recercat.cat/bitstream/handle/2072/220957/Field_study_ Handbook_2013.pdf. GODIAC Project. (2013b). Recommendations for policing political manifestations in Europe. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.recercat.cat/bitstream/handle/2072/220959/ GODIAC_BOOKLET_2013_2.pdf. GODIAC Project. (2013c). The anthology. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.recercat.cat/ bitstream/handle/2072/220958/GODIAC_Anthology_2013.pdf. Grutzpalk, J., & Jarolimek, S. (2024). The importance of police public relations in assembly situations. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Hanson, A., & Dobson, C. (2024). Police organization and the policing of assemblies in the United States. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional's guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Hilton, M. (2011). The GODIAC project. European Law Enforcement Research Bulletin, (6), 19–21. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://bulletin.cepol.europa.eu/index.php/bulletin/article/ view/48.

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Schenk, C., Bornhausen, M. (2024). Mission communication as an integrative overall strategy in protest 2.0. In Bürger, B., Herold, T. & Lee, R. (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Bernd Bürger  joined the Bavarian State Police, Germany, in 1997 and has managed assemblies and large events since 2000. He was responsible for managing camps and assemblies at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen G7 summits in 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, he was commanding officer of the Dachau Special Public Order Unit (evidence gathering and arrest unit), where he was also deployed “on the front line” at the Hamburg G20 summit. He has served as head of the Police Operations Department at the Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police since 2020. In addition to his practical experience, he is a renowned public order scholar, lecturing in various German and European states. He also was a speaker at the 2018 International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting and 2019 at the Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, together with Tamara Herold and Ryan Lee. He holds a master’s degree in criminology and police science from the Ruhr University Bochum (ECTS A), a master’s degree in Public Administration—Police Management (ECTS A) as well as a PhD in Public Administration from the German Police University. Gerd Thielmann  has 44 years of experience as a police officer, including 28 years as a senior officer. He started his career as a patrol officer, before he became an investigator, and later he was the head of a crime scene investigation team. He has completed the education to become a certified forensic expert. As a senior officer, he worked as a lecturer of police operations and leadership science at the Police University for Applied Sciences. Afterwards, he worked at the strategic level in the Ministry of the Interior, where he was responsible for the training and further education of the 20,000 employees of the Hesse Police. He intensified his practical leadership experience as head of various units, including 2 years as Deputy Head of European Union Police Mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Head of the Northern Hesse Police Department with approx. 1800 officers. As the Head of the Police Leadership Science Faculty at the German Police University (GPU), he also worked scientifically. The last 3 years in his police career, he served as Vice President of the GPU.  For the last 8 years he has been working as an international consultant for Police Leadership and Academic Education in the North-Africa and Middle East region for various international organizations such as CEPOL (EU-Agency for Law Enforcement Training), OSCE, GIZ (German Society for international Cooperation), and FRONTEX (EU-Agency for Border- and Coast Guard). Currently he is a consultant at Naif Arab University for Security Science in Riyadh/KSA, an institution of the Arab League.

Police Organization and the Policing of Assemblies in the United States Alan Hanson and Craig Dobson

Abstract  In this chapter, we highlight some aspects of the US police organization and standards that matter when policing assemblies or large-scale events. Hereafter, we will show an example of how an assembly would be policed using a fictitious case study in a fictitious city. At various points, we will also shed light on cross-­ border police collaboration in the United States.

1 Introduction In this chapter, we focus on law enforcement organizations in the United States. As in Germany, federal, state, and local government law enforcement agencies have a mission and are empowered to keep the peace in the society. However, police forces in the United States differ from their European counterparts in terms of organizational structure, training and education, equipment, powers, and even fundamental standards. In some cases, they differ from agency to agency in the around 18,000 different law enforcement agencies in the United States. These differences can be most evident across state boundaries in a comparison of the police management of large-scale public assemblies. In case of large events of national importance, police units from several regions often need to work together and cooperate to successfully manage these events. For these reasons, in this chapter, we would like to highlight some of the differences in organization and standards of police that matter when police are managing public assemblies or gatherings. While in the first part of our chapter, one will find huge differences regarding police organization between Germany and the United States (cf. ch. X and compared to ch. Y), when we explain, how US police handle the same fictitious assembly as in the chapter of our German colleagues (cf. ch. X), you will see some more similarities and less differences. A. Hanson (*) Fairfax County Police Department, Fairfax, USA C. Dobson Portland Police Bureau, Portland, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_9

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2 Police Organization in the United States At this point, we turn to the structures and organizations of the police forces in the United States and relate them to the policing of assemblies in public areas.

2.1 Organization of Police Forces in the United States The United States, by its constitution, is a federalist system of government. Under the Tenth Amendment, “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people” (Cornell Law School, 2022). Therefore, each state determines and governs the policing powers of the police forces within its boundaries. Because each state operates independently of the others, there can be wide variations in hiring standards, education requirements, training practices, equipment used, and what is policed. There are three tiers of law enforcement within the United States: Federal, State, and Local/Tribal. Federal law enforcement agencies focus on federal laws including but not limited to immigration and border security, terrorism, cyberspace security, and investigation of crimes that cross state or national borders. Numerous federal law enforcement agencies have varying roles in regard to public order policing. Agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) may be requested to provide investigative support when criminal activity occurs in or around public order events but have very little role in policing these events, while federal agencies like the US Park Police, US Capitol Police, US Supreme Court Police, US Marshals Service, and the Federal Protective Service are routinely involved with public order policing on a daily basis. According to Gardner and Scott (2022), state and local governments in the United States operated 17,541 law enforcement agencies that employed at least one full-time equivalent (FTE) sworn officer with general arrest powers. These agencies employed 1,214,000 persons on a full-time basis, including 788,000 (65%) sworn and 427,000 (35%) civilian personnel. This includes state law enforcement organizations as well as cities, towns, and Indian Country (BJS, 2022) and includes sheriff’s departments and police departments. The organization of police departments depends on the size of the department, but all have core elements: Operations, Investigations, Internal Affairs, and Administrative Support. The larger the agency, the more capabilities are added to the organization charts. At the state level, State Police (sometimes known as the Highway Patrol) have varying degrees of responsibility for policing. In heavily populated areas, State Police focus primarily on policing the interstate highways and leave the full-service policing to the local police or sheriff’s departments. They work to ensure traffic continues to move, address crashes or blockages quickly on interstate highways,

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and conduct traffic enforcement on the interstate highways to keep them safe. In rural portions of the state, the State Police may be the primary agency tasked with policing and would provide full law enforcement services in the same manner as a local or city police department. Primarily, the State Police act in support of local agencies when it comes to policing public order events. If the event becomes larger than the local agency can manage, the State Police will provide assistance in the form of officers, equipment, and experience in working and managing public order events. The State Police would deploy to the city or town requesting assistance and would fold into their incident command structure (cf. 3.3.1), with the city or town taking the lead as Incident Command. Local police agencies vary widely in size, scope, equipment, training, experience, and tactics. This category is wide-ranging and includes city police agencies, counties (police and sheriff) departments, towns, villages, and Indian Country (tribal police). This category includes large cities like New York City, with a population of 8,804,190 and a police department with nearly 36,000 uniformed officers to numerous small agencies with one full-time uniformed officer (NYC, 2022a, 2022b). Each agency has its own separate set of general orders or standard operating procedures that provide guidelines and standards that their sworn officers must operate within.

2.2 Public Order Policing In the US, law enforcement agencies have varying levels of capability in public order policing. This can range from very limited capability with no public order-­ specific training or personal protective equipment (PPE) and no to very little experience dealing with crowds, to large agencies that deal routinely with large crowd events, protests, civil disobedience, civil disorder, and riot and have dedicated units that train regularly in modern public order tactics and have modern riot PPE. Instances of civil unrest in the United States have occurred since the country’s founding in 1776. Early uprisings like Shays’s Rebellion in 1786 or the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 were dealt with by the newly forming US government by raising armies to fight the rebellion (Britannica, 2022a, b). During the 1800s and early 1900s, protests and riots occurred in many parts of the country, largely caused by differing viewpoints on immigration and race or labor. In the early 1800s many of the riots were managed by using the military to disperse the crowds. By the 1900s though, police were the primary agencies used to manage crowds and quell riots. The 1960s were a pivotal time in the United States where civil rights and anti-war protests dominated the landscape. Police forces of the day were widely criticized for their use force to quell both peaceful protests and riots. Many stark images come from the protests of the 1960s and 1970s including the use of fire hoses and police dogs against protesters in Birmingham in May of 1963 and in the case of Kent State University on May 4, 1970, the Ohio National Guard fired at protesters killing 4 (Kent State University, 2022).

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The 1980s and 1990s were relatively calm when compared to the riots of the 60s and 70s in the United States, but major riots did occur including the 1992 Los Angeles Riots which took the deployment of California National Guard, US Military troops trained in urban policing and the assistance of several federal law enforcement agencies assisting local law enforcement agencies to end the unrest. In the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the number of instances of unrest dropped. With this drop and the recession of 2008, many police agencies, looking for ways to cut expenses, stopped purchasing public order personal protection equipment and also stopped or slowed down training in public order management. This, in hindsight, was a crisis in the making, which came to a head in the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri riots and the Baltimore riots of April of 2015. Large protests of police in the United States continued through 2016 and 2017 and erupted again in 2020 with the murder of George Floyd. Many difficult lessons have been learned and arguably re-learned across the United States since 2014. Many US Law enforcement agencies have been relying on outdated tactics for decades and without the direction of a national standard that European countries benefit from, there was no set of standards for policing public order events or equipping officers to operate in those environments. While there is no national standard for public order policing, the federal government has provided basic training in public order for a number of years in the form of the Field Force Operations (FFO) three-day basic course (CDP, 2022b; FLETA, 2016). This baseline public order course was initially developed by the Department of Justice’s Office for Domestic Preparedness (ODP) and called Managing Civil Actions in Threat Incidents (MCATI). In 2004, this course transitioned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP) and was rebranded FFO.  This course has been offered in a number of iterations from 2005 to the present day, with an average of 33 courses offered each year in residence at the CDP facility in Anniston, Alabama. The course is also taught locally at police department facilities, where the CDP instructors travel to a local jurisdiction to provide the training. The purpose of the FFO course is to prepare responders for protest types and actions, legal considerations, responsibilities of mobile field force teams, and crowd control methods. The course culminates in a series of hands-on activities that allow responders to practice all of the learned skills (baton-holding positions, mass arrest procedures, and riot-control formations) in a realistic context. Federal, state, local, and other law enforcement/security personnel who may be faced with mass arrest procedures may take the program. The main critique of the FFO course has been that it is not up to date with modern public order policing or policies and leaves agencies that follow the tactics and policies trained in these courses open to civil litigation. There are also many gaps in this training. Over the years, many agencies have taken this baseline training and adapted it based on their experiences to fill the gaps in this training. While this has led to positive innovation in some cases, it has also led away from standardization. Agencies that developed their own tactics, policies, and terminology were presented with new challenges when they worked with outside jurisdictions. They were not on

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the same page and had challenges coordinating tactics and communicating commands. The CDP is working to revamp the FFO course. The CDP also offered an FFO Command course, but this was very limited in nature and focused primarily on the development of an Incident Action Plan and coordination of resources as opposed to training in public order tactics or decision-­ making. The CDP is working to revamp this course as well. Finally, the CDP (2022a) offers a course that provides students with the knowledge and skills to operate the tools necessary to extricate individuals safely from protester devices while reducing liability and ensuring due process. This course is widely taken across the country and is continuously being updated based on new protester tactics. In 2014, in the wake of the Ferguson riots, an effort began in the National Capitol Region around Washington D.C. to look at how public order could be improved. Representatives from the Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland, and the US Park Police from Washington, D.C., met to discuss how communication and coordination could be improved in the National Capitol Region. In April 2015, these discussions led to the establishment of a Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) subcommittee within the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) tasked with improving a number of facets in public order policing, namely personal protective equipment (PPE), training, tactics, and professionalism. Members of the group began looking internationally for public order PPE standards since none existed in the US.  British Standard 7971 was quickly identified as being a standard that might fit the US model. The British Standard was consensus derived through committees that included scientists, testing bodies, manufacturers, and law enforcement practitioners. This was seen as a standards development process to emulate in the United States as it involved all parties involved in the creation, use, and testing of the PPE. Work by the MWCOG CDU subcommittee led to outreach to the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) in 2016 to begin work toward establishing Public Order PPE standards in the United States. In 2017, the NIJ formed a Special Technical Committee (STC) on CDU PPE.  This committee was comprised of public order subject matter experts from law enforcement agencies from across the United States who had recent or historic experience with violent unrest. While initially focused on PPE, the group quickly determined the need to focus on all facets of public order. In November 2017, a group of five STC members were sent to the United Kingdom and Germany to learn about their PPE standards, determine how their tactics impacted their PPE design, and to observe their training and training facilities. At the conclusion of the research trip, the group reported its findings to NIJ, the STC, and the MWCOG CDU subcommittee. As a result of the lessons learned from this research trip, a number of law enforcement agencies around the National Capitol Region began adopting European-­ derived public order tactics as well as purchasing equipment that meets British Standard 7971 or relevant UK Home Office standards. In 2018 and 2019, the NIJ STC, working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) began to formulate public order PPE standards. These

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meetings began to take place at ASTM International (one of the world’s largest international standards-developing organizations) conferences and were wound into the ASTM standards development process. Work continues on the development of a complete set of public order PPE standards. Public Order units in the United States are structured in similar ways nationwide, but not the same. The format generally follows the military terminology with platoons and squads, but the number of people on each squad and, thus, each platoon can vary greatly. Some squads may contain seven officers, while others may contain 15 or more. These units are primarily nonstanding units drawn from their primary assignment, such as patrol officers or deputies, when needed. Only a very few large agencies have standing public order units, like for example the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group (NYC, 2022c). Generally speaking, except for very large agencies, the only specialized training within public order has been for grenadiers (tasked with deploying munitions for the units) and cut teams trained in field force extrication techniques and equipped to remove protester devices. Until recently, there had not been formalized evidencegathering teams or community liaison officers. Most public order units have medics with them during deployments, either police officer medics trained to be paramedics and also trained and equipped as public order officers, or Emergency Medical Services (EMS) medics who are not members of the police department but are trained and equipped to operate in public order environments. For law enforcement agencies with public order teams, procedures for handling mass arrests have been established and are largely similar across the country, though there are no set standards. Work within the NIJ STC continued beyond the development of public order PPE standards in the areas of training, tactics, and professionalization of the public order specialty. This culminated with partnering with the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) and the development and recent release of US Public Order Standards (NOTA, 2023). Purchase of public order PPE has been left up to the individual agency. Since no public order PPE standards exist in the US law enforcement agencies have been at the mercy of those selling the PPE products with no input on design or protection requirements. Often equipment that was built for a different purpose like baseball catchers shin guards, was used by law enforcement as public order PPE. This led to numerous injuries because the equipment was not designed to protect against the threat that law enforcement faces during riots or civil unrest. Additionally, federal grants that allow agencies to purchase public order PPE are very rare, and some of the largest federal law enforcement grants specifically prohibit the purchase of public order PPE.

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2.3 Education and Training of Operational Officers and Leaders According to a 2013 census of US law enforcement training academies conducted by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS, 2021), basic training programs lasted an average of about 840 hours, or 21 weeks, excluding field training. State Police Officer Standards and Training (POST) Commission mandates map out the minimum requirements for law enforcement training in each state. While there are similarities in training content between states, there is no overarching federal standards enforcement body that mandates law enforcement training. Each of the 17,541 law enforcement agencies begins with the state-­ mandated training minimums and adds in additional training as they see fit. In Virginia for example the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) establishes and enforces minimum training standards for law enforcement in Virginia through administrative code 6VAC20–20-21 (LIS, 2022). This code requires that an individual hired as a law enforcement officer must successfully complete law enforcement basic training at a certified criminal justice training academy, which includes receiving a minimum of 480 hours of DCJS-approved training in professionalism, legal, communication, patrol, investigations, defensive tactics and use of force, weapons, and driver training. It also mandates that the officer complete a minimum of 100 hours of approved training in the category of field training by meeting or exceeding the field training performance requirements. Local agencies within Virginia must meet the minimum of 480 hours of basic training and 100 hours of field training, but many agencies far exceed this based on community expectations of their officers. The Fairfax County Police Department in Virginia, for example, provides a 26-week basic training for newly hired officers totaling 1040  hours. Currently, field training adds an additional 525  hours to the development of the officer before they are cut loose from training. The size of the training academy varies from agency to agency and state to state as well. In many areas regional academies provide basic and in-service training to a number of law enforcement agencies near the academy. Many larger departments operate their own basic academies. The baseline basic training varies from state to state, and the amount of training in total and the content of the training varies agency to agency. This, in addition to a wide variety of hiring standards, leads to a wide range of capability, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of officers and law enforcement agencies across the country. In short, there is very little standardization. This is in stark contrast to the standardization of education and training seen in Germany. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, in the United States, the President of the United States signed several executive orders designed to better protect the nation and improve its ability to respond to natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Part of this directive was to standardize the approach to incident management and response by mandating all local, state, tribal, and federal agencies operate under the National Incident Management System (NIMS).

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Developed by the Secretary of Homeland Security at the request of the President and released in March of 2004, the NIMS integrates effective practices in emergency response into a comprehensive national framework for incident management. The principles of this framework are flexibility, standardization, and unity of effort. NIMS is the first-ever nationwide standardized approach to incident management and response in the United States and has established a uniform set of processes and procedures that emergency responders at all levels of government can use to conduct response operations. NIMS training is required under the Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD-5) to receive federal funding, grants, training, and reimbursement of disaster recovery costs (DHS, 2003). NIMS originated from work that began in the 1970s to manage wildfires in the western United States and developed a system called Firefighting Resources of California Organized for Potential Emergencies (FIRESCOPE). FIRESCOPE included the Incident Command System (ICS) and the Multiagency Coordination System (MACS). In 1982, the agencies that developed FIRESCOPE and the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) created the National Interagency Incident Management System (NIIMS) in part to make ICS and MACS guidance applicable to all types of incidents and all hazards. Recognizing the value of these systems, communities across the United States adopted ICS and MACS, but adoption was not universal. In the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the need for an integrated nationwide incident management system with standard structures, terminology, processes, and resources became clear. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) led a national effort to consolidate, expand, and enhance the previous work of FIRESCOPE, NIIMS, and others to develop NIMS (FEMA, 2017). NIMS/ICS is the only training mandated by the federal government for law enforcement. In stark contrast to the development of law enforcement supervisors and commanders in Germany, there is no mandated minimum training for supervisors and commanders in the United States. Many agencies, however, put together internal basic supervisor courses for newly promoted supervisors. The length of time varies by agency. In some cases, there is a two-week basic supervision course followed by a six-week supervisory field training program where the newly or soon-to-be promoted supervisor is assigned to ride with a Supervisory Field Training Instructor and perform a variety of department-set minimum training requirements. In addition, there are recommended courses such as ethics, adaptive decision-making, administrative investigations, etc., offered through the department’s criminal justice academy that supervisors are encouraged to take. As with supervisor training, there are no mandates for commander training in the United States and each agency determines the training that they will provide to their newly promoted commanders as well as continuing development courses. Some agencies provide a two-week commanders course for newly promoted commanders, but there is not usually additional formal commander training within an agency. There are a number of national-level courses of varying lengths for commander development in the United States the department’s will send their commanders to such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI, 2012) National Academy, the

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Naval Post Graduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security program (CHDS, 2022), The Major Cities Chiefs Association’s Police Executive Leadership Institute (PELI; MCAA, 2022) and the Police Executive Research Forum’s Senior Management Institute for Police (SMIP; PERF, 2022). Some states have law enforcement executive training programs offered in conjunction with colleges within that state. For instance, the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police partnered with the University of Richmond to produce the Professional Executive Leadership School (PELS, VACP, 2022) designed for individuals who currently serve in executive-­level positions within their organizations. In the United States, leaders in public order units are recruited from the ranks if they have both the skills and motivation for leadership roles. This, however, usually happens when the officer is promoted to be a supervisor in their primary assignment unrelated to their knowledge or skills in public order since the public order units are predominately nonstanding units in the US. Commanders are often selected in the same way, or merely placed into the role due to their assignment. When the latter occurs, this presents a serious challenge as they are put in the position of potentially having to manage a public order event before actually learning how to do it. In these situations, prior public order commanders are often pulled back in to assist the newly assigned commander with a particular event, but for some agencies, there is no planned development path for future public order commanders. This is an area that US Law Enforcement is working to improve.

3 Policing of Assemblies in the United States To demonstrate the measures taken by the police forces during public assemblies and gatherings in the respective countries, we have prepared the following fictitious case study.

Initial Situation The assembly situation takes place in Y-city, with around 700,000 inhabitants. There are many government properties in the inner city, and the city is bordered by two separate states. The city has an international airport and a train station and is accessible via several interstate highways that lead to a ring highway. The city is bordered by a river on which limited commercial shipping, sport boating, and tourism take place. The city police department includes about 3500 officers, with several thousand federal law enforcement officers within the city limits. It is a full-service police department for 24/7 shift service, a department for criminal investigation, a department with a unit of maritime (waterborne) police, Canine Squad, and a unit of special operations. In addition, within the larger metropolitan

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area in the adjoining states, there are two state law enforcement agencies and many local police agencies. 3 weeks before the day of operation Through posters and announcements in social media, the police become aware that a well-known “right-wing group” is calling for a large demonstration. The aim is to protest “restrictive government measures against conservative values”. Y-city was chosen as the location for the demonstration because many government agencies are located there. The “right-wing group” has previously appeared several times as the organizer of such events, during which there was once a clash with opponents of the group.

3.1 Preparation Phase The lead police department where the protest is scheduled to occur, in this case, the Y-city police department, sets up a web-based regional intelligence coordination and analysis group specifically for this event and instructs subordinate units to send information about the event that they become aware of to this event intel group. In addition, the lead police agency invites potentially affected federal and regional law enforcement officers into the event intel group. Outreach will be done to the protest group organizer, affiliated groups, community members, and opposition groups to develop as complete an understanding as possible as to the scale and scope of the planned demonstration. The event intel group itself actively seeks information from other agencies and departments. This event intel group hub will be hosted in the Y-city intelligence fusion center by the lead police agency. All information obtained will be evaluated according to Table 1. The city police department informs the Mayor’s Office and City’s administration about the situation to begin coordination for the upcoming planning with them. –– The permit authority—The demonstration group will be notified to submit an application for permit for their event. The permit authority can impose restrictions on it before the start (if the assembly has started, then this is within the jurisdiction of the police; but those responsibilities differ a little from jurisdiction to jurisdiction). –– The Fire Department and Rescue Services, in order to ensure safety especially on the day of the event. –– The Department of Transportation, to agree and coordinate on the traffic routing and measures. –– The Public Transport Agency or Company, which is responsible for public transport, to coordinate transport options and routes. –– The Water Agency as well as the Power Supply Agency, to inform them about the event and to secure their installations.

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Table 1 Source and Information Reliability Matrix (DA, 2006, Appendix B Source and Information Reliability Matrix) Rating Source reliability A Reliable B C D E

Usually reliable Fairly reliable Not usually reliable Unreliable

F Reliability unknown Information credibility 1 Confirmed by independent sources 2 Probably true 3 Possibly true 4 Doubtfully true 5 Improbable 6 Unknown

Description No doubt about the source’s authenticity, trustworthiness, or competency. History of complete reliability. Minor doubts. History of mostly valid information. Doubts. Provided valid information in the past. Significant doubts. Provided valid information in the past. Lacks authenticity, trustworthiness, and competency. History of invalid information. Insufficient information to evaluate reliability. May or may not be reliable. Logical, consistent with other relevant information, confirmed by independent sources. Logical, consistent with other relevant information, not confirmed. Reasonably logical, agrees with some relevant information, not confirmed. Not logical but possible, no other information on the subject, not confirmed. Not logical, contradicted by other relevant information. The validity of the information cannot be determined.

–– The Waste Management Authority, to ensure the removal of waste on the day of the event and disposal during the event. Contact will be made with the following supra-local authorities and agencies: –– –– –– ––

The Railroad Company and its security service. The Federal police in and around the city. The Airport Management and its police department and security services. The administration of the federal government buildings and its security service, the Federal Protective Service.

It is also very important to contact the City Prosecutor’s Office. It is responsible for the judicial processing of criminal cases committed during the demonstrations. The responsible District Court is informed that for the day of the event, the accessibility of a judge, who must authorize measures subject to the judge, is guaranteed. The City Attorney’s office would also be notified and would be consulted regarding anything that would limit the location or time of the demonstration, as well as questions regarding enforcement, use of force, and appropriate charges should they arise. While basically the use of force is within the responsibility of the police, in some regions, there were recently some changes to laws, so police discuss the potential use of force in advance to ensure they are clear on what is permissible and what is not. Of course, at the moment, the police will still make the decision, but when there is time in the planning phase, it is good to be clear.

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Besides the classic intelligence work, police would try to reach out to the organizers of the protest, to establish a reliable communication channel, to gain cultural intelligence, and to be able to get to know each other. An initial regional virtual meeting would be organized by Y-city Police to discuss the planned protest and any known intelligence. Attendees at this meeting would be all law enforcement agencies likely to participate in the event. These meetings would continue in the lead-up to the event and would draw in city services. 2 weeks before the day of Action In the meantime, it has become known that posts on social media for participation in the rally have been detected nationwide. The right-wing group has notified the permit authority of the assembly and rally, which will take place on federal property within Y-city. The organizers expect around 10,000 participants. At the same time, it was detected that a coalition of left-wing groups had launched a large mobilization on social media in the city, neighboring jurisdictions and cities across the United States. They call for a counterdemonstration with the slogan “Stop the right-wing fascists”. A radical leftist group has notified the Assembly Authority of the rally. According to the organizers, they expect 5000 to 6000 participants. In the past, there have been acts of violence and resistance against the police at assemblies of this group. The two assemblies are being intensively discussed in the local and national media.

Similar to the Incident Organization Structure (IOS) that is set up in Germany, an IOS would be set up in Y-city which would include the Y-city police department and affected federal police agencies. In addition, due to the size and potential for violence between these competing groups, police departments in the region with larger public order teams would be requested to provide assistance for this event. This structure would follow the Incident Command System (ICS) in the National Incident Management System (NIMS; cf. FEMA, 2017). It would define the lead agency for this event which would provide a Unified Command Incident Commander. The incident commander would be chosen based on their prior experience with similar operations. The baseline IOS chart (see Fig. 1) would look like this to begin with before it is built out to suit this particular incident. The ICS organization is similar to the German IOS in that it consists of an Incident Commander (Police Commander), a command staff (ICS command staff often includes a PIO, a Safety Officer, and a Liaison Officer, who have assistants as necessary) as well as a general staff (group of incident personnel organized according to function and reporting to the Incident Commander or Unified Command. The ICS General Staff consists of the Operations Section Chief, Planning Section Chief, Logistics Section Chief, Finance/Administration Section Chief, and often an Investigations/Intelligence Section Chief).

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Fig. 1  Incident Organizational Structure, ICS 300 (FEMA, 2018, p. 12)

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Commander and Command Staff In the United States, as in Germany, the Incident Commander has the overall responsibility for the preparation and execution of the entire operation. The preparatory work is carried out by the general staff with the planning section taking the lead in completing the Incident Action Plan (IAP). The IAP is updated each operational period of the incident. An operational period could be the entirety of an event if it is expected to be a one-day event, or for multi-­ day events, the operational period is typically 12 hours, depending on availability of resources and staffing. Various ICS forms will be completed to create the IAP. These forms are meant to standardize the planning process to ensure all aspects of the event are documented. A complete list of the forms can be found in the ICS Resource Center (FEMA, 2023a) and includes forms such as ICS Form 201 (Incident Briefing), ICS Form 202 (Incident Objective), ICS Form 203 (Organization Assignment List), etc. ICS Form 207 (Incident Organization Chart, similar to Fig. 1) is scalable to encompass the unique nature of a specific event. In the United States, depending on this size of the agency, police departments have commanders that are trained to perform the key functions of the ICS general staff. The capabilities and training of the commanders can vary widely, however, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a core group of training courses (FEMA, 2023b) meant to prepare first responder and emergency management personnel from the basics of incident management up to strategic level multiagency incident management (see Fig. 2). All major police departments have large dedicated special emergency operations centers equipped to manage large-scale events (working places, IT-networks,

• Command and General Staff • Strategic Level Management • Division Group Supervisors • Branch Directors • Strike Team/Task Force Leader • Taccal Level Management • Unit leaders • Single Resource Leaders • First Line Supervisor • Officers • Basic Awareness

ICS 400

ICS 300

IS 800

ICS 200

ICS 100

IS 700

Fig. 2  Incident Command System and National Incident Management System Training Courses, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA, 2023b); Own illustration

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communication devices, screens, projectors, maps, etc.). Smaller agencies make use of the spaces they have to set up emergency operations centers. The section chiefs would have command authority over subordinate operational sections during the incident. They collect and evaluate all information, document it, advise the overall commander in the process, prepare decisions, and then implement the instructions of the Incident Commander through the subordinate operational sections, documenting the progress of the operation and the results. The command staff includes liaison officers to neighboring law enforcement agencies and organizations such as the fire department, emergency services, public utilities, etc., as well as sometimes consultants who come from outside the police, such as professors or subject matter experts. There will also be a prosecutor from the relevant Y-city Prosecutor’s Office and or City Attorney in constant contact with the command staff, the latter present in the command post or forward deployed to view the rallies on the day of the events. The Incident Commander, with the help of the general staff, develop an IOS. The operational section will be organized according to the tasks intended to be accomplished. 1. Public Order Police Branch. 2. Special Operations Branch. 3. Fire/EMS Branch. 4. Support Branch. These branches would be subdivided into Task Forces and Groups to delineate the specific function they would perform within the particular branch. 1. Traffic Task Force (TF). 2. Tactical/Explosive Ordinance Disposal TF. 3. Staging Group. 4. Medical Group. 5. Air Operations Group. 6. Perimeter Control TF. 7. Field Arrest TF. 8. Prisoner Transport TF. 9. Mass Arrest Group. Finance, Intelligence, Logistics and Planning sections would also be built out further based on the incident. Based on the latest intelligence, the Incident Command, Command Staff and General Staff has intensified cooperation with the following authorities: –– The police departments responsible for policing the airports. –– The police departments responsible for the train stations and cross-country trains as well as metro rail stations (subway) and metro trains. First, to escort and monitor demonstrators on the trains and to make arrests if weapons are found. Secondly, to protect the trains and the stations during the events. –– The Federal Protective Service, which is responsible for the protection of federal government buildings, the National Park Service U.S.  Park Police which is

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responsible for the protection of national parks and monuments. On the day of the event, they will have to provide protection of the property on the premises and cooperate closely with the external protection of the property, provided by the Y-city police and outside agencies. –– The State Police from the states that border Y-city to work with their intelligence units to look for any potential threats to the demonstrations, infrastructure, or the community. Based on the demonstration venue, it is discussed whether there is sufficient justification within the framework of law to set up checkpoints at known departure points of potentially violent assembly participants and to search for weapons in the places there before, during and after departure. This measure has proven to be very effective but has high legal requirements for the conditions for the permissibility of the measure. Of great importance are verifiable findings of a willingness to use violence or planned unlawful actions. Efforts continue to make contact with the organizers of the rallies so that clear lines of communication can be established or improved. The goal needs to be to build a relationship with the organizers in which information is shared between police and organizers and vice versa. Decision-Making and Incident Command System Structure Many law enforcement agencies in the United States have adopted the United Kingdom’s “National Decision Model” (NDM) or Police Executive Research Forum’s (PERF) “Critical Decision-Making Model”; both are essentially the same (see Fig. 3).

Gather information and intelligence

Take action, review what happend and re-assess

Code of Ethics Values and professional standards

Identify options an contingencies. Determine best course of action.

Assess situation,threat and risk

Consider powers and policy

Fig. 3  Critical Decision-Making Model; own illustration based on COPS (2021) and National Decision Model (College of Policing, 2014)

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This model can be used for planned events or rapidly unfolding events. It is designed so that decision-makers can use the NDM to structure a rationale of what they did during an incident and why. The goal is to keep every decision centered on professional standards, ethics, and core values. In the United States, all elements of the ICS structure are involved in planning for an event. The planning section takes the lead and typically follows the planning “P” process (see Fig. 4) in order to create the IAP. This process is a phased approach that can be used for one operational period, or be used throughout a multi-day or week operation. In the United States, the Incident Action Planning Process resembles in many respects the German Police Service Regulation 100 “Planning and Decision-making Process for Police Operations” (cf. Bürger & Thielmann, 2024). To demonstrate this parallel development process, we combine the “P” phases into the German planning and decision-making process below: Planning “P”. Phase 1: Understand the situation (initial)

Fig. 4  The Planning “P”—The Incident Action Planning Process (FEMA, 2015, p. 8)

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1. Information Collection: All available information will be collected and evaluated as described above. 2. Situation Report: Preparation of a Situation Report, determination of existing orders as well as specifications or guidelines (e.g., from the laws, by authority management, the Ministry of the Interior). Phase 2: Establish incident Objectives 3. Analysis of the Situation: Individual facts are evaluated in various situation fields (e.g., mission, population, resources, hazards, forces, media, space, weather, law, traffic, etc.). The facts are addressed one at a time, each fact is evaluated, and conclusions are drawn from the evaluation. In the process, one goes through fact after fact. At the end, all conclusions are synthesized, i.e., a general conclusion for the operation is drawn from the overall view of the conclusions. Phase 3: Develop the plan 4. Decision Options: The general conclusions lead to alternative proposals for a decision on what actions could be taken for the upcoming situation. In doing so, the advantages and disadvantages of the measures are to be addressed and weighed. The decision options also already contain drafts for guidelines, the tactical objectives, the tactical and organizational measures. Phase 4: Prepare and Disseminate the Plan 5. Decision of the Incident Commander: The Commander makes his/her decision. Either he/she adopts one of the proposals of the command staff or combines parts of the proposals, in the worst case he/she instructs the command staff to work out new decision options. 6. Implementation Planning: The command staff prepares a graphic and tabular overview of the planning, i.e., what tactical and organizational measures are required to achieve the tactical objectives formulated in the Police Commander’s decision. 7. Order: The command staff prepares the IAP for the operation. This includes an overview of the structure of the ICS with the respective leaders, the tasks and communication channels. Phase 5 (Execute, Evaluate and Revise the Plan) would be the evaluation phase and the lead into the next operational period where lessons learned from the prior operational period are updated into the new operational period’s IAP. If there is no additional operational period, this phase serves to pull together lessons learned into an after-action report, which is further described under “Debriefing” in this chapter as well in that of our German colleagues (cf. Bürger & Thielmann, 2024). In the first step, all information about the two upcoming rallies is being collected and consolidated into a Situation Report in step 2 that is shared with all police agencies involved with planning or are likely to be affected by the rallies. In the Analysis of Situation, one of the conclusions drawn in step 3 is that violence from within the groups may occur in both demonstrations. For these cases, sufficient, specially

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trained public order units must be requested and deployed. This Public Order Branch of the Operations Section may be broken into task forces and designated “Right-­ Wing Rally” Public Order Task Force and “Left-Wing Rally” Public Order Task Force. Or these task forces may be assigned a specific area of responsibility at the outset of the event and designated as Public Order Task Force 1, 2, 3, etc. In the case of the former, additional Public Order platoons would be designated and held in reserve to support the needs of the Public Order Branch at either of these two rally locations, or to be used elsewhere in the city if splinter groups were to break off from the main rallies and begin to cause damage or block roadways. During the planning meeting in phase 4 these options would be discussed and an agreed upon strategy would be documented in the IAP, in step 5 the overall commander would make the decisions. In step 6, Implementation Planning, based on the decision of the Police Commander, the detailed planning of the intervention forces is executed: how many units are needed, how they will be requested, when and where they will be on duty, where they will be accommodated and catered for, what equipment is still needed, etc. etc. The whole process then results in the issuance of the IAP and the associated Incident Organizational Chart (Fig. 5). Cooperation/Group Liaison The already established liaison with the organizers continues with meetings to discuss the current situation and work out solutions for arising problems. During the meetings, the organizers of the right-wing rally showed a certain degree of willingness to cooperate and accepted some of the police suggestions on how to organize the rally and how to communicate with the police. While there is no guarantee that those promises are being kept, it offers the opportunity to discuss many critical things in advance. For the organizers of the right-wing demonstration, a primary and secondary police point of contact will be designated. These two officers will also be on site on the day of operation, one of them constantly near the responsible assembly leader. The leftist rally refuses any cooperation with the police. They deeply distrust the police, as they express. Despite this, the police liaisons continue to seek dialogue and continually transmits necessary information from the police to the organizers, even if they do not respond. However, it is made clear on the part of the police that the refusal to cooperate could have the effect that the permitting authority could impose restrictions that would not have been necessary if they had cooperated. Further Preparations Public relations are in full swing. These activities are carried out in close coordination by the Public Information Officer (PIO) and their staff with input from the incident commander and operations section chief. The Police Departments maintain a constant presence on social media regarding their area of jurisdiction, regularly issue press releases, and will frequently give media interviews. There are also contact points for citizens who have questions on social media. The IAP is adapted to suit the developing situation. The need for assistance from additional outside law enforcement public order units is assessed and if needed,

Explosive Disposal

Helicopters

Left Wing Public Order TF

Reserve Public Order TF

Mass Casualty

Haz Mat

EMS Ambulance

Fire Task Force

Fire EMS Branch

Sound Truck

Traffic Task Force

Staging Unit

Operations Support Branch

Fig. 5  Incident Organizational Chart Y-City; own illustration

Bike Unit

Cut Team

City Wide Public Order TF

SWAT Reaction Teams

Special Operations Branch

Right Wing Public Order TF

Public Order Branch

Operations Section Chief

Reconnaissance

Field Arrest Task Force

Prisoner Transport

Evidence Collection

Formal Processing

Intelligence Unit

Intelligence Section Chief

Liaison Officer

Investigations Unit

Investigations Section Chief

Safety Officer

Public Information Officer

Incident Commander

Unit

Demobilization

Emergency Planning

Documentatio n Unit

Situation Unit

Resources Unit

Planning Section Chief

Fleet Management

Ground Support Unit

Food Unit

Facilities Unit

Supply Unit

Communications IT Management Unit

Logistics Section Chief

Wellness Unit

Cost Unit

Procurement Unit

Compensation Unit

Time Unit

Finance/Admin Section Chief

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mutual aid requests are sent to agencies with public order teams. This can be done through local mutual aid agreements, or through an Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC, 2023) request. An EMAC is a national interstate mutual aid agreement that enables states to share resources during times of disaster. Some agencies require an EMAC request before they may cross major jurisdictional boundaries (state to state) to assist. Other agencies can assist based upon previously agreed upon agency to agency or regional mutual aid agreements. The logistical tasks of preparing for the event continue. This is done in close cooperation between the Logistics Section Chief, Liaison Officer, Operations Section Chief and the various local and federal law enforcement agencies that will be working this event. For this event housing is not required as the outside agencies assisting are local. In other large-scale events of national significance, accommodations would be arranged for by the Logistics Officer. Each outside law enforcement agency will be assigned a Liaison Officer that will assist with all aspects of the operation and would deploy with that agency during the event. Additional supplies are organized before and during the operation, sanitary facilities are rented and provided during the operation phase, missing equipment is requested, the radio network and computer networks are strengthened and expanded as needed with signal boosters, and the vehicle fleet is increased. The Logistics Section will also work with city services to identify locations near the protest sites where materials that could potentially be turned into weapons are identified and plans are set with the property managers to secure them. This often occurs at construction sites where construction materials such as bricks, metal poles and debris are cleared from the area or secured in the construction site in the lead up to an event. For Y-city there is a regional police radio system where most assisting agencies utilize the same radios and can connect on regional coordination channels. In some cases, where an agency does not have the same radio channels, loaner radios from the regional radio cache are provided to commanders and first line supervisors of the visiting agency so that they can monitor and communicate with partner agencies during the event. 1 Week before the Day of Operation There is verified knowledge that potentially violent left-wing groups from the west coast of the United States are planning to travel to the counterdemonstration. In response, the right-wing groups have publicly stated that they are basically peaceful, but if the left-wing groups were looking for a fight, they would fight. Based on the findings, the Permit Authority has issued restrictions to both assembly leaders: assigned routes separating the two events and time limit for the duration of the event. The organizer of the left-wing grouping has lodged an objection against these conditions, which is now before the District Court. However, a ruling is not expected until the day before the event.

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The planning section developed the IAP, but the latest inputs highlight the need for the plan to be flexible so that the decisions of the District Court can be taken into account. For example, the separation of the two events can be judged as unlawful, because with it the counterdemonstrators cannot articulate their intentions—namely opposition to the gathering of the right-wing groups. Thus, a larger police force would be required between the two events. Due to the escalating nature of the situation, the Incident Commander has requested additional forces through an EMAC request. The request would include the number of forces required (based on the analysis of the situation and the scale of the operation), the type of equipment and the special expertise required. This calculation was made by the incident commander in consultation with the Chief of Y-city Police Department, the operations section chief, logistics section chief and the planning section chief. Based on the requirements, public order police units from the state, neighboring states, and the federal police will be deployed to Y-city the day before the operation or on the day itself, depending on the time required for transport of the police units. There will also be Intelligence, Investigation, and Arrest Units, deployed. The deployment of the regional helicopters (2) as well as the regional mounted police officers (15 officers with horses) is also authorized.

3.2 Operational Phase Day of Operation On the day of operation, a Saturday, the weather is dry and warm. The city is bustling with walkers and shoppers. The participants for the two rallies have arrived. The predicted number of demonstrators is correct: about 10,000 people for the right-wing march and about 5000 for the left-wing march. Through controls in metro stations on the outskirts of the city and at the train station, police were able to prevent about 25 people from the left-wing spectrum from carrying large poles and other weapons onto metro trains. The restrictions ordered by the Permit Authority have been confirmed by the District Court: The two routes of the rallies must run separately, there is no confrontation of the rallies at any point. All units work as described in the IAP. The main measures at this point are taking care of the traffic detours which is handled by the traffic task force, informing the public about the event and any obstructions which is handled by the PIO, and to maintain the open lines of communication with the Right-Wing-Rally leaders and accompany the march. The same applies for the Left-Wing-Rally. Other measures are being implemented to protect and to surveil the area by officers from the Intelligence/Reconnaissance unit and the Federal Protective Service and to establish a positive communication with affected businesses in the area of the rallies.

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Incident A In the rally of left-wing groups, posters are held up with “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards) and individuals repeatedly shout, “Fight the cops”.

The described posters are protected speech under the first amendment, though shouting to fight the cops is not protected speech. The commander of the Left-Wing Public Order Task Force (or his liaison officer) will ask the leader of the assembly to talk with the participants to stop this. The operation section chief will assess who is exhibiting these behaviors. Are they a few disorderly students or are they violent, cohesive activists dressed in black? Are preparatory acts of violence being seen or is it just some youths chanting the slogan “Fight the Cops”? As a precautionary measure, public order units in riot PPE are discretely moved closer to the area of concern. They will not be deployed unless acts of violence are being committed or look to be imminent. Also dispatched to the scene are a loudspeaker-­vehicle and portable long range acoustical devices (LRAD) which, when ordered, will be used to communicate to the crowd and explain intended police actions, or actions that were recently taken. Depending on the result of the discussion with the leader of the assembly and communication by the police, a determination will be made on the need for further police action. As long as the situation stays calm, police forces in riot PPE will not be deployed so as not to appear too intimidating, but large numbers of officers clad in riot PPE will be readily deployable should violence begin.

Incident B In the rally of the right-wing group, a group of about 50 participants dressed in black suddenly forms into a block. They set a perimeter boundary for the block with long ropes and in the front display a sign with the slogan “Now the fight against this corrupt government begins”, which extends over the whole width of the street.

Public Order Units in full PPE are dispatched to the location and will be on standby for immediate intervention. Additionally, a loudspeaker-vehicle or LRAD team are deployed to the scene and are prepared to communicate to the crowd and explain taken or intended police actions. Federal Protective Service units who protect close by government buildings will be reinforced with additional forces. Also, already present barricades might be reinforced by vehicles (optical and physical barrier).

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Incident C In the pedestrian zone (outside the areas of the demonstrations), one by one, a few inconspicuously dressed people with shopping bags and sacks approached the right-wing group’s rally. Suddenly, about 25 of these people gathered, shouted slogans “Away with the fascists” and began to throw tomatoes, which were in the bags, at the participants of the right-wing march.

Public Order Units in riot PPE will videorecord and take photos of the incident, at the same time they enclose the members of the group that they can articulate have been throwing the tomatoes and quickly push them out of the sight of the right-wing assembly to avoid further escalation. Those identified as throwing the tomatoes will be arrested (throwing tomatoes is an assault and therefore an offense), and taken by the field arrest officers to the predesignated prisoner transport area for further processing. Incident D At the outer cordon in front of a government building, the right-wing procession stops. Slogans like “Down with this government” or “Fight now” are shouted. Water bottles and stones are thrown from the crowd in the direction of the building, thereby also endangering the police officers.

Pepperball or 40 mm impact batons may be used to target those throwing the rocks and bottles. Additionally, the escorting police units will quickly and determinedly push the crowd back, rapidly reinforced by public order police units in full PPE. The situation will be video-recorded and photos will be taken. As soon as the violence has stopped and the situation is under control or calming down, the units will make arrests as able to if the situation allows or analyze their videos and photos in order to identify perpetrators. The perpetrators not arrested immediately will be arrested as soon as the situation allows. This may be quite a while later at another location—the individual perpetrator will be under surveillance as much as possible until there is an opportunity for a smooth arrest. Final Stage of the Day The two demonstration marches are otherwise largely peaceful. There have been occasional verbal insults or small items are thrown, but no people were injured, or property damaged. Both rallies end with a final demonstration, after which the assemblies dissolve and most of the participants start their return journey home. Some small groups have been still on the move in the city center—monitored by police squads—but then also dissolve.

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Throughout the day, Intelligence/Reconnaissance units continued to gather and assess information on the behavior and discernible intentions of demonstration participants and relay it to the command staff as well as the other operational sections. In the other areas of the city and along transit routes, reconnaissance was conducted to determine traffic backups or large whether large groups were gathering. This was done primarily by visible reconnaissance patrols on foot or in vehicles. However, plainclothes teams were also deployed for concealed reconnaissance. All these units were supported and supplemented by reconnaissance from the air by helicopters and on the water by police patrol boats. In parallel, the regional intelligence center was busy checking and evaluating all information in the police and intelligence systems and immediately passing on findings to the operational units. Forces from Right-Wing Rally Public Order Task Force (all this also applies to Left-Wing Public Order Task Force) escorted the rally to the side, front and rear. Additional forces were deployed at the spots where the rally of the left-wing approached the route of the right-wing. As soon as criminal offenses occurred, the public order police units in PPE were deployed. The actions were stopped and some of the offenders were arrested and handed over to the field arrest officers including the evidence (photos, videos, reports). The use of tactical communications and liaisons successfully directed participants at various points (including individual approaches to persons, clearly visible liaison officers, loudspeaker announcements). When attempts were made to deviate from the prescribed march route and violate restrictions imposed by the Permit Authority, perimeter forces either set up barricades or prevented smaller groups from continuing along the nonpermitted routes by redirecting them. Police bike teams can quickly move to a location to redirect a group. In certain events of national significance, checkpoints are placed for those wishing to access secure areas. This is not usually the case for first amendment events and would not take typically take place here, but this can vary from city to city in the US. Reconnaissance would take place at gathering locations for the protesters and at transit hubs. Law enforcement at metro and train stations have greater latitude to stop and deny access to trains if protesters are carrying items that are prohibited on trains. The metro officers confiscated some prohibited items and made corresponding criminal charges. In many cases a ban notice would be issued to the arrestee prohibiting them from utilizing metro for a period of time based on the arrest and attempt to bring banned items onto a train. There is no ban to prohibit people from participating in first amendment events in the US. Patrol officers and the City Wide Public Order Task Force repeatedly spotted groups in the inner-city area who wanted to form up but prevented this either by communicating with the group or notifying them that arrests would be made if they were to block the roadway. At the various government buildings, public buildings, or memorials that were perceived to be at risk, the appropriate jurisdiction’s police commanders on site deployed their forces in each case as the situation on the ground required. This could be simple open cordon lines by officers, closed cordon lines, barricades such as bike racks or barrier grids.

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The traffic task force diverted all on-coming traffic away from the march routes and, allowed source traffic to exit. For inner-city traffic, detour routes were put in place, some intersections were manned by traffic control forces and close cooperation was maintained with the city’s traffic authorities. Public transport was diverted around the march routes by the transport companies, this was done in consultation and cooperation with the police. On the river, shipping ran without interference, there were neither disturbances nor arrivals of participants on the waterway. Forces from Field Arrest and Prisoner Transportation Task Forces were engaged in taking over the persons arrested by the Public Order Teams, including the related evidence, and transporting them to the processing center. There, the persons were searched and subjected to an identification procedure. Evidence and confiscated items were forwarded to the property section and registered there. Criminal charges were forwarded to the Investigations unit. If the reason for detention no longer existed, the persons were released, and a report was written detailing the circumstances of the detainment and release. The Logistics Section was busy supporting the operational forces. Missing or damaged equipment was brought to the units. Maintenance was busy bringing batteries, accumulators, consumables, etc. to the units as well as doing equipment repairs. The Logistic/Service unit had to organize food for many hundreds of officers. On the day of the operation itself, a mobile catering service had to be set up, including the necessary sanitation (e.g., toilets, garbage). The Medical Service had to care for a few slightly injured officers; most of the injuries were a result of accidents and not caused by violent criminals. The Safety Officer provided a rehab area for officers to warm or cool themselves and to sit and get some water or snacks. Psychosocial Support provided by the Wellness Group was fortunately not needed that day, as there were no traumatic incidents. All members of the PIO team were also busy on the day of the operation. The press and media representatives were in constant contact with the PIO and provided with information both at a central location as well as various decentralized operation points. Social media were constantly monitored by the staff and information was also actively posted online. The community was informed about the incident and the traffic situation on various media platforms, which also included the deployment of communication officers to make personal notifications to areas that might be negatively affected. Communication with the Mayor and city leaders would be constant throughout the event, updating them on significant events and impacts to transit and commerce. Communication would also be continual for federal elected officials to ensure they were up to date with the latest developments that may affect them, their staff, or constituents. The Amtrak Police and Y-city Transit Authority had set up increased staffing at metro stations for arriving participants not only at the train station in Y-city, but also at the train stations in other cities where it was known that groups of participants were planning to arrive. In some Metro Stations, several illegal items were confiscated. In the arriving trains, additional officers were deployed to prevent clashes between right-wingers and left-wingers, though this does not happen as much on trains in the United States as it does in Europe. The Federal Protective Service

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protecting the government buildings cooperated closely with the Y-city Police Department, which were deployed in the area surrounding the buildings as object protection forces.

3.3 Debriefing Phase After the end of the two demonstrations, the Incident Commander successively released the forces later in the evening. The Incident Commander may release the outside agencies first, or they may relieve their own forces first, depending on time on post and other events taking place in the city. The post-surveillance was first carried out by the Intelligence/Reconnaissance, but then handed over to patrol officers. In cooperation with the authorities of the city administration, all the devices, temporary facilities and structures are dismantled, and the normal state is re-established. The PIO section for this event would close and the public relations tasks would be returned to the normal PIO operations late in the evening. The command post is still active with reduced staffing levels. All documentation is checked, reporting duties to the Chief of Y-city are completed, and a final situation report is given to all involved police agencies and other authorities involved. There is also a comprehensive evaluation of the media reports and reactions in the social media. After all field reports have been received from the operation section commanders, task force and group commanders, a comprehensive after-action report will be prepared by planning section. Due to the size of the operation, a one-day after-­ action meeting is also organized, to which all the aforementioned commanders, members of the command staff, representatives of the law enforcement agencies that sent forces to the operation, as well as members of the Y-City senior executive staff are invited. The purpose of the meeting is to systematically discuss all not only successful police actions, but also unsuccessful ones. The aim is not to determine who was to blame for mistakes, but to learn from them—lessons learned in the best sense. These are frank discussions focused on improvement which can sometimes get heated, but usually maintains the spirit of the discussion.

References BJS, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2021). State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies, 2013. July 2021, NCJ 249784. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/ files/xyckuh236/files/media/document/slleta13_3.pdf. BJS, Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2022). Tribal Law Enforcement. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://bjs.ojp.gov/topics/tribal-­crime-­and-­justice/tribal-­law-­enforcement#:~:text=Tribal%20 law%20enforcement%20comprises%20258%20agencies%20that%20have,State%20 Police%2C%20the%20entity%20that%20administers%20the%20VPSO.

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Britannica. (2022a). Shays’s Rebellion. Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/event/Shayss-­Rebellion. Britannica. (2022b). Whiskey Rebellion. Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/event/Whiskey-­Rebellion. Bürger, B., & Thielmann, G. (2024). Police organization and the policing of assemblies in Germany. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. CDP, Center for Domestic Preparedness. (2022a). Field force extrication tactics. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://cdp.dhs.gov/training/course/PER-­202. CDP, Center for Domestic Preparedness. (2022b). Field force operations. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://cdp.dhs.gov/training/course/PER-­200. CHDS, Center for Homeland Defense and Security. (2022). About CHDS. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.chds.us/c/about-­chds/. College of Policing. (2014). National Decision Model First published 23 October 2013, Updated 15 December 2014 National decision model. Retrieved December 15, 2022, from https://www.college.police.uk/app/national-­decision-­model/national-­decision-­model?highlight=national%20 decision%20model. COPS, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (2021). Critical response toolkit for first-­ line supervisors: A new resource. Community policing dispatch. 14(6). Retrieved December 15, 2022, from https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/06-­2021/critical_response_toolkit.html. Cornell Law School. (2022). Tenth amendment. Retrieved December 22, 2022, from https://www. law.cornell.edu/constitution/tenth_amendment. DA, Department of the Army. (2006). FM 2-22.3 (FM 34-52) Human Intelligence Collector Operations. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/DR_pubs/ DR_a/pdf/web/fm2_22x3.pdf. DHS, U.S. Department of Homeland Security. (2003). Homeland security presidential directive5. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ ­ Homeland%20Security%20Presidential%20Directive%205.pdf. EMAC, Emergency Management Assistance Compact. (2023). The all hazards national mutual aid system. Retrieved January 15, 2023, from https://www.emacweb.org. FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigations. (2012). FBI National Academy. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/fbi-­national-­academy. FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2015). Incident action incident action planning guide. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://www.fema.gov/sites/default/files/2020-­07/ Incident_Action_Planning_Guide_Revision1_august2015.pdf. FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2017). National incident management system. Third Edition October 2017. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://www.fema.gov/sites/ default/files/2020-­07/fema_nims_doctrine-­2017.pdf. FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2018). ICS review document. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/icsresource/assets/ics%20 review%20document.pdf. FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2023a). ICS resource center. ICS forms. Retrieved November 5, 2023, from https://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/icsresource/icsforms/. FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2023b). ICS resource center. Training. Retrieved November 5, 2023, from https://training.fema.gov/emiweb/is/icsresource/trainingmaterials/. FLETA, Federal Law Enforcement Training Accreditation. (2016). Field force operations training program. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://www.fleta.gov/programacademy/ field-­force-­operations-­training-­program. Gardner, A., & Scott, K. (2022). Census of state and local law enforcement agencies, 2018  – Statistical tables. Retrieved January 17, 2023, from https://bjs.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh236/ files/media/document/csllea18st.pdf. Kent State University. (2022). May 4, 1970. Retrieved November 11, 2022, from https://www.kent. edu/may-­4-­1970.

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LIS, Legislative Information System. (2022). 6VAC20–20-21. Compulsory minimum training standards and requirements. Retrieved November 5, 2022, from https://law.lis.virginia.gov/ admincode/title6/agency20/chapter20/section21/. MCAA, Major cities Chiefs Association. (2022). Police Executive Leadership Institute. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://majorcitieschiefs.com/police-­executive-­leadership-­institute/. NTOA, National Tactical Officers Association. (2023). Public Order Response and Operations Standards. Retrieved June 8, 2023, from https://ntoa.org/pdf/PublicOrder.pdf. NYC, City of New York. (2022a). About NYPD. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www. nyc.gov/site/nypd/about/about-­nypd/about-­nypd-­landing.page. NYC, City of New York. (2022b). Planning. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.nyc. gov/site/planning/planning-­level/nyc-­population/nyc-­population.page. NYC, City of New York. (2022c). Special operations. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https:// nyc.gov/site/nypd/bureaus/patrol/citywide-­operations.page. PERF, Police Executive Research Forum’s. (2022). Senior Management Institute for Police. Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.policeforum.org/smip. VACP, Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police & Foundation, Inc. (2022). Professional Executive Leadership School (PELS). Retrieved October 30, 2022, from https://www.vachiefs.org/pels. Alan Hanson  is a Captain with the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) in Virginia. Alan received a BA in Political Science and Russian Studies in 1989 from Gustavus Adolphus College after which he joined the US Navy and served as a Cryptologic Officer. He joined the FCPD in 1994 and is currently serving as the commander of the traffic division. In addition, he is the senior public order incident commander for the FCPD and serves as the Civil Disturbance Units (CDU) administrative commander. He has served as the incident commander for numerous CDU deployments, most recently he was primary IC for the FCPD for the protests of Supreme Court Justices residences as well as deployments to support US Capitol Police in 2022. Alan is one of the founding members of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) CDU subcommittee and served there for several years as chairman and vice-­chairman. He is also a founding member of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) CDU Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Special Technical Committee (STC) and traveled to the United Kingdom and Germany on a research trip for NIJ in 2017 to observe European public order standards and best practices in CDU equipment, tactics and training, and report back on the findings. Alan also served as the chairman of the Incident Management Subcommittee for the Major Cities Chiefs Association. Craig Dobson  has 24 years of law enforcement experience and is assigned as a Police Commander at the Portland Police Bureau, assigned to lead the strategic planning and managing of the bureau’s downtown precinct of 146 sworn and professional staff. He also serves as the Senior Public Order Incident Commander for the Bureau, overseeing the Public Order Incident Commander Program. Additionally, Craig is the Police Bureau’s Instructor for Command personnel involving Public Order—Responsible for developing and teaching Bureau command staff the principles and theory behind Public Order including First Amendment implications, crowd behavior, social identity, police capabilities, and appropriate tactical police responses. Prior to being a commander, he served continuously for 15 years in a detached assignment with the Rapid Response Team (RRT), the Portland Police Bureau’s all-hazards team, and helped develop and coordinate Public Order training for Oregon’s regional Public Order teams including Oregon Air and Army National Guard members. Commander Dobson served as the Overall Incident Commander during the civil unrest of 2020 in Portland.

Protection of Citizens’ Rights, Public Safety & Police Legitimacy: The Legal Equilibrium for Public Order Jaclyn M. Keane and Anthony J. Raganella

Abstract  This chapter first discusses the constitutional foundation of free speech and assemblies as well as their possible limitations and challenges, especially for police, when executing such limitations. After a brief view of the relationship between the crowd and police, the authors discuss an example of the London Metropolitan Police (Met) to show some decisive decisions (and possible alternatives) which had a lasting negative effect on the relationship between the Met and their community. Finally, the authors shed some light on Law Enforcement legitimacy as well as the concept of “Policing with consent” and underpin with their conclusion the importance of balancing the legal equilibrium.

1 Introduction Law enforcement has always been at the forefront of any societal upheaval. From religious riots in 1700s England to the most recent “George Floyd” protests in 2020, police are called upon to quell civil disorder. Law Enforcement’s purpose and vital function is to preserve order and preserve the safety of the public while protecting civil rights and impartially enforcing the law. The proof of law enforcement’s competence is the absence of crime and disorder. Disorder seemed to be the theme in 2020, which ranged from a global pandemic to massive demonstrations, riots, and looting protesting police throughout the United States and the world. The scale and scope of these riots, which have not been seen in many decades, have shown the requirement that law enforcement has to balance the rights of citizens to express themselves freely versus the police mandate to impartially enforce the constitutional rule of law. In democratic societies, this requirement also entails maintaining J. M. Keane NYPD; General Counsel, NY Blue Consulting Group, Huntington, NY, USA A. J. Raganella (*) NYPD (ret.); NY Blue Line Consulting Group, Huntington, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_10

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public order. This is an extremely difficult balance, but a necessary one in order to safeguard the public’s trust in law enforcement. The public’s trust is paramount to the legitimacy of law enforcement (cf. also Lee, 2024; Bürger, 2024).

2 Free Speech and Assemblies: A Constitutional Right As an example, pulled from American democracy that can be applied to most democratic societies with a constitutional rule of law, the drafters of this constitution believed certain freedoms needed to be protected: the ability of persons to express their beliefs alongside others, practice their chosen religion, freedom of the press, and for the people to peaceably assemble without government interference. It was written quickly after the American Revolution when the colonies opposed British attempts to impose greater control without greater representation and to raise taxes to repay the crown for its defense of the colonies during the French and Indian War. The colonies believed that the government could not and should not impose unnecessary burdens and control on their citizens. The First Amendment is the foundation of American democracy. The First Amendment reads: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances (US Const. amend. I). This sentence was a shocking thought in 1776, as it sometimes is today. As such, it has been studied and interpreted more than most; it contains so much while being succinct. The writers of the American Constitution believed that everyone was born with “inalienable rights” that needed to be protected from possible government interference. They also believed that every person has “rights of conscience” (National Constitution Center, 2019), which is a person’s unique thought process, which includes that person’s own idea of morality. If a government forced a person to think or act a certain way, then this would be a significant infringement on this right. No individual should have their ideologies infringed upon by the government, and that individual should be able to express their own thoughts and ideas free of any government hindrance. The First Amendment ensures citizens are able to hold the government responsible for actions that these citizens may not agree with. Citizens may hold the government responsible in various ways and it can be as simple as voting, using public record laws to obtain government documents, and, of course, peaceful assembly to criticize or support government decisions. This peaceful assembly allows people to gather to express similar thoughts or beliefs, as well as, opposing thoughts or beliefs at the same time, or at different times. These gatherings can be as unassuming as a music concert, prayer congregations, a heritage parade, and so on. These thoughts can also be announced via the press, without any trepidation of government encroachment.

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3 Free Speech and Assemblies: Limitations and Challenges As with all laws, including amendments, there are limitations. No freedom is absolute, and in order for the First Amendment protection to apply to an assembly to gather to criticize the government, it must be done so peacefully. A person can write, speak, broadcast, sculpture, etc., almost anything they want within limits. A simple and historical example of this limitation is a person cannot yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater, likely causing panic. This type of speech would be considered to be creating an imminent lawless action that is likely to incite or produce imminent disorder. When there is potential for immediate disorder, interference with traffic on the public streets, or other immediate threats to public safety, peace, or order, government officials can restrict First Amendment rights (Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 US 296 Supreme Court 1940). Public safety is a legitimate and compelling government interest that can justify carefully crafted limitations on First Amendment-protected speech and assembly in certain circumstances. These carefully crafted limitations include setting reasonable “time, place and manner restrictions”, if the restrictions are content neutral, and narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest (such as traffic not being hindered for too long as a demonstration occurs). The content neutral requirement is that laws and policy apply to all expression without regard to the substance or message of the expression (Hudson, 2023b). The government should formulate these restrictions to allow demonstrators ample alternative outlets to communicate their message. There are situations where content-neutral restrictions would be allowed even when they incidentally affect the content of speech to a certain degree because, in most cases, such regulations “pose a less substantial risk of excising certain ideas or viewpoints from the public dialogue.” (Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. V. FCC, 512 US 622 Supreme Court 1994). In this case, Congress enacted a law to ensure that cable television operations “must-­ carry” broadcasting companies that are free to anyone who owns a television set. As such, the Supreme Court decided that the law was content-neutral as it was not interfering with the cable companies’ editorial decision, nor the content of the programming. A governmental interest in having public access to television programming that is accessible to everyone, not a specific program, is dominant to a companies’ bottom line. This Supreme Court decision is interesting looking through a current lens focused on modern technology. The internet was a just beginning to take form in 1994, and social media was not even a thought nor a consideration at the time of this case. Social media, while usually “free” to utilize, is a platform through private companies interested in enhancing their bottom-line revenue. It has also become evident that some social media platforms have been involved in various facets of censorship where it has suppressed or deleted anything it considered “objectionable.” Since America’s First Amendment was written to protect citizens from government overreach, does it then also apply to social media and, if so, in what configuration? The First Amendment is constantly evolving as the government

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and The Supreme Court continuously play catch-up to technology. It is interesting to observe this future debate as it currently begins to take form. As we turn back to allowable restrictions placed on First Amendment activities, it is important to note that the government cannot issue a blanket denial to an event but must offer an alternative. There must be legitimate reasons as to the alternative. An example of an event that would require an alternative suggestion would be a demonstration with sound that is occurring near a church, at the same time, the church is having a service. The demonstrators would likely to be asked to have their sound either before or after the service or to pause their sound during the service. This would allow for all persons involved in the demonstration and those not involved (i.e., attending the church’s service) to express their First Amendment right. Another example would be laws that restrict the distribution of printed materials to prevent litter in a public space. This specific law from Thousand Oaks, California did not specify any speaker’s point of view but merely looked to prevent litter and debris within the city (The City of Thousand Oaks, 2005). City ordinances that also prohibit the use of loudspeakers in order to reduce noise are also content-­ neutral, as it does not look to limit specific messages, but all loudspeakers to improve quality of life. Whereas, content-based laws discriminate against speech based on the substance of what it communicates. These laws are presumptively unconstitutional and subject to strict scrutiny, the highest form of judicial review, whereas content-neutral laws generally must survive only intermediate scrutiny. The government has no power to restrict expression because of its message. Viewpoint discrimination occurs when a governmental regulation restricts expression based not only on its content, but also specifically on the underlying views in the message. Examples of these content-based laws are; banning only political speeches by members of the Socialist Party would be viewpoint based (Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 US 819 Supreme Court 1995), and a District of Columbia law prohibiting the display of signs critical of foreign government within a certain distance outside embassies (Boos v. Barry, 485 US 312 Supreme Court 1988; Hudson, 2023a). Government (i.e., police departments) needs objective factors and articulated standards to guide their decisions for all First Amendment events and for possible permitting guidelines, such as permitting guidelines for amplified sound that would only allow for sound with a permit and during times that would not interfere with other persons’ enjoyment of the area. This requirement is to ensure the government does not reinforce a preferred viewpoint, if there is any, while silencing opinions that might meet with official disapproval.

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4 Additional Practical Challenges for Policing From a policing perspective, this is a difficult act to achieve as there are such delicate balances to guarantee everyone’s constitutional right is exercised while also being protected. Law enforcement’s paramount goal, in freedom of expression scenarios, is to ensure persons can participate in peaceful and lawful demonstrations while protecting the safety and rights of those participating in the demonstration, as well as, the safety and rights of those who are not participating. This protection involves limitations on these broad rights. Most importantly, assemblies must be peaceful and must not include any speech or press that will incite violence, as discussed previously. The potential for violent speech in a demonstration is challenging to predict. As such, there are many laws to hinder these violent outbursts and that help define it for law enforcement. Often times the difference between a demonstration and an unlawful assembly is difficult to determine contemporaneously. Unlawful assembly is generally defined as the meeting of three or more persons with the intent to disturb the public peace. It must appear that there is a common intent of the persons assembled to achieve this intent, whether lawful or unlawful, by commissions of acts of intimidation and disorder likely to produce danger to the peace of the neighborhood (LII, 2021). Law enforcement is required to make a difficult call of potentially taking enforcement, based on appearance of “common intent”. This can be construed by demonstrators or the media as “heavy-handed,” or unnecessary when the protestors’ view is that the appearance never rose to the level of intent to disturb the peace. Whereas, law enforcement’s requirement to anticipate and potentially diminish any unrest prior to the actual origination of impending disorder is most often a difficult achievement. Law enforcement can be at an impasse of ensuring public order is maintained while allowing persons to freely express themselves, before the possibility of disorder occurs. Ultimately, it is law enforcement’s continual real-time observation that determines if an event is largely peaceful or if it is becoming hostile and dangerous to people involved in the assembly as well as those uninvolved who may be in the vicinity. This real-time observation is problematic since law enforcement is required to make a decision quickly using the observations they have directly in front of them. There is no advantage of foresight, or the ability to be able to anticipate a person, group, or subsidiary groups’ actions once law enforcement has made their decision to deal with a potentially hostile or already hostile group. As stated prior, this “impasse” can lead citizens to interpret law enforcement’s lawful action, as an unlawful, and illegitimate one. In order to counteract this interpretation, law enforcement will need to adequately support this lawful action through evidence based on local laws, all information that law enforcement used to make their decision, such as video, comments, threats, etc., as well as through communications with group leaders where possible. While some citizens may not accept law enforcement’s

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position, it is important to continue explanations on all decisions to reinforce transparency and, eventually, the legitimacy of law enforcement.

5 The Challenging Relationship Between the Crowd and the Police As such, when conflict occurs between the crowd and police, this conflict will likely have two vastly different viewpoints. The crowd and law enforcement will both believe their own actions are legitimate and the actions of the other are illegitimate (Emamzadeh, 2020). This can also be described as “social identity model.” This model aims to specify and predict the circumstances under which individuals think of themselves as individuals or as group members. The model or theory also considers the consequences of personal and social identities for individual perceptions and group behavior (Ellemers, 2022). People generally prefer to maintain a positive image of the groups to which they belong. Because of social identity processes, people are inclined to seek out positively valued traits, attitudes, and behaviors that can be seen as characteristic of their in-groups. Again, it is crucial to remember that in-groups are groups you identify with, and out-groups are ones that we do not identify with, and may discriminate against (McLeod, 2019). Demonstrators could begin to view themselves as one entity in opposition to law enforcement, where one rash act by an officer to one demonstrator can be identified as an offense to the entire crowd (cf. also Bürger, 2024). This one rash act of an officer may cause other officers to act the same way. This united action could be out of fear or concern that the one officer has seen something from the crowd that other officers have not, which suggests it has now become violent or unruly. When actions by law enforcement are perceived as treating all members of the crowd in the same negative way, particularly if these actions are seen as illegitimate (e.g., excessive force), the result is an extension of the sense of a common goal in the crowd. In other words, this unifies the previously varied opinions in the crowd to their new unified opposition to the police (Emamzadeh, 2020). This crowd, which once consisted of different levels of viewpoints, is now facing law enforcement as the common enemy. This common enemy may also change the objective of what was once a peaceful demonstration. The initial objective, hypothetically, was to protest against a large societal platform, such as criminal justice reform, but it has now reemerged as resisting law enforcement to defend the prior rash act of the one officer. Certainly, police should use proper communication and planning to offset any potential rash acts by officers. In addition, supervisors or other line officers should remove a rogue officer from the incident to show the crowd that there is accountability. This communication, planning, and potential removal of the said officer could allow the majority of the crowd to persuade the distrustful faction to remain peaceful. Along with communication and planning, law enforcement has an

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obligation to observe a crowd, identify who may be in control of the crowd, and develop a relationship with that person or persons. This relationship can be as simple as asking the person what the crowd wants to accomplish with the demonstration or explaining to them that law enforcement is here to ensure their demonstration is secure. This relationship can also be done prior to a planned public order event, so law enforcement and organizers can be seen as having the same goal: a safe and successful event. This same goal will establish trust within the community of demonstrators and the public, which will in turn lead to a belief that law enforcement actions are legitimate. There may be times that the group desires to have little to no conversation or understanding with law enforcement, and this must be met with respect and understanding.

6 Case-Study “London Metropolitan Police” As an example of law enforcement’s loss of legitimacy, we can turn to March 2021, where  Sarah Everard was kidnapped and murdered by a London Metropolitan Police Department (Met) Officer, Wayne Couzens, in London, UK. Ms. Everard and the officer were unknown to each other, and he used his position as a law enforcement officer to detain and deceive Ms. Everard to enter his vehicle based on “breaching” COVID-19 guidelines (Dearden, 2021). As a result of her murder, there were massive debates surrounding the role of police in UK society and police violence. Specifically, the missed vetting of Couzens alleged numerous incidents of indecent exposure (Sinclair, 2021), and the disregard of a female radio DJ who attempted to make a complaint of Couzens exposing himself to her in an alley (BBC News, 2021a). Police culture in general was under scrutiny, where an officer who was part of the search for Ms. Everard was suspended after sharing an inappropriate graphic on social media, and five other officers were placed under investigation for sharing grossly offensive material with Couzens before he committed the murder (Everad, 2021). As well, several female officers told the press they did not feel as if they could report troubling behavior by male colleagues (BBC News, 2021c). As a result of Ms. Everard’s murder, numerous vigils were planned to be held on Saturday, March 13, 2021. A newly formed group, “Reclaim These Streets” also organized numerous marches. A message was sent from Home Secretary Patel to all police chiefs that because of the COVID-19 risk, there should be no gatherings at vigils (Dodd & Grierson, 2021). Police across the country advised the organizers that any gathering would be considered illegal under the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Organizers asked police what would be a safe way to exercise their freedom of expression; as a result, some cities’ marches became online forums for people to join. Organizers brought the question before the courts, and a high court judge refused to say the event would be permitted under coronavirus regulations. Reclaim These Streets, and the Met continued to have discussions on how the event could proceed in a way that is proportionate and safe under COVID-19 restrictions while protecting their freedom of expression (Casciani, 2021a). However, there was

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no resolution to these discussions, and ultimately, the discussions stalled and eventually broke down. On March 13, 2021, hundreds of people gathered in Clapham Common in South London throughout the day to hold an unofficial vigil for the young woman. By 6 pm that evening, a crowd of several hundred had congregated at the park’s bandstand to hear speeches from a direct-action group called “Sisters Uncut” (Theil, 2021). Law enforcement was at a tipping point; do they allow persons to attend a vigil for a woman lost to a heinous act by a fellow law enforcement officer, or do they enforce the current “no social/public gathering” law? Ultimately, there were clashes between the police and the attendees of the vigil, where multiple people were charged with breaking COVID-19 lockdown rules, along with other public order offenses (BBC News, 2022). Generally, during March 2021, the lockdown rules consisted of no public gatherings of more than two people in a Tier 4 area, which was all of England. Numerous politicians came out speaking against the police. The Prime Minister at the time, Boris Johnson, said he was “deeply concerned” by the footage of the events (BBC News, 2021b). Unfortunately, the Met had their legitimacy questioned with their actions. The Met, more concerned about the possible transmission of COVID-19, began to enforce the lockdown rules when the crowd began to stand close together. As the Met attempted to break up the gathering, tensions erupted; there were obscenities thrown, officers were pushed, kicked, and spat at, and a police vehicle was vandalized. The decision by the Metropolitan Police to break up the crowd, arrest attendees, and the ill-fated trampling of the flowers that demonstrators had laid, prompted public anger. Ironically, the officers that began to approach the vigil attendees were mostly male, and use of containment techniques did not allow the demonstrators to be able to leave the location. This made social distancing impossible and forced law enforcement’s hand to begin to make arrests (Fox, 2021). Ultimately, six people were civilly fined for flouting lockdown rules (Casciani, 2021b). This enforcement was publicly seen as the Met being tone-deaf and a poor decision. The civil fines were ultimately dismissed. While the Met did take lawful action by enforcing valid COVID-19 lockdown rules, the public did not see this act as legitimate. This highly delicate situation was already exacerbated by a Met officer committing this hideous crime. As a result, trust in law enforcement was already at an extremely low point. The summer prior, there were Black Lives Matter protests where no one was socially distancing, yet there was no enforcement. The public rightfully questioned the Met as to why one event was not enforced while a similar event was. There was a pronounced lack of impartial policing that fueled and perpetuated their loss of legitimacy. There was also widespread debate about women’s safety and violence against women in the United Kingdom. The British government reopened its public consultation on its violence against women and girls strategy, receiving an additional 160,000 responses in 22 weeks. However, some feminist campaigners argued there was not enough changed in the wake of the murder (Topping, 2021). Reports of women killed by serving or former police officers in the United Kingdom since 2009 indicated that they were usually romantic partners, unlike in this case

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(Moloney, 2021). On September 17, 2021, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services, as requested by Home Secretary Priti Patel, published a report commissioned by the government after the murder finding “inconsistencies at every level in how the police respond to violence against women and girls victims” (Walker, 2021). The report also brutally stated that there needed to be a “radical refocus and shift in the priority given to violence against women and girls offenses” (HMICFRS, 2021). The public even called for Dame Cressida, the Commissioner of the Police of the Metropolis (the Met), to step down because of this event. Leaders of the Labour Party also called for her resignation, as “Cressida Dick has lost the confidence of the millions of women in London.” Commissioner Dick refused to resign and stood by the Met officers’ actions at the vigil (BBC News, 2021d). The High Court eventually ruled in March 2022 that the police force had violated participants’ human rights to freedom of speech and assembly and had failed to conduct a proper proportionality assessment when determining what actions to take (Grierson, 2022). A proper proportionality assessment is where law enforcement officials weigh the use of nonviolent means to achieve a legitimate law enforcement objective before resorting to physical force. In this regard, the police may use force only when strictly necessary and only to the extent required to obtain a legitimate objective. Further, proportionality must be necessary in the circumstances, and the force used must be no more than the minimum necessary to achieve a legitimate law enforcement objective (United Nations Office on Drug and Crime, 2019). Essentially, the court reprimanded the Met for not exercising discretion to determine how exactly to enforce, or not enforce, the valid laws. The proportionate assessment of using force to separate groups of people peacefully protesting to enforce lockdown rules may not have been an accurate assessment in hindsight. The Met believed that the public’s action of gathering together was illegitimate, whereas the public believed that this was their fundamental human right to freedom of speech and assembly, which preempts arbitrary lockdown laws. This contrasting view of legitimacy led to a breakdown between the relationship between law enforcement and the public they serve. A successful relationship between law enforcement and the public is the paramount goal, and legitimacy requires that law enforcement continually reexamine its actions in response to feedback and any performance gaps. The Met received abundant feedback from the public, specifically from women, about their improper actions. The Met began to push back and referenced their concern for COVID-19 transmission, officers being hurt, and damaged property. This only further damaged their fragile relationship and weakened their already unstable legitimacy with the public. The Met should have used the feedback as a tool for performance improvement and internally to review all decisions made at the vigil. For instance, the officers at the vigil were primarily men; perhaps the Met could have had female officers on the front lines as a de-escalation tool to reduce tensions. The vigil attendees are coming together to share in the grief of violence against women, in this case by a fellow Met officer. Some forethought by the Met would have gone a long way in exhibiting compassion and understanding during a trying time.

