海角大神

The violence and arrests that have accompanied聽Occupy Wall Street聽protests in several聽US聽cities, most notably Oakland, Calif., are raising the question of whether police are becoming too heavy-handed against the movement. Some key incidents:

鈥� In聽Oakland, where 10,000 marchers shut down the nation鈥檚 fifth-largest port Wednesday, violence broke out overnight and 80 protesters were arrested.

鈥� Police officers in Denver used mace and shot paintball-like bullets of pepper spray at protesters in front of the state Capitol Saturday.

鈥� Police in Portland, Ore., arrested 27 protesters who refused to leave a public square Sunday, though no violence was reported.

鈥� On Oct. 11, more than 100 protesters in Boston were arrested after they聽refused to comply with an order to vacate their encampment.

The contrast between Occupy Wall Street clash incidents and the comparative calm of Occupy camps in places such as Los Angeles makes the protests a useful yardstick for gauging what has worked 鈥� and what has not 鈥� in crowd control and policing. With protesters calling the movement America's answer to the Arab Spring,聽academics and police watchdog groups are eager to glean lessons about how US law enforcement can best balance the goals of protecting both free speech as well as law and order.

The report card for Oakland so far is mixed 鈥� but perhaps improving.聽

Some critics have harsh words for the city

鈥淭his is a city completely out of control with a police force that doesn鈥檛 know which way to turn, a mayor that is indecisive in giving instructions,鈥� all at the mercy of a mob that is fomenting revolution,鈥� says Sam Singer, a political consultant who runs his own public relations firm in neighboring Berkeley, Calif.聽聽鈥淭his is part of the problem of a leftist progressive mayor who doesn鈥檛 want to betray her own political background by taking a hard line when she needs to put an end to this because it is giving聽Oakland聽a black eye.鈥�

But others say聽the Oakland Police learned volumes from the first episode last week, in which police groups tried to dismantle a downtown encampment.

鈥淚 would give them a failing grade of 50 for the first interaction,鈥� says Olis Simmons, executive director of聽Youth Uprising, an activist group which counsels young people.聽

She notes, however, that 19 other law enforcement agencies were called in, creating chaos and misunderstanding about standard OPD procedures.

She gives the police an 80 for their behavior during Wednesday's general strike, which brought between 10,000 and 15,000 protesters to the port area for several hours.

鈥淚 think they learned from the previous disaster,鈥� she says.

That assessment is echoed by聽Abel Habtegeorgis,聽a spokesman for the聽Ella聽Baker聽Center聽for Human Rights in Oakland. When the police took a surveying role by standing in the background, protests went smoothly and peacefully, with family members of all ages participating. But later, outside agitators arrived to create problems, bringing police into situations that then escalated into violence, he adds.

"Ninety-nine percent of people were perfectly well behaved, and the message was clear until vandals came along and police brought out their tear gas and percussion bombs,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hen it got ugly.鈥�

In such situations, police are put in a challenging position, says聽John DeCarlo, former police chief of Branford, Conn., and an authority on police tactics. But their role is one fundamental to American democracy, he says, quoting late聽sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset: 鈥淏orn out of revolution, the聽United States聽has always considered itself an exceptional country of citizens unified by an allegiance to a common set of ideals, individualism, anti-statism, populism, and egalitarianism.鈥�

Mr. DeCarlo says the police are at the center of this view of American exceptionalism.聽鈥淚t is the hallmark of our system that police must strike the balance between maintaining order in cities and towns while at the same time allowing the First Amendment rights of protesters to speak their message,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t is a very difficult task to reach the balance between allowing residents to feel safe and yet allow crowds to be free to march and speak.鈥�

Moreover, crowd control forces police to blunt their usual tendencies.聽

鈥淥rdinarily, cops are trained to take control of the situation: They respond to a domestic violence call, or recent robbery, or homicide scene, by taking over," says聽Joel Jacobsen, New Mexico's assistant attorney general for its criminal appeals division.聽"But crowd control is very nearly the opposite. Cops are expected to be passive, to allow things to happen, merely patrolling the perimeter, literally and figuratively."

"So you're asking people not only to do things they're not particularly trained to do, but to behave in a way they're trained not to behave,鈥� he adds.

Yet it can be done. In聽Los Angeles, arrests have been kept to a minimum, says James聽Lafferty, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild of Los Angeles, a human rights bar association聽that facilitates public demonstrations.

鈥淚 think it鈥檚 a credit to the聽Los Angeles聽mayor and city council that they got ahead of this whole movement by discussing ahead of time what it was all about and what they wanted to achieve,鈥� says Mr. Lafferty.

They pre-arranged arrests at a bank sit-in, for example, and the city council passed a resolution allowing the encampment to exist on the city hall lawn, though normal rules prohibit camping. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck has visited the encampment several times and has said publicly that, despite technical infractions, he felt the city should 鈥渞oll with them because this is an organized national movement.鈥�

Lafferty says he wishes other encampments could learn from the聽Los Angeles聽example 鈥� especially the lesson of not reacting against peaceful protesters even when agitators are among them. He and his wife were arrested along with other nonparticipants when visiting the New York encampment in Zuccotti Park.

鈥淭he Supreme Court has said the police must go after only the agitators,鈥� he says. 鈥淥therwise, it would be a simple matter for someone to shut an entire protest down by just planting a few hooligans. No, you can鈥檛 go into these situations wholesale with bean bags and tear gas.鈥�

鈥� Staff writer Gloria Goodale contributed to this report.