LONDON – In Bristol, an English university town where pubs are usually packed with students, there were fierce clashes between police and protesters. In Kassel, a German city known for its ambitious festival of contemporary arts, police unleashed pepper spray and water cannons on protesters at closing time.
A year after European leaders ordered people in their homes to quell a deadly pandemic, thousands of streets and squares flood into. They are often met by batons and shields, which raises questions about the tactics and role of the police in societies where personal freedoms have already given way to public health problems.
From Spain and Denmark to Austria and Romania, frustrated people are addressing the constraints on their daily lives. As large parts of Europe face a third wave of infections that could last these suffocating closures for weeks or even months, analysts warn that street tensions are likely to increase.
In Britain, where the rapid pace of vaccinations has given rise to hopes for a faster opening of the economy than the government is willing, frustration over recent police action has sparked a national debate over police legitimacy – one which echoes far from the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.
“What we are seeing is an increasing degree of dissatisfaction among members of our society who see a fundamental illegality in law enforcement under the pandemic,” said Clifford Stott, a professor of social psychology at Keele University and an expert on crowd behavior. , said. “And it created strange bedfellows.”
Right-wing politicians locking up barricades with restrictions are just as angry as the left-wing climate protesters who regularly clog Trafalgar Square in London as part of demonstrations of the extermination uprising. The erroneous rumble of the protests was one of the reasons why the government insisted on greater powers to restrict such gatherings.
This adds to the feeling of outrage: Sarah Everard, a 33-year-old woman who was allegedly abducted and killed by a police officer while walking home in London. The Metropolitan Police then issued a vigilance for Mrs. Everard broke up on the grounds that the participants violated the coronavirus rules on social distance.
The potential for more such confrontations is great, said Mr. Stott said, referring to “the warmer weather, the duration of the exclusion and growing dissatisfaction among sections of the community over the imposition of controls.”
In Bristol, the cause of the clashes was new legislation that would enable police to sharply curb protests. A peaceful ‘Kill the Bill’ rally on College Green in the city turned violent when some of the protesters marched to a nearby police station and started throwing fireworks and projectiles at police officers.
The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, sharply criticized the violence and blamed many of it on rioters from outside, who he said seized a peaceful protest as an excuse to wage a fight with the institution.
But Mr. Rees, a Labor politician, is also strongly opposed to the legislation. He said it was hasty and ill-considered – a cynical attempt by a Conservative government to ‘gather their base behind law and order’ during a pandemic.
“You can not police yourself to peace,” he said. Rees said, adding that he had tried to involve the Bristol police on issues such as housing, drug addiction and unemployment. “By the time it comes to a maintenance problem,” he said, “you have already failed.”
The violent clashes in Bristol, which charred two police vans and injured 20 officers – one with a pierced lung – are very frustrating for Mr. Rees, the son of a Jamaican father and an English mother.
Last summer, his city became a powerful symbol of the worldwide spread of the Black Lives Matter movement, when a crowd pulled down the statue of a 17th-century slave trader, Edward Colston, and dumped it in Bristol Harbor.
This time, however, he fears the images of broken windows and burnt police vehicles will help Prime Minister Boris Johnson pass the police law, which has already removed two major obstacles in parliament.
“The consequences of what they have done is to increase the likelihood that the bill will provide support,” he said. Rees said.
For many in Britain, this would be a bitter irony, as the pandemic in recent memory has led to the greatest restriction of civil liberties. Coronavirus regulations, which are expected to last no longer than a few months, have been in place for a year now, causing tensions between the police and the public not only at protests but also at house parties and even with those who gather outside for coffee.
Early in the pandemic, one local police force used drones to embarrass a couple with a dog on a lonely path. The owners of gyms and sports clubs were raided by police when they opened up against the regulations.
An earlier version of the government’s coronavirus regulations contained a provision allowing nonviolent protests. But it was removed from a later version, leaving the right to peaceful assembly in a sort of legal limbo. According to the latest draft of the rules issued on Monday, protest actions will be allowed under limited circumstances, starting next Monday.
These emergency laws were hastened by parliament without the investigation normally being applied to legislation. In the absence of a written constitution, Britons wishing to take to the streets must rely on the less clear protection of a human rights act.
In contrast, the federal constitutional court in Germany last year upheld the right of its citizens to protest, provided they complied with the rules for social waiver.
“This pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of our unwritten constitution regarding certain rights,” said Adam Wagner, a human rights lawyer and expert on coronavirus rules. “If you take representative democracy out of the legislative process, you are missing key votes.”
The government is carrying out other arguments for the police bill. Cabinet ministers note, for example, that the security cost of protecting a new high-speed line from protesters in the area was £ 50 million, or $ 69 million.
Interior Minister Priti Patel condemned the clashes in Bristol for “riots and disorder” and said protecting the police was a top priority for the government – although it did not say so for some members of the opposition.
“We were clear that people do not currently have to hold large gatherings to save lives and fight this pandemic,” she said in a statement to parliament. “Too many have selfishly decided this weekend that it does not apply to them.”
To further raise the political temperature, the bill moves on police officers at the same time as the government’s coronavirus regulations are renewed, which also shot down the freedom of libertarian law.
“The Coronavirus Act contains some of the most draconian detention powers in modern British legal history,” said Mark Harper. He is chairman of the Covid Recovery Group, a consultant to conservative lawmakers who is critical of the closure rules.
While many say the debate over the role of the police in Britain is overdue, some sympathize with the plight of the officers. They are caught between politicians and the public, with a nebulous constitutional status and a shifting set of rules to apply, especially during an emergency for public health.
“It is not the police’s fault that the coronavirus regulations are partly necessarily draconian and partly unnecessarily draconian,” said Shami Chakrabarti, a civil liberties expert and Labor politician.
The biggest problem, according to her, is that Britain tends to debate the role of the police after episodes such as a police shooting, the murder of Ms. Everard or the violent clashes in Bristol. It ignites public opinion in one direction or another, she says, but could stifle a thoughtful debate.
“We are conducting this discussion almost exclusively in times of crisis,” she said. Chakrabarti said, “not in peacetime.”