Where were the Police?

This post is by PaulL, regular commenter and occasional contributor.

One of my early reactions to the Posie Parker / Stand Up For Women protest / meeting / debacle on the weekend was to ask “where were the Police?”

I’d seen earlier commentary suggesting that the organisers had needed to spend $10K for a security firm, and needed a security plan. I’ve seen mention of things like this before – that you have to ask the Speaker for permission to protest at Parliament, that you have to have a traffic control plan to march in protest etc etc. It always seemed a bit weird to me that if you’re law abiding and organise a protest you have lots of obligations, but when you’re Extinction Rebellion or whomever, you just go stop traffic, so clearly these requirements are things you can just ignore if you’re young and silly.

This time it was even more dissonant – I get that if you’re actively planning to disrupt traffic you might need to have a plan. But if you’re having a peaceful protest (mostly just a group of people meeting and having speeches), and someone else threatens to turn up and cause disruption, it falls on you to make the security and safety plan. Why are those turning up to counter protest not obliged to have a safety plan?

After last weekend it moved a bit beyond “that’s weird” and into “I should do some research on that.”

I started off trying to understand how it is that Police could just require protesters to plan for and manage security for the counter protest. I can’t find anything online that actually requires that. Mostly there are recommendations that you let Police know what you’re doing, and that Police can help you to comply with local authority obligations. Which was a hint to what’s really going on.

This protest was planned in a public space – but in an Auckland Council space. And when you ask Auckland Council whether you can use one of their public spaces, they have some standard obligations for you. You have to do health and safety, you have to have a clean up plan if you make a mess, all the usual type stuff. And you have to have a crowd control plan (makes sense for a big event), and security.

So, it looks to me that the choice to hold this protest/meeting in a public (and Auckland Council operated) space is what triggered the requirement for security.

At some level this makes sense to me. If you turn up to have your protest/meeting, and you know there’ll be counter protesters, and you have made no plans at all, you’re going to have a mess. So I can see that it’d make sense to have barriers to separate the two parties (as they did). It’s not as clear to me that you should have to have your own security to protect you from people who might break the law – but there’s an argument that concerts, for example, provide their own security to man their barriers. And, of course, the Police will probably only act after the law has been broken – which may be too late for the person who’s getting assaulted.

My question is where the Police were once all those plans were in place. There’s been a security plan, there are barriers established, there’s clear threats of violence from the counter protesters. When I look at video footage of similar events from the UK, I see the Police standing in a line between the barriers. When I look at the Parliament protests I see Police standing in a line inside the barriers. If I think back to the Springbok tour protests, I recall Police standing in a line outside the stadiums.

Do we have an expectation that Police would pre-emptively step in to keep the peace?

If we don’t, then we’re basically allowing the heckler’s veto. The threat of violence will stop people exercising their rights. If Police are not visibly guaranteeing those rights, then what does keeping the peace mean? I’m not happy seeing video of grey haired women (I’m avoiding saying elderly in deference to the audience on Kiwiblog) being punched. I feel that Police should have been more visible and active.

Conversely, are we happy that Police should spent time at whatever random protest is going on? Are we happy for Police time to be used in that way?

For me, the answer is yes. When I see the Extinction Rebellion protesting I almost always see Police there – usually keeping irate drivers from physically dragging them out of the way. When I see marches down the street stopping traffic, I typically see Police keeping the peace. For this particular protest, the reality was that the protest itself wasn’t inconveniencing anyone, and wasn’t harming anyone. There was no need for a Police presence for the protest itself. The only need was to control the counter protestors. And yes, that’s exactly something that I think the Police exist for – to control groups who have made credible threats of violence against another group exercising their right to peacefully protest/meet.

So, where were the Police? What plan had Police made, what orders did they have? What direction were the Police on the ground given about how to manage the event? Once it was clear things were going south, what decisions were taken and what action was taken? Were there discussions with the Stand Up for Women organisers, and what was said?

I do think that future Stand Up for Women events might want to consider whether it’s really the best idea to hold these events in public spaces. If this had been in a convention centre or other building then access could have been controlled, they potentially would have avoided the need for security plans and the like that Auckland Council imposed, and perhaps they could have more clearly liaised with Police to say “our boundary is that they don’t come inside the building – they can protest all they like outside, but we want the ability to remove people who trespass at our event.” I don’t know how Police would have responded to that, but it seems like a reasonable request.

Of course, that would have exposed the risk of being cancelled by the venue owner, and we know how that went last time in Auckland.

I also wonder whether they could have made a safety/security plan that basically said “we’re hurting nobody, damaging nothing, we’re just making some speeches. We don’t need anything other than some barriers to separate the space we’re using from the general public.” They could reasonably then look to Police to control people who invade that space, and they should be saying to Auckland Council “why do we need to make a plan for someone else’s protest – go ask them to make a plan for their counter protest.” I suspect it wouldn’t have worked, but it would be a principled position to take.

Overall, this looks like a fail by Police to me. I’d be interested in whether that’s really the case, or whether they were working to a plan that had been agreed with organisers, and things just got more out of hand than expected.

Most of what I’m saying here I’m deducing from what I’ve heard or seen online. I’m very interested if there’s anyone who has organised or co-ordinated a protest and can tell me what this looks like in the real world – how well do Police liaise, who creates the requirements for security plans etc.