Patrick Hayes considers the “kettling” technique beloved of modern metropolitan police forces in the face of protest:
This is not in any way to defend kettling, which restricts basic freedoms of movement and protest. Being kettled is a deeply frustrating experience. You are penned into a small area with thousands of other protesters for hours on end, with no access to toilets or provisions and little to no knowledge of when the police will let you go. This repressive police technique should be abolished.
However, the emergence of kettling does not reflect a new era of police ‘barbarism’ or ‘gross police brutality’, as some have claimed. Rather, the logic behind kettling seems to be an attempt by the authorities to adapt to a new kind of aimless protesting.
[. . .]
The rise of kettling speaks to changes within the authorities too. This tactic reveals a new desire amongst the police to avoid engaging with protesters directly, to avoid beating and controlling them as they might have tried to do in the past. Instead, the police have developed mostly risk-averse, hands-off tactics for demos, of which kettling is a prime example.
Kettling is really a damage-limitation exercise. The hope is that in pinning protesters into one small area they will eventually become sedate or fall asleep after they have let off enough steam. In a bizarre turn of events, the police now even hand out glossy brochures explaining to protesters what kettling is all about and why the police do it. Kettling is analogous to parents sending children to the ‘naughty step’ to get them to calm down.
Indeed, in the absence of any clear collective ideas, protesters have in many ways become reliant on kettling as a focal point for their radicalism. Protests have turned into games of cat-and-mouse, as youths try to avoid being penned in by the police, using Twitter to organise flash mobs and effectively playing peek-a-boo with the police. The protesters achieve a semblance of collectivity through the experience of being trapped together in a kettle.
I guess if they can’t herd them they will revert to the old fashion beating… or would love to except everyone has a camera today. I would still give the police the benefit of the doubt in any situation where they have to respond with force though. It is a crappy job and I wouldn’t want to do it.
Comment by Dwayne — April 20, 2011 @ 19:11
Ah, yes. I used to do that. Except the whole “everyone has a camera today” provided me with enough evidence that they were not deserving of that benefit. See enough examples of unprovoked police violence, stop feeling that they’re good people doing a tough job, start thinking that they’re only slightly less thuggish than the people they’re supposed to protect us against. Not all cops are thugs. But enough of them are — and are protected by other cops — that the clear lesson is to avoid any and all contact with them in their professional capacity.
Comment by Nicholas — April 20, 2011 @ 20:41
I don’t know Nicholas… what may seem like an unprovoked attack by the police may have been preceded by minutes or hours of abuse. Have you ever been spit on while standing and trying to do your job? I don’t think every situation is the same, but all things considered I would want to get the police person’s statement before I assumed anything.
And before you ask, I am not, nor have I ever been, a policeman. I have, however, trained in aid to civil power and during some simulations they can get very “heated”.
Comment by Dwayne — April 20, 2011 @ 23:23
Yes. I’ve also been called a “baby killer”. Suburban Toronto in the mid-70’s had people who were still mad they’d missed out on all those “glorious” anti-war protests of the late 60’s and early 70’s. Anyone in military uniform was fair game in those days.
Comment by Nicholas — April 20, 2011 @ 23:35