Managing Defiance: The Policing of the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Alex S. Vitale

July 2012

The Occupy Wall Street movement has presented a series of challenges to local law

enforcement agencies, some of which have not faced large defiant protests since the early

1970’s. In response, many of them have relied on a variety of aggressive tactics, which in some

cases have shocked public opinion, putting the issue of protest policing on the national agenda.

Images of police pepper spraying passive demonstrators, using tear gas and other “less lethal”

projectiles on non-violent crowds, and forcefully evicting protest encampments has generated a

great deal of commentary about the nature of police power, appropriate use of force, and the

motivations behind police actions.

Three popular narratives have been added to the two main academic explanations for the

aggressive police tactics seen in many cities across the US. The first is that there has been a

broad “militarization” of the police brought on by the Federal War on Drugs and anti-terrorism

spending. The second is that there has been a coordinated effort to repress the OWS movement

because of the threat it poses to existing political and economic arrangements. Proponents of this

perspective point to the role of the US Conference of Mayors in facilitating communication

among local mayors and the efforts of the US Department of Homeland Security along with the

non-governmental Police Executive Research Forum to disseminate best practices among local

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mayors and police chiefs. The third narrative is that local police have been forced to act because

OWS encampments have been a source of permit violations, sanitations problems, and secondary

criminality including drug dealing, sexual assaults, and even shootings. The first academic

explanations is that the police are merely responding in kind to the level of threat posed by OWS

to public order and public safety. The second is that protest policing is driven by certain

philosophies of policing and that these “styles” of policing have become more aggressive in

some cities.

Each of these explanations holds important truths, but they all fail to capture the

underlying nature of the conflict between the defiant non-violent tactics used by OWS and the

strategic emphasis on order maintenance that predominates in American policing. This paper is

based on reviews of police and protestor interactions in 10 major American cities. Video tapes,

journalist accounts, statements by demonstrators, and official police documents were used to

reconstruct both the tactics of the demonstrators and the tactics of the police.

Previous Explanations

Images of mass arrests, riot gear clad police, pepper spraying of demonstrators, and the

use of tear gas and concussion grenades became commonplace in the United States in the fall of

2011. These scenes were unfamiliar to many Americans, at least in relationship to domestic

protest activity. There are several explanations that have been offered in a variety of contexts to

explain the high levels of force used by police in many cities against the Occupy movement.

Journalists, Occupy activists, government officials, and academics have all offered sometimes

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competing and sometimes overlapping analysis of this increase in police use of force, which are

organized into broad themes below.

Militarization of Policing

One of the most common explanations for the high level of aggressive police tactics

against OWS is that there has been a broad militarization of civilian policing across the US.

Kraska (2011) has documented this process well in advance of the Occupy movement.

Militarization can be defined as the use of military tactics, equipment and a military ethos.

Civilian police were created in the 19th Century in large part as an alternative to the use of local

militias to handle outbreaks of civil disorder and rioting. Militias or even regular military units

were frequently used in putting down revolts through the use of deadly force. They generally

lacked the ability to moderate the use of force and had very little or no legitimacy in the local

setting. The result was frequent escalations of conflict and political fallout for local officials.

Civilian police were designed to reduce the likelihood of mass casualties and to increase the

legitimacy of crowd control actions amongst the public. “Policing by consent” became the

touchstone for modern policing and was seen as a way of reducing urban violence and crime.

This civilianization of policing began to be reversed in response to the civil disorders of

the 1960’s in which urban rioting and large contentious protest called into question the ability of

local police to handle large scale civil disorder. The Federal Government responded by making

an increasing array of riot control weaponry and special training available to local police through

the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, created in 1968. This effort was greatly

expanded in the 1980’s with the acceleration of the War on Drugs. Federal asset forfeiture laws

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provided local police with both an incentive to expand aggressive anti-drug enforcement and a

new revenue stream, which was put to use in establishing Special Weapons and Tactics units

(SWAT) armed with military hardware and trained in military tactics and esprit de corps. In the

1990’s the prevalence and scope of these units expanded dramatically. By the mid 1990’s 90% of

small and medium police forces, and 65% of small jurisdictions had SWAT teams. In 1980

Departments reported 3,000 deployments of these teams, by 1995 the number had risen to 30,000

(Kraska 2011: 142). In addition much of the training of these units is performed by current and

former military special forces personnel, inculcating military style small unit combat orientation

in distinction to the more individualistic craft thinking that characterizes police patrol work

(Kraska and Kappeler 1997).

