New book provides roadmap for police management of public order
Assuring safety of large gatherings seen as critical to upholding democracy
Managing public order at large demonstrations, protests, and assemblies is a demanding and necessary task. A new book provides an international review of public order management experiences and effective practices. Through practical examples grounded in multidisciplinary theory and science, the book offers a roadmap to improve police response and increase safety at large gatherings in democratic countries.
The book, Public Order Policing: A Professional's Guide to International Theories, Case Studies, and Best Practices, was edited by researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV); the Institute for Further Education of the Bavarian Police; and the Portland Police Bureau. It published by Springer Cham in December 2023.
“Successful public order management is critical to upholding democracy and maintaining the rule of law,” according to Tamara D. Herold, associate professor of criminal justice at UNLV and a senior advisor at the National Institute of Justice, one of the book’s editors. “Negative police-public interactions can harm the safety and well-being of citizens and officers, as well as local and international perceptions of police legitimacy.”
Herold is an expert whose work is promoted by the NCJA Crime and Justice Research Alliance, which is funded by the National Criminal Justice Association.
In 21 chapters by researchers and police officials in the United States, Europe, and Canada, the book presents cutting-edge, evidence-based, and successful strategies to plan, conduct, and analyze crowd events. The chapters are grounded in research from the fields of sociology, criminology, psychology, and ethics, as well as in practical police work.
The chapters address a wide range of topics, including the emergence and escalation of collective violence; de-escalation; preventing crime at large gatherings; intelligence in public order policing; the use of force in public order policing; and the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as a challenge for public order policing and democracy.
“As we have seen worldwide, including assemblies in the United States, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and elsewhere, police mismanagement of mass demonstrations often instigates crowd violence and other harmful behaviors,” says Herold. “The causes of violence at assemblies are complex and multifaceted, and failure to understand crowd dynamics that lead to violence limits police effectiveness and contributes to poor decision-making by officers.”
The content, perspectives, and lessons presented in this book are intended to guide people working in public order management, including police officials, policymakers, and researchers.
Police leaders face challenges when seeking to accommodate community stakeholders
Research on intergroup communication can inform efforts to improve relations with public
Police reform movements often focus on improving police-public relationships. These ties are a focus of community policing and procedural justice, two significant reform efforts in policing worldwide over the last three decades. In a new article, researchers examine issues involved in these efforts, especially limitations to communication, and highlight implications for police-community relations.
The article, by researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), is published in Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law.
“Reform movements that try to improve relationships between police and the public rely, in part, on improving how police communicate with the public,” explains Edward R. Maguire, professor of criminology and criminal justice at ASU, the article’s lead author. “But little attention has been paid to the constraints police leaders may face.” Maguire is an expert whose work is promoted by the NCJA Crime and Justice Research Alliance, which is funded by the National Criminal Justice Association.
Altering the style and content of police communication to improve trust and reduce tension and conflict is consistent with communication accommodation theory (CAT). The theory addresses how individuals and groups accommodate one another (or not) in their verbal and nonverbal communications, as well as the consequences of those accommodation decisions and behaviors. CAT seeks to explain and predict when, how, and why individuals engage in interactional adjustments with others, as well as recipients’ inferences, attributions, evaluations of, and responses to these adjustments (or lack thereof).
When police leaders use communication accommodation in intergroup settings (e.g., with the public), the decision to accommodate one group can alienate another group, which is an example of an accommodative dilemma. Drawing on the study of intergroup communication, the authors explore the challenges police leaders often face when seeking to accommodate internal and external stakeholders.
“Communication accommodation isn’t easy; you have to have enough empathy and emotional intelligence to accurately perceive what types of accommodation others may want or need,” notes Shawn Hill, a graduate student in communications at UCSB and a police commander, who coauthored the article. “In intergroup settings characterized by mistrust, tension and conflict, communication accommodation is even more difficult. But research demonstrates that intergroup communication accommodation can help build trust and ameliorate tension and conflict.”
In every example, police leaders’ decisions to accommodate one group led to criticism from another group, a common pattern that results from accommodative dilemmas in intergroup settings. Police chiefs are sometimes caught in the middle when attempting to navigate these issues, the authors say. Among the authors’ suggestions, they recommend that police leaders in these situations understand the intergroup dynamics involved, knowingly and purposefully accommodate groups on a case-by-case basis and in context, and explain the reasons behind any positions they take.
“We need more research to understand these dilemmas more clearly,” adds Howard Giles, professor of communications at UCSB, who coauthored the article and was the developer of CAT. “This will enable scholars to continue building evidence base useful for navigating accommodative dilemmas in a way that improves relationships and builds trust between police leaders and the communities they serve.”
JOURNAL
Psychology Public Policy and Law
ARTICLE TITLE
Caught in the middle: Accommodative dilemmas in police–community relations.
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