Beyond Control: A Mutual Respect Approach to Protest Crowd-Police Relations

by Vern Neufeld Redekop, Shirley Pare

How can large protest crowds be better and more respectfully managed by police? This topical book applies the principles of community-based conflict resolution to the policing of large crowds, suggesting a completely new approach that moves away from the discourse of rabble-rousing mobs towards negotiated management, and a paradigm of mutual respect for protesters as principled dissenters and for police as non-repressive agents of public order. Both are needed, the authors argue, in order for democracy to flourish. The book opens with a foreword from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2010

Reviews

[Matt Zimmerman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was interested in the following question: "How can large protest crowds be better and more respectfully managed by police?"

I read the entire book and kept hoping that the authors give an answer. While there is an answer, it is given in the above description of the book. The book itself does not add much practical elaboration.

The theoretical parts of the book are redundant, fluffy, and not tied to any particular practical advice. For example, there are numerous (mostly redundant) invocations of "complexity theory". I would guess that I have a stronger background in the concepts of complexity theory than the average reader of this book and I was at a loss to decide what lessons to draw from the assertion that protest crowds exist at "The Edge of Chaos." This term has a relatively technical definition and the authors do not clearly demonstrate that crowd dynamics conform to this definition or, given that crowd dynamics do conform to the definition, indicate what lessons the reader should draw from this about how to better manage crowds. This is despite repeated (redundant) reminders about the importance of remembering that crowds exist "At the Edge of Chaos." At one point they seem to define "Edge of Chaos" as a point "where anything can happen," which is not weven close to what that term means. (The technical definition of the Edge of Chaos is something like: the range of parameter space where a system is most likely to perform universal computation.)

A big part of their idea is to create "structures of blessing." Despite the importance of this term, I never figured out what this was supposed to mean. Mostly because the term was inadequately defined and there were not any examples of how to do this.

I was completely confused by what the authors meant by "scapegoating" and why it was important. Also there is a long discussion of "morphogenic fields" which are "information fields that influence all who have morphic resonance." There was not enough elaboration of this idea to convince me that it wasn't pseudo-scientific goobeldy-gook.

Also there is repeated references to importance of remembering that "90% of protests occur without incident." This is the only statistic in the book and it comes without a reference. And there is no indication of how one would define "protest" or "incident" for purposes of calculating this statistic. At one point the reader is told that this is holds for "most democracies." At another the reader is told tat "While the 90 per cent statistics [sic] sound appealing and represent a higher level of consciousness... there still are a number of challenges to be faced if there are to be truly mimetic structures of blessing." Ok, thanks for that.

In summary, I agree wit the authors that it would probably be better to have police a protestors respect each other. However, this book never gave specifics about how to accomplish this goal - instead filling pages and pages with scientifically-sounding redundant prose. I do not recommend it.

[6655321 · Rating 1 out of 5]

Redekop and Pare attempt to develop a system of nonviolent political activism and policing that renders the meaning of protest utterly bankrupt, incapable of affecting drastic change and filled with inaccuracies...