The reaction to the September 11th terrorist attacks provided another powerful impetus for

expanding both the use of military equipment and the development of martial tactics and

mindsets. Direct transfers of military equipment began in the 1980’s but after 9/11 the emphasis

switched to Homeland Security grant funding, creating a new $34 billion market for arms

manufacturers. Both high and low risk areas have received massive infusions of cash to buy

military hardware. Fargo, North Dakota recently received $8 million to buy armored personnel

carriers, Kevlar battle helmets, and bomb detection robots (Becker 2011). Bulletproof shields,

armored cars, and assault rifles have become standard equipment in small and medium police

departments across the country.

In addition, Departments have greatly expanded their supply of riot control equipment.

Militarized units and tactics have certainly been in evidence at Occupy protests. Full body armor,

Kevlar helmets, and a variety of “less lethal” weaponry have been seen in Oakland, Denver,

Portland, and other US cities in conjunction with OWS protests. But is this the norm? Are

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images of heavily armored police representative of the policing of OWS or are they the

photogenic exceptions?

Federal Coordination

Another explanation for the aggressive policing of OWS, and in particular the waves of

evictions is that there was a coordinated strategy led by the federal government. Feminist author

Naomi Wolf, following the eviction of OWS encampments in New York and several other cities,

argued:

What happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for

now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of

Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organized

suppression against the people they are supposed to represent (Wolf 2011).

According to this viewpoint there was direct federal involvement in coordinating local policing

actions against the Occupy movement by heads of Congressional oversight committees and the

Department of Homeland Security.

Others have argued that the US Conference of Mayors (COM) played a central role in

coordinating local police action through a series of conference calls (Levine 2011) and surveys

(Cherkis 2012) involving local mayors and police executives in cities with Occupy

encampments. These efforts allegedly focused on strategies for dealing with the protests

including advice on best policing practices as well as ways of generating political cover for

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evictions. There are also allegations of FBI and Department of Homeland Security involvement

(Ellis 2012). In addition, there were two calls in which the Police Executive Research Forum

(PERF) provided expert advice on best policing practices to police executives in at least 40

different cities (Democracy Now 2011), prompting claims that they played a central role on

coordinating the crackdowns (Aigeanta 2011). Is this evidence of communication sufficient to

indicate a coordinated strategy of repression against OWS?

Health and Safety

Many of the cities that have initiated evictions of OWS occupations have relied on a

narrative of concerns about health and safety. Local officials have cited a variety of sanitation

and health issues including accumulations of trash and human waste, unsafe food handling and

spreading of disease. In most cases these health and safety concerns were raised primarily as a

justification for evicting occupy encampments. New York City mayor, Michael Bloomberg,

summed up this sentiment in a statement to the press following the eviction of OWS from

Zuccotti Park:

From the beginning I said that the City had two principle goals: guaranteeing

public health and safety and guaranteeing the protestors First Amendment rights.

But when these two goals clash, the health and safety of the public and our first

responders must be the priority. (Bloomberg 2011)

Boston mayor Thomas Menino made similar comments:

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The conditions at Dewey Square have deteriorated significantly and pose very

real health and safety risks. The city strongly encourages the Occupy movement

to abide by the Rose Kennedy Greenway regulations and remove their tents and

refrain from camping in that area. We applaud the judge for clearly recognizing

the City’s authority to protect all of our residents, including those currently at

Dewey Square. Our first priority has always been and will always be to ensure the

public’s health and safety. (Sweet, Wedge, and McConville 2011)

Like Bloomberg, Dallas mayor Mike Rawlings made it clear that public safety concerns trump

first amendment rights:

They need to be safe. There are kids in that camp; that's not safe. When police get

hurt, that's not safe. When citizens potentially get hurt, that's not safe. So, safety

first; freedom of speech second. (Lopez 2011)

Similar concerns were raised by city officials in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington D.C.,

San Francisco, Oakland, and Seattle. Both Dallas mayor Rawlings and New York mayor

Bloomberg raised the issue of the safety of first responders (see quotes above). Neither provided

examples of what exactly they meant, but presumably they were suggesting injuries to police or

EMS personnel tasked with policing and providing services to the Occupy encampments in those

cities.

