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Abstract
The notion of the police as protecting dominant economic interests is explored by presenting two case studies of direct action social movements occurring nearly 100 years apart. Recent protests in response to a non-state international organization (the World Trade Organization) are compared with a major labor strike of the late 19th century (the Great Strike of 1877). Historical data supports the contention that, despite many changes to contemporary policing strategies, the police are routinely used to protect existing economic structures. These narratives demonstrate how shifts in economic institutions shape formal social control practices. Comparing these events reveals how new technologies have allowed for certain adaptations and innovations for contemporary protesting and protest breaking activities. It is argued that the police institution should not be understood as only charged with responding reactively to criminal violations, but rather as serving more important social functions such as protecting dominant economic structures.
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Earl et al. (2003) used newspaper accounts of protest events occurring between 1968 and 1973, and found that in nearly 70% of the 1,905 protest events the police did not attend.
Sir Robert Peel is credited with establishing the first bureaucratically organized, publicly funded, official police force, in 1829, in London. These officers wore uniforms, carried a night stick, conducted foot patrol, and were referred to as Bobbies in reference to Sir Peel.
This is not meant as a complete history of the development of the U.S. police force as much as a brief sketch of important events shaping the development of this institution. This historical account of American policing is only meant to demonstrate the various administrative alterations in this modern institution. For a thorough account of the evolution of the contemporary police institution from the earlier notions of police science, see Knemeyer (1980), McMullan (1998a,b), Pasquino (1991).
This figure is not adjusted for inflation. However, a non-scientific inflation adjustment found athttp://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi adjusts the $45 million (in 1900) to about $997 million (in 2005).
Ironically, these features of global capitalism are employed by the WTO protesters against the very structure that demands their existence.
This is a similar situation as described nearly two decades earlier inThe New International Division of Labor in the World Economy as it demonstrated the interconnected nature of global production processes and the continual disenfranchisement of workers in general, and those in poorer nations particularly.
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Thomas Janoski, Patrick Mooney, and Alan Dahl for reviewing earlier versions of this article. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor, Brian Payne, for helpful comments that have improved this article. All shortcomings are the sole responsibility of the author.
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Department of Sociology, The University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA
Matthew DeMichele
- Matthew DeMichele
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Correspondence toMatthew DeMichele.
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DeMichele, M. Policing Protest Events: The Great Strike of 1877 and WTO Protests of 1999.Am J Crim Just33, 1–18 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-008-9032-4
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