The challenge today is how police are going to handle protests when the protestors out-number those who assemble to protest against the protesters? To a certain extent, that’s new. Yet, that is the special and unique job of police in a free society – to protect that First Amendment — regardless.
Madison had the unique opportunity in the past to develop a method of responding to protest that came to be called “The Madison Method.” We had plenty of practice during the anti-war and civil rights marches. We learned to contact both “sides” of an issue and negotiated our response and what we expected from them. Early contact was essential.
The Madison Method of Responding to Protest
- Facilitate and protect the right of people to assemble and petition their government.
- Always use restraint and care in the use of force.
- Dialogue before, during, and after the event.
- Be effective and noticeable peacekeepers.
- The focus should be on the protest, not the police.
- Be open and communicate with the media.
- Continuously improve this method.
Along the same lines of crowds and violence, The British Home Office has been concerned about the behavior of their passionate and often violent football (soccer) fans. Commendably, the British consulted academia for some help and found Dr. Clifford Stott, a social psychologist who studied crowd behavior. We would do well to follow what he learned and taught police.
Stott is one of Europe’s leading researchers regarding crowd behavior and he advocates a different approach for police to use when handling crowds; in short, “The Madison Method.” He found that:
“[L]arge-scale disorder tended to emerge and escalate because indiscriminate, heavy-handed policing generated a group mentality among large numbers of fans that was based on shared perceptions that the police action was illegitimate. This had the effect of drawing ordinary fans into conflict with the police.”[1]
So when a crowd perceives the police as overreacting or being heavy-handed, its members tend to stop observing and start taking acting. It is exactly what I had experienced early in my observational studies in Berkeley and Minneapolis. To prevent this from happening, Stott advocates what he calls a “softly-softly” approach—a low-key approach in which officers mix with and relate to crowd members based on their behavior, rather than their reputation.
If police approach a crowd with the expectation that its members are going to make trouble, it often turns out that way. Even so, most police around the world have continued to use the traditional hard methods of the past when responding to crowds. For the most part today, communicating, relating, or dialoguing with people who are protesting isn’t what police do. But it is something they now must learn. The soft approach is precisely what we developed and used in Madison. It worked then and, as Stott suggests, it will work now.
The issues surrounding protest, hate speech, and the First Amendment will be another area which will tend to challenge today’s police along with their use of deadly force.
In order to get this right, police are going to have to become active learners, teachers and leaders in their communities. They will have to be able to articulate why they are permitting a certain group of noxious individuals to say hateful things 
On of my most popular posts on this blogsite has been “Why Police Matter.” Here’s a couple of quotes from that post to remind us of the noble cause ahead:
“[P]olicing is a calling — not a job. It is a calling for those who wish to help society function better, zealously protect the rights of others, and work with community members to resolve budding social problems. Others should not apply.
“The Founders of our society were concerned about fairness, equality, and freedom. That’s who we are as a nation. And that it is our job (often delegated to police officers) to continue that concern. Those who can best ensure that is our nation’s police. This is because police work on the street, with people, not in office buildings or courtrooms.
“[P]olice are like the canaries that coal miners used to carry, acute sensors to detect the early presence of danger. Police are in our communities and neighborhoods to do just that — to make early detection of dangerous social ‘gases;’ our ills, social problems, and the times when we don’t live up to our nation’s values…
“All this makes for a strong foundation in which honesty, moral action, and respect for human rights become the standard of American policing…
“When a man or woman puts on a police uniform, they are highly visible representatives of our government and who we are as a people. They should be the epitome of our nation’s values. When police fail in this, we all stumble. Those of us who experienced our nation’s civil rights movement know this to be true. And once we fall as a nation, it takes a long time to get back on our feet again…”
Dr. King first showed us how, now it’s up to us – and our police – to model it and do it. Peace!
[1] Clifford Stott. “Crowd Psychology & Public Order Policing: An Overview of Scientific Theory and Evidence” in a submission to the HMIC Policing. Public Protest Review Team. September 14, 2009 and http://ift.tt/2vxpCeG.
from Improving Police http://ift.tt/2wIVWd3
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