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7 The Importance of Law Enforcement Legitimacy Law Enforcement legitimacy is the degree to which the community sees officers as a valid police force. It is also the extent to which members of the public view the police as higher power authority figure, often measured in terms of the public’s willingness to obey and cooperate with the police (Reisig & Kaine, 2014; Bürger, 2024). This validity is granted through society’s permission to obey and cooperate with law enforcement, which in turn assumes this responsibility and authority. Society supports and cooperates with law enforcement’s attempt to fight crime, and ensure order is kept. The greater the trust society has in law enforcement, the greater the legitimacy law enforcement acquires. The greater the legitimacy, the more likely there will be an acquiescent crowd at public order events, with less hostility toward police. A more in-depth example of police legitimacy is that this legitimacy reflects the belief that the police ought to be allowed to exercise their authority to maintain social order, manage conflicts, and solve problems in their communities. Legitimacy is reflected in three judgments. The first is public trust and confidence in the police. Such confidence involves the belief that the police are honest, that they try to do their jobs well, and that they are trying to protect the community against crime and violence (POST, 2020). People react to evidence that the authorities with whom they are dealing are equitable. This involves officers making decisions based on consistently applied legal principles and the facts of an incident, not an officer’s personal opinions and biases. Transparency and openness about what the rules and procedures are, and how decisions are being made, facilitates the belief that decision-making procedures are objective. This helps the police to be seen to be acting impartially (Tyler, 2014). Second, legitimacy reflects the willingness of residents to defer to the law and to police authority, i.e., their sense of obligation and responsibility to accept police authority (POST, 2020). This sense of obligation can be seen by persons wanting to have the ability to explain their situation or tell their side of the story to a police officer. This opportunity to make arguments and present evidence should occur before the police make decisions about what to do. The general public want to have an opportunity to tell their story or state their case; that is, they want to have a voice. This is true both when policies are developed and when officers implement them on the street (Tyler, 2014). Lastly, legitimacy involves the belief that police actions are morally justified and appropriate to the circumstances (POST, 2020). Within law enforcement, legitimacy is often described as the legal and moral thing to do, whereas proportionality goes hand-in-hand with legitimacy, which are both important in the realm of law enforcement. Here, proportionality is the risk of harm in proportion to the use of force by the officer. Proportionality demands appropriate responses in different law— enforcement situations depending on the public interests at stake and the risks of harm (Friedman et al., 2017). An example of proportionality would be an officer allowing a car to get away for a minor traffic infraction if stopping the car would

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cause greater harm or danger to the suspect or uninvolved persons. All police interactions involving use of force must be necessary, proportionate, and legitimate. This holds especially true in the public order environment where the failures of police at achieving legitimacy and a proportionate response is magnified—sometimes on a global scale. Citizens are sensitive to whether they are treated with dignity and politeness, and to whether their rights are respected. The issue of interpersonal treatment consistently emerges as a key factor in reactions to dealings with legal authorities. People believe that they are entitled to treatment with respect and react very negatively to dismissive or demeaning interpersonal treatment. Further, people focus on cues that communicate information about the intentions and character of the legal authorities with whom they are dealing (their “trustworthiness”). People react favorably and cooperatively when they believe that the authorities with whom they are interacting are benevolent and caring, and that law enforcement is sincerely trying to do what is best for the people with whom they are dealing. Authorities convey this type of concern when they listen to citizen’s accounts and explain or justify their actions in ways that show an awareness of, and sensitivity to, their needs, and concerns. Research has shown that when the public believes that the police exercise their authority in these procedurally just ways, they accept the legitimacy of the police and defer to police authority, both in particular situations and through a generally increased level of compliance with the law and cooperation with the police (Fisher, 2014). The more public trusts law enforcement and views them as legitimate, the more likely the majority of the public will view law enforcement similarly. To what extent the Met, prior to the start of the 2021 Everard vigil, spoke to the group to lay down some ground rules on what would and would not be accepted due to the lockdown rules is unknown. However, in such circumstances, it is best practice that a police agency would urge the organizers to stay a certain distance apart from each other while having a moment of silence, including when there were speakers. Additionally, the speakers should be allowed microphones or other amplified sounds and encouraged to dissuade persons from gathering closely. The Met should have had women officers being the “voice” for the law enforcement present at the demonstration. This “voice” could have reminded demonstrators to keep appropriately socially distanced, while ensuring the demonstration was accomplished. This would have also conveyed an understanding to the group that the Met understood the feelings of the group when deciding how to adequately monitor this event. Moreover, it could have shown that the Met cared about their desire to demonstrate and grieve, while ensuring compliance with lockdown regulations and the Met’s use of discretion. As well, this communication could have led both the public and law enforcement to see their goals as the same, ensuring their health and safety, while remembering and honoring the victim. By law enforcement practicing impartial enforcement and the proper proportionality assessment, their legitimacy would be safeguarded.

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8 Policing with Consent Through impartial enforcement of laws in free societies, law enforcement must always work to maintain legitimacy with the citizens it serves. Sir Robert Peel, who was a British Prime Minister and founder of the Conservative Party, was highly regarded as the founding father of this premise. While he was secretary of state for the Home Department, Sir Peel created a complete reorganization of the criminal code. Sir Peel was convinced that the rising crime in London required improved methods of crime prevention. In 1829, the Metropolitan Police Act set up the first disciplined police force for the Greater London area (Gash, 2023). As a result of Sir Peel’s reform of criminal codes and the creation of the disciplined police force, his idea of “policing by consent” was born. This idea is where law enforcement exercises their power to police their fellow citizens by implicit consent from those very citizens. Law enforcement must secure the willing cooperation of the public to observe the laws, while securing and maintaining the respect and approval of the public (cf. also Clark, 2024). This consent is based upon a general consensus that law enforcement is transparent in their decision-making and involves the public in this process, thereby facilitating trust with public. Interestingly, Sir Robert Peel writes in his “Nine Principles of Policing” that, “to seek and preserve public favor, not by pandering to public opinion but by constantly demonstrating absolutely impartial service to law, in complete independence of policy…” (Home Office, 2012). This can be a problematic undertaking for law enforcement. Law enforcement should not respond to every societal whim, but must enforce the law, within limits, as it is written by the legislature. “Within limits” can also be described as the use of discretion. Discretion is the freedom to decide what should be done in a particular situation. As every situation is different and each person interprets a situation differently, this is where the difficult task for law enforcement takes shape. While training can alleviate some of the burden of this difficult task, it ultimately rests on the individual officer or supervisor. This individual officer or supervisor should make sure that discretion is used indiscriminately and with a logical approach, such as seeking voluntary compliance or achieving a societal goal. Discretion is often times the deciding factor between law enforcement losing their legitimacy with a crowd, or reinforcing their legitimacy. Taking a look at the aforementioned controversy in London, if the Met decided to not enforce the lockdown laws at the vigil, it could have been seen by some as responding to societal whims and “pandering to public opinion” during a volatile period, as well as, a lack of impartial service to the law. The lockdown laws were clearly written that no public gatherings were allowed, so to ensure impartial policing, there should be enforcement on this gathering. On the other hand, it can be seen as employing discretion to not take enforcement during a highly sensitive and emotional period for the public, as well as the Met as an organization. Consideration must also take into account that at prior freedom of expression events, enforcement was not taken. This use of discretion, and arguably a proper proportional assessment would only further add legitimacy to the Met.

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9 Conclusion: Balancing the Legal Equilibrium This unbiased public order policing model, within the legal framework of ensuring everyone’s rights to expression, is paramount in democratic societies. All viewpoints, including anti-law enforcement, have a right to be peacefully heard and expressed. It is law enforcement’s duty and contract with society to ensure this right is protected. As Sir Robert Peel noted, public approval of their existence is necessary for law enforcement to perform their duties. This social contract, within the legal context of freedom of expression/speech, is the overriding goal for law enforcement. In democratic societies, law enforcement must protect and balance the rights of citizens to express themselves freely versus the police mandate to enforce the constitutional rule of law and ensure public order is maintained. This delicate balance is often difficult to achieve but is absolutely necessary in order to safeguard the public’s trust in law enforcement. Within this setting, trust is a precious and precarious commodity—it is difficult to obtain, easy to lose, and tough to rebuild. In its review of the 2020 civil unrest that took place in New York City in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the New  York City Corporation Counsel succinctly noted that: Public safety requires a partnership between community and police, and the currency of that partnership is trust. Trust is what provides police with legitimacy. It is what motivates victims and witnesses to report crimes; it allows officers to gather information and investigate; and it gives juries a sense of confidence when sitting in judgement of a peer. As a currency, this trust can run at a surplus or a deficit, and how protests […] evolve – and how police respond – are often defined by that trust (Johnson, 2020).

The freedom of expression/gathering is an extremely important right that is granted to members of the public and should be regarded as such. Law enforcement is tasked to protect this right while also protecting other members of the public that do not want or need to gather to express their viewpoints, or may even have competing viewpoints. As such, this delicate balance of impartiality to protect the right of the public to gather while ensuring the safety of all is one of the utmost priorities of policing, and the successful implementation of this priority, through both lawful and legitimate actions, will continue to ensure the public’s trust in law enforcement – thus balancing the legal equilibrium for public order.

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Home Office. (2012). Definition of policing by consent. 10.12.2012. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/policing-­by-­consent/ definition-­of-­policing-­by-­consent. Hudson, D. L. (2023a). Content based. The first amendment encyclopedia. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://mtsu.edu/first-­amendment/article/935/content-­based. Hudson, D. L. (2023b). Content neutral. The first amendment encyclopedia. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://mtsu.edu/first-­amendment/article/937/content-­neutral. Johnson, J.  E. (2020). Corporation Counsel Report Pursuant to Executive Order 58 (June 20, 2020) directing an analysis of factors impacting the george floyd protests in New York City. New  York City Law Department. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www1.nyc.gov/ assets/law/downloads/pdf/ProtestReport-­np.pdf. Lee, R. (2024). Public order policing 2.0. Addressing the challenges of the information age. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. LII, Legal Information Institute. (2021). Unlawful assembly. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unlawful_assembly. McLeod, S. (2019). Social identity theory. Simply psychology. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-­identity-­theory.html. Moloney, C. (2021). At least 15 serving or former police have killed women in UK since 2009. The Guardian, 28.09.2021. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.theguardian. com/uk-­news/2021/sep/28/at-­least-­15-­serving-­or-­former-­police-­have-­killed-­women-­in-­uk-­ since-­2009-­report. National Constitution Center. (2019). First amendment overview: Part I.  Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAxSYbHvuPw&list=PLLd1AFkP31XNcJP TSndF7pwkOPh5IOEAs. POST, Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. (2020). Procedural Justice and Police Legitimacy. 22.10.2022. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://post.ca.gov/ procedural-­justice-­and-­police-­legitimacy. Reisig, M.  D., & Kaine, R.  J. (2014). The Oxford handbook of police and policing. Oxford University Press. Sinclair, L. (2021). Wayne Couzens nicknamed ‘the rapist’ three years before he was hired by met. Evening standard, 10.07.2021. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.standard.co.uk/ news/crime/wayne-­couzens-­nickname-­met-­police-­sarah-­everard-­b945119.html. The City of Thousand Oaks. (2005). Sec. 5-2.01 declaration of public nuisance. American Legal Publishing, 07.07.2005. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/ codes/thousandoaks/latest/thousandoaks_ca/0-­0-­0-­5311. Theil, M. (2021). I was at the Clapham common vigil and this is what I saw. My London, 14.03.2021. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.mylondon.news/news/ south-­london-­news/i-­clapham-­common-­vigil-­what-­20149764. Topping, A. (2021). ‘A crossroads’: The impact of the Sarah Everard case on women’s safety. The Guardian, 09.07.2021. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/ uk-­news/2021/jul/09/a-­crossroads-­the-­impact-­of-­the-­sarah-­everard-­case-­on-­womens-­safety. Tyler, T. (2014). Legitimacy and Procedural Justice: A New Element of Police Leadership. Police Executive Research Forum, 35. United Nations Office on Drug and Crime. (2019). Topic three - The general principles of use of force in law enforcement. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://www.unodc.org/e4j/zh/ crime-­prevention-­criminal-­justice/module-­4/key-­issues/3%2D%2Dthe-­general-­principles-­of-­ use-­of-­force-­in-­law-­enforcement.html. Walker, J. (2021). Violence against women should be prioritised in the same way as terrorism, report finds after Sarah Everard murder. Sky news, 17.09.2021. Retrieved January 24, 2023, from https://news.sky.com/story/violence-­against-­women-­should-­be-­prioritised-­in-­the-­same-­ way-­as-­terrorism-­report-­finds-­after-­sarah-­everard-­murder-­1241011.

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Jaclyn M. Keane  , Esq. is a 14-year veteran of the New York City Police Department in the rank of captain and is currently assigned as the Executive Officer of the Legal Bureau. Jaclyn’s role as Executive Officer is to oversee 350 uniform and civilian attorneys, paralegals, and various other positions. Under her direct command is the Public Safety Division, which encompasses the Criminal Section, Civil Enforcement Unit, and Asset Forfeiture. Additionally, Jaclyn oversees the Body Worn Camera Division, Subpoena Litigation Unit, Giglio Unit, CCRB Liaison Unit, Civil Section, and Legislative Affairs. Prior to the Legal Bureau, Jaclyn was a Lieutenant assigned to 1PP’s Operations Division where she was the NYPD’s liaison to the Mayor’s Office of Citywide Events Coordination and Management. There, Jaclyn planned, budgeted and negotiated for the Police Department for all major events in New  York City and was responsible for all matters related to the department’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. She also assisted with the coordination and oversight of the citywide assignment and deployment of personnel for all of New York City’s major details and events, as well as supervised the department’s Joint Operations Center (JOC) during serious crimes, large-scale emergency incidents, and disasters. Prior to her role in the Operations Division, she was a sworn attorney in the Criminal Unit of the NYPD’s Legal Bureau, being on call 24/7 and advising members of the department on criminal law matters, interpretation of statutes, and constitutional law. Moreover, she reviewed departmental orders and procedural revisions on policy and operational matters. Operationally in the field, Jaclyn was on-scene at active protests and civil unrest where she continually coordinated in real-time with incident commanders to provide decisive legal advice pertaining to arrests and constitutional issues that arose. Jaclyn received her undergraduate Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminology from University of Miami where she was on the Dean’s List and accepted into numerous honor societies and became a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma Fraternity. She received her Juris Doctorate from New York Law School and is a member of the New York City Bar Association, as well as the New York State Bar Association. She is currently admitted to practice law in the states of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Anthony J. Raganella  is a retired 25-year decorated New York City Police Department Deputy Inspector. Currently, he is the founder, and CEO of NY Blue Line Consulting Group, which provides law enforcement training and consulting services in the United States. Additionally, he has been at the forefront of advocating for and developing national standards for personal protective equipment, tactics, and training relating to US public order policing. While at the NYPD, Anthony spent 8 years as the Commanding Officer of the Disorder Control Unit, a citywide department unit responsible for planning, assessing, and ensuring the department’s training and readiness in crowd management and disorder control operations for civil unrest, as well as major events, emergencies, and protests. As Commander of that unit, Anthony regularly developed policy, as well as evaluated and implemented training, equipment and best practices related to crowd management and control. He is considered a subject matter expert on matters related to protests and civil unrest and regularly trains, consults, and testifies on such matters. Anthony has completed his Master Degree in Public Administration, summa cum laude, from Marist College; a Bachelor of Science Degree in Behavioral Science, summa cum laude, from New York Institute of Technology; an Associate of Science Degree in Criminal Justice, summa cum laude, from Nassau Community College, as well as being a graduate of the 24th Session of Columbia University’s Police Management Institute, and the 223rd Session of the FBI National Academy. Additionally, Anthony is the author of several published peer-reviewed journal articles and textbook chapter supplements in the field of criminal justice.

Public Order Policing in the UK Claire Clark

Abstract  This article highlights the principles of public order policing in the United Kingdom, followed by an overview on relevant legislation and guidelines. Then, the chapter explains the system of public order public safety policing, focusing on the tasks of the overall strategic commander referred to as Gold. After describing some important components of public order policing, the author shows how all those aspects and potential strategies can be operationalised by using several examples and case studies.

1 Principles 1.1 Policing by Consent “Policing by consent” is a fundamental principle of policing in the United Kingdom. It is understood to mean that the police carry out their duties with the cooperation and support of the public rather than through coercion or force and that they are accountable to the communities they serve. This principle is based on the idea that the power of the police comes from the people and that the police should use their powers fairly and proportionately to prevent crime, protect the public, and maintain public order. It is built on the idea that the police should engage with the community, build relationships, and seek to resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation, rather than resorting to heavy-handed tactics. This principle is enshrined in law and is a key element of the code of ethics that governs the conduct of police officers in the United Kingdom. Sir Robert Peel, then the Home Secretary, sponsored the bill that received parliamentary approval in 1829 which led to the first full-time professional and centrally organised police force. It was a response to increasing crime and disorder and C. Clark (*) University of West London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_11

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answered a growing need for preventative policing and helped to keep order on the streets (UK Parliament, 2023). The principle of policing by consent was one of the much-quoted Peel Principles and as much as policing has evolved since the nineteenth century, this concept remains fundamental in the twenty-first century. As explained by the notable police historian Charles Reith in his “New Study of Police History” in 1956, it was a philosophy of policing “unique in history and throughout the world because it derived not from fear but almost exclusively from public co-operation with the police, induced by them designedly by behaviour which secures and maintains for them the approval, respect and affection of the public” (Home Office, 2012). Often quoted, the seventh principle, “to maintain at all times a relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and that the public are the police”, according to Fleming and Brown (2023, p. 4) steers a balance between law enforcement and servicing the public. “The first may involve the exercising of coercive control, for example, in maintaining public order, while the second may involve more community-enhancing strategies such as harm reduction and meaningful community engagement.”

1.2 Assessment The policing model in England and Wales relies on consent and trust in the police by the public. This is not just about effectiveness and efficiency as assessed by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) but also the legitimacy of the police. The HMICFRS is an independent body which assesses and reports on police forces and fire and rescue services in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It also inspects law enforcement arrangements in British Overseas Territories, Crown dependencies, and specialist agencies such as the National Crime Agency. Forces are inspected on legitimacy by HMICFRS (2021) as part of the PEEL assessments. These were introduced in 2014 and the focus on legitimacy, “policing by consent”, is key to public confidence in the police. The HMICFRS legitimacy report stated that “Police officers and staff are more likely to treat the public with fairness and respect if they feel that they themselves are being treated fairly and respectfully, particularly by their own police force” (HMICFRS, 2017, p.  10). According to the Crime Survey of England and Wales (ONS, 2021), public confidence in the police has been on a downward trend—from 62% in 2017 to 55% in 2020. Trust in the police in the United Kingdom is at its lowest for some time. A YouGov survey (2022) revealed that in February 2020, 75% of those surveyed said they thought the police were doing well. Two years later just over half of the public (53%) thought that, while the percentage saying that the police are doing a bad job has more than doubled to 37%. Policing recognises the legitimacy challenge it faces

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and a lack of transparency and accountability are factors that contribute to its erosion (Gest, 2022).

2 Public Order and Public Safety (POPS) Policing Maintaining public order is a fundamental part of policing in the United Kingdom and they have a duty which includes responding to incidents that may cause a threat to public safety, such as riots, protests, and other forms of civil unrest. The police have powers to control and manage public events and gatherings, including the use of force where necessary, to prevent violence and protect property. The police also work closely with other agencies, such as local authorities and emergency services, to maintain public order and ensure that communities are safe and secure. The way in which police forces manage this has evolved over the decades because of operational incidents and legislation changes. Strategic leaders must take the police core responsibilities into account when policing public order events and maintain the legitimacy of the police in so doing, by engaging with the public and balancing the competing demands of participants and the public. This involves operationalising the strategy for any event, ensuring that officers’ mindset is focused on that balance and maintaining legitimacy.

2.1 Two Sides of Public Order Policing There are two sides to public order policing in the United Kingdom. First, public order refers to the measures taken by police to prevent and manage situations where there is a risk of public disorder. This includes situations such as protests, marches, and demonstrations that have the potential to cause disruption, harm, or damage to property. Public order policing aims to maintain public safety, protect the rights of individuals and groups to peaceful assembly and/or protest, and prevent violence and other criminal activity. Public order policing is governed by a range of laws, policies, and guidelines that set out the powers and responsibilities of police officers in managing public order incidents. These include the Public Order Act 1986, which sets out the powers of police to control public processions and assemblies, and the Human Rights Act 1998, which places an obligation on the police to protect the right to freedom of expression and assembly. Public order policing is also guided by the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice, which sets out the best practice for managing public order incidents and ensuring the safety and wellbeing of all involved. Overall, public order policing is an important element of policing in the United Kingdom and requires a careful balance between ensuring public safety and upholding the rights of individuals to express their views and assemble peacefully. Police officers are trained to use a range of tactics and techniques to manage public

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order incidents, including communication, negotiation, and de-escalation, as well as the use of force and arrest as a last resort. The aim is to resolve incidents in a peaceful and proportionate way, while minimising the risk of harm or damage to property. Effective public order policing requires close collaboration between the police, local communities, and other stakeholders, and is based on the principle of policing by consent, where the police work in partnership with the public to maintain law and order. The second side to POPS policing is public safety and this refers to events policing, the provision of policing services for large-scale events, such as festivals, concerts, sporting events, parades, and other gatherings. The goal of events policing is to ensure that the event runs smoothly and safely, and that participants and attendees are protected from harm. This includes managing crowd control, traffic, and security, as well as responding to emergencies and criminal activity. Events policing involves a range of different activities and responsibilities, such as risk assessment, contingency planning, communication and engagement with event organisers, and coordinating with other agencies and stakeholders such as emergency services and local authorities. Police officers involved in events policing may be responsible for tasks such as crowd management, search and screening, surveillance, and the investigation of criminal offences that occur at the event. Events policing is an important aspect of policing in the United Kingdom, as it helps to ensure that events are conducted safely and that the public are protected. It requires close collaboration between the police, event organisers, and other stakeholders, and is often based on the principle of partnership working, where police officers work closely with other agencies and organisations to manage risk and maintain public safety. Effective events policing requires careful planning, effective communication, and the ability to respond quickly and proportionately to changing circumstances. There is significant cross over between the two sides and the difference lies mainly in the relevant legislation and guidance which Police Order Commanders must understand and take into consideration when developing their plan.

2.2 Public Order Legislation The evolution of public order legislation in the United Kingdom is a complex and often contentious subject, reflecting the changing attitudes of society towards public protests, demonstrations, and other forms of civil unrest. The core responsibilities of the police in England and Wales are defined in the Statement of Common Purpose: “To uphold the law fairly and firmly; to prevent crime; to pursue and bring to justice those who break the law; to keep the Queen’s peace; to protect help and reassure the community; and to be see to do this with integrity, common sense and sound judgement” (UK Parliament, 2008). To keep the Queen’s peace is an instrumental part of policing, which is now referred to as the King’s Peace. The legal framework for the police has changed over the years but the fundamental starting point is this Breach of the Peace and the Public Order Act:

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Breach of the Peace comes from common law and it is believed that this offence originated from laws over 1000 years ago. It has been used consistently by officers of the law to prevent disturbances and disorderly conduct. It is widely accepted as being defined as given in the Appeal Court decision R. v Howell (1982) as “when a person reasonably believes harm will be caused, or is likely to be caused, to a person or in his presence to his property, or a person is in fear of being harmed through an assault, affray, riot, unlawful assembly, or some other form of disturbance”. Due to the loosely defined nature of breach of the peace and the wide powers afforded to those who intend to stop or prevent a breach, any use of the powers is closely examined by the courts to ensure there has been no undue interference with human rights. The Public Order Act 1936 is an important piece of legislation that was introduced in response to the growing threat of political extremism and violence in the United Kingdom in the 1930s. The Act was specifically aimed at combating the activities of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and other extremist groups, which were seen as a serious threat to public order and national security. It made it an offence to wear political uniforms or to display any emblem or sign associated with a political organisation in public. The Act also gave the police new powers to disperse public meetings and processions that were deemed to be a threat to public order, and it prohibited the holding of political meetings within a designated area around the Houses of Parliament. The Public Order Act 1936 was a significant step in the government’s efforts to combat political extremism and maintain public order, and it remains on the statute books. The next major development in public order legislation (Public Order Act 1986) followed the wave of civil unrest that accompanied the social and political upheavals of the 1960s. Football hooliganism had started in the 1970s and there were regular instances of football hooliganism in the 1980s by English football supporters. Following the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985, all English clubs were banned from Europe for five years. During 1984 and 1985 there were significant numbers of serious public order incidents as a long-running miners’ strike saw violent clashes between the police and strikers. Whilst most pickets throughout the strike were non-­ violent, violence was shown towards those miners who chose to work. There was criticism of police action at the “Battle of Orgreave” in June 1984 where police officers were caught on camera using allegedly excessive force against those striking. The Policing and Crime Act 2017 introduced new measures to strengthen police powers to manage public assemblies and processions by amending the Public Order Act 1986 to give the police additional powers to impose conditions on public assemblies, and to extend the scope of offences related to the wearing of masks or disguises during public order incidents. In 2020, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services was asked by the Government to consider new legislative proposals. HMICFRS (2020, p. 14) “concluded that, with some qualifications, all […] proposals would improve police effectiveness without eroding the right to protest”. These recommendations were incorporated into the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act

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2021 which received Royal Assent in April 2022. This contains a range of measures aimed at strengthening police powers to manage public order incidents: • Increased police powers to manage protests—which has given the police greater powers to impose conditions on public assemblies, including the use of noise limits, start and finish times, and location restrictions. These measures have been controversial, with critics arguing that they could infringe on the right to free expression and assembly. • Increased penalties for certain public order offences—new measures to increase the penalties for certain public order offences: • Amends the offence of assaulting an emergency worker, increasing the penalty to a maximum sentence of up to two years in prison. • Increases the maximum penalty for the offence of wilful obstruction of a highway from a £1000 fine to an unlimited fine and/or six months’ imprisonment. This measure also clarifies that this offence can be committed even when the highway in question has been closed by the police or relevant authority; abolishes the common law offence of public nuisance in statute and introduces a statutory offence of public nuisance, punishable with a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment. • New measures to manage unauthorised encampments to give the police greater powers to manage unauthorised encampments, including the power to seize vehicles and other property used in connection with such encampments. • New measures to protect monuments and memorials from damage or destruction, including the introduction of a new offence of desecrating a war memorial. The government was defeated in the attempt to introduce a number of other proposals, which included the offence of locking on and being equipped to lock on, interference with major transport works, interference of key national infrastructure, the power to stop and search a person specifically for items associated with other parts of the Bill, such as causing nuisance and what was termed “suspicion-less” stop and search related to protest, along with a proposed Serious Disruption Prevention Orders, referred to as protest banning orders. The Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 represents a significant update to the legal framework for managing public order incidents in the United Kingdom and has been the subject of significant debate and controversy. While some have welcomed the increased police powers and tougher penalties, others have expressed concerns about the potential impact on individual rights and freedoms, and the need to balance public safety and security with the protection of civil liberties. In 2023, the UK government sought to introduce some of those provisions which were defeated in a new Public Order Bill (Home Office, 2023). The proposals included criminal offences of locking on and going equipped to lock on, obstructing major transport works, and interfering with national infrastructure. There was significant opposition to these, however the Public Order Act 2023 was passed into legislation by royal assent on 2 May 2023. At the time of writing most, but not all, of the sections have commenced.

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2.3 Public Safety and Events Legislation Effective management of events and public safety requires close collaboration between the police, local authorities, emergency services, and other agencies, and the ability to respond quickly and proportionately to changing circumstances. The main piece of legislation for the police and statutory partners is the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. This act provides a framework for emergency planning and response in the United Kingdom. It requires local authorities, emergency services, and other agencies to work together to plan for and respond to emergencies such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and other serious incidents. The guidance on public safety events for local authorities and emergency services in the United Kingdom “The Purple Guide: Health, Safety and Welfare at Music and Other Events” is published by the Events Industry Forum (EIF, 2015). It is a comprehensive guide to the management of health, safety, and welfare at events and provides practical advice and guidance to help event organisers to plan and manage events in a safe and effective way. The guide covers a wide range of topics, including risk assessment, crowd management, first aid, fire safety, and emergency planning. It is regularly updated to reflect changes in legislation and best practice. It is recommended that anyone involved in the planning and management of events should consult the Purple Guide and use it as a reference point for best practice. The Guide to Safety at Sports grounds (Green Guide) is a guide to safety at sports grounds in the United Kingdom. It is published by the UK government and provides guidance to sports ground operators, event organisers, and other stakeholders involved in the management of sports grounds. It is available through the Sports Grounds Safety Authority (SGSA, 2018). The Green Guide was first published in 1998 and has been regularly updated since then to reflect changes in legislation and best practice. It is recognised as a key source of guidance and information for safety at sports grounds in the United Kingdom. It is used by a wide range of stakeholders, including local authorities, sports’ governing bodies, and event organisers. The guide is also referred to by the Safety Advisory Groups (SAGs), which are responsible for the safety of sports grounds in their area. The guide provides detailed advice on all aspects of safety at sports grounds, including risk assessment, crowd management, emergency planning, and stadium design and construction. It is designed to help sports ground operators and event organisers to plan and manage events in a way that maximises safety and minimises risk to the public. In addition to the Purple Guide and the Green Guide, there are other sources of guidance and information available for event organisers, such as industry associations and trade bodies, and local authorities. By following the guidance, local authorities and emergency services can work together to minimise the risks associated with events and to protect the public.

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2.4 Authorised Professional Practice The College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice (APP; College of Policing, 2022) is a set of guidelines that provides guidance to police officers and other law enforcement professionals on best practice for managing public order situations. The Public Order Public Safety APP is a comprehensive document that outlines the principles, tactics, and legal framework that should be followed by police officers when managing public order events and incidents, and it covers a wide range of topics, from planning and preparation to tactics and decision-making. It is designed to provide clear and consistent guidance to all police forces and officers across the country. It is based on the principle of “policing by consent”, as discussed earlier. The Public Order Public Safety APP is divided into several sections, each of which covers a different aspect of managing public order. These sections include: • Introduction: This section provides an overview of the purpose and scope of the APP for public order and outlines the key principles and values that underpin it. • Planning and preparation: This section covers the importance of effective planning and preparation for managing public order situations. It includes guidance on risk assessments, contingency planning, and communication with other agencies and stakeholders. • Strategic command: This section covers the role of strategic command in managing public order situations. It includes guidance on the responsibilities of senior officers, the use of intelligence and information, and the development of strategies and tactics. • Tactical command: This section covers the role of tactical command in managing public order situations. It includes guidance on the responsibilities of frontline officers, the use of communication and negotiation, and the deployment of resources and tactics. • Use of force: This section covers the use of force in managing public order situations. It includes guidance on the legal and ethical principles that govern the use of force, as well as specific tactics and techniques that may be used in different situations. • Public safety: This section covers the importance of maintaining public safety in managing public order situations. It includes guidance on the management of crowds and protesters, the use of cordons and barriers, and the deployment of specialist resources. • Post-incident management: This section covers the importance of effective post-incident management in managing public order situations. It includes guidance on debriefing and review processes, as well as the management of media and public relations. The APP is regularly reviewed and updated to ensure that it reflects best practice and takes account of changing circumstances and developments in the field. It is supported by a range of training and development programmes, as well as a network

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of specialist advisors and mentors who provide support and guidance to frontline officers and commanders.

3 Command Structure 3.1 Police System in the United Kingdom The public order public safety command structure is based on a three-tier system: strategic (gold), tactical (silver), and operational (bronze) command roles. Individuals that have been accepted those command roles assume responsibility for specific operations or incidents. All commanders must be trained, accredited, and operationally competent. Their role is to make decisions, give clear directions, and ensure those directions are carried out. Modern policing increasingly operates within a multi-agency environment. Partner agencies should be involved in the planning and resolution of incidents and operations as appropriate. Where partner agencies are involved, commanders should ensure that appropriate command protocols are in place to clearly define and agree the jurisdiction, powers, and procedures of each participating agency/partner. The gold (strategic) commander should specify, in their documented strategy, the role of the police in the operation, and the responsibilities and requirements of other partners and stakeholders (College of Policing, 2018). When different agencies work together, there can be a wider range of resources and capabilities available to respond to any situation that may arise. Multi-agency planning allows for a more comprehensive and thorough preparation for public order public safety events. By bringing together different perspectives, agencies can develop more effective strategies to manage events, such as traffic management plans or crowd control strategies. A multi-agency approach allows for better coordination and communication between different agencies, which can help ensure a more efficient and effective response to public order events. Different agencies can share, expertise, and information, which can help them work together to address the needs of the community. Using other agencies can release police officers back to their core responsibilities. That is not to say that there may be challenges with different agencies involved in any event. The Gold Commander should establish a strategic coordinating group (SCG) which helps provide valuable support, advice, guidance, and opportunities for consultation. The specific function, membership, and content of the group will vary dependent on the event or incident. However, the Gold Commander is responsible for any strategic decisions affecting the police response (College of Policing, 2018).

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3.2 Incident Command Structure The incident command structure is standardised and will be briefly explained before focusing on two key roles (Gold Commander and Public Order Public Safety Advisor). The Gold Commander sits at the top of this structure and is ultimately responsible for the overall management of the operation. The Silver Commander is responsible for the tactical management of the incident and has responsibility for devising a tactical plan to achieve the operational strategy set by Gold, while the Bronze Commander is responsible for the operational management of specific tasks or areas (cf. Fig. 1).

3.3 The Gold Commander A Gold Public Order Public Safety Commander is a senior police officer who has overall responsibility for the policing operation, typically the strategic management of a public order public safety incident and is responsible for making decisions related to the deployment of resources and the overall direction of the police response. The College of Policing direction is that a Gold Commander should be at least a Superintendent. This individual should not be on the ground but in a command position allowing remote overview and coordination. Typically, the Silver Commander will be co-located. The role of Gold is crucial in ensuring that public order public safety incidents are managed effectively and efficiently and that the safety of the public and police officers is always maintained. She or he sets the strategy which outlines the overall intention of the policing operation, including the potential outcomes desired. They provide leadership, direction, and guidance to the other commanders and staff involved in the operation. The key responsibilities of a Gold will include: • Assessing the situation and developing a strategic plan for managing any potential public disorder or other safety-related incidents. • Liaising with other agencies and stakeholders, such as local authorities, emergency services, and event organisers, to coordinate a response to any public order issues. • Allocating resources, including police officers and equipment, to support the operation. • Overseeing the deployment of police officers and other resources to ensure that they are being used effectively and efficiently. • Providing strategic guidance and direction to the Silver and Bronze Commanders to ensure that the operation is progressing according to plan. • Monitoring the situation and making decisions about any changes to the plan or resources as required.

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Fig. 1  Command structure diagram. https://www.college.police.uk/app/public-­order/command, reprinted with kind permission of the College of Policing (UK), Approval ref. SF00293

The training is extensive and involves a combination of practical experience and classroom-based learning. To become a Gold Public Order Public Safety Commander typically, an officer will work their way up through the ranks and gain experience in public order policing. However, the College of Policing training allows for individuals to enter at different levels with appropriate guidance and support. There are

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pathways for those that have transferable skills and experience from other areas such as firearms and investigations. They must have a thorough understanding of the relevant legislation and guidance, as well as the tactics and techniques used in public order operations. In addition to their practical experience, they must undergo formal training to develop the necessary skills and knowledge to carry out their role effectively. This training is provided by the College of Policing and covers a range of topics, including leadership, decision-making, communication, and risk management. They must undergo ongoing professional development and training to ensure that they remain up to date with the latest developments in public order policing. This includes regular refresher training and participation in exercises and simulations to practice their skills and knowledge, including annual re-accreditation.

3.4 Public Order Public Safety Advisor A Gold Commander will have specialist advisors to assist in developing their strategy, including a police public order public safety advisor (POPSA) who is a specialist police officer who provides guidance and advice on public order and safety matters to the police and other agencies. POPSAs are typically part of a specialist unit within a police force, the national requirement is to be public order trained at Level 2 (see para. 1.4.3 for an explanation) and their role is to support planning and operational activities related to major events or incidents that may involve significant public disorder or other safety concerns and to help prevent and manage any potential issues that may arise. They are trained and accredited to provide pertinent advice based on the role performed by the commander and based on the information known at the time. Some of the key responsibilities of a POPSAs may include: • Advising on the development of contingency plans for major events or incidents that may impact public safety and order. • Conducting risk assessments and identifying potential safety and public order issues that may arise from a particular event or situation. • Liaising with other agencies, such as local authorities, emergency services, and event organisers, to ensure a coordinated response to any safety or public order issues. • Providing training and guidance to other police officers and agencies on public order and safety matters. • Supporting the development of tactics and strategies for managing public disorder and other safety-related incidents. • Advising on the deployment of police resources and equipment for major events and incidents.

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4 Important Components of Public Order Policing Other components that the Gold Commander might want to take into consideration, although this is not an exhaustive list, are as follows.

4.1 Police Liaison Team The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Manual of Guidance on Keeping the Peace (NPIA, 2010) talked about communicating with crowds in order to manage the event and highlighted some of the practical challenges. This guidance document followed on from the HMIC report “Adapting to Protest—Nurturing the British Policing Model” (2009) which suggested a coordinated and structured approach to communicating with crowds. The introduction of this role was based on engendering legitimacy in the crowd to enable active communication, not just while an event was in progress but also pre-event and post event to build trust and confidence. The College of Policing did not have a full profile for this role until after 2013. Initially referred to as protest liaison, the role now is called police liaison officer (PLT) and they play a key role in the police management of not just demonstrations, but also other events where engagement and communication with those involved is critical. Liaison with event organisers, including protest groups, needs to be structured and the use of PLTs can assist with enabling the Gold Commander’s strategy being explained. From the Olympics onwards, the Metropolitan Police introduced the concept of Police Liaison Teams. There was a misconception when this role was first introduced and they should not have been seen as intelligence gatherers. What this role brought was using dialogue as a tactic; engaging and operating within the crowd, as opposed to being on the outside of the crowd; having officers inside the crowd engaging with the public. Based on the results of the Elaborated Social Identity Model (cf. ch. Bürger), police look to manage the different facets within a crowd, provide them with information, and engage them, seeking to understand the crowd needs and wants, differentiating between diverse groups. Police liaison officers provide a link between the police, protest organisers, and protestors through negotiation, mediation, communication, and sensing to reduce potential tension and the risk of disorder. This role has allowed police to enable compliance with the Human Rights Act 1988 whereby people made informed choices, they understood what the likely consequences of their actions could be, and were provided with advice early in the protest so that potentially would not be caught up in disorder. For the police, this reduced the necessity to revert to force. Some protests develop into disorder or into violence and the introduction of the PLT was to use engagement and dialogue at every stage to explain to the participants, even when there had to be a police intervention such as arrests, to try and reduce the tension prevent escalation. Officers

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deployed in light blue jackets are a key feature of the policing plan for protests currently.

4.2 Community Engagement Communication is key to building trust. For large-scale events, the Gold Commander will appoint a Bronze Commander to engage with communities and be transparent in their actions and decisions, explaining the reasons behind their decisions and being open about the procedures and protocols. “More specifically, the actions of officers during public disorder are particularly informative because it is in such situations that relations between the citizen and the state can be dramatically altered” (Morrell & Brammer 2016, p. 388). Community engagement is an important aspect of managing public order incidents. By working closely with local communities, police officers can build trust, reduce tension, identify potential issues, enhance their situational awareness, and develop more effective responses to public order incidents. It is expected that the Bronze Commander responsible for community engagement will be proactive communicating with the community, including community leaders, to establish relationships and maintain regular dialogue. Formal Community Impact Assessments can assist Gold commanders to have an understanding of the local community confidence through a proper graded process (College of Policing, 2013). They should actively seek out opportunities to engage with the community, such as attending community events and meetings and responding promptly to community members’ queries. They should collaborate with community members and organisations to address community issues, working together to identify problems and develop solutions. Community engagement can help police officers to identify potential issues or flashpoints that may lead to public order incidents. By proactively addressing these issues, officers can prevent them from escalating into more serious incidents. Engaging with local communities can also help police officers to better understand the local context and dynamics of a particular area. This can enhance their situational awareness and enable them to respond more effectively to public order incidents and is important to build and strengthen reciprocal trust.

4.3 Training The Gold Commander needs to ensure that police officers have had the appropriate training to develop their skills and knowledge in managing public order events by conducting a quality assurance or dip-sampling process with the Silver Commander and relevant planning team. There are national standards as laid down by the College of Policing which are reviewed regularly. In line with the Public Order APP, all officers should be accredited to the role they are undertaking, demonstrating

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occupational and operational competence. Most police officers receive public order public safety training as part of their initial probationer training. The recruitment and training for new recruits has changed over the last 3 years with the introduction of the Police Education Qualification Framework (College of Policing 2020b). Most forces in England and Wales have either a degree-level apprenticeship which is a 3-year probationer programme or a degree-holder programme which runs for 2 years. Recruits will receive Level 3 training as a probationer ensuring that they can undertake basic crowd management tactics in normal uniform within the context of a public order public safety event. Officers may choose to pursue this as a specialist skill where they will receive ongoing professional development and will have to re-accredit on an annual basis. More information can be found in the Public Order Public Safety APP (College of Police, 2022) as individual forces have different policies as to when officers can be trained at Level 2. This is a minimum of two days training using shields and other protective equipment and covers tactics to the standards described in modules B1 and B2 of the National Police Public Order Training Curriculum (NPPOTC; College of Policing 2020a). Public order public safety training covers the legal framework of policing public order public safety incidents, including the powers and limitations of the police in managing situations. It also covers the principles of communication and de-­ escalation techniques to help prevent and manage public disorder incidents. Other topics that may be covered in public order training include tactics for managing large crowds, the use of protective equipment, debriefing, organisational learning and the use of force.

4.4 Briefing and Communication Adapting to Protest (2009, p. 64), the HMIC1 report which investigated the British model of policing protest, criticised the inadequate briefings given to frontline officers before deployment. “Adequate briefing is critical for all public order operations. Briefing provides commanders with the opportunity to set the tone and policing style of the operation; establish the legal framework under which the police are operating and identify relevant legal powers; clarify roles and responsibilities and set out their expectations of the officers on duty.” Prior to an event, the Gold Commander will ensure that officers who are to be deployed on the event are provided with detailed briefings, the potential risks and hazards, and the tactics and strategies that will be employed to manage it. These briefings will explain the objectives of the operation, the challenges involved, and the desired mindset and approach to be taken. The briefing might also include  Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary – which is what it was called at the time of the report. It was merged with the Fire Service Inspectorate in 2017 and named (as already mentioned before) HMICFRS. The name of the latter has changed to His Majesty’s since Queen Elizabeth died and King Charles ascended the throne. 1

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practical guidance and advice for officers, as well as any specific instructions that need to be followed. This will ensure that officers are well-informed and prepared for the event. The Gold Commander will maintain clear and effective communication with Silver and thus all officers under their command throughout the event. This will help to ensure that officers are aware of any changes to the strategy and that they understand the reasons behind any decisions that are made. They might communicate directly with officers, either in person or through technology, to reinforce the desired mindset and approach. This might involve providing encouragement, guidance, or correction as needed. The Gold Commander will provide effective leadership to Silver and thus all officers under their command, demonstrating confidence, authority, and decisiveness. This will help to instil a sense of purpose and motivation among officers and ensure that they are focused on the task at hand. They should be available to provide support and guidance to officers as needed, including advice on how to handle difficult or complex situations. The commander should also be available to answer questions and provide clarification on the objectives of the operation by monitoring the situation throughout the event to ensure that officers are safe and that the operation is progressing according to plan. If any issues or risks arise, the commander should take appropriate action to address them. By ensuring that those deployed on an event have received appropriate training, briefings, communication, leadership, and support, the Gold Commander can help to develop a sense of confidence, professionalism, and purpose among officers, ensuring that they are able to carry out their duties effectively and safely.

5 Operationalising the Strategy On any event, there is only one Gold police commander and one Silver police commander to ensure accountability. The Gold Commander owns and is accountable for the gold strategy. They are accountable for its contents and any action taken in response to a specific threat and must ensure that their strategy is operationalised in the way in which they intend. While previous, similar incidents may provide a list of objectives that can be referred to when developing a gold strategy, each operation is unique and, as such, should have its own strategy. This will involve a range of activities that are aimed at ensuring the safety and security of the public, police officers, and property during a public order event. • Risk Assessment—in the planning stages before an event, the Gold Commander will conduct a risk assessment to identify potential risks and hazards associated with the event. This assessment will consider a range of factors, including the nature of the event, the location, the likely attendance, and the history of previous events. This is a continual process as the planning develops.

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• Resource Allocation—once the risks have been identified, the Gold will agree resources such as personnel, equipment, and vehicles to the event. They will also establish the number and type of police officers required, and the positioning of officers and resources to manage the event. • Communication—Gold will maintain communication with the Silver police commander, partner agencies, and event organisers to coordinate efforts and ensure that everyone is aware of the strategy and tactics being employed. • Tactical Coordination—as part of the planning, Gold will review and discuss the proposed tactics and the policing plan for the event with the Silver POPS Commander. The plan will be agreed by Gold as long as it meets the strategic aims and objectives as set out by the Gold Commander. During the event, Silver will coordinate the tactical response of the police officers under their command. This may involve directing officers to specific locations, deploying tactical resources such as dogs or horses, and communicating with officers on the ground to monitor the situation and respond to any incidents that occur. Gold will have agreed tactical parameters with their Silver Commander as part of the planning. If there is any deviation, a discussion will take place, unless it is time critical or there is a threat to life. • Contingency Planning—Gold will have contingency plans in place in case of unforeseen circumstances or emergencies. These plans may include responses to incidents such as injuries, medical emergencies, or disturbances, and the Gold will be responsible for coordinating the response to these events. The purpose of a strategy is to establish an agreed set of objectives, determined by knowledge of the situation, as a result of analysing the risks presented. Ongoing threat assessment and analysis must be considered, and the strategy should be capable of revision. The examples that follow are based on events that the author was involved in during their police career.

5.1 Example: Operationalising the Overall Objective and Protocols Gold commanders must document their decision-making and direction and some should include specifics on outcomes and command protocols. Outcomes My preferred outcome is that the need for police intervention is kept to an absolute minimum and that any protest event takes place with minimum impact. An acceptable outcome would be limited levels of anti-social behaviour (ASB) with some, isolated, incidents of low-level crime and disorder which is promptly dealt with by police, provided it is proportionate and does not impede the safe working environment for workplaces that are targeted such as petrol stations, oil refineries and terminals. An unacceptable outcome would be if we experienced a security threat or that there is widespread or serious disorder and other serious criminality. In addition, I will not consider

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it appropriate if serious disorder/criminality/security breaches do take place and there is a perceived lack of action/intervention by police. Command Protocols The Command Structure will consist of a single pan-London2 Silver POPS commander who is the ultimate tactical decision maker, responsible for the event, supported by Bronze POPS commanders as required by Silver. All POPS commanders deployed on this event will be operationally, occupationally competent be accredited to deploy at the time of planning. The resourcing plan will be kept under review. Silver Tactical Plan to be approved by Gold prior to event.

5.2 Example and Case Study: Operationalising the Mindset Gold commanders will set the policing style and tone for the operation, and this will be included in the strategic documents. All officers deployed on that event or operation will be expected to understand the directions. We will be approachable and accessible; impartial and fair; and ever mindful of the need to maintain the confidence and legitimacy of policing in the minds of the public to retain their consent. Communication We will, where possible, demonstrate a “no surprises” approach by engaging with communities, groups, event organisers, and other relevant parties in order to build trust and confidence. We will be assertive in our policing style seeking to prevent victim-based criminality, ASB, and disorder by positively engaging with the public before incidents escalate. We will seek to use plain and unambiguous language. We will seek, where appropriate, to utilise all opportunities to explain police activity. Proportionality Planning will be based on information and intelligence and Police powers will only be used appropriately and proportionately. Commanders will consider the implications of any “use of force” and develop plans utilising only the minimum of force. All commanders will be able to demonstrate consideration and application of relevant human rights principles. Legal considerations This plan has been developed based upon the NPCC Authorised Professional Practice— Operations and makes use of the National Decision-Making Model. I will ensure that the strategy, tactical plan, and police actions are compliant with the Human Rights Act 1998 and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The police response to any incident will be fair and necessary, balancing the needs of the local community and the rights of all persons involved in the event. All powers and policies will be considered to ensure an appropriate police response. Selecting the most appropriate power or policy will enable the plan to be developed to address the threat in an appropriate manner and ensures accountability by demonstrating the decision-making rationale behind the action or inaction. Any use of force will be documented by the individual officer and in the relevant circumstances the officer directing its use. Any use of force will be proportionate and only to

 This is a specific example taken from the author’s work; however, this should be the same elsewhere. Command protocols should provide commanders and deployed officers with an understanding of what they are required to do. 2

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the extent necessary in the circumstances to achieve a legitimate purpose permitted by law, such as self-defence, defence of another, to prevent crime or to affect a lawful arrest, and to keep the Queen’s peace. All police officers have an individual responsibility for ensuring that they are properly informed about the extent of their legal powers, and it is my responsibility to ensure that they understand the context within which these powers can be exercised during this event.

Case Study: Operationalising the Mindset In Autumn 2021 “Insulate Britain”, a splinter group of Extinction Rebellion, disrupted the motorway network, using coordinated non-violent direct action, obstructing the traffic by using sit-down protests, banner blockades, and superglue lock-ons. The activity started on the M25, the motorway which circles London and the activity affected six police forces and lasted for about 6 months. The public response became increasingly hostile with media footage from various actions showing drivers voicing their frustrations at protestors and pleading with them to move. In some cases, affected drivers and members of the public forcibly removed protesters from the road, spraying ink in protesters faces and playing music close to their ears. The Gold Commander’s strategy would have included directions, which would include a rationale explaining the direction, similar to this: Provide a proportionate policing response to protest, balancing the needs and rights of protesters with those impacted by the protest. • The use of police powers, both from legislation and from common law, will be considered in accordance with the obligations and responsibilities placed on us by the Human Rights Act 1998—in particular Article 2, the right to life; Article 3, prohibition on torture and inhuman treatment; Article 5, the right to liberty; Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life; and Articles 9, 10, and 11, freedom of religion, expression, and peaceful assembly; and Article 14, prohibition of discrimination. • We will endeavour to establish and maintain effective communication with protester groups whilst developing and implementing a police response. • In exercising our powers we will be mindful of the specific needs of individuals and where possible we will adapt our actions to account for those needs (e.g. young people, those with disabilities, and other vulnerable persons). We will use a graduated response to exercising our use of powers where possible. • In all dealings with protesters police will endeavour, where appropriate, to explain all tactics beforehand to maximise the understanding of the policing approach. • Any force used will be proportionate and only to the extent reasonably necessary to achieve a legitimate purpose. The use of force, or decisions regarding the use of force, will be documented comprehensively in decision logs or notebooks, together with a record of relevant communication with individuals or groups.

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5.3 Case Study: Operationalising Community Engagement “Just Stop Oil” (JSO) is an environmental protest group which describes itself as a confrontational attempt to stop the gas and oil industry. They use the term oil as a reference to fossil fuels. Their key demand is not new oil and that the UK government makes a statement that it will immediately halt all future licensing and consents for the exploration, development, and production of fossil fuels. JSO perpetuates the ideology of non-violent civil resistance as their method of protest. During the Spring of 2022 JSO conducted a series of protests at high-profile events including the British Academy Film Awards 2022 at the Royal Albert Hall, Emirates Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Molineux Stadium, and Goodison Park. The action spread to national protest action and obstructed multiple petro-chemical fuel terminals nationwide. JSO protestors glued themselves onto access roads and fuel tankers attempting to enter or depart oil terminals. Low-level lock on equipment was used to frustrate removal teams. A number of “at height” protest actions took place by protestors climbing onto fuel tankers and bonding on using superglue. Fuel tanker tyres were deflated and trailers removed from the cab to further aid the blockade of site entrances. Community engagement needs to be as wide as possible to ensure that the policing operation maintains public trust. The Gold Commander’s strategy would include strategic direction for the officers deployed on this event to: Enhance public and stakeholder confidence and community cohesion. • Our Met Direction states our ambition to be the most trusted police service in the world and that this trust and respect must be earned. • Building public confidence is one of the identified “success factors” identified in our Met Direction and, as such, must be considered one of the success factors of this policing operation. • Every interaction with the public is an opportunity to build trust and confidence in policing and this should be central to the tone and style of our interactions throughout this operation. • Where appropriate, Community and Equality Impact Assessments should be considered by the Silver Commander to permit this operation to be delivered in a manner that enhances confidence in the Metropolitan Police Service.

5.4 Case Study: Operationalising a Multi-agency Approach Football is a multi-million-pound business and in London there are thirteen professional clubs who participate in the English Premier League (EPL), the English Football League (EFL) Championship, the EFL League 1, and the EFL League 2. Additionally, there are four other clubs in the National League that attract a policing presence and England’s national stadium at Wembley. This means that there are

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hundreds of matches every season and policing plans are collaborative, using existing partnership arrangements with local authorities and the clubs. To ensure that each agency, responsible for their own response, works in a coordinated way, a Gold Commander strategic intentions could include directions to the police command team along the lines of: • To contribute to public safety by providing appropriate advice to the Local Authority issuing the safety certificate—through Safety Advisory Group3 planning processes. • To provide advice and guidance to licensees and where appropriate, utilise relevant licensing legislation to minimise crime and anti-social behaviour. • To provide relevant security advice commensurate to the threat level and ensure that where relevant any terrorism threat is considered by the Safety Advisory Group. • To provide advice and guidance to football clubs regarding the implementation of their traffic management plan, with a view to minimising the disruption to local communities or minimising the impact of that disruption.

6 Conclusion The Gold Commander has the ultimate accountability and responsibility for the policing of the operation or event. Ensuring that all officers deployed to any public order event understand the strategic direction is challenging. It is not rank specific, and it is essential that everyone involved in the police response clearly understands what they are required to do, how they are required to do it and when. Actions and decisions will be scrutinised post event and potentially in the future, so it is key that debriefing is completed and lessons are learned. This is what will influence Gold commanders in future events or incidents. Public order public safety policing in the United Kingdom is based on the principles of consent, legal framework, a variety of professional guidance documents, comprehensive training, and public confidence. How Gold commanders deliver their strategy is dependent on the individual and there is a flexibility of approach to respond to the specifics of an event or incident. Not every event concludes without incident or follows the strategy and tactical plan entirely. Some learning arises following every event. It is important that policing plans are reviewed post event through a reflection process so that strategies and tactics evolve. Peer review is helpful to work through any lessons learned which can

 Safety Advisory Groups provide a forum for discussing and advising on public safety at an event. They aim to help organisers with the planning and management of an event and to encourage cooperation and coordination between all relevant agencies. Co-ordinated by the relevant Local Authority they are made up of representatives from the LA, emergency services, other relevant bodies, and the event organiser. 3

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be incorporated into future development and training. The current College of Policing Authorised Professional Practice on Public Order has been reviewed and updated and will be published in the summer of 2023. Under the leadership of the National Police Chief’s Council (NPCC) lead for Public Order Public Safety, significant consultation has taken place to inform the new guidance. This is a strength of this area of policing in the United Kingdom, that practitioners are willing to learn from others’ experiences to improve.

References Civil Contingencies Act 2004, c.36. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/36/ contents College of Policing. (2013). Authorised professional practice engagement and communication. Available at https://www.college.police.uk/app/engagement-­and-­communication/engagement College of Policing. (2018). Authorised professional practice operations. Available at: https://www.college.police.uk/app/operations/command-­and-­control/ definitions-­and-­procedures#command-­protocols College of Policing. (2020a). National Police Public Order Training Curriculum (NPPOTC). Available at: https://assets.college.police.uk/s3fs-­public/PL-­A-­107-­NPPOTC-­v3-­1.pdf College of Policing. (2020b). Policing education qualifications framework. Available at: https:// www.college.police.uk/career-­learning/policing-­education-­qualifications-­framework-­peqf College of Policing. (2022). Authorised professional practice public order. Available at: https:// www.college.police.uk/app/public-­order EIF, Events Industry Forum. (2015). The purple guide: Health, safety and welfare at music and other events. Available at: https://www.thepurpleguide.co.uk/. Fleming, J., & Brown, J. (2023). From Easter eggs to anti-Police sentiment: Maintaining a balance in policing during the three pandemic lockdowns in England and Wales. Administrative Sciences, 13(14), 14. https://doi.org/10.3390/admsci13010014 Gest, T. (2022). British Police face up to a ‘Legitimacy’ challenge  - the crime report. The crime report Available from: https://thecrimereport.org/2021/04/29/ british-­police-­face-­up-­to-­a-­legitimacy-­challenge/. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary. (2009). Adapting to Protest – Nurturing the British Policing Model. Available at: https://library.college.police.uk/docs/hmic/adapting-­to-­protest-­ british-­model.pdf HMICFRS, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services. (2021). HMIC Peel Inspections. Available from: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/ peel-­assessments/what-­is-­peel HMICFRS, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services. (2017). PEEL: Police Legitimacy 2017. Available from: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/wp-­content/uploads/peel-­police-­legitimacy-­2017-­1.pdf HMICFRS, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services. (2020). Getting the balance right? An inspection of how effectively the police deal with protests. Available at: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/wp-­content/uploads/getting-­the-­ balance-­right-­an-­inspection-­of-­how-­effectively-­the-­police-­deal-­with-­protests.pdf. Home Office. (2012). Definition of Policing by consent. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/ government/publications/policing-­by-­consent/definition-­of-­policing-­by-­consent Home Office. (2023). Public order bill: factsheet. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-­o rder-­b ill-­o verarching-­d ocuments/public-­o rder-­b ill-­

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factsheet#:~:text=The%20Public%20Order%20Bill%20builds,intentionally%20or%20 recklessly%20causing%20public. Human Rights Act 1998, c.42. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/ contents Morrell, K., & Brammer, S. (2016). Governance and virtue: The case of public order policing. Journal of Business Ethics, 136(2), 385–398. Available at: https://eds.s.ebscohost.com/eds/ pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=4990a6a7-­266d-­44ce-­aa58-­ffb0fb1c78fd%40redis National Policing Improvement Agency. (2010). Manual of guidance on keeping the peace. Available at: https://www.statewatch.org/media/documents/news/2012/jan/uk-­manual-­public-­ order-­2010.pdf ONS, Office for National Statistics. (2021). Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimates of personal and household crime, anti-social behaviour, and public perceptions, by police force area, year ending March 2020. Available from: https://www.ons.gov.uk/ peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/adhocs/12032crimesurveyforenglandandwalescsewestimatesofpersonalandhouseholdcrimeantisocialbehaviourandpublicpercept ionsbypoliceforceareayearendingmarch2020 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2021, c.32. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ ukpga/2022/32/contents/enacted Policing and Crime Act 2017, c.3. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2017/3/ contents/enacted Public Order Act 1936, c.6. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Edw8and1Geo6/1/6/ contents Public Order Act 1986, c.64. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64/ introduction Public Order Act 2023, c15. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/15/ contents/enacted R v Howell [1982] QB 416; [1981] 3 All ER 383. SGS, Sports Grounds Safety Authority. (2018). The Guide to Safety at Sports Grounds. 6th Ed. Available at: https://sgsa.org.uk/greenguide/ UK Parliament. (2008). Home Affairs Select Committee - Expectations of the police. Available from: https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmhaff/364/36406.htm UK Parliament. (2023). Overview of the Metropolitan Police. Available at: https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-­h eritage/transformingsociety/laworder/policeprisons/overview/ metropolitanpolice/ Unlawful Drilling Act 1819, c.1. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/ Geo3and1Geo4/60/1/contents YouGov. (2022). Confidence in the police sinks in two years. Available from: https://yougov.co.uk/ topics/politics/articles-­reports/2022/03/15/confidence-­police-­sinks-­two-­years Claire Clark  is a former Chief Superintendent who served in the Metropolitan Police Service for 31 years, retiring in October 2022. Claire joined the Metropolitan Police Service in September 1991 after a BA (Hons) in English and Sociology. For the first 11 years of her service, as a constable and sergeant, she worked on emergency response teams, gaining skills as a response driver, public order officer, public order loggist and Police Support Unit (PSU) commander, specialist sexual offences investigator, and officer safety instructor. As an inspector she had several leadership roles including responsibility for custody, volume crime investigations, neighbourhood policing at Notting Hill, and the borough taskforce. She continued her public order event policing on promotion to Chief Inspector by becoming public order command trained and spending a significant number of weekends at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. As a Superintendent she completed the Senior Investigating Officer course and led the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Northwest London. Prior to retirement Claire was the head of the department responsible for the planning the police response for all

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public order events in London which included protest, sporting events, festivals, concerts, and ceremonial events. She was one of the most experienced Public Order Commanders in London and was also a Multi-Agency Gold Incident Commander and a tactical CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) commander. She holds a master’s degree in leadership and management and is a Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute.

Specialized Public Order Units: Integrating a Community Policing Mindset Bernd Bürger

Abstract  This chapter shows how the Unterstützungskommandos (USK), full-­ time public order units specializing in evidence gathering and arrests during assemblies, have evolved over recent decades. The events that triggered and accompanied these developments are described. The chapter also explains how community-­ focused policing became an organizational goal, and how it served as the foundation for operational tactics, as well as personnel selection, development, and training.

1 Introduction Evidence and Arrest Units (BFHu/BFE)1 or Support Commands (USK)2 are well-­ known police units within Germany—at least among protestors and the media. These are full-time public order units, with around 150 officers.3 For many in Germany, hearing the names of these units does not elicit images of competence in conflict resolution through communication, but rather the image of well-trained,  German police vocabulary as well as any citations were translated by the author.  Designation of the Bavarian Police for Evidence and Arresting units. These are called Beweissicherungs- und Festnahmehundertschaften (BFHu) when refering to a company or Beweissicherungs- und Festnahmeeinheiten (BFE) when refering to a platoon in Germany. Just the police in Bavaria uses a different name, Unterstützungskommando (USK) when refering to a company or USK-Einheit or USK-Zug when refering to a platoon. 3  The structure of these units (company): Commander, Executive Officer, Command Post Team, Central Evidence Team (with high-resolution video and photo), report quality management team, reconnaissance and observation group (plain-clothes officers), and three platoons (each around 40 officers: one platoon leader, one executive officer, three regular groups, and one evidence team with high-resolution photo and video). 1 2

B. Bürger (*) Institute for Further Education of the Bavarian Police, Ainring, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; https://publicorderpolicing.com © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_12

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hulking police officers who are ready for any challenge. For many, mentioning these units invokes mental images of a masculine warrior subgroup of the “Cop Culture” (Behr, 2008). This image remains widespread among activists today, for example: “#usk #thadenstrasse Don’t underestimate! Helmets are already on. If they all take a step back together, run! #NoG20” (https://twitter.com/Die_Primel/status/882321650221539328; all translations by the author). “USK is simply a state-legitimized beating troop, which is known for police violence, acting from anonymity, escalation & provocation. Next to the BFE from Blumberg & the 31/32 EHu from Berlin by far the most disgusting, what the executive branch of government has to offer” (https://twitter.com/luj_su/status/1309842046501433344).

Perceptions of these units’ aggressive reputation extend beyond the public, stubbornly persisting within German police agencies. This is unsurprising, given the long history of forceful public order approaches by these units in the first several years when they were founded (1987). However, decades have passed and these units have evolved. Lessons learned have aligned unit actions with community expectations of professional policing. This chapter helps trace the units’ development since their inception, using the Bavarian USK as an example, and evaluates their conflict resolution capabilities, including the use of cooperative, communicative, and innovative approaches.

2 Review on Organizational Culture The federal republic of Germany has had full-time public order units (structured as groups/platoons/companies) almost since its foundation in 1949. In the 1980s, German police faced new public order policing challenges. During numerous protests against issues such as nuclear power plants and NATO’s rearmament, some individuals took advantage of otherwise peaceful protests to engage in criminal acts. Usually masked and dressed in black, the term “black bloc” was coined to describe these new criminal actors and their tactics. Two distinct challenges emerged. First, police were tasked with arresting only the criminals, without causing undue harm within the larger crowd. Second, police were forced to develop the skills needed to gather court-admissible criminal evidence concerning hooded, identically clad people acting within a chaotic protest. After two police officers were shot during a 1987 demonstration at Runway West in Frankfurt am Main, it was decided at the Conference of Interior Ministers (for more information on the German Police System and Public Order Units cf. Bürger & Thielmann, 2024) to counter increasing protest violence by establishing specialized police units. Shortly thereafter, most German states established Evidence and Arrest Units,4 known as the Unterstützungskommando (USK) in Bavaria. The  In 2019, North Rhine-Westphalia became the last state to introduce BF units (https://rp-online.de/ nrw/panorama/beweissicherungs-und-festnahmeeinheit-bfe-erste-polizei-spezialeinheit-aus-nrwnimmt-dienst-in-bochum-auf_aid-36522791). 4

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Bavarian State Police established two USK units (abbreviated as USK BP). One unit was in north Bavaria, with three platoons (each about 40 officers) located in Nuremberg and another platoon in Würzburg. The other unit was established in south Bavaria in Dachau, with three platoons.5 The USK were tasked with the following: “In operations, the USK are responsible for making conclusive arrests at hot spots of unpeaceful events, for escorting, controlling, separating and taking care of violent groups, and for supporting police forces that are under pressure or under attack” (Präsidium der Bayer. Bereitschaftspolizei, 2004, p.  1). Officers with exceptional physical and mental capabilities are specially selected to achieve these goals. These officers receive specialized training (e.g., initial USK BP training lasts six months) and ongoing training during their tenure with the unit (e.g., 30% of duty time dedicated to mission specific training). Early on, likely because of the events that prompted their establishment, the units focused on containing violence, and arrests were a byproduct rather than a priority (cf. e.g. Behr, 2000, 2006; Uschold 2012  - not published; Polizeipräsidium Mittelfranken 2017; KGGP 2017; Schneider 2019 - not published). The units’ intervention tactics were strictly focused on controlling gatherings, garnering the reputation of being “thug squads” (cf. e.g. DER SPIEGEL, 1988; Plarre, 1989; Siegler, 1989; Wimmer, 2010, 2011). Units consisted predominantly of men (cf. Stoll, 2010), and Behr (2000) describes the prevailing culture as one of warrior masculinity or “violent masculinity” (ibid. p. 92). Behr argues that they do not use language as an opportunity to prevent violence (e.g., calm someone down), but see it as a necessary evil, since one is obeyed by law to announce any use of force before one is allowed to “follow through” with it (ibid.). Over time, USKs professionalized and increased their capacity for evidence-­ based arrests, even if these arrests still often involved unprofessional, albeit legal, force (see Ellinghaus 1998). Over time, a  “code of honor” to avoid unnecessary entanglements and escalating conflicts developed (Behr, 2006, p. 145). Direct communication with potential agitators played an increasingly important role, as it helped officers to avoid unnecessary use of force and, in turn, became an essential aspect of their protest management strategy (cf. Bürger, 2010, esp. pp.  28, 29, 95 ff.). Continual USK professionalization was prioritized. The ability to control violent situations remained a core USK competency, but the traditional goal of situational domination faded. Instead, units focused on targeted and video-recorded arrests. Continual professionalization also led to the development of unique USK BP arrest techniques. Prowess in martial arts, exemplified by abilities like punching through numerous wooden boards and various judo throws, was previously emphasized, but did not help officers to perform necessary acts, like quickly seizing someone from a  USK units were also established within the Munich police and in Middle Franconia, but they are exclusively operationalized by the local police authorities (Munich and Middle Franconia). The USK BP are a part of the Bavarian Central Service Police and are being deployed all over Bavaria and even other states, if requested by the responsible police department. 5

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crowd. The USK BP developed a new arrest tactic, called “Tactical Communication and Arrest,” based on martial arts techniques designed for being applied by two persons. Specifically designed for two-officer teams, it emphasizes communication with the arrested person and focuses on getting them away from scene as fast as possible. The entire Bavarian police force, including patrol officers, now receive basic and advanced training on the core elements of this tactic. Following the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, authorities faced new challenges, including finding ways to close tactical gaps between patrol and S.W.A.T. units. In Germany, the Federal Police were the first to equip and train parts of its BFE for this task, and designated these units as BFE+.6 Many federal states followed suit, also Bavaria (but without changing the name of the units by adding a “+”). However, with that development, the unit leadership faced dual challenges: gaining buy-in for adopting the new tactics and dealing with new and conflicting self-images. At the time, unit officers already had to balance the capabilities to employ a friendly community-­focused approach at (still) peaceful gatherings, to do precise arrests in high-intense situations and being the “last resort” when riot occurred. With this new era, they had to balance in a new task (coming with an additional self-image): they were highly trained and equipped with heavy ballistic protection armor, balaclavas, and assault rifles to support S.W.A.T or being a qualified first responder in case of any armed conflict, terroristic attacks, etc.7

3 Community Policing as the Starting Point for Change Processes The USK regularly experienced public criticism of their unsophisticated intervention techniques to uphold law and order in tumultuous environments and were repeatedly referred to as “thugs” or “whipping boys” (Siegler, 1989, p. 9; Wimmer, 2011). The courts also criticized the USK’s rudimentary and indiscriminate tactics. For example, the “Munich Kessel” (or “Munich Kettle”) involved police detention of a large crowd and almost 500 arrests, but none were convicted in court (Görl, 2015). Subsequently, police faced increased pressure from elected officials and the public to improve USK techniques. Demands were made for graduated, contextually appropriate, and differentiated intervention tactics, as well as increased communication with “troublemakers.” In addition, “community policing” became an overall organizational goal for police. Understanding the significance of community policing (or “community orientation,” which is the literal translation of the German phrase) in the USK’s work

 https://www.bundespolizei.de/Web/DE/05Die-Bundespolizei/04Einsatzkraefte/02_ Bundesbereitschaftspolizei/Bundesbereitschaftspolizei_node.html 7  This equipment is not being used within public order events, unless there is a distinct threat, which almost never is the case. 6

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requires a close examination of the term. It originated in the 1990s with the introduction of the “New Control Model,”8 a modernized public administration management approach. Community policing was considered essential to modern public administration, which mandated that administration actions be assessed from the community’s perspective. In essence, it discarded authoritarian ideas and introduced the image of government as a service provider, characterized by cooperation, transparency, and friendly interaction. Citizens are no longer perceived as objects subject to government regulation, but act, ideally, as willing contributors to administration processes (Tillmann, 2020a, 2020b). Community policing requires the same police management approach. All of society is responsible for public safety, including those who report crimes. Consequently, effective police work requires community trust, which increases when positive police–public interactions are intentionally fostered (cf. Frevel 2022). A citizen orientation favors persuasion over issuing commands based on state power. Traditionally authoritative police faced enormous challenges in implementing this philosophy. Feltes (2014) regards this as a major paradigm shift, since the community is considered a partner and no longer as an adversary. The approach does not require police to become a toothless institution. Rather, the goal involves attempts to influence community partners through communication and by appealing to mutual benefit, resorting to the use of state authority only if reason and persuasion fail. Incidentally, this approach aligns with the German legal principle of proportionality, which requires all state actors to consistently choose the least intrusive means to obtain a lawful objective. Community policing plays a prominent role in USK/BFE responsibilities, especially in the context of assemblies or crowds. Its origins lie in legal doctrine established by the Federal Constitutional Court’s “Brokdorf ruling” (cf. BVerfGE 69, 315 of 14.05.1985), which can be described as the “Magna Carta” of Germany’s freedom of assembly. This ruling remains central to current assembly policing and has long influenced police operational philosophy. The ruling’s essential guiding principles support community policing concepts and include the following tenets: –– –– –– –– –– ––

Facilitation of assemblies and community-oriented procedures. Cooperation with organizers and participants. Willingness to engage in dialog through early trust-building interactions. Efforts to de-escalate and prevent confrontations. Differentiation between peaceful and nonpeaceful participants. Isolating and actively targeting violent offenders to facilitate peaceful protests.

It is remarkable that the constitutional judges, based on a keen understanding of democracy and law, rendered their decision in 1985, and their arguments closely preceded advancements in psychological theories that influenced crowd policing tactics. The Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM; Reicher 1987, 2011; Bürger, 2024), an evidence-based explanation of human behavior in crowd settings,

 Equivalent to “New Public Management” in German-speaking countries.

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describes how the police–crowd relationship influences the trajectory of assemblies during critical events. Briefly, larger crowds consist of different subgroups with different social identities (e.g., in Germany, Green Youth, BUND, Die Linke, Jusos, SPD). These groups are differentially predisposed to violence and are guided by different values. These differences influence which means are deemed legitimate for achieving group goals. For these individual groups to unite and form a common social identity, a key transformation is required. When a decisive event or the accumulation of several smaller actions leads the groups to feel unjustifiably restricted, they form a larger common social identify. This allows diverse groups to form similar perceptions and work together to pursue a common goal, often against an opposing party (e.g., the police). Development of a shared social identity can occur if people perceive that “the authoritarian police” are prohibiting the exercise of their fundamental rights. A wide variety of measures prevent this solidarization, as confirmed by ESIM research and field observations. Effective anti-solidarization measures reflect the fundamental principles of community policing and can be illustrated by three specific ESIM-based objectives. First, police should always attempt to support participants’ legitimate interests. For example, police could quickly and violently clear people blocking a street to protest a “right-wing” march. Alternately, police could stop the march, communicate with the people in the road, and individually and calmly clear them from the roadway. Lastly, the police could reroute the march, preventing perceptions of delegitimization of or infringement upon counterprotesters’ free speech. Carefully considering and weighing different interests and the fundamental rights of all groups and, ideally, finding cooperative solutions is not only practical, but also reflects community policing in its purest form. Reicher (2011) argues that police movement from strategies that frustrate to those that facilitate demonstrations is key to successfully policing assemblies. Second, establishing positive relationships with participants requires constant and authentic efforts to counter negative police stereotypes and humanize officers. These efforts can be quite simple in practice. By being friendly, helpful, and willing to converse, officers are more likely to be recognized as a person underneath the uniform. Small gestures including a smile, a wink, appearing approachable, and being polite are also impactful. Nonverbal signals, if authentic, also elicit positive emotions towards police. Feigned gestures are not effective tactics. Officer expressions must be based on a deeply rooted, internalized self-image. Some police officers might want to exercise power associated with the uniform, but it is far more common that officers adopt an authoritarian role to cover their uncertainty or to follow some (false!) role models. Officers seeking to exercise power associated with their position of authority should never work for a USK, all other officers are welcome as long as they are willing to learn and internalize a community-oriented role which emphasizes communication over authority. Third, if intervention is necessary, actions taken against the assembly, its parts, or individual participants must be as targeted and precise as possible. The specificity of an intervention’s application must be the primary consideration in any decision to employ it. Whenever feasible, police intervention should first be announced to

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those concerned and, especially, to those nearby that are not targets of the intervention. Clear explanations of police action make misinterpretation or reinterpretations less likely, significantly reducing the danger of solidarity. If not tactically possible, explanations can be communicated during the intervention or, at the latest, immediately afterwards. These ESIM-based examples (for more examples, cf. Bürger, 2024; Herold & Bürger, 2024) and their parallels to community policing principles illustrate the importance of this approach to USK/BFE performance. Reicher (2011) describes mutual trust between police and the crowd as a catalyst for positive event trajectories. Officers must know and understand ESIM and community policing principles to recognize their effect on the course events. While USK/BFE units were established as the “last resort” for maintaining order during crowd events and must master advanced tactical intervention skills, most situations can be safely resolved using community policing approaches. Accordingly, units should understand, internalize, actively practice, and adopt community policing as a basic professional mindset.

