Police often provoke protest violence, Univ. of Calif. researchers find
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
The violence that turns a small-town protest into a fiery national spectacle like the one that has played out this month in Missouri is often unwittingly provoked by police, according to researchers at UC Berkeley.
The research team, which studied clashes between police and activists during the Occupy movement three years ago, found that protests tend to turn violent when officers use aggressive tactics, such as approaching demonstrators in riot gear or lining up in military-like formations.
... "Everything starts to turn bad when you see a police officer come out of an SUV and he's carrying an AR-15," said Nick Adams, a sociologist and fellow at UC Berkeley's Institute for Data Science who leads the Deciding Force Project. "It just upsets the crowd."
... His team reached its conclusions by analyzing Occupy protests in 192 U.S. cities in 2011. The researchers sifted through thousands of news reports about the protests, which were sparked by concerns over economic inequality, and isolated patterns of violence and their apparent causes.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Police-often-provoke-protest-violence-UC-5704918.php
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It shouldn't take a university research team to figure that out. When the cops start looking like they think ordinarily nonviolent protesters are the fucking Taliban, people get their backs up, and minor disturbances that could be easily dealt with become major altercations. If the cops dress up like soldiers and treat citizens like enemies, they shouldn't be surprised if there's blowback.
