Public Events and Police Response: Understanding Public Order Policing in Democratic India

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Public events are at the heart of civic discourse in modern societies. The nature and number of public events and state response define the characteristics of the society and governance. Events and the police response to them are interactions that provide insight into the nature of social and democratic discourse in society. Surveying the data of public events in cities and police response to them, detailed case studies of selected major events, and advanced statistical analyses, this book looks at the relationship between public events and police response. While different characteristics of events have varying effect on police response, the scale of violence in the event has the greatest impact on police response. The analyses indicate that the response of the police is largely circumscribed by democratic norms and rule of law. Revealing the tendency for police to be drawn into the ambit of political debate, which greatly impacts police organization and personnel, the study also points to the seeds of criminalization of politics and public discourse in selected public events. About the Author T K Vinod Kumar is a PhD in Criminal Justice from Indiana University, Bloomington. His areas of academic interests are policing, ethnic conflicts, public disorder and state response, research methods, and quantitative techniques. He has published papers on public order management, colonial police administration, conflict resolution, public perception of police, and community policing. His publications have appeared in Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, International Criminal Justice Review, Journal of Police Practice and Research, Crime Law and Social Change, and Asian Journal of Criminology. He is a member of the Indian Police Service and has extensive field experience, having worked as Superintendent of Police of Districts, Commissioner of Police of Calicut City, Deputy Inspector General, and Inspector General of Police in Kerala. He was a member of the International Police Task Force in Bosnia, and Police Adviser in UN Mission in Sierra Leone. He has expertise in police administration, crime investigation, public order management, counter terrorism, and police training.

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1. Introduction 2. Theories on Public Events 3. Nature of Public Events 4. Police Response to Public Events 5. Communal Violence: A Case Study 6. Political Violence: An Analysis of Events 7. Statistical Model of Relationship between Public Event and Police Response 8. Comprehensive Model of Relationship between Event Characteristics and Police Response using Structural Equation Modelling 9. Public Events, Police Response, and Democratic Discourse Appendix: Data Entry Protocol References Index