4 Anchoring the Elements of the ESIM in USK Units The merits of an ESIM and community-focused approach are clear. The USK units evolved as necessary changes to units’ philosophy and tactics were addressed by various generations of commanders. The following offers examples of this process as it occurred within the USK BP.

4.1 Goal Setting and Strategy Development Increased professionalization has always been the USK’s fundamental organizational development goal. The motto “whoever has stopped wanting to become better has stopped being good” is ingrained in officers during the units’ six-month full-­ time basic training. However, to achieve professionalism, it must be defined. For USK/BFE tactics, professionalism can, theoretically, be both a quick and decisive arrest and a delayed, discrete arrest involving drawn out, covert offender observations. Leadership must promote this mindset amongst unit members to elevate professionalism. Early on, USK units embraced forceful interventions as their goal, but the units’ expectations changed as the government and police embraced community policing. Although not an explicit USK responsibility, engaging in noncritical policing activities during assemblies allowed the officers to witness first-­ hand the calming impact of communication, precise action, and active officer engagement on the course events. Nevertheless, leadership must also ensure that officers master the skills needed to alternate between friendly, patient, and community-­oriented police officers and well-trained, determined fighters. This is a challenging task requiring skillful response. Clear communication of community

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policing goals and values that achieves officer buy-in is needed to change and reinforce effective mindsets. Only then can officers consistently act with conviction, even when facing high-stress situations.

4.2 Practical Implementation: Further Development of the Self-Image In 2015, the ethos “The USK as a de-escalation unit” was introduced to the USK BP by two command leaders seeking to help officers achieve a citizen-oriented mindset. This guiding principle is taught and integrated into tactical responses during the officers’ six-month basic training. The principle is based on three pillars first described by Uschold in 2012.9 The first pillar is prevention (“de-escalation through mere presence”), and it is argued that escalation can be prevented by the presence of the special units alone and through reconnaissance-driven deployment to possible hot spots. It is important that these units are visually recognizable, although it is questionable whether inexperienced assembly participants can identify special units based solely on nonverbal signals like a united, disciplined appearance. While alternative uniform colors would improve distinguishability from other units and more clearly signal a change in police threat assessment and posture, the mere presence of police officers in strategic locations can reduce escalation risks (cf. Herold & Bürger, 2024). The second pillar is “de-escalation through prosecution.” This includes the de-­ escalating impact of “general deterrence,” meaning that potential offenders are deterred from crime by witnessing the arrest, conviction, and sentencing of others. This pillar also includes de-escalation achieved by arresting ringleaders. Communication with all persons, including those affected and bystanders, and a differentiated approach that only targets criminals and avoids collateral impact to bystanders are critical to the successful application of this pillar, as well as the third. The third pillar is “de-escalation by the restoration of order,” and involves dispersing offenders through large and united, but targeted and coordinated, action to contain an immediate violent outbreak. While calling this approach “de-escalation” may initially seem disingenuous, it is important to quickly stabilize the situation and allow units to again apply the first two pillars to reduce the potential for violence (for more details, cf. Bürger, 2024). Practical examples of the three pillars are presented to the new officers to provide context for understanding the guiding principle of “the USK as a de-escalation unit” and show how this principle can be reflected in tactics. The guiding principle is supported by the outcomes of the applied tactics, helping to further develop the unit’s understanding of this principle and support its ongoing practice.

 Cf. Uschold, 2012 - not published. Colonel Tobias Uschold was commanding officer of the USK Nuremberg from 2013 to 2019. 9

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In addition to conveying the image of the USK as a de-escalation unit, it is necessary to understand the impact of police actions in assemblies. A unit commander can simply ask their officers to unfold their arms and stop scowling, but explaining the power of nonverbal communication, the impact of a sincere smile versus a menacing scowl, leaders give meaning to the request. The goal is to encourage officers to actively model de-escalating behavior to support the unit’s claims of professionalism and to use force only when absolutely necessary. If officers understand and believe that friendly facial expressions can help avoid the need to use force, they are more likely to try. Leadership of USK units is challenging. Units must perform as decisive and tactically agile forces in high-risk situations, including during terrorist acts. Yet, they must master the principle of assembly de-escalation. Officers must be decisive and tactically agile: be able to keep a rioting and stone-throwing crowd in motion for several miles over burning barricades or arrest a ringleader in a riot using considerable physical force. Conversely, officers must be inspired to have casual conversations and smile at assembly participants regardless of ideology or cause. This represents a paradox of purpose, but it can succeed if officers are praised, not only after “battles” but for frequent de-escalation work, preventing violence by acting with foresight, making smart decisions, and having conversations. Commanders must define operational “success”; for example, when no arrests are needed in a challenging situation. This outcome may appear paradoxical, since the units, as their name suggests, are deployed precisely to make evidence-based arrests. Therefore, all USK/BFE officers, and especially veteran officers, must comprehend the criteria for success. Success is achieved when units work hard and smart in demanding situations (e.g., adjust deployments, communicate, announce or signal a use of force, use a differentiated approach, use situationally adapted interventions, engage in community policing) and still no arrests are made because officers blocked crime opportunities.10 Success under these conditions reflects the professionalism ethos of preventing violence by using ESIM techniques or community policing. Defining success this way is important. It makes clear why focusing on the community does not render police toothless or laissez-faire, but involves precise and challenging action. It is more demanding than using a zero-tolerance approach to resolve dangerous crowd situations. It requires a high degree of mental agility to consciously and continuously change roles and demeanor to suit the situation, uses a variety of tactical options, and contributes significantly to balancing action between the few intent on misconduct and the predominantly peaceful majority. Communication, cooperation, and enforcement are complementary, not conflicting. Such work epitomizes professional policing in crowds.

 However, celebration is unwarranted if the situation did not require the specialized units’ deployment to begin with (e.g., few, if any, disturbances were expected) or no special tactics were required due to overwhelming police presence, thus negating the need for the units’ more informed and nuanced approach. Highly experienced USK officers will not consider the absence of arrests a special achievement in these circumstances. 10

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ESIM in Practice: A Hypothetical Example A USK platoon accompanies an assembly march, during which officers are repeatedly attacked. The platoon stops the group, about 200 people, before they enter a restricted area. The USK commander addresses the participants over a police vehicle loudspeaker to explain the interruption, announces that some participants in the crowd will be arrested for criminal acts against officers, and asks to speak with a group leader. Some might argue that announcing impending arrests will encourage evasion and countermeasures, but this communication initiates an honest relationship and minimizes the potential for group unification against police. Two young men come forward. There is dialog with the USK commander about the announced arrests and how to handle the situation in general, and they return to their group. The group huddles in circles, there is discussion, and people start moving around, making identification of the offenders more difficult. Time passes, and the crowd must now be escorted back to their starting point. The USK commander discusses the situation with the two spokespersons and explains that, as participants march back, they must pass through a narrow area lined with police so that the offenders can be identified and arrested. Again, a discussion circle is formed, and the commander is told that the group has decided not to depart under those circumstances. What now? The participants can decide to stay. A legal review would invite challenges, but is unnecessary, because the commander decides, to participants’ applause, that they can leave unimpeded. A surrender? What the applauders may not have considered is that the de-escalation principle involving a positive mindset, cooperation, openness, and honesty does not equate to a laissez-faire approach. Indeed, a specialized evidence and arrest unit lives up to its name sometime later. At a convenient location, while transferring trains, the perpetrators are arrested. The group briefly becomes hostile and begins chanting, “lying police.” Using a megaphone, the commander reminds the crowd that he previously promised that the offenders would be arrested, and this is what has happened. Shortly after, the situation is calm again.

Police leaders should discuss how best to deploy USK units at the start of an assembly, particularly if disturbances are anticipated. Studies on policing assemblies and events universally recommend starting with a “low-profile” approach (Reicher 2011; Adang 2011; Stott 2011; Bürger, 2024; Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Behrendes & Bürger, 2024). This means that participants only or mainly see “normally” uniformed police officers. Initially, USK units should standby in an unobservable staging area. However, this approach has not been used widely across Germany. Assemblies are typically dominated by regular public order units, often wearing impact protection and carrying helmets, and USK/BFE units are visible. It is debatable whether officers clad in protective gear can present a “low profile,” but citizens, at least in Germany, are highly accustomed to seeing officers in riot gear. Still, officers can appear friendly in this attire. Some argue that the officers must always wear protective equipment due to the ever-present threat of violence. Yet, most assemblies remain peaceful, and commanders can quickly call in units with protective equipment or USK/BFE units if situations escalate, as is practiced in some European countries (cf. Stott 2011; Adang, 2011). Constantly hiding USK/BFE units to achieve a “low-profile” approach also poses risks. Officers’ can develop negative perceptions of assemblies and participants if they wait in a van and are “let off the chain” just before a situation escalates or used only to control a situation. Therefore, the standard de-escalation model practiced in

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Germany is undoubtedly advantageous for USK units’ development. Early and regular contacts with predominantly peaceful participants reinforce officers’ positive perspectives of assemblies. Moreover, opportunities to engage with people prior to an escalation offers useful intelligence and the chance to identify possible agitators and use smart, low-threshold interventions. And to obtain a “low profile,” one could consider some “out-of-the-box” tactical options, like deploying one platoon without any protection gear, having two others fully equipped out of sight but within reach, if some unforeseen unrest occurs.

4.3 Practical Implementation: Personnel Selection and Development Maintaining or deepening a unit’s de-escalation self-image requires a careful choosing of officers during personnel selection processes. Officers should already see themselves in this way as a “friend and helper,” and have the ability to be both decisive and differentiated in their decisions to use force. Officers should be introspective and able to deal with criticism since these are essential characteristics of a modern USK officer and a prerequisite for change, including continual professionalization. Selecting and developing leaders is also important. By virtue of their function, they shape the units’ self-image and organizational culture. Thus, leadership functions can only be entrusted to officers who believe strongly in professionalism and possess the necessary social and operational skills. They must also be introspective and demonstrate capacity for active and passive criticism. Leaders need specialized and intensive training, and the USK BP invests heavily in this. USK BP leadership training begins in the Central Psychological Service of the Bavarian Police. Officers are introduced to their new leadership role in two, one-­ week workshops. They collectively work through various problems and complete a “hard skills” module, in which leaders’ knowledge and tactical skills are developed using scenario-based learning. Two points are emphasized. First, leaders should never become physically involved in officers’ work, such as making arrests. Leaders instead conduct management and supervisory tasks, including situational assessments and observations of officer problem solving, and readjust and debrief personnel, if necessary. Second, leaders must provide constructive criticism to their officers and superiors to advance professionalization. Another two-day “soft skills” module covers expectations of unit commanders, including how to manage complex dynamics like “rituals and traditions,” the wearing of unauthorized squad or platoon patches, and other indicators of groupthink or mission-drift. These trainings and emphasis on an open, honest, and self-critical organizational culture promote a perpetual feedback process. Feedback ensures that organizational changes are based on common values and discussed constructively, making change more easily accepted amongst leaders, including new ones. This further develops the community policing

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mission and continually engrains and expands it within the units’ internal leadership philosophy.

4.4 Practical Implementation: Adaptation of Tactical Means Promoting citizen’s understanding of government and police actions is an important goal of community policing. Communication is essential to ensuring that people understand which actions are taken and why. The goal is to avoid misunderstandings and other dynamics leading to solidarity and, consequently, escalations. The USK’s “Tactical Communication and Arrest” tactic is an example of this type of communication. It is ideal for USK/BFE units because it is designed for coordinated two-officer interactions. It involves handholds used to bring a person under control and escort them out of sight as quickly as possible, using minimal (visible) use of force. Arrests conducted in this manner do not usually elicit crowd hostility. It appears less aggressive than other techniques and is rarely misunderstood or seen as “excess of force” by bystanders. However, this communication tactic only reaches the arrested persons and nearby observers; for people farther away, the tactic may not appear reasonable or justified. Accordingly, the action taken and supporting reasons should be communicated to the larger assembly using megaphones. Asking USK platoon leaders to carry and use a megaphone during operations can create tension. Arguably, tactical communication via megaphone should not be the USK’s responsibility as they conduct tactical work. This task should be given to specially trained tactical communication units, which are usually also in the field (cf. Schenk & Bornhausen, 2024). This argument makes sense in principle, but professionalism dictates that communication by megaphone should always accompany police use of force, regardless of the speaker. Evidence shows that tactical communication is still statistically highly effective even when carried out informally by a nontrained officer (Brandl & Bürger 2022). Thus, platoon leaders should carry megaphones, whether voluntarily persuaded by the evidence or compelled by direct orders, which are sometimes necessary to ensure units actions are “community oriented.”

4.5 Practical Implementation: Transparency to the Outside World—Demystifying the USK Community policing can be demanded or promoted in many ways. Two actions seem particularly effective in promoting the adoption of a community policing orientation. First, the community must know and understand what authorities, and particularly the USK, do. Past events have caused resentment among civil and

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political society towards the USK. Accordingly, the USK must be as open, transparent, honest, and authentic as possible to disprove the myth of being “blunt thugs.” It is important to show officers’ physical and intellectual abilities and, most importantly, convince the public that officers are normal people who reflect the community and represent all of society. This is exemplified by the biennial “Comparative Exercise of the Federal and States Evidence and Arrest Units,” which was first publicized by the media in Bremen in 2019.11 Video teams were permitted to interview BFE officers.12 Due to Covid-19 several times postponed, the 2023 exercise, which was hosted by the 2019 winner, the USK, was filmed by the Bavarian Television (BR).13 Moreover, the BR was allowed to accompany the USK Dachau and broadcasted a four-part series “Inside USK.”14 Another example is the official Instagram account of the Bavarian Police “Polizei Bayern Karriere” (Bavarian Police Career), where photos, videos, or stories are posted also by USK officers.15 The second action to promote community policing involves increasing direct communication and dialogue with outside stakeholders. For example, several USK officers, including the commanding officer, participated in a one-day event organized by the Bavarian Alliance for Tolerance called “Changing Perspectives” (cf. Becher & Bürger, 2022). People who had regular interactions with police, ranging from frequent assembly participants to fanatical soccer fans, took part. After various keynote speeches, officers and participants directly shared their own perspectives with each other.16 Police explained their role, officers shared their personal feelings about this role, and the community members shared their perspectives. The event was so successful that participants expressed interest in a further exchange, and USK officers signed up a Federal Agency for Civic Education training course on changing perspectives.17 Insights gained were incorporated into USK training, including lessons on the “structural-functional” and “communicative-cultural” conflicts inherent in the role of police at assemblies (Becher, 2019 as well as in Bürger, 2024).

 Cf. e.g. https://www.nwzonline.de/bremen/bremen-polizei-spezialeinheiten-ueben-fuerernstfall_a_50,5,292,157,293.html, https://www.bild.de/regional/bremen/bremen-aktuell/vergleichswettkampf-elitepolizei-trainiert-im-europahafen-62708666.bild.html 12  Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDm9eYCte0w, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=HdcksdaGScg 13  Cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94K6RA-OSrs 14  Cf. https://youtu.be/JuuIUqiWcRQ, https://youtu.be/zjHTshrjneg, https://youtu.be/jxbKxk7F9zc, https://youtu.be/GFWu1mTBD78 15  Cf. https://www.instagram.com/polizeibayernkarriere/, https://www.instagram.com/p/ CCGKftYFWEQ/, https://www.instagram.com/p/B_fDVulFx1d/ 16  Similar format of the same organizer cf. https://www.buendnis-toleranz.de/service/aktiv/veranstaltungen/172782/gemeinsam-fuer-demokratie-zivilgesellschaft-verwaltung-polizei-versucheines-perspektivwechsels 17  https://www.bpb.de/fortbildung-polizei 11

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Communication with elected politicians, who represent the citizens, is also important. Maintaining dialogue with pro-police representatives is essential,18 but exchanging opinions with more critical representatives can reduce mutual resentment. Katharina Schulze, the Green party parliamentary group leader in the Bavarian State Parliament, describes the result of such an exchange, which illustrates the great importance of openness and dialogue by USK units: The police unit with the deep blue overalls has a reputation for not being exactly squeamish about intervening [...]. At my meeting with the executives of the USK Dachau we had a very open discussion. Both sides did not leave out problems and points of contention. After an intensive four hours I can only say: I was very pleased to see how reflective the USK is with itself and its role. And I am glad to see how training and selection processes are developing in the context of current requirements and framework conditions[...]. USK executives pass on to their colleagues that a rough arrest of a demonstrator does not look good either on the street or on YouTube – and above all does not correspond to the self-image of USK units. Ju-Jutsu is no longer the tool of choice. Practice-oriented and graduated intervention as well as arrest techniques have been developed. These were also demonstrated to me during a practical exercise of the training platoon of the USK. I was not the only one who was amazed at some points. I think the representatives of the USK were also surprised that the Green party came to listen and discuss with them, and that we also realize that there are disputes that cannot be solved with words. That, of course, must always be the last resort. The representatives of the USK have made it clear once again: at assemblies, they protect the freedom of assembly of the Fundamental Rights and not world views (Schulze, 2017).

4.6 Practical Implementation: Auditing and Reviews Regular reviews and audits ensure successful implementation of community policing. The USK BP has institutionalized this practice. Every operational video is viewed and analyzed by USK training and tactics team officers. Videos revealing a need for improvement are submitted to the commander for further evaluation and discussion. Lessons learned are incorporated directly into training. If reviews uncover officers’ behaviors liable to criminal charges, the clip is forwarded to the Internal Investigations Department. To balance necessary criticism, the team identifies and shares with officers evidence of positive examples. In an example from the G20 summit in Hamburg, the USK Dachau had been on duty for about 40 hours with four hours of sleep, invoking high levels of physical stress. After the unit made an arrest and prepared to leave the area a crowd gathered, chanting and throwing bottles at the officers. A platoon formed a line to secure the withdrawing forces, showing means of force (showing/raising batons or irritant spray is trained as nonverbal threat of force aimed at avoiding its deployment). One person standing in front of the police line, gestured offensively at the officers. When the throwing did not stop, the unit “made air,” and all officers simultaneously ran towards the crowd,  See, e.g., https://www.florian-herrmann.de/lokal_1_2_457_Informationsbesuch-bei-der-22Einsatzhundertschaft-USK-der-Bay-Bereitschaftspolizei-in-Dachau.html; https://www.florianherrmann.de/index.php?ka=1&ska=2&printit=1&idn=558 18

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yelling and holding batons. Although experiencing frustration from days-long repeated attacks and physical stress from sleep deprivation (see, for example, Bürger, 2015, p. 107), officers injured no one. Even the wildly gesticulating man, who was standing directly in the unit’s path, was deliberately bypassed and left unharmed. Video of this controlled intervention under extreme duress continues to serve as an example of professional intervention and shows the need for and benefits of training and professionalization. The USK’s training and tactics team also reviews public film sources, such as YouTube and Twitter. Here, too, examples of successful community policing interventions can be found and promoted internally. For example, USK Dachau officers conducted a pull-up challenge during a train ride with “Ende Gelände 2020” (Anti-­ Mining Protest) activists: “On the journey of the green finger back towards Aachen (no idea why!!??) there’s a pull­up challenge between USK and #Endegelaende activists.... despite additional weight of 25 kg, the USK wins”.19

The post generated both negative and positive comments: “You don’t talk to cops […] don’t mess around with them?” “Unnecessary bullshit. Besides, you don’t cuddle or do sports with cops. They’re just waiting to beat up the activists at the next opportunity, like they do every time.” “The atmosphere seems to be relaxed? I’m glad!”

Such varied response among the activists is to be expected; it is the nature of things. However, that such a benevolent competition resulted from USK officers talking with activists on a train proves the value of a community policing approach. Community policing also impacts complaints against officers. Since filing an official complaint is extremely easy and even low-threshold inquiries (e.g., the officer was not wearing a beret/cap) are investigated, complaints can be used in unit reviews and appraisals. The absence of complaints is a key indicator of community policing’s success. For example, after a 10-day deployment during the G20 summit in Hamburg, 169 preliminary proceedings were initiated against police officers (Reuter, 2020). Yet, the high level of USK unit professionalism and use of community policing was reflected in fact that not one complaint was directed against USK officers. Ultimately, reviews should not be unidirectional, with only commanders offering feedback to officers. Reverse feedback opportunities, with dialogue unconstrained by position or rank, should also be institutionalized. Anchoring bidirectional reviews within organizational goals and personnel development can provide these opportunities. Establishing platoon and command spokespersons (similar to class and school spokespersons) can also foster feedback exchanges and promote the tenants of community policing. While dialogue is more strenuous than issuing directives, conversations and negotiations are not only an element of community policing but

19

 https://twitter.com/Fotografie_JV/status/1309749435358994432

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are at the core of our democratic model of society and should be modeled by leadership.

5 Conclusion In the more than three decades since the 1987 founding of the USK, these special public order units have greatly evolved. Today, community policing is a central policing principle, especially for evidence and arrest units, which primarily operate at critical democratic events, namely assemblies. Even if the units’ historical reputation still influences some assembly participants, these units are essential in policing assemblies due to their high levels of professionalism and extensive nationwide experience. USK/BFE units, with an understanding of ESIM, can apply de-­ escalation techniques and insert community policing into assembly operations. Federalism and variation in leadership influence the degree to which community policing is accepted and implemented by those units across Germany. Despite this variation, anchoring the elements of ESIM and community policing remains a leadership priority. It involves a continuous generational process of introducing and further developing these concepts. Experience has shown that this approach does not contradict the units’ basic mission, highlighted by their name (evidentiary and arrest). Instead, communication, cooperation, and enforcement collectively contribute to professionally policing assemblies. To be effective, units must use a wide spectrum of responses and have the ability to transition from being polite, communicative, and cooperative officers to using force. This broad range of skills requires training and implementation must be monitored by squad, platoon, and company commanders, because “The application of force without effective command and control is the proverbial loose cannon” (Waddington 1993, 366). Therefore, if excessive and unnecessary force is used, the question should not be whether USK/BFE units should exist, but rather how to best improve that specific unit, its philosophy, training, and ultimately its leadership (Waddington 1991, 1993, 1994; Bürger 2022).

References Adang, O. (2011). Initiation and escalation of collective violence: An observational study. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Crime prevention studies: Vol. 26. Preventing crowd violence (pp. 47–68). Lynne Rienner Publishers. Adang, O., & Schreiber, M. (2024). How collective violence emerges and escalates. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Becher, M. (2019). No competition for the most beautiful anti-fascist hero. How police work and civil society engagement can meaningfully complement each other. In: What serves peace.

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Impulse und Vorträge von der Frühjahrstagung der bayerischen Landessynode, Nachrichten der evangelisch-lutherischen Kirche in Bayern 2/19. Becher, M., & Bürger, B. (2022). Perspektivwechselseminare – ein Beitrag zu einer reflektierten polizeilichen Praxis bei Versammlungen und darüber hinaus. In Bürger (Ed.), Die Rolle der Polizei bei Versammlungen. Theorie und Praxis. Springer Gabler. Behr, R. (2000). Cop Culture - Der Alltag des Gewaltmonopols. Leske + Budrich. Behr, R. (2006). Polizeikultur. Routines  - Rituals  - Reflections. Bausteine zu einer Theorie der Praxis der Polizei, Wiesbaden. Behr, R. (2008). Cop culture  - der Alltag des Gewaltmonopols: Männlichkeit, Handlungsmuster und Kultur in der Polizei. Zugl.: Frankfurt am Main, Univ., Diss., 1999 (2. Aufl.). VS Verl. für Sozialwiss. http://deposit.d-­nb.de/cgi-­bin/ dokserv?id=3061078&prov=M&dok_var=1&dok_ext=htm. Behrendes, U.  Bürger, B. (2024). Almost forgotten experiential knowledge of de-escalation. In Bürger, B., Herold, T. Lee, R. (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Brandl, J., & Bürger, B. (2022). Der messbare Effekt Taktischer Kommunikation im Einsatz. In Bürger: Die Rolle der Polizei bei Versammlungen. Theorie und Praxis. Springer Gabler. Bürger, B. (2010). Einsatzeinheiten der BRD im europäischen Ausland. An analysis of foreign deployments of closed units based on the deployment of German riot police units at the UEFA European Football Championship 2008 in Austria Bürger, B. (2015). Arbeitszeitmodelle für den Streifendienst der Polizei. Eine interdisziplinäre Analyse am Beispiel der Bayerischen Polizei. Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft. Bürger, B. (2022). Bürgerorientierung bei Beweissicherungs- und Festnahmeeinheiten. In C. Barthel (Ed.), Proactive policing as a leadership and management task: Fundamentals practice - perspectives. Springer. Bürger, B. (2024). Public order policing. From theory to practice. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Bürger, B., & Thielmann, G. (2024). Police organization and the policing of assemblies in Germany. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional's guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. DER SPIEGEL. (ed., 1988). Bones in Plaster, issue 42/1988, p. 43 f. Accessed October 30, 2020, from https://magazin.spiegel.de/EpubDelivery/spiegel/pdf/13531195. Ellinghaus, C. (1998). Beweissicherungs- und Festnahmeeinheit Thüringen  – “Ein wichtiger Faktor zur Gewährleistung der Inneren Sicherheit”. Accessed October 20, 2020, from https:// www.cilip.de/1998/12/20/beweissicherungs-­und-­festnahmeeinheit-­thueringen-­ein-­wichtiger-­ faktor-­zur-­gewaehrleistung-­der-­inneren-­sicherheit/. Feltes, T. (2014). Bürgerahe Polizeiarbeit in Deutschland, in: Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (ed.), OSCE Yearbook 2013, Baden-Baden, pp. 241-252. Frevel, B. (2022). More community policing in Germany?! An essay on security and police policy. In C.  Barthel (Ed.), Proactive policing as a leadership and management task (pp.  59–67). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-­3-­658-­34201-­2_2 Görl, W. (2015). Als Bayern etwas hartter hinlangte, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 05.06.2015. Accessed November 15, 2020, from https://www.sueddeutsche.de/bayern/ muenchen-­1992-­als-­bayern-­etwas-­haerter-­hinlangte-­1.2507466-­0. Herold, T., & Bürger, B. (2024). Preventing crime at assemblies. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. KGGP. (2017). A very special birthday: 30 years of Bavarian Support Command. Retrieved November 9, 2020, from https://www.keine-­gewalt-­gegen-­polizisten.de/keine-­gewalt-­ gegen-­p olizisten/2017/11/22/ein-­g anz-­b esonderer-­g eburtstag-­3 0-­j ahre-­b ayerisches-­ unterstuetzungskommando-­michaela/.

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Plarre, P. (1989). EbLT bludgeons on under new name. TAZ, 28.01.1989. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://taz.de/!1824034/. Polizeipräsidium Mittelfranken. (2017). Festschrift zum 30-jährigen Besten der Bayerischen Unterstützungskommandos, Nuremberg. Präsidium of the Bayer. Bereitschaftspolizei. (2004). Grundsatzanweisung für Unterstützungskommandos (USK) der Bayer. Bereitschaftspolizei in the version of 29.03.2004, Bamberg, not published. Reicher, S. (1987). Crowd behavior as social action. In J.  C. Turner, M.  A. Hogg, P.  J. Oakes, S. D. Reicher, & M. S. Wetherell (Eds.), Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory (pp. 171–202). Blackwell. Reicher, S. (2011). From crisis to opportunity: New crowd psychology and public order policing principles. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Preventing crowd violence (pp. 7–24). Lynne Rienner. Reuter, M. (2020). Polizeigewalt beim G20. Not a single indictment. Retrieved November 8, 2020, from https://netzpolitik.org/2020/polizeigewalt-­beim-­g20-­keine-­einzige-­anklage. Schenk, C., & Bornhausen, M. (2024). Mission communication as an integrative overall strategy in protest 2.0. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Schneider, M. (2019, unpublished). Evidence and arrest units in Duetschland. An analysis of commonalities, differences and problems based on selected units. Master's thesis (VS-nfD) at the German Police University, Münster. Schulze, K. (2017). Besuch beim USK Dachau. Retrieved October 10, 2020, from https:// katharina-­­schulze.de/besuch-­beim-­usk-­dachau-­polizei-­spezialkraefte/. Siegler, B. (1989). “Mir san die Chaoten” - Der Widerstand in Wackersdorf, TAZ of May 31, 1989, p. 9. Retrieved on November 1, 2020, from https://taz.de/!1810558/. Stoll, S. (2010). Alone among men: The only woman at the USK.  Nürnberger Nachrichten, 06.01.2010. Accessed October 30, 2020, from https://www.nordbayern.de/2.242/2.229/ allein-­unter-­mannern-­die-­einzige-­frau-­beim-­usk-­1.628407. Stott, C. (2011). Crowd dynamics and public order policing. In J. Knutsson & T. Madensen (Eds.), Crime prevention studies: Vol. 26. Preventing crowd violence (pp.  25–46). Lynne Rienner Publishers. Tillmann, U. (2020a). Modernization of the Civil Service: Guidelines for Modernization. Accessed October 24, 2020, from https://www.beamten-­magazin.de/information/ modernisierung_oeffentl__dienst/leitlinien_der_modernisierung. Tillmann, U. (2020b). Modernisierung des öffentlichen Dienstes: Verwaltungsmodernisierung. Accessed October 24, 2020, from https://www.beamten-­magazin.de/information/ modernisierung_oeffentl__dienst/leitlinien_der_modernisierung. Uschold, T.(2012, Unpublished). Evidence and arrest units over time. An analysis of framework conditions and reactions in the Management of Assemblies and Violent Actions Using the example of the support units of the Bavarian riot police. Master’s thesis (VS-nfD) at the German Police University, Münster. Waddington, P. A. J. (1991). The strong arm of the law: Armed an public order policing. Clarendon. Waddington, P. A. J. (1993). The case against paramilitary policing considered. British Journal of Criminology, 33, 353–373. Waddington, P. A. J. (1994). Liberty and order, public order policing in a capital city. UCL Press. Wimmer, S. (2010). Unter Prügelknaben. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/ermittlungsverfahren-­gegen-­usk-­beamte-­unter-­pruegelknaben-­1.538253. Wimmer, S. (2011). Thugs remain unrecognized. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://www. sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/usk-­polizisten-­die-­schlaeger-­bleiben-­unerkannt-­1.1065116. Colonel Dr. Bernd Bürger  joined the Bavarian State Police, Germany, in 1997 and has managed assemblies and large events since 2000. He was responsible for managing camps and assemblies at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen G7 summits in 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, he was the

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commanding officer of the Dachau special public order unit (evidence gathering and arrest unit) where he was also deployed “on the front line” at the Hamburg G20 summit. He has served as head of the Police Operations Department at the Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police since 2020. In addition to his practical experience, he is a renowned public order scholar, lecturing in various German and European states. He also was a speaker at the 2018 International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting and at the 2019 Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, together with Tamara Herold and Ryan Lee. He holds a master’s degree in criminology and police science from the Ruhr University Bochum (ECTS A), a master’s degree in public administration – police management (ECTS A) as well as a PhD in public administration from the German Police University.

Maintaining Public Order from a Military Police Perspective Michiel Rovers and Tom van Ham

Abstract  This chapter describes public order management from a Dutch military police perspective. It does so by briefly reflecting on theoretical notions on collective violence and addressing the basis for Royal Marechaussee (gendarmerie-type military police of the Dutch Armed Forces) involvement in maintaining public order in a civil environment. We will discuss the characteristics of such units, their deployment, and the corresponding challenges. Additionally, we will highlight the necessary doctrines that were developed to handle such events. Furthermore, we will show the challenges for military units when trying to establish public order in a hostile/post-conflict environment and underline the necessity of international cooperation in this sector—not only between military units, but also between all units deployed at public order events. Overall, with the explanation of the Dutch doctrine, we hope to contribute to further discussion and to a common use of language when describing crowd-related situations.

1 Theoretical Notions on Collective Violence Collective violence by crowds (hereafter, collective violence) is a type of violence that—as violent behavior by singular individuals—has been common both in time and in place (e.g., LeBon, 1895; Reicher, 2001). However, it varies in scale, cohesion of the groups involved and their level of preparation. Most notably, the variation in nature of collective violence comes to mind with regard to hooligan violence. Well known in the literature are arranged confrontations between hooligan groups— for which a date, time and rules of engagement are agreed upon beforehand. This type of confrontations are—just like hit-and-run attacks—indicative of a high level of cohesion and preparation of the groups involved, while the scale of violence usually is limited to about 40 people or less (Van Ham et al., 2020). However, given the ‘right’ context, individuals unbeknownst to the police have also been found to M. Rovers (*) · T. van Ham Royal Marechaussee, The Hague, Netherlands © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_13

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involve themselves in football-related violence (Van Ham, 2020). In such cases, these individuals contribute to the scale of collective violence, while the level of preparation and social cohesion among the crowd as a whole is usually low (some groups may have been intent on partaking). Collective violence in other contexts, such as protests and demonstrations, nevertheless shows a similar variation in scale, cohesion and preparation of the groups involved. A relatively limited scale but high level of group cohesion and preparation for instance may be found around counter demonstrations, which occur on a regular basis among left- and right-wing activist groups. At the same time, around international summits such as G8 and G20 meeting, the scale of collective violence has been significant with those involved (black bloc, activist groups, regular protesters) varying in both their cohesion and preparation around becoming involved in collective violence. Since the 1960s, extensive research has been conducted, to explain how crowds gather and under which circumstances collective violence may be an expected outcome. Scholars focused particularly upon perceived injustice, perceived efficacy, and social identity. Perceived injustice encompasses triggers on the economic, political, or social level that—to restore balance—may result in retaliatory action (Reicher, 1996; Waddington & King, 2009). Retaliatory moves are more likely if the notion of perceived efficacy is met, i.e. that groups are aware that their goals and interests may be advanced without suffering a disproportionate backlash. By introducing the concept of social identity in addition it was argued that behavior in a crowd is guided primarily by an individual’s self-understanding as a member of a group instead of individual goals and desires. As the social identity mechanism results in an “us versus them” perspective, in crowd settings it is emphasized that situation-specific norms direct individual behavior (e.g. Reicher, 2001). While acknowledging the relevance of context (trigger events, intergroup relations) and intragroup dynamics (norms, expectations), more recently also the role of individual characteristics of individuals involved in collective violence has been stressed because of two notions. First, based on the nature of violence (impulsive or controlled) and the associated emotions (appetitively or aversively), four incentives for violent behavior may be identified: a desire for excitement and exhilaration, self-­ gratification either in material goods or social dominance, self-protection (whether against a physical or psychological interpersonal threat) and vengeance or retribution (Howard, 2015). In addition, Van Ham (2020) found that psychological characteristics, such as heightened impulsivity, sensation-seeking behavior and a hostility bias, may influence individual perception of intra- and intergroup relations and underlie the incentive(s) of engaging in violence. These psychological characteristics were present disproportionately among individuals that persisted in collective violence and to a large extent could be related to hooligan groups that appeared to extract both intrinsic and extrinsic value from partaking in violence. Prior research has explicitly noted the influence of policing on public disorder. For instance and more specifically, Stott and Reicher (1998) and Reicher (2001) have argued that individuals in an initially heterogeneous crowd may come to reconceptualize themselves as members of a homogenous crowd when treated as such by parties responsible for maintaining public order (such as the police or the Royal

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Marechaussee). Taken together research on collective violence leads to the conclusion that opposing theoretical perspectives on collective violence may not be mutually exclusive. Instead, it appears that to explain collective violence the relevance of context, intergroup interaction and intergroup relationships and individual differences in the willingness of persons to partake need to be accounted for (also see Adang, 2011; Adang & Schreiber, 2024). This suggests that around policing and maintaining public order also other theories need to be taking into account i.e. are fundamental to considerations and doctrines—as well as the context of a crowd, e.g. a post-war/post-conflict environment.

2 Parties Involved in Public Order Management in the Netherlands As a Gendarmerie-type Military Police organization, the Royal Marechaussee is historically a military organization but performing activities for more than one Ministries in the Netherlands. The Royal Marechaussee is structured within the Ministry of Defense as a separate (Military Police) capability, next to the Army, Navy and Airforce. In addition to this, the Royal Marechaussee is fully authorized through civilian law to perform civilian police tasks. This means that the primary responsibility falls under the Minister of Defense, but when performing civilian police tasks the Minister of Justice and Security is responsible for the tasks of the Royal Marechaussee. Although over the past 20 years the Royal Marechaussee had a focus on its civilian policing tasks, some of the typical Gendarmerie-type force characteristics are still present in the current organization. That is most likely one of the reasons that the Royal Marechaussee is predominantly tasked with policing and securing duties on locations that could be referred to as vital infrastructure (e.g. Schiphol Amsterdam International Airport or the Royal Palaces). From these tasks, the Royal Marechaussee has its own public order challenges, given the fact that in recent years there has been a lot of attention to the role of aviation in climate change. This has made airports not only in other countries, but also in the Netherlands, the scene of very large and sometimes violent protests. Consequently, the Royal Marechaussee has always maintained some capabilities for Public Order Management (POM) available for deployment in relation to their national (civilian) policing duties on their designated locations. This happened for example during the Greenpeace & Extinction Rebellion climate protests on Schiphol (Amsterdam) International Airport in December 2019 (NH Media, 2019): For hours, the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee was tasked to remove or apprehend hundreds of activists from Greenpeace and Extinction Rebellion at Schiphol Plaza. These activists gathered in the terminal building at 11:00 a.m. on the morning of December 14th to enforce a climate plan from the airport. The mayor had informed the activists in the crowded terminal building at the end of the morning that they had to be gone by 12:00. That did not happen, so in the hours that followed countless activists were taken away. Greenpeace had

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trained some of its activists in recent weeks to prepare for a confrontation with the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee. Greenpeace estimates that about four to five hundred people have had such training. Some twenty-five of them were detained; dozens of others were moved out of the terminal building.

The Royal Marechaussee has also seen growing demand for Public Order and Security-related challenges abroad, outside the Netherlands. For example, in 2017, the Royal Marechaussee was deployed on the island of Sint Maarten in the Caribbean after a devastating hurricane (Ministerie van Defensie, 2023): Hurricane Irma raged over Sint Maarten on September 6th, 2017, leaving a trail of destruction behind. Military personnel from the Navy, Army, Air Force and Marechaussee provided emergency aid on the island. They repaired communication infrastructure and roads, helped evacuate the wounded and were deployed to prevent looting and maintain public order and safety. For example, Marechaussees assisted the local police on the island and engineers and marines tried, among other things, to make the airport on Sint Maarten accessible again. Navy ships and Airforce planes delivered tons of relief supplies. At its peak, more than 600 soldiers were on Sint Maarten, while another 400 supported them from Navy ships and the islands to the south.

In addition to this, the Royal Marechaussee also supported (civilian) police with POM capabilities on locations where the (civilian) police bears primary responsibilities. The intended role of the Royal Marechaussee, from a doctrinal perspective, is to provide these capabilities, derived from the Gendarmerie-type characteristics (see next para.), specifically where escalation of public violence is at its worse. In practice, however, the Royal Marechaussee would operate under the authority of the civilian police to compensate for insufficient capacity i.e. man power. This has happened on many occasions in the past 15 years, but most notable in recent history was the support during the riots that followed restrictions imposed by the Dutch government due to the COVID19-pandemic early in 2021 (e.g., BBC, 2021): More than 180 people were arrested in 10 Dutch cities as protesters defying a curfew clashed with riot police for a third night in a row. Shops in Rotterdam were looted and police used water cannon, as rioters resisted latest Covid restrictions. There were further violent scenes in many towns and cities. Riot police clashed with protesters in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, as well as Amersfoort, Den Bosch, Alphen and Helmond. Some of the worst disturbances were in the south of Rotterdam where police said 10 officers were hurt. Across the country 184 people were arrested. Amsterdam’s mayor appealed to parents to keep young people indoors. Fires were lit on the streets of The Hague, where police on bicycles attempted to move small clusters of men who threw stones and fireworks. There was violence in the southern city of Den Bosch, where rioters set off fireworks, broke windows, looted a supermarket and overturned cars. A woman living near Den Bosch train station told Dutch radio that masked youths had left a trail of destruction in the city center. “I saw windows smashed and fireworks going off. Really crazy, just like a war zone,” the woman said.

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3 Gendarmerie-Type (Military) Police 3.1 Characteristics and Strengths The gendarmerie-type (military) police characteristics of the Royal Marechaussee have put the organization in the spotlight due to the growing number of public order and security-related challenges that the Dutch government faced in recent years. Van Lent (2001) describes gendarmerie-type forces as “hierarchical organized, predominantly politically neutral and loyal to democratic values”. Bruggeman, (2001) in addition noted that these forces differ from civilian police on several aspects. On an organization level he, for instance, stated that gendarmeries are more focused on the central government as opposed to the civilian police, which has the focus on (local) civilians. The thought behind this could be that the civilian police should always be available for community policing, especially after (violent) riots. It would not help community policing efforts if the civilian police is associated with the tactics of dealing with (violent) protest. A gendarmerie force could, in cooperation with civilian police, be deployed to deal with violent protest and, through coordinating with the civilian police, pull out of the problem area when the shift towards community policing is possible again. While being a military organization, the Royal Marechaussee has an association with the Ministry of Defense as well as the (civilian) police but—unlike the civilian police—lacks the right to go on strike. On an operational level, gendarmerie-type forces are deployable for a diverse set of security related tactical activities, always available and rapidly deployable, efficient through unit cohesion and more willing and capable to conduct robust operations. Furthermore, they are usually schooled in the whole spectrum of levels of violence (from low to high intensity) and have a culture that is historically focused on hierarchy, discipline, cohesion and leadership. In addition to this, gendarmeries have (from their military police activities) expertise in international policing. These characteristics described by Bruggeman (2001) are at the core of required capabilities for any force dealing with extensive Public Order and Security tasks in a volatile operating environment. Therefore, due to their organizational and operational characteristics and their experience with policing, gendarmerie-type forces like the Royal Marechaussee are, in theory, a suitable capability for POM and a necessary capability in the POM levels of the violence spectrum.

3.2 Challenges of Gendarmerie-Type (Military) Police A gendarmerie-type police like the Royal Marechaussee should, as part of the Ministry of Defense from a NATO country, be aware that through a call for troop contribution may be requested to participate in missions abroad for the sake of public order and security—contrary to regular civil police. This means that a

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gendarmerie requires the capabilities to serve in both civil and military environments. The latter tasks are derived from the NATO Military Police doctrine. The Royal Marechaussee, therefore, is obliged to incorporate this doctrine in its certification of their public order and security-related capabilities for missions abroad in a military operating environment. The NATO Military Police doctrine (NATO, 2019) defines several (military police) functions that the Royal Marechaussee, together with other NATO military police partners, must be able to perform in a (hostile) environment where military operations take place. One of these functions is stability policing, which is crucially important to NATO operations and conducted by military police (NATO, 2016a). It describes the important role the military police (which includes gendarmerie-type forces) has in police-related activities that are intended to reinforce or temporarily replace indigenous (civilian) police while contributing to the restauration and/or upholding of public order and security, rule of law and the protection of human rights (Dziedzic, 1998). Therefore, the Royal Marechaussee needs to take into account both military (conflict) and peacetime (civilian) operating environments. The public order spectrum in peace time scenarios in the past years might have been considered by some to pose limited threats. Recent protest, however, have shown that dealing effectively with public order and security challenges requires new approaches. Additionally, it is important to recognize that public order challenges in peace time environments are not similar to those in the military operating environments. Whereas dealing with peacetime POM, the focus will primarily be on the risk event or protest itself and is less focused on threats from the surrounding environment, like for instance actions taken by other state or non-state actors. For POM to be effective in the military operating environment (also known as ‘the battlespace’), planners always have to take into account at least five aspects that differ substantially from operating in a civilian non-military environment (NATO, 2016b): • Scope (Military land operations contain many more (violent) interactions between hostile actors as well as interaction with friendly forces), • Duration (In military land operations there is a high possibility of prolonged— almost continuously—contact with hostile threats), • Terrain (POM in military land operations takes place among a complex variety of natural and man-made features in the densest of all media of hostilities), • Permanence (Land operations are most likely to make permanent the often-­ temporary results of other operations like for example hybrid, air or cyber operations. POM is an important part of this process, especially in urban environments), and • Uncertainty (the likely presence of asymmetric forces in addition to previous mentioned elements generates uncertainty as a natural side effect). It would appear logical that military police and/or gendarmerie-type forces that could be deployed in both peacetime and military operating environments should have their education and readiness training focused on the more challenging operating environment. Indeed, this ensures that the right kind of prerequisites to operate

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in such a military operating environment are met and maintained. This would contribute to the maintenance of the gendarmerie characteristics as mentioned by Dziedzic (1998). Furthermore, it may be argued that this then would require less additional education and training efforts for operating in a peacetime environment in comparison with keeping a main focus on civil POM. However, capabilities as well as education and training for both the civilian and military environments each have unique and sometimes very different characteristics that need to be continuously reflected, considered and trained.

3.3 Role in Post-Conflict Environments Military police and gendarmerie-type forces are able to fill a void in establishing and maintaining a post-conflict safe and secure environment (SASE; Den Boer, 2022). These forces perform (military) police activities in the operating environment aimed to tackle possible (hybrid) threat sources and provide security to the local population by (temporarily) replacing and/or reinforcing indigenous police forces. Given the growing number of crises in the world and the shifting of the geopolitical situation, the Royal Marechaussee in 2018 laid its own foundation for developing a national doctrine on the military police function of stability policing in land operations. In September 2022, this national stability policing doctrine and therewith the frameworks for public order and security from the perspective of military policing by gendarmerie-type forces (Rovers et  al., 2022) came into effect. The  established  doctrines (NATO, 2016b; Rovers et  al. 2022) state that Public Order and Security activities are conducted with the aim of establishing a SASE, restoring public order and security, and establishing the conditions for meeting longer term needs with respect to governance and development (in particular through security sector reforms). This can include both the re-establishment of law and order and reinforcing the rule of law (such as police, courts and corrections). Under a comprehensive approach, a combination of military and non-military actors, such as indigenous and international police forces, could be employed. The varying nature of these goals implies that public order and security activities should be conducted through the whole range of military operations themes and are not limited to a single phase of military operations. The Royal Marechaussee and military policing capacity. “[…] it may be concluded that as a gendarmerie organization, the Royal Marechaussee is capable of delivering unique military policing capacity: militarized law enforcement, rapid deployment, flexible deployment, operational in the whole of Dutch territory and dedicated spaces abroad and within the Kingdom of the Netherlands as well as internationally (see also Koops, 2018). It can operate in a centralized security system and to engage in public order management in the context of social disorder (see also Oakley et al., 1998). In a way, the Royal Marechaussee may be considered as the “Blue army” (McCulloch, 2001). Its range of activities can be positioned within the national and international security architecture, such as the EU, NATO and the OSCE. Whilst NATO continues to focus primarily

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on the common defense and a limited number of crisis management operations, also in higher spectre of violence, the EU tends to focus far more on integrated civil-military co-­ operation, particularly in the direct neighborhood of the European Union (Ukraine, Western Balkan, Middle East), where it seems to deliver a contribution to conflict prevention and conflict management through political support and diplomacy, trade, development projects, as well as small-scale military and civil missions (AIV, 2020: 14). Hence, in these situations it concerns temporary, unexpected and small-scale operations. The Royal Marechaussee may thus be regarded as well-positioned and ideally-equipped to deal with newly emerging security concepts that are currently being developed within the EU, including border management and migration management, civil missions or civil-military cooperation, crisis management, rapid response, as well as battle groups. This should be assessed in the context of the new Strategic Compass of the EU, in which High Representative Borrell argues calls for more rapidity, robustness and flexibility to undertake a full range of civilian-­ military actions, whilst proposing the establishment of an EU rapid deployment capacity which would embody a modular force of up to 5000 troops by 2025” (Den Boer, 2022).

Throughout the spectrum of conflict, the initial goal of military police and/or gendarmerie-­type forces through stability policing is to re-establish and maintain security for the local population on a sufficient level. Secondly, stability policing re-establishes law and order and strengthens the rule of law through reinforcing local security institutions. In this view, lasting stability can be achieved under the policing perspective by preventing violence (including collective violence), protecting borders, personnel, and key institutions, tackling organized crime and countering terrorism. These forces are specialized resources, available to the commander to support safety and public order needs in any operating environment.

4 The Doctrine on Public Order and Security To identify threats related to public order and security in both the civilian and the military operating environment, the Royal Marechaussee doctrine DP 19–56 contains a schematic to visualize the similarities and differences of public order and security challenges that the Royal Marechaussee must consider in the different operating environments. The schematic displayed in Fig. 1 shows the Public Order Management spectrum of Gendarmerie-type Military Police (derived from historical characteristics and MP functions, inside and outside the battlespace) and the Public Order Management spectrum of civilian police (only outside of the battlespace). It defines seven levels of violence, describes a situation for each level and then connects the defined task that a force primarily has to undertake to be able to mitigate the specific threat or threats. Therefore, it can help planners and commanders, military or civilian, at any level in obtaining an increased level of understanding of the public order and security challenges faced at any given moment. It may also contribute to situational awareness of the force that has to maintain or restore the public order and it may be an aid to structure a complex situation.

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Fig. 1  Schematic of the public order and security management spectrum (Rovers et al., 2022)

4.1 Level of the Situation The schematic uses the following doctrinal definitions: • Level 1—State of Normality: A state of normality exists when, at first glance, there are no discernible disturbances to Public Order & Security. There is a small risk of a reversal to an undesirable, illegitimate, violent situation that is defined by opponents, groups and crowds posing a threat to Public Order & Security. All activities required to provide and maintain public order at this stage can be summarized as ‘community policing’. • Level 2—Tension: This manifests as an increased level of anxiety or other feelings within a community, group or crowd. A trigger incident can result in a shift from tension to disorder. Such incidents may be traced back to the police, the community or a third party. All activities needed to provide and maintain public order at this stage are being called ‘crowd management’. • Level 3—Disorder: This state represents the stage where mood is supplemented by action, both isolated and persistent. It manifests in disruption, damage or violence. Disorder can occur after a single trigger incident or a series of incidents

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that have a cumulative effect. All activities needed to restore and maintain public order at this stage are labeled as ‘crowd control’. • Level 4—Serious Disorder: An escalation to widespread violent behavior resulting in a large-scale and violent disturbance of public order. This can take the form of, for example, violent protest or looting. One or more groups or individuals within the crowd threaten or behave violently towards persons or property, creating an extremely turbulent environment. In doctrinal planning this would be the maximum violence level for civilian (public order) police to be deployed for. From this level onwards Gendarmerie-type forces should be included in the planning stage and be ready to take over to provide the civilian police the opportunity to undertake action in situations characterized by lower levels of violence, where community policing is needed. All activities needed to restore and maintain public order at this stage are called ‘riot control’. • Level 5 & 6—Riot: This situation refers to an escalation to widespread violent behavior resulting in a large-scale and violent disturbance of public order. This can take the form of, for example, violent protest or looting. One or more groups or individuals within the crowd threaten or behave violently towards persons or property, creating an extremely turbulent environment. The distinguishing factor in relation to the level 4 condition serious disorder concerns the use of weapons and/or (the strong threat of) the individual/incidental use of firearms by individuals that are part of the crowd and/or environment. The difference in the two riot levels is set in the type of threat coming from rioters and how rioters are organized. All activities needed to restore and maintain public order at this stage are labeled as ‘riot control’ or ‘crowd combat’, depending on the actual threat or level of coordination. • The Combat Level: This level does not constitute a situation where public order management is the primary objective. Other tactical activities, related to security for example, and are part of (NATO) operations themes, will most likely have the focus of any unit formation at this level. However, the threats from the combat level (see Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2021) could influence any public order management capability in the military operating environment where SASE needs to be re-established or maintained.

4.2 Definition of Specific Terms To allow a precise analysis of the situation (from which all measures are being derived), the doctrine defines several terms that help to avoid misunderstandings and allow a clear assessment. Community and Kinds of Crowds With regard to Public Order & Security, the community is defined as a group of individuals, whether or not cohesive, who reside and/or are located in the relevant

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area of operations (local population). They are engaged in everyday affairs and are in principle no part of a crowd. The doctrine defines four types of groups with regard to Public Order & Security: • Casual Crowd: this crowd does not form a cohesive whole, does not display group behavior and does not have a common goal. The common factor of the crowd is the location and presence of people. An example of a casual crowd is a large group of people in a market square. The crowd consists of many different individuals, each of whom is there for their own reason. Control of this casual crowd is easy, for example by removing elements from it. • Sighting Crowd: concerns a concentration of people at a location. The distinguishing factor from a casual crowd is an event that might be the reason for the gathering of the crowd. Examples include spectators at a fire, football match or concert. Control of a sighting crowd can be simple and requires both diplomatic and decisive planning and action by authorities. • Agitated Crowd: refers to a concentration of people in a location, where an event occurs that causes an emotional reaction among the crowd that may be followed by aggression. The cause may be found in relatively minor actions by individuals or non-tactical actions by police officers or soldiers. A direct confrontation with this crowd can lead to escalation. • Mob: refers to a concentration of people in a location, where an event occurs that causes an emotional reaction among the crowd. This emotion manifests itself in physical activities (yelling, throwing objects, etc.). This mob is characterized by hostility and aggression. Control of such a crowd is not easy; the initial goal should be to temper the individual emotional state. Multiple actions must be taken simultaneously to control the crowd. Some form of physical force may be necessary to stabilize the situation. Protesters The doctrinal term protesters denotes a concentration of people who have grouped together on the basis of a common goal or point of view, which they intend to manifest. Those protesters are being divided into three types: • Non-compliant Protesters: non-compliant protesters do not respond to any official address and offer physical passive resistance. Disobeying orders from officials is part of the method generally used by such crowds, termed civil disobedience. They can become very aggressive without clear warning. An example of a tactic used by non-compliant protesters is a sit-down. • Verbal Protesters: express their displeasure or point of view verbally. This expression can range from shouting slogans to displaying collective verbal aggression. Verbal protesters try to achieve various intended effects, such as drawing attention to a point of view, intimidating individuals or groups or expressing dissatisfaction with the actions of law enforcement officers. • Aggressive Protesters: resort to violence, whether or not they are physically touched. Sometimes this group can be clearly identified in a crowd. Aggressive

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protesters can be armed with objects such as sticks and/or stones and could be unrecognizable due to face-covering clothing such as scarves or balaclavas. Rioters The doctrinal term riot refers to an escalation to widespread violent behavior, which may involve the use of (fire)arms. This results in a large-scale and serious disturbance of public order. There are three subgroups defined: • Rioters (regular): rioters pose a threat to the public order. Due to the presence and behavior of such individuals or group, there is a direct danger to others or the rights of others (threaten to be) violated. • Rioters (organized): the distinguishing factor from ‘regular’ rioters is the degree of organization. Organized rioters can plan in advance and could be assigned certain tasks. • Rioters (collective and coordinated): a collective and coordinated riot has a greater degree of organization. Not only does assignment of tasks and roles take place prior to a riot, rioters may also be actively controlled or re-tasked during the riot. There is a certain structure to make this happen. An example of a tactic used by collective and coordinated rioters is the use of ‘Black Block’ techniques (Gilligan, 2017). This includes the use of counter-techniques that can hinder the operations of POM units. These techniques can range from operating in formations to using certain defensive or offensive tactics based on knowledge of POM units tactics. Opponents When violence is used by a mob, it is rarely, if ever, done by the mob as a whole, but usually by a number of individuals within the mob. The (entirety of) individual(s) within a crowd that is responsible for refraining to violence, or exhibits such illegal behavior that immediate enforcement is necessary, is referred to as opponent(s). Opponents in any environment of deployment may mingle with a crowd that is present for protest. This mixing can take place through opportunity, but may also be the outcome of a well-prepared for and coordinated hybrid action. As a result of the mixing of crowds and opponents, threat analysis must always include both the threat related to the (Public Order & Security) assignment as well as the threat arising from the operating environment.

5 Concluding Remarks 5.1 Military Police in Civil Environment In this chapter, it has been set out under which circumstances the Royal Marechaussee may or should fulfill a role in maintaining public order. In the Netherlands, there is increasing attention for intelligence in policing (intelligence-led policing). The notions on theoretical developments with regard to collective violence underscore

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that each and every situation is unique, and thus requires specific intelligence with regard to scale, crowd cohesion (including subgroups) and the level of preparation—which is indicative of intent—for violent conflict. Intelligence-gathering around public disorder, with often significant uncertainty about the number of individuals that show up and the fact that most individuals involved in collective violence are up to that moment unbeknownst to the police or other law enforcing agencies, comes with many challenges. Another even more important challenge is to follow up on available information when operating in a multi-actor environment.

5.2 Military Police in the NATO Operating Environment As part of the military, it is expected that military police and gendarmerie-type forces can work in a multinational environment. To mitigate challenges that this might pose, any Royal Marechaussee capability, dealing with public order & security challenges in military or international operations, is obligated to be certified for (international) deployment and tactical activities in conjunction with the capability codes and statements defined by NATO (Commander of NLD Defence Forces, 2020). As a result of ratification of the various NATO publications by each NATO member country, other NATO member forces have similar instructions in place to ensure harmonization. Conducting operations and tactical activities, which include POM by military police and gendarmerie-type forces under conditions in a military operating environment, demand a high degree of interoperability (NATO, 2016b). Significant differences in multinational cooperation do remain, particularly in organization and equipment. These differences will continue to exist among land forces of the NATO alliance for some time. Further differences remain in the manner and degree to which land forces of the NATO alliance, as well as of other partners, have incorporated modern communication and information services (CIS) into their forces. Therefore, it is essential that these forces possess a common understanding of the principles of command & control in land operations (POM activities included) and the appropriate tactics, techniques, and procedures of command & control of land forces dealing with POM to ensure interoperability within the multinational environment. POM should also be a backbone activity for the European Gendarmerie Force (EGF). Although not part of NATO, the European Gendarmerie Force (EGF) is an organization in which most EU Gendarmerie Forces are represented. In addition to NATO (military) missions, the EGF could contribute in creating a Safe and Secure Environment (SASE) through its sponsor forces and gendarmerie-type capabilities for European Union operations. It can be part of a NATO operations theme or this could also be as a follow on force, in a later stage of NATO stability operations.

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5.3 Interoperability However, interoperability remains a challenge—not only between military police forces, but also when those units are being deployed shoulder by shoulder with civilian POM units or even when those civilian units work together. As some of the chapters in this book show, new crowd phenomena arise and are being exported— “globalized”. With the explanation of the Dutch doctrine, we hope to make a contribution to the necessary further discussions, in our case foremost to a common usage of language when describing a crowd-related situation.

References Adang, O. (2011). Initiation and escalation of collective violence: An observational study of protest and football events. In T. D. Madensen & J. Knutsson (Eds.), Preventing crowd violence (pp. 47–68). Lynne Rienner Publishers. Adang, O., & Schreiber, M. (2024). How collective violence emerges and escalates. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. AIV Adviesraad Internationale Vraagstukken (2020). Europese Veiligheid: tijd voor nieuwe stappen, Advies nr. 112, Den Haag, 19 juni 2020. BBC (2021). Covid: Dutch curfew riots rage for third night. 26.01.2021. retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-­europe-­55799919. Bruggeman, W. (2001). Gendarmeries and the security challenges in the 21st century: Some introductory remarks. In J. L. Hovens & G. A. G. van Elk (Eds.), Gendarmeries and the security challenges of the 21st century. Koninklijke Marechaussee. Commander of (NLD) Defence Forces (2020). Instruction I-300, Operationele inzet (classified). den Boer, M. (2022). Stepping into the void – Exploring the concept of military policing within a dynamic security complex. Research Paper, Breda: NLDA. Dziedzic, M.  J. (1998). Introduction. In R.  B. Oakley, M.  Dziedzic, & E.  M. Goldberg (Eds.), Policing the New World disorder. Peace operations and public security (pp. 3–18). National Defense University Press. Gilligan, H. (2017). The Black Bloc protestors in hoodies started in Germany in the late 1970s. Retrieved February 3, 2023, from https://timeline.com/black-­bloc-­started-­1980s-­e228bf3981b4. Howard, R. (2015). Personality disorder and violence: What is the link? Borderline Personality Disorder and Emotion Regulation, 2(12), 1–11. Joint Chiefs of Staff (2021). Joint security operations in theater, joint publication 3–10. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/Doctrine/pubs/jp3_10.pdf. Koops, W. (2018). Het (denker) blauwe hart van de Koninklijke Marechaussee, Een onderzoek naar de betekenis en de positie van de Koninklijke Marechaussee in het politiebestel, Masterthesis, Bestuurskunde. LeBon, G. (1895). La psychologie des foules. Alcan. McCulloch, J. (2001). Blue Army: Para-military policing in Australia. Melbourne University Press. NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (2016a). Allied Joint Doctrine for Stability Policing, AJP-3.22, Edition A Version 1 July 2016. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/ file/628228/20160801-­nato_stab_pol_ajp_3_22_a_secured.pdf. NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (2016b). Allied tactical publication 3.2.2, command and control of allied land forces. (NATO unclassified).

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NATO, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (2019). Allied joint doctrine for military police, AJP3.21, (NATO unclassified). NH Media (2019). Tientallen actievoerders Schiphol Plaza weggehaald, protest voorbij. 14.12.2019. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://www.nhnieuws.nl/nieuws/258461/ tientallen-­actievoerders-­schiphol-­plaza-­weggehaald-­protest-­voorbij. Oakley, R. B., Dziedzic, M., & Goldberg, E. M. (Eds.). (1998). Policing the New World disorder. Peace operations and public security. National Defense University Press. Reicher, S. (1996). The battle of Westminster: Developing the social identity model of crowd behavior in order to explain the initiation and development of collective conflict. European Journal of Social Psychology, 26(1), 115–134. Reicher, S. (2001). The psychology of crowd dynamics. In M. A. Hogg & R. S. Tindale (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of social psychology: Group processes (pp.  182–208). Blackwell Publishers. Rovers, M., Ellerman, T., & Schultze, R. (2022) (NLD) doctrine publication 19-56: Stability policing – Public Order & Security in land operations. Stott, C., & Reicher, S. (1998). Crowd action as intergroup process: Introducing the police perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28(4), 509–529. Ministerie van Defensie (2023). Orkaan Irma. Retrieved February 1, 2023, from https://www. defensie.nl/onderwerpen/historische-­missies/missie-­overzicht/2017/orkaan-­irma. van Ham, T. (2020). Collective violence and collective violence offenders: The role of individual characteristics. Leiden University. van Ham, T., Adang, O. M. J., Ferwerda, H. B., Doreleijers, T. A. H., & Blokland, A. A. J. (2020). Planned hooligan fights: Contributing factors and significance for individuals who take part. European Journal of Criminology, 19(5), 954. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477370820932080 van Lent, B. (2001). Politiekorpsen met militaire status: Krijgers of koddebeiers? (scriptie). College for Public Office. Waddington, D., & King, M. (2009). Identifying common causes of UK and French riots occurring since the 1980s. The Howard Journal, 48(3), 245–256. Michiel Rovers  (1978) graduated from the Royal Netherlands Military Academy in 2006 as an army officer. In 2013, he transferred to the Royal Marechaussee and was deployed on several international and national public order and security-related missions. He combined his tactical experience with existing strategic (NATO) concepts, which resulted in the development of the (NLD) Doctrine Publication 19-56: Stability Policing - Public Order & Security in Land operations.  Tom van Ham (1983) obtained an MSc degree in both clinical neuropsychology and criminology in 2007. In 2020, he successfully defended his PhD thesis ‘Collective violence offenders and offending: the role of individual characteristics’ at Leiden Law School of Leiden University. Over the years, he has increasingly provided guest lectures for training and academic purposes and has been employed in safety and security-related functions in both the private and public sector.

January 6th: A Challenge for Public Order Policing and Democracy Eli Cory

Abstract  This chapter allows an insight to the events that unfolded on January 6th at the U.S.  Capitol in Washington, D.C. from the viewpoint of a Public Order Commander on the ground. The author first describes the state of law enforcement in the United States before this event, considering the social circumstances, developments regarding training and equipment as well as the territorial specialties. In the following, he describes the day from his point of view, how events unfolded, decisions he had to make and the emotional aspects of such a police operation. At the end of this chapter, the author provides some lessons learned, regarding training, equipment, and communication.

1 Introduction 1.1 The State of Law Enforcement before January 6th The precursor to January 6, 2021 was a unique time in law enforcement. At the time I was a bureau commander in the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD), with the overall command of the department’s Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU). Fairfax County, Virginia is an affluent suburb of Washington, D.C.  A 400 square mile county, comprising over 1.1 million residents, and a mere 5 miles to Washington, D.C. from our eastern border, separated by Arlington County. Leading up to the day, it is important to understand the social state of the United States of America and the condition of the police profession. The past two years were spent reacting to a pandemic and all its unexpected outcomes. First was the general fear for the safety of the public, our officers, and their families. I could see the stress and anxiety our officers felt, yet they continued to arrive at work for each and every shift. Early on, no one knew what to expect and extreme measures were taken to safeguard our workforce. Constantly changing policy and safety protocols E. Cory (*) Fairfax (VA) County Police Department, Fairfax, VA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_14

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were the norm. Social distancing, masks, emergency declarations prohibiting large gatherings were now things the community looked for law enforcement to aid in. We asked officers to limit contact when they could with others, while still maintaining public safety, and be the arbiters of new social safety protocols. A monumental ask to put it lightly. Pressure from society to enforce social norms was a role foreign to modern American policing and for good reason. The mounting stress on one of the few professions that could not ride the pandemic wave in the safety of their homes accumulated. Then came the summer of 2020. The world watched as a black man was killed under the knee of a law enforcement officer. Perhaps the stress of the pandemic contributed to the public outcry, but for several months, thousands of Americans took to the streets to have their voices heard. Officers shifted from arbitrating social distancing norms to managing large crowds of people, who were unhappy with the profession. During the summer following George Floyd’s death on May 26th, 2020, the United States experienced over 7750 demonstrations linked to the Black Lives Matter movement (Kishi & Jones, 2022). Our CDU officers felt the brunt of this increased workload the most. The FCPD is authorized for just under 1500 officers and had a CDU contingency of about 140 officers. FCPD’s CDU is a non-standing unit of officers who are trained in crowd management techniques, have advanced understanding of the associated laws, and are equipped with specialized equipment to protect themselves while maintaining public order. This is not their primary job function, as in most agencies. They are patrol officers, detectives, and traffic officers, among others. They joined the CDU because they had a work ethic to be a part of an elite unit, which deploys on extraordinary events from the Pope’s visit to the United States to presidential inaugurations. During the summer of 2020, the CDU officers of the FCPD worked a myriad of additional hours, often without a day off for weeks. Anyone who works in the civil disturbance field knows when officers are deployed to an event, they are always outnumbered. This is a constant safety concern for law enforcement, but at that time the focus of the group’s anger was squarely on anyone wearing a uniform. Compound this concern for safety with the ongoing pandemic, where safety experts were pleading with people to isolate. Now large groups of people were yelling in the faces of officers, at times inches apart. Multiply fatigue and the fear of bringing a disease back home to your family, the stress on CDU officers was specifically high. Then came the waves of scrutiny from elected officials who held an emergency state session, specifically to review and reform police practices. This was an extraordinary time for CDU officers who were now uncertain about what types of force would be socially acceptable. They were concerned about their jobs, their health, and their families. At the time, some contemplated their participation in CDU and the profession. As the unrest of the summer wound down, and the changes in the legislation settled, law enforcement was able to take a breath. The world was starting to see glimmers of hope that the pandemic was either winding down, or society normalizing to its effects. Business began to reopen, emergency policies expired, and

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executive orders were rescinded. Leading into January of 2021, there was a general feeling that we had overcome many adversities and had emerged stronger.

1.2 Equipment and Training In years past, CDU equipment was a conglomeration of whatever was available. Shin guards could be repurposed sports equipment, helmets from old military surplus, and other equipment made to fit the mission, instead of equipment specifically designed for the mission. After the summer of 2020, the Metropolitan Council of Governments (COG) CDU subcommittee released their recommendations on equipment standards for CDU. One of the subcommittee co-chairs, FCPD Captain Alan Hanson, was an integral part in the equipment standards document and brought his findings forward to our leadership. Through his monumental work, funding was appropriated to outfit the FCPD CDU with proper modern gear. The gear arrived and was distributed to all FCPD CDU officers. An important reminder about that time period, the pandemic. Social distancing was still a focus and most training was postponed during that time, including CDU. When the gear was distributed, officers were instructed to try the equipment on for proper fitment. The unit did not have the opportunity to train with the new gear and this important lesson will come to play later. Ultimately, the unit now had better personal protective equipment, including highly impact-resistant helmets, neck guards, elbow guards, and others that were either substandard or nonexistent before.

1.3 Police Landscape in Washington, D.C. In addition to the general atmosphere in policing at the time, to understand the events of January 6 fully, one must have a general idea of the physical landscape faced by police that day (for more on that cf. Bürger et al., 2024; Hanson & Dobson, 2024). For those who do not live or work in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region, you may be unaware that the District (as locals often refer to Washington, D.C.) is a popular location for advocacy groups to gather to have their voices heard in mass. Iconic scenes from when Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, the International Monetary Foundation meeting protests, or the Million Woman March, may be familiar to those outside the region; however, there is some level of protest, march, demonstration, or assembly in the District on a daily basis. The Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has a large number of officers who are well trained in civil disturbance and mass gatherings, across multiple disciplines in their agency. They routinely facilitate the orderly gathering of thousands of people to create a safe space for people to exercise their First Amendment right to free speech.

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While the MPD has extraordinary staff, Washington, D.C. is unique in that, especially in and around the National Mall area (several blocks comprising monuments, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, government buildings, and the White House) is a patchwork of multiple independent jurisdictions adjacent to one another. Each with a different law enforcement agency, a unique mission, policies, training standards, equipment, radio frequencies, and leadership structure. To outline a few of the larger organizations that MPD’s jurisdiction is adjacent to: • The White House with their own police department and Secret Service (and some level of military). • Capitol Police with their own department, and a jurisdiction that extends beyond the building, encompassing several surrounding blocks. • Park Police, who have jurisdiction on the National Mall and other national parks scattered in the city. • Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), with their own police department and the US Marshals Service. • Federal Protective Services who secure many government buildings around the National Mall. This list is not all inclusive, and does not include the two states, Virginia and Maryland, which border the District. Given this unique makeup of law enforcement jurisdictions, regional relationships, coordination, and intelligence sharing are paramount. A regional mutual aid agreement has been in place for decades to allow a rapid assistance across jurisdictional boundaries. For example, during the International Monetary Foundation meetings of years past, MPD requested mutual aid from the FCPD and other regional law enforcement partners. The operation was a well-coordinated success where the FCPD deployed a number of officers to support MPD as thousands of people converged on the District to have their voices heard. FCPD officers were deputized and deployed in preapproved ways to assist the MPD mission. Every four years the FCPD has assisted in the Presidential Inaugural parade under the same MOU authority, through operations plans and signed agreements developed over several months, detailing tactical responsibilities, legal agreements, and other logistics of the specific event. These deployments have always been executed in an exemplary manner. However, they all had the benefit of timely planning and collaboration. They were also typically with the same jurisdictions in Washington, D.C., and never the Capitol or SCOTUS police departments. There had never been a time when aid was needed beyond MPD or their usual mutual aid partners, not from FCPD.

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2 January 6th 2.1 The Day Unfolds January 6, 2021 was different. Leading up to the day, the region was aware of a planned protest (Demirjian, 2021). But as listed before, a protest was a common sight in the District, and few were aware of the magnitude of what the day would result in. Prior to the day, no mutual aid requests were made for the FCPD, and from our standpoint, we were unaware of anything indicating an increase in staffing, or the formation of CDU assets. However, on any given day, there are a select number of CDU officers working their primary assignments, and their equipment is with them. During the morning hours of January 6, department and county leadership were aware of the protest as it was covered on local and national news outlets. The TV news broadcast played in the background as I worked on my computer and periodically glanced over to see the group’s movements. Then more intently as they approached the walls of the Capitol building. Crowds of people were now up against the building’s walls, at its doors and windows. I recall thinking to myself, how did the crowd get that far and what is the reaction going to be from the officers on the scene? From a CDU command standpoint, the past two years of civil unrest created a greater political and societal appetite to provide more space for protestors where there may have been stricter standards in the past. For example, in years past, if a group of people started blocking a roadway, rapid steps would have been taken to clear the right of way. Warnings, arrests, and movement lines would have been the standard response. However, recent events in US national history produced a greater tolerance for large public spaces to be occupied during a protest, whether that is a roadway, parking lot, or other public space (Jarvis, 2020; Holycross, 2020; Tracy, 2011). An argument can be made for and against drawing a line where first amendment protected speech can be exercised, but the new norm in the country at that time was to allow assemblies in areas they may not have gone before. While I don’t know what Capitol Police leadership were thinking in the moments leading up to the group’s approach to the capitol walls, I know as a CDU commander, what questions would need to be answered in my response calculation. Where would I draw the line given modern society’s appetite for public assembly? Would I allow a group to come on the lawn of the capitol? Do we hold a group to the designated assembly area, stop them at the front patio area, steps, door? If force is used to hold a group on the sidewalk or other areas further from the capitol doorway, would the headline in tomorrow’s newspaper be, “Police use excessive force to stop a peaceful crowd that just stepped on the grass.” In retrospect, after knowing the outcome of the day, that thought may sound unreasonable, but having experienced the summer of 2020 and the time period leading up to January 6, it was not. As much as some would posture that politics has no bearing on doing the right thing in policing and as much as we strive as police leaders to keep politics out of the profession, there is no absolute way to avoid it. While as a leader I am 100% accountable for the orders given

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to my people, they will be the ones in the pictures and on the video footage taking the actions they are ordered to follow. A modern police leader understands that dichotomy and navigates its nuances in a balanced way to protect the public, their officers, and the protestors. Before long, the thoughts in my head about when and where I would draw a line in the sand if I was the incident commander at the Capitol became a moot point. The capitol’s entryways were breached and a call for assistance was made over the Police Mutual Aid Radio System (PMARS). As much as some may highlight perceived deficiencies of law enforcement that day, there are many systems and aspects of the event that were preplanned and worked well. Police leaders that preceded me understood the need for a rapid way to request aid in times of a quickly unfolding emergency, and PMARS was the result of some of those discussions and planning. PMARS is a radio system that is regularly monitored and tested by area law enforcement communications centers. It is a singular point of contact to request emergency assistance or provide information to the area law enforcement agencies rapidly. Multiple agencies in the area, including FCPD heard the call for assistance and took swift action to respond. PMARS worked as planned and should be recognized for that. Without such a system, I believe the regional response would have taken much longer.

2.2 Mobilization of the FCPD CDU After the call for assistance, the FCPD began mobilizing a response. Of the eight district stations in our department, the McLean District station is geographically located the closest to the Capitol. Its close proximity to the Capitol and to the Capitol beltway were the reasons CDU leadership selected it that day as a rally point to assemble our CDU officers and equipment. Several CDU officers working their normally assigned patrol districts, detective bureaus, and other specialty assignments converged on the McLean station. Our unit not only comprises CDU officers, but also has a small contingent of tactical medics and safety officers. Both of which were part of the response group. Not knowing what we were facing, where we would be assigned, or what our role would be when we arrived, we wanted to take as much gear as possible. Our shields and munitions were stored in a mobile trailer at the other end of the 400 square mile jurisdiction. However, our dedicated officers recognized the need early in the call for assistance, and quickly arranged for it to be picked up and transported to the McLean District Station. During the Mclean station assembly, county government approvals were sought. Within our government structure, county leadership must approve the deployment of police assets outside of the state. This request was made through me, to my chief, to the county executive, and the county chairman. However, what may sound like a long process, on this day was a quick and clear approval to respond. That clearance was granted well prior to my arrival at the McLean station.