Crime was also highlighted as a concern in several cities in the study. In some cases

OWS members have been pointed to as the victim of crimes and in others as the perpetrators.

Crime was a particular concern in Oakland, where the city posted notices to vacate citing an

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“increasing frequency of violence, assaults, threats and intimidation” (City of Oakland 2011).

The conservative Washington Times editorial board described an “Occupy D.C. crime wave” that

was drawing police resources away from other parts of the city (Washington Times 2012).

Crime was also pointed to as a problem by officials in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Los

Angeles. How serious were the health and safety problems associated with the Occupy

movement and could it explain aggressive police action?

Threat Hypothesis

Another possible explanation has to do with the relationship between protest mobilization

and police repression. While most studies on the repression-mobilization relationship have

focused on the impact of the former on the latter, recent work has shown that characteristics of

protests can influence the likelihood and types of repression they face (Ayoub 2010; Earl, Soule

and McCarthy 2003). The “blue centered” approach (Earl and Soule 2006) emphasizes rational

police procedures that determine the level of repressive coverage police will undertake. The

common finding in this literature is that police make assessments about situational risk based on

factors closely tied to the past behavior of groups and the likelihood that their protest will cause

significant disorder. According to this view, assessments about the level of threat protestors

impose are critical determinants of police repression strategies. Tactics, especially, are a salient

aspect of protest events that significantly influence the level of situational threat attributed to the

event. Past studies have found that protest tactics are a source of threat for police especially

when protestors use disruptive, confrontational, multiple, and noninstitutional tactical forms

(McAdam 1982; Earl, Soule and McCarthy 2003; Earl and Soule 2006; Martin, McCarthy and

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McPhail 2009; Ayoub 2010). In addition the target and political message put forward by groups

has been shown to be predictive of police response in some settings (Chang and Vitale

forthcoming)

There is abundant evidence that the Occupy movement has been defiant in its political

message and tactics. Occupation of public spaces, bank lobbies and public streets have all been

common place at Occupy demonstrations. In addition, there have been many cases of people

refusing police orders to disperse, resisting arrest, and even some violent attacks on police.

While the Occupy movement has avowed a variety of political positions in its striving for greater

economic equality, there have been demands for fundamental changes in the economic and

political organization of society that go beyond traditional interest group politics and that may

therefore be deemed more threatening by the police and local political authorities. Similarly the

targeting of major financial institutions both public and private may be predictive of higher

levels of police repression. Did police merely respond proportionately to the threat posed by

OWS’s defiant style of protest?

Styles of Policing

Protest policing can also said to cohere around strategic philosophies of how to manage

protest activity. Rather than reacting to individual situational factors, the police may rely on a

framework of beliefs and practices that organize and orient their behavior. McCarthy and

McPhail (1998) and McPhail et al. (1998) argue that there has been an important transition in the

style of protest policing from the 1960s to the 1980s. In the 1960s and early 1970s, the police

operated under a philosophy of ‘‘escalated force’’ in which the militancy of protestors was met

by increased militancy by the police. Any show of force or violence by the protestors was met

with overwhelming force in return (McPhail et al., 1998). In response to the growing violence at

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demonstrations during this period, a new doctrine of ‘‘negotiated management’’ emerged based

on greater cooperation between police and demonstrators and an effort to avoid violence. The

new approach called for the protection of free speech rights, toleration of community disruption,

ongoing communication between police and demonstrators, avoidance of arrests, and limiting the

use of force to situations where violence is occurring (Schweingruber, 2000).

