Police in the United States are three times more likely to use violence against left-wing protesters than right-wing protesters, according to new data from a non-profit organization that monitors political violence around the world.
In the past ten months, U.S. law enforcement agencies have used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and punches at a much higher percentage on Black Lives Matter protests than in pro-Trump or other legal protests.
Law enforcers were also more likely to use force against left-wing protesters, whether the protests were peaceful or not.
The statistics, based on law enforcement responses to more than 13,000 protests across the United States since April 2020, show a clear difference in how agencies responded to the historic wave of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence, compared to demonstrations by Trump supporters have been arranged. .
Barack Obama emphasizes a previous version of this statistic on January 8, arguing that they provide a ‘useful frame of reference’ to understand the outrage of Americans over the failure of the Capitol police to stop a crowd of thousands of white Trump supporters from entering the Capitol on January 6 to fall and plunder, a response that called for renewed investigation into the level of violence and aggression that U.S. police forces use against black versus white Americans.
The new statistics come from the U.S. Crisis Monitor, a database created this spring by researchers from Princeton and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a non-profit organization that has previously been involved in civil unrest in the Middle East. Europe and Latin America. .
The researchers found that the vast majority of the thousands of protests across the United States over the past year were peaceful, and that most of the protests by left and right were not answered with violent response by law enforcement.
Police fired tear gas, rubber bullets, beatings with batons and other violence against protesters during 511 leftist demonstrators and 33 protesters to the right place since April, according to updated data this week announced.
The Guardian compares the percentage of all protests organized by left and right groups that led to the use of force by law enforcement. For left-wing protests, it was about 4.7% of the protests, while for right-wing protests it was about 1.4%, meaning that law enforcement was about three times more likely to use violence against left-wing versus right-wing protests.
The difference in the police response only increased when comparing peaceful left and right protests. If we look at the subset of protests in which protesters did not commit violence, vandalism or looting, law enforcement officials were about 3.5 times more likely to use violence against left-wing protests than right-wing protests, with about 1.8% of the peaceful left-wing protests and only half a percent of the right-wing peaceful protests received tear gas, rubber bullets or other force from law enforcement.
‘The police are not just involved anymore because [leftwing protesters] is more violent. They are even more involved with peaceful protesters, “said Dr. Roudabeh Kishi, director of research and innovation at ACLED, told the Guardian. “That’s the clear trend.”
The ACLED data also show that US law enforcement agencies were more likely to intervene in left-wing versus right-wing protests in general, and that they were more likely to use force when intervening. U.S. law enforcement agencies made arrests or other interventions in 9% of the 10,863 Black Lives Matter and other left-wing protests between April 1, 2020 and January 8, compared to only 4% of the 2,295 right-wing protests.
Half the time the police intervened on a left-wing protest, it used violent force, ACLED found, compared to only about a third of the time for legal protests.
Overall, 94% of left-wing demonstrations over the past ten months have been peaceful, compared to 96% of right-wing demonstrations, according to ACLED’s most recent data. Kishi warned that the process of classifying protests as peaceful does not take into account whether protesters engaging in violence or damage to property are responding to aggressive or violent behavior by the police.
The U.S. Crisis Monitor has earlier found that despite Trump’s rhetoric and intense media coverage of damage to property or violence during protests this summer against police violence, more than 93% of Black Lives Matter protests since April have left no one harmed or damaged. . .
Most of the protests that ACLED classified as leftist were Black Lives Matter demonstrations, but also included pro-Biden demonstrations; abolish protests by left-wing groups such as ICE, the NAACP or the Democratic Socialists of America; and protests related to anti-fascists or left-wing militia groups and street movements.
The right-wing protests included pro-Trump and pro-police demonstrations, including “Blue Lives Matter” rallies; legal protest against coronavirus restrictions on public health; demonstrations in which supporters of the conspiracy theory of QAnon and others are associated with the “Save Our Children” movement; and the “Stop the Steal” marches that promote Trump’s false allegations about his 2020 election loss.