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During the McLean assembly time frame, the Fairfax County Office of Emergency Management (OEM) stood up their Joint Operations Center (JOC). While this event occurred solely in the District of Columbia, at the time, no one knew the extent of where it would continue. An FCPD commander was assigned to the JOC, listening to our operations channel. Assembling for a spontaneous request, such as the one on January 6, often requires leadership to make many judgement calls. The first of which at the Mclean Station was when to depart. Officers were responding not only from every district station in our large jurisdiction, but also from their homes. In the D.C. metro area, commutes regularly can exceed an hour to work. We needed a large enough group of officers to be effective, but we could not wait for all responding officers. I made the decision to depart once the gear trailer arrived. In the interim, a scribe was designated to record every officer in our group and the vehicles we were taking. At the arrival of the trailer, we had 43 officers, including two medics and one safety officer. I knew additional officers were still responding but we had to leave and help. We also could not leave Fairfax County without CDU resources, so the order was for the remaining CDU officers to assemble at the McLean District in the event something occurred in our jurisdiction or a second response was needed to the capitol. This small group of officers ended up being less than ten but would have been more than capable, with the assistance of patrol, to address any event that may have generated in our county. Prior to leaving, we took one last roll call, ensured all were operating on the same radio channel, and departed as a group with our lights and sirens clearing the way. Simultaneously, while assembling a platoon of CDU officers, others in the department coordinated with the OEM to stand up a command center for the county in the JOC. A department member of major rank and other representatives assembled in that location to provide coordination in the event of spillover in the county, to maintain contact with the platoon responding to the capitol, and provide visibility to department executive leadership. They monitored our designated radio channel the platoon would be operating on and maintained cellular contact with me as the operational commander. When we departed the McLean District Station, the operations center was well aware of our movements. One item that has been desired for years in the unit but unable to be obtained were CDU-specific response vans. In preplanned events, we have always relied on partnerships with county buses or a van from our academy. Given the spontaneity of this response, we utilized the cruisers the officers arrived in, many with cages separating the back seats from the front. Doubling up, 2 officers to a vehicle, in a response of 43 officers, meant our arrival to the capitol stretched far down the road. Thankfully, we were given a somewhat secured location to park the multiple vehicles, but during the drive, I contemplated what would happen if the area we park in gets overrun and our vehicles destroyed. Not knowing where CPD would park us, I contemplated parking in two locations in the event one gets overrun. During the short drive to the capitol, I maintained contact with executive leadership within the department as we were all concerned for the well-being of our officers and the outcomes of our response. A recent CDU incident that was particularly

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on everyone in leadership’s mind was an event that occurred in Lafayette Park. Six months prior, President Trump visited this park after a group of people in protest were cleared out by US Park Police in CDU gear, utilizing shields and mounted officers. Initial reports suggested the use of force was predicated on the President’s desire to take photographs at that location (Gjelten, 2020); however, that was later refuted by a US Department of the Interior, Office of Inspector General report (Office of the Inspector General, 2021). Regardless of the facts of that event, there were concerns that CDU units could be used in the wrong situations or for improper reasons. The past two years of civil unrest, sensitivities from the recent Lafayette Park event fresh in the minds of leadership, and the uncertainty of our role that day, increased the blood pressure of some. Again, the notion of separating politics with police operations reared its head and I knew I needed to address the officers upon our arrival.

2.3 The Way to the Capitol We arrived at a designated location and met with two command level Capitol Police officers. Things were still unfolding rapidly, and our role was still uncertain, but our priority was to get to the capitol building and help. We were quickly sworn in as special Capitol Police officers for the duration of our assistance and connected with a Capitol Police sergeant as our escort. Prior to leaving the parking lot, I briefly spoke to the group of officers. Remember your training, stick together, and stand by your ethics were the highlights of the speech. I could see in the eyes of the officers that they were ready to defend the nation’s capitol, uncertain of what may happen, and eager to put their training to the test. When we departed the parking area where we were sworn in, our CPD liaison did not have a specific assignment for us or mission outside of “respond and assist.” This was understandable given the fluidity of the situation and immediacy for help. With heavy packs of CDU gear on our backs, we double timed it, following the CPD sergeant. The Capitol area campus is connected by a multitude of underground tunnels. To the unfamiliar eye, these connections seem like a maze, with a small railway system shuttling people to and from the various government buildings. I have lived in the D.C. area for 25 years and familiar with the layout of the city; however, as we traversed those hallways, I had no idea where we were in relation to ground above us. And before long, I was geographically disoriented and our mobile radios began to produce an audible alert that there was no connection to the Fairfax County repeater (more on this later), but this was when I first noticed the radio issue. Eventually, the FCPD CDU contingency arrived at the end of a hallway and underneath the capitol building. As we approached this area, the distinct smell of pepper spray could be detected. While we were not given a specific order or role to fulfill, the strong smell of pepper spray in the area signaled that we were about to encounter the rioters. I gave the order to drop packs and fully gear up, including gas

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masks. Not far from our location we could hear banging, and commotion. The sense of urgency rose as we geared up. At the doorway in front of us leading to the capitol appeared two CPD officers who clearly had just come from the fight, encouraging us to deploy quickly. In these moments we say in policing that we revert back to our training; however, due to the pandemic, we had not trained with our new gear and valuable time was expended donning the equipment. Our new gear system included shoulder pads that connected to other pieces of equipment, new helmets, and new shin guards, among other things. What seemed like an inordinate amount of time, but likely was not, the group was geared up and ready to deploy. A hard lesson to realize in an emergency, and one that our profession knows better: train, train, and train again. The pandemic effected so many things in policing and in our lives that this was just another unintended outcome of social isolation practices, deferred training. Sometimes in policing, you go with what you got and make it work, and we did.

2.4 On Scene at the Capitol Leaving our empty equipment bags behind, we followed our CPD guide up the stairs and into a hallway where we temporarily held our position. Our CPD guide advised us to standby and we awaited instruction. Suddenly, two CPD officers were pulled down into our hallway, noticeably exhausted and injured. The benefit of integrating medics into our CDU deployment strategy instantly paid off. The two medics quickly went to work, providing medical aid on the floor of the capitol hallway. Such a sight may not have been seen at this location since the war of 1812.1 During the holdover in the hallway, we could hear loud banging, explosions, likely from chemical munitions, and the sounds of a large out of control group. Another sound that I did not expect to hear was a tone from my radio, indicating that I did not have a signal to our repeater. While walking through the underground tunnels, I noticed this tone, but assumed it was due to the depth of our location. I did not expect it to continue once we emerged into the capitol. But it did and a decision had to be made. We no longer had a communication connection to the FCPD command center via portable radio, only cellular service. I texted my leadership and we changed radio channels to a point-to-point frequency that does not connect to the radio system’s repeater. Another item to include in the after-action report. Typically, when we deploy CDU assets in a planned mobilization, a communications officer is included in the deployment. However, one was not available given how rapidly we responded, and honestly, was an afterthought with this deployment. This would not be the last communication example we would encounter. Speaking through a gas mask is challenging. Speaking through the gas mask and  A Most Magnificent Ruin: The Burning of the Capitol during the War of 1812, Architect of the Capitol, 11, August 2012, https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/blog/ most-magnificent-ruin-burning-capitol-during-war-1812. 1

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into a portable radio is another hurdle altogether. Add in the volume of a large unruly group, and you can imagine what the communication barrier was. In the past we explored purchasing voice emitters for each officer, or at least supervisors and commanders in anticipation of this issue. However, on that day, we made do with what we had.

2.5 Outside of the Capitol What we did not realize while holding in the hallway of the Capitol was that around the corner of the corridor we stood in was the doorway leading out to the west side of the building, leading to the capitol balcony. If you have ever watched the presidential inauguration, this is the balcony where the president takes the oath of office and looks outward to the Washington, D.C. mall. Soon we made our way through this hallway and out the balcony door. However, the door was not open, it was ripped off its hinges and was lying on the floor, damaged and with the glass broken out. Emerging through this broken threshold, the sound of the crowd amplified as we joined a group of officers assembled on the balcony. I am not sure about the other officers in my platoon, but it was at this point my emotional state changed. Leading up to this moment I felt a sense of uncertainty and uneasiness. When I emerged outside of the capitol building after seeing the injured officers, observing some of the damage to the building, hearing and seeing the crowd in person, a different emotion took over. I was struck with a mixture of anger and disappointment. I recall thinking that in my lifetime, we had been attacked by people from other parts of the world (9/112,3) but rallied as a nation in the aftermath. We had endured a select few crazed individuals (beltway sniper4,5) who terrorized the area. On this day, a large mob of our own citizens had desecrated our nation’s capitol. This was not a far-off group of people who hated the United States; these were our people, our nation’s citizens, out of control, and acting in unison as an angry mob, hell bent on who knows what. At this point in the riot, the brave men and women of the CPD and MPD had fought valiantly to move the angry mob out of the capitol building; however, they were still at the foot of the building, screaming and refusing to leave. Their numbers diminished from the initial portion of the event but were still in mass, up against the building walls and the balcony stairs. Suddenly a commander, who I initially did not recognize, (he was wearing a gas mask and full CDU gear), began to direct our platoon and other assembled police around us. Months later I learned that this  September 11 Attacks, History, 25, August 2018, https://www.history.com/.amp/ topics/21st-century/9-11-attacks. 3  9/11 FAQs, 9/11 Memorial and Museum, https://www.911memorial.org/911-faqs. 4  Beltway Snipers, FBI, https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/beltway-snipers. 5  Three weeks of terror: How the 2002 D.C. sniper attacks unfolded, The Washington Post, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/01/timeline-dc-sniper-attacks/. 2

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person was MPD Commander Robert Glover. He and I had worked together a few times in years past on presidential inauguration deployments and motor squad events, but I did not recognize him on that day. Commander Glover had been in command since some of the early moments of the event and had led his officers through a tough battle. The men and women of the Capitol Police Department, MPD, and others who did an outstanding service to American democracy during the early moments and height of the insurrection should be recognized with distinction. Highly outnumbered, they placed themselves at great personal risk to defend the capitol and its occupants. They slowed the angry mob, allowed elected officials time to secure safely, and for a collective law enforcement response to occur. Without them, the FCPD and other departments would not have had the opportunity to assist in the manner we did. We quickly made our way down the balcony stairs, fanned out in front of the capitol building, and formed a skirmish line. This is something we trained for numerous times in my career and our officers were ready to work together. To our left and right were various jurisdictions, including MPD and CPD, although most were wearing gas masks, and identification of any individual officer was difficult. This was another point noted during our debrief of the event. With departments standardizing equipment in the region, distinguishing jurisdictions and officers became more of a challenge. Including stickers on the back of helmets with agency, rank and identifier were noted as solutions. Shouting through his gasmask, Commander Glover organized the line of officers and the crowd was moved off the capitol walls and off the paved patio where a short concrete wall divided the patio and the grass field. As the crowd was moved onto the grass field, they stopped, possibly feeling protected by the concrete barrier. As we held at this position and tightened the line, objects began falling on the officers. Some in the crowd threw anything they could get their hands on, jugs of liquid, rocks, and pieces of metal. On the other side of the concrete wall were the remnants of the metal bicycle fencing, originally erected as a barrier to keep the crowd from approaching the capitol. In the early moments of the attack, these bicycle racks were lifted, thrown, trampled, and damaged. Very few at this point in the day were still upright. Suddenly, a large piece of metal rebar came raining down on the CDU line, striking the FCPD officer directly in front of me. It was likely a piece of one of the bicycle racks. I heard a loud thud as I saw the object strike one of my officers directly on his head. I immediately checked on him and could tell he was dazed by the impact. Lucky for all of us, especially this officer, we had new CDU-specific, impact-resistant helmets. Up until purchasing these helmets, my unit had military surplus helmets that were designed more for ballistic resistance than impact resistance. This officer was later diagnosed with a concussion, but at the time, insisted on remaining with his brothers and sisters on the line. For the second time, our CDU medics proved their invaluableness and attended to this officer’s needs. With our line adjusted and bolstered, the order was given to traverse the concrete wall and move the crowd farther off the capitol property. As we had trained, verbal commands accompanied each step as the reinforced law enforcement line, comprising multiple variations of badges and patches, worked together to make a final push

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to move the remaining people across the capitol lawn. This was the final signal to the protestors that this event was over. As the remnants of the crowd were pushed to the curb, many left the area, recognizing that law and order had been restored, and their awful moment was over. While several people remained on the sidewalk, their insults and shouts fell on deaf ears as the officers held fast, on the line.

2.6 Aftermath As the crowd diminished, the order was given to remove gas masks and take a breath of fresh air. Coordinating with CPD, the decision was made to reassemble congress so they could finish their session. On the east side of the capitol building is the parking area and rear entrance. We were reassigned by CPD to the east perimeter while the motorcades returned and the elected officials resumed their duties. On this side of the building were only a handful of people and reporters looking for the latest story. By this point in the evening the sun was down and night had set in with the temperature dropping. Being involved in an event such as this, you tend to lose a sense of time. We had been at the capitol for several hours. It was at this point our safety officer asked me a question I felt at the time was very odd. He inquired, “when was the last time you took a bathroom break.” I had to think about the answer for a moment because we had been so involved in the day’s events. I could not give him an answer, other than, not in a while. His point was, we had been deployed for several hours and no one had stopped to drink. He was doing what we want a safety officer to do, look out for our blind spots, and protect our officers’ well-being, including dehydration. Point well taken, but we were in a different jurisdiction, and without some of the supplies we typically bring, such as bottled water. Another footnote for the debrief, stock a supply of bottled water to keep near the gear trailer. Our safety officer connected with someone in the CPD who was already working on and had obtained water to distribute. What may sound like a minor footnote could become a larger issue if this deployment was extended. If you don’t deploy your unit with a safety officer, consider adding or designating someone. Attention to safety should always be paramount and someone paying attention can save you in the moment. In a large and fluid deployment, your attention as the operational commander, to general safety issues like dehydration will not be sufficient. As congress returned to the capitol, and the evening temperatures dropped, we were pulled off the rear perimeter and staged inside by a large bust of President Lincoln. It was at this moment that we had an opportunity to take a restroom break and reflect. I remember walking into the building through a door with fresh graffiti on it. There were objects knocked over and windows smashed. The feeling of disgust for what our own citizens had done to the capitol revisited my mind. Why would they do this? What did they hope to accomplish? While pondering these questions, I was struck by what I observed on the floor: sand. I noticed this earlier in the day but was focused on the mission. I later learned this was a byproduct of all of the multiple munitions that were deployed inside the building. They left a sandy

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residue when they dissipated to the ground. The graffiti, dirt, and damage started to fill my heart with disgust and anger, but soon a new emotion took over as I saw the elected officials walking back to resume the congressional session. This was fulfillment and duty. Fulfillment to the protection to our nation’s democracy and duty to our country. The men and women who protected the capitol and the congressional members on January 6 ensured the continuity of our government. Collectively, we made it possible for the joint session of congress to reconvene and complete its business. When we left the Capitol that evening around midnight, we were passed by incoming jurisdictions from outside of the region who had answered the call to assist in maintaining the security of the nation and to allow the brave men and women who had encountered the angry mob an opportunity to rest. The FCPD platoon collectively returned to the McLean District Station where our Chief and deputy chiefs were waiting for our arrival, with food, drinks and gratitude. Many of the officers had started their day at 0530 hours and fatigue and hunger had set in. A welcomed meal from our top leadership was a welcome sight.

3 Lessons Learned 3.1 Training In the following days, we debriefed our response as law enforcement typically does in major deployments to learn from our mistakes and successes. Ideally, the debrief is conducted at the conclusion of the event; however, given the length of the event, we opted for rest that evening. Assembling the leadership of the response for a discussion the following day, several items were discussed. The first being the unit’s readiness as it related to donning our equipment. Upgrading or changing even one item should be accompanied by instruction and training. While the pandemic temporarily blinded us to this fact given competing priorities associated with the virus, we could have explored creative ways to familiarize our officers with the new gear. Perhaps a video showing the proper methods and a follow-up virtual deployment could have solved this. Training is paramount and as law enforcement leaders, we need to maintain this priority along with other competing priorities whether it is social distancing, budgets, or other obstacles. In addition to training with new equipment in one’s own unit, it is necessary to train with regional jurisdictions. Many civil disturbance units in the United States are non-standing, and only a fraction of the entire department workforce. Regional collaboration is inevitable in this subset of law enforcement given the limited number of CDU officers and joint training across jurisdictions is needed. While the FCPD had trained with other localities in the past, CPD and some federal agencies had not been included. A lesson in thinking broader as a leader. What jurisdictions are in your region and what agency is charged with its protection? What are their

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capabilities, and have you trained with them before? As absurd as the notion of a mob infiltrating the Capitol may have seemed before January 6, we should be prepared.

3.2 Equipment Aside from training, we noted several equipment items. The first was having the proper equipment. As mentioned earlier, our previous iteration of CDU equipment was not specifically tailored for our mission and there were no established standards. That changed during the year leading up to January 6, and likely saved our officers from further injury. Military surplus equipment may be acceptable for its originally intended purpose; however, it is less than optimal for CDU purposes. Investing in proper personal protective equipment can and will save officers from injury. Initial costs can seem high; however, the alternatives are costlier. Seek grants, seized assets or other nonstandard options if budgets are not adequate. Another lesson learned was from an identification standpoint. As CDU equipment becomes standardized, distinguishing people and departments becomes more difficult. With full PPE equipment utilized, including helmets and gas masks, a method needs to be employed to more readily differentiate one from another. The solution used by FCPD now is a set of stickers indicating the jurisdiction, rank, and unit number on the back of each helmet. A simple and inexpensive fix. Transportation was another topic of discussion in the debrief. Responding to an uncertain and largely attended civil disturbance event brings a multitude of logistical concerns, including transportation. Utilizing over 20 vehicles requires finding sufficient parking that is secured. Additionally, if units needed to move in mass farther and faster than ideal on foot, through crowds of people, a number of things can go wrong. Some CDU have specific vans with larger seating capacity and space for equipment storage. Having a few vehicles of this nature would have been highly beneficial in this response.

3.3 Communication Proper PPE without sufficient communication will leave a unit short of its intended goals. When we deployed to the capitol, our communications specialist was not in the response. Heading through the tunnels of the federal buildings, our radios had difficulty connecting to the county repeaters. While communications within the onsite platoon were maintained using the direct talk around option of the portable radios, a regular signal to the repeater would have been ideal. During the debrief, our communications specialist noted that there was an option to solve the dilemma; however, we were unaware at that time. Having more than one person proficient in

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communications systems would have resolved this problem and the lesson was noted as another opportunity for growth within the unit. Properly functioning radios only amplify a message across distances. The original communication has to reach the radio’s microphone in an audibly recognizable fashion to be received well. Yelling through a gas mask to produce a clear communication is challenging. This aspect was overtly a part on January 6, and the obvious solution is the availability of a voice emitter designed to work with the gas mask. Following this event, the unit purchased emitters for all supervisors and commanders, with plans to outfit all officers with one. While there are always opportunities for growth in any event, the collective law enforcement deployment after the initial movements of the crowd restored order. This allowed our country’s government to complete its business that evening. Being any part of that mission is something that the men and women who defended the capitol, and our democracy on January 6, will never forget and will always be proud of.

References Bürger, B., Thielmann, G., Hanson, A., & Dobson, C. (2024). Differences in U.S. and German police organizations with an impact on the policing of public assemblies. In B.  Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional's guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Demirjian, K. (2021, June 8). Capitol police had intelligence indicating an armed invasion weeks before Jan. 6 riot, senate probe finds. The Washington Post. Retrieved January 17, 2023, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-­security/january-­6-­senate-­ investigation/2021/06/08/a8cc5b1e-­c7d4-­11eb-­81b1-­34796c7393af_story.html. Gjelten, T. (2020). Peaceful protesters tear-gassed to clear way for trump church photo-op, NPR, 1, June 2020. Retrieved January 17, 2023, from https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/ trumps-­unannounced-­church-­visit-­angers-­church-­officials. Hanson, A., & Dobson, C. (2024). Police organization and the policing of assemblies in the United States. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Holycross, J. (2020). Center City: Demonstrators rally, March onto I-676 to protest police violence. Philadelphia Neighborhoods, 7, July 2020. Retrieved January 17, 2023, from https://philadelphianeighborhoods.com/2020/07/07/ center-­city-­demonstrators-­rally-­march-­onto-­i-­676-­to-­protest-­police-­violence/. Jarvis, J. (2020). Seattle mayor expresses support for ‘first amendment activities’ at CHOP. Newsweek, 17, Jun. 2020. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://www.newsweek. com/seattle-­mayor-­chop-­chaz-­first-­amendment-­activities-­1511398. Kishi, R. & Jones, S. (2022). Demonstrations and political violence in America: New data for summer 2020. Retrieved January 28, 2023, from https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/ demonstrations-­political-­violence-­in-­america-­new-­data-­for-­summer-­2020/. Office of Inspector General. (2021). Review of U.S.  Park Police Actions at Lafayette Park, 8, June 2021. Retrieved January 17, 2023, from https://www.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/oig-­ reports/DOI/SpecialReviewUSPPActionsAtLafayetteParkPublic.pdf. Tracy, R. (2011). Occupy DC allowed to keep on occupying D.C. Park. The wall street journal. 16 Nov. 2011. Retrieved January 12, 2023, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-­WB-­31935.

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Eli Cory  is the Deputy Chief of Police for Investigations for the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) in Virginia, USA. He has been a sworn member of the department since 1998 and serving in the Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) as an officer, supervisor, and commander since 2001. In the later portion of his CDU service, he held the position of overall CDU commander. During his tenure with the CDU he deployed on several Presidential inaugurations, International Monetary Foundation protests, Bilderberg protests, a Papal Visit, January 6th United States Capitol response, post-Floyd demonstrations, National Rifle Association protests, and a multitude of varying protests within Fairfax County. In addition to CDU responsibilities, Deputy Chief Cory also served his community in a variety of capacities commanding the Northern Virginia Reginal Intelligence Center, a Patrol Division, Traffic Division, and the Public Affairs Bureau. He holds an undergraduate degree from the Pennsylvania State University and a master’s degree from the George Mason University.

The “Yellow Vest Protests”: A Challenge for Police and Democracy Christian Ghirlanda

Abstract This article first describes the challenges that  French police faced with Yellow Vest protests, but also for democracy itself, and how the various actors in France have attempted to respond to this new situation. Thereupon, the author analyzes the specifics of this new form of protest. Finally, the author emphasizes the importance of continuous further development of the police profession and further education to adapt to this new kind of protest in an evolving liberal democratic system and society.

1 A Movement that Challenges Democracy The Western model of street protests since the nineteenth century was a “regulated and disciplined street” (Clemenceau in Hayat, 2006, p.37) protest where dialogue should be achieved, between the recognized representatives of the institutions and the leaders of the assembly. However, these norms no longer applied to the Yellow Vests, whose protest can be described as a culmination of the new system-critical protests that have emerged in France since the 2010s. A basic principle of democracy, the transfer of power through elections, was being questioned; the power transferred to the elected was no longer recognized. On the other hand, every person wants to be seen and heard, wants to be part of the debate, and the supposed common will are the partial interests that by chance find their way into the public discussion. “Self-affirmation - shaped in a hypertrophy of the ego - [... as] a characteristic of an epoch [...] in which everyone tries to be himself like a king and not like another” (Roudinesco, 2021, p. 10). Relationships with others in society are changing, the rules of interaction for maintaining public order are simply not accepted at best and rejected at worst. Even some politicians agree that emotion prevails over law and give themselves to these kinds of protesters. As then French Interior C. Ghirlanda (*) CRS West, Rennes, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_15

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Minister Castaner put it when he announced that the George Floyd protests would be tolerated despite being banned (due to COVID -19 measures): “I believe that the worldwide emotion, which is a healthy emotion on this subject [meaning anti-­ racism], basically exceeds the legal rules that apply” (Martin, 2020). With this statement, it is quasi-officially acknowledged that sentiment, emotion, i.e., including that of the Yellow Vests, can be a go to transgress rules. The Yellow Vest protests became a real challenge for the state: there was no coordination with the authorities in advance, often the assembly locations or routes were announced at the last minute, if at all, were unusual and there were no organizers who could be identified as assembly leaders. Crucial to coordination were the various social networks, which, however, as is usual in these networks, are deliberately not organized hierarchically, but function like a swarm. Accordingly, the well-­ rehearsed administrative processes no longer functioned, and the assessment of the situation and the possible dangers were also a particular challenge. Eric Morvan,  Head of the French National Police, describes the situation before the National Assembly on April 9, 2019, as follows: the virality of influencers, combined with the reach and speed of social networks challenges the police’s previously well-rehearsed procedures, especially those for assessing the situation and accordingly planning appropriate measures (Assemblée Nationale, 2019a, p. 9). Likewise, dialogue with the demonstrators became a challenge,  because there were as many representatives of the assembly as the number of participants; each vest donned by the demonstrators was labeled with individual demands. This swarm “organization” is in fact disorganization due to the problems described regarding maintaining security, with two notable consequences: First, it is almost impossible for the authorities to protect the places of gathering, for example, to divert traffic. As a result, people were even killed in accidents during the first Yellow Vest protests in France. The demonstrators by the refusal of dialogue, the rejection of any state institutions, their representatives and the police have paid high price. Due to the lack of dialogue between the officials and the demonstrators, the police could only protect the places of assembly under time pressure, sometimes late or with too few forces. Secondly, the disorganization of the Yellow Vest movement also allowed the various extremist ideologies to participate in the protest. Not only were they able to spread their world views, but it also happened that ultra-leftists and ultra-rightists joined the protest and virtually confronted each other within the same assembly, sometimes even carrying out violence against each other or against police forces. Incidentally, this was also the situation in which the police’s well-rehearsed procedures once again reached their limits. The use of Police, especially the use of force were considered disproportionate by everyone in this overall context, everyone felt restricted in their rights. Together with the spread of this interpretation through social media, Police became, in the eyes of the demonstrators, an expression of repression, carried out on orders of the rulers they rejected. Overall, the various legitimacies quoted by the protesters for their actions can be described as follows:

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• Liberal legitimacy: the individual is inviolable and may not, in practice, be subjected to coercion by the state or the police. • Syncretic legitimacy: autonomy of one’s own knowledge, the individual trusts only his own judgment and is therefore allowed to question institutional power. • Historical legitimacy: Democracy is also directly linked to the right to rebel. • Ideological legitimacy: the goal of changing society. • Geopolitical legitimacy: globalization as a threat legitimizes protest. • Revolutionary legitimation: the street as the only means of expression and achievement of goals. Also, the slow responsiveness of the authorities fed the feeling of contempt for the decision-makers and institutions. It reinforced the certainty of a gap with an elite represented by politicians. In addition, the protests were also used by looters. The Christmas holidays were approaching, and in the chaos of events, some took the opportunity to loot stores, quite opportunistically. This multiplicity of actors with different goals meant that the groups did not even internally agree on a common will or common demands. They had “come together for the sake of the occasion” (Tartakowsky, 2020, p. 208). Again, the well-rehearsed procedures, such as the dialogue between assembly leaders and the police, could no longer take place de facto - an enormous challenge for the police. Typical for the protest of the Yellow Vests is also in particular the use of modern means of communication and especially social networks. This organizational volatility and diffusion of leaders posed particular challenges for the police: it was de facto no longer possible to discuss security concerns with the organizers, to cooperate and to find solutions together. The equilibrium built up over the course of the twentieth century and the relationship between Authorities and “the street” disintegrated. In addition, the impression that the risk of an uprising from people exists was solidifying among the population. The first actions of the Yellow Vests were given this label of insurgency by the public, even though this attribution was not accurate (Ghirlanda, 2019). Finally, this conflict was also characterized by the large number of assembly locations, as well as the outbreak of violence in many unusual places that had not previously been known for assemblies of such scale and, in some cases, violence. Accordingly, the locally deployed police forces were overtasked, under-resourced, often disorganized, hardly practiced and insufficiently equipped for such operations. To illustrate the dimension of the protests from the point of view of the police, the statement of the commander of the 32nd Company of Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (32nd CRS of Le Havre), a full-time public order unit, who was deployed at the first protest of the Yellow Vests, is cited here: “Saturday, November 17, 2018, is the first demonstration of the Yellow Vests. The CRS No. 32 was in charge of securing Élysée Palace between 16:00 and midnight. Leaving the barracks and

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being on the radio, I immediately understood that the situation was critical and once we are in the capital, ‘Paris1’1 asked me for urgent support. The entire neighborhood around the Élysée Palace was blocked by other police forces. Given the urgency, I decided to stop my convoy. I decided to walk  in the direction of the Élysée. I sent one platoon to reinforce another unit to the rear exit of the U.S.  Embassy, forty meters past Rue d’Anjou.... I sent another platoon to reinforce CRS 27. The third platoon stayed with me to protect the main entrance of the residence of the President of the Republic. The situation was increasingly escalating for the forces located at the back exit of the U.S.  Embassy. Tear gas was used in very large quantities. The situation seemed unbelievable and unreal to me. I was standing at the main entrance of the Élysée Palace, behind me were a dozen very concerned Élysée Palace employees. A few moments later, I saw a large cloud of tear gas very close to my platoon, which is behind the U.S.  Embassy. At that moment, the ambassador was exfiltrated. Fortunately, no barrier was overrun and my platoon, which was protecting the president’s house, did not have to intervene. By 5:30 p.m., the situation was calm again.”

2 Classic Responses to Maintain Order Are Challenged The characteristics of the Yellow Vest conflict, as we have just identified them, have forced Police and Gendarmerie to look for short-term solutions. At the beginning of the conflict, Police  was faced with fragmentation into small, active and virulent groups due to the lack of cohesion of the protesters, who did not form “classic” marches. Situational assessment, flexibility and speed of police response became the new challenge - but reached its limits given the procedural model introduced in Paris in the early twentieth century. The highly centralized chain of command of the police prefecture was for a long time numb. The very deep and broad chain of command leads to a single person, the  Prefect, from whom almost all decisions are made. Apart from the cognitive load that puts the decision-maker in high stress, this hierarchical command structure prevented police from taking initiative on the ground. The system is unable to quickly adapt and respond to micro-goals. Another weakness of the Paris model was the lack of declared or at least predictable routes for the Yellow Vest marches. This absence triggered a classic reflex, which was to concentrate public order units at sensitive objects. This decision meant that forces experienced in such situations and equipped and trained for them, namely the public order units of the CRS and the gendarmerie, had to protect these sites, while few units, far from being as well trained for such situations, faced huge crowds that were also infiltrated by violent protestors. These units, therefore, experienced a deployment that pushed them beyond the limits of their operational and physiological capabilities. This deployment resulted in a high number of use of force as the safety

 Call-sign of the commander modified for this publication.

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of police officers in critical situations could often only be guaranteed through the massive use of force. In outside Paris, the situation was different: here, it was simply the large number of assembly sites in combination with the nonavailability or late availability of public order units that meant that police officers with little experience, lack of equipment and training for such situations had to cope with them. Consequently, as in Paris, in the face of the riots, there were numerous and not always targeted use of force incidents that could perhaps have been avoided by deploying more professional units. In addition, there was also a lack of leaders trained for such challenging assembly situations, neither in the command of operations nor in the tactical leadership of the units on the ground. The duration of the protests over days, weeks, months, together with the factors described above, led to overload Police. This was exacerbated, as it was deemed necessary to shorten training periods and rest breaks to ensure public safety, which intensified the above-mentioned effects (training deficits and exhaustion, and in turn led to deficits in traditional daily police work. Deficits in the legal system also became apparent: prosecution of criminal offenses, which might have deterred the most egregious and violent of protester behavior, was hardly possible by the sheer volume overwhelming the legal system and the perception of the police using excessive force and the public demand to also investigate the action of the police. This divided already overburdened resources to both working with and investigating the police simultaneously. The investigating departments and public prosecutors had enormous difficulties in proving that those arrested had committed crimes. In addition, the preventive measures that were legally possible also proved to be almost ineffective in practice. Finally, institutional communication proved to be outdated and inadequate from the beginning of the conflict. Given that trust in institutions in France has been declining for years, and that precisely these institutions were barely, if at all, recognized by the participants in the Yellow Vest protests, the communication strategy was ill-fated from the outset. In addition, there was the structural rigidity of institutional communication, which was almost imperceptible in the continuous communication fire of the unions, especially the unions of the police, as well as the anarchistic swarm communication of the Yellow Vests. The time-delayed communication of the authorities, both due to the necessary coordination and the use of classical media, led to a ministerial publication only 14 days after the start of the movement - this de facto speechlessness was perceived by the public and was interpreted as an inability of the institutions - fitting the image of the protesters.

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3 Political, Legal and Technical Responses under Time Pressure The scale and impact of protests meant that Police had to adapt quickly to the new situation. This became particularly difficult because politicians initially did not react to the content of the protests or just defended their previous line (increasing the tax on fossil fuels to finance the energy transition), which was the origin of the protests. Accordingly, anger at the government grew. Moreover, the government showed its determination not to be dissuaded from its plan by masked and violent protests. The Yellow Vests, however, felt “screwed” by the government because of this stance (Midi Libre, 2018). In the public eye, the content of the protests took a back seat to the discussion of the violence by the demonstrators or the police response to it. At the same time, the general  headquarters of the gendarmerie and the police were trying to improve their media relations and to use various channels to provide information about the guidelines and procedures of the police and to make their actions transparent. This communication offensive was also accompanied by tactical adjustments. The first major break took place the day after December 1, 2018, after two weekends of violence that culminated in the Arc de Triomphe riots. Police decision-makers were beginning to question the Paris operational concept. And if the Paris model was being questioned, the question for all of France was how to shape a new model. After the December 1 protests, directors of the national police, responsible for public order, and those in charge of the General Directorate of the Gendarmerie met in the prefecture of Paris for an emergency meeting under the auspices of the interior minister. As Prefect Klayman explained to the deputies afterwards, the objective was that the police “must be mobile, effective and innovative,” and, as the CRS central director further specified, this would require the formation of new competencies and synergies between the various directorates of the National Police. (Assemblée Nationale, 2019b, p. 9). Accordingly, the operational planning for Dec. 8, 2018 was adjusted: the public order units were partially relieved of their duty to protect distinct locations, and new legal frameworks were created, which allowed for a large number of detentions. In addition, the rapid intervention unit (détachements d’action rapide, DAR) was created. The idea was to create an adaptable unit, a rapid intervention group, whose task was to deploy quickly to violent elements in order to disrupt their actions and arrest them as fast as possible. Due to the time urgency of the introduction of this unit, it was not possible to sufficiently train the forces, reliably establish their command structures, and embed their intervention logic (coordinated and concerted actions rather than uncoordinated individual actions). These problems explain the relative failure in implementing the DARs. However, the basic idea (quick intervention) of the deployment of this unit did not work out in practice and some of them came into contact with large crowds. The DAR were then deployed to build cordons, but were neither trained nor equipped to do so. Naturally, however, they wanted to carry out their orders, but in doing so they

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got into trouble and tried to defend themselves as best they could. To this end, the officers also used their “rubber bullets” (Lanceur de Balles de Défense, LBD), which injured numerous demonstrators. Due to the public debate on this, the LBDs were equipped with cameras in March 2019, and later every shot required the approval of a supervisor (LeParisien, 2020). Some of the adjustments nevertheless bore fruit, as there were significantly fewer incidents on December 8, 2018. However, the Yellow Vests also adapted. As early as December 21, Éric Drouet, one of the movement’s influencers, declared that the next place of assembly would be Paris. However, the exact location could change, as his only strategy was to disrupt and obstruct police actions. Also, the CRS and the corresponding units of the Gendarmerie sought to become faster and more responsive. CRS developed new tactics to deploy, move around, and be as compatible as possible in terms of mutual support during interventions. In Paris, in particular, water cannons were also used extensively. The deployment of police  outside Paris, for example in Le Puy-en-Velay or Quimper, which had not previously been the venues of such operations, also required adjustments. Thus, out of necessity, protective equipment was distributed to small police or gendarme stations. It also became clear that training was absolutely necessary. There were numerous other initiatives to adapt tactics or command and control, some of which came to nothing, while others were incorporated into the further development of the National Guidelines for Dealing with Assembly Situations (Schéma Nationale du Maintien de l’Ordre - SNMO; cf. Ministère de l’Intérieur, 2021). But this frantic race to find new solutions shows how this new form of protest puts well-rehearsed structures, strategies, and tactics to the test. This is also true of the legal tools that, with periodic adjustments throughout the twentieth century, had sufficed to ensure public order. However, the extreme violence at the end of 2018 but also in January and March 2019, with numerous injured police officers but also protesters, have highlighted the limits of judicial reappraisal but also of the available preventive possibilities, calling for the further development of the laws. In February 2019, the law “to strengthen and guarantee the maintenance of public order during demonstrations”, also called “Anti-Randalizer Law”, was introduced in the legislative process and was adopted on April 11 after long and intense discussions (République Française, 2019). But in the end, the momentum of the protests was only slowed down by the Covid-19 pandemic. The entire society, the media and all institutions focused their attention on this overall social challenge. Accordingly, the acute urgency to deal with this form of protest decreased; however, the situation still seems far from being pacified. It remains to be said, however, that new form of protest turned the rehearsed structures and strategies upside down. The authorities had lost control in parts - the protest of the twenty-first century encountered authorities and police from the twentieth century.

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4 Characteristics of the New Form of Protest 4.1 Complexity of Democratic Systems: The Fragmentation of Power It is characteristic of democratic systems that a concentration of power on a few or individuals is prevented - “[...] democracy [...] must at the same time be understood in terms that it is impossible for it to be appropriated by someone who claims to embody the entire community of citizens.” (Rosanvallon, 2020, p.  209). This is ensured in particular by elections as well as the separation of powers in government, legislative power and jurisdiction by independent organizations. The media, often referred to as the fourth power, also play a crucial role. But the political opposition, the various parties and interest groups such as unions are other examples of important actors. This complexity, which also allows (if not even demands) judges to rule some state actions or even laws as unlawful, also affects the demonstrators. They realize that the state is an extremely complex and often not particularly responsive system, in which it is difficult to identify and approach the decision-maker who matches their individual demands, and possibly to receive a response. The relationship between the governing and the governed is thus a special challenge; an election, which was intended as the basis for power in a democratic and liberal system, is no longer sufficient; the governing are continuously controlled - and no longer just by the established media, but by every individual who can spread his or her opinions and views via social networks and thus also gain a great deal of attention.

4.2 The Disappearance of Representatives of the Protests The phenomenon that there are no longer any official representatives or leaders at an assembly was not entirely new with the Yellow Vests. This already occurred in France during “Nuit debout” in 2016 or during “Zone à Défendre of Notre-Dame-­ des-Landes” (2014–2018). These protest movements  were formed because of a theme or event. It was difficult to identify or recognize a spokesperson, but each individual wanted to impose  its opinion, which could organize and influence the movement. The leader who used to emerge from a liberal protest and especially from a populist movement is now often rejected once he has gained legitimacy. Recognizing a leader capable of bringing people together in protest movements thus becomes more complex and rare. The Yellow Vest movement in particular was characterized by the inability to identify and recognize one or more representatives capable of speaking on behalf of all. Whenever the French prime minister offered to receive a delegation, the rejection of the idea of representation was so great that some supposed delegates were threatened with death and excluded from the demonstration marches.

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However, this situation has direct consequences for how the state deals with such a protest. If there is no representative, no organizer, there is no one to turn to; classical approaches to conflict resolution do not work that way. Police are then hardly in a position to conduct dialogue, it becomes difficult to find an echo to the will to de-escalate and to support the search for political solutions to the conflict. From the opposite point of view of the protest, in this universe of individualities, of multiple and scattered demands and the lack of a unifying leader, “the enemy” makes the cohesion. The enemy is the state, the liberal society in its economic and competitive vision, capitalism, global neoliberalism and its representatives. It is a matter of imposing one’s own ideology outside the classical representative democratic framework without descending into civil war or insurrection. Basically, it is an opposition that tries to impose its idea of social change spontaneously and without an election. And what is inevitably added to this cohesion fed by an image of the enemy, the “us versus them”: police forces easily become targets, because they were seen as representatives of the state or because they have taken actions that are judged as an interference with the fundamental right to assemble.

4.3 The Fragmentation of Demands In a liberal democracy attempts are made to strike a balance between the interests of the general public and particular or individual interests such as private enterprise or the rights of minorities. But it is precisely in the case of the new forms of protest, which are, after all, an important democratic means of expressing opinions and forming wills, despite their challenges as assemblies, that it has become apparent that they are not only unable to determine one or more representatives but are also unable to form a unified opinion or even to make a common demand. The importance of individual opinion, of individual interest, comes to the fore and becomes the protestor’s paradigm together with the conviction of knowing the truth and being able to judge the complex social and economic interdependencies. Accordingly, it becomes almost impossible to find compromises or to subordinate oneself to a goal to be found in common - what remains is a cacophony of individual interests and demands. Accordingly, due to the lack of representatives, not only is dialogue not possible, but also no communication of the contents of the demand - because there are too many, possibly contradictory individual interests. After a synthesis of the different demands seemed de facto impossible, the introduction of the complaint booklets (cahiers de doléances) succeeded in establishing a communication channel in which each individual could communicate his or her opinion to the state. As a result, over 400,000 pages of individual demands were collected in the 101 departments (Robin, 2022). However, the problem of mediating conflict in concrete terms, possibly new, assembly situations remains.

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4.4 The Inviolability of the Individual In a liberal democracy, the individual is of great importance; he or she enjoys numerous rights that both protect the individual from the state but also oblige the state to protect him or her, especially his or her physical and mental integrity. Protecting citizens is the task of Police, who may also use force to do so if this is proportionate (necessary, appropriate, reasonable). But it is precisely this permissible use of force, to enforce the protection of the rights of third parties, which is regularly sharply criticized; even the slightest touch is considered disproportionate. The paradox here lies in the fact that the protesters themselves demand far-­ reaching rights, i.e. also regard extreme forms of protest including violence as legitimate in order to impose their will on the state. At the same time any interference by the state, i.e. Police, or even their use of force is assessed as not legitimate. Accordingly, it is difficult to take police action in the context of these assemblies, as the risk of escalation is very high. In addition, it is often difficult to hold individual criminals in a crowd accountable for their actions in a way that can be used in court, for example because they cannot be arrested, or the chain of evidence is insufficient. In contrast, attempts are made to hold every police officer personally accountable and to have even obviously lawful actions criminally investigated by filing complaints or reports. This contributes enormously to the insecurity of officers when they use force, up to even the highest executive levels, for example, when a commander needs to order an eviction or an arrest of a larger group of people and are reported for it. In this regard, it is difficult to find a solution, because unlawful use of force by the police is undoubtedly unacceptable and there should be no “comfort of irresponsibility [that] comes with belonging to any large state or parastatal machinery” (Laurent, 2020, p. 18). Nonetheless, it is important to ensure that obviously baseless allegations can be swiftly resolved in order to also keep police officers’ confidence in the rule of law and in the police commanders’ orders high. These four characteristics of the new protest can be used to think about changes in police strategy and tactics. However, this should not only be about equipment or procedures, but also in particular about the perception of the protest and the perception of the police in society. It is important to shape the relationship, the connection between the police and society.

5 Policing Assemblies in the Twenty-First Century In a democratic state governed by the rule of law, public safety cannot be guaranteed only by the police, their technology and tactics. Maintaining public safety is a task for society as a whole, in which everyone must be involved. The relationship between the police and the population is, therefore key, and how the police are perceived is of particular importance.

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Thus, if the maintenance of twentieth century public order should be evolved to a maintenance of twenty-first century public order, the focus must be on the relationship between Police and population. In France, however, this relationship is clouded and must, therefore, be restored. This means, especially in the context of assemblies, where the actions of the police are observed with the greatest attention, giving priority to means of de-escalation and mediation and placing particular emphasis on communication, especially to enable observers to develop an understanding of police actions. The French doctrine of maintaining public order has come under criticism in the past. It has very often been accused of anti-democratic slippage, militarization, and a lack of adaptability to social developments; it is said not to be a tool for democratic crowd management. This public discourse also contributes to the clouding of the relationship between the police and the population. But how can such a means be shaped, what weaknesses in this doctrine can explain the alienation between the police and the population?

5.1 Democratic Framework In a liberal democracy, policing of assemblies must inevitably be guided by the democratic rule of law and must, therefore, meet the following criteria, which are also reflected in French doctrine: • Society gives Police a monopoly on the use of force and defines their power and limits through the tasks and powers of Police. • Police actions must be predictable, accountable, transparent (the public must have access to information), and consistent across the country for the same event. • Police must be empowered by society to decide what actions to take, and the decisions should be made public and ideally gain approval from the general public - this can be achieved through communication and a dialogue. • Police and their actions must be monitored; they are accountable to society. The results of investigations are published (see, for example, Assemblée Nationale, 2019a and 2019b). Powers, tactics, and equipment also evolve through legislation.2 The institutions of democracy thus define and limit the power of Police. This happens, on the one hand, not only through legislation and formal control, but also through informal control, such as the public discussion of measures or even the doctrine of the French police, which is, after all, significantly developed by the police themselves and the Ministry of the Interior. In this context, the liberal society

 For example: the State Council’s June 10, 2021 decision to ban kettling techniques or the July 1, 2021 directive to ban the use of the GM2L grenades for hand throws. 2

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tries to strengthen the relationship between the police and the population by imposing obligations of comprehensibility, communication, and transparency.

5.2 The Challenges of Implementing the Democratic Framework It is important that the above criteria are in balance: • Too much power for police can lead to tyranny, too little to anarchy. Regulating the limits of police action protects against authoritarian excesses and at the same time helps to define and shape the police force by defining the powers assigned to them. • Too much predictability can lead to inefficiency; if every measure is made public before it is enforced, everyone can prepare for it - this may often be a very good thing, but in individual cases it can lead, for example, to criminals hiding, withdrawing and not being able to be arrested. • If the police refrain from trying to achieve agreement on their measures, for example through communication and dialogue, there is a danger that their actions will be seen as authoritarian and incomprehensible and may result in further alienation. If, on the other hand, Police rely too heavily on achieving their measures in accordance with the will of all those involved, there is a risk that it will be unable to act, because it is impossible to achieve consensus in the fluctuating diversity of opinions (which includes not only those involved on the ground, but also the many other citizens who are not involved in an assembly and whose rights may be restricted by traffic measures or otherwise). • Multiplying the number of decision-makers or centralizing all decisions to a single person would slow down and paralyze all processes. It would also be dangerous for the actors, since the reactions of the police would often no longer correspond to the reality they would be confronted with, because this has long since changed via the loss of time over the instances. • Finally, a multiplication of official and informal controls and monitoring bodies would deprive those responsible for public order of any initiative and cause decision-­makers to fall into an apathy characterized by fear and caution. The greatest risk in maintaining law and order is that if the above fundamentals are not respected, the police can contribute to a democracy sliding into what P.  Rosanvallon calls “democrature,” (a mixture between democracy  - démocratie and dictatorship - dictature) or even become the main instigator of such a development. He suggests two cases in which the use of this term is relevant, namely in “the democratic justification of authoritarian practices” or the “ gradual slide of countries into authoritarian regimes within a democratic institutional framework” (Rosanvallon, 2020, p.  228), what  Tavoillot calls illiberal democracy  (Tavoillot, 2011). This refers especially to the risk that the police take when they view

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protesters as opponents or enemies to be defeated, when they no longer maintain the existing order but create a new one. Sure, the most effective way to avoid riots is to give Police unrestricted authority and access to all means. But this would almost inevitably lead to such a “democrature” if there is no clear and set framework, because there is a risk that these means will be used at every assembly. Therefore, it is imperative that all of the above-­ mentioned elements that regulate and limit the policing of assemblies are accepted and implemented, even if in some situations they may limit the effectiveness of the measures. This includes the legality and appropriateness of the use of force and the means used.

5.3 The Weaknesses of the French Doctrine Analyzing the French doctrine on the maintenance of public order and its practical implementation, three elements are identified, which should be optimized: de-­ escalation and mediation as well as the training of police chiefs on the basic principles of democratic maintenance. De-escalation Principles The principle of de-escalation was repeatedly the focus of media coverage during the past protests. It was often portrayed that de-escalation as a police tool was rejected by those responsible in France and that this approach was an example from abroad that should be followed in order to avoid the use of force. But what actually is de-escalation? De-escalation is a method that aims to avoid or reduce conflict through dialogue with the police and the sharing of information (for further aspects of this term and its concept cf. Bürger, 2024). In Europe, there are many different approaches to the practical implementation of de-escalation principles, as they are also listed in the European project “Good Practice for Dialogue and Communication as Strategic Principles for Policing Political Manifestations in Europe” (GODIAC Project, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c). They are also implemented in various ways in individual states, e.g., as tactical methods, such as the use of police anti-conflict teams or communication officers, the use of tactical communication, or strategic approaches such as the English “policing by consent” or the Austrian “3D strategy” (dialogue, de-escalation, enforcement). These are often contrasted with the French doctrine, which is said to be too repressive and does not use de-escalation techniques. In this context, it is also often argued for the abolition of nonlethal distance weapons and for a greater restraint of police forces, especially their worn equipment and the nonverbal effect of their posture or tactics and movements in the area. In fact, however, French doctrine has long included de-escalating means, which are also used in practice, but without any doubt, further modernization is needed, some of which has already begun with the “Schéma National du Maintien de l’Ordre” (Ministère de l’Intérieur, 2021).

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However, there is a danger that the public discussions about de-escalation principles creates the fiction that this approach is a panacea, that public safety can be guaranteed for every crowd and every protest without the use of police force - and that if force has to be used, the police have inevitably failed to de-escalate properly. Simply because of the complexity of what happens in crowds and also because of what may be the unintended effects of police actions, the situation can escalate despite the use of de-escalation techniques (Fillieule et  al., 2015; Bürger, 2024). Nevertheless, it should be noted that de-escalation principles must be the means of choice, a basic stance in policing protest in a liberal democracy, in order to, as criminologist Sébastian Roché puts it, “reduce the potential for conflict” (Pilorget-­ Rezzouk, 2019). However, the conflict is not limited to the dimension on the ground, that is, to the relationship between police and participants, but also includes the underlying conflict between participants and state (non)decisions, the content of the demand that is the basis of the assembly and the response of the state. The later conflict cannot be solved by police means but must be solved by political means. Mediation is needed to achieve this. Mediation as a Political Tool Mediation is a strategic and long-term policy tool that addresses the core of potential protests, preferably well in advance, before demonstrations occur, in an attempt to identify a political target. This includes identifying interlocutors who are able to mobilize, influence, and unite. If protests do occur, they should be accompanied by political mediation. The preceding remarks have shown that this has its limits with the new forms of protest, whether because of the lack of leading protest figures or recognized spokespersons, or because of the multitude of different demands. Nevertheless, these challenges must not lead to the neglect of this means, because this would mean considering police means as the only solution to protests, which is unacceptable in a democracy. And as the complaint booklets (cahiers de doléances) have shown, innovative mediation solutions are also possible here. Thus, there are two complementary approaches that can be essential to ensuring public safety: De-escalation as a police tool, and mediation as a political tool.

6 Conclusion Policing assemblies is subject to a constant process of adaptation. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, mainly tactical adjustments have been made in France. The new forms of protest with their multiple challenges and the expectations of society require that the current evolution must take place at several levels: political, strategic, and operational/tactical. Politicians must become aware of their decisive role; their decisions not only have an influence on possible emerging protests and their development, but also insofar as they make direct statements about police operations  - on the ongoing operations themselves.

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One of the major weaknesses in policing assembly in France is the training of the operationally responsible decision-makers, the prefects and the police chiefs. They have enormous decision-making powers, but their decisions are too inconsistent, too dependent on the personality and experience of these respective key players. Accordingly, the results of the decisions, which can, therefore, vary throughout France, are not always comprehensible, neither for the demonstrators, the population, nor the police officers. In France, there is a lack of a common standard that allows everyone to analyze the challenges with common strategies and to solve them accordingly with the same procedures. Those responsible must have the same basic understanding, know the mechanisms, and speak the same language. Therefore, I propose to create an institute exclusively dedicated to policing of public order, a “Institut supérieur du maintien de l’ordre”. This institute could provide training for the relevant decision-makers. It could also further professionalize the interaction between the police, administration and judiciary, and test or (further) develop decision-­support technologies and communication systems. Academic work could also be carried out there, which could help to observe and analyze current developments and to develop strategies and tactics accordingly and evaluate them in turn. Such a continuous and professional training seems to be indicated, because especially the public order police is of enormous social importance; it not only contributes significantly to freedom and stability of the society but can also endanger both. Therefore, such adjustments must not be imprecise, based on dogmatisms, gut feelings or political convictions. They must be based on scientific findings, professional debriefings, and international exchange, because the challenges affect all liberal societies. An “Institut supérieur du maintien de l’ordre” would be an important building block to accomplish this for France.

References Assemblée nationale. (2019a). Compte rendu. Commission d’enquête sur la situation, les missions et les moyens des forces de sécurité, qu’il s’agisse de la police nationale, de la gendarmerie ou de la police municipale, 19.04.2019. Accessed November 8, 2022, from https:// www.assemblee-­nationale.fr/dyn/15/comptes-­rendus/ceforsec/l15ceforsec1819011_compte-­ rendu.pdf. Assemblée nationale. (2019b). Compte rendu. Commission d’enquête sur la situation, les missions et les moyens des forces de sécurité, qu’il s’agisse de la police nationale, de la gendarmerie ou de la police municipale, 22.05.2019. Accessed November 8, 2022, from https:// www.assemblee-­nationale.fr/dyn/15/comptes-­rendus/ceforsec/l15ceforsec1819023_compte-­ rendu.pdf. Bürger, B. (2024). Public order policing. From theory to practice. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Fillieule, O., Descloux, G., & Viot, P. (2015). Changement de tableau. Le maintien de l'ordre public en Europe entre poussée de l'histoire réelle et dédifférenciation, 6 ème Congrès des Associations Francophones de Science Politique.

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Ghirlanda, C. (2019). Gilets jaunes : La question insurrectionnelle doit-elle se poser? Retrieved November 8, 2022, from https://fr.linkedin.com/pulse/ gilets-­jaunes-­la-­question-­insurrectionnelle-­doit-­elle-­ghirlanda. GODIAC Project. (2013a). Field Study Handbook. Good practice for dialogue and communication as strategic principles for policing political manifestations in Europe. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.recercat.cat/bitstream/handle/2072/220957/Field_study_ Handbook_2013.pdf. GODIAC Project. (2013b). Recommendations for policing political manifestations in Europe. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.recercat.cat/bitstream/handle/2072/220959/ GODIAC_BOOKLET_2013_2.pdf. GODIAC Project. (2013c). The anthology. Retrieved May 6, 2022, from https://www.recercat.cat/ bitstream/handle/2072/220958/GODIAC_Anthology_2013.pdf. Hayat, S. (2006). “La République, la rue et l’urne” (the republic, the street and the ballot box), Pouvoirs - La Rue. Laurent, A. (2020). Responsabilité, réactiver la responsabilité individuelle (p.  18). Les belles lettres. LeParisien. (2020). Les tirs de LBD seront soumis à l’accord d’un “superviseur,” assure Darmanin. 11.09.2020. Accessed November 8, 2020, from https://www.leparisien.fr/ faits-­d ivers/les-­t irs-­d e-­l bd-­s eront-­s oumis-­a -­l -­a ccord-­d -­u n-­s uperviseur-­a ssure-­ darmanin-­11-­09-­2020-­8383095.php. Martin, C. (2020). George Floyd: malgré l’interdiction, Castaner assure que les rassemblements de ce mardi seront tolérés, 09.06.2020. Accessed November 7, 2022, from https:// www.bfmtv.com/politique/pour-­castaner-­la-­manifestation-­en-­memoire-­de-­george-­floyd-­est-­ interdite-­en-­droit-­mais-­il-­n-­y-­aura-­pas-­de-­sanction-­et-­de-­proces-­verbal-­pour-­les-­participants_ AV-­202006090089.html. Midi Libre. (2018). “Acte VI” : toujours “en colère” mais essoufflés, les “gilets jaunes” prévoient moins d’actions Samedi, 21.12.2018. Accessed November 8, 2022, from https://www.midilibre.fr/2018/12/21/acte-­vi-­toujours-­en-­colere-­mais-­essouffles-­les-­gilets-­jaunes-­prevoient-­ moins-­dactions-­samedi,5871647.php. Ministère de l’Intérieur. (2021). Schéma Nationale du Maintien de l'Ordre (SNMO). Accessed November 8, 2022, from https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/sites/minint/files/medias/ documents/2021-­12/schema-­national-­du-­maintien-­de-­l-­ordre-­decembre-­2021.pdf. Pilorget-Rezzouk, C. (2019). Violences policières. “C’est toute la doctrine du maintien de l’ordre qu’il faut réinventer.” 17.01.2019. https://www.liberation.fr/france/2019/01/17/c-­est-­toute-­la-­ doctrine-­du-­maintien-­de-­l-­ordre-­qu-­il-­faut-­reinventer_1703709/, abgerufen am 10.11.2022. République Française (2019). LOI no 2019–290 du 10 avril 2019 visant à renforcer et garantir le maintien de l'ordre public lors des manifestations. Accessed November 10, 2022, from https:// www.legifrance.gouv.fr/download/pdf?id=ubB_A-­cNDGDG0l-­z5OwjfCu1fmt64dDetDQxhv JZNMc=. Robin, Yves-Marie (2022). ENTRETIA. Pourquoi les cahiers de doléances des Gilets jaunes n'ont jamais été rendus publics? Feb. 30, 2022. Accessed November 9, 2022, from https://www. ouest-­france.fr/politique/entretien-­pourquoi-­les-­cahiers-­de-­doleances-­des-­gilets-­jaunes-­n-­ont-­ jamais-­ete-­rendus-­publics-­18bce458-­8039-­11ec-­bd46-­29e8689bf94e. Rosanvallon, P. (2020). Le siècle du populisme histoire, théorie, critique, Paris, coll. Les Livres du nouveau monde. Roudinesco, É. (2021). Soi-même comme un roi. Essai sur les dérives identitaires, Paris, Seuil, coll. La Couleur des idées. Tartakowsky, D. (2020). On est là, la manif en crise. Editions du détour. Tavoillot, P.-H. (2011). Qui doit gouverner ? une brève histoire de l'autorité. Grasset. Police Divisional Commissioner Christian Ghirlanda  began his career in 1985 as a policeman at CRS 45 (public order company) in Chassieu and then worked at CRS 50 in La Talaudière. He was deployed at many serious law enforcement events, particularly those in New Caledonia in May

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1988. In 1991, he passed the competitive examination for the rank of Peace Officer and was posted as a Lieutenant to the CRS 55 in Marseille and then to the CRS 06 in St Laurent du Var. This time, as a section leader or half-company leader, he was confronted with major public order events. In 2000, he joined the office of the Prefect of Police in Corsica. He was in charge of the organization of official trips, including a deconcentrated Council of Ministers in Ajaccio, he managed the use of policing forces in Corsica and was responsible for the security of the deployment of the Euro fiduciary on the island in 2002. In 2009, he joined the Ecole Supérieure de la Police Nationale de Saint Cyr aux Monts d’Or and became Police Commissioner. He was appointed Deputy Director of Public Security in Ajaccio. He was responsible for the policing of many football matches of the Premier League and the organization of the arrival and departure of stages of Tour de France in Ajaccio. In 2014, he joined the Central Direction of the CRS in Paris as Deputy Director of Logistics. He designed the new EGIDE water launcher with a capacity of 10,000 liters. In 2018, he took over the position of Deputy Zonal Director of the CRS in the Western zone where he manages 1650 police officers and administrative and technical staff. He frequently commands large-scale CRS operational groups of up to 2000 police officers in the field. He is a trainer for the senior management of the CRS and speaks on behalf of the Centre National des Arts et Métiers on the subject of policing. He is the author of two books, one written in 2019 “Diriger le maintien de l’ordre” and the other in 2022 “Le Maintien de l’ordre, arbitre de la paix sociale.” He is a Knight of the Order of Academic Palms.

Public Order Policing 2.0: Addressing the Challenges of the Information Age Ryan Lee

Abstract  Most public order policing practitioners focus on the physical space and the immediacy of maintaining order within it and fail to evaluate the role of legitimacy, narrative space and the impacts of the information age, all of which will be discussed within this chapter. It will examine the sophistication of criminal protesters and how communication is leveraged by them. Lastly, it will highlight strategies and tactics for public order professionals to navigate this new and challenging environment.

1 Introduction While public order policing covers a wide gamut of police and community interactions, such as the management of attendees at a sporting event or large public celebrations, public order policing, both in success and failure, is inexorably tied to protest in the public consciousness. Despite this strong correlation, the police profession often only examines public order in terms of managing and mitigating physical disorder and disruption while not fully comprehending the underlying nature of protest activity. Although the vast majority of protest are peaceful and lawful, a small percentage are more contentious and often are the ones that have long-lasting impacts on the police profession. At the heart of protesting is the goal of changing the status quo. The goal of protest activity, in its most elementary form, is to compel discussion on a social issue in an effort to effect change through civil discourse. This is the vast majority of protest events around the world and is in keeping with the nature of western democracy. However, a very small number of protests manifest in their most complex state, are most complex and are about overturning policy and practice or even replacing governance altogether. Regardless of whether simple or complex the desired social change will not occur without cultural agitation, be it a peaceful protest to raise social consciousness about an issue or actions that are R. Lee (*) Portland, Oregon, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_16

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more antagonistic. Ultimately, for those seeking social change, the perceived legitimacy of their grievance and demands is essential to their success. To this end, the delegitimization of the status quo, and those perceived as representing it, is of equal or greater value to the goals of protesters, particularly criminal protesters.

1.1 Constitutional Right Vs. Intended Criminal Action The Constitution of the United States of America has often been cited as one of, if not the, key document, which other nations have emulated in pursuit of a just, fair, and democratic society. The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, are collectively considered one of the first and most important human and civil rights documents ever crafted. The Bill of Rights enumerates what many today consider to be fundamental rights to western democracies. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” [emphasis added by the author]. This is what leads the Bill of Rights and is arguably the foundation of what makes The United States of America a great nation; the right to peaceful assemble and address the government, even in protest, is foundational to truly free nations. The information presented here is not about people lawfully exercising any rights as enshrined in the Bill of Rights or another nation’s comparable document. Instead, it is focused on illegal actions, particularly violence, and the synergistic impacts of the information age to such activities. This chapter is not about the self-described political right or left as professional policing must remain apolitical. It is not about politics, or having police concern themselves with politics, but is focused on criminal behavior, and the often-overlooked organizational sophistication of some engaging in protest, especially those who utilize violence as a mechanism to drive narrative for illicit reasons. Criminal behavior at some events is not merely the acts of individuals “lashing out” or a “cathartic moment” but are organized and driven by groups, often to create specific narratives advantageous to their goals. Make no mistake, there are groups at some mass gatherings and public events that knowingly commit crimes with the explicit intent to further the prestige of their organizations and to advance their agenda. Some of these incidents may seem benign by certain standards and I recognize some concerns over the notion these groups are “simply exercising free speech” or they are “movements”, but we need to intelligently delineate between groups with legitimate political agendas, willing to engage the lawful political process, and those whose chosen tool for change is criminal action.

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1.2 The Current State of Public Order Policing in the United States of America It would be easy to describe the state of public order policing in the United States of America during the second decade of the twenty-first century with a single word: challenged. Recent years have seen challenges and events for policing and public order that we hopefully will not ever see again in our lifetimes. The confluence of the global pandemic, governments’ responses to the COVID-19 health crisis, national and international concern over issues of racial justice and police brutality and, in the United States of America, a presidential election involving one of the most polarizing political figures in our history, created a mixture of events that fomented civil unrest on a scale not seen in generations, if ever at all. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED, 2023), a non-­ profit, non-governmental organization, collects information on the dates, actors, locations, fatalities and types of all reported political violence and protest events around the world. It is not uncommon to review reports and data from ACLED and see it focused on the developing world or in conflict zones but in September of 2020, the developed world came into focus. While ACLED gathers its data from secondary sources, and as such there may be limitations to their data and analysis, the fact that the magnitude of conflict in the United States of America related to the racial justice movement merited their mapping and analysis should raise concern amongst police professionals. Further raising concern are that these conflicts are described not only with terms like “protest” and “riots” but also “battles” and “violence against civilians” (ACLED, 2020). These terms paint a stark picture of the challenge to public order policing in the United States, and create a narrative, just or unjust, about policing that in ages past may not have emerged and certainly not with such vigor. The Major Cities Chief Association, a professional organization of police executives representing many of the largest cities in the United States and Canada, published that between May 25 and July 31, 2020, there were 2037 officer injuries reported because of civil unrest out of the roughly 8700 demonstrations reported in 68 member cities and counties (ICG, 2020, p. 10). While the overwhelming majority of these protests were peaceful or nonviolent, which does not always equate to lawful activities, a small percentage were violent. Police leadership often found themselves needing to prepare for contingencies of unlawful and potentially violent protests, for multiple days, taxing resources significantly. The unpredictability of how unrest would manifest on any given day, in any given community taxed and exhausted police professionals. The wide variance in events is illustrated by the protest in the western United States alone. From peaceful and lawful protest in Boise, Idaho (Bustillo, Bustillo, 2020) to more contentious, unlawful freeway standoffs in San Francisco (DiFeliciantonio, 2020) to riotous violence in Los Angeles (Vives & Smith, 2020), police were confronted with spectrum of events and were challenged to determine if what occurred in the last community featured on the

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nightly news was what was coming to their community or something different altogether. Faced with these varied challenges, the response from American policing was, at best, equally varied. The variance in approaches could be seen in equipment used, in tactics employed but most of all in leadership, most conspicuously in the decisions made and an understanding of dynamics of the information age. The confrontation between protestors on Interstate 676 and the Philadelphia Police Department in 2020 illustrates this point. Protesters took to the interstate highway and the Incident Commander ordered the highway cleared, but there were no obvious avenue of egress for the protesters. When the protestors were ordered to clear the highway and failed to leave, the Incident Commander authorized the deployment of riot control agents, particularly CS gas (McDaniel et al., 2020). The Incident Commander was a seasoned Deputy Commissioner, part of the core leadership team of the Philadelphia Police Department. This incident turned into a public apology from the Police Commissioner and the Mayor, a demotion for the Incident Commander and a moratorium on the use of certain riot control agents (Chinchilla, 2020). This decision was disastrous to the trust and legitimacy of the department and is likely to haunt police in and around Philadelphia for a generation or more. This was a response to a protest decrying police brutality and racial injustice and the police response only further engrained that belief among many.

2 Impacts of the Information Age on Public Order Policing It cannot be overstated that the information age has exacerbated the challenges of public order policing and has created a degree of connectivity that humanity has never experienced. Merriam-Websters (2023) dictionary defines the information age as “the modern age regarded as a time in which information has become a commodity that is quickly and widely disseminated and easily available especially through the use of computer technology.” In short, many consider the defining trait of the information age as instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously.

2.1 Long-Term Impact Vs. Short-Term Solution In the information age, the narrative space is as, or more, impactful to the legitimacy of the police as the conditions of the physical space. No disrespect is meant to the Incident Commander from Philadelphia, but the incident on Interstate 676 was a failure to understand the dynamic environment and the importance of narrative in modern protest activity for either the police or the protesters. The key to policing in the free world is the belief in the legitimacy of the police and the actions they take. Over two years after the incident on Interstate 676, it and the police response to

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other events around the racial justice movement of 2020 were still a major topic for many members of the Philadelphia community. On March 20, 2023, it was announced that the City of Philadelphia had settled a lawsuit over the police response to the protest for $9.25 million. In response to this announcement, Mayor Jim Kenney would say, “The pain and trauma caused by a legacy of systemic racism and police brutality against Black and Brown Philadelphians is immeasurable,” and “While this is just one step in the direction toward reconciliation, we hope this settlement will provide some healing from the harm experienced by people in their neighborhoods in West Philadelphia and during demonstrations on I-676 in 2020” (Tanenbaum, 2023). In examining the events in Philadelphia, who appears more legitimate, the police or those protesting them? While public order police need to be prepared to respond to a wide array of circumstances, police leaders must ask themselves critical questions about strategic impacts to their organizations, communities and profession when assessing a course of action, protective posture or even the visibility of their presence. This is not only important in evaluating how sustainable operations are under the conditions they face or how it may impact their police agency’s ability to deliver essential services, but they must also consider what are the long-term impacts to the police profession? The Philadelphia Inquirer quoted Kai Mickens, one of the protestors at Interstate 676, “How can you expect us to be peaceful and then you—you attack us. You get mad when we violent (sic!), but when we peaceful (sic!), you still get mad. So what is the answer?” (McDaniel et al., 2020). The legitimacy of the Philadelphia Police Department, and policing in general, suffered heavily because of this incident. I am not implying the protestors on Interstate 676 sought to have police use CS gas on them, especially under the circumstances that occurred, but this outcome clearly illustrates the strategic implications to the police profession and its perceived legitimacy. Mr. Mickens statement alone lays the foundations for an argument that delegitimizes police action while subtly putting forth a narrative that justifies actions that are “violent” as equally legitimate as “peaceful”, given his conclusion that they will garner the same response from the police.

2.2 Spreading Misinformation and Disinformation Despite the common optimism that having the knowledge of the world easily accessible in the average person’s pocket on ubiquitous smart phones would improve the world, it has also created distinct, and often under acknowledged, negatives. While these negatives may manifest independent of each other, far more often they overlap and intermingle in a synergistic way. While information is easily accessible now, the information’s veracity is not guaranteed, a challenge we are not fully accustomed to. Self-publishing allows for the rapid spread of not only accurate information but misinformation and, more perniciously, disinformation. There is no editorial desk verifying facts or disclosing conflicts of interest in an era of self-publishing. As society has become accustomed to the accessibility of the information age, a new

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cultural expectation for instant access to any inquiry or question has developed, in turn creating a culture that values speed as much or more than accuracy. In this environment of unchecked information coupled with a demand for instant answers, misinformation and disinformation can spread faster and farther than wildfire during a dry summer. Additionally, in our hyperconnected society, virtual affinity groups and companion clusters have emerged. These groups are not only centered on common and benign interest of society but also have coalesced virtual communities around once marginalized and unlawful ideas buoyed by a sense they are more widely accepted and supported. While this is beneficial for people from some marginalized communities and has helped to bring forth new ideas to a broader audience, it has also brought forth divisive and destructive narratives. Exemplifying the confluence of the rapid spread of disinformation and virtual affinity groups can be seen in the rise of White Nationalism in the United States of America. The Associated Press wrote in June of 2022, prompted over the Department of Homeland Security’s public concerns about White Nationalism and social media platforms, as follows: White nationalists and supremacists, on accounts often run by young men, are building thriving, macho communities across social media platforms like Instagram, Telegram and TikTok, evading detection with coded hashtags and innuendo. Their snarky memes and trendy videos are riling up thousands of followers on divisive issues including abortion, guns, immigration and LGBTQ rights. The Department of Homeland Security warned Tuesday that such skewed framing of the subjects could drive extremists to violently attack public places across the U.S. (Sietz, 2022).

The impacts of disinformation are easily illustrated with the events of what has been dubbed “Pizzagate”. Pizzagate centered on disinformation about a pedophilia ring led by Hilary Clinton and how Comet Ping Pong, a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C., held proof of it. This disinformation motivated Edgar Welch to enter the pizza parlor with a rifle and discharge the weapon. As preposterous as this disinformation may seem, it was crafted with the intention to seem credible. It used factual tidbits, like the very real pizza parlor, to create an air of credibility and greater influence. In eras past, this sort of disinformation would likely have faded quickly but with the global influence of the information age, this story was repeated around the world, as far away as the Czech Republic and Vietnam (Fisher et al., 2016). The public safety impacts of disinformation motivating a lone actor to enter an unsuspecting business and discharge a firearm should give police concern. This concern should be amplified when the disinformation intersects with mass gatherings and public order policing. On March 2, 2022 protesters gathered outside New Zealand’s parliament in Wellington to protest COVID-19 policies of the government when a large fire broke out on the lawn. A Facebook influencer started streaming live to their 96,000 Facebook followers falsely claiming the police had started the firewithout any evidence. (Hall, 2022). Protestors repeated the disinformation, intensifying the social conflict between them and the police and undermining the legitimacy of the police presence. Disinformation in the public order setting is not simply rhetoric for a cause but can be a deliberate tactic employed by those intent on manipulating narratives to encourage criminal actions in furtherance of their goals and to delegitimize the

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government as purveyors of the cultural status quo, a tactic made all the easier by the information age. The consequences of this rhetoric are grave as noted by a May 2022 brief from Center for Strategic and International Studies (Doxsee et al., 2022, p. 1): “In 2021, over half of all domestic terrorist incidents occurred in the context of metropolitan demonstrations […]” that were fueled by growing political polarization.

2.3 Sharing Tactics The information age has not only allowed for the construction of virtual affinity groups and the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation, but it also allows for the sharing of protest tactics, techniques and procedures with both celerity and scale. While it is not uncommon to hear of a group conducting protest training focused on civil disobedience, there is also training that directly or indirectly espouses more violent and criminal actions. The level of organization and communication is significant, and in some cases, there is interstate and international cooperation amongst sympathetic groups or chapters. Case in point, Deep Green Resistance Seattle (DGRS), an environmentalist protest group from the Seattle-area of Washington State that outwardly state they are committed to nonviolent civil disobedience. On February 20, 2017, DGRS promoted “Advanced Tactical Direct Action Training” (cf. Fig. 1), that “will focus on escalation and creative, advanced tactics to increase our effectiveness” (DGRS, 2017). While protest groups conducting training are not out of the ordinary what stands out in the flier is the absence of any mention of “peaceful” but instead verbiage such as “operational security,” “hit and run tactics,” and “tactical movement”. The paramilitary verbiage used to describe the training will likely draw individuals that see this as a “battle” and a “fight” that carries the moral high ground to justify action that may be more confrontational and potentially violent. A reasonable observer must ask themselves if the language is simply accidental or designed to draw provocateurs to the social cause. In the widely disseminated “Swarm” (DGR, 2019) that can be found on many protest websites, the document’s author(s) promotes the concept of a roving caravan that attacks and withdraws only to show up at another location as an effective protest tactic. In the document the authors debrief a successful operation where they were protesting the drilling of a pipeline under a river in Iowa. Highlighting the coordination and sophistication of some groups, the authors discuss how they consulted engineers about the drilling process and found out that the under boring of the river was a unique and critical time for the work. They discovered that an offsite storage site would be an essential location for the process, so instead of attacking at the main dig site, they went to this more vulnerable piece of infrastructure and secured it, preventing the construction from happening. This rapid sharing of strategies and tactics transcends political ideologies and social causes. The hyperconnection of the information age is agnostic to the viewpoint of its consumer. We need

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Fig. 1  Advanced direct action training (DGRS, 2017)

only look at news headlines to see the rapid spread of tactics such as umbrellas and leaf blowers to mitigate the use of impact weapons and riot control agents that first appeared in protest in Hong Kong but quickly emerged in Europe and the United States.

2.4 Global Reach and the Coordination of Protesters The ability for the information age to make what were once regional issues now interstate or even international incident should not be underestimated. In the earlier example, despite the post being authored by Deep Green Resistance Seattle, the training was being hosted in Eugene, Oregon, roughly a four and half-hour drive by the most direct route. Another example, relatively early on in the social and racial justice protest sparked by the murder of George Floyd, the Associated Press analyzed the over 200 arrests made up to that point in Portland, Oregon and concluded “95% of those arrested by police and federal agents were local” (Naishadham & Bleiberg, 2020). Two points should be made from this statement; first, it looked at

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only those who were arrested. Any public order commander knows that in truly large-scale and tumultuous events, effecting arrest can be difficult at best and as such this represents a small sample of those present. Second, while 95% were local, 5% of those arrested were not. Considering the size of some of the public order incidents in Portland during this time, 5% is an appreciable number of people, especially given the many other protests over the same issue that could be found throughout the United States. However, this hyperconnectivity can also be used by affiliated but autonomous groups to coordinate actions. Rutgers’s University and Network Contagion Research Institute examined this alarming capability in the document, “Network-Enabled Anarchy: How Militant Anarcho-Socialist Networks Use Social Media to Instigate Widespread Violence Against Political Opponents and Law Enforcement” (Finkelstein et  al., 2020). In short, this research document clearly illustrates the networking, real-time communication, and sophistication of criminal protesters in the information age. In the authors research, they found, “distributed anarchist networks prepared, executed, and propagandized simultaneous rallies in July 25th (2020) across the United States in a coordinated campaign with the hashtag/code “#J25” resulting in riots being declared simultaneously in four cities: Portland, Or, Richmond, VA, Eugene, OR, and Seattle, WA.” (ibid., p. 14). The document also notes a meme image showing the division of labor for criminal protesters to be effective in countering police efforts at maintaining public order. The image delineates roles such as “shield soldier”, “peaceful protester”, “fire squad”, “range soldier” and “online comms” to name of few of the enumerated roles. While this meme is attributed to PNW Youth Liberation Front, it can also be found attributed to other groups in reporting as far away from the Pacific Northwest as the Jerusalem Post’s examination of the Russian–Ukrainian conflict and its declaration that “street warfare” with “organized riots with concrete political objectives” are “as geopolitically impactful as military conflict” (Starr, 2022). The hyperconnectivity of the information age has been used to encourage militant and criminal action at protest events on a scale and sophistication not seen in previous generations. Events organized by groups wishing to lawfully and peacefully protest can be coopted by groups wishing for greater confrontation. In recent years we have seen digital flyers calling for violent action and counteraction from both sides of the political spectrum as well as propaganda from both sides purporting calls for violence from the other side of the aisle to justify any violence they may partake in. The information age allows for criminal protesters to effectively offer after actions of “successful” events and share nationally and internationally tactics and techniques that are effective against the police, the state or whoever is viewed as adversarial. Again, these come from all political and social perspectives. This desire to organize is not limited to either end of the political spectrum. Whether it was the violent and destructive cooption of permitted and peaceful May Day protests in Portland and Olympia, Washington in 2017 (Flaccus & Bauman, 2017) or the coordination among those that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021, where some militant “Stop the Steal” protestors had designated rally points in multiple states, including Kentucky, South Carolina and Massachusetts

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and discussed tactics and objectives in online forums prior to that day (Barret et al., 2021), communication and sophistication among criminal protesters has grown in the information age. Nothing could signal preplanning and intent of action more than the now infamous images of rioters inside the U.S. Capitol with flex-cuffs or the erection of a gallows on the National Mall, and public order practitioners need to understand the role the information age plays in criminal protesting.