The police in New York City, and some other jurisdictions have rejected the negotiated

management style in favor of a new approach based on the strict micro-management of

demonstrations called command and control to emphasize the extent to which the police attempt

to micro-manage all important aspects of demonstrations in an attempt to eliminate any

disorderly or illegal activity during the demonstration (Vitale 2005, 2007). This approach is

distinguished from negotiated management because it sets clear and strict guidelines on

acceptable behavior with very little negotiation with demonstration organizers. It is also

inflexible to changing circumstance during the course of the demonstration, and will frequently

rely on high levels of confrontation and force in relation to even minor violations of the rules

established for the demonstration. This does not represent a return to escalated force because it

attempts to avoid the use of force through planning and careful management of the protest. When

this fails, however, force is used, but only in the service of re-establishing control over the

demonstration. This is a highly managed system and therefore is not characterized by

uncoordinated uses of force or police riots as seen in many cities in the 1960s, in which police

supervisors were seen chasing after their officers to try to keep them from beating protestors in

the streets, but instead relies on the micro-management of crowd movements and mass arrests

planning and careful management of the protest.

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The Miami model. This later approach emerged nationally in response to the disruptive

protests at the World Trade Organization meetings in Seattle in 1999 and is named for the Miami

Police Department’s handling of protests at the Free Trade Area of the Americas meetings in

2003 (Getzen 2004; Scahill 2004). This style is characterized by the creation of no protest zones,

heavy use of less lethal weaponry, surveillance of protest organizations, negative advanced

publicity by city officials of protest groups, preemptive arrests, preventative detentions and

extensive restrictions on protest timing and locations (Vitale 2007).

This set of tactics is reserved for groups that the police believe cannot be controlled

through micro management. This is especially true for groups that do not apply for permits,

threaten direct action, or civil disobedience not coordinated with the police. Such groups are

subjected to aggressive and preemptive control measures such as being arrested while lawfully

gathering, being held in detention for long periods of time awaiting arraignment—often in poor

conditions. They are also likely to be the subjects of extensive police surveillance, infiltration,

and negative advanced publicity in the form of both official statements from the police and

unnamed police sources accusing the groups of planning violence and other illegal activity.

Finally, they are often met with high levels of force in the form of “less lethal” weaponry such as

pepper spray, tear gas, and rubber bullets.

Both command and control and the Miami model are consistent with Noakes and

Gillham’s new penology framework (Noakes and Gillham 2006) and Gillham’s strategic

incapacitation (Gillham 2011). They each attempt to prevent the possibility of disruptive protest

activity through the isolation and control of potentially disorderly groups and individuals. While

command and control accomplishes this with a minimal amount of direct coercion, the Miami

model is available for the police to use against those groups and individuals who are deemed to

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be uncontrollable by command and control tactics. In either approach there is a rejection of the

negotiated management style. There is little tolerance for disruption, limited communication,

inflexibility, and a willingness to use high levels of force to control even minor illegal behavior.

Nor is this a return to escalated force. The use of force here is strategic rather than punitive. It is

designed to control suspect populations and establish a zero tolerance framework for the control

of disorder, rather than to punish groups based on their politics or tactics. For the most part,

police control is exerted through preemptive intelligence-led actions and on the ground micro

control rather than the use of violence. The effect is to deny the full right to assemble without

the appearance of police brutality on the nightly news. Can the policing of OWS be explained by

the adherence of local police to these broad strategic orientations?

Methodology

In order to test these possible explanations I examined the practices of both

demonstrators and police in 10 major US cities. Working from a list of the cities in the 15 largest

statistical metropolitan areas (SMAs), I chose those ten with the highest level of interactions

between the police and OWS, excluding cities like Houston, Texas, with only limited OWS

activity. The 10 cities are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington,

DC., Dallas, San Francisco, Oakland, and Seattle.

For each city I reviewed dozens of videos of police protestor interaction as well as

numerous photographs and written accounts by news sources. I then coded the interactions in

terms of protestor behaviors such as pushing the police, resisting arrest, sit-ins, marching without

a permit, and refusal to disperse. The police behaviors I coded included mass arrests,

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containment tactics, display and use of specialized weaponry, use of body armor, and flexibility

among others detailed below. I also gathered press reports on a variety and health and safety

measures associated with OWS encampments.

