The U.S. police reckoning has entered a new chapter this week with the television spectacle of federal security agents being overrun by a crowd of armed extremist extremists storming the Capitol.
At first glance, the siege was a failure of planning: the U.S. Capitol police, who have been dealing with all sorts of protests and protests all year, apparently did not predict the threat posed by thousands of people at the urging of President Donald not. Trump – and after sharing their plans online – joined the Capitol to protest his election loss. Although some officers fought with them – one riot was shot dead and one officer later succumbed to injuries – others took selfies and apparently offered no resistance, and dozens of rioters were able to leave without being arrested.
The relatively indulgent treatment of the intruders was of great concern to many Americans whose view of the chaos on Wednesday was affected by their response to the protests against the police that woke the country up in the summer. The attack on the Capitol could eventually deepen the divide between those who want police power reduced and those who warn about lawlessness, and it underscores the need for police to restore their relationships with their communities.
To many officers and their supporters on the right, Capitol police action has shown how passive policing has become in the face of a reform movement aimed at curbing their use of force. For them, the debacle showed that no matter how they reacted to a mass demonstration, whether with too much force or too little, they would always be criticized.
To black activists, civil rights advocates and many Democrats – including President-elect Joe Biden – the police response reflects the law enforcement’s long history of giving white people passions for behavior that would cause beatings or death if done by people of color . Some have pointed to the cruel treatment of many Black Lives Matter protesters in cities across the country following the May 25 assassination of George Floyd in Minneapolis – including the forced removal of peaceful protesters near the White House to make way for a Trump photo-op – and the more moderate reaction to groups of white people who excluded protests against Covid-19. Revelation that Wednesday’s rioters include military veterans and police officers has exacerbated feelings of divergent treatment.
And for law enforcement officials, researchers, and consultants who want to help change the U.S. police, the Capitol fiasco was a strong reminder that the police still have a way to adapt to a new era of protests.
“There is a general recognition that the playbook police used for demonstrations are outdated,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-profit organization in Washington that advises police departments.
A few days before the Capitol siege, Wexler predicted in an email that mass handling of police demonstrations in 2021 would be one of the profession’s biggest challenges, with several high-profile hearings scheduled for officers charged last year with the murder or mistreatment of people. He asked if local departments were prepared.
“The kind of unpredictability of protests has become very worrying for police chiefs,” Wexler said in an interview Thursday. “The police will make every kind of protest must be regarded as unreliable. That is what happened here, ”he added, referring to the Capitol.
But the 2020 protests have shown that the answer is not an overwhelming display of power.
Many departments were caught off guard by the violent and brutal protests after Floyd’s death, some of which turned violent. Some police departments have used tactics that are considered excessive, from setting up riot gear to curves and defeating protesters to using tear gas and “less than lethal” projectiles that leave people bleeding or maimed. Critics say the militaristic tactics violate people’s constitutional rights and provoke violence. In cities where police have moved to improve public confidence, the response to the protests has threatened to put efforts back.
This experience led to soul-searching among some police and law enforcement officials who continued as they faced protests across the political spectrum: right-wing Americans angry with anti-police protesters, along with pandemic locks and Trump’s loss . Researchers found that police were less likely to intervene or use force in the protests, whose participants often saw themselves as law enforcers. Amnesty International accused police of not preventing violence when the two parties clashed in the streets.
“The differences we see in the use of force are the political streaks of those who come under surveillance,” said Brian Griffey, a researcher and adviser at Amnesty International. It was, according to him, seen at the American Capitol, where he saw the protest turn into a riot.
How this happened is now being investigated by federal authorities and Congress. Department of Defense officials said Thursday that local and federal law enforcement agencies do not expect such violence during planning meetings, and that U.S. Capitol Police and Washington, DC, police department have not turned down the number of national troops deployed in the area. area deployed, does not expand. While the rioters in the Capitol went on a rampage, U.S. Capitol police were slow to accept offers of assistance from the U.S. Department of Justice, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News. Steven Sund, head of the agency, said on Thursday that he would resign, which will take effect later this month.
In the wake of the Floyd protests, many cities and police departments have adopted changes in the way they handle mass demonstrations. Most of these reforms have focused on limiting the use of tear gas and rubber bullets. But there is also a quieter effort to update police crowdfunding standards to reflect the lessons of 2020, with less emphasis on retaining control over protesters and more on allowing people to exercise their rights for first amendment. to practice.
In California, for example, officials are setting new police training standards in response to recommendations given by experts to Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, in September. It ranges from lessons on first modification and crowd psychology to improved communication and ‘use of force proportionality’ that prioritize restraint and de-escalation.
“Now we go back to the drawing board and say, ‘Wait a minute, what are we doing here?'” Said Steven Nottingham, a retired police lieutenant in Long Beach, California who teaches departments across the country how to manage civilian governance. management. unrest and is part of the new training effort.
There is widespread frustration among police who feel they have received the message in recent months that both more and less violence is unacceptable, Nottingham said. “We absolutely do not know what to do. “Everything we do seems to be wrong,” he said.
The answer, he says to police commanders in his crowd management classes, is to do more to understand protesters before they arrive, to be more aware of the political environment in which officers work, and to respond proportionately to threats.
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Thor Eells, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, teaches a “tiered response” – a large contingent of uniformed officers along with secret officers who gather information from the crowd and riot units ready to respond if protesters become violent – apparently did not exist Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol.
Police do not want to risk further erosion of public trust, Eells said. But on Wednesday there was ‘extreme self-control, almost to the point where there was too much self-control’.
Lynda Williams, a professor of criminal law and a former agent of the secret service, who leads the national organization for black law enforcement officers, said police should also acknowledge that the diverse treatment of protesters is rooted in systemic racism.
That racism not only affects the police’s response to protests; it also poisons police planning for the events, Williams said. Williams was not involved in the response to Wednesday’s riot. But based on her experience helping law enforcement plan previous protests in the Capitol, Williams said police gather a lot of information beforehand and assess the risk of violence, and that black protesters are usually at greater risk than white protesters.
“If it was a minority, a black crowd, they would still put a record on individuals today,” Williams said of the riots in the Capitol. “We have to admit there is a difference.”
Vera Eidelman, a staff advocate at the American Civil Liberties Union, said she hoped the U.S. Capitol debate would not be cited by officials as a reason to give police more resources and tools to respond to mass demonstrations.
“It’s a danger to think that’s the lesson,” she said.
Kim Dine, a former head of the US Capitol Police, said he hoped the failure of his former agency would prompt the US police to improve their response to increasingly volatile protests – and the political conflict they often provoke.
“It’s a stain in our history that is not going to go away any time soon,” Dine said. ‘It’s worrying, but I think the policing profession has gotten a lot better and better and we have to hold ourselves accountable. But we must also reduce this level of rhetoric that divides people and supporters in disagreement. ”