Review

Reviewed Work(s): Policing Protest: The Control of Mass Demonstrations in Western

Democracies by Donatella Della Porta and Herbert Reiter
Review by: Richard J. Lundman
Source: Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Mar., 1999), p. 226
Published by: American Sociological Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2654900
Accessed: 28-03-2018 23:24 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to Contemporary Sociology

This content downloaded from 190.119.238.18 on Wed, 28 Mar 2018 23:24:13 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
226 Social Control and the Law

Mosher concludes by connecting his histori- several and important.

important. Police
Police less
less often
often have
have egg
egg
cal findings of systemic racism at all levels of on their faces
faces or
or protester
protester blood
blood on
on their
their hands;
hands;
Ontario's criminal justice system to contempoS and protesters,
protesters, accordingly,
accordingly, are
are far
far more
more likely
likely to
to
rary findings from the 1995 Commission on come away from
from demonstrations
demonstrations unhurt.
unhurt.
Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Policing Protest raises and discusses other
Justice System, the renewed racialization of important issues. Three I found especially
crime in the media, and the overpolicing of lowS
intriguing. First, when police practice gentler
income black populations and black drug users.
and kinder methods of dealing with protest, are
the conditions protesters deplore as likely to
become visible? I suspect not, and there is evi-
Policing Protest: The Control of Mass
dence in several of the papers in the book that
Demonstrations in Western Democracies, edited by
this is indeed the case. Second, some of the
DonatelLa Della Porta and Herbert Reiter.
authors note that softer policing depends upon
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1998.302 pp. $57.95 cloth. ISBN: 0-8166-3063- police perceptions of the protesters and their
1. $22.95 paper. ISBN: 0-8166-3064-X. grievances. Soccer hooligans whom police see as
out for violence, and university demonstrators
RICHARD J. LUNDMAN whom they believe have no real clue what they
Ohio State University
are protesting, are more likely to be on the
receiving end of harsher policing. Third, some of
In the 1960s and 1970s, I engaged in voter reg-
the authors correctly wonder whether the softer
istration in Greenwood, Mississippi, and antiwar
policing of protest is simply a sign of the extent
demonstrations in St. Paul, Minnesota.
to which government power in western democ-
Regardless of the nature of the demonstration or
racies has become entrenched. Presumably the
its location, police were generally creatures to be
feared. Police always looked in at the protestors harsher protest policing of the past occurred at
rather than out as those who might threaten least partly because govemments felt threatened
by protest and used police to suppress it. It may
protesters, they took a lot of pictures, they some-
times gassed, fogged, and beat demonstrators, well be that contemporary democratic govern-
they used force to move people while frequently ments practice softer policing because govern-
giving them no place to go, and they made a lot ment elites do not believe that garden variety
of arrests. A few years ago, I joined a NAACP protest threatens government power and gov-
march directed at police brutality in Columbus, ernment privilege. Soft and unthreatening
Ohio. There were many fewer police, some protest yields soft and unthreatening policing of
looked at the demonstrators but others looked protest.
out, as if they were serious about protecting the Because Policing Protest documents important
marchers. They took many fewer pictures or changes and raises important issues, I recom-
were better at hiding the fact that pictures were mend it for scholars of social movements and for
being taken. They cleared our path and by doing students of policing. Both will learn about their
so, gave us somewhere to go. Nobody got hurt
respective areas and, especially, the intersection
and there were no arrests.
of these areas when cops work demonstrations in
Policing Protest documents and, to a lesser
postindustrial democracies.
extent, explains these important changes. Police
in the western democracies covered in the schol-
arly papers that compose this anthology-
England, the United States, Switzerland,
Germany, Spain, and Italy have uniformly
adopted a far softer approach to policing demon-
strations. Police appear to recognize and seem to
work to protect the rights of people to assemble
and demonstrate. Police anticipate their assem-
bly by negotiating with those responsible for the
demonstration, suggest routes, offer to train mar-
shals, and, when things go wrong, carefully con-
sider their responses. The consequences are

This content downloaded from 190.119.238.18 on Wed, 28 Mar 2018 23:24:13 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms