Why Militarized Policing is the worst Response to Ferguson’s Problems

[unhappycamper]

http://www.juancole.com/2014/08/militarized-fergusons-problems.html

Why Militarized Policing is the worst Response to Ferguson’s Problems
By contributors | Aug. 21, 2014 |
By Chris Cocking, University of Brighton

The town of Ferguson, Missouri has now seen ten days of almost nightly disorder following the shooting of black teenager Michael Brown by the police. The decision to bring in the National Guard has not quelled the disorder and in fact may be aggravating the situation.

~snip~

Misunderstanding the crowd

This also shows that protestors are placing limits on the crowd’s behaviour in Ferguson. This undermines another common myth of crowd disorder – that once riots begin, anything goes and “mob rule” takes over. Evidence from the London riots suggests that the crowds behaved in complex ways. People who had been fighting police would stop to protect shops from looters and despite hostilities with police, the crowds would rarely attack fire crews or paramedics.

The disorder in Ferguson can’t be explained away by blaming a minority of bad-intentioned individuals. And responding to legitimate protests with increasingly militarised policing and force will only serve to further alienate the people of Ferguson.

Responding to these events with such overwhelming force is a move based on a fundamental distrust of crowd behaviour. The US police are probably among the most heavily armed in the world but that has not stopped urban disorder from happening. Something is clearly badly wrong when US citizens in 2014 are openly talking about their own police as an occupation force. We have to look at the broader social context when events like this happen and escalate. Long term solutions will not be found by turning police forces into the paramilitary outfits we are currently seeing on the streets of St Louis.

[pleinair]

1. That presupposes

that reasonable long-term solutions are being sought. I wish it were so.