Protesting & Power-Seeking Policing
Post-Pandemic futures for protest: past patterns, present trends?
CW: descriptions and images of police violence/injured victims
The term protester has taken on a rather different meaning these last months. Though negative connotations are hardly new—how often has protest been framed as a public nuisance, activists as naïve students?—nothing could have stoked such antagonism so fiercely as the sight of maskless, careless crowds making their way through the city streets in loud opposition of lockdown.
For many, this seems to have only confirmed long-held beliefs about the supposed selfishness of protest. And still others have cheered on drastic and downright violent police retaliation to anti-lockdown protests—often the last people who would be expected to do so.
When I first came upon this phenomenon, it was quite the shock. All over my facebook feed, and flooding twitter reply threads (not only within saccharine mazes of #IStandWithDan stans) self-declared leftists lauded police violence.
This didn’t emerge suddenly. Its early stages, well over a year ago, first stirred against those in violation of restrictions, a media fiasco of name-and-shaming.
Anti-lockdown protesters now bear the brunt of the ire. For me, it began here:
Mere months into the COVID-19 crisis, video footage surfaced in which a couple of Victoria Police (VicPol) officers are depicted restraining, struggling with, and ultimately choking a maskless woman. The detainee, as determined while she was in custody, actually had an exemption to the mask mandate. Still, the hot takes streamed in, with many seeming to relish the violence.
Some culprits could perhaps have been predicted—tenuously progressive types, prone to fickle political loyalties—but others were quite surprising.
I wondered then, and I suppose I am still wondering, what it was that made retribution against a single sacrificial individual so sought-after. Scapegoating—fuelled by misrepresentation in the media, collective frustration, and the all-too human search for somewhere and someway to cast off one’s emotional burdens—seems to have proliferated since the earliest days of COVID-19.
Buffeted though it may have been by waves of a we’re all in it together sentiment of unity, this tried-and-true technique for the passing of blame and easing of guilt persists. Helplessness is a hell of a thing. Lashing out at a public target can help to cope, I think, or at least to regain some sense of agency and influence.
However socially acceptable it is, in some contexts, to celebrate the suffering of certain people, it is never legally advisable for a politician to express it, and Daniel Andrews’ comments failed to stray far from his usual vague approval:
“I am supportive of Victoria Police being very cautious when they deal with people who are not wearing masks or who are openly breaking the rules,” he said.
“I think our Victoria Police have done an outstanding job right throughout this.”
ABC reports the above comment as having been made on August 11, 2020—it is rather reminiscent, on the Premier’s part, of similar remarks he made late in the prior year regarding Blockade IMARC protesters, also covered by the ABC:
“[Protesters] are free to protest peacefully,” Mr Andrews said.
“What they’re not free to do is to act the way they acted. It’s appalling conduct, absolutely appalling conduct. Violent conduct.
“I think police have done an outstanding job.”
‘Violent conduct.’
Well, that’s one term for what I witnessed—and experienced—at the hands of VicPol, for a half-week stretch at the end of October 2019, outside Jeff’s Shed.
Blockade IMARC activists — myself among them — arrived in the wee hours of the morning, all set for the first of a few days of direct action against IMARC.
Melbourne, of all cities, is the International Mining and Resources Conference location, the annual event playing host to thousands of attendees with billions of collective dollars invested in extractivist industries and no signs of slowing.
IMARC was often protested, but this was the first push for a proper blockade. The physicality in tactics seemed to surprise the police, having grown used to recent Extinction Rebellion arrests with little in the way of physical resistance.
VicPol surprised is success, but it also means revenge. Retaliation for humiliation.
Non-violent direct action was met with a police force ill-prepared for blockade tactics and more than happy to overcompensate with every tool at its disposal. Boots, batons, OC foam (pepper spray, functionally) saw gratuitous use; even distressed horses were weapons to force through lines of arm-linked activists.
And so, as I woke each day and went via the very earliest trams, battered and bruised, to Jeff’s Shed, I watched as the cruelty continued and a true blockade became impossible to maintain.
Police barricades pushed farther out; protesters from previous days were legally or physically sidelined; and the brutality escalated exponentially.
Some of the more sympathetic media coverage allowed activist accountings of events to stand, rather than playing cop said, protester said with a rigged deck.
Many stories didn’t make it to news media, but those that did drew attention:
“I had a police officer coward punch me in the jaw, unprovoked,” Kiki told a media conference held by the protesters.
“I’m a five foot five, 49-kilogram woman.”
The woman said her jaw was still sore and she had since spoken with Melbourne Activist Legal Support about the incident.
Melbourne Activist Legal Support (MALS) observe, document, and analyse not only individual incidents like this, but almost all notable protests. Their legal observers, clearly identified by bright pink vests, can be found immersed in crowds or filming externally, often catching significant details of a ‘clash’ in a way neither in-the-moment activists, nor distanced journalists, are able to.
MALS, in the report they published on Blockade IMARC, had the below to say:
The police actions over those three days shocked many protestors, journalists and observers present. That people were scared, injured, and placed in excruciating levels of pain for what was an act of peaceful protest is greatly disturbing.
They also noted the following…
Police tactics such as crowd pushes and manoeuvres directly into crowds by the Mounted Branch turned static and peaceful picket lines into dangerous commotions, and generated high degrees of distress and chaos. The policing tactics understandably caused confusion and alarm amongst protesters.
