PROTESTING THE POLICE: HOW SITUATIONAL THREATS ELICIT POLICE REPRESSION AT PROTEST EVENTS TARGETING THE POLICE.

Abstract

Protests challenging the police pose a significant reputational threat to law enforcement. The threat hypothesis states that police repression is motivated by the desire to maintain social control, and when threats arise, police will act to incapacitate them. Reputational threat literature has established that police are more likely to be present and intervene at protests with goals challenging them. However, an investigation of police action at only protests that target the police has yet to be conducted. Using the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), all protest events from the month of June 2020 with goals targeting the police (n=5,900) – in support of BLM, anti-police brutality, against the death of George Floyd or other minority individuals killed by police, and other goals seeking to remove the social control of police – were analyzed to investigate how police intervene (arrest, use force/violence, or both arrest and use force/violence) at these events when situational threats are present. The results of this study illustrate police are more likely to intervene at protests targeting them when situational threats were present. Furthermore, the forms of situational threats present elicited different forms of policing interventions.