The population of Kyrgyzstan often has had a negative attitude toward the police force.  This has been connected with the sometimes high levels of human rights violations by law enforcement personnel and with their lack of interaction with the general population in the protection of public order.  Often, according to Public Foundation, this fear and distrust of police officers is based on second-hand information or is due to a lack of understanding of the police force’s role in the community.  

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The CLEEN Foundation, formally Centre for Law Enforcement Education in Nigeria, created public forums where citizens and police can discuss concerns and grievances regarding crime and police conduct.

Communities and police forces can find themselves in an unproductive cycle of distrust. Community members are concerned about misconduct, brutality and corruption. The police, in turn, are concerned with the community is hostile and uncooperative in their investigations.

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Training police officers to teach law to adolescents in order to improve communication and understanding between these two group

In 1999, the International Centre for Cultures and Languages (Internationales Zentrum für Kulturen und Sprachen) in Austria developed a program that pairs police officers with an immigrant or refugee to foster positive relations between the police force and the foreign-born population. While educating the officers about citizens who they may have held negative stereotypes about, this program also gives the refugees and immigrants an opportunity to communicate with the officers about racial profiling and other racial issues.

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Tandem©: Cross-cultural exchange between police and migrants

The Turkey Police Academy uses videotaped prosecution of policemen for human rights violations to teach police academy candidates about the consequences of violating human rights.  This tactic was used as part of a larger strategy in police academy human rights education for police candidates to incorporate the understanding, value and use of investigation and interrogation procedures that do not violate the human rights of the accused. Turkey is working to eradicate the practice of police in higher authority misusing their positions and actually being promoted to higher rank for doing so.

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Nobody can argue against the proven benefits of using a diversity of well-chosen tactics to wage successful struggles. The sequencing of multiple creative tactics ranging from protests to legislative pressures, from secondary boycotts to civil disobedience, has been a fundamental feature of countless successful campaigns. A wide variety of tactics lies at the core of the emphasis nonviolent activists have put for decades on knowing a repertoire of at least 198 methods of action, and on clever ways to sequence them.

But dangerous slips of logic have presided over a protest framework known as "Respect for a Diversity of Tactics". I believe the failure of protests such as the one at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul (USA) last September is inherent in the Diversity of Tactics approach.

Photo: Diana Jou

 

On September 1, 2008, several hundred protesters from across mainland USA tried to stop delegates from attending the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Center in the business district of Saint Paul, Minneapolis, where they were going to crown presidential hopeful John McCain.

 

"Crash the Convention" was the order of the day. But politically and number-wise, whose side really got smashed and crushed?

 

Over 800 people arrested. Many more detained and released. House raids in the middle of the night. Eight organizers facing "Conspiracy to Commit Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism", a second degree felony charges. Maximum penalty: seven and a half years in prison. 

 

Deep police infiltration. Pre-emptive searches and seizures. Baton rounds. Concussion and Sponge grenades. Tasers. Pepper spray. Tear gas. 

 

The intense brutality of the crackdown in the Twin Cities was an awful, a hydra monster of gross violations. Outrage and indignation. These are healthy, vital reactions. 

 

But once the emotion subsides, what should be the question?

The Centro de Documentación y Archivo (CDyA) opens police files to the public to contribute to justice and healing in Paraguay.  The discovery of an immense cache of files in a small Paraguayan police station by a former political prisoner in December 1992 led to the creation of the CDyA.  This archive is commonly known as the “Archive of Terror” because of the nature of the files it contains.  These files document prisoners’ detention experiences in detail and have been used to corroborate individuals’ stories of detention during several Latin American dictatorships, to confirm the disappearance of citizens, and as evidence in the prosecution of former police and military personnel in several Latin American countries.

Otpor! (“Resistance!” in Serbo-Croatian) prepared “Plan B” demonstrations outside of police stations to respond immediately to arrests during protest events in Serbia. Whenever the police arrested activists in their demonstrations, Otpor! would instantaneously launch a second operation, mobilizing more people to show up at the police stations and protest the arrest. The events at the police station became media showpieces, calling attention to the injustice of the arrests and the illegitimacy of the regime.

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Plan B: Using Secondary Protests to Undermine Repression

From the video "We were warriors".

 

From behind the stools, white men start taunting the mixed row of mostly black students who had the audacity to sit there. "He's so dark the whole room is darkened." "Nobody ain't gonna sit beside them dirty niggers." Those on the swiveling seats at the counter answer only with an unshakable look of dignity.  Frustrated, the men from behind start pushing and shoving. Still no response from those on the stools. Then they launch the attack: hurling obscenities, throwing milk shakes and live cigarette buts, grabbing and punching. Lenses capture the scene. The whole world watches in shock.