Talk:Protest policing

Merge proposal

I propose merging military response to protest into protest policing. The user Ironic sensibilities created both of these highly useful articles last week, but I believe they share significant overlap. As noted at militarization of police, the recent trend is not just increasing hostility to protests but also the transformation of traditional police into domestic military forces. Accordingly, the point at which protest policing becomes a military response is increasingly fuzzy. We would be best served by transferring the prose and references of military response to protest here to describe how government responses ramp up. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 18:22, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Hi @ViridianPenguin. I'm not sure I agree with this merge proposal. The difference between military and police response isn't "fuzzy", because even if police are using militarized tactics and weapons, there is still a clear delineation between police organizations and military organizations. Calling the cops isn't the same as calling the army. Also, the literature does draw a distinction. Finally, I've already included "criminalization of protest" with protest policing (because some sources explicitly state that these have been historically equated in the literature). So I'm concerned that this article would become unwieldy if we also include military response.

Military response to protest is just a stub right now, but it could easily be filled out with information from books and academic papers on the topic. I might do this at some point, or someone else could of course.

Ironic (talk) 15:18, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

My point is that while the newspaper might tell you whether the current protest response is primarily handled by the city police or an army division, it is a distinction without a difference if the city police are already using militarized tactics and weapons. For example, the cited Pion-Berlin and Acácio (2022) article discusses how the military is often called to support protest policing in Latin America, rather than wholly take over such functions. Lee (2014) similarly discusses how "Wiranto activated these soldiers together with heavily armed police units ..." (p. 149) and "the SPDC eventually retook control of the streets by flooding Yangon with thousands of troops, riot police, and militia members." (p.160), clearly recognizing that military response to protest operates as a mode of protest policing, rather than as a distinct response. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 15:59, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

If the military is deployed, they might conduct joint operations with the police. I suppose that creates a grey area that is both "protest policing" and "military response to protest".

In most countries, there are different legal frameworks for police vs military intervention in protests—so that is a distinction AND a difference. In most countries, police receive different training than the military. Pion-Berlin and Acácio say that "Battlefield training conditions [the military] to respond with maximum force, resulting predictably in civilian casualties." So that's another difference. One could argue that as police become militarized the training is increasingly similar. I understand that's the argument you're probably making, and I don't disagree, but I think in many countries the training may still be quite different.

It would be good for these articles to better describe how frequently protests in liberal democracies are entirely handled by the police, and how frequently the military does intervene, and to better differentiate these interventions based on legal frameworks, etc. That is hard to do well, because the rules are different in different countries....Ironic (talk) 20:50, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

tldr, It's true there are countries where the distinction between protest policing and military intervention is not meaningful, but there are other countries where that distinction is important, both legally and in shaping how events play out on the streets. Ironic (talk) 20:54, 16 May 2025 (UTC)

I removed the tags for this merge proposal after expanding the other article. I have added sources that support the distinction. For example, see Mass Protests and the Military.: "Some studies conflate military behavior during authoritarian regime crises with actions undertaken by state-security forces in general. That is a mistake." Ironic (talk) 11:36, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

...not to mention the current debate about the military response to the June 2025 Los Angeles protests makes the distinction apparent, at least in the US Ironic (talk) 11:44, 13 June 2025 (UTC)