Policing Protest in Unequal Democracies. Violence and Police Image in Colombia

• In Event: Trust the Police? How Attitudes about the Police and Their Violence Are Made

Abstract

High levels of police violence as a means to regulate protests are often associated with low support for and trust in the police. Research has demonstrated that low support results from negative evaluations of procedural fairness: the use of excessive force against protestors is considered unfair treatment. We argue that negative evaluations of police can also result from an alternative mechanism: rather than seeing them as unfair, individuals may view police as ineffective because they are not using enough force. We argue further that which of the two mechanisms gets activated is contingent on perceptions of protests as threatening to the dominant social order in contexts where inequality is high. In unequal societies, protests can be perceived as a threat to social order, or as a legitimate means to channel societal grievances. Those who perceive a protest as legitimate, will also perceive police violence as unfair. In contrast, those who perceive protest as a threat to social order, will judge police action based on its effectiveness to contain protest. In this latter case, de-escalation tactics or the inability to contain protest might be viewed as ineffective, ultimately leading to negative evaluations of the police.

We test our argument in the case of Cali, Colombia, where a very violent police response followed a series of massive urban protests in favor of redistribution, in 2021. Although many citizens rejected police excessive use of force, almost 40% of survey respondents evaluated the police negatively because of their perceived reluctance to use “sufficient” force. Taking advantage of unique survey data collected during the protests, we find that respondents in higher socio-economic brackets (people more likely to be “losers” of redistributive demands) are less likely to express concern about procedural fairness as a reason for their negative evaluations of the police. These same respondents are also more likely to express that the insufficient use of violence is at the root of their negative perception of the police. These effects are stronger for respondents of higher socio-economic status who live in districts that are of lower socio-economic status on average (where class differences are more pronounced). Our findings have implications for academic debates about trust in police, as well as for policy debates about police reform. By exploring the underlying tension between the protection of rights and the violent provision of public order, we shed new light on the diverse mechanisms through which citizens evaluate police use of force, which has practical ramifications for thinking about how to increase trust in police.

Authors

• Juan Albarracin Dierolf, University of Illinois, Chicago

• Lucia Tiscornia, University College Dublin