2.5 Delegitimization of Police Not all public order events, by a wide margin, include the described degree of organized criminal activity, even those that devolve into criminal action, mentioned above. What I want to draw attention to is those using criminal activity, masked under the guise of “protest activity” to further a goal of delegitimizing the police and the state. Regardless of politics, for some, their protest efforts are directed at long-term, systemic goals of delegitimizing government or focused on inspiring extremism in furtherance of such goals. Efforts to delegitimize the state are deliberate disinformation campaigns whose reach has expanded in the self-publication era of the information age. The website “It’s Going Down”, promotes itself as a website “for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements across so-called North America.” (IDG, 2023). An article was published on their website about the 2017 May Day protest in Portland, Oregon with the headline “When Riot Cops Attack: Repression and Solidarity at Portland’s May Day.” The article would assert that the permit to march in vehicle roadways for the protest was “summarily” revoked mid-march by police. While the article does mention this decision was “allegedly because a window at a Federal Courthouse was cracked and some had thrown Pepsi at the riot cops […]” (Black Rose Anarchist Federation, 2017) it engages in a narrative that justifies the violent actions by those that coopted a permitted lawful protest. In contrast, the same protest was described by The Oregonian, the largest newspaper in the state, as “Portland May Day march erupts into fiery riot; 25 arrested” and is accompanied by pictures of ad hoc fires burning in the middle of intersections. The author succinctly wrote, “The demonstration began as a city-permitted march featuring impassioned but peaceful rhetoric, but ultimately was defined by black-clad protesters, fires and property damage” (Ryan, 2017). Efforts on disinformation are not limited to one side of the political spectrum. The August 6th, 2017 “Freedom March”, as its organizers dubbed it, in Portland, Oregon was the subject of significant counterprotest. The protest drew “alt right” groups including the now widely heard of Proud Boys to march in downtown Portland in a clear effort to be provocative. The Oregonian would summarize the protest and counterprotest as “Altercations start early at downtown dueling protest” noting “a few violent altercations” (Chadha, 2017). However, the conservative website The Blaze, then known as the Conservative Reporter, chose the more sensational headline “Antifa violence in Portland, the police just let it happen” (Pandolfo, 2017).

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If we look at the events of January 6th, 2021 with this lens we can see the disinformation, fueled by the mechanics of the information age, convinced protestors of the alleged illegitimacy of the election and government to the point they stormed the U.S. Capitol, attacking police in the process, injuring hundreds and leading to multiple direct and indirect deaths. This disinformation motivated Larry Brock, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, to not only storm the U.S. Capitol but to develop a plan of action on social media that showed an alarming degree of premeditation. Larry Brock’s “plan of action if Congress fails to act” included a call to “seize all Democratic politicians and Biden key staff and select Republicans” and “Begin interrogations using measures we used on al-Qaida to gain evidence on the coup” (Kunzelman, 2023). Larry Brock, distinguished combat veteran, sworn to protect the constitution, was swayed to criminal action by the disinformation that turned the “Stop the Steal” rally into the storming of the U.S. Capitol, and for his actions that day, he has been sentenced to two years in prison. These campaigns of disinformation are not limited to motivating people to action or crafting a narrative about police actions or inactions at a protest but can be aimed at delegitimizing any facet of the police. June Davies, aka “Gia” and “Tan”, was a member of protest groups self-identified as “Antifa.” Davies was willing to discreetly talk to police in an effort to keep protest events peaceful in Portland after tension with police and clashes between politically opposing groups began dominating the protest activity in the city. Members of “anarchist” groups discovered “Tan’s” messages with a police liaison and “outed” her. The narrative was then twisted to create the impression that the Portland Police Bureau was deliberately targeting “Tan” because she was emotionally vulnerable. Outing “Tan” as someone willing to talk with police was not enough to drive a narrative that delegitimized police. Texts that were taken from her phone were photoshopped to remove context and then released via social media by “anti-fascist”. Absent proper context, activists could insinuate motivations and drive a narrative that served to leverage the opinions sympathetic to their position. This story was carried by a local newspaper, Willamette Week in 2017 (Shephard, 2017), and damaged police legitimacy and undermined efforts to communicate with participants at protest that would have been willing to talk to keep events safe from violence. Unfortunately, the same reporter would later break a story implying the liaison, who had promoted and become the public order team commander, was not just communicating with the protesters but implied he was potentially sympathetic to the “alt-right” protester group “Patriot Prayer” (Pandolfo, 2017). This story, and subsequent articles, did not reference the previous article that would have shown congenial exchanges between people regardless of ideology. This story would make national news and would further be used by activist to attack the legitimacy of the police. The story would spur public commentary from political officials, an internal investigation and the removal of the public order team commander from his position during the investigation. The national headlines not only impacted the police in Portland but also fueled commentary that undermined police legitimacy nationally at a critical juncture in American history.

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Why does this matter other than the shorthand of “it damages police legitimacy.” It is important to remember that the moral authority of the state to act on behalf of the people’s greater interest is never expressed more clearly than in the lawful use of force by the state. Extremist, whether they are on the political right or left or identified with some other ideological construct, aim to delegitimize the state. If the moral authority of the state can be called into the question and criminal actors can be framed as having the moral high ground, those actors have the ability to use force at will with the perception of legitimacy. Their actions, and in turn the states required counter actions, are then mischaracterized with the state becoming oppressors rather than guardians and defenders of liberty and the people. This is more than internal propaganda; this becomes a tool to effect the change at a broader level through extra legal means. To paraphrase the Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz, the political object is the goal, conflict is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.

2.6 Legitimizing an Agenda: Moral Authority In delegitimizing the moral authority of the police to lawfully use force (or more succinctly violence) on behalf of the state enables criminal protesters to argue that they have the moral authority to use force and more importantly have the moral authority of the “people.” This can be derived from baiting action or inaction by the police. Think of the criticism we have heard of the overreliance on generalized force on crowds then the equally damaging narrative of police departments not using force. In September of 2017, Peter Beinart, a journalist from The Atlantic, wrote a piece entitled “The Rise of the Violent Left”. While it was focused on the public order challenges of Portland, Oregon, it succinctly explained a key challenge to public order policing in the information age, maintaining the legitimacy of police use of force. Beinart wrote: What’s eroding in Portland is the quality Max Webber considered essential to a functioning state: the monopoly of legitimate violence. As members of a largely anarchist movement, antifascists don’t want the government to stop white supremacist from gathering. They want to do so themselves, rendering the government impotent. Revulsion, fear, and rage are understandable. But one thing is clear. The people preventing Republicans from safely assembling on the streets of Portland may consider themselves fierce opponents of authoritarianism growing on the American right. In truth, however, they are its unlikeliest allies (Beinart, 2017).

While Beinart’s observations were in 2017, years before Portland became a political epicenter for the American “Culture War” that has driven so many violent protests between oppositional groups, it still bears true today. Beinart astutely noticed the role of narrative and legitimacy in the violent protest space of Portland. The first paragraph articulates the need for police to engage. Police cannot stand by allowing violence to go on. The belief that disengagement will yield greater police legitimacy has been proven false time and time again. Disengagement creates a vacuum that

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protesters will fill. The second paragraph articulates that as one group grows and takes action, in oppositional protests, it fuels the other. While it is widely perceived that anarchists and anti-fascist dominate Portland, this belief has caused individuals from all over the nation to feel the need to come to Portland and take counter action only exacerbating the conflict. This in turn creates counter-counter reactions causing a cyclical escalation. Legitimizing Crime and Violence The Oxford Blue, the newspaper of world-famous Oxford University, published an opinion piece by Anvee Bhutani, titled “Why looting is a legitimate form of protest.” If we look at this excerpt from that article while mindful of the narrative space and strategic implications, it illustrates many of the points that have been raised. “Every protest, revolution, or movement that has ever occurred and made progress has been either ‘radical’ ‘uncomfortable’ or ‘too extreme’ for those in power. This movement checks all three boxes. This is good and means change is occurring. Many people believe that ‘violence’ is not the answer and that a peaceful protest would perhaps be the best option. In an ideal world, this would be the preferred form of protest and people of color honestly want nothing more than to peacefully request the restoration of their basic human rights and to carry on with their lives without having to put their identities, health, and livelihoods at risk by protesting. The problem lies in the evident reality that we do not live in an ideal world, and in fact live in quite the opposite where our world is deeply unfair and unjust and nonviolent protest lacks genuine momentum and sway. This is because people of color are the minority and no matter how much they talk about the rights they do not have, the disadvantages they face, and explicit and implicit biases that white people have, the government or officials in charge are not receptive to their voices. Unless the movement causes disruption to the regular way of life, there is no reason for them to make changes. Government officials that are in charge of care about reelection, and when there is no massive movement that gathers everyone’s attention, protesting simply does not matter because officials are confident that protests are merely just a vocal minority and not actually a threat to their power. Therefore, if the only way to bring about change is through disruption, the question still stands as though whether this change can come about through nonviolent protest. If a majority of people supported changes that these people of color were working towards, there would already be enough support and no need to ‘violently’ protest” (Bhutani, 2022).

While Bhutani’s rationale for why violence and looting are justified is in regard to the racial justice movement, one can hear clear similarities to the rationale employed by those that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. I am not drawing a moral equivalency between these events, just highlighting the similarities in rhetorical rationale that are designed to legitimize violence. Creating “Truth” More so than ever, with “reality” being created by the most watched video clip on the litany of social media platforms, history and narratives can be pre-scripted and edited into “truth.” Protest organizers, especially those willing to engage in or encourage criminal conduct, know this power and those who know how to harness

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it can bring about change quite quickly. Protest has become the perfect tool to heighten the necessary narratives to affect change. It is important to mention, that at this level of the conversation, the influence of foreign actors cannot be overlooked. As we know foreign state actors deliberately seek the cracks and tension points in our society and move to encourage the divisions already present to grow and metastasize. I am not saying Russia or China are behind protests, rather through manipulating the open nature of our society they can help fan the flames of discontent that spur on the protests themselves. In the age of social media, helping to Tweet “concerning images” can cause more damage to the stability of a nation than a direct, traditional confrontation. Protest’s create drama, attention, stress, damage, financial strains, capitulation by leadership and change; those willing to leverage the complexity of the information age and criminal conduct can do so even more. This social shift is not simply a tool to change those in power but can be used to legitimize the means for furthering the change and legitimizing violence. When it comes to putting the people in power whom you want, one option is to ensure the election of the person who supports your interests, this of course requires the support of the voting majority to be in line with the interest you desire, this requires the changing of all these voters’ minds to your cause if they are already not aligned. The second option is instead of changing the mind of the masses, simply change the single mind that holds the power. This is where the strategy of the protest comes into play, a protest evolves into a persuasion tool meant to change the minds that matter. These are influence operations, often dependent on misinformation, disinformation and illegal conduct to create the desired narratives. This is not a new reality, but the level of sophistication employed is.

2.7 Economic Consequences Delegitimizing the actions of police is not just a strategy applied to the use of force but can also be applied to the economics of public order operations. The legitimacy of action on the state’s part can be undermined if the financial impacts seem disproportionate to the perceived risk and impact of an event or series of events. Take as an example a “march through the streets” of a major city for a “cause.” In the City of Portland, in 2017, if a major thoroughfare was shutdown, it caused an estimated $243,000 dollars and hour in economic damages (Berfield, 2018). This is a cost per thoroughfare. Imagine the financial impacts to a downtown business district with the roadway infrastructure quagmire most “protests” create that block multiple streets at any point in time. This does not address the trickle-down economic impacts either. If businesses lose revenue and close early, employees are paid less and have less disposable income. If the narrative space is dominated with verbiage of the police “overreaction” or “massive response” how long will the business owner or worker feel the government action is legitimate? In short order, the cost can cripple the will of policy makers. As public order professionals, understanding and

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articulating the financial impacts of operations is essential to maintaining the public will for the police to act. In the pursuit to damage the willingness to address these issues, direct action is not the only tool criminal protesters can employ. In San Francisco, California on August 26, 2017, Patriot Prayer, a pro-Trump group led by Joey Gibson of Vancouver, Washington (a nearly 650 mile/1050 km road trip), abruptly canceled plans for a controversial free speech march and rally at Crissy Field near the iconic Golden Gate Bridge. The National Park Service had granted the group a permit despite objections from the City of San Francisco. According to records obtained by the San Francisco Examiner, the city spent $775,000 on public safety and $115,000 on extra buses and traffic control. Total cost, $890,000 for security and transit, for an event that did not happen (Fitzgerald, 2017). Conversely, criminal protestors can mount large protest that necessitate a public order response but create space for a narrative that challenges the legitimacy of the government’s actions. On September 24, 2017, Milo Yiannopoulos, a controversial right-wing figure, spoke at Sproul Plaza at the University of California at Berkeley. Per the University of California, the cost of additional security personnel for that speaking engagement was $2.44 million dollars (Berfield, 2018). This “sticker shock” does not only cause pause because of financial impacts but also creates a narrative of police overreacting and people reviewing police decisions not based on law but on emotion and personal opinion, “Why are they defending that person?”

2.8 Classic Public Order Policing Is Not Enough Protests of today have evolved into a complex asymmetric struggle. As much as it involves the physical space, protests are large-scale political theater, a public relations challenge, an optics game, designed to drive narratives in the real and virtual worlds. Modern protests are an interconnected web involving the political aim, street tactics, narrative control, pressure to elected officials, delegitimization of police (as the force arm of the state), disinformation and misinformation often driven by autonomous but connected groups and individuals. All of these concepts can be elaborated on extensively, but they represent some of the fields of work that protest organizers are using cohesively to effect the change they want. Each one influences and is encouraged, directed by, or builds upon another. It is simply not enough to manage the physical terrain and challenges of public order policing, as a commander you must be aware of challenges in the information space because of the strategic implications. These strategies and tactics carry across the spectrum of politics and social issues. Whether the issue is defunding the police, political revolution, the overthrow of capitalism, ending systemic racism, or anti-­ COVID-­19 measures, what holds all these goals at bay is the police. Until those “fighting” for a cause resolves the issue of the government’s monopoly on legitimized force, success is elusive. Anvee Bhutani’s editorial spoke directly to this issue.

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Street tactics are a means to an end, not the ultimate goal. Street tactics are astutely crafted to create the effect they desire. All too often police leadership focuses on “winning in the streets” without appreciating that the physical space is not the only struggle, and perhaps the least important to some. As public order professionals we should examine the interplay of strategies that create the intended outcome of the criminal protester. The employment of a street tactic such as protesters antagonizing and pushing the envelope slowly and steadily doing the least harm necessary to create the police response they hope to achieve. Once the scale has tipped and police can no longer maintain a purely defensive posture the protesters have elicited the desired reaction. Criminal protesters know force will be used by the police, this is the desired response, and they strategically capitalized on it. In the information age there is the ability to abundantly promote on social media the short clips of police force that can be perceived as inappropriate and can be used to bombard the politicians to enact changes desired by creating a narrative “that corruption is innately in the system.” This cycle can be repeated to identify what police are using effectively in a public order setting. Criminal protesters can strategize how to influence decision-­ makers to stop police from using tools and in turn make the police seem impotent in their role as peacekeepers for the state. By using narrative control, feeding the media’s need for immediacy in the information age, criminal protesters can thwart anything police are using effectively to maintain order or keep events peaceful. If, in example, police have been successfully using liaison officers, then a narrative delegitimizing the practice as manipulation to gain “intelligence” can be put forth, as in the case of “Tan” mentioned previously. If something on the other end of the intervention spectrum is effective, say CS gas, they need only to control the narrative on that issue, not defeat it in the physical space. How often have we heard, “Its inhuman to use a tear gas while COVID is going on” or “it’s a war crime stated by the Geneva convention.” If the narrative that delegitimizes police techniques, tactics or tools can be repeated first and frequently, it will drown out all other voices. Criminal protesters only need to fine-tune their approach and initiate new street tactics while driving the narrative space to gain the response and outcome they desire. Pre-advertisement of a peaceful and legitimate demonstration, or the cooption of one, helps to accelerate the goals in the narrative space. Criminal protesters need only bait a use of force and coordinate documentation of the event so there is only one perspective to control the narrative space and delegitimize any action. A criminal protester who has baited a police use of force only needs to walk slowly away with their hands up, while someone is filming them to make the force of an arrest appear unwarranted. Criminal organizers often will put vulnerable members of the protest at key places such as the front of marches to limit the ability for police to intervene without having to wade through a sympathetic group. This is the ease of narrative control in the information age. Short clips of video showing police use of force without full context can give the perception of an improper use of force. Follow this perception with call-in campaigns, e-mails, and complaints that overwhelm the elected officials and drown out all other voices and the goal of making the police ineffectual can be achieved by breaking the policy makers’ will to allow the police to act. In the information age,

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there is no need to prove the illegitimacy of the force used, simply spread it out to the world, create the impression, and the damage is done. Any reactive counternarrative from the police, regardless of its factuality, is the expected response and is easily marginalized. In many modern protests, regardless of the political motivation, we have seen the criminal protesters obstruct filming from those not putting forth their desired narrative. Criminal protesters will intimidate those documenting an event, even taking cameras and using violence if necessary to control perception, “who started the fight, not protesters but the police.” Direct action devices are not the tool of choice for the modern criminal protester. They are good for stopping trains and cars, and may create headlines, but if the goal is to delegitimize police, and create a narrative of state corruption, direct action devices are an ineffectual tool compared to social media.

3 Addressing the New Challenges: Public Order Policing 2.0 Public order policing is about gaining and maintaining initiative. This is true in the physical space, the virtual space, and the connection between the two. Police leaders in public order settings must understand any event may be as much a battle of narratives as it is a hands-on crowd management one. It is not only important to have a Public Information Officer in the command post, but they must also be equipped with a comprehensive communication strategy for before, during and after an event that is forward thinking and not reactionary (cf. Schenk & Bornhausen, 2024; Grutzpalk & Jarolimek, 2024). The communication strategy needs to be nuanced and mindful of disinformation opportunities, actively work to dispel them and constantly assess the narrative space. Understanding and considering the long-­ term impacts to legitimacy must be considered; maintaining police legitimacy must be a goal in any police operation. Police leadership needs to ensure that public facing communications maintain the police as the only ones who can legitimately use force. Narratives to contrary, whether claiming police uses of force are illegitimate or that police are incapable of using legitimate force when appropriate, not only undermine police legitimacy but also are preludes to criminal protesters employing violence. Police must loudly and persistently deliver the accurate narrative before, during and after an event, but they must ensure they maintain a fair, neutral, unbiased and apolitical stance.

3.1 Before an Event A commitment to extreme transparency must be adopted by police leadership in public order. I am not advocating the disclosure of operational tactics or strategies that could jeopardize the police but far too frequently, police hold more information in secret than is truly needed. Police should communicate clearly prior to an event

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the intended outcomes, the resources that will be available and the roles they play. An excellent example of this was the Portland Police Bureau’s question and answer style press conference preceding on August 9, 2019, which preceded an anticipated confrontational protest between self-described politically right and left groups on August 17, 2019 (Haskins, 2019). It was attended by roughly 200 participants of the press and lent clarity to the expectations for the event and the potential police interventions and why they may occur. This proactive communication was paired with a gathering and press conference with prominent members of the community, organized by city leadership, calling for anyone intending violence to stay away from the protest. Then Chief of Police Danielle Outlaw unequivocally declared to anyone intent on violence, “Don’t come. We don’t want you here. I don’t care what side you’re on” (Bernstein, 2019). These proactive steps set a clear tone in the information space that also minimized room for other narratives. This in turn garnered public support for the police and any action they may need to take and delegitimized those who may cause violence at the event. These efforts created a noticeable tone shift in media coverage for the Portland Police Bureau, especially in comparison to other significant events that had occurred in the city. The Portland Police Bureau made key arrests related to criminal conduct at previous events and took efforts to highly publicize those arrests from prior events to send a clear message of consequence for action that enhanced the legitimacy of the police leading into the event. This preemptive strategy yielded tactical benefits as well. With three weeks of proactive messaging, the involved groups shifted their rhetoric prior to the event in attempts to humanize their cause and appeal to the moderate majority. This meant the rhetoric of violence (and actuality of it) was mitigated. In short, it was a preemptive effort at managing the narrative space that was cognizant of the interactions with the physical world.

3.2 During an Event Equally as important as managing the narrative space preemptively is managing the narrative space in real time during the event. Quickly and clearly delivering factual information can mitigate the ability for disinformation to be broadcast. The real-­ time dissemination of information by the police helps to ensure larger, more mainstream media outlets do not turn to other, less accurate or bias sources for information. The police are also often privy to a unique perspective in public order settings and sharing that perspective is essential to given context to decisions of action or inaction. Using the August 17th, 2019 protest in Portland as an example again, the Police Bureau took the steps to not only update critical information in real time but scheduled regular updates on the hour that the press and public could access immediately. These updates started prior to the event, continued throughout, and ended only after all activity in the city concluded. This created both transparency and a tone that the Police Bureau could be accurately relied upon as a source of information, mitigating the reach of biased social media and those spreading

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disinformation. The advantage to rumor control in the information age cannot be overstated. False narratives, that in the past, would carry on as tantamount to fact were dispelled. The public had accurate information about injuries, arrests, and police actions as well as the context provided before the event. The ability to damage police legitimacy and further other narratives was greatly reduced. A key component to this real-time strategy was an immediate end of event press conference that included not only senior police leadership but also elected and appointed officials. This approach changed local and national coverage from previous events and helped to prevent additional, similar events for several months. It was the virtual equivalency of denying the space and opportunity for criminality that police so frequently work for in the physical world. Accuracy over Speed Despite the need to be mindful and agile of the narrative space, police communications must not fall victim to the speed over accuracy trap that plagues modern media. Any assertion made by the police will be scrutinized as much as any use of force, inaccurate information or information that cannot be corroborated may do more to damage legitimacy. During a protest in Portland, Oregon the Police Bureau sent out a Tweet that read, “Police have received information that some of the milkshakes thrown today during the demonstration contained quick drying cement. We are encouraging anyone hit with a substance today to report it to police” (PPD, 2020). This information was offered in part not only to warn the public but also to give context to a confrontation between protesters and police where force was used. National news outlets quickly picked up the headline with NBC national news writing, “Demonstrators clash in Portland, Oregon, police warn about ‘concrete milkshakes’” but also noted, “As of Monday morning, there was no physical evidence or additional reports of the use of the so-called ‘concrete milkshakes” (Romero, 2019). However, with a lack of physical evidence the narrative was easily shifted to one that attacked and undermined the legitimacy of the police. Activists on one side of the political spectrum claimed it was another example of police propaganda and disinformation, others used the Tweet in conjunction with unrelated images of concrete burns to drive a narrative that the police could not or would not protect them; in short, both sides used the Tweet and lack of evidence to attack police legitimacy. In the media and political morass that followed, both sides capitalized on their narratives to drive more contentious protest and shifted Portland into the national spotlight as a hotbed of political violent. The Portland Police Bureau’s Tweet was well intentioned and designed to potentially protect members of the public, but public order commanders must always assess the consequences of statements that cannot be corroborated. In an effort to fill narrative space, police must evaluate if there are narrative gaps that can be exploited. If in a risk–benefit analysis, the benefit to public safety outweighs the risk police legitimacy, the decision is clear, but leaders must be prepared for the consequences of their decisions.

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3.3 After an Event In the modern struggle for legitimacy, continued communication after the event is as important as the preemptive and concurrent communication plans. Following criticism of police action on June 5, 2020 in Portland during the significant protests in that city, the Police Bureau posted video taken from a criminalist embedded immediately behind police resources that showed the objects being thrown by members of the crowd, the announcement made prior to any police action and gave context to the situation not captured by other sources (PPD, 2020). However, information after an event should not only be offered in defense of police action or inaction but must also take ownership of when police fall short of intended goals. This helps to maintain legitimacy by showing institutional introspection and an understanding of community expectations. Following an unprecedented and tumultuous protest in Boise, Idaho on June 30, 2020, the Police Department acknowledged they fell short of community expectation with the following statement that was also put out via social media, “BPD does not condone acts of violence. In anticipating a rally or protest similar to those experienced here recently, the amount of confrontation that we saw last night was unprecedented here in Boise. Based on resources available at the scene, we did not make physical custody arrests last night. We are, however, following up on reported incidents and reviewing video to pursue charges and hold people accountable for any criminal actions conducted during the protests. We hold dear people’s rights to peacefully assemble and exercise their first amendment rights. We regret if people did not feel safe protesting last night and know it’s our job to ensure a safe environment for everyone” (BPD, 2020) This message clearly states the police position on violence, gives context to the response, explains what will happen and takes ownership of not meeting public expectations. A position like this not only enhances trust and legitimacy with the public but also mitigates opportunities for disinformation to be sown.

3.4 Internal Strategies While it is essential to undertake these external strategies, it is equally important to focus on what must be done internally. Police leadership must use an intelligence led policing approach in preparing for and managing a public order event (cf. Cannon, 2024). Understanding not only the physical space and traditional information for analysis but also looking to open-source information in the virtual space to understand narrative. To this end, leadership must commit to ongoing analysis leading up to any event and leadership must be prepared to adjust and adapt accordingly. Knowledge of how to discreetly deploy resources and scale appropriately is as important to managing legitimacy as being overtly prepared for an event. An understanding of the importance of the narrative space must be conveyed to all police personnel involved in public order policing. A cohesive and united deployment is essential, a single police officer acting on their own accord can damage

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legitimacy for the whole organization or, as we have seen in recent years, the entirety of the profession globally. With an understanding of the complexity of the environment police are tasked with working in, leadership is essential. Despite our best efforts, events may unfold in a manner that leads to a civil disturbance. While we should seek a mitigated peace, we must also be prepared to restore civil order. Leadership is not about position or title; leadership is about behavior. The junior most person in an organization can be a leader by how they act and the decisions they make. They can affect leadership at levels above them, and while it is important to divide leadership to manage spans of control and ensure tactical, operational, and strategic lenses are applied to the challenges at hand, regardless of the level a person is leading at, they must understand the strategic implications of action or inaction and the narrative space. Line level personnel and after actions of public order incidents often note poor command and control from the upper levels of police leadership; a fear to act and an unwillingness to allow tactical commanders to carry out mission-based objectives, is often what leads to an event devolving into chaos. In short, indecision is the most detrimental thing an incident commander can do in a public order event and can irreparably damage legitimacy. While it is comfortable for many police professionals to focus on the dynamic, tactical level of leadership, the consequences of the information age requires that public order events are not “tactical” events that are spontaneous and cannot be addressed until they have erupted into a critical incidents requiring public safety to wrap their arms around them and “take control.” Waiting to take control means waiting for disaster. Managing the risk, mitigating the criticality of moments in the incident, managing the information space and being prepared to exert control, if necessary, while maintaining legitimacy must be the focus of public order leaders at every level of leadership.

4 Conclusion While police leadership must address the historic challenges of public order policing, they must also recognize the evolving and complex state of modern times particularly in light of the impacts of the information age. Police must continue to address the challenges of managing the physical space during protests. They must still protect impacts to critical infrastructure, manage threats and risks from malicious actors toward large gatherings, balance the right to free speech against potential impacts to the rights of others and enumerable other variables still need to be addressed. Public order leaders must also ensure their officers are properly trained and equipped to meet the standards of the profession and the expectations of the public. However, only considering these historic factors is not enough to address a public order event in the modern, evolved protest environment saddled with strategic implications to the very legitimacy of policing. The police profession has traditionally looked at the issue of public order policing as a symmetrical confrontation over identifiable, real objectives. The reality is

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different, the objectives of criminal protestors are not simply to create a spectacle to draw attention to “a cause,” many of the criminal protesters’ tactics are designed with an understanding of asymmetrical confrontation strategy. This being the case, police cannot simply “throw more cops” at the problem to solve it. This is not a matter of sheer numbers of brute force but perception and moral legitimacy. While the concepts of symmetrical and asymmetrical confrontation strategy are commonly discussed in the context of the generational evolution of warfare, we see these same strategies and tactics now appearing in modern “protest.” Traditionally, confrontations are engaged in with clearly delineated adversaries, which try to overpower and overcome each other. This is a symmetrical confrontation and applicable to much of police work. For example, a criminal gang is occupying a neighborhood, police must drive them out to allow community members to reclaim their homes. If thieves are targeting a certain area or demographic, police must confront them and deny them access to the area and opportunity to steal. In much of policing, the objective rest in the physical world and is easily understood. This is why police in a public order setting so often focus only on the physical space; such an analysis is simple, comfortable and “winnable”. However, when a power and legitimacy disparity exist, groups wishing to engage in illegal efforts to change government utilize asymmetrical confrontations. This changes the concepts from defeating the “adversary” in a force-on-force struggle in the physical space to one that is a struggle of legitimacy. Simply breaking the policy makers willingness to continue to oppose will affect the outcome desired by the traditionally less powerful group. This strategy can be used for both direct confrontation and tangentially involved parties wishing to impose their agenda and is made ever more relevant with the speed and accessibility of the information age and a society less with veracity than being first. The protest environment is an ever-changing landscape. With insurrection theory leaders and international influence, protests have evolved into a sophisticated and effective change tool. For public order police leaders and planners, the simple analysis of yesterday; crowd size, make up of protesters, known criminal actors/groups, location, dynamic or static event, has become insufficient and ineffective. For the peaceful demonstration of a homogenous group at a static location, this simple linear analysis and response may suffice, but for “protest” with an enraged destructive element following an actual or perceived government injustice, or the strategic work of criminal protesters, or a young leader wanting to mimic or conduct the same kind of protest operations seen in recent years in places like Portland and Seattle, a simple linear analysis and response will be ineffective and likely counterproductive. Far too often, police public order leaders look at protest as a complicated problem and fail to recognize that protest, particularly criminal protest are a complex challenge. Modern protests are not a matter of components that can be separated and dealt with systematically with known challenges, known inputs and predictable outputs but a challenge that has no such degree of order, control or predictability with emergent patterns resulting from the dynamic interactions from parts that casually seem unconnected. It is not simply a challenge of “solving the problem” but learning the nature of the system and its interactions. The criminal protesters of today utilize

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coordinated asymmetric tactics, and policing needs to adapt, evolve, and remain flexible to overcome the changing landscape. When looked at with a strategic lens, the power of protest becomes ever stronger in the information age by driving narratives in the vast virtual space that impact decisions and impressions in the localized physical space. This is especially relevant in cities where politicians have aligned with similar agenda as those of the protesters (or certain protesters). One aim of a protest is of course to influence the will of the elected but how much easier is that accomplished if the elected are already willing and wanting to bend the status quo? Navigating the complexity of the physical space, the narrative space and the political landscape requires a sophisticated degree of situational awareness and initiative for the modern public order leader. Public order leaders of today and tomorrow must remember that at the core of these movements is the need to remove the police as they are today. At this time the most effective means to accomplish this is to influence elected officials, and to do that, bombard them with “evidence” that police are corrupt, abusive, and unjust. A protest with this aim is nothing more than a propaganda machine intended to create the doctored evidence needed to prove the point. Police leadership in the public order setting must understand that criminal protesters utilize an interconnected web of strategies that leverage the synergistic interactions between the street tactics, narrative control, pressure on elected officials, delegitimization of the state (particularly the police), influence through social media and disinformation campaigns to achieve their political aim (cf. Fig. 2). Regardless

Information Age Challenges

Legitimacy Challenges

Delegitimize Police/State

Legitimize own Agenda

Individual / Unchecked Information

Tactical Challenges

Classic Challenges

Digital Cooperation

Selected Information

Spread

Public Order Policing

Speed

Disinformation

Reach

Misinformation

Proactive Public Relation

Coordination

Sharing Tactics

Professionalism Holistic Intelligence

Professional Public Order Policing 2.0

• • •

Standards Equipment Training

Trustful Community-Relation

Fig. 2  Public Order Policing 2.0 (own illustration by Bernd Bürger & Ryan Lee)

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of the political objective, it is essential for the criminal protester to delegitimize the police monopoly on the use of force, in order to justify their actions. While the vast majority of protest are civil and lawful, failure to understand and recognize the presence of these evolving concepts will make police actions in public order more than ineffectual, but instead the very tool used to undermine police legitimacy.

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IDG, It’s Going Down. (2023). About. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://itsgoingdown. org/about/. Kunzelman, M. (2023). Former air force officer gets prison term for capitol attack. In: Associated Press News, March 17, 2023. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://apnews.com/article/ capitol-­riot-­larry-­brock-­jan-­6-­4e25827679950d620ad0cc384a6e450f. McDaniel, J., Rushing, E., Walsh, S. C. & Palmer, C. (2020). Philadelphia protestors gassed on I-676, leading to ‘pandemonium’ s they tried to flee. In: The Philadelphia Inquirer, June 1, 2020. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.inquirer.com/news/george-­floyd-­protests-­ philadelphia-­gas-­police-­vine-­street-­expressway-­20200601.html. Merriam-Webster. (2023). Information age. In: Merriam-­Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.merriam-­webster.com/dictionary/Information%20Age. Naishadham, S. & Bleiberg, J. (2020). Analysis: Portland protesters vary as much as their arrests. In: Oregon public broadcasting, July 30, 2020. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www. opb.org/article/2020/07/30/portland-­oregon-­protests-­arrests-­records-­data/. Pandolfo, C. (2017). Antifa Violence in Portland: The police just let it happen. In: Blaze Media, August 7, 2017. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.theblaze.com/ conservative-­review/antifa-­violence-­in-­portland-­the-­police-­just-­let-­it-­happen#toggle-­gdpr. PPD, Portland Police Bureau (2020, June 6). Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://twitter.com/ PortlandPolice/status/1269426195839332352. Romero, D. (2019). Demonstrators clash in Portland, Oregon, police warn about ‘concrete milkshakes’. In: NBC News, June 29, 2019. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.nbcnews.com/ news/us-­news/demonstrators-­clash-­portland-­oregon-­throw-­concrete-­milkshakes-­n1025036. Ryan, J. (2017). Portland may day march erupts into fiery riot; 25 arrested. In: The Oregonian, May 2, 2017. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2017/05/ portland_may_day_demonstration.html. Schenk, C., & Bornhausen, M. (2024). Mission communication as an integrative overall strategy in protest 2.0. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A Professional's guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Shephard, K. (2017). What it’s like to Betray Antifa to the Cops – and get caught. In: Willamette Week, December 26, 2017. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.wweek.com/ news/2017/12/26/what-­its-­like-­to-­betray-­antifa-­to-­the-­cops-­and-­get-­caught/. Sietz, A. (2022, June 10). White supremacist are riling up thousands on social media. In: PBS News Hour. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ white-­supremacists-­are-­riling-­up-­thousands-­on-­social-­media. Starr, M. (2022). Street warfare: How organized riots are the future of conflict. In: The Jerusalem Post, March 16, 2022. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.jpost.com/international/ article-­701437. Tanenbaum, M. (2023). Philly reaches $9.25 million settlement in lawsuit over police response to 2020 protest. In: Philly Voice, March 20, 2023. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www. phillyvoice.com/philly-­protests-­police-­lawsuit-­settlement-­george-­floyd-­tear-­gas-­i676. Vives, R. & Smith, D. (2020, May 31). L.A. reels from looting and arrest note seen in decades. In: Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 25, 2023, from https://www.latimes.com/california/ story/2020-­05-­31/l-­a-­reels-­from-­looting-­and-­arrests-­not-­seen-­in-­decades. Chief (retired) Ryan Lee  has served over 22 years in the policing profession. He served nearly 20 years with the Police Bureau in Portland, Oregon, USA ­specializing in public order policing for nearly 17 of those years. He rose through the ranks of the public order unit from line officer to senior leadership. He has been deployed hundreds of times in public order operations ranging from peaceful gatherings to riots. He served as a frontline supervisor during the 2011 Occupy Portland Protest and as the Operations Section Chief during the 2016 Election Riots and 2017 Inauguration Riots in Portland. Chief Lee has been a subject matter expert in public order policing for the National Institute of Justice, the Center for Domestic Preparedness, International Association

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Chiefs of Police’s Collaborative Reform Initiative Technical Assistance Center, the National Tactical Officer Association, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center through work with the Federal Protective Service. He was a keynote speaker at the International Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from California State University at Sacramento and a Master of Criminal Justice from Boston University.

Intelligence in Public Order Policing Loren (Renn) Cannon Jr

Abstract  This chapter will provide law enforcement leaders important concepts and tools by summarizing key research and reviewing the fundamentals of the intelligence cycle to help officers lawfully develop crucial intelligence and effectively incorporate this knowledge into all stages and aspects of public order policing operations. Through a case study and real-world illustrations of successful public order intelligence efforts, the chapter will also provide law enforcement leaders critical context and concrete examples of practical steps for developing and integrating intelligence.

1 Introduction Veteran police officers know their beats. Over time, they gain knowledge of the streets they patrol, the businesses and community leaders, common activities, traffic flows, geography, crime problems and myriad other details. Each officer’s practical experience forms a personal intelligence base. Good cops intuitively develop and apply this intelligence base to their daily patrols. What’s new or out of place? What crimes are likely? Where and how should I focus my time? Complex problems such as organized crime or sophisticated fraud schemes require more formalized analysis. Accordingly, law enforcement agencies have built intelligence units to counter these public safety threats. The officers and analysts in these units support investigations by helping answer difficult questions. How is a criminal group organized? What criminal conspiracies are underway? Where are illicit funds hidden? Modern public order policing presents a next-level challenge for several reasons. With large numbers of people experiencing powerful emotions like anger, grief, and

L. R. Cannon Jr (*) Graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, NY, USA Current Master of Professional Studies in Homeland Security at George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_17

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concern, public order demonstrations are complex and dynamic. Communities expect police departments to enable their right to assemble and speak. Accordingly, officers step into these difficult environments to protect the protesters’ right to assemble, direct traffic, provide emergency response, and facilitate logistics. Adding to the challenge, the demand for fundamental public order policing has risen in the past decade. According to recent research, from 2006 to 2020, the number of significant global protests roughly doubled. Increases occurred in every geographic region of the world. The most significant growth occurred in the regions of North America and Europe/Central Asia, where protest rates roughly tripled (Ortiz et al., 2022). Further complicating the challenge of public order policing, communities expect authorities to prevent serious acts of violence. Unfortunately, violence may be sparked by many factors. A vehicle backfire may be mistaken for gunshots leading to a deadly stampede. Drunken celebrants may start a brawl, which spreads into a riot. And increasingly, violent extremists seeking to make powerful impacts may target large gatherings with violence (Doxsee et al., 2022). Measures such as security guards, vehicle barriers, patrol officers, and surveillance teams can detect and mitigate acts of violence. But the more law enforcement agencies know about threats in advance, the more likely such acts can be prevented. Prevention demands strong intelligence to inform planning, resource allocation and tactical preparation. Useful intelligence can help disrupt attacks by answering important questions, including the following: Is violence likely? What might trigger aggression? How is violence likely to manifest? What threat actors are planning destruction? What units and capabilities are needed to preempt or counter violence?

2 Intelligence and the Intelligence Cycle Most law enforcement professionals have an intuitive understanding of intelligence and how to develop it. However, many factors complicate intelligence efforts in public order policing, particularly the policing of large protests. Protests usually occur sporadically and with limited notice. Many departments, particularly in smaller jurisdictions, have limited experience dealing with emotional, mass demonstrations. Protest leaders often assert police are biased toward one side or another. Similarly, proactive intelligence efforts can spur allegations that Constitutional rights to assemble and speak have been violated. Finally, rapidly evolving situations and massive information flows before large demonstrations make it difficult to obtain clear intelligence pictures. Given these complications, law enforcement leaders must move beyond an intuitive understanding of the intelligence process. To avoid pitfalls and achieve the teamwork needed for effective public order policing, executives must formalize their understanding of intelligence in advance. In addition to learning common intelligence terminology, police leaders must study how intelligence can be lawfully developed and effectively utilized in support of public order policing efforts. There are many descriptions of intelligence (Warner, 2003). Definitions from business, military, law enforcement, information management and other areas tend

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to emphasize a specific field rather than a general definition. For the purposes of this chapter, intelligence is relevant, lawfully collected information, the significance of which is known and understood through analysis and dissemination.

Importantly, this description also reflects the intelligence cycle. The intelligence cycle describes the common-sense process of identifying knowledge gaps, gathering information, analyzing it, and sharing what is learned. There are varying models describing this process. As a result, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff captured a model to facilitate teamwork within the US military and coordination with other departments and agencies in the United States and around the world (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, i). The International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEIA) defines a highly analogous model of the intelligence cycle with very similar terminology as that noted below (IALEIA, n.d.). Though mirroring military models, law enforcement intelligence is focused on different goals. Traditionally, law enforcement agencies have developed intelligence to detect crimes, identify criminals, develop cases, support prosecutions, and ascertain crime trends in order to plan and allocate resources (Carter, 1990, 3). Today, law enforcement agencies are also expected to prevent major acts of violence. Preventing violence during large public gatherings requires excellent intelligence, planning, communication, and operational execution. There are approximately 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States (Banks et al., 2016; cf. also Chap. X). As a result, both intelligence and public order policing typically demand teamwork amongst local, state, and federal agencies. To facilitate intelligence teamwork, law enforcement leaders should have a fundamental and common understanding of the following six-step intelligence cycle. The first step in the intelligence process, Direction and Planning identifies knowledge gaps and key questions, also referred to as intelligence requirements (IR), or priority intelligence requirements (PIR) when given precedence by commanders (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, I-7). Using Plan and Direct, IALEIA notes this step involves defining the problem (n.d.). For example, a commander’s PIR for an upcoming protest might include How many people will attend this event? What routes will be utilized? Are violent individuals or extremist groups planning to attend? Once initial IR and PIR are identified, planning activities may include tasking agencies and units to lawfully collect relevant information, determining where and how information will be processed, requesting additional capabilities and assistance, and establishing protocols for sharing and evaluating intelligence amongst partner agencies (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, I-5). For example, a police department may task its detectives and patrol officers with collecting information, which will be reviewed by local analysts. The department may request assistance from the county sheriff, state police and federal partners with resulting information analyzed by a joint task force. As intelligence is developed, it may be shared through department roll calls or sent to task force agencies in a newly established daily or weekly report. Collection, the second step in the cycle, refers to lawful actions taken to gather information relevant to identified IR and PIR (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, I-15;

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Carter, 1990, 88). For example, analysts may read news stories and review open social media accounts for information about an upcoming protest. Liaison officers may interview organizers and community leaders. Patrol officers may follow up on tips called in or sent from the public. Detectives and agents may canvass established sources for knowledge of threats. When warranted and properly authorized, agencies may initiate physical or electronic surveillance on subjects believed to be planning violent actions. The third step, Processing and Exploitation, is the process of capturing collected information into forms, which can be readily utilized by commanders, decision-­makers, officers, agents, analysts, and other involved team members (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, I-16). Calling this step Process/Collate, IALEIA summarizes this step as organizing and evaluating information (n.d.). For example, a series of interviews documented to a central database may provide estimates of crowd size and routes. Investigation of tips summarized in a report may capture credible threats. Investigative summaries by detectives and agents may capture information regarding individuals or groups planning violent actions. Analysis and Production then synthesizes processed information gathered from all sources into intelligence products of value (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, I-16; Carter, 1990, 107). These products may draw conclusions and recommend actions (IALEIA, n.d.). For instance, multiple estimates may be averaged, collated, and compared to past events to form a consolidated graphic showing expected crowd size and routes. Independently reported tips may corroborate an assessment that bottles and rocks will be thrown at a particular building. Investigation may develop a link chart and photos of a particular group planning an arson. During Dissemination and Integration, intelligence is sent to relevant people and units. Those people and units incorporate the intelligence into their action plans (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, I-20; Carter, 1990, 112). For example, liaison officers may notify businesses and residences along the route of an upcoming protest. Traffic units may plan needed officers, vehicles, and street closures to adequately manage traffic during a demonstration. To pre-empt vandalism, public order teams may determine steps to identify individuals carrying projectiles. Public information officers may spend time warning motorists to expect delays on certain streets. Police leaders may realize more resources are needed, then use intelligence developed to support requests made to mutual aid partners or political leaders. Evaluation and Feedback occurs throughout the intelligence process and makes the cycle continuous. Also called Reevaluate, leaders must constantly gauge the process to ensure it is efficient, effective, and lawful (Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2013, I-21; Carter, 1990, 116; IALEIA, n.d.). Units acting on intelligence may find it accurate and sufficient. More often, they uncover new questions. For example, liaison officers speaking to business owners and residents may find additional information regarding crowd size and routes. Analysts reviewing open social media may gain insights into new, unanticipated protest tactics. Detectives and agents conducting investigation may discover threats have subsided from one group and elevated from another. As operations unfold, the intelligence picture progresses, PIR and IR are updated, and the intelligence cycle is continuously renewed.

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3 Public Order Intelligence: Collection Considerations Every police officer involved in public order policing understands the right to assemble and speak must be protected. However, large demonstrations can be fraught with complex, emotional dynamics which prompt unexpected behavior. Crime and violence do occur. To anticipate and manage issues, public order police officers need a fundamental grasp of criminal actors and their motives. Crowd violence may be sparked in different ways. Firecrackers or vehicle backfires can spark fearful stampedes by people believing gunfire or explosions have occurred. Public intoxication during mass celebrations can lead to drunken violence, which spreads to rioting and opportunistic looting. For example, in 1964, an unpopular call by a referee at a soccer match led to a massive riot in Lima, Peru. Over 300 people were trampled to death as an enormous mob broke every window in the stadium, then boiled into the streets to overturn cars, light fires, and loot stores (300 Dead, 1964). More commonly, violence and destruction are initiated by criminal actors with ideological motives. Peaceful protesters are lawful citizens who must be protected, regardless of their political position. But polarized politics can blur public perceptions of civil disobedience and serious violence. Within any large reform movement, there are people who take their ideas to violent extremes. And according to recent research, those violent extremes increasingly occur during public demonstrations.

3.1 Extremist Ideologies and Demonstrations Federal law defines terrorism as violent acts undertaken to intimidate a population, influence government policy, or affect government functions (Federal Bureau of Investigation, et  al., 2021). The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently completed an analysis of 1040 terrorist acts or plots in the United States between 1994 and 2021. This analysis identified four broad ideologies underlying terrorist acts: violent far right, violent far left, religious, and ethnonationalism. Reflecting common characterizations, CSIS researchers noted violent far right ideologies to include white supremacism and opposition to government authority or specific policies such as abortion. Violent far left ideologies include black nationalism, anti-capitalism, and anarchism. The report also noted terrorist acts motivated by religious extremism and by ethnonationalism (Doxsee et al., 2022). Significantly, CSIS researchers found the percentage of terrorist attacks and plots conducted during demonstrations has risen massively. Their review found that in 1994, just 2% of terrorist attacks and plots occurred during public demonstrations. In 2020, 47% of terrorist attacks and plots occurred in public demonstrations. In 2021, that number rose to 53%. Although religious and ethnonationalist terrorism did occur during the study period, domestic violent far right and violent far left

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ideologies motivated the terrorist acts at demonstrations during the study period (Doxsee et al., 2022). Therefore, a solid understanding and common vocabulary for domestic extremist ideologies are important to public order intelligence efforts.

3.2 Categorizing Extremist Groups CSIS researchers took care to note that violent far right and violent far left extremist do not correspond to mainstream political parties (Doxsee et al., 2022). However, extremist ideologies can become linked by association with mainstream parties. For example, a Republican rally for reducing the size of the federal government may be joined by individuals with a violent anti-government ideology. A Democratic protest for workers’ rights may see participation by violent anti-capitalists. U.S. law enforcement agencies may not lawfully investigate and gather intelligence on individuals based solely on their political beliefs. To reinforce this standard and to improve public communications, federal agencies avoid conflating extremist ideologies with mainstream political parties. To the extent possible, agencies do not characterize ideologies as being on the right or left of the political spectrum. Instead, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) utilize the following titles to categorize domestic violent extremists (DVEs) into general ideological groups (Federal Bureau of Investigation et al., 2021). Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists (RMVEs) RMVEs are motivated by bias against other groups. This bias may be based on race, ethnicity, or a specific population (Federal Bureau of Investigation, et  al., 2021). Examples include violent white supremacists such as Nathan Allen, who shot and killed two black individuals after crashing a stolen truck into a home, and black nationalists like Micah Xavier Johnson, who shot and killed five police officers in Dallas, Texas during a demonstration in 2016 (Jiménez and Medina 2021; Cherelus and Seba, 2016). Anti-Government/Anti-Authority Violent Extremists (AAVEs) Speaking broadly, AAVEs violently oppose the formal hierarchies holding authority in society. This wide ideological spectrum has been further divided into three subgroups: –– Militia Violent Extremists (MVEs) advocate violence to overthrow the US government in the belief that Constitutional authorities have been exceeded and a totalitarian regime is forming (Federal Bureau of Investigation, et  al., 2021). Such beliefs prompted Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Oklahoma City federal building in Oklahoma in 1995, killing 168 people in the largest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history (Cooper, 2020). –– Anarchist Violent Extremists (AVEs) reject capitalism, corporate globalization, and governing institutions because they belief these institutions harm society

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(Federal Bureau of Investigation, et al., 2021). AVE violence has rarely escalated to murder, but rather manifests in vandalism, assaults, and arson. For example, Malik Fard Muhammad pled guilty to charges stemming from smashing windows and throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers during 2020 racial justice protests in Portland, Oregon (Wilson, 2022). –– Sovereign Citizen Violent Extremists (SCVEs) believe they are immune from government authority and laws (Federal Bureau of Investigation, et al., 2021). Criminal activity, including refusal to pay fees and fines, tax evasion and fraud, occasionally escalates to violent confrontation with law enforcement. For example, in 2003, Arthur Bixby, his wife Rita, and their son Steven, were involved in a violent standoff with police. Angry with efforts to widen a highway near their home, the Bixby family killed two police officers and exchanged hundreds of rounds with police before surrendering (Steven Bixby convicted of murdering two officers, 2007). Animal Rights/Environmental Violent Extremists (AEVEs) AEVEs turn to violence to stop perceived cruelty towards animals or destructive exploitation of the environment (Federal Bureau of Investigation, et  al., 2021). AEVE criminal activity most frequently takes the form of sabotage and property destruction. For example, from 1995 to 2001, members of the Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front used improvised explosive devices and arson to cause more than $45 million in property damage during 40 criminal actions (Chung, 2022). Abortion-Related Violent Extremists (ARVEs) ARVEs pursue acts of violence either in opposition to abortion or in support of it (Federal Bureau of Investigation, et al., 2021). In example of the former, Michael Frederick Griffin shot and killed Dr. David Gunn during a 1993 protest against abortion in Pensacola, Florida (Lithwick, 2017). More recently, vandalism and arson at anti-abortion facilities have also occurred (Aratani, 2022). All Other Domestic Terrorism Threats Violent extremists motivated by a mix of personal grievances and ideologies not covered in the other categories fall into this catch-all group (Federal Bureau of Investigation, et  al., 2021). The “involuntarily celibate” or incel movement is an example of one such potentially violent ideology. Fueled by frustration with his own virginity, misogyny and anger at more sexually successful peers, Elliot Rodger targeted a sorority while killing six people in a 2014 shooting and stabbing spree in Isla Vista, California (Branson-Potts and Winton, 2018).

3.3 Takeaways Over 100 years ago, US President Theodore Roosevelt observed “there is a lunatic fringe to every reform movement” (Lunatic fringe/fringe, 2010). The summary of extremist ideologies supports this observation. When combined with the recent CSIS research indicating half of terrorist violence in the United States in recent

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years occurred during public demonstrations, two important conclusions emerge. First, law enforcement leaders must guard against complacency. Although past demonstrations by a particular group may have occurred peacefully, the potential for violence exists at any mass gathering. Second, public order leaders must lawfully gather appropriate intelligence to help anticipate and prevent extremist violence during public gatherings.

4 Public Order Policing: Intelligence Case Study Dueling protests have occurred in Oregon over time (cf. Michel 2016, D’Souza 2008, Diehl, 2015, Perry 2016, Denson 1998, SPLC 2001, Levin 2016, Gerike 2018). But in 2019, divisive politics played out in the streets of Portland regularly. Opposing political narratives increased fervor on the right and the left, ratcheting up confrontations between factions. Groups such as the Oathkeepers, the III%ers, and the Proud Boys joined right leaning protests. Individuals associated with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups voiced support for these protests and sometimes attended them. On the left, Black Lives Matter activists often joined other social justice activists in demonstrations. Self-styled anti-fascist, or antifa activists, often wearing head-to-toe black clothing and masks to obscure their identities, regularly took part in demonstrations as well. In Portland, Oregon in 2019, Patriot Prayer was the most prominent local protest group on the right. Patriot Prayer loosely organized individuals from the Portland metro area and nearby regions. Though apparently less organized as a formal group, Rose City Antifa was an established online voice among many left-leaning antifa groups. During 2019 protests in Portland, extremists motivated by race, militia ideology and anarchist beliefs went beyond protest speech to initiate violence. Extremists within protest groups attacked others with fists, projectiles, pepper spray, batons, and other weapons. During a Proud Boys protest in Portland on June 29th, a relatively unknown blogger named Andy Ngo filmed antifa counterprotesters. Several masked individuals assaulted Ngo, resulting in a head injury and a hospital stay. Ngo publicized the assault and his injuries on social media and in interviews with major news outlets (Woodrow, 2019). The assault on Ngo became a nationwide rallying cry for alt-right groups to gather in Portland for an “End Domestic Terrorism” rally on August 17th. Perhaps not surprisingly, local left-wing groups vowed to oppose this rally (KGW Staff, 2019).

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4.1 End Domestic Terrorism Rally: First Intelligence Cycle Iteration Intelligence cycles do not begin with a blank slate. Past intelligence efforts and operations provide context and experience informing new efforts. The “End Domestic Terrorism Rally” was no exception. The city had already seen extremist within protests engage in violence by throwing objects and engaging in fistfights. Angry rhetoric and national attention further raised concerns. An event from the other side of the United States illustrated the potential threat. On August 12, 2017, during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a 20-year-old white supremacist named James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one and injuring dozens (U.S. Department of Justice, 2019). Direction and Planning Given the evident and growing risks of the August 17th protest, law enforcement leaders saw the need for a comprehensive public safety plan. To support such a plan, a clear intelligence picture became critical. Two units took the lead in developing that picture. Encompassing multiple agencies, including the Oregon State Police and the Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington County Sheriff’s Offices, the FBI Portland Division Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) initiated intelligence gathering efforts. Earlier in 2019, the Portland City Council had mandated the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) withdraw from the JTTF. Accordingly, the PPB Criminal Intelligence Unit (CIU) began a parallel effort. While conducting their work, PPB CIU officers coordinated with the JTTF in accordance with information sharing guidelines established by the Portland City Council. The nature of the potential clash raised questions applicable to both the right-­ wing protest and the left-wing counterprotest. The PIR established for each faction included: –– –– –– –– ––

How many protesters will participate? Where will the “End Domestic Terrorism Rally”/counterprotest take place? What protest leaders are available to coordinate with authorities? Will protesters be armed? If so, what weapons are likely? Will RMVEs, MVEs and AVEs attend? If so, what crimes or violence are they likely to initiate?

With these common-sense questions in mind, law enforcement leaders laid out plans for collecting, analyzing, and sharing information. Collection Initial collection focused on review, liaison, interviews, and canvasses. JTTF analysts and CIU personnel reviewed media reports and open social media posts. PPB protest liaison officers reached out to organizations on both the left and the right regarding attendee numbers and routes. JTTF agents and CIU officers interviewed tipsters and canvassed established contacts and sources regarding weapons and threats of violence.

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Processing and Exploitation Preliminary data indicated several thousand right-wing protesters would descend upon the city. Most would come from the Portland area. But given promotion of the event by national media figures, law enforcement learned individuals from around the United States planned to attend. Information gathered indicated right-wing protesters intended to exercise their right to speech. However, many planned to attend armed in order to defend themselves from anticipated assaults from AVEs. Potential weapons ranged from brass knuckles and batons to pepper spray and firearms. Additionally, sources expressed concern RMVEs and MVEs planned to attend and initiate violent attacks using firearms or vehicles. Data for left-wing protesters indicated 1000–2000 counterprotesters would show up for the rally. Most would come from the Portland region. Their stated purpose was to assemble and speak in opposition to fascism and white supremacy. Many planned to attend with weapons for self-defense from RMVEs and MVEs. Open-­ source social media posts indicated AVEs might attend and initiate violence. Worryingly, information indicated a growing number of possible AVEs were obtaining and training with firearms. Analysis and Production As information flowed in, analysts set to work collating and scrutinizing initial data. They compared estimates to past events and considered motivations and past reliability of sources. They cross-referenced, compared, and corroborated information to produce an initial intelligence estimate. Given past exaggerations of crowd size, analysts assessed 1000–2000 right wing protesters would be opposed by approximately a 1000 counterprotesters. Both recent experience and analysis indicated confrontations between opposing demonstrators were almost certain to occur. Left unchecked, analysts assessed violence would escalate to include vandalism, thrown projectiles, fistfights, baton strikes, and pepper spray. Chillingly, analysts also identified a rising likelihood that without robust public order policing, extremist violence could spiral into gunfights or vehicle assaults. Dissemination and Integration Initial intelligence estimates flowing to police leaders confirmed their experience and concerns. Leaders at the Portland Police Bureau, Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, Federal Protective Service, and other agencies began planning crowd control resources and forming an operational plan to prevent violence by keeping the dueling factions separated. The intelligence picture made clear a sizable public order team would be required to prevent clashes on August 17th. To help assemble and support this plan, law enforcement executives began briefing intelligence estimates to political leaders and staffs. Support of extensive public safety measures grew as key leaders became aware of the possibility of violence during the “End Domestic Terrorism Rally.” Evaluation and Feedback Though confirming leaders’ experience, the intelligence picture forming added depth of understanding and raised new questions.

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4.2 End Domestic Terrorism Rally: Second Intelligence Cycle Iteration As the initial intelligence cycle provided answers and identified new knowledge gaps, law enforcement leaders saw the need to continue developing and refining intelligence. Direction and Planning Threat information from initial investigation and collection spurred new PIR including: –– –– –– ––

What specific individuals or groups have threatened to initiate violence? What actions can be taken to reduce threats of violence prior to the rally? What teams and resources are necessary to prevent violence during the rally? Where should these teams and resources be stationed?

With this newly updated and focused PIR, leaders updated collection and dissemination plans. Collection To identify individuals making credible threats of violence, Portland JTTF analysts, agents and task force officers worked collaboratively. They further reviewed open social media posts. They queried established contacts and sources. They sent leads to FBI field offices around the country to follow up on threat reporting. Those offices conducted further interviews, reviewed ongoing threat assessments, and opened new investigation where warranted. Meanwhile, PPB liaison and public affairs officers continued engagement with community leaders, media outlets and activists. These interactions indicated most people planning to protest and counterprotest did not support violence. They fervently believed in their respective messages. Many prepared to defend themselves from attack. But most hoped they would not need to do so. Processing and Exploitation As threat information and community input rolled in, analysts consolidated reporting and eliminated redundancies. This work helped narrow investigation to specific subjects and identified themes and emerging common ground. Analysis and Production As analysts and agents continued to cross-reference, corroborate, and collate information, they incorporated known information from subject’s criminal histories and ongoing cases. These efforts further clarified assessments and resulted in a list of approximately 15 individuals preparing to attend who presented legitimate threats of violence. Similarly, consolidated reports from businesspeople, community leaders, and protest contacts confirmed violence was not a foregone conclusion. It could be prevented with appropriate communication and sufficient action.

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Dissemination and Integration As leaders received more specific intelligence, they incorporated it into plans and actions. The Portland Mayor’s Office organized a public information campaign decrying protest violence and hate speech. The campaign culminated at a large press conference held at a local park on August 14th. Led by Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, politicians, businesspeople, community leaders, athletes, and law enforcement officials united behind robust public order policing for the August 17th rally (McCarthy 2019a). Provided a summary briefing of intelligence assessments, state political leaders easily pictured the ghastly prospect of protest scuffles escalating to assaults and gunfire. To prevent this possibility, Oregon Governor Kate Brown sent a robust group of trained Oregon State Police troopers to assist PPB in keeping the peace on August 17 (Bernstein 2019a, b). Other mutual aid partners in the region also provided resources, including the US Marshals Service, which sent a 100 Deputy US Marshalls in case of need. Seeking to further assess and disrupt potential violence, federal, state, and local law enforcement officers on the JTTF interviewed specific subjects. During interviews, officers included admonishments that state and federal laws prohibited true threats and inciting violence. In one case, task force officers applied for and obtained a court order from a county judge authorizing the seizure of an individual’s firearms under Oregon’s red flag law (Kavanaugh, 2019b). Similarly, PPB officers obtained and executed arrest warrants for individuals charged with past protest crimes to property and persons (Zielinski, 2019). Finally, public safety plans for August 17th expanded to include action from additional city bureaus. The Portland Bureau of Transportation planned road and bridge closures and provided concrete Jersey barriers to help keep protest groups apart. The Portland Fire Bureau provided medics and firefighters. The Bureaus of Emergency Communication and Emergency Management helped coordinate communication. The Portland Emergency Coordination Center opened to provide a unified Incident Command Post (ICP). Evaluation and Feedback With the public information campaign and proactive law enforcement efforts, organizers and supporters of the “End Domestic Terrorism Rally” moderated violent rhetoric. One influential, right-wing media figure advised attendees to “tone it down. Don’t go too far” (Bernstein 2019a, b). The Oath Keepers militia group advised members not to attend the rally for fear of associating with white supremacist groups (Templeton, 2019). On August 17th, only 300 or so protesters showed up for the rally. At the peak, about a 1000 counterprotesters marched in opposition (Flaccus, 2019). End Domestic Terrorism Rally: End Result Effective intelligence is a force multiplier. It cannot replace operations, but rather makes operational action more focused and impactful. On August 17th, the work of maintaining public safety fell to public order teams from the Portland Police Bureau, the Oregon State Police, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, and other partner agencies. More than 700 cops from 15 different agencies deployed early that

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morning to ensure public safety (Kavanaugh, 2019a). Some wore uniforms marking them as crowd liaison officers. Many wore protective armor and carried riot control weapons. Cops walked, rode bikes, drove squad cars, and mounted SUV siderails to quickly move where needed. In a unified Incident Command Post, an intelligence cell stood by to help track developments, investigate leads, and ensure situational awareness for crowd control teams. By midmorning, Proud Boys and antifa activists arrived in Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park. They found themselves separated by concrete Jersey barriers and a line of police officers (Mesh and Jaquiss, 2019a, b). Groups crisscrossed the Willamette River on the Morrison Bridge, the Tillikum Bridge, the Burnside Bridge, and the Hawthorne Bridge. They scampered down miles of sidewalks and streets on both sides of the river (Mesh and Jaquiss, 2019a, b). Try as they might, the two sides seldom found a way around or through the ever-present wall of police separating them. Officers made arrests and seized metal poles, shields, bear spray, and wooden batons from both protest groups. By 3 PM, the Proud Boys called it quits, loaded buses and departed the city. With the alt-right groups gone, most counterprotesters headed home. However, demonstrating the dynamic nature of public order policing, some antifa demonstrators turned their attention to blocking Portland streets, throwing water bottles at police officers, stealing road signs and setting off smoke bombs. Adapting quickly, Portland Police declared a civil disturbance at 4 PM and made a few more arrests. By 5:30 PM, the last antifa agitators dispersed. In total, PPB made 13 arrests. Mayor Ted Wheeler commended the police response for ending the cycle of clashing protests and keeping the day largely peaceful (Crowley, Hanson, 2019).

5 Public Order Intelligence: Resources and Integration As discussed, police departments in some smaller jurisdictions lack experience with large public order events. In cities where large demonstrations are infrequent, even large agencies may be unfamiliar with public order intelligence needs. However, as demonstrated by protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline (Seattle Times staff, 2016) and the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, protest violence can and does happen in remote, rural areas. Similarly, the “Unite the Right Rally” in Charlottesville, Virginia showed protest violence can erupt in smaller cities unused to large demonstrations. Public order intelligence can be challenging, even in cities where major public order events regularly occur. The January 6, 2021 attack on Congress in Washington, D.C. demonstrated the difficulty in developing accurate intelligence and integrating it effectively into a comprehensive public safety plan (Sands, 2022). There are approximately 18,000 U.S. police agencies with overlapping jurisdictions and missions and fragmented information sets. These facts make the task of assembling a complete, accurate intelligence picture challenging everywhere in America.

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Wherever the event, public order intelligence becomes even more difficult for contentious protests involving well-publicized political issues. Such high-profile events not only draw larger crowds, but they can also attract extremists bent on violence. Complicating matters, some of these extremists may travel from other cities and states. For example, James Alex Fields Jr., the white supremacist who conducted the 2017 vehicle attack in Charlottesville, Virginia, lived near Cincinnati, Ohio (Pilcher, 2017). Detecting threats from traveling extremists in advance is a difficult prospect requiring teamwork and information sharing with agencies around the country. Fortunately, there are resources to assist agencies meet the challenge. Existing task forces and intelligence centers can provide tremendous assistance. Mutual aid requests can provide great resources and experience. And with proper leadership, each department’s organic assets can also be leveraged to help fill the gap.

5.1 Intelligence Fusion Centers The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provides personnel, training, technology assistance, and grants to fund Intelligence Fusion Centers. As of 2022, 80 Intelligence fusions centers operated in all U.S. states and territories. Each fusion center is a state-owned and operated organization. Fusion Centers receive classified and unclassified information from U.S. federal agencies, analyze local implications through a risk assessment process, and share threat information amongst local, state, tribal, territorial and federal partners. Importantly, DHS, state authorities, and fusion center directors also prioritize protection of privacy and civil rights as critical skills necessary to long-term success. Fusion centers are a valuable resource in understanding trends, general threats, and emerging tactics. (Homeland Security, n.d.-a; Homeland Security, n.d.-b; Homeland Security, n.d.-c). For more tactical intelligence specifically integrated into threat mitigation efforts, agencies can take advantage of another resource.

5.2 Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) The FBI leads approximately 200 JTTFs covering every part of the United States. Each JTTF includes investigators from local, state, and federal agencies located in its area of responsibility. JTTF personnel have experience with their region’s history, culture, capabilities, and crime trends. Working as a team, these agents and officers conduct threat assessments and investigate cases. FBI JTTFs also have trained analysts who accelerate the intelligence cycle. The national JTTF network helps detect threats proactively, even those originating in another county, state, or nation (Federal Bureau of Investigation, n.d.-b). Importantly, JTTF investigations are overseen by both FBI supervisory agents and prosecutors from the nation’s US Attorney’s Offices. Guidance and oversight from federal prosecutors help hold

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violent actors and conspirators accountable in court while ensuring JTTF efforts preserve civil rights and remain within constitutional guidelines.

5.3 State Police Intelligence Units Many departments call their state police agency for tactical assistance when facing a major public order event. This natural partnership may be accompanied in some cases by analytical and intelligence support from highly capable state police intelligence units. In other places, intelligence support may be available, but will not deploy unless specifically requested. In either case, leaders must ensure intelligence resources work in a coordinated fashion. Communication and information sharing are critical. In some areas, the state police may not have personnel experienced with public order intelligence. Even in these situations, state police troopers and analysts remain valuable resources in developing the intelligence picture. Communicating intelligence questions before and during public order events helps state troopers. If troopers are on the lookout for indicators of crowd size, extremist groups, or violent individuals, their potential contribution to public safety rises.

5.4 Major City Intelligence Units Many cities regularly undertake public order police operations with accompanying intelligence support efforts. These department are skilled in gathering data, processing and analyzing this information, and developing layered security measures. For example, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) regularly plans and conducts operations to safeguard the United Nations General Assembly, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, New Year’s Eve in Times Square, and other large gatherings. The agency monitors cameras, gathers tips from “See Something, Say Something” campaigns, and monitors reports from street officers. NYPD personnel then develop real-time intelligence to hone security planning and assist security operations (Lowry & Aguirre, 2021; Winter, 2021; McCarthy, 2019b). Though perhaps not on the same scale, most major cities in the United States have experience with managing large public order events. When facing large events, smaller departments located near major cities can potentially tap into that experience with a mutual aid request.

5.5 Organic Assets Developing intelligence is a core competency of every law enforcement agency. Officers gather information at crime scenes. Analysts identify crime trends. Detectives develop cases beyond a reasonable doubt. Leaders and public affairs

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personnel communicate with the community to explain efforts and communicate context. Even when facing a highly unusual public order event, a small agency can leverage their personnel and skills to help develop an effective intelligence picture. Familiar with their communities and on the streets every day, local officers are the first line of defense against local crime and violence. For similar reasons, they play a critical role in public order intelligence. Public order policing of a protest at Recapture Canyon in San Juan County, Utah serves as an excellent example. On May 10, 2014, dozens of protesters, many of them armed with long guns or sidearms, rode ATVs down a trail into Recapture Canyon. Part of a larger demonstration nearby, the riders were protesting the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), which had closed the ATV trail to protect and evaluate Native American archeological sites. The protest ride was organized by Phil Lyman, a San Juan County Commissioner. Lyman had invited protesters from the Bundy Ranch standoff with BLM near Bunkerville, Nevada a month earlier. As a result, Ryan Bundy and others had traveled to the remote Utah site to take part in the armed protest (O’Donoghue, A. & Platt, R, 2014). Wearing a black shirt, white cowboy hat and blue jeans, San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge sat astride his horse watching the ride take place (Hughes, 2014). Despite the potentially explosive situation, Eldredge sat as coolly as any Old West lawman ever had. Eldredge was calm and composed because he and his team were prepared. In the run-up to the publicized protest in San Juan County, the FBI JTTF organized a meeting to share intelligence regarding the upcoming event. Around the table, Sheriff Eldredge listened to officials from the FBI, the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS), the BLM and the US Attorney’s Office discuss indicators armed extremists might shortly descend on his county. Leaning forward, the experienced sheriff added information that completed the intelligence picture. Speaking firmly, Eldredge explained people in San Juan County were frustrated by the BLM.  The sheriff noted federal enforcement would likely inflame the situation and draw more protesters, possibly resulting in a dangerous standoff like the Bundy Ranch event. Eldredge’s evaluation lined up with general intelligence that many militia members view elected sheriffs as inherently more legitimate than appointed federal agents. Incorporating this complete intelligence picture into a well-thought-out operational plan, Eldredge spent time meeting with key constituents, including Commissioner Lyman and some of the armed protesters traveling to Blanding, Utah. Though he only had a few deputies in the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, Eldredge made it clear he would have a robust force on hand for the protest. “We are here to keep the peace and safeguard the Constitutional rights of everybody,” the sheriff explained. “We don’t want to see clashes between citizens and clashes between BLM and militia. This is not going to be Bunkerville (Maffly, 2014).” Now, Sheriff Eldredge led a team of 30 deputies, many on horseback and carrying long guns, arrayed throughout Recapture Canyon (Griffith & McCombs, 2014). Responding to a mutual aid request from Eldredge, most of the deputies had come from surrounding Utah county sheriff’s offices to assist. In case of need, a Utah DPS

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team was a radio call away, ready to provide back-up. BLM agents were not in evidence, though federal investigators were present to capture video evidence of criminal trespass. Working with BLM, the US Attorney’s Office later brought federal charges resulting in misdemeanor convictions for Lyman and one other organizer (Romby, 2015). Despite limited resources in their department, Sheriff Eldredge and his deputies kept the peace in Recapture Canyon on May 10, 2014. With assistance from law enforcement partners, the experienced sheriff assembled clear intelligence, which he integrated into an outstanding operational plan.

6 Intelligence Integration When it comes to intelligence, integration is an important word. Diverse data and information streams must be integrated to develop good intelligence. But simply having good intelligence does little good. As the examples and case study demonstrate, agencies must use what they discern to good effect. They must utilize intelligence to shape strategy and inform operational planning. Departments achieving this level of internal intelligence integration reap tremendous benefits. They obtain the right resources. They build the right teams. They look in the right places to detect and prevent more crime. But deeper and broader intelligence integration brings even more benefits. To fully leverage the value of good intelligence, departments must also focus on integrating the intelligence cycle into their tactical execution, communication efforts, prosecutive teamwork, and political support.

6.1 Integrating Intelligence into Tactical Execution When fully disseminated, good intelligence improves tactical decisions and actions by improving officers’ situational awareness. The most casual student understands this benefit. An officer with a good description and general area may locate a subject. The chances for success go up with a clear subject photo and list of known hangouts. Similarly, detectives are more likely to find white collar criminals if they have clear intelligence about the latest fraud scheme. Integrating the intelligence cycle into police units provides a second benefit. Police officers are not just intelligence consumers. They are also collectors. Their work gathers important information and data. When this information is effectively processed, analyzed, and disseminated, hidden crime trends, unknown tactics, and helpful leads come to light. But the benefits of good intelligence go beyond these immediate benefits. A growing body of research indicates a sense of purpose and meaning are critical to motivation and performance. Put simply, “why we work determines how well we work” (McGregor & Doshi, 2015). Fully disseminated intelligence often helps build the sense of purpose and meaning underpinning good police work. When cops know the why of a plan, they are better at figuring out the

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how of implementing it. An example from a recent and difficult public order policing challenge illustrates this dynamic. In 2020, the city of Portland drew nationwide attention for nightly protests against police brutality. These protests often devolved into civil unrest. When the Trump Administration deployed U.S. marshals and federal officers to Portland, weeks of vandalism and violence escalated and focused on the Hatfield Federal Courthouse. As violence and crowd size peaked, Oregon Governor Kate Brown struck a deal with Vice President Mike Pence. Federal units would draw down and the Oregon State Police (OSP) would take over response to civil unrest, including safeguarding the federal courthouse (VanderHart and Dake 2020). Surveying the intelligence picture, OSP Superintendent Travis Hampton saw two important facts driving up crowd size. First, President Trump was unpopular in Portland. Second, federal agents in “riot gear” and face shields dominated news coverage. The intimidating uniform contributed to the narrative that President Trump and the federal government had ‘invaded’ Portland. To change the narrative, the OSP Superintendent felt troopers posted at the courthouse should be dressed in normal duty uniform, including campaign hats. Realizing the idea carried risks, Hampton met with troopers assigned to secure the Hatfield Federal Courthouse. They discussed the dynamics driving up crowd size in Portland. The troopers understood why their boss wanted them in normal uniforms rather than riot gear and helmets. The uniform sent an important message: the officials guarding the federal courthouse were people from Oregon, not some faceless, invading army. The state troopers agreed that message was important to restoring public safety in Portland. Having bought into the why, the team worked out the how with precautions to ensure officer safety. Public order teams in full gear would provide backup. A security fence would provide stand-off and cover. Security cameras would monitor for threat indicators. With these and other precautions in place, the team took their posts. Soon, photos of professional OSP troopers in their iconic campaign hats dominated the news and changed the narrative (Nakamura & Bernstein, 2020). To be fair, the violence in Portland did not end. But crowd size dropped from 5000–10,000 each night to 200–400. Violence declined and the Hatfield Federal Courthouse remained safe (McGreal, 2020).

6.2 Integrating Intelligence into Communication Efforts Police officers are not the only ones who benefit from knowing why decisions are made. Effective policing depends upon trust and legitimacy in the community. To build that trust, departments must be as transparent and accountable as possible (President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, 2015). The more citizens understand the factors motivating law enforcement decisions and actions, the more likely they are to provide their support. Accordingly, departments work hard to communicate with the citizens they protect. Public affairs officers run social media accounts, organize citizens’ academies, and hold press conferences to create transparency and

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build community trust. The word intelligence evokes secrecy but integrating intelligence into these public information efforts can make them more effective. This reality is apparent, for example, when an agency issues an Amber Alert describing a suspected kidnapper. Departments commonly take similar steps when preparing a major public order operation. For example, when the NYPD prepares for New Year’s Eve and other events, public affairs officers describe public order threats. They urge the public to “see something, say something.” An additional layer of integration is possible. Providing public affairs officers and social media teams with intelligence available for dissemination to the public helps them explain potential threats to lives and property. Drivers are less impatient with street closures and temporary barriers if they are aware that vehicle attacks are a real threat. Citizens are more supportive of crowd control measures when they understand two protest groups are likely to violently clash. Finally, public information teams see what is trending on social media. They talk to reporters, community leaders, businesses, and civic groups. They gain important information regarding the impressions and feelings of community members. As Superintendent Travis Hampton and his OSP troopers demonstrated with their selection of duty uniforms and campaign hats, these insights can be critical components of the intelligence picture. Accordingly, departments should work to ensure important information is flowing both to and from their public information teams.