Findings

Militarization

While militarization involves a strategic orientations as well as a combination of special

weapons and tactics I was only able to focus on the latter as a test of the presence of

militarization as an explanation for police aggression towards OWS. Those who support this

hypothesis have similarly relied on primarily observable aspects of policing rather than internal

documents, interviews, or other evidence related to the strategic orientation of paramilitary units

or protest policing more generally. Such interview and documentary evidence is rarely available

in the US due to a combination of concerns by local police about security and fear of litigation.

My measure of the presence of militarized policing involved the visible presence of four aspects

of such policing, which are 1) the use of body armor, 2) the display of special “less lethal”

weapons such as tear gas, flash bang grenades and a variety of “less lethal” projectiles, including

bean bags and rubber bullets, 3) the actual use of such weapons, and 4) the presence of armored

or riot control vehicles such as armored personnel carriers, armored, jeeps, and water cannons.

Table 1 shows that no city had all four of these elements and that only one (Oakland) had

3 of them. In several of the cities officers on occasion wore riot helmets, in Dallas and New York

City shields were deployed during evictions of OWS encampments, in San Francisco long riot

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batons are standard issue for demonstrations and were in evidence during some interactions, but

not all. In Philadelphia and Seattle and at time Dallas, most of the police tasked with policing

OWS were bicycle units and wore athletic uniforms with bicycle helmets. The body armor and

extensive display and use of special weapons was by far the exception in these cities indicating

little support for the militarization hypothesis.

Table 1

Body Armor SW displayed SW used Riot vehicles

NYC No No No No

LA Yes Yes No No

Chicago No No No No

Philly No No No No

Boston No No No No

Dallas Yes No No No

D.C. No No No No

Seattle No Yes Yes No

SF No Yes No No

Oak. Yes Yes Yes No

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Coordination of Federal Authorities

At least two conference calls were held that involved information sharing between local

mayors coordinated by the US Conference of mayors (Gold 2011). Participants in the call,

however, have consistently stated that this was for the purposes of information sharing and did

not involve any kind of coordination of activities. In addition, there was no evidence of a

substantive involvement of any federal authorities. Claims by Wolf (2011) that Congressional

committee heads, through their budget and oversight functions exerted pressure on local

authorities or coordinated a federal response are also lacking in any evidence.

In the US, policing is strongly decentralized. Unlike much of the rest of the world, local

police commanders are answerable exclusively to local officials. There is no federal control over

the police and federal interference tends to be strongly resisted. Federal oversight of local police

is also extremely limited. In rare circumstances the Federal government requires an outside

monitor of a local department that the Justice Department has found to engage in systematic

misconduct or corruption. Federal influence is felt indirectly through funding of special

programs and equipment. Much of this funding, however, goes towards modernization more

broadly and lacks specific strategic objectives. Two exceptions have been the push to involve

local police in the War on Drugs and terrorism prevention through direct grants and mandates of

local-federal cooperation, such as Joint Terrorism Task Forces.

Several commentators have pointed to the role of PERF in the repression of OWS

(Democracy Now 2011, Aigeanta 2011). PERF is a non-governmental organization of police

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executives from larger police departments. The policing of contentious demonstrations is not a

new issues for PERF, which has issued two major reports on the subject (Police Executive

Research Forum 2006, 2011a). It is seen as more sophisticated than the Association of Chiefs of

Police, which includes thousands of small and very small departments that skew it’s orientation

towards small town and rural concerns. While PERF receives research funding from the federal

government, this mostly goes towards the production of best practices documents designed to

improve police effectiveness. The organization has a high degree of transparency and most of

their activities and reports are publicly available. PERF did host two conference calls for local

police officials to “compare notes about their experiences with ‘Occupy’ protests,” but they

strongly deny any role in coordinating police actions. In addition they point out that their best

practices in relation to protests call for a soft approach to policing that is more in line with

negotiated management. (Police Executive Research Forum 2011b).

