NCJ Number
87372
Journal
Indian Journal of Criminology Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Dated: (July 1982) Pages: 100-107
Date Published
1982
Length
8 pages
Annotation
An analysis of partisan police intervention in a number of countries shows that such intervention stems from a public-sanctioned effort to control disruptive social and political conditions.
Abstract
Police partisan intervention involves an aggressive police challenge to collective demonstrations against officialdom and its policies, as opposed to nonpartisan police intervention that quells all significant civil disturbances regardless of the ideology or purpose underlying the demonstrations. Police nonpartisan nonintervention provides that civil demonstrations proceed without police intervention except where violence and acts of destruction are perpetrated. Police partisan intervention is not possible unless there is public support for such action, regardless of the desires of the police or officialdom. This principle is illustrated in the failure of the German police to take partisan action against the Jews in Denmark during World War II. Able to tolerate the social and political conditions prevalent at that time, the Danes did not give the German police either overt or covert support for partisan intervention. The crucial issue in determining public support for partisan police intervention is that point on an order-chaos continuum where the public is no longer willing to tolerate threats to the ordered enjoyment of their lives. The public is also the body that finally determines those groups identified as responsible for producing the chaotic social conditions. This becomes the group the public gives the police permission to aggressively contain. Twenty-five references are listed.