6.3 Integrating Intelligence into Prosecutive Teamwork No law enforcement effort succeeds without support from criminal prosecutors. Public order policing is no exception. Just as crowd control teams need clear intelligence to form tactical plans, prosecutors need to understand threats and context to make appropriate charging decisions and follow through with them. Police officers must also support prosecutors with evidence, which will hold up in court and satisfy elements laid out in criminal statutes. Normally, experienced officers and detectives are intimately familiar with the criminal statutes they are working. They know the elements and collect needed evidence without reminders or reviews. However, in many jurisdictions, civil unrest during protests is uncommon. What crimes can be charged, elements of proof, and Constitutional protections of assembly and speech can be complicated. This is especially true when protest become contentious and chaotic. Bringing prosecutors into the intelligence cycle as early as possible helps address these challenges. When prosecutors help craft intelligence requirements and form collection plans, operations become more robust while also safeguarding citizens’ rights. The Recapture Canyon event serves as a great example. Involved with intelligence sharing and planning from the beginning, federal prosecutors provided important guidance on federal laws and evidentiary standards. This information helped law enforcement partners stay ahead of the situation. Sheriff Eldredge clearly

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answered questions from county leaders and protest organizers about federal and state jurisdiction. BLM investigators understood which ATV rides would violate the Archeological Resources Protection Act and which were merely trespassing. Importantly, the operational plan included measures to safely collect evidence of crimes while also preserving civil rights.

6.4 Integrating Intelligence into Political Relationships When it comes to public order policing, political leaders play an important role. Protests are struggles for attention, influence, and legitimacy. Unattended, they can devolve into vandalism, rioting, and battles between dueling factions. Elected leaders can help find common ground, reinforce standards of behavior, support law enforcement, and provide resources to agencies in need. They can also deny needed support and inflame a situation with an ill-advised speech. Shared intelligence empowers constructive action. The more political leaders understand potential threats and possible ramifications of words and actions, the more likely they are to provide wise leadership. Preparations for the “End Domestic Terrorism Rally” illustrate this point. Elected leaders in Portland had witnessed violent conflicts during protests earlier in the year. But more specific intelligence prompted stronger action. Knowledge of potential crowd size, likely participants with histories of violence, and heated online rhetoric prompted the Portland mayor to greater action. He and his staff built a coalition of influencers. Denouncing violence and explaining the danger to Portland citizens, they built support for a robust public safety plan. Similarly, Oregon Governor Kate Brown knew the rally could draw large crowds and involve fistfights, pepper spray, and baton assaults. When briefed on RMVE and MVE firearms, the growing number of guns carried by AVEs, and out-of-state travelers with violent criminal histories planning to participate, Brown more clearly understood public order needs. Encouraging mutual aid, the Governor sent the Oregon State Police to help prevent a repeat of the violent 2017 attack in Charlottesville.

7 Collection Techniques Unfortunately, destruction, injury, and death at mass gatherings can be sparked by many events. Basic intelligence regarding crowd size, exit routes, vehicle traffic, weather, and other environmental factors help reduce the potential for stampedes, accidents, heatstroke, and other dangers. Extremist violence is harder to detect and prevent. Radical fanatics study law enforcement tactics, techniques, and procedures. Convinced of the righteousness of their beliefs, they adjust actions to avoid capture and carry out violence. To effectively collect intelligence and prevent violence, law

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enforcement leaders must study extremist attacks. Agencies must continually adapt and improve to protect their communities. In the past, violence was often organized and initiated by hierarchical organizations. A leader formed a plan, then recruited team members who trained and worked in concert. The actors knew each other and took orders from a recognized chief. Examples of such violent organizations include the 9/11 hijackers, white supremacist gangs, and Mafia crime families. The effectiveness of these violent organizations prompted passage of statutes outlawing participation in criminal conspiracies. With these laws, the actual perpetrators of violence and murder are not the only ones who can be held accountable. The people directing violence are also criminally liable. Over the years, law enforcement agencies have successfully penetrated criminal organizations, preventing violence with arrests and conspiracy charges. Some terrorist acts, notably militia violent extremism, are still carried out by hierarchical organizations. However, extremists tactics evolve and violence today is increasingly carried out by individuals and small groups. The violence is often inspired and influenced by ideological networks operating online. Rather than taking a direct, hierarchical role, radical leaders sow outrage with biased, incomplete, or false information. They promote the idea of violence. For example, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula launched the English-language online magazine Inspire, which encouraged readers to “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” (Ryan, 2010). Domestic white supremacist organizations constantly launch propaganda painting Jews, immigrants, and people of color as existential threats to white people, which must be opposed with force (Morrison, 2021). Promising a glorious future with uninhibited individual freedom, anarchist extremists advocate that small “affinity groups” attack government institutions with arson and homemade bombs (Hwang, 2021). Radicalizing themselves online, only a few outraged followers go down the extremist rabbit hole to become lone wolf terrorists. Inspired by online hate, lone wolf terrorists or independent affinity groups act on their own initiative and direction. Often, the people inciting violence don’t know the people conducting it. Today’s terrorist actors are often decentralized and only in contact with others through anonymized and encrypted Internet platforms. Using these sophisticated technologies, online influencers not only inspire violence, but they also subtly direct violence using memes and codewords (Doxsee et al., 2022; Finkelstein et al., 2020). These characteristics make detection and disruption very difficult. When extremists are caught, conspiracy charges against influencers often don’t apply. Their computers and phones might be full of violent propaganda, but hate speech is only illegal in the United States if it makes a credible and specific threat. To be effective, law enforcement organizations seeking to develop lawful intelligence must recognize the decentralized nature of modern extremism. Along with traditional techniques, agencies must develop competence in lawfully investigating online information flows and extremist radicalization chains. This may be pursued with internal officers and units or through task force partnerships. Though not inclusive, the following techniques and considerations provide insights into investigative options and their applicability:

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• Open-Source Intelligence: Whether sporting events, concerts, or protests, mass gathering rely on publicity to generate interest and crowds. Traditional media outlets, organizational websites, and social media accounts provide tremendous amounts of information regarding upcoming events, crowd size, and geography of gatherings. Ideological influencers also rely on social media and websites to promote their views. Publicly posted social media traffic provides vast amounts of data. Social media analytical teams can use this information to develop initial estimates of the potential for extremist participation. Additionally, analysts can use this information to help build patrol officers’ awareness of extremist indicators such as graffiti, flyers, tattoos, and clothing. Finally, analysts reviewing open social media information can develop leads for further investigative steps. • Public Appeals: As individuals radicalize toward violence, their behaviors change. They may obsess over violent, ideological online content, post violent comments, make threats, engage in aggressive, confrontational behavior, or obtain equipment to facilitate violence (National Counterterrorism Center, 2021). These and other indicators are often noticed by family, friends, coworkers, and others. Appeals to the public, such as the long-running “see something, say something” campaign, builds awareness and helps people know when to seek help for loved ones and to appropriately notify police of concerns. • Threat Assessment Programs: Individuals who see indicators of violence may contact law enforcement agencies with their concerns. In times of stress and conflict, like before a controversial protest, the volume of such tips usually rises. Many tips turn out to be nothing. But actively reviewing and appropriately investigating these tips is one of the most important methods to detect and prevent the potential for lone wolf terrorist attacks. Often, radicalization toward violence can be interrupted with appropriate services, counseling, and medical care. In other instances, facts may prompt further investigation, which results in criminal charges before terrorist incidents occur. • Physical Surveillance/Security Cameras: As information is developed prior to public events, surveillance can help confirm or refute the danger of violence. In combination with other information, surveillance can help build the intelligence picture. During mass gatherings, physical surveillance and security cameras are important tools to help detect and gather evidence of criminal behavior. Knowing this, however, some extremists take countermeasures. AVEs, for example, often wear anonymizing black clothing, masks, and goggles. This clothing makes it very difficult for surveillance officers to specifically identify individuals committing crimes in the crowd. • Human Sources: As with any criminal problem, confidential human sources are a potent source of information on extremist violence. Depending upon placement and access, sources can provide early warning on potential threats and help gather evidence of ongoing crime. Given the influence of ideology, as well as the

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dueling nature of opposing extremist groups, source information must be thoroughly vetted, and motives considered. Human sources may provide information which is intended to influence law enforcement actions to further their own goals and agendas. Nevertheless, with proper handling, human sources often provide invaluable intelligence and evidence. Search Warrants: Investigations often develop sufficient probable cause for a warrant authorizing the search of vehicles, structures, electronic devices, or digital accounts. These searches can produce torrents of information and result in specific intelligence regarding threat actors. Given the prevalence of online radicalization and encrypted, anonymized communications, computer forensic teams may be needed. For departments without such capabilities, regional computer forensic labs led by the FBI are available to assist. Close Surveillance: As noted, many extremists utilize masks and anonymizing clothing to make themselves difficult to identify while committing crimes during mass gatherings. Some violent extremists even bring changes of clothing to alter their appearance following acts of violence. Crowd members sympathetic to violent acts may hold umbrellas or lock arms to obscure violent actors or impede crowd control teams seeking to make targeted arrests. In such scenarios, police officers wearing appropriate clothing may be able to blend into the crowd to conduct close surveillance. This information gathering technique must be carefully integrated with tactical and communications plans to be effective. Additionally, risks to close surveillance officers necessitate effective planning, resources, and rehearsals for extracting endangered officers if necessary. Oversight from prosecutors to ensure the surveillance does not violate policy or Constitutional rights is also necessary. Finally, public affairs officers and police leaders must be prepared to publicly explain the close surveillance is to facilitate targeted arrests of violent offenders, not to gather information on lawful protesters. Wiretaps/Electronic Monitoring: The decentralized nature of many extremist groups, along with the use of encrypted Internet messaging, makes traditional wiretaps less broadly effective than in the past. Nevertheless, electronic monitoring can still be effective in investigating hierarchical extremist groups or smaller radical cells. This technique can be particularly effective when law enforcement investigations develop evidence a specific online facility is being used to plan or direct violence. Undercover Operations: Like electronic monitoring, traditional undercover operations are still effective when law enforcement encounters a hierarchical extremist organization. To be effective in a world of lone wolf extremists ­self-­radicalizing in online forums, undercover operations can also go online. When investigation indicates criminal activity is ongoing in specific forums, online undercover officers may be able to successfully participate and collect intelligence and evidence of ongoing criminal conspiracies.

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8 Conclusion Public order policing is a difficult challenge. Strong emotions and dense crowds create the potential for volatile outcomes, including stampedes, riots, and looting. The growing presence of extremists during demonstrations has greatly magnified the challenge. Utilizing effective tactics, sophisticated technology, anonymized communication, and decentralized action by individuals and small groups, extremists have brought increasing violence to public demonstrations in recent years. Investigation and intelligence can help counter extremist violence while preserving the right to assemble and speak. A clear intelligence picture supports strong tactical planning, justifies appropriate resources, and enables effective communication with the public. Detailed intelligence helps identify extremist actors and facilitates threat mitigation prior to mass gatherings occurring. Effectively integrating intelligence and investigation into operational plans improves the potential for targeted arrests and successful prosecution of offenders (cf. Fig. 1). Developing such clear and detailed intelligence takes time and resources. Especially for smaller agencies unused to large public demonstrations, the necessary personnel and expertise may not be readily available. Fortunately, teamwork with partner agencies can help fill the gap. Tapping into existing task forces and fusion cells, each department can increase capabilities to meet the need. With

Direction and Planning

Resources: - Intelligence Fusion Centers - Joint Terrorism Task Forces - State Police Intelligence Units - Major City Intelligence Units - Organic Assets

Evaluation and Feedback

Collection

Dissemination and Integration

Processing and Exploitation

Collection Techniques: - Open-Source Intelligence - Liaison - Public Appeals - Threat Assessment Programs - Physical Surveillance / Security Cameras - Human Sources - Search Warrants - Covert Surveillance - Wiretap/Electronic Monitoring - Undercover Operation

Analysis and Production

Fig. 1  Intelligence Cycle for Public Order Events (own illustration by Bernd Bürger and the author)

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teamwork, law enforcement agencies engaged in public order policing can extend a long history of effective intelligence and investigation to fight crime and reduce violence.DisclaimerThe opinions herein are those of the author and not any government agency.

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Kavanaugh, S. (2019a, August 17, updated August 18). Portland protests: 13 arrested as police declare civil disturbance. The Oregonian/OregonLive. https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2019/08/portland-­protests-­antifa-­right-­wing-­groups-­set-­to-­face-­off-­downtown-­live-­ updates.html Kavanaugh, S. (2019b, August 30). Former marine said he’d slaughter antifa. The FBI, using Oregon’s new red flag law, took his guns away. The Oregonian/OregonLive. https://www. oregonlive.com/news/2019/08/an-­ex-­marine-­said-­hed-­slaughter-­antifa-­the-­fbi-­using-­oregons-­ new-­red-­flag-­law-­took-­his-­guns-­away.html KGW Staff. (2019, August 16, updated August 17). What to know about Saturday’s protest in Portland. KGW8. https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/what-­to-­know-­about-­saturdays-­ protests-­in-­portland/283-­7d312b7a-­72a5-­47f2-­8512-­ac6a4478bf24 Levin, S. (2016, January 16). Oregon standoff tension mounts as so-called ‘3%’ groups refuse to leave. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-­news/2016/jan/10/ oregon-­standoff-­three-­percenter-­groups Lithwick, D. (2017, Oct 31). The murderer who started a movement. Slate. https://slate.com/news-­ and-­politics/2017/10/michael-­frederick-­griffin-­killed-­an-­abortion-­doctor-­he-­could-­soon-­be-­a-­ free-­man.html. Lowry, W., & Aguirre, H. (2021, September 23). UNGA 2021: How the NYPD protects world leaders and city residents. The National News. https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/ unga/2021/09/23/unga-­2021-­how-­the-­nypd-­protects-­the-­worlds-­leaders-­and-­its-­residents/ Lunatic fringe/fringe. (2010, October 3). Wordorigins.org. https://www.wordorigins.org/ big-­list-­entries/lunatic-­fringe-­fringe Maffly, B. (2014, May 11). Dozens illegally ride ATVs into Utah canyon in lands fight rally. The Salt Lake Tribune. https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=30852090&itype=storyID. McCarthy, D. (2019a, August 14). Portland mayor joins other officials to decry violence, hatred ahead of looming rallies. KATU News. https://katu.com/news/local/ portland-­mayor-­other-­officials-­will-­hold-­press-­conference-­on-­looming-­demonstrations McCarthy, K. (2019b, December 30). NYPD issues security measures for New Year’s Eve in Times Square. ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/US/ nypd-­issues-­security-­measures-­years-­eve-­times-­square/story?id=67982603. McGreal, C. (2020, July 31). Portland sees peaceful night of protest following withdrawal of federal agents. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-­news/2020/jul/31/ portland-­protests-­latest-­peaceful-­night-­federal-­troops-­withdrawal. McGregor, L., & Doshi, N. (2015, November 25). How company culture shapes employee motivation. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2015/11/ how-­company-­culture-­shapes-­employee-­motivation Mesh,A., & Jaquiss, N. (2019a,August 17). Proud boys scamper across Portland waterfront, but police keep them far from antifascists. Willamette Week. https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/08/17/ proud-­boys-­scamper-­across-­portland-­waterfront-­but-­police-­keep-­them-­far-­from-­antifascists/ Mesh, A., & Jaquiss, N. (2019b, August 17). Proud boys wander lost through Portland as police allow wild goose chase by antifascists. Willamette Week. https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/08/17/ proud-­boys-­wander-­lost-­through-­portland-­as-­police-­allow-­wild-­goose-­chase-­by-­antifascists/ Michel, C. (2016, January 11). When Oregon ranchers tried to start their own state. PoliticoMagazine. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/oregon-­rebellion-­jefferson-­state-­213520/. Morrison, A. (2021, March 17). White supremacist propaganda surged in 2020, report says. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/white-­supremacist-­propaganda-­surge-­2020-­1489c946446c3 6b0afe4e9fdb4f030c7 Nakamura, B., & Bernstein, M. (2020, July 30). Oregon State Police at federal courthouse. The Oregonian/OregonLive. https://www.oregonlive.com/galleries/ JESXG2F27VEDLELYWQBA7Z7Q64/. National Counterterrorism Center. (2021) US violent extremist mobilization indicators 2021 Edition. U.S.  Director of National Intelligence. https://www.dni.gov/files/NCTC/documents/ news_documents/Mobilization_Indicators_Booklet_2021.pdf.

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O’Donoghue, A., & Platt, R. (2014, May 10). Hundreds gather to protest BLM closure of Recapture Canyon. KSL.com. https://www.ksl.com/article/29840688/ hundreds-­gather-­to-­protest-­blm-­closure-­of-­recapture-­canyon. Ortiz, I., Burke, S., Berrada, M., & Cortés, H. (2022). An analysis of world protests 2006–2020. In World protests. Palgrave Macmillan. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/ 978-­3-­030-­88513-­7_2#Tab1. Perry, D. (2016, April 11). ‘Little Beirut’ legacy: 21 of the most memorable protests in Portland history. The Oregonian/OregonLive. https://www.oregonlive.com/living/2016/04/little_beirut_legacy_20_of_the.html Pilcher, J. (2017, August 13). Charlottesville suspect’s beliefs were ‘along the party lines of the neo-Nazi movement,’ ex-teacher says. Cincinnati Enquirer. https://www.cincinnati.com/story/ news/local/northern-­ky/2017/08/13/charlottesville-­suspects-­beliefs-­were-­along-­party-­lines-­ neo-­nazi-­movement-­ex-­teacher-­says/563139001/ President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. (2015). Final report of the President’s task force on 21st century policing. Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice. https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/taskforce_finalreport.pdf Romby, D. (2015, May 1). County commissioner found guilty in illegal ATV protest ride. KSL.com. https://www.ksl.com/article/34455940/ county-­commissioner-­found-­guilty-­in-­illegal-­atv-­protest-­ride Ryan, J. (2010, July 12). ‘Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom’. ABC News. https://abcnews. go.com/Blotter/al-­qaeda-­launches-­english-­language-­web-­site-­recruit/story?id=11147013 Sands, G. (2022, March 8). Watchdog finds DHS identified threats prior to January 6 but did not widely share intelligence until after attack. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/08/politics/ dhs-­ig-­report-­threats-­intelligence-­january-­6/index.html Seattle Times staff. (2016, October 27, updated October 28). Watch: Shots reportedly fired, 141 arrested at Dakota access pipeline protest. The Seattle Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/ seattle-­news/environment/live-­updates-­from-­the-­dakota-­access-­pipeline-­protests-­oct-­27/ SPLC. (2001, November 29). Conflict in Klamath. Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-­hate/intelligence-­report/2001/conflict-­klamath. Steven Bixby convicted of murdering two officers. (2007, Feb 18). WIS10 News. https://www. wistv.com/story/6105889/steven-­bixby-­convicted-­of-­murdering-­two-­officers/ Templeton, A. (2019, August 16). Militia leader warns against attending Portland rally, citing legal risks and white nationalist presence. OPB. https://www.opb.org/news/article/ oath-­keepers-­militia-­leader-­portland-­oregon-­rally-­warning/ U.S.  Department of Justice. (2019, June 28). Ohio man sentenced to life in prison for federal hate crimes related to August 2017 Car attack at rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. U.S.  Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ ohio-­man-­sentenced-­life-­prison-­federal-­hate-­crimes-­related-­august-­2017-­car-­attack-­rally. VanderHart, D., & Dake, L. (2020, July 29). Unlikely allies: How Kate Brown and Mike pence ended stalemate in Portland. OPB. https://www.opb.org/article/2020/07/30/ portland-­protest-­kate-­brown-­mike-­pence-­federal-­officers/ Warner, M. (2003, June 2). Wanted: A definition of “intelligence”. Homeland Security Digital Library. Retrieved September 12, 2022, from https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=3677 Wilson, C. (2022, June 21). Indiana man sentenced in federal court for role in 2020 Portland protests. OPB. https://www.opb.org/article/2022/06/21/ portland-­protests-­2020-­indiana-­man-­sentenced-­malik-­fard-­muhammad/ Winter, T. (2021, November 24). NYPD beefs up security ahead of Macy’s thanksgiving day parade. NBC New  York. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/ nypd-­beefs-­up-­security-­ahead-­of-­macys-­thanksgiving-­day-­parade/3419077/. Woodrow, M. (2019, July 1). Portland journalist Andy Ngo speaks out, says Antifa behind attack. ABC7News. https://abc7news.com/ antifa-­journalist-­journlist-­attacked-­pioneer-­square-­portland-­protest/5374202/

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Zielinski, A. (2019, August 17). Protest: What to know, how to follow along. Portland Mercury. https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2019/08/17/26983205/ august-­17-­protest-­what-­to-­know-­how-­to-­follow-­along Renn Cannon  is a public safety consultant focusing on leadership development, investigation and intelligence, and integrated strategy development. With decades of public service, Renn last served in the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of the Portland Division. In this role, Renn led the FBI response to numerous public order events, including Occupy ICE PDX, protest clashes in 2019, and the 2020 Portland riots. Prior to Portland, Renn served throughout the FBI. As a section chief in Washington, DC, he oversaw the FBI’s Leadership Development Program. Serving as an Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Salt Lake City, Utah, Renn led national security, intelligence and tactical programs throughout Utah, Idaho, and Montana. Renn also served overseas in Sydney, Australia coordinating joint investigative efforts in Australia, New Zealand, and the island nations of the South Pacific. Entering service in the FBI’s San Francisco Division, Renn worked violent and organized crime, international terrorism, and crisis management matters, including SWAT operations and leadership. Upon promotion, Renn provided leadership in the Joint Terrorism Task Force and served in Afghanistan as the FBI’s Deputy On-Scene Commander. Prior to the FBI, Renn served in the US Army including service in Bosnia during the initial phases of Operation Joint Endeavor. Renn also had a successful stint in the private sector as a manufacturing manager. Renn is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, is married and has three children.

The Importance of Police Public Relations in Assembly Situations Jonas Grutzpalk and Stefan Jarolimek

Abstract  Police operations do not occur in a vacuum, but rather are accompanied by a media public. This public is difficult to understand, consisting of confusing echo chambers, fake news, journalism, social media, and rapid attention economies. Police are obliged to simultaneously explain their own actions and to reinforce the public’s sense of security through the media. This mix becomes a challenge for the police, especially in assembly situations, when there are real-time media disputes about how a situation unfolds and is interpreted. Recommendations are provided to advise police public relations, from a German perspective, on how to position themselves within this media situation.

1 Introduction: Legal Classification and the “Public Pillory” From a legal point of view, police public relations work passes through a narrow corridor. On the one hand, Article 5 of the German Basic Law ensures general freedom of the press, which is mostly understood by the authorities as a duty to provide information to media representatives. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Paragraph 4 of the State Press Act states that all public authorities are obliged to “provide representatives of the press with information necessary for the fulfillment of their public duties.” This can be used to justify the establishment of a police public relations department. Decrees often establish the political expectations surrounding public relations work. In North Rhine-Westphalia, the police public relations work should

J. Grutzpalk Dept. Bielefeld, University of Police and Public Administration (HSPV) NRW, Gelsenkirchen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] S. Jarolimek (*) German Police University, Münster, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_18

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convey an “objective image of the police,” guide law-abiding behavior, and help “overcome publicity crises” (RdErl. d. MIK NRW—Az. 401–58.02.05). On the other hand, there are limits to police public relations work. For example, there are protections afforded by the right to informational self-determination (VG Gelsenkirchen, 14 K 3543/18), which follows a German constitutional ruling that people have the right to limit the information about themselves that is shared with others. The Federal Constitutional Court also states that statements made by a public authority must be within the framework of fact-based information activities, may not contain defamatory or distorting representations, and are subject to the requirement of objectivity and accuracy (BVerfGE 105, 252). This ultimately obliges police public relations to use neutral, legally aligned language, which cannot always be understood by media representatives or the broader public (due to a lack of legal training, among other things). The “public pillory,” featuring media reporting, evaluation by experts and in social networks, is faster and significantly impacts the image (reputation) of the police with its conclusions and creates political repercussions. In demonstrations, the real-time dissemination of information and, in particular, images by self-declared media teams have become a factor to be reckoned with. One example is the media coverage of many anti-corona (Covid-19) protests in 2021 and 2022 by the Youtuber Martin Lejeune.1 From a police perspective, public participation is useful in various contexts. The public, for example, can avert dangers by broadcasting traffic warning services or information to locate missing persons. Some information cannot be released by police. In Germany, press releases on criminal investigations, for example, are generally only issued by the public prosecutor’s office (circular of the MIK NRW—ref. 401–58.02.05). In general, however, it is in the interest of the police to conduct public relations work, especially in assembly situations. Considerations for police public relations work beyond the above-mentioned legal restrictions and experiential examples are presented in the three major sections that follow. First, general information about the function of public relations and the media that can be used for communication is presented. Then, examples of police public relations, as viewed through the lens of current research, are offered. Finally, practical advice and illustrations are used to demonstrate the prospect of successful police public relations.

2 Public, Journalism, Media, and the Challenges for the Police There are numerous theories about the public sphere. What they all have in common is that the definitions offered to explain the public sphere make it difficult to draw direct implications for public relations work. The primary problem is that the public  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-qQ1TNcFK3DqD7jEK5D_jg, last retrieved 06.01.2023.

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is made up of different people, groups, organizations and social subsystems, and communication with these entities can take very different forms. Police officers know this—in their daily work, they encounter people from very different social, cultural, and economic backgrounds, which often require officers to adjust their communication styles. This also applies to assembly situations. Superficial classifications of those coming together to engage in political assembly into r­ight-wing/ left-wing/civil society, for example, has always proved unhelpful for police leaders. Even where supposedly clear camps, or groups are present—for example, at soccer matches—it is appropriate to be prepared for a variety of different encounters that extend beyond simple categorization. However, speaking to a broader “public” involves different rules than those that apply to direct one-on-one communication. To illustrate where the problem lies, consider a crime novel by Fred Vargas (2001). An old sailor decides to become a town crier in Place Edgar-Quinet where he loudly announces news concerning the neighborhood three times a day. “The public” in this case would be all those who hear these proclamations. There are diverse theoretical problems posed by such public communication: can enough people hear the town crier (e.g., over traffic noise), what authority does he have to shout, and are his messages relevant? Are the people who cannot hear or understand him not part of the public? And is “calling out” the appropriate medium in our times? Does this medium reach all those who should and want to be informed? The main issue here seems to be that modern societies are no longer capable of assembling their members for public communication, which puts them in stark contrast to democracies in antiquity where gathered assembly was at least theoretically possible (Sloterdijk, 2004; p. 614). Public relations departments face these same questions. They must consider with whom they want to communicate when approaching “the public.” They must contend with people questioning their authority, and they must consider which media to use and how. These tasks cannot be avoided, as will be illustrated in the sociological examinations of “the public sphere” that follow. These illustrations provide a comprehensive picture of the range of activities associated with public relations. German police officers jokingly describe themselves as “confident appearance despite complete cluelessness” but for police public relations, this cannot be the standard when situations require professional media support.

2.1 What Is the Public? To avoid a lengthy discussion concerning historical debates, it is suffice to say the literature clearly shows that it is difficult to understand or define “the public” in conceptual terms. The description of police duties in the Prussian General Land Law of 1794 still sees “averting dangers facing the audience or individual members of it” as an “office of the police” (§ 10 Part II Title 17 PrAlR 1794). It is somewhat easier to imagine an “audience” than a “public,” since it is a defined group of people

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who observe an event and—more or less—participate in it. In this respect, an audience is a group of people who are involved in an event. A public, on the other hand, is a broader spectrum of people who are not always listening, are uninvolved, or who must be reached with the help of particular media. In assembly situations, the public is more concrete—one can include those involved in the assembly. Yet, the matter is complex because an assembled public often also has its own media channels, through which to report and receive information. What the audience has in common with the public, however, is that they can sometimes show a great deal of interest, sometime critical interest in the work of the police. “Public” may be a diffuse sociological concept, much like “society,” but in both cases, this diffuseness can be powerful when it sanctions misconduct. Individuals can “see” society when it makes moral demands on them—for example, when someone runs a red light and those on the sidewalks make a loud and audible “tststs” (Durkheim, 1968, p.  249). The public becomes perceptible when it reacts to the behavior of a person or institution. This is particularly clear in times of controversy, with media increasing scandalization and inducing organizational crises. In these times, public relations workers recognize the reality and power of the public. Sociologists realize that it is difficult to speak of “the” society. It is equally difficult to speak of “the” public and even “the” assembly. On closer inspection, different societal subunits exist, each of which communicates differently (this is often also true in assemblies, cf. Bürger, 2024). Contemporary communication experts differentially adapt their communication to the various social milieus. In Germany, the Sinus studies on milieus have become particularly well known. In the USA, Barack Obama’s campaign team identified 80 different social milieus, each of which was addressed with different communication and messaging in the election campaigns (Moorstedt, 2008, p.  39). Even police public relations, with its broad spectrum of tasks, cannot avoid identifying different communication milieus as target groups and serving them through suitable channels. When police see how other relevant institutions observe and interact with the public, this can be called “third-order observation” (Luhmann, 1992). For example, politicians or political institutions might read certain newspapers and follow certain Twitter accounts—and police will read these very same newspapers and follow the very same Twitter accounts in order to understand what kind of public reality the politicians and the political institutions perceive. The police in this case observes what the given political institution reads in the media, whereas the political institutions read the media in order to establish and preserve power. “Third-order observation” thus means that the media observe and influence the public perception of reality (1), political institutions observe the media (2) and the police observes the political institutions by reading the same media as they do (3). The public, through this political frame, becomes relevant to police by offering a political perspective and thus creating implications for police action.

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2.2 Why Is it Necessary to Communicate with the Public? The fact that political leaders, for example, in the Ministry of the Interior or whoever might be in charge is monitoring the media public is one reason for the police to conduct public relations work. There are at least three additional reasons: 1. The police, as previously discussed, are required by state law to engage in public relations work. 2. In a democratic constitutional state, the police are part of the public discourse and cannot withdraw from it without reason. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas describes the public as the sphere of “private individuals gathered to form an audience” (Habermas, 1990, p. 86). Seen in this way, the public sphere is a kind of space for reflection and debate in democratic society. As an institution of the democratic constitutional state, the police cannot therefore withdraw from the media public sphere. Police must engage since there is no real alternative to the media public sphere. 3. Sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1997) sees the public as a mirror of society. In the classic mass media (before the Internet and social media), professional journalism had the greatest reach. It set topics, and experts and representatives of the elite discussed important social issues as representatives of the various social groups (Gerhards & Neidhardt, 1990). Luhmann argues that it is not possible for police to do media work “bypassing the media.” Even if access to media publics is no longer solely supervised by professional journalism, Luhmann’s description of the media’s power to describe reality is still true: “What we know about our society, indeed about the world in which we live, we know through the mass media. This applies not only to our knowledge of society and history, but also to our knowledge of nature. What we know about the stratosphere is like what Plato knows about Atlantis: you’ve heard about it.” (Luhmann, 1997, p. 9).

2.3 What Is Important to Keep in Mind When it Comes to Police Public Relations? The introduction of private television in Germany in the late 1980s had already significantly changed the media landscape described by Luhmann. It created a new competitive pressure between the media, which became highly noticeable to the police in the case of the Gladbeck hostage drama, when journalists literally battled to get in touch with the bank robbers. With the advent of the Internet, and social media in particular, the media landscape has significantly changed yet again. It is easier to reach more people among the public at low cost. Spill-over, or social media influence on the classic mass media is now possible. When Youtuber Rezo published his “The Destruction of the

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CDU” (the CDU being the by far biggest conservative party in Germany), he quickly rose to the top of the journalistic agenda. With this media-technological development, the advertising markets for the mass media are also collapsing. With online content from the press, radio, and television, competition between journalistic products is growing cross-medially. News pressure is growing, and the demand for speed has reduced traditional journalistic media relevance, while increasing scandalization to maximize reach and advertising revenues. As early as 2002, Imhof (2002, pp. 7–8) aptly summarizes, “The journalistic media have professionalized their role as experts in scandalization, largely stripped of worldviews and tailored to questions of virtue.” As a result, the media has increasingly become a place where outrage is celebrated. In assembly situations, even the best-intentioned police tactic can get caught up in the maelstrom of public outrage. To illustrate this potential for outrage, it is worth entering the search terms “cops” and “surrounded” on Twitter—a panorama of social-media ad hoc outrage opens immediately. This can certainly find its way into the traditional media, for example, if they want to follow the Latin motto “audiatur et altera pars” (both sides are to be heard) in attempts to report in a balanced manner. The temptation is great to engage in a real-time wars of words, despite its negative outcomes. The development of smartphones and tablets brings together previously disparate end devices into one. Media use has changed in this overall context. In particular, 14–29-year-olds today hardly ever read newspapers, only 22% regularly watch traditional television, and time-shifted reception is on the rise (i.e., watching on-­ demand rather than at a scheduled time). Among those over age 50, non-linear, time-shifted video use was between 8 and 11% in 2019 (Frees et  al., 2019). By 2022, the proportion of usage among people aged 50 and older continued to rise, increasing by five to eight percentage points in year-on-year comparison. This can be attributed to the increased use of streaming services and media libraries. Accordingly, non-linear, time-shifted media use, especially in the field of videos, is taking up more and more space (Hess & Müller, 2022). People are increasingly receiving short messages from subscribed accounts or forwarded by acquaintances and friends (e.g., on Twitter or Facebook), which are consumed quickly and incidentally as news. Schäfer et al. (2017) aptly refer to these as “snack news.” Further development toward images and moving images (among others, through image-­ centric social media offerings such as Instagram and TikTok) continues to displace text. Media’s evolution has far-reaching implications for the police. Changes in public structures make it is necessary to reach the various target groups and sub-publics in different ways. In addition to traditional press work accompanying operations, social media communication opens numerous opportunities. “Social media offers the police the ability to engage in a two-way, interactive dialogue with citizens. Communication with the public allows the police to answer an individual’s questions in a way that makes it shared knowledge that is accessible to others as well” (Denef et al., 2012, p. 20). However, online disputes are inevitable. The police of Central Franconia experienced this when in July 2020 they confronted a “Critical Mass” (assemblies of bicyclists to demand more rights, including

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better bicycle-ways who meet on a monthly basis in larger German cities). The organizers traditionally have a debatable view on traffic law. They regard a convoy of bicycles as a single unit which can legally move on the streets accordingly. As “Critical Mass” events are growing in numbers these self-proclaimed “convoys” can in fact become very long and they can block the traffic for a considerable amount of time. Considering the event therefore to be a political assembly, rather than convoy of bicycles, police dissolved it, issued expulsions, and stopped the procession by deflating the tires of 11 participants. This matter became a political issue, especially on Twitter, and culminated in a Bavarian state parliament investigation. Police face other media risks. Police are filmed and photographed, and montages distort the events of operations. In addition, unauthorized patches on uniforms or brutal-looking coercive measures lead to challenges for the police press and public relations work seeking to portray police as a neutral, democratic, constitutional institution. Similarly, photos and videos (e.g., of perpetrators, crime scenes) posted in semi-private police chats can become public. Therefore, all police forces need media competence and education to promote a professional public image (Jarolimek, 2020). Since the attention economy of the “public” is limited, attention is increasingly sought through highly exaggerated reports. In the process, the road to what is called “fake news” is quickly traveled. An example of this phenomenon surrounds the need to release information quickly. Concise, brief reports might be factually accurate, but leave out information that make them appear false, or serve to trigger false associations. Completely fictitious stories can also spread quickly through the Internet, and perceived truths can be treated the same as verifiable information (Jaster & Lanius, 2019, p. 17, p. 31). The storming of the Reichstag building as part of a large demonstration in Berlin on August 30, 2020, for example, was triggered by pointed short reports about Donald Trump’s presence in Berlin, which were interpreted as a call to take immediate action (cf. on this Jarolimek & Melzer, 2022). Confirmation bias explains the relative success of perceived truths in communication—people see news that aligns with their experiences and knowledge as more plausible. Actual news, if contrary to perceptions and expectations, has a hard time catching on. In addition, there are information cascades: “In such a cascade, the news item gains more credibility because more people believe it.” So-called conformity cascades ultimately ensure “that even those who do not believe the news behave as if they were convinced by it (…). Information and conformity cascades unfold particularly well in echo chambers” (Jaster & Lanius, 2019, p. 78, emphasis by author). In assembly situations, where messages spread “like wildfire” even before the invention of social media, conformity cascades are particularly dangerous if they contribute to a radicalization of the assembled “we.” In general, it can be stated here that police alone cannot succeed in the concert (or is it cacophony?) of media communications. The struggle for attention, the problem of confirmation bias, and the cascading processes taking place within media echo chambers give the public sphere a life of its own, to which police public relations must adjust.

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3 Special Part: Police Public Relations Studies Overviews and guidelines for police public relations are rare (see Schabacker, 2020). Beyond general descriptions and journalistic analyses of operational situations, there are only a few studies that examine police operations and the effect of operational communication. Descriptions of a few landmark studies follow, including studies of federal and state police force training. Police and Communication: The Word is the Weapon of the Modern Police Officer In a survey of more than 150 prospective police officers, Miriam Stamm (2020) found that 98% of the respondents reported communication as essential for police work. Only a small percentage (17%) of respondents believed that internal police sociolect (e.g., jargon or terminology), characterized by abbreviations, legal references, and formal language, negatively affects communication. Police officers might see their professional sociolect as an objective description of reality. If police public relations share this opinion, misunderstandings are likely because (1) this sociolect is not understood by outsiders and (2) others might not share the assumption that police sociolect provides a bias-free description of situations. Portrayal in the Media: The Focus is on Communication, Not Necessarily Police Operations Zimmermann (2016) compared two Blockupy demonstrations in Frankfurt am Main (2013 and 2015) and showed that proactive police communication to support the media prompted a positive response from journalists and neutral reporting of police actions, which is associated with fewer post-operation investigations, complaints, etc. Journalists also used police Twitter messages as a source of information, which partly relieves the burden of mobile press teams. During the shooting rampage in Munich (2016), good press and social media work resulted in positive reporting of the entire police operation, despite the numerous challenges faced by police that day. In retrospect, the operation and communication positively impacted the image and reputation of the Munich police. Tactical Communication: Talking to Each Other Brandl (cf. Brandl & Bürger, 2022) investigated the de-escalating effect of tactical communication. Test subjects using VR goggles were shown filmed assembly scenes. Police response was rated more favorably when an officer used a megaphone during police intervention. Despite the officer not being trained in professional public communication, this communication significantly improved perceptions of police response, providing the first empirical evidence of tactical communication’s de-escalating effects. The study also showed that compliance police instructions was correlated with positive preconceptions of police. Thus, the role of press and public relations in daily police work is key in achieving citizen cooperation in critical situations, including events and assemblies.

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The Role of Police Leaders In recent years, social media communication has played an increasingly important role in the management of operations. Use of social media is now standard practice, alongside traditional press. Jarolimek and Böhmer (2017) and Jarolimek et  al.’s (2019) field studies show that the expertise and advice of press/social media teams in operations is now used more frequently, especially by police commanders. When asked about the importance of communications work compared to other areas of police work, only operations management was ranked higher. Communication Before, During, and After the Operation Schmid (2018) examined community policing approaches within assemblies across three police departments. In all three case studies, trust and transparency were key objectives. Citizen-centered policing was identified as a key factor for operation management success. The experts interviewed identified communication and police willingness to communicate as foundational for implementing the community policing philosophy in an assembly context.

4 Practical Advice and Implications for Police Practice Public Relations Work Needs the Trust of the Commander in Charge Operations reports, including those for assemblies, repeatedly show that, particularly just before and at the start of an event, the police commander in charge is difficult to reach or cannot be reached at all. This is a critical time. The population is seeking information to adapt their behavior to the anticipated situation. If the police fail to quickly communicate during this time, this information vacuum is filled by other actors. Among them, rumors, misinformation, and conspiracy theories can spread, exacerbating situations and significantly impairing operation management. Therefore, public relations need full authority to communicate, especially prior to events, or clear policies are needed to guide communication. These policies should address the use of social media channels, and give the responsible teams a framework in which to act autonomously. Fast and Neutral Communication: Accuracy Before Speed Neutral language must involve common language use, not police sociolect. Technical terms must be “translated,” and messaging around them must offer coherent explanations. Also, legal references do not always clearly resolve questions of authority. It is important to note that moral indignation is not bound to legal requirements, and the media public’s attention economy is swayed more by indignation than legal concepts. Nevertheless, references to legal frameworks are useful in police public relations. Legal frameworks can help make police actions understandable to the public. Journalists consider the police to be a privileged source, meaning that information provided by police is regarded as factual. This is a valuable asset, and reinforces the principle of always striving for accuracy before speed in every case.

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Good Everyday Communication Strengthens Police Reputation As already described, good public relations and communication by police officers improves the image and reputation of police. This is not only helpful in operational situations, but also in organizational crises. This topic is more frequently addressed, most recently in a federal-state working group, called “Vertiefende Befassung mit Reputationsmanagement—Polizeilicher Umgang mit Reputationskrisen” (UA FEK with participation of AG Kripo, system of police in Germany cf. Bürger & Thielmann, 2024). The final January 28, 2020, report outlines numerous goals, including increasing awareness of regional and transnational police reputation, strengthening external reputation, avoiding or overcoming reputation crises, developing a comprehensive understanding of factors influencing reputation that are deeply ingrained in police culture. This issue will also be addressed in an update to PDV 100, the German Police Regulation (binding for all federal and state police; cf. Bürger & Thielmann, 2024). Be Prepared for the Crisis (Organizational) crises will come, you just don’t know when. The police are often the focus of public attention. Operations are presented in the media and criticized by various sides, such as after the G20 summit in Hamburg: “An angry mob, an idle police force and many questions” (cf. Schröder, 2017). Media depictions of operation details can generate negative public reactions. Individual officer misconduct can initiate organizational crises. Critical public debates have increased following changes in media systems and new tendencies favoring scandalization. This topic, and the need for a crisis management plan, is being discussed the context of cooperation with other authorities and organizations with security responsibilities (BOS). Federal-state coordinating groups like the AK V or the federal-state working group “crisis communication” (Krisenkommunikation, FF UA FEK; cf. Bürger & Thielmann, 2024) acknowledge the need to develop management plans for police use of social media. Coordinated recommendations for crisis communication with other BOS, in a final report dated February 11, 2019, described the following essential goals and corresponding recommendations: obtain information dissemination authority, avoid speculation, counteract false reports and rumors, avoid creating information vacuums, consistently publish information without contradictions, and convey safety reassurance to the public. Media Literacy for All The previously described changes in media technology allow every smartphone owner to photograph and video police operations and publish them in a matter of seconds. In addition to public relations personnel, all officers must be sensitized to this reality and possible consequences. In many cases, officers are unaware of the implications of an unauthorized patch or a unit’s body language. For example, in Germany thin-blue-line patches are “popular among right-wing extremists.” Particularly in assemblies, the police draw the media’s full attention and are vulnerable to attack. Ensuring the highest level of police officer neutrality in terms of clothing and appearance can prevent defensive media battles (“but that’s not true at all”), which distract from actual police work. Using humorous pictures or emojis,

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which is common in social media, is also questionable. Humor open to interpretation and debate—a matter for which there is no time when policing assemblies. Using irony, which is also common in social media, is also unadvised for police communication. It is argued that irony is a “weapon of partisanship” (Lausberg, 1990)—and it is precisely the suspicion of partisanship police want to avoid, especially during demonstrations, if they seek to prevent crises. In Germany, legal opinions about being filmed differ. The right to one’s own image competes with performing a public task, but seeking to prevent filming equates to “a battle against windmills.” Social media journalists enjoy protections offered by the ill-defined and ambiguous concept of the “press” and freedom of the press. Police must receive training in how to respond to being filmed. Every officer must be as unassailable as possible to relieve media teams of unnecessary work. Basic media competence is now a component of successful professional police practice. Awareness of the very agile and excitable public, who observe police, must become part of police training to ensure successful communication in the media. Public Relations for Assembly Situations The following conclusions for public relations work in assemblies can be drawn from this discussion and other contributions in this volume: 1. Use police language that signals support to prevent stereotyping by the public (“the good and the bad demonstrators”), among all—including peaceful—participants (“the police are arming against us”), and by authorities (“only disorderly people are coming”). For example, instead of “We expect the arrival of numerous people ready for violence and are prepared for everything,” police could communicate, “Our goal will be to support the many peaceful assembly participants in their rallies. However, we also expect people to arrive who will probably want to prevent this, and we have prepared for that as well.” 2. Prior to assemblies, police should communicate the “rules of the game.” Not all attendees will be aware of legal requirements (e.g., prohibitions against carrying certain objects). It is also useful to explain the role of the police, specifically their duty to neutrality but also to protect fundamental rights, which includes dissenters’ right to demonstrate. 3. Police actions should be made transparent, if possible, in advance, but at least afterwards. Reasons for controversial measures, such as a large-scale use of batons or irritant gas, arrests from gatherings, or the movement of large groups, should be communicated immediately so that bystanders understand why police took the measure in question. The more intensive and forceful the intervention, the timelier and more detailed the published information should be. In summary, it can be said: assemblies are a litmus test for our democracy, and police public relations can make an essential contribution to ensuring that the outcome of this test is positive.

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References Brandl, J., & Bürger, B. (2022). Der messbare Effekt Taktischer Kommunikation im Einsatz. In Bürger: Die Rolle der Polizei bei Versammlungen. Theorie und Praxis. Springer Gabler. Bürger, B. (2024). Public order policing. From theory to practice. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Bürger, B., & Thielmann, G. (2024). Police organization and the policing of assemblies in Germany. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Denef, S., Kaptein, N., Bayerl P. S., & Ramirez, L. (2012). Best practice in police social media adaptation. http://publica.fraunhofer.de/eprints/urn_nbn_de_0011-­n-­2689574.pdf. Abgerufen am 29.09.2020. Durkheim, E. (1968). Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Le système totémique en Ausralie. P.U.F. Frees, B., Kuperschmidt, T., & Müller, T. (2019). ARD/ZDF-Massenkommunikation Trends 2019: Nonlineare Mediennutzung nimmt zu. Ergebnisse der repräsentativen Studie im Intermediavergleich. Media Perspektiven, 7–8, 314–333. Gerhards, J., & Neidhardt, F. (1990). Strukturen und Funktionen moderner Öffentlichkeit: Fragestellungen und Ansätze. WZB. Habermas, J. (1990). Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Untersuchungen zu einer Kategorie der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft. Suhrkamp. Hess, C., & Müller, T. (2022). ARD/ZDF-Massenkommunikation Trends 2022: Mediennutzung im Intermediavergleich. Aktuelle Ergebnisse der repräsentativen Langzeitstudie. Media Perspektiven, 9, 414–424. Imhof, K. (07. Juni 2002). Der hohe Preis der Moral. Neue Zürcher Zeitung. https://www.nzz.ch/ article82PIW-­1.399336. Zugegriffen: 29 September 2020. Jarolimek, S. (2020). Smartphones in police operations: The necessity of media literacy in police forces in the age of transparency. European Journal for Security Research, 5, 105–114. Jarolimek, S., & Böhmer, M. (2017). Kommunikation als profession. Das Berufsfeld Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit in der Polizei 2016. Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei Hochschulverlag. Jarolimek, S. & Melzer, A. (2022 im Druck). Öffentliche Kommunikation, Polizei und Corona. In H.-J. Lange (Hrsg.), Politik zwischen Macht und Ohnmacht: Zum politischen Umgang mit der Corona-Pandemie in Deutschland. Springer. Jarolimek, S., Melzer, A., & Böhmer, M. (2019). Kommunikation als profession 2.0. Das Berufsfeld Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit in der Polizei 2019. Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei Hochschulverlag. Jaster, R., & Lanius, D. (2019). Die Wahrheit schafft sich ab. Wie Fake News Politik machen. Reclam. Lausberg, H. (1990). Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik. Eine Einführung für Studierende der klassischen, romanischen, englischen und deutschen Philologie. Hueber. Luhmann, N. (1992). Die Beobachtung der Beobachter im politischen System. Zur Theorie der öffentlichen Meinung. In J. Wilke (Hrsg.), Öffentliche Meinung. Theorie, Methoden, Befunde. Verlag Karl Alber. Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Realität der Massenmedien. Westdeutscher Verlag. Moorstedt, T. (2008). Jeffersons Erben. Wie die digitalen Medien die Politik verändern. Suhrkamp Verlag. Schabacker, J. (2020). Polizeiliche Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit im digitalen Zeitalter. Verlag Deutsche Polizeiliteratur. Schäfer, S., Sülflow, M., & Müller, P. (2017). The special taste of snack news: An application of niche theory to understand the appeal of Facebook as a source for political news. First Monday, 22. https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v22i4.7431

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Schmid, T. (2018). Community Policing im Kontext komplexer Versammlungslagen-Eine empirische Analyse der Erfolgsfaktoren bürgernaher Polizeiarbeit bei Großveranstaltungen (VS-NfD). Unveröffentlichte Masterarbeit. Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei. Schröder, A. (2017). Ein wütender Mob, eine untätige Polizei und viele Fragen. Deutschlandfunk Kultur, https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/nach-­g20-­ausschreitungen-­ein-­wuetender-­mob-­ eine-­untaetige-­100.html, abgerufen am 28.11.2021. Sloterdijk, P. (2004). Sphären III. Schäume. Stamm, M. (2020). Sprache im Polizeialltag – Welche Herausforderungen ergeben sich bei der Ausübung des Dienstes für angehende Polizist*innen. Unveröffentlichte Bachelorarbeit. HSPV NRW. Vargas, F. (2001). Pars vite et reviens tard. Viviane Hamy. Zimmermann, C. (2016). Neue Kommunikationsstrategie der Polizei Hessen in herausragenden Einsatzlagen. Betrachtung und Evaluation des Konzeptes StB 4  - Neu anhand ausgesuchter Medieninhalte unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Social Network Twitter (VS-NfD). Unveröffentlichte Masterarbeit. Deutsche Hochschule der Polizei. Jonas Grutzpalk  is a political scientist and sociologist. He has served as Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Police and Public Administration since 2009. He was previously a research assistant for the project “Max Weber’s so-called sociology of law” of the Max Weber Complete Edition and then a public relations officer at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Brandenburg. In this capacity, he developed, among other things, the educational simulation game “Democracy and Extremism.” He has published on knowledge stocks and knowledge management in security agencies, intercultural competence, the “New Right,” and sociology of religion. Stefan Jarolimek  is a communication scientist. He has been a Professor of Communication Science at the German Police University in Münster since 2016. His work and research focus on strategic communication, intercultural communication, extremism research, and professional field research. Since 2016, he has been responsible for education and training at the Office for the Coordination of Social Media of the German Police Forces. He has published essays and books on the future of the police, the professionalization of police communication, and online radicalization.

Mission Communication as an Integrative Overall Strategy in Protest 2.0 Carsten Schenk and Michael Bornhausen

Abstract  The importance of operational communication in assemblies is examined using a case study of the operation at Dannenröder Forest, a forest area to be cleared for a highway expansion. In 2020, the Hesse police, along with subordinate public order units from across Germany, managed the situation in Dannenröder Forest for several weeks. First, the new demands on police communication resulting from the use of social media during protests are presented. Subsequently, the importance of Tactical Communication in operations is highlighted using various theoretical approaches and practical examples. The goals, applications, and methods of Tactical Communication are presented. Finally, challenges that arise in the context of protest 2.0 (expansions of protest into virtual space) are highlighted. The multitude of communicative challenges requires effective understanding and implementation of mission communication as part of an overall communicative strategy. [A first version of the article with a different main emphasis was published in Schenk, C. & Bornhausen, M. (2022).]

1 Initial Situation: Dannenröder Forest 2020 After decades of legal action and court proceedings, construction of the federal freeway A49, which had been decided by parliament, was officially approved. Construction of the highway route required the clearing of part of a commercial and natural forest. Until the clearing work started, protest and resistance formed on site. Different groups from the region, as well as from all over Europe, occupied the Dannenröder Forest, or “Danni.” They set up several camps along the route over the months. These consisted of structures on the ground and tree houses up to 30 meters high. At the edge of the forest, several support camps were set up as tent camps.

C. Schenk (*) · M. Bornhausen Hessian College of Public Management and Safety, Center for Police Psychological Services, Wiesbaden, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_19

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Several hundred camp residents and forest squatters received support from repeated demonstrations and from members of the local population. The camps’ protest groups were heterogeneous. They differed above all in their willingness to take risks, to put themselves or others in danger, to tolerate violence as a legitimate means, or to use it themselves. Also, in the wider forest area, the number of pile dwellings, rope traverses, and obstacles, used in attempts to prevent or slow the clearing efforts, increased over time. The forest roads were blocked by hundreds of barricades, some of them complex. The constructions, even in the camps, were intentionally interconnected in incomprehensible ways. Trenches and pitfalls were constructed, nail boards were hidden under foliage, and steel bolts were hammered into trees to prevent tree cutting (i.e., tree spiking). The forest squatter scene was generally very well organized and engaged in professional public relations work, including on social media platforms like Twitter. After the forest’s vegetation phase, the clearing work began, with police securing the environment. Specially trained police units had to remove up to 100 tree squatters daily from tree houses and other treetop constructions, often “rescuing” them. Police stated that everyone’s safety was their top priority. Nevertheless, isolated injuries to squatters and officers occurred during the evacuation. Two squatters fell—in one case due to a rope mistakenly cut by a police officer at some distance from the occupied structure. In some cases, the police were targeted. There were cases of physical harm and attempted homicide. Tensions increased during specific situations, but did not escalate or sustain over time. The work steadily progressed. On a December winter day, the last tree fell along the side of the future highway.

2 Assemblies in the Age of Social Media: Protest 2.0 Protesters unite over a shared grievance that they feel is not being adequately addressed. Protest is a form of resistance against an undesirable situation, for which the state is often said to bear (joint) responsibility. Protesters antagonistically stand up against or for something. It is common for there to be opposing groups on the ground with irreconcilable differences, for example in “left-wing” versus “right-­wing” demonstrations. Police are tasked with preventing a clash between the groups by averting physical confrontations, so they deliberately place themselves between the fronts. In doing so, police often become “antagonists” themselves. The same can happen without opposing groups (e.g., only “walkers” against corona rules). Police are often ascribed the “antagonist” role simply because they are a physical representation of the state. The prerequisite for escalation is the presence of at least two “opposing” parties. The “escalation of the situation” can be purposefully driven forward, but it can also occur involuntarily and sometimes unconsciously, when one side “only” reacts to the situation or actions of the other (cf. Bürger, 2024; Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Schattka, 2024). Conflict Staging in the Dannenröder Forest A registered march starts at the edge of the forest and demonstrators protest against the highway expansion and for more climate protection measures on the planned

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route with stops for speeches, while a smaller group simultaneously occupies a construction site. Hooded people throw feces from tree houses at police officers and forest workers, others penetrate the safety zone of the construction area and temporarily bring the work to a standstill by sitting on the trees. A family, who went for a stroll in the forest, wanders between “the fronts” and must be escorted out of a fog of Bengal flares and smoke pots. In distant locations, “activists” rappel from highway bridges, paralyzing traffic in the Rhine-Main area (a metropolitan area with about six million inhabitants). While the various protest groups use different means to achieve specific objectives, they all see their actions as morally justified. For some, legitimate protest means that have evolved into illegal violence are seen as a legitimate continuation of their political protest. Yet the demonstration is largely symbolic (Warneken, 1991). The protesters do not expect the course of state action to change, but they seek to publicly admonish, denounce, or demand changes to state action in symbolic form. There lies a significant dilemma for situational evaluations (Schmalzl, 2011). Depending on the evaluator—the protesters themselves, the public, or the judiciary—the focus is on a legitimate symbolic act or the factual rule-breaking that accompanies it. Takeovers of construction machinery or spontaneous tree occupation are likely temporary symbolic acts intended to convey a public message. Even the protagonists must know that these acts alone would not permanently stop the work. Protesters were prepared to accept sanctions. The highway rappelling was particularly newsworthy. Intentionally, it caused considerable traffic jams. Unintentionally, a serious rear-end collision occurred at the end of one traffic jam. Irrespective of a judicial determination of causality, there was a serious lasting effect of this temporary symbolic action. Protest movements also draw on political theorists to justify their actions. As Schmalzl (2012, p.  69) notes, German citizens’ initiatives invoked Henry D. Thoreau’s ideas of civil disobedience. Demonstrators in the Arab world refer to Harvard professor Gene Sharp’s writing “From Dictatorship to Democracy.” Some autonomists find their inspiration in Russian anarchism. Even the superficially clownish behavior of the Rebel Clowns Army is ideologically underpinned (Mellor’s “direct action” and Derrida’s “deconstructivism”). The activists’ symbolic actions are thereby means of expression for content-­ related messages and emotions, such as consternation, anger, determination, or obstinance. Protest as a communicative act can reach diverse audiences, including decision-makers, officials, issue-specific groups, and the general society. Consequently, multimedia attention determines the action’s success. Thus, protest action has changed considerably in the age of “Web 2.0″ (Pleil, 2009). Messages previously had to be delivered to the mass media via “gatekeepers” (primarily journalists) to reach “stakeholders” or the intended target groups. Today, a complex system of reciprocal communication channels is available. Ideas and messages can be disseminated by everyone in the “pre-media space” of Web 2.0. The (participating) public is not condemned to passive reception, but actively intervenes. Participation is not limited to physical presence; the protest event extends into

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virtual space. Mass media, for their part, multiply messages from Web 2.0 sources, not only through their conventional channels but also, in turn, in Web 2.0. Virtual reality increases the already existing complexity of the fields of action and their interrelationships in protest events (see also Grutzpalk & Jarolimek, 2024).

3 The Need for an Integrated Operational Communication Many approaches from numerous scientific disciplines explain people’s behavior in the context of crowds (cf. Bürger, 2024; Adang & Schreiber, 2024; Schattka, 2024). Some of these approaches are examined to illustrate why professional on scene police communication—referred to as “Tactical Communication”—is needed. Supplemented by “press and public relations work,” these two pillars of communication, referred to as “operational communication,” must be embedded in police strategy.

3.1 Human Information Processing Event complexity during large-scale police operations often leads to differing interpretations of shared experiences. During the Dannenröder Forest protest, events occurring day and night, over weeks and months, in a kilometer-long forest area, were experienced intensely and processed selectively by all involved parties. These effects occur over time, but they can also be observed in each situation, no matter its duration. Social perception allows participants to filter facts that conform one’s own beliefs and attitudes and reinterpret events to minimize their “cognitive dissonance.” As hostility increases and mutual exchange decreases, event interpretations become less complete and more one-sided. Grounds for constructive debate and shared interpretation, become increasingly lost. The risk of misunderstanding, false attributions of causes, and negative insinuations concerning the actions of others increases.

3.2 Group Effects and Social Identity Individuality, including personal values and norms, decreases in protests and mass events. Social–psychological group effects increasingly influence actions and thinking (cf. Bürger, 2024; Adang & Schreiber, 2024). Participants experience feelings of community and a sense of belonging, which shapes their social identity (Tajfel & Turner, 1986) and Mummendey (1985). Groups with stronger internal cohesion are more likely to separate themselves from other, rival groups (i.e., ingroup–outgroup effect; Taylor et  al., 2005). Tendencies to valorize one’s own group and devalue

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others are reinforced by perceived similarity, strength, and closeness. Thus, rivalry, demarcation, and resistance to the police increase if protest groups conclude that they want or need to engage in action beyond symbolism to define themselves. This decision is also observed among rival soccer club supporters. Humans commonly engage in social comparisons to achieve or maintain a positive self-image and self-­ esteem, with each group trying to rank itself as high as possible in an imaginary ranking list (Tajfel & Turner, 1986). If a group’s soccer team is unsuccessful in the league, the supporters often adopt other evaluations of worth; some celebrate themselves as “The Carnival Club” (Mainz 05, Bundesliga club), while others become self-proclaimed “Randalemeister” (which translates as “Champions of riots”; Eintracht Frankfurt, Bundesliga club, Frankfurter Rundschau (2011)). Self-image Using the Example of Dannenröder Forest When the forest protesters’ success was threatened by the construction company’s advancing clearing work, tree house evictions, and police intervention, some protesters displayed and emphasized their creative and harmonious existence with nature, while others showed their willingness to fearlessly fight. In a group context, police face a problematic effect called “risky shift” (Taylor et al., 2005). Group members tend to take higher risks than individuals would by themselves. Increase in risk tolerance results from perceived shared responsibility (up to complete diffusion of responsibility) and the group structure. Intra-group social comparisons also take place, and those who wish to occupy higher status within the group’s hierarchy tend to engage in riskier behavior. Thus, group members are more inclined to act confidently, aggressively, and even violently toward other groups as they accept higher risks. The more individuals define themselves exclusively through the group’s social identity and hide within it, using a kind of “anonymity within a crowd,”, problematic behavior is more likely to occur and controllability decreases. “Risky Shift” Using the Example of Dannenröder Forest In the Dannenröder Forest, the activists increasingly endangered themselves and their rescuers by climbing unsecured on thinning branches to ever greater heights. The highest point they reached was the spectacular “crow’s nest” construction at 40 meters above ground, over 12 stories high.

3.3 Protective Environment Conditions that increase perceptions of protester security and strength against police measures can foster confrontation and resistance. Security and strength are provided by large communities of like-minded people, like a “black bloc,” a tactic used by protestors to obscure their identity, commonly through black clothing, including face masks and helmets. Security is also provided by a large, mostly passive crowd into which one can disappear, for example, after throwing a stone. Feelings of security and strength also thrive behind barricades and barriers, or generally under

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conditions that lead to a front line between police and protesters. A fence between the two provides an ideal field of action for violent groups. Members can insult or throw items at police without direct intervention. If the police use distancing means like water cannons without first explaining their use, they run the risk of further escalating the situation. Finally, security is provided by the familiar surroundings of the protective forest. Many forest squatters have used the location as their own “living room” for months. The security of familiar surroundings is also offered to those who protest repeatedly in the same location, like Berlin, Hamburg, or Leipzig. Events in common protest locations are fundamentally more problematic than events cities without a “protest-proven” scene.

3.4 Targeted Escalation “For the Sake of the Cause” Carefully calculated provocations that further objectives and escalation can also be part of the protest strategy. Situational dynamics cooled after police were blamed when a 27-year-old blogger, involved in a similar 2018 large-scale protest in Hambach Forest, broke through a suspension bridge and fell to his death. Could a single shocking event also lead to escalation? In general, protests require a stage, attention, and “clicks” to create significance. The “algorithms” and mechanisms of media publicity “reward” a rule-abiding protest march far less than one involving more spectacular actions. These range from peaceful “creative” protest actions, to rule-pushing by experienced groups, to targeted rule-breaking and acts of violence. Targeted Escalation Using the Example of the Dannenröder Forest A sympathizing group from the “Hambach Forest” (a protest area known throughout Germany) supported the highway expansion opponents. One Saturday, they all dressed in white painter’s suits, making individuals difficult to distinguish, and demonstrated at the clearing site for media attention. Their initial actions were protected by law. Unsurprisingly, the outwardly homogeneous group engaged in forbidden actions in the clearing area, including violent attacks on police officers. During the chaos, one activist fell from a tilting platform. A rope had broken as demonstrators and officers ran past it. A mistake, carelessness, an accident, or intentional? Is it a coincidence that something like this happened on a particularly busy and chaotic demolition day? The police were again publicly suspected of causing the crash.

4 De-escalation: Active Situation Management Taking a passive role does not prevent escalation. Escalation can only be limited through action. De-escalation is, therefore, active situation shaping. German police defines it as a “strategic guideline in conflict-prone operational situations with the

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objective of preventing or reducing threatening or existing confrontations in such a way that a sustainable pacification of the situation becomes possible, in particular through target group-oriented mitigation of readiness to use violence” (PDV 100 VS-NfD, 2012—open part, Annex 20). Elements of de-escalation include transparency and cooperation, differentiation between perpetrators and others, consistency, and congruence. Congruence refers to consistent behavior over time, toward all group members. The goal is to act in ways that are predictable, based on previously communicated rules. De-escalating might require differentiated and group-specific measures, which can be perceived as biased and escalating. Prosecuting rule violations also means safeguarding the rights of others (e.g., to allow an assembly to continue) and preventing additional violations. De-escalation requires that police measures are seen as appropriate by participants and third parties. Differentiated concern over and interest in the goals, motives, and backgrounds of the direct and indirect target groups must be communicated. Police must be present where communication takes place. No one must be cut off from the flow of information. De-escalation by means of communication should not attempt to diminish a protest’s communicative impact through police counterpropaganda. The protesters’ legitimate and logical goal of attracting media attention and support for their cause is negatively impacted by one-sided, incomplete police information policies. Police failure to gather and communicate necessary information contributes to conditions that detract from the legitimacy of a cause by fostering a lack of understanding, creating the need for frontal positions, and increasing escalation. Countering selective perceptions and misinterpretations by providing reliable information and comprehensible reasons for police assessment and actions is essential to preventing collective revolt. A predictable, cooperative approach can help to avoid rivalries and confrontations between police and participant groups. Protestors often feel that the mere presence of police is threatening and provocative. The police, who were simply performing their public duties, were accused of supporting the highway expansion. In fact, many members of the police force, as private citizens, voted against the expansion. Thus, it is important for police to explain their role from the outset. First, they are neutral in terms of the issues; they protect the fundamental rights to assembly and freedom of expression, thus enabling democractic legal protests. Police must intervene only when rules are violated to protect the freedoms and rights of others or, in individual cases, to enforce the rule of law, and should do so with empathy and tact. For example, expansion opponents expected a much longer stay in the forest and, according to their social media statements, were emotionally devastated by the course of events. Police must anticipate outcomes, including the potential loss of self-esteem to minimize risks of escalation in future interactions. Unnecessary demonstrations of power by authorities are harmful and counterproductive.

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5 Tactical Communication During Operations 5.1 Basic Objective Without active communication, the possibility of negative crowd reactions solidifies or increases, and the police are more likely to position themselves as pawns in an escalation process, where each side “merely” reacts to the alleged actions of the other. Worse, people justify their own behavior based on the situation, while blaming others’ behaviors on character (i.e., fundamental attribution error: Taylor et al., 2005). Successful Tactical Communication requires police to make continuous contact with people and communicate with them in a differentiated, structured, but situationally flexible way. Therefore, Tactical Communication requires: • Target group-specific communication, • On different levels (individual, small group, group, large group), which serves the goals of: • Interpretive authority, in which police descriptions and assessments of events are trusted, and • Effective action that motivates or prevents specific behavior. (cf. Polizei Hessen, 2007). Other essential goals and elements of Tactical Communication include: • • • • • • • • • • •

Counteracting distorted perceptions, Supporting the formation of positive opinions, Discouraging tensions, Isolating offenders, Making police measures transparent, Minimizing solidarity effects, Reducing or preventing anonymity, Slowing dynamics, Directing movements, Relieving other forces, and Continuously describing the role of the police in each operation.

5.2 Situation Assessment A situation assessment must be the first act accomplished in every police operation. It serves “[…] to recognize, analyze and forecast police-relevant events and developments as well as internal organizational requirements […]. The assessment of the situation includes the selection, analysis, linking and evaluation of relevant topics, including their interactions and possible consequences of police action, taking into

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account the role of the police, given strategies and guidelines” (PDV 100, VS-NfD, 2012—para. 1.6.2.1 f.). Four situation assessment topics are particularly relevant for using Tactical Communication: persons (groups) involved, group interaction, situational conditions—both in terms of location and time, and the background or larger context. It should be noted, as with almost all situational aspects, that these can change and must be regularly analyzed and reevaluated. Groups It is important to understand the attitudes, convictions, goals, and value systems of all directly and indirectly involved in events. What does this group of people want? What are their needs? What drives them, what inhibits them, and what scares them? Police aim to reach as many people as possible and motivate them to behave cooperatively, but these outcomes are never in opposition to the will or needs of police. Empathic understanding of others’ perspectives is critical to success and must be incorporated into police actions and communications. Targeted messaging to the different groups can prevent mutual solidarization, where police become the common enemy of all protesters. Media representatives are indirect target groups. They also need publicly accessible messages since they are subject to an opinion-forming process and will report on police measures. Groups of People in Dannenröder Forest The abundance of participant groups in attendance during the highway expansion protests presented a challenge. In addition to the numerous protest groups that differed from one another (peaceful and unpeaceful participants, forest squatters and camp residents, each passively or actively resisting), there existed a larger group of local residents who either benefited from the expansion (supporters) or saw themselves as losers (opponents). In addition, there were normal forest visitors, individuals on so-called “Sunday walks,” forest and construction workers, road users, media representatives, commuters, actors from governmental and non-governmental organizations, supra-regional interest groups, and the public as a whole, as well as the police. In addition, parliamentary observers from various political parties in the state and federal parliaments were present daily. For the latter two groups, the police created daily changing security areas to enable effective reporting and ensure the greatest possible security in a clearing area. The challenge was not to “overlook” anyone. For example, during the operation, the police found that although they had contacted many groups and individuals and had established several points of contact, they had not done so in a village directly affected by the expansion. Was it a coincidence that some of these “neglected” villagers, of all people, could be seen and heard criticizing the police in the media? Interactions How do the groups interact internally and with each other? How do they relate to each other? How do they act in the media, or toward the police? How do the interactions change over time or in response to particular measures?

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Interactions in the Dannenröder Forest It became clear that the forest squatters lacked consensus. There were, for example, different views on the extent to which they should accept the police’s offer to talk things through and which protest means were legitimate. Intense social media interaction significantly impacted dynamics. Protest groups professionally promoted their cause through impressive presentations of their viewpoints. Their goal was to increase social participation by winning over as many people as possible to their cause. The motto was: “outrage is desired.” If they presented and critically commented on images of police actions, national interest and solidarity increased. Meanwhile, controversial social media discussions of protester actions, such as the highway blockades, increased criticism about the extent of the protest movement, its understanding of democracy, and its willingness to recognize others’ freedoms. Situation What is the influence of situational conditions, including location, time, and weather? A one-day demonstration in a central city location with open stores on a pleasant summer day leads to completely different outcomes than a protest lasting for months in a remote, confusing forest during winter temperatures. The city backdrop provides a stage that fires up the opposition. Access to and from the event is easy for participants and supporters, and a broad accommodation and supply infrastructure is available. An area with little infrastructure, on the other hand, presents immense logistical difficulties for participants. Situation Assessment in Dannenröder Forest From the beginning of the police operation, there was a considerable resistance infrastructure in place with concrete structures and “lock-ons,” fixed bracings with deliberately difficult-to-understand relationships, and hidden sources of danger, all of which were set up in advance at the remote locations. Police could only enter the unprotected forest during daylight hours due to violent resistance. Clashes in the dark were considered an incalculable risk and intentionally avoided. Consequently, police faced nighttime “re-conquering” of the remaining trees and construction of further obstacles in the clearing area. Background Every event must be considered within the current context and, as is often necessary, the historical, social, cultural, political, and religious contexts in which it takes place. Background to the Protests in the Dannenröder Forest After a 40-year democratic process, a political decision was made to close the gap in a highway. Most of the regional population favored the project. However, the protest surrounding the highway expansion occurred within the context of an increasingly intense and socially significant broad climate policy debate, and thus generated public interest beyond the region. Previous events, such as those in Hambach Forest, provided a blueprint for the Dannenröder Forest protest. In Hambach Forest, the issue was the use of the forest for lignite coal mining, which was being phased-out with political action and social support. The forest became a

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symbol of climate policy. When the politicians finally stopped the clearing project, the protest was considered both a symbolic and practical success: the forest was saved and the project stopped. This gave the highway expansion forest squatters confidence that they would be able to block the work in the long term, avert the highway construction, prevent tree clearing and, moreover, ensure that similar projects would be highly scrutinized. They were emboldened by the fact that, due to the complex jurisdictional forest situation, they were able to operate largely undisturbed for months and literally took root there.

5.3 Components of Tactical Communication The police in Hesse managed the Dannenröder Forest protest. Tactical communication in Hesse is carried out with the help of various units responsible for police communication. Goals and tasks are tailored to each case, and include individual dialogs, group interactions, and announcements during major events. Police Communicators can be equipped with backpack loudspeakers and are always ready for dialogue and approachable in the crowd. They pledge continuous contact with the participants and establish necessary “connections” when possible during periods of peace and calm to maintain communicative contact if faced with emerging conflict situations. Each individual tree or tree house eviction required effective police communication with both the respective occupants and the outside world. Police communicated the option to voluntarily leave the clearing area the legal consequences associated with failure to vacate prior to police action involving high-altitude rescue. Police loudspeaker vehicles could not be used due to impassable terrain, so the communicators’ work was of great importance. Tactical Loudspeaker Vehicle Squads inform entire groups and explain police action. Vehicles with radio microphones and equipped with outside visible speakers. Squads used the loudspeaker vehicles to communicate at numerous demonstrations in locations around the forest area. They explained police actions to address blockades on access roads and at the camps. Target Group Contact Communicators deployment also plays an important role. Their task is to establish early contact with relevant groups, be available and approachable, and establish a genuine and sustainable relationship based on mutual respect and trust. They listen to the groups(s) intentions, needs, and fears and relay this information to police decision makers, while also explaining police goals, needs, intentions, and actions to the groups. By fostering a mutual understanding of commonalities and differences, contact officers and group representatives can better communicate in subsequent operational situations. In the Dannenröder Forest, the Target Group Contact Communicator established direct contact with the squatter scene months before the first police interventions. He was constantly available to them, was on site every day, and could be reached by phone at any time. He made police tactics transparent and relayed the squatters’ concerns to the operations management, subsequently succeeding in building a high

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degree of rapport and trust. The mutual contact was used hesitantly at the beginning and frequently as the operation continued. Criticisms that the police do not sufficiently communicate, which is often voiced in other situations, were effectively prevented. Enduring relationships were built by establishing contacts with longer-­ term interest groups. Contact-Communicators can also be deployed. These are police officers who maintain contact with the assembly leader or other persons who can influence the crowd on event day. They are available to answer questions and facilitate direct communication with the incident commander. Tactical Public Safety Communicators are another important asset at large-scale events like soccer matches or concerts. These are specially trained police officers who stay close to the stadium announcer or event presenter. They usually introduce themselves to attendees at the beginning of the event (“If you see me or hear my voice, this means that this is an announcement considering your safety …”) and manages communication in event of an evacuation or other dangerous situation.

5.4 Communicative Intervention Public events are accompanied by rapid communication to prevent the distorted perceptions and misinterpretations previously described (sovereignty of interpretation). Timely communication is also often necessary to persuade groups of people to behave in a desired way or to dissuade them from undesirable behavior. In this case, small or larger groups must be addressed, so that the event communication takes place via megaphone, a specially equipped loudspeaker vehicle or a backpack-­ loudspeaker system. However, announcements only influence action if they are relevant to the immediate situation, linguistically adapted to the target group, and delivered authentically (“speaker adaptation”). Preformulated standard texts do not meet these requirements. Authentic announcements made by the speaker are not strictly prescribed (i.e., exact predefined wording), but follow a predefined structure. The four-step tactical communication model (cf. Fig. 1) begins by describing the situation (1.) to ensure that the groups understand how police are interpreting immediate conditions. The target group (2.) is addressed and named as specifically as possible, which also brings them into the focus of attention. Arguments and assessments (3.) concerning consequences and police viewpoints are communicated to promote transparency and understanding before issuing a positively formulated appeal for group action (4.). In urgent situations, energetic immediate intervention (steps 1 and 4 only) can warn third parties of danger and still dissuade “near” offenders from their actions. For example, “Stones are being picked up at entrance to the construction site. Stop—put down the stones immediately!” (Neutzler, M.; Schenk, C. (2011)). Coordinated behavior and appearance of police with publicly issued statements and announcements are prerequisites for successful Tactical Communication. Messages are only effective if all officers visibly “embody” the messages and send

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Fig. 1  Four-/two-steps model of tactical communication (own illustration)

appropriate nonverbal signals (cf. Bürger, 2024). This can only occur if there is close consultation between all forces and operational sections and the willingness to act professionally according to the principles of de-escalation.

6 Challenges of Police Communication in Protest 2.0 The review of police operations showed that, even when using Tactical Communication tools, police internal assessments of their operations sometimes differed from media portrayals and descriptions of police actions. While Tactical Communication takes place on scene, others with various motives use their interpretive authority to describe police action on social media. This influences the formation of others’ opinions and is also sometimes picked up in media reporting. Four frequently recurring challenges emerge in this context: range of coverage, conflicting goals, uniform communication, and responsiveness. Range of Coverage Tactical Communication tools can reach larger crowds, but not always every individual within them. Some gatherings and events are so large that not all participants can be reached simultaneously using loudspeaker technology. Police loudspeaker announcements can be hindered by a variety of situational factors (e.g., weather). In addition, while the public discussed police operations via social media, the police did not engage through these channels or failed to do so in a professional manner. Conflicting Goals The work of traditional police press and public relations was traditionally managed by the police organization’s general leadership, rather than police commanders responsible for events. As a result, it was often too passive in dynamic situations, too slow and, in many cases, too general in its content. However, modern public

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relations work accompanying operations should be tailored to emerging situations, be fast and goal-oriented, and use all relevant channels. Police public relations in large-scale operations should be the event Police Commander’s communication tool, not only that of the department’s executive team. Uniform Communication Various units conduct communications during police operations. Examples include press and public relations, Tactical Communications, personal cell phones, police social media accounts, and ultimately every officer. The goal is to ensure that all communicating units convey consistent messages, content, and statements to the outside world. This requires coordination in terms of structure, preparation, and implementation in the field. Consistent information must be used to inform police decisions, measures, and communication. After accurately assessing the situation (step 1, cf. Fig. 1), police can select justifiable actions that will be understood by most of the general public. Access to this initial assessment information by every person involved in the operation is critical to ensuring uniform and confident communication with the public. Responsiveness Third parties regularly try to discredit police actions during, following, and sometimes even before an operation. This is often accomplished by intentionally spreading incomplete, biased, or even false (fake news) information. If the police do not counter this information with proactive, neutral, transparent, and honest communication, they will lose control of the media narrative. Social media channels like Twitter are far-reaching, with multiplying (retweeting) influencers and media representatives. It is important to follow and quickly counter false messages when they appear.