Health and Safety

In almost all of the cities in this study concerns about health and safety were raised by

local officials in relationship to OWS encampments. Health concerns took many different forms

including the presence of trash and human waste, damage to park property, outbreak of disease,

and improper food handling. Safety issues focused on the role of crime. In some cases OWS

members were portrayed as the victims of crime in need of protection. In others they were

portrayed as crime committers. Finally, in some jurisdictions the issue of the safety of first

responders was raised. To measure the presence of sanitation as an actual problem I looked for

evidence of excessive trash, human waste, and food contamination. For health problems I looked

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for the presence of injuries sustained by occupiers related to the act of occupying (as opposed to

protesting at another location), infectious or food born sickness among occupiers, and fires in the

encampment. Crime was judged to be present if there were documented crimes committed

against or by occupiers other than those directly related to protesting either in the encampment or

nearby. For officer safety, I looked for injuries sustained by police related to the act of

encamping (as opposed to protesting at another location).

Table 2 shows that while there was a basis for concerns about sanitation and crime, there

was little evidence of concrete health problems arising from OWS encampments. In some cases

the raising of sanitation concerns was somewhat disingenuous given that local officials actively

interfered in improving sanitation through restrictions on portable toilets in Dallas (Cherkis

2011), more organized food preparation in New York and Philadelphia, and even inadequate

trash pick-up.

Table 2

Sanitation Health Problems Crime Officer Safety

NYC No No Yes No

LA Yes No Yes No

Chicago No No No No

Philly Yes No Yes No

Boston Yes No Yes No

Dallas Yes No Yes No

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D.C. Yes No No No

Seattle Yes No No No

SF Yes No No No

Oak. No No Yes No

Threat Hypothesis

In order to test the threat hypothesis, I used five variables to code the level of threat posed

by demonstrators. Blockade measures the presence of demonstrators linking arms or otherwise

actively preventing access to a building or use of a roadway or sidewalk. This is a highly

disruptive form of protest and often results in arrests. Resisting arrest was present when people

either linked arms to prevent arrests, pushed police, or attempted to evade arrest. Pushing

involves active resistance to police dispersal efforts or an effort to cross police lines. It is a

highly contentious activity but does not usually rise to the level of causing injuries. Refusal to

disperse was present when demonstrators ignored police orders to leave a place, whether or not

the order was lawful. The refusal must have been more than just transitory. Finally, violence

measures the use of force against police in the form of thrown objects, fistfights or use of

weapons. Injuries to police are often but not always involved. I did not isolate target or

ideological variables because these were consistent in all cases. OWS encampments in all ten

cities targeted local private and public financial institutions and called for systematic changes in

the relationship between financial elites and government.

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Table 3 shows the distribution of these variables. Overall the presence of these variables

is quite high across the board. only Chicago has fewer than three variables present, while

Oakland and San Francisco each have all five. Despite the presence of some violence in three

cases, these were generally isolated incidents and not characteristic of the actions in those cities

more broadly. As a whole the OWS movement has remained remarkably non-violent. The fact

that there is some variation, however, allows for a testing of correlation with police actions.

Table 3

Blockade Resist Arrest Pushing Ref. to Disperse Violence

NYC Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

LA Yes Yes No Yes No

Chicago Yes No No Yes No

Philly Yes Yes No Yes No

Boston Yes Yes No Yes No

Dallas Yes Yes No Yes No

D.C. Yes Yes Yes Yes No

Seattle Yes Yes Yes Yes No

SF Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Oak. Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

I use four variables to measure the intensity of the police tactics used. Mass arrests was

indicated by the arrests of at least 25 demonstrators in a single incident, and does not include

staged mass civil disobedience actions. Force was present when police used violence that either

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did or could reasonably have been expected to result in injury. Incidental pushing and shoving or

forcible arrest without injuries was not sufficient to indicate the presence of this variable. It also

required the occurrence of more than one incident to be present. Similarly, a positive rating for

use of special weapons requires more than one instance. As mentioned before special weapons

include tear gas, flash bangs, or a variety of "less lethal" projectiles. Containment, also known as

"kettling" was present when police surrounding a demonstration or large group of demonstrators

for the purposes of either arresting them in mass or detaining them for over an hour in hopes of

forcing them to disperse in small groups as released.

