Violent Control of Urban Protest and Support for the Police in Colombia

• In Event: Policing the Americas

Abstract

Although high levels of police violence can decrease support and trust in the police, we argue that this relationship is contingent on perceptions about the target of violent police tactics. Focusing on protest policing, an area of growing relevance in Global South democracies, we argue that whether protest policing worsens perceptions of police in democracies depends on perceptions about the targets of police violence, leading some groups to support and trust the police when they police violently. The tension between the protection of rights and the (violent) provision of public order is salient in the regulation of protest: While non-violent, “under-enforcement” tactics might de-escalate conflict, they can reduce trust in the police when implemented towards groups perceived as disruptive of social order. Responses to violent police action during massive urban protests in May and June of 2021 in Colombia—particularly in the city of Cali—illustrate this. Although many citizens rejected the police’s excessive use of force, almost 40% of respondents to a survey in Cali evaluated the police negatively because of a perceived reluctance of the police to use “sufficient” force. We test our argument with a mixed-methods strategy, combining focus groups and sub-municipal (comuna) level survey data from Cali with a survey containing a multi-dimensional factorial experiment in the entire country. In doing so, we show how policing policies face contradicting expectations from the public regarding the use of force, thereby limiting their impact on increasing support.

Authors

• Juan Albarracin Dierolf, University of Illinois, Chicago

• Lucia Tiscornia, University College Dublin