7 Conclusion: Operational Communication as an Overall Communication Strategy Police communication challenges require that mission communication be more than “just” Tactical Communication; it must be approached and designed as an overall communication strategy. Mission communication must be a tool of the respective police commander (operational command) in operational situations. It is imperative that this be coordinated at an early stage and function alongside the police organization’s continuous, larger communication strategy. The dynamic process of police communication during operations must be embedded in regular communication that takes place before, during, and after the operation. Separation of personnel allows current operations to take place without allowing larger organizational issues or crises to become a problem during the operations, and vice versa. As such, a critical incident during an operation should not significantly damage the organization’s reputation. Operation leadership communicates,

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through different means, what police decide and why. The executive team can evaluate the mission from a distance without needing to justify specific details. The goal of mission communication, as a holistic communication strategy, is to achieve defined mission objectives by communicating information and messages to specific recipients. It comprises all Tactical Communication measures as well as press and public relations work accompanying the operation (cf. Fig. 2). It has a defined beginning and end and is carried out independently of (but in consultation with) other official communication chains. Mission communication occurs internally and externally, as well as before, during, and after an operation (Polizei Hessen, 2018). Operational communication must be coordinated and free of contradictions across all communication channels to reach and facilitate cooperative dialogue with identified target groups. Authentic and honest communication, based on verified information, reinforces perceptions of police institutions as trustworthy and reliable. Further, it is essential that communication is consistent with police actions. Practical implementation of operational communication requires the formation of a corresponding unit within the operational command. In addition to a leader with overall responsibility, the unit should fulfill the following functions. • Wording: information gathering and processing to continuously develop an “external language regime/wording” or tailored messaging. • Liaison officer: ensuring information exchange between operation communications and all other offices responsible for police communications.

Fig. 2  Communication modules (own illustration)

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• Situation orientation during operations/internal information for deployed officers: continuous, active communication with all officers at specified times, using the tailored messaging. • Social media: monitoring of and communication within social media networks (e.g., Twitter) and, if necessary, in selected third-party channels, including reactive communication in response to questions, comments, and representations by third parties (so-called “community management”). A strategic Tactical Communication plan, tailored to the event, must be developed in advance to allow communication prior to the operation and fast and reactive communication during the event. The plan should be built around the operational strategy and key event-specific tactics, and approved by the Police Commander. The plan can be used to develop specific messaging made available to all officers, including core messages for frequently asked questions or responses to anticipated scenarios for the Tactical Communication Teams. Likewise, communication channels staffing must be predetermined. A police spokesperson should be assigned when managing particularly important situations. This “face and voice” of the police is the media’s point of contact on the ground near the operation. They publicly represent communication for the operational command. In addition to the other officers responsible for communications, especially Tactical Communications, this officer’s duties are to: • Communicate situational assessments and corresponding police actions in a tactically reflective and differentiated manner, • Present the Police Commander’s decisions as quickly and authentically (from the Commander’s perspective) as possible, • Establish early contact with target groups, including media representatives, to build relationships and trust, • Talk to media representatives at specified locations with a PR-Team advisor’s support. Communication, communication channels, and communication technology are subject to constant modification. Police must continuously adapt to social developments to best fulfill their mission within a democracy. A holistic understanding of mission communication and its practical implementation is an essential step toward meeting these challenges. Mission Communication as an Overall Strategy in the Dannenröder Forest The operation’s overall success was based on the successful interplay of strategy, tactics, and the implementation of mission communication within an overall communication strategy. This case study found that the necessary operational and communication positions were occupied continuously throughout the operation’s entire duration and this played a significant role in the operation’s success. The police effectively communicated their strategy and tactics. When further intervention was necessary, communication explained police actions and maintained open dialogue. Early on, a contact police officer was deployed to engage in dialogue to understand the actors’ or groups’ perspectives and explain to them the

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role of the police and other involved parties (e.g., forestry authority, construction companies). The contact officer provided information about existing rules, including explanations of the relevant laws, ordinances, rulings, and political decisions. Thus, police were transparent about the rules and consequences of violations. In cases of non-cooperation, which occurred when protesters refused to leave the occupied area, consistent adherence to prior police announcements was critical to success. Failing to react to rule violations would result in lost credibility and weakened confidence. This would reduce protesters’ willingness to cooperate (“Tit for Tat” strategy, Axelrod, 2009). Varying, inconsistent reactions to rule violations would lead to confusion and provocation, and police action could be perceived as arbitrary. However, the rules and police action remain clear if there are immediate reactions to initial rule violations, including announcements that remind attendees of previously explained consequences. The principle of “tough but fair” may not invoke unquestioned approval, but it does minimize the extent of negative reactions and solidarization, discouraging a unified vision of the police as a common enemy of protesters. But how can we reestablish cooperation? The tit-for-tat principle promotes “forbearance”—not holding grudges. Once a consequence is administered, the police return to fostering cooperation. The “game” starts all over again. Cooperation increases if consequences, commensurate with the violations, are delivered in targeted manner, while also offering options for rule compliance within a cooperative framework. Protester occupation of a forest is not explicitly restricted by the ban on assembly or Basic Law, but is intrinsically accepted as a violation of the rules. That the protesters were engaged in an implicit-only law violation hampered cooperation. However, the lives and safety of the protesters and officers depended upon the manner in which police conducted clearings or “rescues” from dangerous structures and heights. As a result, police found ways to protect the clearing work, enable a democratic and legal protest, and remove the tree squatters without physical injury in most cases. The police thus protected and strengthened the democratic fabric. Media coverage was extensive, partly due to Germany’s prevailing “Corona (Covid-19) lockdowns.”. Communicative demands were all the greater—not only at the protest site, but also nationally and in social media. Holistic communications, aligned with police strategy and tactics, were centrally important.

References Adang, O., & Schreiber, M. (2024). How collective violence emerges and escalates. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Axelrod, R. (2009). Die Evolution der Kooperation. Oldenbourg. Bürger, B. (2024). Public order policing. From theory to practice. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer.

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Frankfurter Rundschau. (2011). https://www.fr.de/frankfurt/mehr-­randalemeister-­11438064.html (15.07.2011). Grutzpalk, J., & Jarolimek, S. (2024). The importance of police public relations in assembly situations. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Hessen, P. (2007). Konzept Taktische Kommunikation. In Erlass Taktische Kommunikation. Landespolizeipräsidium. Hessen, P. (2018). Rahmenkonzeption Einsatzkommunikation, 2. Fassung. In Erlass zu Einsatzkommunikation. Landespolizeipräsidium. Mummendey, A. (1985). Verhalten zwischen sozialen Gruppen: Die Theorie der sozialen Identität. In D.  Aus Frey & M.  Irle (Eds.), Theorien der Sozialpsychologie, Band 2: Gruppen- und Lerntheorien. Huber. Neutzler, M., & Schenk, C. (2011). Kommunikation als Teil der Deeskalation am Beispiel der Langzeitlage Bau der Landebahn Nord am Flughafen Frankfurt/Main. Deutsches Polizeiblatt, 5, 18–21. PDV 100 - VS-NfD. (2012). Polizeidienstvorschrift 100. Führung und Einsatz der Polizei. VS-Nur für den Dienstgebrauch. Stand: 11/2020. Pleil, T. (2009). PR der Zukunft: Was bringt das Netz? Darmstadt: https://de.slideshare.net/ ZukunftOnlinePR/pr-­der-­zukunft-­was-­bringt-­das-­netzpresentation (31.10.2021). Schattka, C. (2024). Interpretive regimes of violence in action. The “welcome to hell” demonstration during the G20 summit in Hamburg 2017. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Schenk, C. & Bornhausen, M. (2022). Deeskalation im Protestgeschehen und Einsatzkommunikation. In B.  Körber, H.  P. Schmalzl & M.  Hermanutz (Hrsg.), Moderne Polizeipsychologie in Schlüsselbegriffen. 4. völlig neu bearbeitete und gestaltete Auflage. Richard Boorberg Verlag. Schmalzl, H. P. (2011). Deeskalation will verstanden sein. Irrungen und Erkenntnisse der Polizei in ihrem Bemühen um Deeskalation im Protestgeschehen. In Deutsches Polizeiblatt - Themenheft 5/2011 “Deeskalation”. Boorberg Verlag. Schmalzl, H. P. (2012). Deeskalation im Protestgeschehen. In H. P. Schmalzl & M. Hermanutz (Hrsg.), Moderne Polizeipsychologie in Schlüsselbegriffen. 3. völlig neu bearbeitete und gestaltete Auflage (S. 66–74). Richard Boorberg Verlag. Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Nelson-Hall. Taylor, S. E., Peplau, L. A., & Sears, D. O. (2005). Social psychology (12th ed.). Prentice Hall. Warneken, B J, (Hrsg.) (1991). Massenmedium Straße. Zur Kulturgeschichte der Demonstration. Campus. Carsten Schenk  studied psychology before working as an operational psychologist in the Central Police Psychological Service of the Hessian Police (ZPD). Schenk is responsible for developing tactical and operational communication approaches for mass events/assemblies. He advised police leadership on communication during the ongoing large-scale operation for the further construction of the federal freeway A49. Today, he is Psychology Director and head of the ZPD’s Operations Support, consisting of the Behavioral Analysis Competence Center dealing with Threat Management and Criminal Psychological Investigation Support as well as the Communication and Crisis Management Competence Center with, among others, Operations/Crisis Communication/ De-escalation, Negotiation Management, Psychosocial Crisis Management/Operations Section Support, Officers Crisis Support, as well as Acting and Deciding in Critical Situations. Michael Bornhausen  worked for several departments of the Hessian Police, including an evidence-gathering and arrest unit. In 2009, he joined the Department of Police Operations. In

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addition to working as a specialist instructor, he assumed management of the Tactical Communication Coordination Unit Hesse. In 2016, he began working for the Central Police Psychological Service of the Hesse Police (ZPD) and is responsible for coordinating the police operations and communication. Major Bornhausen is a certified social media manager and crisis manager. Starting in 2022, he became head of the Communication and Crisis Management Competence Center at the Hessian University of Public Management and Security in the Center for Police Psychological Services. He oversees Tactical Communication, operational communication, Press officers, and psychosocial emergency care statewide. He has served as a section leader in numerous operations, including leading the Tactical Communications section in the large-scale operation that lasted several months to continue the construction of the federal freeway A49.

Public Order Standards: Moving the Public Trust Needle Forward Anthony J. Raganella, Jose M. Vega, and Peter Davidov

Abstract  The significance of law enforcement having established standards for public order tactics, equipment, and training cannot be overstated. The existence of these standards, or lack thereof, has a profound impact upon police legitimacy and public trust in democratic societies. The authors explore how well-defined public order standards keep both citizens and officers safe and promote positive incident outcomes. Using examples and case studies, the authors demonstrate how public order standards influence law enforcement policy development and minimize risk to officer safety, as well as agency liability and credibility thereby furthering police-­ public trust. Further discussion is presented on why professionalization and specialization of public order policing in law enforcement matters, especially in countries such as the USA where standards do not currently exist.

1 Introduction The US Constitution guarantees unalienable rights to people in America such as free speech, freedom of religion, and the right to peaceably assemble, to mention a few. The First Amendment right guaranteeing free speech and peaceable assembly may be one of the most powerful foundational rights ever put on paper and freely protected in the USA (Keane & Raganella, 2024). At the same time, responding to protest, civil disobedience, and civil unrest is one of the most challenging areas of responsibility for law enforcement. Unlike responding to a domestic incident, dispute, robbery or burglary, the response to a public order event is a high risk/low A. J. Raganella (*) NYPD (ret.); NY Blue Line Consulting Group, Huntington, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. M. Vega Sergeant Special Assignment, NYPD (ret.), Huntington, NY, USA P. Davidov Montgomery County PD, Rockville, MD, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_20

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frequency event that presents myriad threats and liabilities to individual officers, agencies, and governments because these events are not stationary or static, but are events that can encompass a large area in a city. The standardization and professionalism of the public order specialty in policing is crucial in promoting positive incident outcomes and legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

2 The Need for Public Order Standards A standard, by definition, is “something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality” (Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2023). Numerous professions around the world have standards. These standards lay out what is expected by someone in their profession, education, and how to carry out day-to-day activities. In law enforcement, there are standards for many specialty units. Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) operators have standards they have to follow to maintain their certifications and to carry out their overall mission. SWAT teams carry out tactical missions according to the experience they receive from following standards. Canine units carry out search and rescue, bomb and drug detection; mounted units supplement patrol and can be used as force multipliers in many public order situations; police snipers undergo vigorous training with standards that must be met; helicopter aviation teams carry out aeronautical jobs; and harbor units conduct nautical jobs. All these units have schools they must attend and certifications to be acquired. These schools have standards that must be met in order to graduate. Once graduation occurs, they must follow these standards to stay proficient in their trade, remain in the unit, and avoid injury and costly liability. Subsequently, when these units are requested by an incident commander and are deployed, the incident commander briefs them on what has occurred, what needs to be done, and then these specialty units come up with a plan and then carry out the mission as they are trained to do. International standards have also been developed for SWAT, forensics, police canines, and other police specialists. It is long overdue for public order policing in America to be on equal footing with these other specialists. To grow and maintain trust in policing, the role and specialization of public order policing must be made a high priority. What is required is a dedication of time, effort, money equipment, and a national standard to make a specialty service aligned with the current expanding public order environment and to counter the ever-­ increasing sophistication of professional protestors and agitators. Moreover, top-­ level police executives must be intimately knowledgeable in the dynamics and best practices of public order policing prior to commanding such incidents so they can develop effective strategies to maintain the peace or command a return to normalcy. The vast majority of US incident commanders receive minimal public order training and usually base most of their decisions not on founded best practices, but on politically based solutions. Many of these decisions are also based on the personal whims of an untrained incident commander instead of relying on data and advice that is grounded in experience, education, and research. Incredibly, if a department does

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not have a trained public order team, patrol-line officers are given a baton and a helmet and are sent out on the field with little else (Fomby, 2024). Alternatively, fully kitted and heavily armed SWAT officers are sometimes sent out to deal with public order issues which has caused significant backlash with the public because of the optics it creates. In addition, officers who lack task-specific training and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the public order environment will likely be outside of their comfort zones. Their normal ability to make nuanced decisions, to talk calmly with people, and to de-escalate potentially violent situations, will be compromised. Lacking appropriate PPE in a dangerous situation, they will be very aware that they are physically vulnerable and will therefore be prone to make poor use of force decisions (Kepp, 2024b). This will lead to increased public frustration with law enforcement and reinforce the perception that the nation’s police officers are disrespectful of citizen’s rights and overly reliant on heavy handed tactics. Currently, there is no standard regarding public order policing for constitutionally protected First Amendment assemblies and civil unrest in the USA. As a result, a multitude of versions exist among 18,000 plus US law enforcement agencies. National standards for public order officer selection, training, equipment, tactics, command, and those supporting these operations are critically needed. This lack of standards has created confusion and misconception regarding public order best practices among law enforcement, the public they serve, the media, and elected officials. A lack of understanding about community tension indicators, crowd dynamics, and crowd psychology may cause mass demonstrations to quickly devolve into disorder. When untrained and/or unequipped officers engage in public order policing, unintended consequences often follow. This in turn has led to strained relationships and significant trust issues between the public and police. The lack of national standards in public order can lead to a simple protest becoming a riot because of the lack of training or experience when it comes to handling a public order situation. Lack of standards could leave a municipality open to litigation if the officers assigned do not carry out the assignment properly. It can lead to injured police personnel because they may be using ill-fitting equipment or using equipment improperly. An ill-fitting “kit” or absence of PPE can lead to serious injuries. Not having standards on the use of less lethal munitions, or the use of sound amplification devices, or the deploying of hand-tossed munitions, projectile munitions, or aerosol sprayers can lead to injuries to first responders and demonstrators, as well as pose significant liability and credibility issues for an agency (Fomby, 2024).

3 Case Study: The NYPD and the Crown Heights Riots As an example of the difficulty that not having national public order standards has upon the US’s largest law enforcement agency, we look to the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The City of New York is comprised of five counties: New York County (Manhattan); Queens County (Queens); Kings County (Brooklyn); Bronx

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County (Bronx); and Richmond County (Staten Island). For patrol function and organizational purposes, the NYPD further designates these five counties into eight patrol boroughs: Manhattan North; Manhattan South; Queens North; Queens South; Brooklyn North; Brooklyn South; Bronx; and Staten Island. Prior to 1993, each one of these NYPD patrol boroughs had a task force assigned to it that acted as its public order team. Because of their decentralized structure, all eight of these task forces trained differently, had different standards, and conducted public order operations differently from each other. Each one had its own commanding officer, and that commanding officer decided on how training and operations were conducted. Moreover, the tactics, equipment, training, and operations did not come under the purview of any formal agency mandates. In August of 1991, an Orthodox Jewish man was driving a vehicle as part of the three-car motorcade for a highly influential rabbi. The procession, along streets in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, was led by an unmarked NYPD police vehicle with two officers, and its rooftop light flashing. At some point, one of the vehicles had fallen behind, and not wishing to lose sight of the rabbi’s vehicle, it went through a red light because the orthodox Jewish man in the motorcade believed he had the right of way to proceed through the intersection because of the police escort. In doing so, it was struck by another vehicle and it then veered onto the sidewalk knocking down a heavy stone building pillar and pinning two children against an iron grate covering the window of a first-floor apartment in a four-story brick building. One of the children, the son of Guyanese immigrants, died instantly. Within minutes, a crowd gathered and some witnesses later claimed that a Jewish volunteer ambulance service arrived and started to care for the traumatized Jewish driver, without regard for the children who were struck. The police rendered aid to the injured children along with city Emergency Medical Services and ordered the Jewish volunteer ambulance to escort the driver of the vehicle back to the police precinct because of the crowd that had gathered, fearing violence would occur. Within hours, violence erupted in Crown Heights with members of the Caribbean-­ American and African-American communities throwing rocks at homes and passersby, as well as attacking several Jewish persons in the street with one man stabbed and killed. The Jewish community fought back, and street fights involving area residents started on many corners. The trigger event—the automobile collision—ignited preexisting tensions in the community where Jewish people were perceived to have disproportionate political power. The rumor that the Jewish volunteer ambulance treated the Jewish driver and not the fatally injured child (which proved later to be false) only made matters worse. Police initially deployed on street corners but did little to stop small skirmishes from taking place in the street. Almost an hour after calls of riots were coming in to 911, the NYPD’s Brooklyn South Task Force was mobilized to the area in an effort to stabilize it. Forty-five minutes after that, three other Task Forces were also mobilized. Police were not actually deployed to stop the violent behavior for almost three hours. By this time, things had spiraled out of control and a handful of violent individuals had started to prey on victims and property, continually being joined by others to destroy or steal property. The rioting and unrest continued for

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three full days involving residents and non-residents from the neighborhood. During the daytime, there were street marches and protests, while at night, violent skirmishes and unrest occurred where shots were fired from rooftops. At its peak, over 1800 police officers were assigned to quell the riots and it was not until the fourth day that the NYPD enforced a curfew and effected mass arrests to finally end the rioting. In the end, numerous stores were looted, police vehicles were damaged and overturned, and buildings, vehicles, and debris were set afire. Approximately 40 civilians and 150 police officers were injured (Girgenti, 1993). There were rumors that then Mayor David Dinkins and then Police Commissioner Lee Brown delayed the police response in order to let the protestors vent on the first night. Subsequent investigation by the State of New York did not turn up corroborating evidence over that allegation, but rather, laid the blame on poor planning and poor response by the police before the protests became a full-blown riot. The riots were unprecedented at the time and there were widespread rumors that the NYPD was told to stand down for almost three days for purely political reasons. The other issue was the fact the mobilized officers along with the borough task forces who responded all had different tactical approaches to handle the riot because of the lack of standards. After the riot ended, the then Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, ordered an investigation as to what contributed to the riot and how it could be avoided in the future. Richard Girgenti, then-New York State Commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services, was the lead in this investigation and his report was released in 1993. Aside from stating a multitude of reasons the riot occurred, the report recommended that the NYPD create a unit for developing departmental standards and recommendations on public order equipment and training (Girgenti, 1993). This resulted in the creation of the NYPD’s Disorder Control Unit, whose mission it was at first, to test and recommend public order equipment and to create standardized training for the patrol borough task forces as well as the remainder of the department. In 1999, and again in 2013, the unit recommended the merging of all eight borough task forces into one centralized public order unit under the command of a single executive. The idea was that this would allow for all eight task forces to have a singular vision, the same training, the same equipment, and the same operational tactics. It was not until 2015, this vision came to fruition with the creation of the New York City Police Department’s Strategic Response Group—a citywide public order unit under the command of one police executive. But even then, the major issue confronting the unit was the lack of national standards to fall back on. The operational tactics, the equipment and the training chosen fell under the decision of whoever was in charge and invariably those decisions were marked by personal likes and dislikes and not fueled by grounded educated national standards—a problem that still exists today.

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4 Public Order Training Standards Incredibly, the overwhelming majority of US law enforcement agencies employ less than 25 sworn officers (BJS, 2016). As such, most US law enforcement agencies depend upon mutual aid to supplement their capabilities during major critical incidents. This reliance highlights the need for standardization among agencies and mobilized regional forces to ensure compatibility and best practices are adhered to. To be certain, police response to public order incidents must be proportionate, as well as lawful and legitimate to avoid harmful missteps and strain upon public trust. In regard to training for public order, the lack of US national standards leave these 18,000 agencies to fend for themselves. This includes determining what the training is, who should be instructors, how much time should be devoted to training, how often should training or refreshers be conducted, and so on. While the US Federal government offers some semblance of public order training through its Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), there is no mandate for agencies to utilize it and the course content is viewed by most experts and practitioners as outdated and not relevant to the current threat matrix which has evolved over the last several decades. Couple this with their limitation to only teach what the federal government instructs them to teach, and it is easy to see the disservice done to our police officers and executives in the field who are charged with carrying out effective public order operations. For agencies in the USA that do not follow FEMA’s model of public order training, they either invent their own model or hire private contractors to provide this training. But without national standards to look to, and because of the geographical diverseness of the country where US agencies must work together in public order incidents, they are all potentially operating within different frameworks which cause a plethora of issues and constraints in actual field operations. National standards can solve these problems and remove the guesswork on what tactics are proper, what equipment to procure, and what type of training to conduct. National standards lead to increased professionalism for law enforcement agencies. This professionalism also increases when we properly plan and train for an event, which in turn reduces litigation against agencies from injuries and constitutional/ civil rights violations. National standards in training can also increase morale and effectiveness in departments because officers feel more confident in their abilities. This in turn leads to better use of force decisions on the front line and allows officers to de-escalate when it is proper, arrest when they must, and testify properly when they go to court. Furthermore, consistent tactics and metrics for action allow the public, including the media and politicians, to have realistic expectations of how law enforcement plans to deal with civil unrest (Kepp, 2024a; Lee, 2024). This will help prevent opportunist and self-serving interpretations of law enforcement actions from delegitimizing law enforcement.

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5 Public Order Equipment Standards The selection and quality of the PPE utilized by public order units is critical to reducing officer injury and increasing officer confidence which results in enhanced use of force decision making and de-escalation (Kepp, 2024b). Instead of placing a reliance on equipment manufacturers to inform end-users what level of performance and safety their products pass, establishing a national standard for public order equipment that requires manufacturers to meet or exceed certain metrics creates a much more unbiased and credible process that significantly enhances end-user confidence and reduces both injury and liability. Everything from helmets, outer garments, footwear, and gloves to eyewear protection should be tested for performance and compatibility. End-users, manufacturers, and certification/accreditation organizations should work together on these matters to ensure a best-case outcome. This is currently the case in the UK where PPE utilized by law enforcement public order units meet standards. As a result of publication of the “Police (Health and Safety) Act 1997,”, and “Police (Health and Safety) Regulations 1999,”, where police officers were brought under the scope of the UK’s “Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974,”, there are now strong legal indications that PPE for the UK’s police services must comply with the requirements of such standards. The Home Office Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB), at the request of the “Association of Chief Police Officers” (ACPO) Training and Tactical Equipment Working Group, has developed law enforcement-specific standards for PPE to address the threats faced by UK officers facing public disorder situations. These standards have been developed along with practitioners to lend guidance on such areas as fitment, usage, and maintenance of the PPE. In conjunction with this, the standards detail the testing methodologies necessary that will enable PPE manufacturers and suppliers to achieve compliance to this standard. Additionally, there is the British Standard suite of standards—BS7971—that represent the benchmark in evaluation of public order PPE and these standards are utilized widely in European law enforcement agencies for officers who are required to deal with violent situations. Purchasing suitable protective equipment is made more difficult by the absence of standards in the US for Civil Disturbance Unit (CDU) equipment. However, the US Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) has formed a special technical committee of subject matter experts to develop standards for CDU PPE (the authors are committee members). Until such time as that is completed and published, NIJ has advised US law enforcement agencies that are planning to procure new CDU PPE that they should utilize equipment identified as meeting either British Standard 7971 or standards developed by the UK Home Office (NLECTC, 2017). This is no doubt a step in the right direction for US law enforcement agencies that possess public order units or are contemplating the creation of one and desire guidance. Another promising effort for US CDUs is a public order standard developed and released by the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) that intends to better prepare law enforcement to respond to Public Order events and violent civil unrest.

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The NTOA was created in 1983, and is a non-profit association representing almost 40,000 public safety professionals across multiple disciplines in various assignments, including special operations within local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. The NTOA offers the law enforcement community across the USA, Canada, and abroad, an array of training courses which provide officers with knowledge, best practices and successful techniques for bringing violent, or potentially violent situations, to a safe and secure conclusion. The NTOA’s ultimate goal is to improve public safety and domestic security through training, education, and tactical excellence. As such, and with the assistance of the authors here, NTOA (2023) has created a Public Order Section of its association and diligently worked with the authors and other public order subject matter experts to develop this standard. The scope of the NTOA public order standard includes concepts and principles that relate to the organization, training, operational tactics, personnel management, and equipment of public order law enforcement teams. The standard does not dictate how member agencies will write and apply any specific policies as it relates to such operations, but rather will provide guidance based upon the terminology and collective viewpoint of the NTOA organization and its stakeholder partners. It is intended to serve as an efficient core set of concepts and principles that improve standardization within the profession of public order law enforcement services. It is anticipated that this standard will quickly serve as a model and framework for US CDUs moving forward.

6 Missing Standards Foster False Narratives Missing standards do not only negatively affect public order policing, it impedes professional debriefing and allows an arbitrary interpretation of police action. Therefore, it fosters false narratives which can also contribute to a loss of trust in police. Beginning in 2014 with the Ferguson, Missouri riots and the New York City Eric Garner death in New York City, through the summer of 2020 George Floyd unrest, agencies across the USA faced civil unrest at levels not seen in decades. The public witnessed nightly images of the unrest along with widely varied police response to similar events in locations from coast to coast. The lack of clear consensus by police agencies as to what constituted protest, civil unrest, and riot was clearly evident. This led to further misunderstanding by the public and political leaders. The media and politicians provided varied commentary regarding police tactics and response often confusing protests with violent criminal activity such as arson, looting, and property destruction that occurred during these incidents. In many instances, the police were criticized for a lack of response and in many others for over-­response. Sadly, some members of the media, advocacy groups, and even elected officials politicized police response to further their agenda or political standing. Violent criminal conduct was described as legitimate protest as well as justified by the cause. This gave rise to the perception that police were violating citizen’s First

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Amendment rights of expression and peaceable assembly when they used public order tactics and force in order to stop violent actions against people and property. Police agencies were castigated when they had to defend themselves against violence, thrown projectiles, and Molotov cocktails. Police agencies often did not explain their actions, allowing those with a political agenda to create false narratives that negatively influenced the public perception of policing and the specific agencies involved in the incident. These mixed responses and thresholds for police action, such as donning overt PPE or which actions by individuals and groups trigger a police intervention, led to widely varied analysis and acceptance of police response to demonstrations, protests, and civil unrest. All of these factors decreased police legitimacy at a time in which US law enforcement agencies were struggling to increase it. Case Study: US Park Police and Lafayette Park In another example of a false narrative influenced by lack of educated standards, we look to the media coverage of the US Park Police (USPP) operation to clear Lafayette Park on June 1, 2020. USPP is a federal law enforcement agency whose responsibilities include protection of Department of the Interior properties in Washington, DC, which include many of the nations revered monuments. USPP has specifically trained and equipped officers to deal with civil unrest and has much institutional experience in handling mass gatherings and protests. In 2020, they had highly trained officers and commanders who were equipped with first-rate PPE. They had participated in regional training and had partner agencies in the region trained and equipped similarly. They were as ready as any agency in the nation to respond to violent unrest and respond appropriately with respect for individual rights. Their training, tactics, and PPE allowed them to engage violent groups and achieve tactical objectives without having to rely on non-specific force, such as 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile—CS tear gas. However, they faced challenges based on public perception that was influenced by a lack of national consensus of what effective response to civil unrest looked like. The inability of USPP to combat negative public and political narratives regarding their public order tactics was compounded by the agencies inability to effectively communicate with the public in real time regarding their plans, actions, and goals. The death of George Floyd on May 25th, 2020, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers led to national outrage and protests. As the nation’s capital, Washington, DC, hosted many protests and marches in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. On May 29th, 2020, following a protest march, uniformed officers from the US Secret Service (USSS) and the USPP had responded to Lafayette Park which abuts the White House complex on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue. The march ended at the park and resulted in sizable crowds forming there. Initially peaceful crowds turned violent as night fell and into the morning of May 30th. Damage to property occurred and officers of the USSS and USPP were assaulted resulting in several injuries including a USPP officer who was hospitalized after being struck with a brick (DOI, 2021). This pattern of peaceful daytime activities

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and violent evenings and nights occurred again on May 30th and 31st. After these events, USPP had made a tactical determination to expand the perimeter fencing surrounding Lafayette Park. This decision was based on the need to protect officers against injury from violent criminal activity in the form of active assaults on officers that were occurring in and around protest activity (DOI, 2021). As a result, USPP committed its most highly trained public order team to this mission. USPP used public order tactics to remove those persons committing violent criminal activity and completed their clearing of Lafayette Park according to their plan. The clearing of the park was conducted using field formation tactics and less lethal equipment. The objectives were set by the incident commander and non-specific force was not authorized or used. Individual officers were responsible for force decisions and they encountered members of the public in the crowd who were non-compliant or assaultive. In the aftermath, then President Donald Trump walked across the park and held a news conference at St. Johns Church. The USPP was later accused of clearing the park for the President to hold the news conference. This report was later proven false however, the damage to the legitimacy of USPP, and policing in general, was already done (DOI, 2021). USPP’s decision to clear the park of those perpetrating violence was not communicated clearly in advance. Coupled with this was the mischaracterization by politicians, media representatives, and even law enforcement, that violent criminal activity, termed as protest, allowed the incorrect narrative to be created that USPP cleared the park of peaceful demonstrators for the President’s political purposes. The public was not made aware of what police actions would look like so they conflated police tactics designed to minimize the use of force with police over-response. A lack of national standards that clearly differentiate between response to protest activity which is peaceful by definition and violent criminal activity allowed that narrative to take root and perpetuate. The progressive and constitutional practice of not relying on non-specific force and instead relying on individual application of force in response to specific and articulable facts was not explained. National standards will allow agencies to point to clearly defined best practices and to debunk opportunistic mischaracterized interpretations of their lawful actions. In short, a national standard will serve to educate not only law enforcement but the public, the politicians, and media as well.

7 Public Order Standards Effect on Citizen Trust of Police Having quality public order standards that agencies follow, coupled with police legitimacy and public engagement, establishes a foundation for citizen trust of their police. As modern-day policing’s father, Sir Robert Peel, pointed out, “The basic mission for which the police exist is to prevent crime and disorder.” Yet, “The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police actions” (NYT, 2014). The delicate balancing act of preserving and protecting citizen’s rights vs. the mandate to prevent crime and disorder must be understood and respected. All organizations in the democratic world, including police, exist because

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of public consent, and the foundation of that consent is public trust. Trust is a precious and precarious thing. It is hard to get, easy to lose, and difficult to rebuild. Public trust in policing in the USA may be at an all-time low. Police professionals must find a way to bring back that trust. Trust in public order policing depends on effective, reliable, professional, and unbiased policing. This involves and necessitates specialized training, specialized equipment, proper planning, and a lead role given to public order policing specialists. The result is a public that understands that public order policing supports and encourages the power of free speech and peaceful assembly; it is not there to suppress or quell free speech through perceptions of fear and intimidation, but to protect the right to peaceably assemble because the Constitution is always in effect. To prevent negative outcomes and negative accusations on agencies charged with policing First Amendment gatherings, it is essential that public order policing be professionalized and specialized within US law enforcement. Proper training and tactics will provide improved community relations, improved de-escalation capabilities, positive optics, and decrease the reliance on higher levels of force. Currently, the lack of standardized public order equipment has routinely resulted in unnecessary and improper tactics being utilized. The inseparable relationship between tactics, equipment, and training must place tactics as the driving, evolutionary force to improve equipment and the police response to public order. This will provide public order commanders with increased tactical options when dealing with different types of crowds, groups, and organizations. Today, it can be strongly argued that public order policing is still not fully accepted by police executives as an important specialty unto its own. Policing priorities, or lack thereof, are easily identified through language and actions. Agencies have spent tremendous time and effort in developing SWAT units, and mistakenly believe that SWAT can do the job of a trained public order team. But that is not true. When SWAT officers are tasked with a job for which they are poorly trained and ill-equipped, the number of officer and citizen injuries rise, property is damaged, the community begins questioning the law enforcement leadership, civil suits enter the courts, and officers are out of work for long-term rehabilitation from injuries. Lost in this dynamic is the necessary trust that the public places in their police. With national public order standards, a decrease in government interference and control can be had. Agencies can decrease interference from politicians who have no public order experience. These politicians should not be deciding tactics, training, and equipment for public order. Usually, their decisions are politically motivated to please their constituents instead of relying on public order expertise. Standards can stop knee-jerk reactions or decisions made in a vacuum that cater or pander to certain voter demographics and endanger police personnel and the citizens they serve by making their job more difficult and less realistic. Some examples of politically motivated decisions that create obstructions for public order police are restricting the use of sound amplification devices because politicians believe they are weapons; denying the use of less lethal munitions and riot control agents at public order events because politicians compare them to chemical weapons deployed during times of war; and restricting the use of PPE and armored vehicles because of

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the provocative perception by some that relate it to militarization of the police. Standards can remove the guesswork from these decisions and decrease the interference and improper regulations that city managers and government oversight entities sometimes bring to public order. Through sound policy and training that falls back on established and recognized standards, joined with public and political education, these issues can be alleviated and will bridge the gap of misunderstandings to create increased transparency and public trust in public order policing.

8 Conclusion In May 2015, an assessment report on the failures of law enforcement during the US Ferguson, Missouri riots turned up six key themes. A careful examination of these themes would imply that many of them could have been prevented by having national standards: • First, there were inconsistencies in leadership, direction, incident management, and tactical orders. • Second, police failed to understand problems and concerns of the community during the riots. • Third, the police response to the mass demonstrations was reactive and did not appear to establish a strategic approach to effectively mitigate the mass gatherings and violence that was occurring. • Fourth, there was a lack of communication, information sharing, and information management. • Fifth, the use of ineffective and inappropriate strategies and tactics had the unintended consequences of escalating tensions among protestors rather than de-­ escalating them, and infringed upon constitutionally protected activities. • Finally, the response of over 50 different police agencies to Ferguson showed that each responding agency had different missions, policies, training, equipment, and ways to respond, which led to a lack of law enforcement continuity to the response in Ferguson (COPS, 2015). Civil unrest in democratic societies will continue to be a challenge for law enforcement for the foreseeable future. With the current political landscape, global recessions, the issue of climate change, national abortion debates, increased social media use, and new technologies, public order standards are needed more than ever. National public order standards facilitate law enforcement agencies in responding to the challenges posed by lawful protestors and activists, as well as to the threats posed by extremists, and meet those challenges head on. The ability of officers to recall, articulate and implement the training, procedures, and policies they learn from national standards become more significant in the defense of the officers’ choices and actions during public order events and protects agency credibility when followed. National standards also help to educate the media, elected officials, and the public served by those agencies who follow standards. In doing so,

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professionalizing the public order specialty in policing increases transparency and trust, and strengthens the relationship between police and the public. You only get one chance to tell your story for the first time, so law enforcement needs to be better prepared to explain their understanding of laws, policy, and training they receive. The authors leave the reader with a quote from 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature author Rabindranath Tagore, who in his 1916 book Stray Birds wrote, “we read the world wrong and say that it deceives us” (Tagore, 1916, p.  25). Establishing national public order standards can overcome the reading of a situation incorrectly, and thereby move the public trust needle forward.

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NYT, The New York Times. (2014, April 15). Sir Robert Peel’s nine principles of policing. The New  York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/nyregion/sir-­robert-­peels-­nine-­principles-­of-­policing.html Tagore, R. (1916). Stray birds. The Macmillan Company. Anthony J. Raganella  is a retired 25-year decorated New York City Police Department Deputy Inspector. Currently, he is the founder and CEO of NY Blue Line Consulting Group, which provides law enforcement training and consulting services in the USA. Additionally, he has been at the forefront of advocating for and developing national standards for personal protective equipment, tactics, and training relating to US public order policing. While at the NYPD, Anthony spent 8  years as the Commanding Officer of the Disorder Control Unit, a citywide department unit responsible for planning, assessing, and ensuring the Department’s training and readiness in crowd management and disorder control operations for civil unrest, as well as major events, emergencies, and protests. As Commander of that unit, Anthony regularly developed policy, as well as evaluated and implemented training, equipment and best practices related to crowd management and control. He is considered a subject matter expert on matters related to protests and civil unrest and regularly trains, consults, and testifies on such matters. Anthony has completed his Master Degree in Public Administration, summa cum laude, from Marist College; a Bachelor of Science Degree in Behavioral Science, summa cum laude, from New York Institute of Technology; an Associate of Science Degree in Criminal Justice, summa cum laude, from Nassau Community College, as well as being a graduate of the 24th Session of Columbia University’s Police Management Institute, and the 223rd Session of the FBI National Academy. Additionally, Anthony is the author of several published peer-reviewed journal articles and textbook chapter supplements in the field of criminal justice. Jose M. Vega  is a retired 25-year veteran Sergeant Special Assignment of the NYPD and a graduate of the 253rd Session of the FBI National Academy. For 19  years, he was assigned to the Disorder Control Unit which is the NYPD’s main public order unit. Among Jose’s many responsibilities was the training of NYPD personnel on all facets of crowd control, as well as his real-time response to major protests and civil disturbance that provided tactical and logistical support to on-scene incident commanders. In 2016, Jose was promoted to Sergeant Special Assignment—a highly desired and valued acknowledgment bestowed upon high achieving members of the NYPD who are recognized for their performance and outstanding contributions. He is a New York State certified instructor and was one of unit’s lead designers for multiagency training exercises that were consistent with the guidelines and standards set forth by the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program (HSEEP). He is recognized as one of the leading experts on public order in the country. Jose has provided frequent presentations regarding public order to numerous US and international agencies. Jose is currently employed by the Center of Domestic Preparedness where he routinely teaches their field force courses. He also serves on-staff to NY Blue Line Consulting Group, a company which provides law enforcement training and consulting services nationwide. Additionally, he sits on the National Institute of Justice Special Technical Committee for the standardization of training, tactics, and equipment related to crowd control in the USA. Jose is a graduate of John Jay College of Criminal Justice where he received his Bachelor of Science Degree and he has completed the John Jay College NYPD Graduate Certificate Program. Peter Davidov  , a Lieutenant with the Montgomery County Police Department, has served in law enforcement since 1992 when he began his career as a reserve police officer for the Metropolitan Police in Washington, DC. He has served as a US Capitol Police Officer, Scottsdale, AZ Police Officer and as a Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. He has spent the majority of his career with the Montgomery County Police Department in Maryland. Peter has extensive experience as a firearms and general instructor. He has taught entry level and advanced police training in use of force and firearms. He has specialized in the highly demanding area of police

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response to civil disorder, an environment in which police use of force is highly scrutinized. He has trained for civil disturbance since he began his law enforcement career. Peter was one of the founding members and lead trainers of Montgomery County’s Special Event Response Team (SERT) which is responsible for handling civil disturbance. He has responded to many major events including IMF protests in Washington, DC, the 2009 G20 protest in Pittsburgh, PA, Presidential Inaugurations in 1992, 2001, 2005, 2009, 2013, and 2017, and the 2015 Baltimore Civil Unrest. He was the CDU leader for Montgomery County’s SERT response to the Baltimore unrest. He is one of the founding members of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG) CDU subcommittee and served as chairman of the committee from 2015 to 2017. He is currently a member of the National Institute of Justice’s Special Technical Committee for CDU personal protective equipment. As a member of the STC he traveled to the UK and Germany to meet with public order and crowd control experts and practitioners in November of 2017. He presented at the National Public Order Workshop in Ottawa, Canada in November of 2019 at the invitation of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He is a consultant for the DHS Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, AL serving as a crowd management instructor and subject matter expert. Peter holds a Bachelor of Science in Foreign service and a Master of Arts in National Security Studies, both from Georgetown University. He is a graduate of the 279th Session of the FBI National Academy.

Building an Evidence-Based Training Curriculum for Public Order Policing: A Case Study Jason J. Kepp

Abstract  Public order policing is a critical aspect of law enforcement, tasked with maintaining peace and safety during protests and other public events. To effectively execute their duties, police officers require specialized training that equips them with the necessary skills and knowledge. However, not all training programs are created equal, and evidence-based training is increasingly becoming the go-to approach for public order policing. This chapter shows why evidence-based training for public order policing helps improve officer safety and reduce the risk of injuries to officers and civilians. When officers are well-trained and equipped to handle public order situations, they are more likely to act professionally and appropriately, earning the respect and trust of the public. As the demands of public order policing continue to evolve, evidence-­ based training will remain a fundamental approach to ensure officers are equipped to meet these challenges.

1 Introduction Sir Robert Peel, in the 1800s, stated in his nine principles that “the public are the police, and the police are the public” (Williams, 2003, p. 100). He also stated that “the test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it” (Williams, 2003, p. 100). Police derive their authority from Peel’s second principle, “The ability of the police to perform their duties is dependent upon public approval of police existence, actions, behavior, and the ability of the police to secure and maintain public respect” (Williams, 2003, p. 100). All organizations in the democratic world, including the police, exist because of public consent, and the foundation of that consent is public trust. Trust is a precious and precarious thing. It is hard to get, easy to lose, and difficult to rebuild. Public Order Policing depends on trust with the community built on effective, J. J. Kepp (*) Federal Protective Service, Alexandria, VA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_21

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reliable, professional, and unbiased policing. This requires specialized training, specialized equipment, customized environmental scanning beyond current crimefocused geographic data analysis, and a lead role given to Public Order Policing specialists. The result is a public understanding that Public Order Policing supports and encourages the power of free speech; it is not there to suppress or quell free speech through perceptions of fear and intimidation.

1.1 Crowd Management Training in the United States There is no significant challenge for police officers in a democracy than managing mass demonstrations. After all, it is here where the competing goals of maintaining order and protecting the freedoms of speech and assembly meet. The challenge facing law enforcement agencies is the balance of proportional and impartial techniques and tactics to accomplish both. The training of law enforcement officers for crowd management in the United States has not evolved significantly since the 1960s (Maguire, 2022). In the 1960s, police dogs in Alabama (Maurantonio, 2014) and military troops in Ohio (Steidl, 2013) were used to demonstrate a dominant presence to deter disobedience. This escalated force model only inflamed protestors, who reacted more violently (PERF, 2022). Following the protests of the 1960s, inquiries into the police handling of these events identified the shortcomings, and in the 1970s, the “negotiated management model” was developed (PERF, 2022). Under this new model, police were trained to facilitate First Amendment events by communicating with groups and organizations beforehand. However, in the 1990s, training, and response swung back the other way resulting in violent clashes between law enforcement and protestors. This continued into the 2000s when the Mobile Field Force Model was used for protest during the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia and the Free Trade Area of the American (FTAA) negotiations in Miami, Florida (Lush, 2007). Referred to as the Miami model, the tactics employed by law enforcement came under intense scrutiny. Over 20 protestors brought lawsuits against the city of Miami following the FTAA. In a settlement, the city and county paid $460,000.00 (ibid.). Historically, many techniques and tactics have aggressively increased escalation between law enforcement and the community. Crowd management is a critical aspect of law enforcement, and it involves maintaining public order in situations where many people gather for various reasons, such as protests, sporting events, and festivals. However, current crowd management training for law enforcement has several problems that must be addressed to ensure the safety of the officers and the public. National standards for public order officer selection, training, equipment, tactics, command, and those supporting these operations do not exist in the U.S. (cf. also Hanson & Dobson, 2024; Raganella et al., 2024; Fomby, 2024; Kepp, 2024), although city-specific models exist in many large American cities. Police agencies, absent a specific national standard, have often acquired equipment and derived tactics to suit the equipment’s capabilities.

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This void in training has led to an unnecessary limitation preventing an adaptive and situationally informed approach to policing these events. One of the significant problems with current crowd management training is the lack of focus on de-escalation techniques. Law enforcement officers are often trained to use force to control crowds, but this approach can escalate the situation and lead to violence (Ederheimer et al., 2006). On the other hand, de-escalation techniques can help calm the crowd and prevent violence from breaking out. Unfortunately, many law enforcement officers are not trained in these techniques, which can lead to unnecessary violence and injuries. Moreover, excessive force can lead to mistrust and hostility towards law enforcement, particularly among minority communities (Kingshott, 1993). In recent years, there have been several instances of police brutality during crowd control, resulting in the loss of lives and increased social unrest (Maguire, 2022). Therefore, law enforcement agencies must prioritize de-escalation techniques in their training programs to ensure officers are equipped to handle crowd situations in a non-violent and effective manner. Effective communication is critical in crowd management situations. Law enforcement officers must communicate clearly and effectively with the crowd to prevent misunderstandings and de-escalate tensions. However, current training programs often do not place enough emphasis on communication skills. As a result, officers may not be adequately prepared to handle situations where communication is critical. Ineffective communication can lead to confusion, misinterpretation, and a lack of cooperation from the crowd, which can further escalate the situation. Therefore, law enforcement agencies must prioritize communication skills in their training programs to ensure officers can handle crowd situations effectively and safely. Lastly, law enforcement commanders and leaders must know when and how to appropriately use protective tactics for public and officer safety.

1.2 The Importance of Evidenced-Based Curriculum in Law Enforcement Law enforcement education plays a critical role in ensuring public safety and security. The quality of training that police officers receive is fundamental in determining their effectiveness in carrying out their duties. The problem with law enforcement training today is multifaceted. Many police departments struggle with outdated curriculums that do not adequately address current issues such as implicit bias, mental health crises, and de-escalation techniques. As a result, officers may be ill-equipped to handle these situations effectively, leading to tragic outcomes. As such, law enforcement education has a growing emphasis on an evidence-based curriculum. An evidence-based curriculum is an educational approach grounded in research and empirical evidence. This approach aims to ensure that the curriculum content is relevant, up-to-date, and effective in achieving the desired outcomes. In law enforcement education, an evidence-based curriculum can help to enhance the quality of

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training that officers receive, which, in turn, can improve their effectiveness in the field. One of the main benefits of an evidence-based curriculum in law enforcement education is that it can help reduce bias and promote fairness. Police officers are often required to make decisions in high-pressure situations, and their training can significantly influence these decisions. An evidence-based curriculum can help ensure officers receive training based on the most accurate and up-to-date information. This approach can help to reduce bias and promote fair decision-making, leading to better outcomes for all parties involved. Moreover, an evidence-based curriculum can help to reduce the use of excessive force by police officers. Such force can have severe consequences, including injury, loss of life, and public mistrust. An evidence-based curriculum can help officers understand the appropriate use of force and promote de-escalation techniques and alternative strategies for resolving conflicts. Another benefit of an evidence-based curriculum is that it can help to improve community relations. Police officers must work closely with the communities they serve, and their interactions can significantly impact how the community perceives law enforcement. An evidence-based curriculum can help ensure officers receive training emphasizing community-­ oriented policing. This can help to improve community relations and build trust between law enforcement and the community. An evidence-based curriculum is essential in law enforcement education. It can help to improve the quality of training that officers receive, reduce bias, promote fairness, improve community relations, and reduce the use of excessive force. By implementing an evidence-based curriculum in law enforcement education, we can ensure that our police officers are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to carry out their duties effectively and create a safer and more just society.

1.3 A Curriculum Development Process Developing an evidence-based curriculum is a multi-step, ongoing, and cyclical process. The process progresses from evaluating an existing program to designing an improved one, implementing a new one, and evaluating the revised one. ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation; Branch, 2009) is a well-known instructional system design process used by instructional designers to create effective training programs. This process is a systematic approach to instructional design that helps ensure that training programs are effective and meet the target audience’s needs. The process is flexible and iterative, meaning that instructional designers can revisit any phase to improve or change the training program. The ADDIE process comprises five phases: • The first phase is Analysis. This involves identifying the learning needs of the target audience and assessing the resources available for the training program. During this phase, the instructional designer considers the program’s learning

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objectives and outcomes desired for the learners. The analysis phase also includes the relevant research and benchmarking to develop an evidence-based training curriculum. The second phase is Design. During this phase, the instructional designer creates a blueprint for the training program. This includes determining the instructional strategies, methods, and media that will be used to deliver the training content. The third phase is Development, where the training materials, such as presentations, handouts, and assessments are being created. The fourth phase is Implementation when the training program is delivered to the target audience. During this phase, the instructional designer monitors the delivery of the program and makes any necessary adjustments to ensure that the program is effective. The final phase is Evaluation. During this phase, the effectiveness of the training program needs to be assessed. This includes collecting feedback from learners and trainers, analyzing the results of assessments, and making any necessary changes to the training program.

Law enforcement agencies should consider the use of the ADDIE model of instructional design. The ADDIE model provides a structured framework that aids in creating an effective learning product. ADDIE ensures learning is identified in a structured way, that all learning activities serve a goal, and determines learning effectiveness based on appropriate job behaviors and their required knowledge and skills.

2 A Case Study Training and development have become increasingly important in today’s rapidly changing world. Organizations must ensure that their officers have the necessary knowledge and skills to stay competitive and meet the job demands. One way to achieve this is by designing a comprehensive training curriculum incorporating research-based, data-driven, and best practices approaches. Regarding policing public protest, an evidence-based training curriculum plays a crucial role in managing public disorder. An evidence-based training curriculum ensures officers are trained in the most effective techniques and tactics for managing disorder. This training ensures that officers have the knowledge and skills to de-escalate tense situations and prevent them from escalating into violence. In late 2019, a U.S. Federal Law Enforcement Agency (USFLEA) identified a need to re-examine how they responded to and trained for crowd management. A decision was made that all previous information and training of U.S. law enforcement personnel would be disregarded, and the team would start from nothing. The team’s foremost driving training objective was to facilitate peaceful gatherings. In early 2020, the agency co-hosted an interagency symposium with federal, state, and local law enforcement stakeholders to better coordinate public order

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curriculum development. Shortly after the symposium, the USFLEA determined that the best step would be to develop a working group of federal, state, local, and international partners to discuss the current law enforcement principles in crowd management. However, in March 2020, a global pandemic was declared, and efforts were diverted to respond to the growing public health emergency. Then, in May 2020, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police Officer rocked the policing profession. The murder of George Floyd and other police use of force incidents sparked a wave of demonstrations throughout the United States. Cities across the Country witnessed demonstrations unlike anything seen by modern policing. Within the same period, various official agencies initiated an audit of the response to the civil unrest. As a result, the USFLEA re-prioritized the review and development of a comprehensive Public Order Public Safety training program.

2.1 Analyze: Develop the Evidence The USFLEA knew the curriculum needed to be developed as a research-based curriculum. This approach ensures that the curriculum is effective and meets the needs of the learners. Research-based curriculums are grounded in the latest research in learning and development, cognitive psychology, and instructional design. In designing a research-based curriculum, it is essential to conduct a needs assessment to identify the skills and knowledge that learners need. This information helps to inform the curriculum design, ensuring that it meets the needs of the learners. One step that can be used to identify the research and evidence is benchmarking training and identifying best practices. Benchmarking training helps to identify the gaps in an organization’s training program and to stay ahead of the competition. By comparing training practices with industry leaders, an organization can identify where it falls short and needs to improve its training program. Secondly, benchmarking helps to identify best practices that an organization can adopt. By identifying what other successful organizations are doing in their training programs, as well as emerging trends and innovations, an organization can adopt those practices to improve its program. Thirdly, benchmarking provides an opportunity for networking and collaboration. By connecting with other organizations in the industry, an organization can learn from their experiences and build relationships for future collaboration. To assist with benchmarking and gathering data. The USFLEA contracted with International Public Order Policing Subject Matter Experts from the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to develop the research and evidence. The first step was to gather training curricula from other U.S. Federal Law Enforcement Agencies and international law enforcement partners. The goal of the Public Order Training Programs will consist of instructions and guidance reflected in the agency’s Public Order tactical and strategic doctrine, which is required. • The protection of peaceful and lawful demonstration.

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• Emphasis on de-escalation. • Train in protective tactics to handle unlawful demonstrators who are mixed with lawful demonstrators. • The training reflects a range of tactical and strategic options based on research. • The design will consist of courses to train all involved staff, from those responsible for planning and commanding a public order event to those having face-to-­ face interaction with the public. The initial steps the curriculum development team undertook included: • In January 2021, the USFLEA hosted an International Summit on Public Order Policing. The Summit was conducted in a virtual and in-person format to allow practitioners and academics an unscripted open forum where participants could examine responses to public disorder. The information shared would help develop tactics, techniques, and procedures to handle public disorder that impacts critical infrastructures. Practitioners included: local, state, federal, and international law enforcement partners (Portland Police Bureau, Seattle Police Department, Boise Police Department, Utah Highway Patrol, Federal Bureau of Investigation—Behavioral Analysis Unit, Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, and the United Kingdom). Academic partners included the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the University of South Carolina. • The cornerstone of public order policing is trust. To build trust, the community must be involved in developing public order policing philosophy, doctrine, policy, and training. Understanding this, the USFLEA engaged community-based organizations, the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties organizations, who provided comments and suggestions for curriculum development. • Next, the USFLEA partners with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. The Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) is the largest U.S. provider of law enforcement training. FLETC provides career-long training to law enforcement professionals to help them fulfill their responsibilities safely and proficiently. • In March 2021, The FLETC established a Civil Unrest Response Working Group to develop government-wide guidance regarding civil disturbance. This Working Group intended to review the federal response to public order policing, specifically training, equipment, protocol, tactics, and standard operating procedures. The working group comprised 130 subject matter experts representing 18 federal law enforcement agencies. The working group helped produce a core task list, including response protocols, understanding crowd dynamics, and protective equipment. • October 2021—The USFLEA receives an invitation from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to audit and benchmark the RCMP Public Order Commander Course. The benchmarking trip supports the ongoing development of their public order training. As a result, the USFLEA has developed a portfolio of public order training programs that identify the importance of training supervisors and leaders on public order management. The portfolio of training programs includes,

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–– Public Order Public Safety Commanders Course (supervisors and operational commanders). –– Public Order Public Safety Tactical Advisor Course (Operational Commanders). –– The Public Order Public Safety Specialist course (All law enforcement officers). As a result, the USFELA prioritizes developing and delivering the supervisor and operational commanders’ training. Supervisors and Commanders are the key decision-makers driving the public safety specialist in the field.

2.2 Assessing Best Practices In today’s rapidly changing world, organizations must ensure their officers have the necessary knowledge and skills to meet the job demands and stay competitive. Best practices are a crucial aspect of designing an effective training curriculum. A best practice is designed based on proven best practices in learning and development. Incorporating best practices into the curriculum ensures that the organization provides law enforcement officers with the most effective training methods. A best practice is also more likely to be effective because it has been proven to work. The curriculum is based on tried and tested effective methods in various settings. This means that organizations can have confidence that the training provided to law enforcement officers will successfully achieve its intended outcomes. In addition to being practical, a best practice is designed to be inclusive and accessible to all learners. Another critical aspect of a best practice is its adaptability. Organizations can design the curriculum with the future in mind, considering how it can be adapted and updated as new research and best practices emerge. This includes incorporating technology and online learning into the curriculum to make it more accessible and flexible for learners. By designing the curriculum with adaptability in mind, organizations can ensure that it remains relevant and effective over time. • A best practices curriculum is designed based on proven best practices. This approach involves identifying the best practices in learning and development and incorporating them into the curriculum. As part of the best practices approach, the USFLEA conducted several site visits to benchmark and determine best practices in public order policing, which included several U.S.-based law enforcement agencies and several international partners. • The USFLEA travels to France to meet with the French National Police to learn the best principles in Public Order Policing. The benchmarking trip supports the ongoing development of the FPS Public Order/Public Safety Training curriculum portfolio. In addition, the attendees discuss other emerging challenges such as Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE), protection of critical infrastructure, and protection of courthouses during high-profile trials.

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• The USFLEA travels to the United Kingdom to meet with the U.K. College of Policing and New Scotland Yard. The trip aimed to focus on the best Public Order Training and Response principles, partner and share information between federal government law enforcement agencies, gain an independent perspective about how well FPS performs compared to peer agencies, and identify performance gaps and areas of improvement. The USFLEA meets with colleagues in-person and virtually from other European Union Nations and Canada to share lessons learned from recent public order events. Incorporating best practices into a curriculum is essential to an effective training curriculum. Organizations can provide their employees with the most effective training. A comprehensive training curriculum invests in the organization’s and its employees’ future success. Additionally, by designing the curriculum to be inclusive, adaptable, and regularly evaluated, organizations can ensure that it remains effective and meets the needs of the learners over time: the organization’s and its employees’ future success.

2.3 Evaluating the Research USFLEA convenes a Public Order Curriculum Review Conference (CRC) at FLETC. The curriculum development team first reviewed the literature focusing on crowd behavior, interaction, and use of force. In concert with the above actions, it was widely understood that law enforcement would need to partner with academia and community-based organizations. This partnership was critical to help define the objectives of how law enforcement would understand crowd behaviors, interact with crowds, and use force. Practitioners then partnered with researchers to review the science of crowd behavior and crowd psychology. The review focused specifically on the relationships between policing and crowd dynamics. Historically police training on crowd behaviors was based on a nineteenth-century theory that police training was designed to deal with a mindless mob (Williams & Stott, 2022). However, research and evidence show that social identity is the dominant psychological model of crowd action (Reicher et al., 2004). With a model of crowd behavior, the crowd response can be shaped and reshaped positively or negatively based on police response and interactions (Williams & Stott, 2022). The next area of research was to evaluate how to train law enforcement officers to interact with crowds. Tamara Herold, a professor of criminal justice, developed the RDFC (Reasonable, Disarm, Focus, Consistent) Interaction model as a tool for law enforcement officers to de-escalate situations and avoid using excessive force (Clouse, 2018). This model consists of four main components that officers should follow when interacting with individuals who may be aggressive or confrontational, it is a valuable tool for law enforcement officers to de-escalate situations and avoid using excessive force, especially when dealing with crowds (for further information see her chapter in this

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book: Herold & Bürger, 2024). Officers can build trust with individuals and the community they serve by being reasonable, disarming, focused, and consistent. When applied to the context of public order policing, this model can help to reduce the number of violent encounters between law enforcement and the public and improve the overall relationship between the two. Finally, the USFLEA wanted to include a critical decision-making model in the curriculum. Recently the USFLEA implemented a training program called ICAT (Integrating Communication, Assessment, and Tactics). It was created by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF). PERF is an independent research organization that focuses on critical issues in policing, and the ICAT training program was designed to provide law enforcement officers with the skills they need to defuse a range of critical incidents safely. The ICAT program is built upon a critical decision-­ making model that educates officers to assess situations, determine the best action, and review and re-assess. An ethical core at the model’s center provides the guiding principles for the entire process.

2.4 Conducting Literature Reviews A literature review systematically identifies, evaluates, and synthesizes relevant literature on a specific topic. A literature review is a crucial step in achieving this goal as it provides a comprehensive understanding of the current knowledge and practices related to the training topic. In this essay, we will explain the process of conducting a literature review and how to incorporate it into a training curriculum. The following steps provide a guide through the process of conducting a literature review: 1. Define the research question: Clearly define the research question, topic, or field addressed in the literature review. 2. Search for relevant literature: Conduct a thorough search of relevant databases, journals, and other sources to identify relevant literature. Use search terms specific to the topic or field to ensure that relevant studies are identified. 3. Evaluate the literature: Evaluate the quality and relevance of the studies found. Consider factors such as the source of the information, design, and relevance to the research question. 4. Synthesize the findings: Synthesize the findings from the studies you have reviewed. Identify common themes, patterns, and gaps in the literature. 5. Write the literature review: Write a comprehensive review summarizing the findings of the studies you reviewed. Organize the literature review based on the themes and patterns you have identified. Once the literature review is completed, the findings can be integrated into the training curriculum. The following steps can guide you through the process: 1. Identify the key findings of the literature review relevant to your training topic.

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2. Develop learning objectives aligned with the key findings of the literature review. The learning objectives should be specific, measurable, and achievable. 3. Develop training content that is based on the essential findings and learning objectives. Use the literature review to inform the development of the training content. 4. Develop assessments aligned with the learning objectives and training content. The assessments should measure the trainees’ understanding of the essential findings and their ability to apply them in practice. 5. Evaluate the effectiveness of the training curriculum. Use the literature review to inform the evaluation process and assess whether the training has achieved its objectives. As an example, find a small sample of some of the literature reviewed in the case study in this list: • Center for Policing Equity (2021). Guiding Principles for Crowd Management”, https://policingequity.org/crowdmgt • Clouse, S (2018). Police Interventions, Public Perceptions, The RDFC Interaction Model. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4236&co ntext=thesesdissertations • Herold, T. (2021). Research in Brief: Public Safety and Mass Demonstrations New Understanding and a Model for Advancement. https://www.policechiefmagazine.org/research-­in-­brief-­public-­safety-­and-­mass-­demonstrations/ • Logan, K (2019). Policing Protests: An Exploratory Analysis of Crowd Management Policies., https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a rticle=4735&context=thesesdissertations • Metropolitan Police (2012). 4 Days in August. Strategic Review into the Disorder of 2011. [Not published]. • Hoggett, J., & Stott, C. (2010). The role of crowd theory in determining the use of force in public order policing. Policing & Society, 20(2), 223–236. • International Association of Chiefs of Police (2019). Crowd Management. h t t p s : / / w w w. t h e i a c p . o rg / s i t e s / d e f a u l t / fi l e s / 2 0 2 0 -­0 8 / C r ow d % 2 0 Management%20FULL%20-­%2008062020.pdf. • Police Executive Research Forum (2015). Lessons Learned from the 2015 Civil Unrest in Baltimore. https://www.policeforum.org/ assets/2015baltimorecivilunrest.pdf. • Reicher, S., Stott, C., Drury, J., Adang, O., Cronin, P., & Livingstone, A. (2007). Knowledge-based public order policing: Principles and practice. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 1(4), 403–415. • Reicher, S., Stott, C., Cronin, P., & Adang, O. (2004). An integrated approach to crowd psychology and public order policing. Policing: an international journal of police strategies & management, 27(4), 558–572. • Police Executive Research Forum (2006). Police Management of Mass Demonstrations: Identifying Issues and Successful Approaches. https://www. policeforum.org/assets/docs/Critical_Issues_Series/police%20management%20

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of%20mass%20demonstrations%20-­%20identifying%20issues%20and%20 successful%20approaches%202006.pdf. Seattle Office of the Inspector General – “Less Lethal Weapons Usage in Protests, June 2020.” Still, K. Understanding crowd dynamics: The main event. Retrieved from https:// www.gkstill.com/News.html. Stott, C., Reicher, S. (1998): Crowd action as intergroup process: Introducing the police perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology. 28:509–529. The President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing (2015). Final Report, https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/taskforce/taskforce_finalreport.pdf.

A literature review is essential in developing an evidence-based and relevant training curriculum. Conducting a literature review involves defining the research question, searching for relevant literature, evaluating the literature, synthesizing the findings, and writing the literature review. Incorporating the literature review into a training curriculum involves identifying the key findings, developing learning objectives, developing training content, developing assessments, and evaluating the training. Organizations that conduct literature reviews can ensure that the training curriculum is based on current knowledge and practices and effectively prepares law enforcement officers for their roles.

2.5 Developing the Curriculum: Putting it Together The first step in the design and development phase is to identify the goals and objectives of the curriculum (cf. Table 1). This involves defining what students should know and be able to do by the end of the curriculum. Goals should be broad statements describing what students should achieve, while objectives will be specific, measurable, and time-bound statements describing learning outcomes. The USFLEA determined that the primary goals for the program would include understanding crowd behavior based on the Elaborated Social Identify Model (ESIM), a critical decision-making process, crowd interaction, and communication and crowd interaction based in the RDFC Model, and, when required, protective tactics. Curriculum objectives are an essential part of the teaching and learning process. They help define what students should learn and measure their progress. The first step in writing curriculum objectives is identifying the desired learning outcome, what you want your students to know, understand, or be able to do by the end of a block of instruction. For example, de-escalation is a tactical consideration that can be used in several police critical incidents. In public order policing, de-escalation should include education on how law enforcement officers can communicate with demonstrations to solve problems without force. A crowd conducts a peaceful “sit­in” in an intersection, or that blocks access to a facility or building. Law enforcement officers can de-escalate the situation by re-routing traffic or directing building occupants and visitors to another entrance to the building. In public order policing,

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Table 1  Summary of the USFLEA Training Program Goals (versus Current U.S. Law Enforcement Training)

Crowd Behavior

Historical L.E. Crowd Management Training Subscribe to the Le Bonian thesis in their understanding of crowds; crowds and large groups of people cannot be reasoned with due to impaired cognitive function.

De-escalation

Not included.

Critical Decision Making

Not included.

Interaction Model

Not included.

First Amendment

Historical training focused on responding to disorder and unlawful behavior. Provided students with a best-practice organization of a mass arrest team and tactics for mass arrest operations.

Arrest Procedures

USFLEA Training Program Crowd members are viewed as responsive to rational appeals. A more significant role is given to non-coercive pathways to behavior change, like leadership and authority. Understanding the role of social norms guiding group behavior, the pro-social norms of some crowds could now be seen as a police resource. Thus, opportunities for self-policing could be included in the model. De-escalation tactics and techniques are included to avoid physical confrontations unless immediately necessary to protect someone or stop dangerous behavior while minimizing the need to use force during an incident when the totality of the circumstances and time permits. De-escalation tactics and techniques increase the likelihood of voluntary compliance and cooperation. Public Order Public Safety (POPS) training will use the Police Executive Research Forum’s Critical Decision-Making Model (CDM). CDM is designed to help officers develop and think through their options. At the center of the CDM is an ethical core that provides rounding and guidance for the entire process. The RDFC Interaction model is grounded in several theories, including reactance theory, procedural justice, police legitimacy, defiance theory, the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM), differential coercion theory, and situational crime prevention. The diverse theories contributing to the RDFC model form the four dimensions that aim to explain factors leading to citizen support for policy interventions. Will train officers and agents with the knowledge and skills needed to maintain public order while facilitating freedom of speech and assembly. Avoid the use of mass arrests whenever possible. If possible, make targeted arrests for violent criminal activity.

law enforcement officers can also de-escalate by explaining the “WHY.” Law enforcement officers can de-escalate by explaining why actions need to be taken if law enforcement needs to move the crowd that blocks access to a facility. Law enforcement officers can attempt to de-escalate by explaining why the crowd needs to move and where they should move. However, the “WHY” needs to be legitimate

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and honest. A lack of transparency and truth will potentially escalate tensions. It is also understood that not all actions can be de-escalated, and when the police require action, it needs to be reasonable, focused, and consistent. Setting goals and objectives is essential for any training curriculum. Goals and objectives provide a structure and direction for the training, ensuring that it meets the needs of the learners and the organization. Goals and objectives clearly explain what the training is trying to achieve. They help focus the training, ensuring learners learn the right skills and knowledge. Goals and objectives also ensure that the training is aligned with the organization’s needs, helping to improve performance and productivity.

3 Conclusion Law enforcement’s role also changes as the world continues to evolve. Law enforcement must adapt to the new challenges, including ensuring that the training that police officers receive is evidence-based. This approach ensures that the curriculum content is accurate, up-to-date, and effective in achieving the desired outcomes. By emphasizing an evidence-based curriculum in law enforcement education, organizations promote fair decision-making, improve community relations, and reduce the use of excessive force. This will ultimately lead to a safer and more just society for everyone. Public order police officers have unique responsibilities and need a robust training program to develop the skills necessary to carry out those responsibilities effectively. Traditionally, public order training programs for law enforcement personnel are often too short and not comprehensive enough. Inadequate training programs only undermine communities’ trust in law enforcement, and this lack of trust can lead to disastrous outcomes. It is essential to recognize that the problem with law enforcement training is not just limited to individual departments or jurisdictions. It is a systemic issue that requires a concerted effort to address. Policymakers must prioritize investing in training programs that adequately prepare officers for the challenges they will face in their daily work. There is no significant challenge for police officers in a democracy than managing mass demonstrations. Current crowd management training for law enforcement has several problems that must be addressed to ensure officers’ and public safety. The lack of focus on de-escalation techniques, inadequate preparation for dealing with diverse crowds, and the lack of emphasis on communication skills are just a few of the issues that need to be addressed. Law enforcement officers must be trained to assess every event independently to determine the protective tactics that will effectively support and facilitate First Amendment activity and provide public safety. The core principle of Public Order Management is that most crowds that gather are law-abiding citizens legally exercising their rights to protest and voice their concerns and beliefs. Therefore, the focus and emphasis should be on managing and maintaining order by supporting people’s rights to gather or protest and not

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be persuaded to focus on managing a disturbance. When the objective is to restrain the disorder, this is done through countermeasure tactics and force to de-escalate the situation. Law enforcement agencies and training programs must take these issues seriously and provide officers with the skills and knowledge to manage crowds effectively and safely. Only then can we ensure that law enforcement and the public can work together to maintain public order peacefully and respectfully. A comprehensive training curriculum ensures officers have the latest information and skills to succeed in the workplace. It also shows officers that the organization values their growth and development, which can lead to increased job satisfaction and retention. By incorporating these approaches into the training curriculum design, organizations can ensure that their employees have the necessary knowledge and skills to meet the job demands and stay competitive. A comprehensive training curriculum invests in the organization’s and its employees’ future success. A training curriculum must be designed based on current research, data, and best practices to be effective. By incorporating these approaches into the training curriculum design, organizations can ensure that their employees have the necessary knowledge and skills to meet the job demands and stay competitive. Disclaimer  The opinion expressed herein is that of the author and is not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the US Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Government.

References Branch, R. M. (2009). Instructional design: The ADDIE approach. Springer New York. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-­0-­387-­09506-­6 Clouse, S. (2018). Police interventions, public perceptions, and the RDFC interaction model. UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones, 3233. https://doi. org/10.34917/13568419 Ederheimer, J., McFarland, M., Murphy, J., Narr, T., & Toliver, J. (2006). Police management of mass demonstrations: Identifying issues and successful approaches. Police Executive Research Forum. Fomby, S. (2024). Public order policing: Use of force. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Hanson, A., & Dobson, C. (2024). Police organization and the policing of assemblies in the United States. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Herold, T., & Bürger, B. (2024). Preventing crime at assemblies. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Kepp, J. (2024). Considerations for personal protective equipment for public order policing. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Kingshott, B. (1993). Police behavior in crowd situations-A recipe for violence? Police Journal, 66(4), 366–376.

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Lush, T. (2007, October 4). FTAA Settlement Reached. Miami Times. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/ftaa-­settlement-­reached-­6333537#:~:text=Under%20 the%20accord%2C%20the%20city,protesters%20called%20a%20gross%20overreaction Maguire, E. (2022). The role of the U.S. government in the law enforcement response to protests. Niskanen Center, Arizona State University. Maurantonio, N. (2014). Remembering Rodney King: Myth, racial reconciliation, and civil rights history. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 91(4), 740–755. https://doi. org/10.1177/1077699014550094 PERF, Police Executive Research Forum. (2022). Rethinking the police response mass demonstrations: Nine recommendations. Critical issues in policing series. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://www.policeforum.org/assets/MassDemonstrationsResponse.pdf Raganella, A., Vega, J. M., & Davidov, P. (2024). Public order standards – Moving the public trust needle forward. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Reicher, S., Stott, C., Cronin, P., & Adang, O. (2004). Integrated approach to crowd psychology and public order policing. Policing: A International Journal of Police Strategies and Management, 27(4), 558–572. Steidl, C. (2013). Remembering May 4, 1970, Integrating the Commemorative Field at Kent State. American Sociological Review, 78(5), 749–772. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122413500273 Williams, K. L. (2003). Peel’s Principles and their acceptance by American Police: ending 175 Years of reinvention. The Police Journal 76(2):97–120. https://doi.org/10.117 7/0032258X0307600202 Williams, N., & Stott, C. (2022). The role of psychological science in public order policing. Police Psychology, 149–171. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-­0-­12-­816544-­7.00008-­5 Jason J. Kepp  is an Assistant Director at the Federal Protective Service, where Jason is a member of the leadership team that leads the training and professional development of sworn and non-­ sworn employees. Jason spent 25 years in the emergency services field, serving in the field and later as Deputy Director of Emergency Medical Services at Somerset County Emergency Services Academy (N.J.). Before starting with the Department of Homeland Security, Jason’s career encompassed all organizational leadership, development, and management levels for emergency service organizations and educational institutions. His published works have included active threat response and training, incident management, health and safety, pandemic response, and tactical law enforcement operations. Jason has received numerous awards for superior performance throughout his tenure. His awards and decorations include lifesaving certificates of achievement, agency commendations, and the Secretary of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service. Jason is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Research and Advisory Committee, Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), and the Order of the Sword and Shield, an academic and professional honor society for homeland security Jason has a Bachelor of Science in Homeland Security and is currently pursuing a Masters of Science in Emergency Services Management.

Public Order Policing: Use of Force Spencer Fomby

Abstract  Public order policing is one of the most complex areas of modern policing and requires specialized training and expertise. When police intervene in a protest event, the focus is often on the use of force. While police in other Western countries have invested considerable resources in improving public order policing, American police agencies have long neglected this specialty. By summarizing historical trends and current challenges, this chapter will provide an overview of the current use of force landscape in American public order policing. Through case studies and real-world examples, this chapter will also provide guidance for police leaders to develop effective use-of-force capabilities that conform with best practices, legal restrictions, and model policies.

1 Introduction In a democratic society, governmental power is derived from the people. Community members who are elected to represent their constituents are accountable to the people who put them in power. When the people are dissatisfied with their representatives, they have a fundamental right to redress the government of their grievances. These accountability measures can take many forms including, direct contact with their representatives, emails, phone calls, letters, media interviews, op-ed columns, blog posts, social media, legal action, and civil disobedience. When people engage in civil disobedience, they may come into contact with police officers who are often the most accessible and prominent representation of governmental power. These interactions can be dynamic and complex but are often defined by any force used by officers against members of the community. Police are entrusted with the responsibility of protecting citizens and upholding the law. This responsibility sometimes

S. Fomby (*) National Tactical Officers Association, Colorado Springs, CO, USA e-mail: [email protected]; https://www.leexperts.net © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_22

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requires the use of force. The use of force is a necessary component of policing but should be objectively reasonable and proportionate to the threat faced by the officer. Protests are among the most difficult events that police have to manage. Police leaders have to balance the need to maintain or restore order with the rights of people to assemble, engage in free speech, and peacefully protest. Police agencies often struggle to maintain public trust and legitimacy even when the use of force is lawful and proportionate. The mere presence of police, especially large numbers of officers wearing personal protective equipment (PPE), can have a negative effect on police/community relations. There are a range of force options that police may employ during a protest event, from escorting passive protesters to the use of deadly force. A professional police response to a protest event requires careful consideration of how and when police will use force. This requires the appropriate training, policies, and legal guidance for everyone in the agency. The incident commander has to understand the ramifications of any tactical decisions. Each officer on the ground needs to have a full understanding of the mission, the commander’s intent or desired end state, and the role that force plays in accomplishing the policing mission during and after the event. Since the creation of Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams in the 1960s, there has been an emphasis on the development of this policing specialty. There are now professional organizations for SWAT at the state and national level. There are instructor courses for various sub-specialties. There are SWAT competitions and large-scale exercises to evaluate core competencies and develop best practices. All of this has created a lucrative industry for everything related to SWAT operations including tactical training, leadership training, equipment, firearms, less lethal options, specialty vehicles, surveillance equipment, robots, drones, and PPE. Conversely, there hasn’t been the same commitment to the development of the public order specialty in the United States. The National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA) is a professional organization that has created national standards for SWAT teams and related tactical units. The NTOA (2023) has been instrumental in advancing best practices for command and control, training, leadership, use of force, tactics, and use of specialty equipment and munitions. In June 2023, the NTOA released the first public order national standard for American police. The Public Order Response and Operations Standard was created in collaboration with public order experts in the UK, Germany, and Canada. The Public Order Response and Operations Standard is designed to provide guidance  for creating a public order specialty unit. The Public Order Response and Operations Standard defines the capabilities a public order specialty unit must have and provides recommendations on the minimum amount of training that is needed to maintain proficiency. This is a critical step toward creating minimum standards for public order units and the specialists who are assigned to them. This effort will also lead to a more standardized approach to public order use of force in the United States.

