Police in the United States are three times according to new data from a non-profit organization that controls political violence around the world, it is more likely to use force against left-wing protesters than right-wing protesters.
In the last ten months, U.S. law enforcement agencies have used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, and beatings at a much higher rate in Black Lives Matter demonstrations than in pro-Trump or other protests. the right.
Police officers were also more likely to use force against left-wing protesters, whether the protests remained peaceful or not.
Statistics, based on law enforcement responses to more than 13,000 protests in the United States since April 2020, show a clear disparity in how agencies have responded to the historic wave of protests in the United States. Black Lives Matter against police violence, compared to demonstrations organized by Trump supporters. .
Barack Obama highlighted one previous version of these statistics on Jan. 8, arguing that they provided a “useful frame of reference” for understanding Americans’ outrage at the Capitol police’s failure to prevent a crowd of thousands of white Trump supporters from invading and looting the Capitol on Dec. 6. January, a response that sparked renewed control over the level of violence and aggression used by U.S. police forces against blacks against white Americans.
The new statistics come from the U.S. Crisis Monitor, a database created this spring by researchers at Princeton and the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project, a nonprofit organization that has previously monitored civil unrest in the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.
The researchers found that the vast majority of thousands of protests in the United States over the past year have been peaceful and that most protests from the left and right have not received any violent response from U.S. forces. ‘order.
Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck. Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck. Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Friday, removing hundreds of protesters by truck.
The Guardian compared the percentage of all demonstrations organized by left-wing and left-wing groups that led to the use of force by law enforcement. For left-wing demonstrations, this accounted for about 4.7% of the protests, while for right-wing demonstrations, it was about 1.4%, ie the forces of the order were three times more likely to use force against left-wing protests against right-wing protests.
The disparity in police response only grew when comparing peaceful protests of the left with those of the right. Observing the subset of protests in which protesters did not participate in any kind of violence, vandalism or looting, police officers were about 3.5 times more likely to use force against left-wing protests than right-wing protests, with about 1.8% of left-wing peaceful protests and only half a percentage of right-wing peaceful protests were met with tear gas, rubber bullets or other forces from the order.
“The police are not just involved anymore because [leftwing protesters] they are more violent. They are interacting even more with peaceful protesters, “Dr. Roudabeh Kishi, director of research and innovation at ACLED, told The Guardian.” This is the clear trend. “
ACLED data also show that U.S. law enforcement agencies were more likely to intervene in left-wing protests against the right-wing ones in general, and that they were more likely to use force when they intervened. U.S. police agencies made arrests or other interventions in 9% of the 10,863 blacks in black life and other left-wing protests between April 1, 2020 and January 8, compared to only 4% of the 2,295 right-wing protests.
Half the time the police made any intervention in a left-wing protest, it involved the use of violent force, found ACLED, compared to only a third of the time for left-wing protests.
Overall, 94% of left-wing demonstrations in the past ten months were peaceful, compared to 96% of right-wing demonstrations, according to the most recently updated ACLED data. Kishi warned that the process of classifying the demonstrations as peaceful did not take into account whether the protesters who exercised violence or material damage responded to aggressive or violent police behavior.
The U.S. Crisis Monitor 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 as of April they had not involved any damage to people or damage to property. .
Most of the ACLED protests classified as left-wing were Black Lives Matter demonstrations, but they also included pro-Biden demonstrations; protests by left-wing groups such as Abolish Ice, the NAACP, or the Democratic Socialists of America; and protests associated with militia groups and anti-fascist or left-wing street movements.
Right-wing protests included pro-Trump and pro-police demonstrations, including “Blue Lives Matter” rallies; right-wing protests against coronavirus public health restrictions; protests that included supporters of QAnon’s conspiracy theory and others associated with the “Save Our Children” movement; and “Stop the Steal” rallies that promote Trump’s false claims about his 2020 election loss.