Daniel Andrews, however, resting quite comfortably on the belief that Victoria Police can do no wrong, expressed only a condemnation of our actions and an approval so vague as to almost come across as self-congratulatory. In The Age:
Premier Daniel Andrews has backed senior police who insist officers exercised “fine restraint” on a second day of violent clashes with protesters outside an international mining conference in Melbourne.
That line about ‘restraint’ has stayed with me for some time since—if all this is Victoria Police exercising restraint, then what, exactly, will come beyond that?
Well, it seems the day will soon arrive. Already VicPol can clearly be seen to cling tight to COVID-caused expansions of their powers, relishing the chance to test out their shiny new toys. Though none, perhaps, is such overkill as this:
Tanuki is well-known for, among other things, his wariness when it comes to police powers, and to VicPol more broadly. At a time when any response to a public health directive to ‘jump’ other than ‘how high?’ can be seen as poor form, his takes and quips have been a fresh breath of air—and a crucial reminder of the threats recent circumstances pose in the long term.
All Victorians should be alert to the risks of these extraordinary powers being misused now or into the future. It is possible to support the health restrictions but be critical of how they are policed and enforced.
Clearly, then, MALS concur. A preliminary 2020 report goes over areas for concern, balancing health with human rights, on a wellspring of empathy:
For many people, these restrictions may be the first time they have experienced significant limitations upon their freedoms. For others, these restrictions may compound feelings of already being targeted by police.
Rail as we may against the foolishness, selfishness, naïveté of anti-lockdown protesters, the fact remains that they are humans, likely in distress. Rage often comes from fear, and though it hardly excuses the actions taken by some, I’d like to understand it. And, as MALS indicate above, police-related trauma is feasible: those targeted by police are often also more vulnerable to conspiracy.
What is there to gain from frightening and aggravating them further? Where will that lead if not to building tension and inciting tempers? How does doing more violence to them than absolutely necessary help in keeping anyone safe?
It seems to come down to release—to ‘fun’. We are all in need of a little relief.
Victoria Police, though, seem to get their thrills in less-than-mundane ways:
Twitter user @hpstorian writes, in response to the Tom Tanuki tweet further up, about the acquisitions by police forces edging ever-closer to militarisation. In the full thread the issue is explored quite thoroughly—but, suffice it to say, a veritable mini-tank designed for counteracting domestic terrorism seems to be a disproportionate response to the circumstances.
MALS make the same assertion, including in the recommendations listed on a recent and comprehensive report a demand to cease such usage of the vehicle:
They advise, too, the withdrawal of specialised classes of police from these front-line engagements. While I don’t recall having had encounters with the CIRT team, as they are typically assigned to ‘armed incidents’— what reason would I have? — the knowledge, gleaned in this report, that CIRT enacted the harrowing raid of queer bookshop Hares & Hyenas, is in itself quite damning.
As for PORT—well, their conduct during IMARC might prove to be enough.
PORT had a significant presence at IMARC in 2019. While it was difficult to distinguish between classes of cop in the chaos, they were decidedly the most violent group. Trained for violent riot scenarios, and—according to a cop I spoke to on the way out of the station, after my involuntary stay— taking volunteers to work this specific job. Just the perfect opportunity for getting to bash some silly, filthy hippies, hey?
I have no love for anti-lockdown protesters, nor respect for their stances. But I do believe in basic human rights that, to my mind, are universal and inalienable.
I cannot bring myself to wish harm on any protester (within reason; Nazis are, as ever, an exception) regardless of our fundamental disagreements.
I am not alone in this, nor in my concerns of what this trajectory might mean in terms of ‘actual’ protesting—if police brutality becomes allowable, for certain people, then where is the line?
*de-identified by request
I send some questions along these lines to a comrade of mine* and find that, though they also experience apprehension, they still ultimately feel hopeful:
I think people are more worried about the likelihood of police violence and repression after how they treated the lockdown protests, and worried that the general population wasn’t outraged by the violence (even if they disagree with the message of the ‘protesters’). I don’t think it will stop people doing direct action. It makes me feel worried, but also just confirms what I already feel about the police and the state (and their corporate backers).
Certainly, police violence comes as less of a shock when you are familiar with their ways, when you have experienced them directly somehow—though the encounter itself might not be made any easier to bear, in that actual moment.
But MALS point out in the earlier 2021 report that the shocked public, while well-meaning, have been sheltered from this—that dangerous and ruthless tactics are often used first against vulnerable individuals or communities.
To say nothing of America, or any of the others with fully militarised police forces.
Drawing as they do from—
a combination of direct on-the-ground observation, monitoring of multiple livestreams, analysis of video and media reports, and the use of trusted third-party eye-witness accounts
—MALS provide an invaluable service for activists and lawyers alike. Their measured, considered analyses bring the concept of human rights and obligations back towards familiarity, serving as a guide, a kind of yardstick.
MALS is concerned about the encouragement of police violence or even calls for greater force to be used against protesters from some sections of the media and community. This creates a very dangerous trajectory and assists in this sort of policing becoming more normalised.
When MALS express observations reflective of my own, I trust the way ahead.
I have thus, through activism, come to an awareness and an appreciation of the work of those in the legal field—to everyone bending bureaucracy into this tool for the purest of purposes—but especially to my own lawyers, the tireless individuals who fit such fierce, unyielding souls inside tailored suits and diminutive frames and assertive, matter-of-fact, stabilising tones of voice.
Knowing and upholding vital rights is a far from straightforward undertaking in an ever-shifting political, cultural, and literal landscape. It takes tenacity; a certain staunchness; an earnest flexibility. It takes passion—and compassion.