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2 Law and Policy In the United States of America, the First Amendment of the Constitution protects the right to freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Police can place certain time, place, and manner restrictions on these rights. The regulation must be content-neutral, it must be narrowly tailored to serve a significant governmental interest, and it must leave open ample alternative channels for communicating the speaker’s message. (The National Archives, 2023; Keane & Raganella, 2024). The 4th Amendment of the Constitution provides protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. Seizures as defined by law include detentions, arrests, and uses of force by police officers (The National Archives, 2023). The reasonableness of force used to effect a seizure is determined by balancing the nature and quality of the intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against the governmental interests at stake. In essence, the consideration is what force option was used and what was the foreseeable risk of injury under the totality of the circumstances. The courts have emphasized that the most important factor is whether the individual posed an immediate threat to the officer or the safety of the public (Young v. County of Los Angeles, 655  F.3d 1156, 1162 (9th Cir. 2011); CA POST, 2022).

2.1 Public Sentiment Over the past 60  years, there has been a constant evolution of what the public believes is reasonable use of force by police in response to disorder. Some use of force best practices from the recent past are now considered brutal and excessive by the American public, for example, the use of water cannons or deploying canines on the front lines of a protest. While many Western countries have national police forces or national training standards, within the American policing community there has never been a national consensus on protest use of force. Individual agencies have been free to develop tactics, training, policies, and protocols with little regulation on the State or Federal level. Public Order practitioners, including instructors and experts, have not worked together to advance the theoretical and practical understanding of public order use of force (cf. also Raganella et al., 2024). Because members of the profession have not prioritized this work, changes in law and policy are most often the result of civil lawsuits, criminal charges against individual officers, external after-action reviews, or court-ordered reforms. The most recent wave of external reform efforts is a result of the George Floyd protests from the summer of 2020. George Floyd was killed on May 25, 2020 (Tyler, 2021). The following day the video of his killing was seen by millions of people around the world and sparked local protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota that soon spread to cities all over the United States and beyond. On Friday, May 29, 2020, the

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protests reached most major cities and eventually, protesters took to the streets in over 2000 American cities and towns (Burch et  al., 2023). 15–26 million people self-reported taking part in George Floyd protests, making it the largest series of protest events in recent American history (MCCA, 2020). These events led to the largest deployment in modern U.S. policing. Although most protests were peaceful, there were significant acts of vandalism and violence directed at police. Over 2000 officers were injured during the unrest including several who were shot and killed (ibid.). The police response to the George Floyd protests varied from city to city. Many agencies were unprepared for the scale, length, and intensity of the protests. Few agencies had prioritized public order training for line officers, creating specialized public order units, or the development of specialized command personnel. Agencies reported that they were ill-equipped to intervene in the vandalism, looting, violence, and other criminal activity. Many agencies lacked the appropriate personal protective equipment to outfit the officers who were deployed. There was also a lack of experience at all levels of the deployment and some agencies allowed untrained officers to use chemical agents and less lethal impact munitions (ibid.). The result was that many members of the public and the officers who were deployed were seriously injured. At least 115 people were shot in the head by police using less lethal impact munitions and dozens of people were permanently blinded as a result (PHR, 2020). There were widespread reports of police indiscriminately firing less lethal impact munitions into crowds, deploying CS gas without giving dispersal orders, using OC spray against passive protesters, and using force against members of the media. These allegations led to hundreds of civil lawsuits all over the United States and demands for changes to policing policy, local ordinances, and state law.

2.2 Political Influence on Police Use of Force Law and Policy For decades left-wing extremists, including Antifa activists and members of other related organizations, have engaged in systematic efforts to change police policy and laws, restrict access to equipment and weapons, and otherwise limit the effectiveness of American police. Some of these activists are anarchists whose stated goal is to abolish the police and create new forms of community-based public safety (Bray, 2017). During the George Floyd protests, “Defund the Police” became a rallying cry and then a coordinated political effort. Once politicians started folding under political pressure, activists seized the momentum and pushed their agenda. For the most fervent anti-police activists, defunding the police was a compromise, but it was one more step in the direction of abolition. The Defund the Police movement led to ill-conceived politically motivated changes to policy, deployment strategies, and restrictions on equipment. These decisions were made by politicians who were pandering to the most vocal police critics. Police experts were generally excluded or ignored during the subsequent policy discussions. As a

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result, public policy decisions were made without consideration of the unintended consequences. The Berkeley City Council made a rushed public policy decision in the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd protests: On May 29, 2020, the Berkeley Police Department responded to assist the Oakland Police Department in downtown Oakland. As the Berkeley officers arrived on scene, a large crowd attempted to access the Oakland Police Department Headquarters at Broadway and 7th Street. Police officials were aware that extremists had been attacking police stations in other cities and attempting to burn them down (Helsel, 2020). Berkeley Police officers assisted Oakland Police and Alameda County Sheriff deputies with keeping the crowd away from the police station. Members of the crowd began throwing projectiles and explosives at officers and the police responded by using less lethal impact munitions, OC spray, and CS gas. A core group of Antifa activists used this opportunity to attack police with explosives, projectiles, and Molotov cocktails. Police declared an unlawful assembly and used CS gas to disperse the crowd. This was only the 2nd CS gas deployment by Berkeley Police officers during a protest in over 20 years. (Dinkelspiel, 2014) During the next several hours, members of the crowd continued to use deadly force against the officers on scene. Boogaloo Boi (a loosely organized far-right anti-government extremist movement) member and US Air Force Sergeant Steven Carrillo shot and killed Federal Security Officer David Patrick Underwood during the ensuing violence (Shepherd, 2020). Despite the fact that Berkeley Police officers sustained a multi-hour deadly attack from an organized group of extremists and criminals, the Berkeley City Council seized on the opportunity to promote their political agenda. On June 9, 2020, just a week after the most violent rioting that Berkeley Police officers had experienced since the 1960’s, Berkeley City Council banned the use of CS gas, smoke, and OC spray during protests (Raguso, 2020). There was no consideration for the professionalism, training, and experience of the Berkeley Police officers and their judicious use of chemical agents over the years. The goal was to be seen as the most progressive city council in the country. This decision left Berkeley Police officers with impact weapons as their only force option when responding to violent unrest.

Politicians and policymakers in many other jurisdictions made similar knee-jerk reactions in the wake of the George Floyd protests (Chavez, 2020). Some jurisdictions passed ordinances banning the use of CS gas, OC spray, and less lethal impact munitions. Other restrictions were focused on specific tactics, such as mass detention or mass arrest. The most impactful changes were rushed decisions to strip police budgets. Municipalities seemed to be in a race to defund their police agencies. Billions of dollars of police resources were reallocated or eliminated in the weeks and months following the George Floyd protests (Levin, 2020). Some state legislatures passed laws banning the use of chemical agents and less lethal impact munitions in protest response, while others created restrictions that reinforced what experts in public order policing believe are the best practices. These rushed public policy decisions have created even more confusion for those trying to understand what force is objectively reasonable in response to violent civil unrest. There is a huge disparity in the force options individual police agencies are authorized to use during protests and no professional consensus or national standards for the use of CS gas, OC spray, and less lethal impact munitions.

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2.3 Use of Force Policy Instead of banning access to less lethal options, U.S. police need clear guidelines for the policy, training, and use of less lethal weapon systems and munitions. Less lethal impact munitions and chemical agents should be regulated at the state and federal levels. When used incorrectly or by untrained personnel, these weapons can cause permanent debilitating injuries. The American policing community has to do a better job setting standards for the training and supervision of the use of these less lethal options. There is no excuse for the widespread inappropriate use of impact munitions and chemical agents that we have seen in recent years. Agencies should conduct an annual review of their public order policy with consideration for changes in the law, promising practices, and best practices. The policy should give clear guidance for all aspects of managing and controlling a protest event. Model policies created by police policy and research organizations, such as the Major City Chiefs Association or International Association of Chiefs of Police, are a good starting point, but the best resource is often an agency like the Oakland Police Department in California or the Portland Police Bureau. These agencies have received intense scrutiny over their response to protest events and their departmental policies contain many of the national best practices. California Peace Officers Standards and Training Organization (CA POST) has updated its crowd management guide to include industry-standard best practices for deploying less lethal options (CA POST, 2022). These guidelines should be widely adopted and used as the current standard for the deployment of these potentially dangerous munitions. CA POST (2022, p. 43 f.) recommends the following: “[K]inetic energy projectiles and chemical agents should only be used to defend against a threat to life or serious bodily injury to peace officers or others or to bring an objectively dangerous and unlawful situation safely and effectively under control. An objectively dangerous and unlawful situation is one where, absent intervention, there is an imminent threat under the totality of the circumstances to overtake and/or exceed law enforcement capabilities and on-scene resources. In such a situation, law enforcement may use kinetic energy projectiles and chemical agents to safely and effectively bring a situation under control in accordance with specific requirements. Those requirements are set forth in Penal Code section 13652 (b) (1–11) and summarized below. Examples of objectively dangerous and unlawful situations may include, but are not limited to: • • • • • • • •

Act of felony vandalism that will likely lead to further felonious acts Looting Blocking roadways with active vehicular traffic endangering life Arson Rioting Illegally taking or attempting to take a prisoner from a peace officer Individuals in distress, injured, trapped, or encircled in a crowd Carjacking of motorists during civil disorder

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• Individuals engaged in violent acts • Use of biological, chemical agents, substances, or explosives that could inflict serious bodily injury to a peace officer or citizen • Potential immediate takeover by an unlawful crowd of critical facilities that may overwhelm existing resources or impact public safety”

3 Public Order Policing Training The tactics, training, and, equipment used by American police have not seen significant advancements since mobile field force tactics were developed in the 1980s. While there have been myriad improvements in the tactics, techniques, policies, and procedures for SWAT teams in the United States since the 1960s, there has been very little change in the way American police respond to protests. Mobile field force tactics were created in the 1980s by Miami-Dade Police Department. The tactics have been adapted over time, but still maintain the same basic concepts. Mobile field force has been the most widely adopted approach to public order in modern American policing (FEMA, 2023). These tactics are based on a system of rigid formations, positions, and tactical movements. They are designed to move large numbers of officers in organized teams, squads, and platoons to accomplish certain mission-critical tasks during a protest event. Maintaining an effective mobile field force capability requires a commitment from a policing agency. Mobile field force units require specialized equipment and extensive training. Some police agencies have invested in the creation of specialized units, while others have trained all uniformed personnel. Some agencies do a combination of both. Unfortunately, too many American police agencies lack the capability to manage a protest event because they have not invested in the requisite training and equipment. In the aftermath of the George Floyd protests, agencies conducted after-action reviews that have since been released to the public. One of the consistent themes in these reviews is the lack of training for line personnel, specialized units, grenadiers, and command personnel (Heintze, 2022). The combination of inexperienced and untrained personnel leads to confusion, ineffective deployment strategies, use of excessive force, and lapses in command and control. Many agencies also found themselves exposed to civil liability for failure to train their personnel. In the worst cases, agencies issued chemical agents, distraction devices, and less lethal launchers to untrained officers. (Rector & Reyes, 2021) Some of these officers received only a brief overview of the weapon systems and munitions, while others received no training at all. The results were catastrophic and led to members of the community being seriously injured. Chemical agents, distraction devices, and less lethal launchers should only be used by personnel who have gone through specialized training. This training should be conducted by law-enforcement personnel who have gone to a certified instructor course. Agencies should be careful when searching for certified training courses. Some courses that are presented by

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manufacturers are inadequate for training public order grenadier instructors. The manufacturers’ courses often give a broad overview of the munitions the company sells. The instructors sometimes suggest that all the munitions the company sells are applicable to a protest response. Agencies should seek training from credible instructors who can give an objective opinion about the utility and appropriate use of less lethal weapon systems, impact munitions, and chemical agents.

3.1 Training Case Study On March 11, 2021, Independent Counsel Gerald Chaleff released a review of the LAPD response to the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020 (Chaleff, 2021). The report highlighted specific training failures and the resulting outcomes. The report identified the following training related issues: • “The Department first approved the use of the less lethal 40 mm system in 2000. At that time, only personnel from the Metropolitan Division were authorized to use the 40 mm and trained frequently on its use. • The LAPD later undertook a pilot program to examine the deployment of the 40  mm Department-wide. This was largely due to the increased safety of the 40  mm round vs. the beanbag round and the increased effective range of the 40 mm. The pilot program was successful. The 40 mm system was authorized for Department-wide patrol operations use in 2017 upon approval of the Board of Police Commissioners after the Inspector General’s evaluation. • In 2017, when the Department transitioned to the 40 mm for patrol, officers were trained during the Integrated Communications, De-escalation, and Crowd Control (ICDC) ten-hour class. Two hours of this course were dedicated to the 40 mm transition. At that time, the Department also integrated training on the 40 mm in the Basic Recruit Training Course. To the best of the Review Team’s knowledge, the Department determined that officers would only need to qualify one time during the class to be able to carry and use the weapon in the field” (ibid., p. 44). • “Over 7800 personnel were trained (certified) to deploy the 40 mm during a two-­ hour block of instruction at the ICDC course. However, the Review Team did not find the two hours of training to be sufficient given the skill level needed to deploy the 40 mm in a chaotic public order policing environment. • Officers are required to be trained one time on the 40 mm system. Deploying the 40  mm in public order policing situations requires recurring certification and training” (ibid., p. 45). • “The 40mm rounds cost approximately $25 per round making it too expensive to certify. (requalify) the entire Department on a regular basis” (ibid., p. 42). • “The last training for the 40  mm for officers, other than those going through recruit training, was in 2018.

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• The skill level required to deploy the 40 mm in chaotic public order policing situations is high. Officers must be extremely competent and possess excellent marksmanship skills. It is unlikely that all officers trained possess the marksmanship skills necessary to competently deploy the 40  mm system under those circumstances. • The Department’s Use of Force Tactics directive authorizing the use of 40 mm has no detailed guidance on use in public order policing situations. • The 40 mm can be an effective tool in a crowd control situation when utilized by officers who are well trained and experienced in its use” (ibid., p. 45). The City of Los Angeles ultimately paid millions of dollars to settle lawsuits related to the use of less lethal impact munitions by LAPD officers (Rector & Jany, 2023). The improper use of these weapon systems is a direct result of the decision to cut training hours and reduce costs by shooting fewer munitions in training. The cost of training, including staff hours, overtime, workers comp, and equipment, can be significant, especially in an agency with over 9500 officers. The cost of failing to train officers is more impactful when you factor in the cost of litigation, lawsuit settlements and judgments, and the loss of public trust. LAPD is not unique in the failure to train officers to use force during periods of civil unrest. After-action reviews, independent investigations, and lawsuits have exposed widespread inadequacies in public order training for American police. The lawsuit settlements and judgments from the summer of 2020 will exceed $100 million dollars. To date, cities have agreed to pay over $80 million dollars to protesters who were injured during the George Floyd protests. Hundreds of lawsuits are still pending in courts around the country (Oladipo, 2023). In recent years, American police have started researching new approaches to managing and controlling protest events. American public order experts have started to collaborate with their counterparts in the UK, Germany, Canada, and France. These partnerships have led to new and innovative training methodologies and vigorous debate within the American policing community. Public order experts in Europe and Canada have spent decades developing tactics, techniques, and procedures for response to crowd events. Our European and Canadian counterparts have specialized facilities and training methodologies that are a testament to their investment in the public order policing specialty. There remains a huge need for certified training in all aspects of public order policing in the United States (cf. also Kepp, 2024). American public order training is where SWAT was in the 1980s.

4 Supervision of Use of Force Supervision is a critical component in all aspects of policing, none more important than during tactical operations. Studies show that the presence of a supervisor is critical to reducing the use of excessive force (PERF, 2018). An effective public

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order supervisor understands the importance of avoiding indiscriminate uses of force while attempting to target specific individuals who are engaged in criminal behavior. During complex tactical operations, such as protest events, experienced and well-trained front-line supervisors are invaluable. Supervisors set the tone for their personnel and can create a calming effect during chaos or create anxiety and aggression in their subordinates (Winter, 2023). Field supervisors, play a critical role in the success of any public order operation. They must understand the commander’s intent and the overall mission, and convey that information to their subordinates. They also need the flexibility to make independent decisions in the field that support the mission without constantly seeking approval from the command. There are certainly situations where, time permitting, supervisors will ask permission, such as deploying chemical agents or leaving their designated area of responsibility. When field commanders and supervisors are required to get approval for every decision, it bogs down the whole operation and grinds momentum to a halt (cf. also Bürger & Thielmann, 2024). Best practices in American public order policing dictate that the incident commander must authorize the use of less lethal impact munitions and chemical agents. The authorization to use less lethal impact munitions is best done at the beginning of an operation as units are being briefed. If an officer sees a situation that requires the use of less lethal impact munitions, and that use is within policy, consistent with the law, and in support of the overall mission, they should be able to take immediate action. If they wait to contact somebody in the command post or receive direction from an on-scene supervisor, it may be too late. CS gas deployment during civil unrest falls into two categories, spontaneous and preplanned. There are many factors that play into the decision to deploy CS gas. Typically, the incident commander makes a decision to declare an unlawful assembly as defined by statute and departmental policy. Then the units in the field will give a dispersal order. The dispersal order should contain a force warning and be audible to people in the affected area. The crowd should be given a direction of travel and time to comply with the dispersal order. Once a reasonable amount of time has passed, the incident commander can give the command to deploy CS or other munitions in an attempt to disperse the crowd and restore order. When officers are faced with exigent circumstances such as an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury, a spontaneous deployment of CS gas, or other chemical agents may be reasonable. Field commanders and supervisors should try to control that deployment. Once there is a break in the action and time permits, the field commander or supervisor should notify the incident commander of the spontaneous deployment. The incident commander can then determine whether to declare the event an unlawful assembly and continue with further CS gas deployment in an attempt to disperse the crowd and restore order. Field supervision of public order units is vital to mission success. A competent supervisor is a force multiplier for an incident commander. Having capable front-­ line supervision allows the incident commander to maintain situational awareness of the overall protest event without focusing on minor details. Good supervisors will prepare their subordinates to respond to the stress of a crowd event with the

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appropriate mindset and use force that is lawful, in policy, and proportionate to the level of threat.

5 Public Order Policing Force Options In the United States, the force used by a police officer has to be objectively reasonable, based on the totality of circumstances. There are a number of considerations when determining the reasonableness of any application of force. Some of those factors include whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, whether the suspect is actively resisting, the time available for officers to make decisions, the severity of the crime(s) at issue, and whether the individual is attempting to escape or evade (Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, 1989). Over the past 60 years, the American public has grown weary of certain types of force used by police during civil disturbances. Uses of force that were best practices during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, the use of water hoses and canines on the front line, are now considered by the American public to be excessive. Conversely, water cannons and dogs are widely used by police forces in other Western countries. There is currently a debate about the use of chemical agents, especially CS gas, and less lethal impact munitions. This debate has become politicized and even involves activist groups of physicians offering their opinions on what type of weapons police should be allowed to use. These groups are using their status as medical professionals to call for a ban on the use of CS gas and less lethal impact munitions (PHR, 2023b). Police need to have less lethal options that are effective for targeting violent individuals in crowds, dispersing crowds, or otherwise bringing order to a riotous situation for the safety of all involved. These less lethal options need to be carefully considered. De-escalation should always be the primary focus. Where feasible, police should give warnings before using force. Agencies need to have the appropriate policies and training in place. Only trained personnel should use less lethal munitions. Whenever possible, police should be surgical in their application of force, and only target people who are committing criminal acts. The use of indiscriminate force should be avoided. Police should be judicious in their use of force, especially when there is a potential for injury to nonviolent members of the crowd or bystanders. A major challenge for police is the lack of a perfect less lethal force option. There is no magic force option that can pinpoint a violent suspect who is attacking police with dangerous projectiles, explosive devices, or petrol bombs while hiding behind hundreds of nonviolent protesters. Police commanders are often required to make decisions about the thresholds for declaring an unlawful assembly or riot. The argument is that police should identify and remove the agitators from the protest and allow the assembly to continue. That approach may not always be feasible and sometimes the safest thing to do is end the protest event or forcefully disperse the

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crowd. When police decide to make a tactical intervention, their force options are limited and there is a clear need for technological innovation in this area. In the United States, the primary force options are physical control, baton, OC spray, less lethal impact munitions, and CS gas. Some agencies also use distraction devices including flash bangs, tear balls, sting balls, and blast balls. Less lethal impact munitions, CS gas, and distraction devices allow police to affect members of a crowd from a distance. During violent civil unrest, maintaining distance between police and violent members of a crowd can increase safety and reduce the use of higher levels of force that could lead to more injuries to the public and the police.

5.1 Physical Control and Batons The oldest and most primitive form of police intervention is the use of physical force. Police officers are trained in defensive tactics in the academy and receive varying levels of training throughout their careers. The defensive tactics that are needed in public order policing require a higher degree of proficiency and competency. Public order specialists need to be capable of self-regulation. They have to be able to evaluate threats quickly and apply the proper amount of force based on the suspect’s age, size, apparent physical limitations, and level of resistance. Police officers who are proficient and measured in their use of physical force project professionalism. “Whether referred to as truncheons, Billy clubs, nightsticks, saps, blackjacks, or batons they remain in use throughout the world today in a variety of materials and configurations, arguably as the most common nonlethal [author’s note: Heal preferred the term nonlethal, for our purposes it is synonymous with less lethal] option available to police anywhere in the world. They are also the most primitive, and only the skill and intent of the person wielding them prevents serious injury or death. The fact that they remain popular speaks loudly for the primitive nature of other nonlethal options that would displace them given a commensurate degree of effectiveness and cost” (Heal, 2020).

5.2 Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) OC or pepper spray was developed in the 1960s as an animal repellant and widely adopted by police in the 1980s (Wyant & Burns, 2014). OC is available in fogs, gels, streams, foams, powders, vapors, impact munitions, and pyrotechnic and aerosol grenades. OC causes tearing, involuntary closing of eyes, difficulty breathing, pain, and burning to skin, eyes, nose, and throat. OC has multiple applications in public order policing. It is most often used as a spray to engage individuals who are engaged in violent or destructive behavior. OC spray should not be used indiscriminately and people exposed to OC spray require decontamination. Many times, the person who is sprayed disappears in the crowd and is treated by other protesters or

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medics. Officers should treat people they spray if they are taken into custody. Some agencies use less lethal impact munitions with an OC payload. OC grenades, pyrotechnic and vapor, have become a more popular alternative to CS gas because OC reduces cross-contamination and dissipates faster.

5.3 Tear Gas Tear gas is a term used to refer to a group of riot control agents or chemical agents that are used in public order or SWAT operations. CN was first developed in 1864 and CS was created in 1928. CS was adopted by American police as the primary form of tear gas because of higher safety margins and easier contamination. It is still the most likely tear gas to be used by police in the United States (Wyant & Burns, 2014). In public order policing, CS is typically deployed using a pyrotechnic delivery system that is either hand-deployed or launched. The use of CS has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. Members of the public have complained about the use of CS in urban settings because it creates widespread contamination. There are also concerns about long-term health effects. Some activist groups have used these concerns, even when there is no scientific evidence, to call for a prohibition on the use of CS by police (PHR, 2023a). Some jurisdictions have created policies that provide strict guidance on the use of CS, while others have banned it outright. CS is an effective less lethal option for dispersing an unlawful assembly when other reasonable means have failed. Because of the potential for cross-contamination and the indiscriminate nature of tear gas, CS gas should be used sparingly and only under clearly defined circumstances.

5.4 Less Lethal Impact Munitions Less lethal impact weapons are intended to deliver a blunt impact, similar to a baton strike, at a distance. Less lethal impact munitions are known by several interchangeable terms, specialty impact munitions, kinetic energy projectiles, kinetic impact weapons, extended range batons, rubber bullets, sponge grenades, baton rounds, beanbags, and kinetic rounds (Wyant & Burns, 2014). The media and other uninformed people often use the term rubber bullets to describe any impact projectiles used by police. This is not only inaccurate but also inflammatory. Rubber bullets have historically been used by police and military units in some countries and have led to serious injuries and deaths. Modern less lethal impact munitions are typically made of foam, plastic, or a flexible sock (Heal, 2020). They are designed to deliver blunt impact to the large muscle groups without risk of penetration. When used properly, they allow police to deliver force on a specific individual while maintaining a safe distance.

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5.5 Distraction Devices American police have access to several types of distraction devices. These are generally known as rubber ball diversionary devices, flash bangs, Sting balls, Stingers, tear balls, or blast balls (Wyant & Burns, 2014) These devices are classified as destructive devices by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). Agencies must comply with ATF regulations, and ensure that the people handling these devices have the proper training. Agencies also need to maintain inventory controls to account for all of the devices in their possession and document when they are used. Distraction devices are explosives. When handled incorrectly or deployed in an unsafe manner, they can cause serious injuries including disfigurement. Deployment considerations are critical when using distraction devices. Officers need to consider the location of deployment and blast radius. Where feasible, some warning should be given prior to deployment. Police agencies should carefully weigh the benefits of using a distraction device versus the potential for injury or escalation of tensions. One of the main considerations is whether the police can justify the application of force against everyone it might affect. This determination is based on the totality of the circumstances and the context of the deployment. Some police agencies have found that the appropriate use of distraction devices can reduce the need for higher levels of force: “While we recognize the concerns over the use of blast balls, we also know from experience that, when compared to other available options, including hands-on uses of force in dynamic crowd control situations, blast balls often provide a less intrusive means of bringing volatile situations under control” (Kroman, 2016). “Five varieties are typically used in riot situations, including those capable of only making noise and light; sting-ball or blast-ball grenades that spray small rubber balls; devices that emit pepper spray or tear gas; or a combination of some or all of those, Eells said. In situations with unruly crowds, the devices are meant to help police more effectively use resources by splintering large crowds into smaller groups and creating a “reactionary gap” that can improve policing decisions, and they are far less likely to cause injury than a 39-inch hickory wood riot baton […]” (Kamb, 2020). If a police agency decides to use distraction devices in response to violent unrest, there should be careful consideration for potential injury to members of the crowd. Agencies need to have adequate policies in place to mandate training, supervision, and appropriate deployment strategies. These devices should be used sparingly and only in response to a threat to officers or others or the destruction of property.

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5.6 Restricted Force Options In the United States, there are several effective force options that are banned or severely restricted based on historical context. The International Association of Chiefs of Police Crowd Management Guide provides the following recommendations (IACP, 2019, p. 8): • Canines should not normally be deployed for the purposes of crowd control. When their use as backup is deemed necessary and appropriate, canines should remain in patrol vehicles or other secure locations and, whenever reasonably possible, out of the view of the crowd. Canines should not be deployed for crowd control or management of peaceful demonstrations—but may be deployed in isolated circumstances related to bomb detection, pursuit of suspects in buildings, and related situations. • Horses can be a significant asset in controlling and managing crowds and can normally be used to contain, or direct groups in nonviolent demonstrations as appropriate. However, they should not be used against passively resistant demonstrators. This is especially true of individuals who are sitting or lying down. Unless exigent circumstances exist, horses should not be deployed when the use of chemical agents is anticipated or have been deployed or in ice or snow or other conditions where footing is problematic. • Fire hoses are not recommended for crowd containment or dispersal, due to the potential for negative connotations stemming from their inappropriate use in the past.

6 Research and Partnerships American police have entered into partnerships with academics and governmental scientists to establish standards for the use of less lethal weapons and develop new options that are safer, more effective, and accepted by the public. The National Institutes of Justice (NIJ) is the research arm of the United States Department of Justice. The NIJ has created numerous research projects focused on police weapon systems, both lethal and less lethal. One of the most important less lethal projects is a test method for less lethal impact munitions. The test method is designed to assess the impact energy and precision of direct-fire single-projectile less-lethal impact rounds used by public safety officers. Currently, it is difficult to find objective third-party test results for less lethal impact munitions. Agencies must rely on information from manufacturers. Manufacturers have a financial incentive to market their products as safe, reliable, effective, and applicable to a wide range of public safety scenarios. Agencies require information on the effective range, safe standoff distance, muzzle velocity, kinetic energy transfer, and accuracy of less lethal impact munitions before making a decision to purchase and deploy a new weapon system.

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American police agencies and the public need to have a better understanding of injuries caused by specific impact munitions. “Manufacturers often struggle to explain how a particular round interacts with the body, as this type of testing can be expensive and requires a significant knowledge base to be useful. Some studies have been performed by academics, and testing models have been developed, but often the data is specific to a particular round and may not apply to the inquiring end user” (Wyant & Burns, 2014). That is why it is essential to involve independent experts like Dr. Geoffrey Desmoulin, who is an American engineer with two degrees in Kinesiology. He has developed an expertise in biomechanics and injury causation. He is able to determine the amount of tissue damage caused by a particular less lethal impact munition based on the type of projectile, type of launcher, mass, velocity, environmental factors, and intermediate barriers. Access to this type of scientific information will help police and the public understand the risks of using these kinetic energy weapons in a public order context. The United States Department of Homeland Security has created a program that funds the research and development of new technology for public safety. “The Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) relies on experienced emergency response and preparedness professionals to guide its research and development efforts. The First Responder Resource Group (FRRG) fills that role. Composed of 140 first responders, the FRRG is an all-volunteer working group that helps S&T maintain focus on the top-priority needs of responders in the field. Members represent a broad range of disciplines (law enforcement, fire service, emergency medical service, emergency management, and more), sectors (local, state, tribal, and federal government), as well as first responder professional associations and geographic regions […] The FRRG’s primary role is two-fold: (1) identify high-priority capability gaps in the first responder community that S&T development efforts might be able to fill; and (2) define operational requirements that technologies and knowledge products must meet in order to effectively fill those gaps” (DHS, 2020). The FRRG is currently involved in developing new less lethal technologies for use by public order police. The program is focused on creating less lethal options that are safer, cheaper, reduce cross-contamination, don’t require decontamination, and target specific individuals who are involved in criminal activity.

7 Mass Detentions and Arrests The tactic of mass detention or mass arrest should be carefully considered, and should not be the primary tactic used by police. Lawfully detaining a large number of people presents many legal and logistical challenges. When police agencies aren’t prepared to meet these challenges, they expose themselves to civil liability and public scrutiny. “The city of St. Louis agreed pay nearly $5.2 million to settle claims by people who were arrested during a protest in 2017 over the acquittal of a

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police officer in the shooting death of a Black man, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. According to a proposed class action settlement filed last week, the city agreed to pay $4.91 million, or about $58,500 per person, to 84 people who were protesting in downtown St. Louis. The lawsuit claimed the protesters’ rights were violated when they were caught in a police ‘kettle’ as officers surrounded and arrested everyone in the area. Three people who filed individual lawsuits settled from $85,000 each” (Associated Press, 2023). The American legal standard for detention is reasonable suspicion. Police must have specific articulable facts that the person to be detained has committed a crime, is in the process of committing a crime, or is about to commit a crime. The legal standard to make an arrest is probable cause. Probable cause for arrest exists when facts and circumstances known by the police officer will lead a reasonable person to believe that the suspect is committing or is attempting to commit a crime (Findlaw, 2021). In order to conduct a mass detention or mass arrest, police need to meet these legal standards. It can be difficult to articulate reasonable suspicion or probable cause for every individual in a crowd. Police should not use indiscriminate force in an attempt to conduct a mass detention or arrest. Police can use objectively reasonable force to effect an arrest, overcome resistance, or prevent escape. Prior to conducting a mass detention or mass arrest, police need to declare an unlawful assembly and give a dispersal order. That order needs to be clearly audible and confirmed by other police in the affected area. Officers also need to give a direction of travel, force, warning, and time to comply with the dispersal order. In an urban environment, it can be incredibly difficult to isolate a group and make sure that uninvolved people are not swept up in a mass detention or mass arrest. Once the group is detained, they need to be processed quickly, and those who are under arrest need to be transported in a reasonable amount of time. Police have a duty to care for everyone in their custody. “The District of Columbia agreed to pay $13,302,500 to settle a class-action lawsuit related to the illegal arrest of 680 people. Those people were arrested on April 15, 2000 in connection with the protest against the Prison Industrial Complex during the International Monetary Fund-World Bank demonstrations. Persons were not allowed to leave the area within the police lines and were arrested. Those arrested included demonstrators, bystanders, tourists, journalists, legal observers and parents and their minor children. In recommending summary judgment be granted to the class, the magistrate judge said it was ‘nothing short of ludicrous’ to suggest there was particularized probable cause that each of the cordoned off arrestees were among those demonstrators observed by Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) Lt. Jeffrey Herold to have committed wrongs. The settlement also requires training for MPD officers in handling First Amendment assemblies and mass demonstrations. It also requires an order to expunge all arrest records of the class, allowing them to claim they were never arrested in the incident” (Reutter, 2010).

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8 Documentation Accurate documentation of police use of force is critical for accountability and transparency, as well as organizational credibility and legitimacy. “Thorough documentation is a key element which supports not only criminal investigation and prosecution, but also gives an account of public safety’s response to an event. Accurate, transparent and complete documentation is imperative for public safety credibility and objective review. Documentation should begin during planning and continue throughout the process. Proper documentation can aid in addressing after-action concerns such as complaints, civil litigation, training considerations and requirements for potential reimbursement. Agencies should ensure record retention protocols are followed” (CA POST, 2022, p. 22). When police use force during a protest, it can be difficult to keep track of the details of each force event. It is recommended that police agencies use body cameras and designated camera teams to record interactions between police and members of the crowd. Individual uses of force have to be understood based on the totality of circumstances and through the perspective of the involved officer(s). Without video evidence it will be nearly impossible to determine the sequence of events, especially when members of the public are alleging excessive force. Police agencies should require officers to complete supplemental reports and document any use of force with as much specificity as possible. The best practice is to complete the documentation at the end of each operational period while the information is fresh in the officer’s mind. IACP (2019, p. 10) suggests, “Use-of-force reporting requirements apply equally to policing demonstrations and civil disturbances. It is very important for law enforcement agencies to document and investigate uses of force during these events, not only for managerial and accountability reasons, but also to respond effectively to potential complaints alleging excessive force following an event.” Command personnel need to complete an After-Action Report (AAR) that documents the overall response and any lessons learned. The AAR should document any issues that were identified during the tactical operation and steps taken to mitigate the problem. The CA POST (2022, p. 22 f.) defines methods and subjects of documentation: “Methods of documentation may include (not in priority order): • • • • • • • • • •

Still photography Audio recording All available video recordings Body-worn videos Three-dimensional (3D) mapping (before and after) Live stream capture Communication, dispatch recordings, and printouts Civilian hand-held radio frequency audio capture Written log/journal Crime reports, after-action reports, and any appropriate ICS forms

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• Media reports/open-source footage • Social media sources Subjects to be documented may include (not in priority order): • • • • • • • • • • •

Incident/event action plan Records of law enforcement decisions and information Records of law enforcement actions in response to the event Property damage Injuries and claims of injuries Collective and individual behavior of participants Individual arrests Individual officers’ actions Use of force Evidence/property collected After-action report”

9 Conclusion Public order policing is one of the most challenging specialties in the policing profession. Police have to balance the rights of the public to gather and peacefully protest, with the need to maintain order and the safety of the rest of the community. When force is needed to address violent actors in the crowd, or to restore order, the police need to maintain their professionalism and use force that is lawful, proportionate, and in policy. American police are far behind their international counterparts in the development of the public order specialty. There is a serious need for training, education, professional development, and equipment. Manufacturers, scientists, academics, and practitioners need to work together to create new tactics and technologies that are designed to avoid any escalation and when force is necessary to contribute to the safe resolution of violent unrest.

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NTOA, National Tactical Officers Association. (2023). Public order response and operations standards. Retrieved June 8, 2023, from https://ntoa.org/pdf/PublicOrder.pdf Oladipo, G. (2023, May 25). US cities to pay record $80 m to people injured in 2020 racial justice protests. The Guardian. Retrieved June 7, 2023, from https://www.theguardian.com/ us-­news/2023/may/25/us-­cities-­settlement-­protesters-­blm-­racial-­justice PERF, Police Executive Research Forum. (2018). Promoting excellence in first-line supervision: New approaches to selection, training, and leadership development. Retrieved February 5, 2023, from https://www.policeforum.org/assets/FirstLineSupervision.pdf PHR, Physicians for Human Rights. (2020). U.S. law enforcement shot at least 115 people in the head with crowd-control weapons during the first two months of George Floyd protests: Physicians for human rights. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://phr.org/news/u-­s-­law-­ enforcement-­shot-­at-­least-­115-­people-­in-­the-­head-­with-­crowd-­control-­weapons-­during-­the-­ first-­two-­months-­of-­george-­floyd-­protests-­physicians-­for-­human-­rights/ PHR, Physicians for Human Rights. (2023a). “Less-lethal” crowd-control weapons when misused can cause serious injury, disability, and death. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://phr.org/ issues/weapons/non-­lethal-­weapons-­used-­with-­excessive-­force/ PHR, Physicians for Human Rights. (2023b). Lethal in disguise 2, how crowd-control weapons impact health and human rights. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://phr.org/our-­work/ resources/lethal-­in-­disguise-­2/ Raganella, A., Vega, J. M., & Davidov, P. (2024). Public order standards – Moving the public trust needle forward. In B.  Bürger, T.  Herold, & R.  Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Raguso, E. (2020). Officials ban tear gas in Berkeley, approve other police reforms, Berkeleyside. Retrieved June 7, 2023, from https://www.berkeleyside.org/2020/06/10/ officials-­ban-­tear-­gas-­in-­berkeley-­approve-­other-­police-­reforms Rector, K. & Jany, L. (2023, February 28). One man’s fight to hold an LAPD officer accountable for a protest shooting. LA Times. Retrieved May 6, 2023, from https://www.latimes.com/california/ story/2023-­02-­28/inside-­one-­mans-­legal-­battle-­to-­expose-­lapd-­abuses-­2020-­protests Rector, K & Reyes E. A. (2021, April 11). Highly critical report faults LAPD for mishandling summer George Floyd unrest. LA Times. Retrieved June 7, 2023, from https://www.latimes.com/ california/story/2021-­03-­11/new-­report-­faults-­lapd-­for-­mishandling-­summer-­unrest Reutter, D.  M. (2010). $13 million settlement in DC mass arrest of protestors. Prison Legal News. Retrieved May 22, 2023, from https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2010/ oct/15/13-­million-­settlement-­in-­dc-­mass-­arrest-­of-­protestors/ Shepherd, K. (2020, June 17). An officer was gunned down. The killer was a ‘boogaloo boy’ using nearby peaceful protests as cover, feds say. Washington Post. Retrieved June 7, 2023, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/06/17/boogaloo-­steven-­carrillo/ The National Archives. (2023). The bill of rights: A transcription. Retrieved June 7, 2023, from https://www.archives.gov/founding-­docs/bill-­of-­rights-­transcript Tyler, D. B. (2021, November 5). George Floyd protests: A timeline. New York Times. Retrieved June 12, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/article/george-­floyd-­protests-­timeline.html Winter, D. (2023, May 8). Jaleel Stallings objects to plea deal for MPD officer charged with beating him. Minnesota Refomer. Retrieved June 22, 2023, from https://minnesotareformer. com/2023/05/08/stallings-­objects-­to-­plea-­deal-­for-­mpd-­officer-­charged-­with-­beating-­him/ Wyant, R. T., & Burns, T. (2014). Risk management of less lethal options: Evaluation, deployment, aftermath, and forensics. CRC Press. Spencer Fomby  is a former commander for public order, SWAT, explosive ordinance disposal, and training. He was previously employed by the Berkeley Police Department for 20 years. He has held primary assignments in patrol, narcotics, and crime prevention. He was assigned to SWAT for 18 years as an entry team member, team leader, and tactical commander. He is a certified instructor in the following disciplines: firearms (pistol, shotgun, and carbine), weaponless defense, impact

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weapons, Peacekeeper RCB, Gracie Survival Tactics Level 1, active shooter response, ALICE, chemical agents, flash bangs, sting balls, 40 mm launcher, FN 303, shoot house and tactical deescalation. He has created two CA POST approved de-escalation courses. He was also a tactical instructor for the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA), where he taught Police Counter Ambush and Advanced Response Police Officer (ARPO). Captain (Ret.) Fomby was the lead Berkeley Police Department public order instructor. He was responsible for equipment selection, tactical training, less-lethal weapon selection, chemical agent selection and deployment, and mission planning. He has been recognized as a subject matter expert in police tactics and works on several national projects. He is the section chair for the National Tactical Officers Association Public Order Section and a member of the NTOA Public Order Standard Committee. He is assigned to a National Institute of Justice Special Technical Committee on crowd control equipment. He is an SME in crowd control equipment and tactics for DHS First Responder Resource Group. Captain (Ret.) Fomby earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Howard University and now works as a consultant and expert witness focused on police practices, use of force, officer-involved shootings, and public order.

Considerations for Personal Protective Equipment for Public Order Policing Jason J. Kepp

Abstract  The safety of law enforcement officers is inherent in public order events, especially if the event dissolves into disorder. When disorder occurs, law enforcement officers must be protected. A properly trained and protected officer will be better able to make critical decisions during intense situations. This chapter first elaborates on the necessity of specific Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for public order policing and discusses the importance of standards and training. The second part focuses on distinct PPE, including impact protection, eye, hearing, and respiratory protection, gloves and boots, and outer garments, and briefly discusses their specifics and interdependencies. In conclusion, this chapter also emphasizes the role of law enforcement leaders, who must balance avoiding the perception of expecting disorder with being prepared to respond to it (by wearing PPE) and constantly assessing the need for personnel protection.

1 Introduction Historically, law enforcement officers have used personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect themselves and their colleagues from physical and chemical hazards and to reduce the risk of exposure to infectious diseases. PPE for law enforcement has included ballistic body or stab-resistant armor, ballistic, bike, and motorcycle helmets, protective gloves and eyewear, respirators, and other items. Personal protective equipment (PPE) is critical to law enforcement safety. It is the frontline of defense against potential hazards, including injury, illness, and death. The most effective PPE is designed with the specific job in mind and is tailored to the individual officer’s needs, and the mission of public order is no exception. The goal of Public Order Policing is for law enforcement agencies to help facilitate the lawful expression of legal and/or constitutionally protective assembly and free speech. However, protective tactics are required to maintain a lawful J. J. Kepp (*) Federal Protective Service, Alexandria, VA, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 B. Bürger et al. (eds.), Public Order Policing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43856-1_23

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demonstration if disorder develops. Law enforcement officers not only need to be appropriately trained in tactics. Law enforcement officers must have the appropriate personal protective equipment to protect them. Having the proper personal protective equipment can help reduce the risk of injury to officers and civilians and allow officers to respond to evolving disorder, allowing for improved critical decision-making. In 2018 France faced a powerful movement called the “Yellow Vests.” Born out of social media, the Yellow Vest sustained an unprecedented period of intense protests and violent clashes with the police (Adam-Troian et  al., 2021; Ghirlanda, 2024). In 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a law enforcement officer, the United States faced unprecedented civil unrest resulting in hundreds of officers and civilian injuries. In November 2020, Berlin police faced demonstrations by opponents of the German government’s Coronavirus policies. Then on January 6th, 2021, the attack on the United States Capitol Building injured one hundred and fourteen officers (GAO, 2022; Cannon, 2024). Following these events, inquiries, and audits were conducted by government agencies and private sector organizations. Two constant themes seemed to emerge law enforcement officers were not trained or under-trained to handle violent demonstrations. The second was that law enforcement officers were not provided with the proper personal protective equipment to protect them from the threats they faced. It was recommended that officers in the U.S. cities of Philadelphia and Baltimore receive “PPE,” whereas after-action reports out of Cleveland, Ohio, report that “officers should receive PPE that fits them” (PERF, 2022). Because of the variety of public events, concerts, marches, demonstrations, football, and parades, law enforcement officers who handle public order events must be trained and equipped to manage any form or type of demonstration. Public order management personal protective equipment must be selected based on a continuous threat assessment for public order and public safety. A protective ensemble must be designed and tested to work together to protect the officer from head to toe. In addition, all elements of the PPE must be compatible and allow officers the required mobility to engage in protective tactics. An appropriately protective law enforcement officer will have the clarity and confidence to make critical decisions without the fear of being injured, reducing the risk of disproportionate uses of force. Policing any crowd, especially a large gathering, is a challenge that requires advanced planning and training to enable peaceful protests to occur successfully. Mindful that violence could erupt by persons with hostile intent at any point. However, properly trained and equipped officers need to maintain a low-profile appearance throughout peaceful protest so as to aggravate the situation and provoke negative media attention by appearing ready to quell disorder when no violence exists.

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2 Basic Considerations 2.1 Job Hazard Analysis Police agencies have a crucial role in ensuring the safety of their personnel while on duty. This includes providing personal protective equipment (PPE) for all officers engaged in any hazardous task. To ensure adequate PPE, agencies are responsible for thoroughly assessing the employee/officer’s work practices and operational deployments to identify potential hazards. The assessment should be comprehensive and consider all possible scenarios to ensure that all possible hazards are identified (cf. Table 1). A Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) is a technique that focuses on job tasks to identify hazards before they occur. It focuses on the relationship between the worker, the task, the tools, and the work environment. Ideally, after you identify Table 1  Common hazards associated with public order policing Hazards Chemical (toxic)

Description A chemical that exposes a person by absorption through the skin, inhalation, or bloodstream causes illness, disease, or death. Chemical A chemical that, when exposed to a heat ignition source, results in (flammable) combustion. Typically, the lower a chemical’s flash point and boiling point, the more flammable the chemical. Chemical (corrosive) A chemical that, when it encounters skin, metal, or other materials, damages the materials. Acids and bases are examples of corrosives. Explosion (chemical Chemical reactions cause explosions. reaction) Explosion (over Sudden and violent release of a large amount of gas/energy due to a pressurization) significant pressure difference, such as a rupture in a boiler or compressed gas cylinder. Ergonomics (strain) Damage of tissue due to overexertion (strains and sprains) or repetitive motion. Ergonomics (human A system design, procedure, or equipment tends to lead to human error. error) (For example, a switch that goes up to turn something off instead of down). Fall (slips and trips) Conditions that result in falls (impacts) from height or traditional walking surfaces (such as slippery floors, poor housekeeping, uneven walking surfaces, exposed ledges, etc.) Fire/heat Temperatures can cause burns to the skin or damage to other organs. Fires require a heat source, fuel, and oxygen. Noise Noise levels (>85 dBA 8 h time-weighted average) that result in hearing damage or inability to communicate safety-critical information. Struck-by (mass Accelerated mass that strikes the body, causing injury or death. acceleration) (Examples are falling objects and projectiles.) Extreme Temperatures that result in heat stress, exhaustion, or metabolic temperatures (heat/ slowdown, such as hypothermia. cold) Visibility Lack of lighting or obstructed vision results in an error or other hazard.

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uncontrolled hazards, you will take steps to eliminate or reduce them to an acceptable risk level. It is important to emphasize that a JHA is not a one-time process. Instead, it should be conducted periodically to account for any changes in the job, tools used, or work environment. This is especially true for high-risk jobs where even minor changes could have serious consequences. In addition, a JHA can serve as an essential training tool that helps officers recognize hazards and take appropriate measures to mitigate them. A hazard is something that has the potential to cause harm. Typically, this means something that can cause an injury or illness. To develop a thorough JHA, the following factors should be considered: • • • • • •

Types of duties performed. Frequency of use. Duration of use. Organization’s experiences. Geographic location and climate. Incident operations: It is essential to consider how the organization responds to incidents and whether any areas need improvement. • Likelihood of serious escalation: The potential for minor incidents to escalate into serious ones should be assessed. Once the hazards have been identified, law enforcement must take steps to remove the hazard physically. If the hazard cannot be removed, then steps to replace the hazard should be taken. If elimination and substitution of the hazard cannot be performed, law enforcement agencies should isolate officers from the hazards or change how the officer works. When none of these steps can be performed, law enforcement agencies must protect officers with PPE. Law enforcement agencies must ensure that the PPE provided is adequate for the task and that the equipment is worn correctly and maintained. This includes regular inspections and maintenance to ensure the equipment is in good working order and can be protected in an emergency. By taking these measures, police agencies can ensure the safety and well-­ being of their officers while on the job.

2.2 Public Order Hazards and Threats Law enforcement officers who manage public order events may be exposed to various threats and hazards. Over the last few years, the threats posed by violent individuals and groups have dramatically increased. In the United States during the summer of 2020, U.S. law enforcement officers were subject to blunt trauma and injuries due to launched, thrown, or handheld weapons such as baseball bats, bottles, ball bearings, and bricks. In addition to blunt trauma, they experienced thermal injuries due to Molotov cocktails, improvised explosive devices, commercial-grade fireworks, mortars, and other burning materials, as well as skin, eye, and inhalation

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injuries following exposure to improvised chemical weapons and temporally visual impairment due to lasers (PERF, 2022). The chemical hazards faced by public order policing can be from natural or synthetic agents in the form of liquids, solids, or gases, and the classes of chemicals can vary. Household chemicals are readily available and can be used or blended with other household chemicals. When mixed, household chemicals can react violently, creating new chemicals and threats. Depending on the chemical reactions, officers can be exposed to inhalational threats, thermal injuries, and chemical burns. Acids or corrosive materials can be found in various forms and be procured from grocery to hardware stores. Medium to strong acids can cause minor to significant chemical burns. Caustic substances can also easily be found and used during a public order event. Lye and ammonia are two common caustic materials. Flammable liquids and materials such as Acetone, fuels, oils, greases, and turpentine may also be used. In addition to thermal and heat effects, should the substances be ignited, they may threaten a law enforcement officer. Thicker petroleum products, such as oils and greases, may stick to helmets and other garments. Some products threaten plastics, and most will degrade or destroy foam materials. The shells of Public Order PPE can withstand the acid and will not degrade. However, foam or other materials can be impacted. Caustic materials may impact the plastic used for Public Order PPE but not degrade outer garments—one reason to have impact protection under the outer garments. A simple way to determine if a substance is acidic or caustic is to use pH or litmus paper. Ph or litmus paper can easily be attached to an officer’s helmet, shield, or outer layers. When the litmus paper turns red, it will indicate the substance is acidic; when the paper turns blue, it is caustic. The use of riot control agents such as chlorobenzylidenemalononitrile (CS) or capsaicinoid agents does not present to public order PPE. However, they will pose an inhalation hazard to officers not correctly protecting their respiratory tract.

2.3 Importance of Personal Protective Equipment and Training Stress and fear are inevitable aspects of performing daily as a law enforcement officer, and public order operations offer no reprieve. Many studies have explored how stress and fear may impact a law enforcement officer’s ability to think critically and the assessment to use force (Verhage et al., 2018). One can argue that this is especially true when law enforcement officers operate during public order events. Just like daily police work, public order operations are stressful and require law enforcement officers to execute complex tasks where the outcomes can result in high consequences (Kelley et al., 2019). When faced with unconventional threats posed by flammable materials, liquids, biohazards, and lasers, law enforcement officers can become increasingly anxious, their ability to think critically becomes diminished,

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and their motor skills are also affected—leading to impairments in quality of skill execution and proportionality of force applied (Baldwin et al., 2021). This stress reaction is called the “fight or flight” response, an automatic series of physiological reactions to an event perceived as stressful or frightening. The impact on performance and decision-making is complex. The type and strength of the resulting response can improve or impair performance. However, growing clinical research suggests that too much or too little sympathetic nervous system response with the compounding suppression of the parasympathetic nervous system is impacting performance. Within the space of public order policing, this impairment to response inhibition with the parasympathetic nervous system suppressed can result in the application of more force. In their research, Baldwin et al., 2021 concluded: “that stress-inducing scenarios result in impairments to various aspects of police performance.” We can improve performance by controlling the body’s response to stress, providing appropriate PPE, and delivering evidence-based, dynamic, and realistic training for our officers. In addition to the proper PPE, law enforcement agencies must focus on training incorporating evidence-based best practices. Training programs should ensure adequate amounts and repetitions of critical skills of evidence-based objectives. Agencies also need to ensure consistency in training. Maintaining a consistent training environment is essential to determine the successful retention of cognitive and motor skills. Training should be conducted in real-world-controlled settings, allowing all law enforcement officers to practice objectives under stressful conditions. For public order training, this means the use of actual projectiles, exposure to fire, and other incendiary devices. By training under stress, officers can develop confidence in their PPE which can improve police performance, enhance officer safety, and reduce the use of force errors (Baldwin et al., 2021). As law enforcement leaders, we must prepare our personnel for the daily changes and threats that law enforcement work poses and for the unique challenges that public order policing presents. Examining existing research and theoretical knowledge, stress and fear can adversely impact performance. This can be impacted by providing officers with the right equipment and training.

2.4 Public Order PPE Standards Public Order Personal Protective Equipment is designed and tested to work together to protect the officer  (DOJ,  NIJ, 2020). The helmet, base layer, torso protection, limb protection, outer covering, gloves, and boots must function together while allowing law enforcement officers to maneuver and, if required, engage in protective tactics to deal with the disorder.  (DOJ, NIJ, 2020). To ensure the protective ensemble works as one, personnel protective equipment must meet performance and testing standards that ensure protection from the threats of impact, liquids, and flame. PPE components should be tested and utilized to provide complete body protection. This approach assures that component seams, closures, and interfaces are tested and designed to complete the system. When choosing components of

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PPE, agencies should only choose items certified to appropriate standards. Agencies should require manufacturers and vendors to provide documentation that equipment meets standards, including care and maintenance guidance and warranty information. Law enforcement agencies should assess and evaluate PPE components before making large procurements. All components should be tested individually and then evaluated together as an ensemble (DOJ, NIJ, 2020). Testing should include male and female officers, assess the thermal (heat) load on the officer, the time it takes to don and doff the PPE, and how quickly it can be removed in a medical emergency. The minimum requirements recommended for a Public Order officer include a helmet with a face shield, approved respiratory protection, and impact protection for the torso, shoulders, abdomen, limbs, and groin (DOJ, NIJ, 2020). Gloves that provide cut and flame retardant footwear that provides metatarsal protection, flame, chemical, and liquid protection, and has antistatic soles. Outer garments are required to provide flame, chemical, and biohazard protection. To ensure public order PPE components perform as intended, each component must have been independently tested and verified to a standard. Many countries have government or private sector organizations as independent certifying bodies. In the United States, the National Institutes of Justice produces the nationally accepted standard for body armor worn by law enforcement and correction officers. EN 443 is the standard used to test firefighting helmets used by the Fire and Rescue Services in the United Kingdom and other countries. For law enforcement agencies planning to procure or certify public order protective equipment, the United States and other countries identify British Standard 7971, set by the Home Office Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB) and the Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB) as the performance standards that meet the requirements for Public Order Policing. British Standard 7971, “Protective clothing and equipment for use in violent situations and training,” includes a catalog of standards applicable to public order operations. BS 7971 is a code of practice that advises designing, testing, and approving protective clothing for use in riots and other public disorder situations. Since its original publication in 1987, the standard has been adopted by more than 50 countries worldwide. BS 7971 certification ensures that manufacturers meet stringent safety requirements at every stage of the design process, from initial product development to final inspection. Certified products benefit from a rigorous testing process by independent third parties to ensure compliance with the standard’s design, material, and manufacturing specifications. This contrasts with non-compliant products typically manufactured to in-house standards and which do not undergo the same rigorous testing and inspection procedures. Certified products are also backed by a stringent quality assurance program that includes regular audits by industry bodies and independent auditors to ensure that they continue to meet the high standards required by the standard. British Standard 7971 is a suite of standards applicable to public order operations. The standard includes several distinct volumes for different PPE (cf. Table 2). In most countries, PPE is required by law, and employers have a legal requirement to ensure their employees wear appropriate PPE when carrying out their

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Table 2  British Standard 7971 No. BS 7971-3 BS 7971-4 BS 7971-5 BS 7971-6 BS 7971-7 BS 7971-8 BS 7971-10

Name Personal Defense Shields—Requirements and test methods. Limb Protectors—Requirements and test methods. Footwear—Requirements and test methods. Gloves for protection against mechanical, thermal, and chemical risks— Requirements and test methods. Slash-resistant gloves—Requirements and test methods. Blunt trauma body, shoulder, abdomen, and genital protectors—Requirements and test methods. Coveralls—Requirements and test methods.

duties. However, unless employees are appropriately trained in using PPE, there is a risk that they will be more likely to misuse or fail to wear the correct safety equipment when required. Failure to train could result in severe injury or even death, so all employees must receive proper training in using PPE before they are allowed to do any work that involves the possibility of injury. Training should include an understanding of the hazards encountered during a particular job and the appropriate types of PPE that should be used to minimize the risk of exposure to these hazards. Employees should also be trained to properly fit and wear their PPE to provide adequate protection without restricting movement.

2.5 Guidance and Selection of Personal Protective Equipment Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) must be deployed with sensitivity and common sense not to inflame a situation yet be able to respond to any sign of hostility with appropriate PPE to protect Law Enforcement, innocent protestors, and the Public. Visual and physical de-escalation is essential not to provoke extreme counter-­reaction by the crowd. In a recommended low-profile police formation, the officer wears baseball caps and identifiable police high visibility over-jackets over riot overalls, under which are groin protectors, upper limb, leg, and shin protectors high-leg duty boots. The transition from low-profile to complete riot PPE must be swift and effective. No single combination of PPE can protect the wearer from all hazards. The selection of PPE should be based on threats immediately dangerous to life or health and should always be used in conjunction with other protective methods. Other considerations should include the weight of the PPE and the heat and physical stress the PPE may cause the wearer. It is recommended that each officer has individually issued PPE correctly sized to fit and perform effectively.

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However, agencies evaluating and purchasing any protective device for their officers must conduct proper scientific evacuations under a Duty of Care obligation and take responsibility for any resulting liability issues—that also applies if they do not provide proper PPE. Agencies provide thoroughly tested body armor against firearms and fully tested gas masks against chemicals. Therefore, the same degree of Due Diligence is required with other officer PPE evaluations and purchases. This is a liability issue. It’s important for organizations to understand their duty to care obligation and prioritize it in their operations. This means taking reasonable steps to ensure the safety and well-being of all individuals involved. By emphasizing this obligation, organizations can create a culture of safety and responsibility that not only protects against legal action but also fosters trust and confidence.

3 Considerations Regarding Basic PPE After the basic considerations regarding the necessity of PPE and a justification of the importance of standards and training, the following paragraphs focus on a detailed discussion and reflections on distinct PPE.

3.1 Impact Protection The determination of PPE should be based on the threats law enforcement officers face. When selecting PPE, blunt trauma is one of the most immediate threats a law enforcement officer faces during public order missions. Impact protection should be able to absorb the energy from projectiles, either thrown or launched, handheld impact weapons, and slashing weapons. The first concern is the law enforcement officer’s head. The head protection selected should meet or exceed industry standards for impact protection. Head protection should have a retention system that holds the helmet securely and be comfortable, as law enforcement officers may wear the helmet for long periods. Ballistic Helmets for Public Order operations are not recommended as they do not offer a high degree of impact or fluid protection. The lack of impact protection is partly due to the standards for manufacturing ballistic helmets. Most ballistic helmets manufactured today provide high levels of ballistic protection and low levels of impact protection. Ballistic helmet standards establish performance requirements and test methods for helmets to protect the wearer against gunfire. These standards consider the threat posed by ammunition, including its composition, shape, caliber, mass, and penetration. In addition, ballistic helmet standards do not require helmets to protect from flammable or other caustic liquids (United States Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, 1981). Impact protection should also provide blunt force trauma protection for the arms, legs, and torso. The interaction between the torso and limb protection, the outer

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garments, duty belt, weapon systems, and other equipment must be tested and evaluated before deploying the PPE to the field. Impact protection may be worn over or under outer protective garments and duty uniforms. Impact protection worn over uniforms and outer garments often displays and more aggressive visual profile. Wearing impact protection on the outside can be counterintuitive to de-escalation techniques and tactics. It is strongly recommended that impact protection be hidden. When selecting impact protection, it must be sized appropriately for the officer and be designed to fit both male and female anatomies. Limb protection will protect the upper and lower extremities. Groin protection is critical to protect against kicks. Torso protection protects the shoulders, chest, and abdominal organs from potential injury. While wearing torso protection, law enforcement officers should wear stab-­ resistant or ballistic vests to protect firearms and edged weapons. Another threat to a law enforcement officer is fluids. Fluids can come as various, caustic, biohazard, toxic, or flammable threats and need to be taken into account when selecting head and body protection. The head protection must be designed to allow fluids to run off the helmets and onto the law enforcement officer’s protective uniform. This can be accomplished by head protection with a skirt off the backside of the helmet. The head protection must have an integrated face shield that does not fog, provides a good field of vision, and is compatible with respiratory protection, as discussed later in this chapter. A seal must also be between the face shield and the head protection. This will allow fluids to run off the head protection instead of running into the face of the law enforcement officer. The head protection should not have dimples, crevices, or indentations allowing fluids to pool. The head protection selected must also resist burning or melting and should have parts that allow law enforcement officers to remove the helmet if required quickly. To ensure the (head and body) protection can withstand the heat of flammable liquids and materials, the outer shell of the impact protection needs to be treated with a self-extinguishing coating and the retention systems of a no melt, no drip material.

3.2 Hearing Protection Hearing protection is another critical component of public order PPE. In the United States, hearing protection standards require that employers implement a hearing conservation program when noise exposure is at or above 85 decibels averaged over eight working hours or an 8-hour time-weighted average (OSHA, 2023). Habitual exposure to noise above 85 dB will cause gradual hearing loss in many individuals, and louder noises will accelerate this damage. For unprotected ears, the allowed exposure time decreases by one-half for each 5 dB increase in the average noise level. For instance, exposure is limited to 8 hours at 90 dB, four at 95 dB, and two at 100 dB. The highest permissible noise exposure for the unprotected ear is 115 dB for 15  minutes/day. Any noise above 140  dB is not permitted (ibid.). Law Enforcement officers can be subject to extremely high decibel noises that can cause ear damage quickly. They can also be subject to a prolonged level of moderately

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high decibels, which causes hearing damage over a period of time. This includes exposure to commercial-grade fireworks, improvised explosive devices, sirens, bullhorns, loudspeakers, and the noises generated by crowds and significant events. Compatibility and communication are two important considerations when selecting hearing protection for public order operations. How will officers deployed in the field communicate with each other and public order unit commanders? Will officers be required to communicate using radios, cellphones, or verbally? The organization’s communication needs will depend on the hearing protection issued to public order officers. As critical as the ability to communicate is compatibility with other PPE components. Hearing protection must be compatible with an officer’s public order helmet, visor/eye protection, and a negative air purifying respirator. Hearing protection incompatible with other components of public order PPE will disrupt its integrity, decreasing the overall protection.

3.3 Eye Protection The next component that needs consideration is eye protection. Eye protection must meet standards for impact, provide proper ventilation to prevent fogging, and allow for a wide apparent field of vision. When considering eye protection first step is to consider the possible threats. Potential threats that can result in eye injuries are projectiles like ball bearings that can be launched or thrown, flammable or caustic fluids, biohazards, glass, and flying debris. In recent years law enforcement officers have also been exposed to high-powered, handheld lasers used to distract, disorient, or injure them. Eye protection must be worn properly when an officer wears other PPE, such as a helmet. A laser can produce an intensely bright light traveling long distances from its source. Invented more than 30 years ago, today’s lasers are smaller, more powerful, less costly, and readily available (Johnson, 1999). Lasers are extensively used in industry and science as well as surveying, weapon sights, and many other applications with varying power outputs, some being eye-safe and others exceptionally dangerous. Laser beams are collimated pure ‘light’ and often are specific wavelengths or colors depending on use. Personnel using lasers need eye protection, and many manufacturers produce excellent laboratory-grade laser products. However, to be as safe as possible, those safety glasses and films are mono-spectral and specifically designed to protect against one type of laser wavelength. Laser wavelengths are defined as laser colors such as green, blue, red, and purple and can vary from low power to very high power within each wavelength band. International Standards exist to set the safe protective levels of laser safety products, with the U.S. Standard being ANSI Z136 (LIA, 2023)—which sets the industry standards for eye safety. A laser directed at an individual’s eyes can cause temporary blindness or visual impairment. However, most low-power lasers do not cause permanent eye damage (Johnson, 1999). To be visually compelling, all laser attacks are in the dark at night. They are rare in daylight as they are hard to aim, and the beam is almost invisible.

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Protestors rely upon the visual effect of a visible laser beam. Therefore, police must evaluate laser protection in low or zero light conditions, not in bright rooms or outdoors during the day. In addition to distracting and disorienting law enforcement officers, lasers can flash blind or permanently disable cameras temporarily. In August 2019, protestors in Hong Kong used lasers to shut down facial recognition systems. Today protestors can access high and low-power red, blue, green, and purple lasers. This means that police need access to safe and effective multi-spectral laser protection, not mono-spectral. Eye damage and eyesight loss are severe threats when lasers are deployed as hostile weapons. Agencies provide thoroughly tested body armor against firearms and fully tested gas masks against chemicals. Therefore, the same degree of Due Diligence is required with officer eye safety evaluations and purchases. This is—like with all other PPE—a liability issue. When assessing which laser protection is best for an organization, the following must be taken into consideration: • Industrial mono-spectral eye safety has no place in police tactical operations. Multi-spectral is essential as the officer will be exposed to varying types and laser powers. Many laser protection devices on the market today are red. Law enforcement agencies will not be able to use reflex or red dot sights as the red lenses block the laser sight. • As all laser attacks are at night, all evaluations must take place in the dark most laser attacks are in very dark conditions down to zero light. • The officer’s operational roles and tasks must be unaffected by the eyewear or device issued. • Officers requiring corrective eyewear may need specific protection unless the selected device is designed to give overall protection. • The selected product must have multi-spectral capability, clear full-frontal vision, and high visible light transmission. A high level of Visible light transmission is critical when choosing laser protection for law enforcement operations. Visible light transmission (VLT) is the amount of light that can pass through the lens. The higher the VLT, the more light comes through the lens and reaches the eye; a lower VLT blocks light. For example, 9% VLT only allows 9% of visible light to pass through the lens, indicating a very dark tint. Since most laser attacks occur at night, a low VLT will make it difficult for law enforcement officers to see. Laser protection must balance the amount of VLT with the protection offered. When specifying laser protection, agencies should look for eye protection that can protect multi-colors, red, blue, and green, and protect a 20 mW laser by reducing it to 1 mW, which is considered safe. The laser protection should provide at least 42% VLT and be grey to depict colors accurately.

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3.4 Respirators Another component of public order PPE that is often overlooked is respiratory protection. Several types of respirators are on the market today, so steps must be taken to identify the appropriate respirator for the job tasks. For public order operations, the most appropriate respirator is a full-face Negative Air Purifying Respirator (NAPR). An NAPR is a tight-fitting respirator in which the air pressure inside the facepiece is negative during inhalation to the ambient air pressure outside the respirator. A full-face NAPR respirator removes gases, vapors, aerosols, and other airborne particles using filters, cartridges, or canisters and comprises a facepiece and harness that holds the respirator tightly against the user’s face. This fit is critical to create a seal and provide negative pressure. If the respirator does not create a seal, contaminants can enter the respirator exposing the user. Full-face NAPRs do not supply oxygen and, therefore, cannot be used in environments that are oxygen deficient or immediately dangerous to life and health. Organizations must select respirators approved by their national occupational health and safety agencies. Respirators need to be fit-tested with the user to ensure a proper seal, and user training is required to learn how to don and doff the respirator properly, clean and maintain the respirator, and store the respirator properly. When selecting a respirator for public order policing operations, agencies must first ensure the respirator selected is compatible with selected hearing protection and public order helmets. To ensure effective communication, a voice amplifier for respiratory protection is recommended and must be compatible with other communication equipment.

3.5 Gloves and Boots Selecting proper gloves and footwear will be as important as selecting the proper head protection. Materials used to construct gloves, and boots should be treated as fire-resistant/retardant. The materials should shed liquids, petroleum products, chemicals, and caustic substances. Gloves should be constructed to protect the officer’s hands from impact and cutting injuries. Gloves must enable dexterity and tactility to allow officers to handle firearms or other weapons, operate communication equipment, and handle other equipment and prisoners while wearing gloves. Footwear should protect against heat and cold transfer, include puncture-resistant soles, and protect the toes and other bones of the foot (metatarsal) from impact. Footwear should extend above the ankle and interface with lower limb protection. In 2016 BS 7971–5 was revised, dropping type 1 “duty boot” classification and requirements for all rubber or polymeric molded footwear. The revised standard now only classifies standards for “riot” footwear. New requirements for heat transfer and cut resistance, antistatic, and cold insulation have been included and are now

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mandatory. In addition, new test procedures for ergonomics, assessing resistance to penetration of chemicals and flammable materials, have been added.

3.6 Outer Garments and Base Layers To deal with the threat of fire and other flammable materials, law enforcement officers should have clothing that has flame and or thermal-resistant properties. Base layers should include an upper and lower garment and balaclava. In addition, to be flame or thermal-resistant, the materials should not melt or drip, and they should be moisture-resistant to prevent water in the garment if heated water in the garment could cause burns. Outer garments should be worn over torso and limb impact protections and designed to allow burning fluids to run off the wearer. The garment should be able to self-extinguish if it re-ignites and provides thermal protection from flame and heat generated from a fuel source. In addition, garments should be low-weight and evaluated for heat stress.

3.7 Shields The use of shields has been around for decades and is often overlooked as PPE. Shields can be used as an impact weapon and have been the primary barrier against impact, thrown objects, and recently protection against flame and chemicals. Today public order shields are available in various sizes and different handle types. Each size, type, and design have a specific tactical advantage. The use of a public order shield depends on the organization’s doctrine and tactics. Some organizations may choose not to utilize shields. This might be due to the number of resources and officers an organization has, and the geographical area the agency is responsible for may be small. Using shields can provide smaller agencies with the ability to be effective while covering large geographical areas tactically. In addition to other PPE, using a shield can further decrease law enforcement officers’ stress and anxiety, improving decision-making and motor skills. Shields selected for public order operations must be tested and certified to a standard such as the BS 7971-3, Personal Defense Shields—Requirements and test methods.

3.8 Fire Suppression The use of Molotov cocktails and other incendiary weapons have increased over the last several years. This is why another form of personal protective equipment that law enforcement agencies should consider is fire suppression. While most modernized nations have fire services, they may not be able to support law enforcement

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public order missions. This may be due to the dangers during these operations, the lack of adequately trained staff to support these events, or other operational or political conditions. While several law enforcement organizations may use water as a tactical tool, many do not. Law enforcement agencies should identify other means of fire suppression to fill this gap or plan for areas or situations where water is unavailable. In addition to traditional methods, such as fire extinguishers and water cans, several alternatives can be found. The advantage these alternative fire suppression materials have over traditional methods is that they work by removing the heat and the hydrocarbon fuel source and suppressing the fire quicker than traditional extinguishers. Encapsulating the hydrocarbons also prevents the re-ignition of the flammable material. Another advantage of these systems over traditional chemical extinguishers is that they are organic, bio-degradable, and can be applied directly to the skin. These systems come in various sizes and deployment types, making them adaptable to public order operations.

4 Conclusion Proper equipment and protection are necessary for everyday policing. This is also the case for public order policing. It is also vital that regardless of the quality or expense of the PPE, officers need to be appropriately trained on its use and limitations. Law enforcement officers must also be aware of the potential hazards they may face. This includes environmental factors such as extreme temperatures, inclement weather, and chemicals. It also includes potential threats from firearms, violent extremists, and other members of the public. Officers must be familiar with PPE and other safety equipment to prepare adequately. Using PPE, law enforcement officers can reduce the risk of injury and illness, protect themselves from exposure to hazardous substances, and ensure their safety on the job. Poor decisions and indiscriminate use of force can have high consequences. Research has shown that training and the proper equipment can improve officer performance under stressful conditions (Baldwin et  al., 2021). Law Enforcement leaders must also recognize that there is a balance between avoiding the perception that police expect disorder and being prepared to respond to disorder. If disorder occurs, PPE will be needed to protect law enforcement officers. Law enforcement leaders and supervisors must constantly assess the threat and need for personnel protection. For many organizations, the requirement for public order policing may be a low-­ frequency event. However, the frequency of high-impact, low-probability events in the last decade has signaled a new norm for law enforcement agencies. A signal that should not be ignored. One way to overcome the challenge of public order policing is to invest in PPE and training now—at least a small investment in both, which can build up a preparedness bank over time. Without PPE for public order operations, little can be done to protect those who swore to protect others.

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Disclaimer  The opinion expressed herein is that of the author and is not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the US Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Government.

References Adam-Troian, J., Mahfud, Y., Urbanska, K., & Guimond, S. (2021). The role of social identity in the explanation of collective action: An intergroup perspective on the Yellow Vests movement. Journal of Applied Social Psychology., 51, 560–576. https://doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12757 Baldwin, S., Bennell, C., Blaskovits, B., Brown, A., Jenkins, B., Lawrence, C., McGale, H., Semple, T., & Andersen, J. P. (2021). A reasonable officer: Examining the relationships among stress, training, and performance in a highly realistic lethal force scenario. Frontiers. https:// www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.759132/full Cannon, L. (2024). Intelligence in public order policing. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. GAO, United States Government Accountability Office. (2022). Capitol attack: Additional actions needed to better prepare capitol police officers for violent demonstrations. https://www.gao. gov/products/gao-­22-­104829. Ghirlanda, C. (2024). The “Yellow Vest Protests”. Challenge for police and democracy. In B. Bürger, T. Herold, & R. Lee (Eds.), Public order policing. A professional’s guide to international theories, case studies, and best practices. Springer. Johnson, D.  A. (1999). Laser threats to law enforcement. FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 68(5) https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-­library/abstracts/laser-­threats-­law-­ enforcement#:~:text=Low%2Dpower%2C%20visible%2Dlight,to%20deal%20with%20 this%20threat Kelley, D.  C., Siegel, E., & Wormwood, J.  B. (2019). Understanding police performance under stress: Insights from the biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat. Frontiers in Psychology.. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6696903/ LIA, The Laser Institute. (2023). ANSI Z136 Standards. Guidelines for implementing a safe laser program. Retrieved March 11, 2023, from https://www.lia.org/resources/laser-­safety-­information/ laser-­safety-­standards/ansi-­z136-­standards OSHA, United States Department of Labor, Occupational Health, and Safety Administration (2023). 1910.95 - Occupational noise exposure. Retrieved March 11, 2023, from https://www. osha.gov/laws-­regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.95 PERF, Police Executive Research Forum Report. (2022). Rethinking the police response to mass demonstrations: Nine recommendations. https://www.policeforum.org/assets/ ResponseMassDemonstrations.pdf United States Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice (2020). Guide for selection and procurement of personal protective equipment used by public order police. United States Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs (1981). NIJ Standard for ballistic helmets. https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/077182.pdf. Verhage, A., Noppe, J., Feys, Y., & Ledegen, E. (2018). Force, stress, and decision-making within the Belgian police: The impact of stressful situations on police decision-making. The Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 33, 345–357. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11896-­018-­9262-­4 Jason J. Kepp  is an Assistant Director at the Federal Protective Service, where Jason is a member of the leadership team that leads the training and professional development of sworn and nonsworn employees. Before starting with the Department of Homeland Security, Jason’s career encompassed all levels of organizational leadership, development, and management for emergency service organizations and educational institutions. Jason spent 25 years in the emergency services field, serving

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in the field and later as Deputy Director of Emergency Medical Services at Somerset County Emergency Services Academy (N.J.). His published works have included active threat response and training, incident management, health and safety, pandemic response, and tactical law enforcement operations. Jason has received numerous awards for superior performance throughout his tenure. His awards and decorations include lifesaving, certificates of achievement, agency commendations, and the Secretary of Defense Medal for Meritorious Civilian Service. Jason is a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), Research and Advisory Committee, Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), and the Order of the Sword and Shield, an academic and professional honor society for homeland security. Jason has a Bachelor of Science in Homeland Security and is currently pursuing a Masters of Science in Emergency Services Management.