Political violence is an American tradition

The scene was violent and chaotic: protesters being forcibly removed from a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The image reinforced a common complaint that police can be callous toward the free-speech rights of demonstrators when seeking to preserve order. Some questions and answers about rules and procedures for police at political events:

Q. Who pays for police to be there, taxpayers or event organizers?

A. It depends. As part of the permitting process, local officials, the venue and the event organizers discuss the event and its logistics and decide what kind of security is needed. What’s the expected crowd size? Is there a record of violence or disruptions at similar events?

Sometimes authorities decide it’s necessary for event organizers to provide private security. Sometimes authorities agree to supplement that with local police. Sometimes the private security detail consists of off-duty officers who are paid by the organizers or the venue, but retain their normal police powers. Sometimes, it’s private security without arrest power supplemented by police on their regular shifts.

With 18,000 police departments in the United States and municipalities with different rules, venues that can be municipally owned or privately held and events that require different approaches to ensure safety, nothing is standard.

Q. Why are police there?

A. To ensure public safety, both inside and outside the event. A large gathering mixed with the natural political friction of an election season, or any event that draws crowds in the thousands, can be a volatile brew.

Any such event, from a political rally to an NFL game, needs police present, said Jon Shane, an assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Q. How do police show enough force sufficient to maintain calm without becoming a provocation?

A. When violence broke out in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, blame fell on police for deploying armored vehicles and tear gas and using them aggressively against protesters.

Law enforcement experts say officers must walk a fine line: to appear in control without appearing threatening.

“That’s a very difficult judgment area,” said Ben Tisa, a former Marine and retired FBI agent and now a consultant on police policy, procedures and practices.

Some officers might be in uniform, while others are in plain clothes to blend in. Conflicting protesters may have to be kept separated. And some demonstrators come with the full intention of getting arrested, Tisa said.

“The officers are in a tough place,” he said. “If they have too many, they get yelled at. If they don’t have enough, they get yelled at.”

Q. Can localities recover any costs of providing protection for political rallies?

A. They can try, but it’s not easy. A county in Virginia billed the 2012 presidential campaigns more than $180,000 for providing police for security on a visit by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The state GOP reimbursed them just under $2,000, leaving the rest unreimbursed.

Henrico Police Chief Douglas Middleton told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, “I can’t make them pay it, but I want them to be aware that it’s not free for you to come here. Somebody pays for it. It’s either you or the taxpayers.”

In Burlington, Vermont, the mayor of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders’ hometown sent a bill totaling $8,464.27 to the Trump campaign for providing police at a Jan. 7 rally. The city said it dispatched 33 officers, about a third of its force. So far, the campaign hasn’t paid, said Jennifer Kaulius, the mayor’s spokeswoman.

Source by : http://www.nwherald.com/2016/03/19/why-are-police-at-political-rallies-and-who-pays-for-them/a7zj3a9/

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Political violence is an American tradition

BERLIN – Sen. Marco Rubio says that the tension Donald Trump cultivates at his rallies is worthy “of the Third World.” He’s overstating the case, and for that, Americans should count themselves lucky.

I have been to eight of Trump’s rallies in several states over the last two months, and I have seen protesters removed or jeered at each one, but I have not seen anything that could be described as a serious brawl.

In Trump’s months of campaigning before growing and fired-up audiences, some of them so large they packed stadiums, no one has been seriously injured — and that includes the police officer and two civilians who were briefly taken to a hospital after the canceled rally in Chicago on March 11. A punch, a reporter pushed to the ground: This is hardly the mayhem that sometimes accompanies politics in what Rubio calls “the Third World.”

In younger and poorer democracies, there’s more violence in parliaments than there has been at Trump rallies. In Greece, demonstrations against pension reform routinely feature Molotov cocktails and tear gas. In Ukraine last August, a hard-right activist threw a hand grenade at the police at a rally outside the parliament building, and shots were fired, resulting in the death of an officer and 100 serious injuries. In Russia, attending a rally that is not officially sanctioned carries the risk of beatings and detention. Hundreds invariably are.

We can hope that Trump tones things down while at the same time remembering that the United States has a long tradition of muscular politics characterized by flare-ups that go far beyond shouting matches and some pushing.

Consider the civil rights protests or those against the Vietnam War, not to mention the labor clashes of the 1920s and 1930s.

It’s not just the U.S., either. “As comforting as it is for civilized people to think of barbarians as violent and of violence as barbarian, Western civilization and various forms of collective violence have always clung to each other,” the sociologist Charles Tilly wrote in 1978.

But the relative calm in U.S. politics may just be cyclical. This season may be more contentious because Americans are getting impatient with politics as usual, whether from the left or from the right. Around the world and throughout history, similar impatience sometimes has found expression in violence. Brawling at rallies is not necessarily the sign of a descent into barbarity. It may just be a manifestation of intensified anger and conviction, which often go hand in hand. Democracy can be messy, especially when a country is changing. I’ve seen in one post-Soviet country after another that the past doesn’t give up without a fight. But all hope for change dies when people grow apathetic, stop fighting, then stop showing up.

This election may not be a showcase for the intelligence and statesmanship of the U.S. elite, but the passion and engagement it has infused into U.S. politics could have a silver lining.


Source by : http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2016/03/20/commentary/world-commentary/political-violence-is-an-american-tradition/#.Vu5jNtx95dj

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