Len's News, Notes, and Stuff

Police + Protestors Living in Peace? Almost.

I’ve come across a few pro­tes­tor web­sites lately, and I used to have an anar­chist class­mate. In many cases, there was an under­ly­ing dis­like and dis­trust of police agen­cies. But is that really deserved?

We‘ve all seen videos and pho­tos of pha­lanxes of offi­cers in armor and riot shields, rain­ing can­is­ters of tear gas on pro­tes­tors. We know that police offi­cers can get rough with pro­tes­tors — batons aren‘t just for show. We know that by design, man­date, and train­ing, police agen­cies are the mus­cled arm of “the estab­lish­ment” and “the pow­ers that be”.

I’m sim­pli­fy­ing, of course.

But you can under­stand why many ardent activists don’t have much love for the police.

Yet, I think that is both unde­served and, in fact, not at all the main­stream view of the police other than for the truly die-hard.

I have spent the last 2 days at a con­ven­tion or con­fer­ence of sorts largely pop­u­lated by police — at the fed­eral, provin­cial, and munic­i­pal lev­els. Oh, there’s Cana­dian Forces (read: Army) folks here as well, but they truly do want to stay in the back­ground for the issues being discussed.

In any case, this morning’s topic was on protests, both law­ful and unlaw­ful. I learned a few things that were totally new to me — I am nei­ther an activist pro­tes­tor nor a law enforce­ment guy, you see.

Cana­dian police agen­cies have been tak­ing a new approach, one that has been seem­ingly for­eign to the police cul­ture until lately: coop­er­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion with activist groups and protest leaders.

The RCMP, OPP, Toronto Police, and Peel Regional offi­cers in my dis­cus­sion group all agree that pro­tes­tors have a right to voice their views, to be seen, and to be heard. This view was repeated con­sis­tently by the other dis­cus­sion groups who reported back in at the fol­low­ing ple­nary session.

“Crowds have a right to assem­ble and protest. We will facil­i­tate law­ful protest.”

What hap­pened to the oppres­sive, over­bear­ing, bul­ly­ing police­mon­sters that I’ve heard about via pro­tet groups’ web­sites? If they exist, they don’t exist here.

Police agen­cies are now work­ing with protest lead­ers to head off prob­lems before they arise. They rec­og­nize that prob­lems are often started by a tiny minor­ity — maybe as few as just 1% of those present — who want to cause prob­lems. Protest lead­ers can, and do, police their own peo­ple to keep things peace­ful. Protest groups can, and do, kick out trou­ble­mak­ers from their ranks.

It’s offi­cially called “out­reach”, but it’s really just com­mon sense, isn’t it? We live in a demo­c­ra­tic soci­ety, where vocif­er­ous protest has a right­ful place — a place carved out and defended by the blood and sac­ri­fice of good peo­ple over the past 200 years. The police agen­cies don’t want to oppress, repress, or foci­bly shut any­one up — they just want to main­tain pub­lic safety when things get out of hand. That, too, is reasonable.

So what else are the cops at all lev­els doing besides out­reach to protest lead­ers and activist groups? They’re mak­ing sure the line in the sand is clear before­hand, for a start.

Peel Region described how they’ve begun send­ing let­ters to groups and lead­ers out­lin­ing their expec­ta­tions. Where is the line between law­ful and unlaw­ful protest? Where is the line beyond which law enforce­ment will have no choice but to bring out the mus­cle? It’s good to make it explicit.

How­ever, hav­ing said that, it is a dual-purpose mea­sure. Yes, it is meant to head off prob­lems, but it is also meant to enable more legal charges to stick in case things do get out of hand and pro­tes­tors are hauled away in restraints.

The police aren’t absolute angels, y’know.

But they are sen­si­ble. Not only are they col­lab­o­rat­ing with groups and lead­ers before­hand, they’re also keep­ing their ears to the ground and directly inter­act­ing with pro­tes­tors dur­ing protests. No, not from behind a wall of riot shields. No, not as under­cover spies sent into the crowd. They’re going in as uni­formed offi­cers, talk­ing to peo­ple, hear­ing con­cerns, get­ting a direct feel for the situation.

This isn’t the way the pub­lic per­ceives the police, is it?

“Indi­vid­ual pro­tes­tors break­ing the law doesn’t make it an unlaw­ful protest.”

The police are instru­ments of pol­icy, of the estab­lish­ment, and of the pow­ers that be. There’s no get­ting around that. But they obey lim­its imposed by law, and they are made up of indi­vid­u­als who rec­og­nize the value of the demo­c­ra­tic right to protest and to be heard.

Yes, there are bul­lies behind the riot shields, just as there are hooli­gans in front of them. But those peo­ple are the minor­ity on both sides.

The police aren’t oppres­sive, repres­sive, or overzeal­ously aggres­sive.  At least the major­ity of offi­cers aren’t. They’re just mis­un­der­stood and mis­rep­re­sented at times.