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Law enforcement social control policies over black Americans can be traced back to early policing. From the development of the “patroller” system (established in 1794 to systematically police slaves) to contemporary police militarization, the relationship between black Americans and the police has been defined by bitter conflict that continuously results in outward expressions of discontent and protests. Recent examples abound, including the Los Angeles riots in the 1990s, the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as the protests sparked by the deaths of Eric Garner and Freddie Gray. Indeed, social, political, and media speculation has placed police behavior under heavy scrutiny. Questions abound regarding the fairness, appropriateness, legality, and legitimacy of police methods, as critics have accused policing agencies of adopting punitive and repressive measures that target communities of color (and act as provocation for rioting). This chapter will use a critical lens to first investigate the historical social control strategies used against communities of color by law enforcement (beginning with antebellum “beat companies” to more contemporary “broken windows” policies). Next, the author observes that, in addition to institutional evolution, police behavior (specifically related to community policing and responses to community protests) have accordingly shifted since the nineteenth century. For example, the author discusses the three current strategies of protest management (escalated force, negotiated management, and strategic incapacitation) that have all been embraced to varying degrees with relationship to police response to black community protests. Last, the author explores the iterative process of police “command and control” policies and black community protests, noting that these competing forces have “coevolved,” mirroring one another, and feature antagonistic attitudes from both sides.

This paper analyzes the relationship between the Chilean student movement and state force action during the period 2000–2012, placing specific attention on three waves of student contention that took place at the turn of the century. During the decade under study, the Chilean students became more contentious, they broadened their demands beyond specific grievances to encompass a critique to the education system as a whole, their alliance system grew (gaining from these denser networks of collaboration more resources to mobilize), and they managed to win public opinion on their side. However, the relationship with state forces has not been static across time, and both students and state forces have experienced changes in how they interact with each other. The results of this paper are based on a mixed method approach that drew on a quantitative database of student contention in Chile (n = 491 student events) and 15 in-depth interviews with leader activists from the most salient recent Chilean student movements of three periods under study, in addition to some key informants. The findings confirm that when student protests target the government, when they use disruptive strategies that affect the status-quo, and when they mobilize alongside other challenging actors, they are more likely to be met with direct repression by authorities. The research shows that there is a “dialect of repression” at play by which state forces' direct repression of protest can be two-fold: on the one hand, it gives students visibility in the public opinion, but on the other, it can be negative for ushering support if the media and authorities are successful in portraying them as violent or a threat to public order. In this sense, the figure of the “encapuchado,” students who disguise their identity and purposefully seek confrontation with authorities during mobilizations is problematized by the movement itself. How to win public opinion and use that visibility in their favor is related to decision-making mechanisms that the movement puts at play but also to the calculations done on the part of the government and security forces about the leverage of the movement.

Scholarship on the effects of various kinds of state repression (e.g., counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, protest policing) on subsequent dissent has produced a body of contradictory findings. In an attempt to better understand the effects of one form of state repression – protest policing – on one form of dissent – public protest – this paper examines the effects of various policing strategies used at protest events on subsequent protest levels in the United States between 1960 and 1990. Theoretically, we argue the effects of repression cannot be broadly theorized but instead need to be hypothesized at the level of particular police strategies and actions. We theorize and empirically examine the impacts of five police strategies, while also improving on prior analyses by producing a comprehensive model that examines lagged and nonlinear effects and examines the effects across the entire social movement sector, as well as across two specific movement industries. Results (1) confirm that not all police strategies have the same effects; (2) show that policing strategies tend to have predominately linear effects; (3) show that police actions have their strongest effects in the very short term, with few effects detectable after a few weeks; and (4) point to interesting differences in the effects of policing strategies on subsequent protest across different social movements.

Examining the historical evolution of public protest and the police response, primarily in the United States since the 1960s informs strategies and tactics on more recent responses to protest. Case study examination and analysis can aid police and civic leaders in crafting a cohesive strategy to address civil unrest within their jurisdictions. Specifically examining case studies involving the Occupy Movement of 2011 and the resultant civil unrest following the death of Freddie Gray in the City of Baltimore will aid in understanding potential benefits of a more integrated response to civil unrest that would include emergency management as a contributory to the possible solution.

