Kristian Williams - Our Enemies in Blue - Police and Power in America

175 Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, en passim; and, Ken Lawrence, The New State Repression (Chicago:International Network Against New State Repression, 1985), 2.176 Kitson, i.ow Intensity Operations, 67.177 Donner, "Practice and Theory," 35. See also: Lawrence, New State Repression, 2-3.178 Lawrence, New State Repression, 3.Chapter 8: Riot Police or Police Riots?Much of the discussion in this chapter is drawn from my article "The Cop and the Crowd."Kristian Williams, "The Cop and the Crowd: Police Strategies fo r Keeping the Rabble in Line,"Clamor, December 2000/January 2001, 9- 13.2 This account is based primarily on mv own observations, with support from the sources citedlater in the chapter.3 Seattle City Council. WTO Accountability Review Committee. Report of the WTO AccountabilityReview Committee (September 14 , 2000), 15. Emphasis in original.4 ACLU Washington, "Out of Control: Seatrle's Flawed Response to Protests Against the World TradeOrganization," http://www.aclu-wa.orgIlSSUES/police/WTO-Report.html (accessed August 2000),5 Seattle City Council, Report of the WTO, 3. A more precise definition of "police riot" appears inthe discussion that fo llows.6 Seattle Police Depanment, ihe Seattle Police Department After Action Report: World Trade OrganizationMinisterial Conference: Seattle, 'Washington, November 29-December 3, 1999 (April 4, 2000), 5.7 The accuracy of this description is dubious, but it docs say something about the way the police view disorder,and cxage,>erare its dangers. Seattle Pol ice Department, Seattle Police Department After Action Report, 41.8 R. M. McCarthy and Associates, An !ndependent Review of the Word Trade Organization ConferenceDisruptions in Seattle. Was hington; November 29-December 3, 1999 (San Clemente, CA: July 2000),132. They suggest making pre-emptive arrests at earlier demonstrations and assigning NationalGuard troops to the area on "training/standby" status, citing-of all things-the 1968 ChicagoDemocratic National Convention as a precedent. R. M. McCarthy and Associates, !ndependentRt:I!iew, 38. The 1 ')68 Democratic Convention is examined in detail later in this chapter.9 R.M. McCarthy and Associates, Independent Review, 59.10 R.M. McCarthy and Associates, Independent Review, 129- 130.II Seattle City Council, Report of the WiG, 13.12 Seattle City COllncil, Report of the WTO, 3.13 Seattle City Council, Report of the WTO, 10.14 Police in D.C. had a secure perimeter in place considerably before the April lG, 2000 IMFIWorld Bank meetings. They also had about 600 protesters ill jail bef()re the meetings began;earlier in the week, they surrounded an entire march and arrested everyone present. As a res lilt,they relied less on acmal fo rce during the conference itself, and were widely praised for theirrestraint. One commentator noted: "Law enforcement learned from Seattle, and changed tacticsaccordingly." Geov Parrish, "Lessons From D.C.," Eat the State', April 27, 2000, 3. See also: PaulRosenberg, "The Empire Strikes Back: Police Repression of Protest from Seattle to L.A.," LAIndependent Media Center, August 13, 2000, http://www.r2kphilly.org/pdf/empire-strikcs.pdf(accessed March 18, 2003).15 Police used nightsticks, pepper spray, and horses to fo rcefully attack demonstrations against the2003 American invasion of Iraq. In New Yo rk, Washington, D.C., and Seattle, police corralledprotesters and arrested them en masse. In Oakland, police fired less-lethal weapons at a crowdpicketing docks where war-related cargo was being loaded onto ships; numerous protesters andseveral uninvolved longshore workers were injured. Silja .l.A. Talui, "The Public Is the Enemy,"The Nation, Mav 12, 2003, 30-3 1.I G Both quoted in james F. Richardson, The New York Police: Colonial Times to 1901 (New York:Oxford University Press, 1970), 143. Richardson comments: "The police of the 1860's did notnave either the doctrine or the materials to deal with disorder in any way other than violence. Inordinary circumstances, policemen worked alone or in small groups; their only additional trainingor experience came in their military drill. The only anti-riot tools they possessed were theirclubs and revolvers, and their only recourse in a disorder was to bash as many people on thehead as possible. There is no indication that Acton and other police officials ever thought aboutany other method." Richardson, New York Police, 143.17 "That year there came a series of tumltiruolls strikes by railroad workers in a dozen cities; theyshook the nation as no labor conflict in its history had done .... When the great railroad strikesof 1877 were over, a hundred people were dead; a thousand people had gone to jail, 100,000workers had gone on strike, and the strikes had roused into action countless unemployed in thecities. More than half of the height on the nation's 75,000 miles of track had stopped runningat the height of the strikes." Howard Zinn, A Peoples History of the United States, 1492-Present(New York: HarperPerennial, 19')5), 240 and 246.283