There was much more variation with this measurement. Table 4 shows that at one

extreme Philadelphia scored negative on all variables, while Oakland scored positive for all.

Graph 1 shows that there is far from perfect correlation between the level of threat and the

intensity of police response. While there is a general tendency for higher threat to produce more

intense policing, it is far from consistent. While the small number of cases doesn't allow for

statistical testing, it is clear that the threat response is not consistent. The three cases with a 5

threat level each had different levels of police response. And the lowest threat case had a higher

level response that several lighter threat cases. This suggests that threat is not irrelevant, but that

it cannot fully explain the degree of difference in intensity of police actions.

Table 4

Mass Arrests Force SW used Containment

NYC Yes Yes No Yes

LA Yes No No Yes

Chicago Yes Yes No No

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Philly No No No No

Boston Yes No No No

Dallas Yes Yes No No

D.C. Yes No No No

Seattle Yes Yes Yes No

SF Yes Yes No No

Oak. Yes Yes Yes Yes

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Figure 1

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.50

1

2

3

4

5

6Threat Hypothesis

Police Response

Prot

esto

r Thr

eat Oakland

Philadelphia

N.Y.C.

LA

Chicago

Boston

Dallas

D.C., Seattle

S.F.

Style of Policing

I identified several variables associated with the three different styles of protest policing.

For negotiated management I looked for flexibility, meaning the tolerance by police of minor

legal violations; a soft-hat approach, meaning the absence in general of body armor and "less

lethal" weapons; and the presence of good communication between police and demonstrators.

For command and control, I looked for the extent of use of steel barricades and other access

restrictions, difficulty in receiving permits and their strict enforcement, and zero tolerance

approach to legal enforcement. For the Miami model, I looked for use of body armor and special

weapons, preemptive arrests and use of the media, undercover police and other methods to

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intimidate and discredit protestors. I gave each variable a rating of 1-5, with 5 being heavy

presence. I further subdivided the results into two time periods, one before eviction and one after.

Table 5 shows that there were clear patterns of police practices consistent with the

different styles. New York was strongly tied to the command and control approach, while the

rest of the cases showed at least an initial orientation towards negotiated management. In the

cases of Los Angeles, and Oakland, however, there was a clear shift in tactics away from

Negotiated Management and towards the Miami model, beginning with the evictions of their

respective encampments. In addition, even in those cases where negotiated management

continued to predominate, it was at a lower intensity, with some small shift towards the Miami

model. This suggests that as the OWS protests continued and the political decision was made to

evict their encampments, police tactics became more aggressive and less tolerant, though not

across the board.

Table 5

Negotiated Management Command and Control Miami Model

NYC 2 1 4 5 2 2

LA 4 3 2 2 2 4

Chicago 4 4 2 2 1 1

Philly 4 4 1 1 1 1

Boston 4 3 1 1 1 2

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Dallas 4 3 1 2 1 2

D.C. 4 4 1 1 1 2

Seattle 4 4 1 1 2 2

SF 4 4 1 1 1 2

Oak. 3 1 2 3 2 4

Conclusion

In reviewing these ten cases I found mixed support for the five hypotheses under

consideration. While there has been an important trend towards the militarization of policing

broadly in the US, I did not find this to be the case in the policing of OWS in these major cities.

There were some cases of militarized policing in Oakland but this was still at a lower level than

is normative at contentious demonstrations in European and East Asian democracies.

Similarly, I found little support for the Federal coordination hypothesis. While some

coordination of ideas occurred in some documented conference calls, this appears to have been a

mostly horizontal form of communication in which ideas of how to manage encampments was

shared and some best practices discussed, but this does not rise to the level of direct control by

Federal authorities. The involvement of PERF, while limited, would if anything suggests a softer

approach to policing rather than an intensification of repression.

