Deciding Force

The Deciding Force (DF) project is classifying information from more than 8,000 news articles describing more than 35,000 events in which police and the Occupy movement interacted. These data are considered alongside variables describing the governing contexts in which protests occur (including city and police department budgets per capita, city political culture, police department culture and training, and more). Using statistical techniques, including multi-level event history and sequence analyses, the DF project will answer questions still pending in the protest policing literature: Do police departments use a signature set of tactics or an array of protest-policing repertoires? How much violence is associated with different policing approaches? Which interactive sequences are most likely to lead to violence or compromise?