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Commentators discuss how to police protests. The Home Secretary Theresa May will make a statement today on the policing of the tuition fees protests and she isn't ruling out the use of water cannons.

University of Cambridge history professor that the police method of controlling crowds should be illegal:

"Kettling is illegal elsewhere and it certainly should be here. I speak as someone who was kettled in Parliament Square and Westminster Bridge last Thursday, one of several thousand people held for nine hours at zero degrees without food, water, heat, toilets.
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"The widely reproduced photograph of a youth urinating against the plinth of Winston Churchill's statue during the protest over tuition fees provides a disrespectful image, but kettling represents disrespect on a premeditated, industrial scale: degrading conditions of confinement enforcing the shame of performing one's natural functions in public. Put in the same position, where exactly would the Chief Constable have urinated?"

President of the Association of Chief Police Officers, that the use of water cannons would not be proportionate to the violence at recent protests:

"The tactics used over the last week have been that small groups of very violent people have embedded themselves in large groups of very peaceful people. To try and use water cannon in that situation would be very difficult and would upset a lot of people."

University of East Anglia law lecturer the dilemma police are faced with:

"The problem the police face is this: against whom and when do they act? Under the Human Rights Act, they are under a duty to facilitate peaceful protest. If they act too soon or in too widespread a manner, they face charges of indiscriminate brutality at worst and at best wholesale erosion of innocent protesters' rights. If they delay or stand by reticently, they are castigated for giving succour to vandals and violence."

The that police are going to face criticism whether they use water cannons or not but urges they prevent violence such as Thursday's again:

"In order to restrain the violent minority, what officers need above all is more support from the Government. Ministers must have the courage to stand up for the police, rather than remaining mute in an effort to deflect responsibility and blame. As the cuts intensify, there will certainly be many more protests like last Thursday's. We expect the authorities to make the strongest efforts to stop legitimate protests degenerating again into destructive violence."

the key to policing protests would be to identify the trouble makers early on, something she is surprised didn't happen on Thursday:

"Surely they could've worked out who was worth removing? The police tactic of kettling - pushing demonstrators into a confined space - has been shown to be unproductive. It enrages people and doesn't stop acts of vandalism.
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"Unfortunately, the current string of tactical failures by police may produce a result even Tony Blair failed to achieve - turn our students into radical activists."

Former commissioner of the Metropolitan police that debate over policing protests shows a "remarkable lack of strategic thinking":

"The approach to policing public disorder in the UK, where police are in close physical contact with demonstrators (elsewhere water cannon and CS gas keep the demonstrators at a distance) causes difficulties, but is not explored. The police desperately need a locus for public discussion: to explain longer periods of pre-charge detention, to consider responses to suicide bombers, to debate stop and search powers and a myriad other points of public concern. I see no sign of such a development under this government, which is intent on the abolition of the limited home for police doctrinal discussion, the National Police Improvement Agency."

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