The confrontational stance of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) against the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) was a central factor in the outbreak of political violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. The analysis of the RUC officers’ testimonies before the Scarman Tribunal of Inquiry discloses both the police knowledge and the pattern of interaction between police and protesters. The closed political opportunity structure (POS) for the CRM filtered in the police knowledge, proving it to be a thorough indicator of the state's prevailing strategy towards challengers. Yet, even within a state firmly intolerant of mass dissent police can occasionally decide to cooperate with protesters. In Derry, the RUC was often willing to, and in fact did, negotiate with protest leaders, showing at times a remarkably flexible approach. However, the negotiations occurred haphazardly outside institutional channels, with unpredictable outcomes. Consequently, protest-policing styles failed to soften and conflicts to deescalate.

Protests surrounding the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC) resulted in over 1,800 arrests. Scholarship on repression is divided about the likely impacts of arrests on subsequent activism. Interviews with RNC arrestees are used to examine potential effects. Findings offer twists to social movements and socio-legal hypotheses: (1) while many arrestees were less willing to protest after their arrest, for many of these individuals deterrence was selective, not wholesale; (2) many factors that were expected to neutralize repressive impacts either resulted in deterrence or set the stage for radicalization; and (3) individuals who were radicalized shared strong preparation for their arrest experience.

We are long overdue for a conversation about ethical treatment of student researchers. Ethical treatment of research participants has been carefully defined through decades of public conversation, and ethical practices have been institutionalized through mechanisms like mandatory ethics trainings and Institutional Review Boards. Student researchers deserve the same level of consideration. While there are many types of ethical violations of student labor in research projects, there are two that are of particular concern to social movements researchers: use of volunteer labor without clear academic or professional benefits, and failure to ensure the safety of student researchers. The first of these ethical violations is especially common in social movements research because of the emergent nature of protests: new rounds of protests begin and researchers seek to rapidly collect data on a tight timeframe, making grant funding to pay student researchers challenging. The second situation emerges when faculty researchers do not consider the ways students' race, gender identity, or other characteristics, or the nature of the protests themselves might create potential risks for students.

In this paper, I propose using the Belmont Report principles to create guidelines for ethical treatment of student researchers. While these principles were developed for the purposes of protecting research participants, the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice help us to clarify the risks and benefits for student researchers, to find ways to maximize the benefits of student research participation, and to understand and address the inequalities that plague graduate student training.

This chapter examines the framing of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement in mainstream media. An analytic sample of 4,303 articles collected from the Dow Jones Factiva database reveals variation in depth, breadth, and intensity of BLM coverage in the following newspapers between 2012 and 2016: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Al Jazeera English. We review contemporary literature on racial inequality and employ Media Framing and Critical Race Theory to discuss the implications of our findings on public perceptions, future policy formation, and contemporary social protest worldwide.

Using socio-legal research on arrests and the criminal justice system, this paper contests the implicit argument in recent research on repression that arrests are “softer” than police violence. Specifically, the paper explores the physical conditions of arrest and detention, and the extent to which arrests initiate costly interactions with the legal system that punish defendants before they are even tried (or even if charges are later dropped). Using data on arrests and police practices from mine strikes in Arizona from the early 1980s and data on arrests and police practices during urban riots in the 1960s, the paper: (1) discusses the physical realities of arrest and detention; (2) outlines the array of costs that arrests impose on protesters; (3) discusses the implications of biased policing on that set of costs; and (4) examines the costs associated with mass arrests. The paper concludes this empirical analysis by questioning the commensurability of arrests with other forms of police action, including violence, against protesters.

Frame resonance and innovative tactics can substitute for a movement’s lack of important resources to sustain protests. This chapter shows how the insurgent groups in the 2011 Tunisian uprising that lacked mass-based organizations and national leaders maintained and spread the protests using frame resonance and innovative tactics. It argues that the activists’ strategy of frame resonance drew on the collective identity of the poor people in the interior regions, mainly their collective feeling of social marginalization. Activist organizers also relied on a motivational campaign aimed at converting the feelings of injustice held by those in the interior regions into anger against the regime. The innovative tactics of the activists included locating protests inside poor people’s neighborhoods, especially in coastal regions. The engagement of poor people in the protests sustained them in two ways: by spreading and intensifying protests through individual initiatives, and by weakening the Tunisian police in sustained disruptive actions and spontaneous riots. These findings are based on the narratives of 81 activists, insurgent groups’ documents, chanted slogans, and official state documents. The fieldwork research was conducted in Tunisia during the months of April and May 2012, and June 2013.