Nonviolence and Bent Cops
A Response to: Nonviolent Activism and the Police

Robert Burrowes makes a principled and informed contribution to how
nonviolent activists should liaise with police, especially in situations such
as obtain in civilised places like Melbourne.

While being in general agreement with most of his points, as a former
Queenslander (with a long memory) who was involved in the street march
protests of the 1970s, and then as a close reader of the Fitzgerald Report
into police and official corruption, I must pick what, perhaps, is a nit.

Robert seems to assume that the police form a monolithic group who will
reliably obey orders given by superiors in the force.

I am not suggesting that junior police, on their own initiative, singly or as
a group of mavericks would wilfully disobey orders from superiors on the day.
I am suggesting that messages passed from activists to senior liaison police,
through the police chain of command, and finally to pre-deployment briefings
of junior police must get distorted simply because of inherent distortion
through any communication chain. This distortion could range from, hopefully,
minimal, through to extreme. Activists have absolutely no control of their
messages whatsoever once they leave their meeting with police liaison. On the
day, activists could attempt to directly communicate with police, but the
efficacy of this must be highly variable, especially as junior officers would
have their superior's briefing firmly in mind.

My strong suspicion would be that those police delegated to meet with
activists to discuss a forthcoming action would tend to be senior officers
and specialists in community liaison, the same officers who would assist
other groups organise parades on Anzac Day and other non-threatening events.
While it would be expected that more junior officers actually deployed on the
day would follow orders from superiors, this expectation must be problematic
simply because of what Commissioner Fitzgerald called the 'police culture'.

Commissioner Fitzgerald wrote that while the police are drawn from the wider
community, "... police officers collectively form a strongly-bonded separate
social group which has a unique culture". 

"When [recruits] join the Force," Commissioner Fitzgerald added, "they enter
an insular environment where they work and socialise almost exclusively with
their colleagues. Their experience of the broader society is therefore not
widened greatly. Contact with members of the public tends to be in situations
of distress, conflict and hostility." 

He went on to observe that while criminal members of a police force echo
society generally, "They assume increased significance only because of their
role and authority. However, a completely new dimension is added if a police
culture exhibits features which do not accord with the general social
culture, especially involving contravention of the law. The effect is worse
if the culture also incorporates a code which provides for a different
approach to the enforcement of the law in relation to police officers, and
insists that, in conflicts between the law and the code, the code prevails."

Moreover, with the police 'code' and 'culture' in place within the force,
political support for the police was unstinting. "Any criticism of the Police
Force was rejected, and the critic trenchantly attacked, often under
Parliamentary privilege, sometimes with false information provided by the
Police," wrote Commissioner Fitzgerald.

When the Queensland Government placed appeals against a refusal to grant a
street march permit back into the hands of the police, they provoked some of
the largest and ugliest demonstrations Australia has seen. It was politically
a most adroit move, deflecting public and media attention away from less
savoury political and police activities. This was done in, as Commissioner
Fitzgerald later reported, the context of significant police corruption, with
a virulent police culture operating, aided and abetted by a combination of
political disinterest, conniving political manipulation, and inept control.

Out on the streets, we were being arrested by police whose then Commissioner
now languishes in jail for corruption. It is certain that the same police who
formed the 'thick blue line' at demonstrations knew about their corrupt
colleagues, and most did nothing about it, silenced by the police culture. If
silence signifies consent, then the deafening silence of all but a few honest
and courageous police must be interpreted as the force giving its tacit
approval to all that Commissioner Fitzgerald later reported was rotten in the
state of Queensland.

These same police actively supported the Queensland Government by carrying
out its orders to stifle dissent through the street march ban!

The foregoing, Robert et al., may respond, is a sad reflection of the
environment in which police operate, the almost necessary dualism of 'us' and
'them' which constant exposure to society's low life must engender. Activists
probably sympathise with the lot of the average copper, even when the baton
comes down or the boot goes in.

I am not suggesting that other Australian police forces are as warped as was
the Queensland force during the 1960s through to the latter 1980s. Even in
Queensland, significant reforms have been implemented in the police service
and, by all accounts, the force is far healthier than it has ever been.

If I were a canny police officer with a eye to promotion, I might decide to
study nonviolence with a view to analysing how nonviolent protests could be
more effectively contained, reducing the likelihood of negative media
exposure through maladroit police action. Part of my suggested strategy might
be to eagerly facilitate liaison with activist groups, garner as much
information from them as possible, not only about their projected action on
the day but about their whole approach to conflict and contentious issues,
then analyse it, and develop ingenious ways of containing the activist's
tactics and their wider social change agendas. Depending on my superiors at
Police Headquarters, and the attitudes of their political masters, my
suggestions may be most favourably received, implemented as policy, resulting
in much more effective police containment of dissent.

A sense of history leads me to the conclusion that, while activist - police
relations may have improved since the mid-70s, those who have no sense of
history are doomed to repeat the mistakes made in the past. It is indeed
tragic that the same police who arrest heroin pushers, drunk drivers, and
child molesters are also actively complicit with rainforest destruction or
human rights abuses when they arrest protesters at demonstrations. We now
know what was really going on in Queensland while we were being busted by a
police force riddled with corruption and an insidious police culture for
protesting against what was clearly a, by Australian standards, gross
violation of human rights. I, for one, will never ever forget that.

My overriding point is that while activists should do what Robert advocates,
do not be entirely trustful of the police.
Mark D. Hayes
currently nurses his bruises and nurtures his paranoia in Lismore, Northern
New South Wales.
Note: Quotes from Report of a Commission of Inquiry Pursuant to Orders in
Council (The Fitzgerald Report) Brisbane: State Government Printer, 1989,
Pages 200 - 201.