Police Management of Pickets and Protests: A Global Perspective

Abstract

The policing of industrial pickets and demonstrations is unpredictable, volatile and problematic. The public order literature indicates that policing in the Western world has generally experienced trends from ‘escalated force’ to ‘negotiated management’ to ‘strategic incapacitation’ in the monitoring and controlling of large-scale dissent. Historically in Australia, police ruthlessly, and sometimes brutally, quelled hostile industrial unrest. Three worker fatalities at the hands of police in early Australia form the centrepiece of this book. In August 2012, the South African Police Service shot dead 34 striking miners at Marikana. The Australian fatalities and those at modern-day Marikana are extreme and exceptional examples of police use of lethal force, but they convey important narratives and significant lessons for the policing of pickets and protests.