US Police Three Times More Likely To Use Force Against Left-wing Protesters, Data Shows | American Police

Police in the United States are three times more likely to use force against left-wing protesters than right-wing protesters, according to new data from a nonprofit that monitors political violence around the world.

Over the past 10 months, US law enforcement has used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and beatings at a much higher percentage during Black Lives Matter protests than during protests. Trump or other right-wing protests.

Law enforcement officials were also more likely to use force against left-wing protesters, whether protests remained peaceful or not.

Statistics, based on law enforcement responses to more than 13,000 protests across the United States since April 2020, show a marked disparity in how agencies have responded to the historic wave of Black Lives Matter protests against police violence, compared to protests by Trump supporters. .

Barack Obama highlighted a previous version of these statistics Jan. 8, claiming they offered a “useful frame of reference” for understanding Americans’ outrage at the failure of the Capitol Police to stop a crowd of thousands of white Trump supporters from invading and looting on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, a response that prompted extensive examination of the level of violence and aggression that US police forces use against black-versus-white Americans.

The new statistics come from the US Crisis Monitor, a database created this spring by researchers at Princeton and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) Project, a nonprofit that previously monitored civil unrest in the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

The researchers found that the vast majority of the thousands of protests in the United States over the past year had been peaceful and that most of the protests on the left and the right had not elicited any violent backlash from the forces of the United States. order.

Police have used tear gas, rubber bullets, beatings with batons and other forces against protesters in 511 left-wing protests and 33 right-wing protests since April, according to updated data released this week. .

The Guardian compared the percentage of all protests by left and right wing groups that resulted in the use of force by law enforcement. For left-wing protests it was around 4.7% of protests, while for right-wing protests it was around 1.4%, meaning law enforcement was around three times more likely to use force against left-wing protests versus right-wing protests.

The disparity in police response only increased when comparing the peaceful protests on the left and the right. Looking at the subset of protests in which protesters engaged in no violence, vandalism or looting, law enforcement was around 3.5 times more likely to use force against left-wing protests than protesters. Right-wing protests, with around 1.8% of peaceful left-wing protests and only half a percent of peaceful right-wing protests have encountered tear gas, rubber bullets or other law enforcement.

“The police don’t get involved just because [leftwing protesters] are more violent. They engage more even with peaceful protesters, ”Dr Roudabeh Kishi, ACLED’s director of research and innovation, told The Guardian. “This is the clear trend.”

ACLED data also shows that U.S. law enforcement agencies were more likely to intervene in protests on the left than on the right in general, and more likely to use force when they did intervene. US law enforcement made arrests or other interventions in 9% of 10,863 Black Lives Matter and other left-wing protests between April 1, 2020 and January 8, compared to just 4% of 2,295 protests of right.

Half the time, the police intervened in a left demonstration, it involved the use of violent force, found ACLED, against only about a third of the time for the demonstrations of the right.

Overall, 94% of left-wing protests over the past ten months were peaceful, compared to 96% of right-wing protests, according to the latest updated data from ACLED. Kishi warned that the process of categorizing protests as peaceful ignored whether protesters who engaged in violence or property damage were responding to aggressive or violent police behavior.

The US Crisis Monitor had previously found that, despite Trump’s rhetoric and intense media coverage of property damage or violence during this summer’s protests against police violence, more than 93% of Black Lives Matter protests since April n ’caused no personal injury or material damage. .

The majority of ACLED protests classified as left-wing were Black Lives Matter protests, but also included pro-Biden protests; protests from left-wing groups like Abolish Ice, the NAACP or the Democratic Socialists of America; and demonstrations associated with anti-fascists or left-wing militias and street movements.

Right-wing protests included pro-Trump and pro-police protests, including “Blue Lives Matter” rallies; right-wing protests against coronavirus-related public health restrictions; protests involving supporters of QAnon’s conspiracy theory and others associated with the “Save Our Children” movement; and “Stop the Steal” rallies promoting Trump’s false claims about his defeat in the 2020 election.