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One area where there may have been some coordination of ideas was in the use of health

and safety concerns to justify the eviction of OWS encampments. However, while these concerns

were raised broadly, this is not the same as saying that these concerns were based on real

problems. I did not find measurable health problems in any city studied. While sanitation

problems did occur in some cases, this was often at least in part the result of state action in their

failure to make adequate sanitation resources available. Crime was a legitimate problem in

several encampments, but this also may have been at least in part the result of state action. In

several cities there was an under policing of encampments that allowed some criminal elements

to mix in. In part, however, this was a somewhat unavoidable aspect of having a movement

based on open encampments, with only limited organizational infrastructure. Finally, I found no

support for the ill-defined concern for officer safety. Overall I found some limited support for the

claims of local administrations that evictions were necessary to protect health and safety, though

this was far from sufficient to explain the broadly conflictual and aggressive nature of policing

applied to OWS.

There is no question that the OWS movement can be characterized as highly defiant in its

use of tactics and choice of targets. All the OWS groups examined used militant tactics that go

far beyond permitted marches or even staged civil disobedience actions. According to the threat

hypothesis, this should engender a high degree of police repression. A cursory viewing of media

coverage of OWS leaves one with this broad impression. A closer and systematic examination of

police tactics, however, shows that police responses were not at all uniform across the ten major

cities in this study, even in those cases where OWS had the same level of contentiousness. In

fact, the police response in many of these cities, even those with high levels of contentious

protest, was quite low in its intensity. In many cities police did not use riot equipment, did not

25

act preemptively, and showed a high degree of flexibility, especially in the periods prior to

evicting OWS encampments. What can explain this discrepancy?

The remaining explanation is that the police were not guided in their actions by reacting

to immediate circumstances, but instead were following a broader game plan. Dan Linsky, the

Superintendent in Chief of the Boston Police Department said that his goal was to avoid

confrontations and the use of force through good communication and flexibility on the part of

police:

It’s better to start in as a lamb. If you start as a lion, you have no way to go back

from that. We’re pretty liberal when it comes to protests, and Occupy Boston did

a decent job of policing their own (Rapport Center 2012)

Chicago Superintendent of Police Garry McCarthy made similar points stating that his

main concern was to maintain police legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the demonstrators

(Wildeboer 2012). Philadelphia Police Chief Charles Ramsey also stated that his primary goal

was that things go smoothly and to that end emphasized communication and tolerance and

ordered that the First Amendment be read at police roll calls and over the police radio (Madrak

2011, Talk of the Nation 2011). This suggests that these departments were guided by a strong

orientation towards the negotiated management style of policing regardless of the more defiant

quality of OWS demonstrations. Seattle, Dallas, Washington, DC, and San Francisco also

showed a great deal of restraint. New York continued to heavily micro manage the OWS

demonstrations; backing that up with occasional arrests and violence when demonstrators

challenged their control mechanisms consistent with command and control policing. Oakland

and Los Angeles each started off with more of a negotiated management approach, but as the

26

demonstrations became more contentious following the evictions of OWS encampments in each

city, both departments became more militant and even militarized in their posture, sporting and

in the case of Oakland using a variety of riot control weaponry.

Styles of policing matter in understanding how and why police departments respond the

way they do to protest activity. The advent of new more contentious forms of protest in the case

of OWS did not engender a radical break with past practices in most of the cities studied. While

there were well documented instances of misconduct documented in Seattle (Lindblom and

Thompson 2011), Dallas (Gubbins 2011), Oakland (McKinley 2011), and New York

(Parascandola, Burke, and Kennedy 2011) as well as evidence of more systemic problems in

New York (Knuckey, Glenn, and MacLean 2012) and Oakland (Artz 2012), most of the cities in

this study responded with a great deal of flexibility, tolerance, and proportionality to most OWS

demonstrations. It was only after political leaders decided to close down OWS encampments,

that more aggressive policing could be seen in some additional cities. This suggests that styles of

policing can come under pressure when confronted by a changing political landscape. The higher

level of individual level misconduct cases, suggests that there is room for improvement in many

of these cities in the training, supervision, and accountability of police at protest events, even

when more flexible and tolerant approaches to protest policing are in place.

27

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