Public Order Policing - A Professional's Guide to International Theories, Case Studies, and Best Practices

Successful public order management is critical to upholding democracy and maintaining the rule of law. Negative police-public interactions during assemblies can impact the safety and well-being of citizens and officers, as well as local and international perceptions of police legitimacy. As observed during events across the world, including assemblies in the U.S., Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and elsewhere, police mismanagement of mass demonstrations often instigates crowd violence and other harmful behaviors. The causes of violence at assemblies are complex and multi-faceted. Failure to understand crowd dynamics that lead to violence limits police effectiveness and contributes to poor officer decision-making. 

This book offers an international review of public order management experiences and effective practices. Practical examples, grounded in multi-disciplinary theory and science, offer a roadmap to improve police response and increase safety at assemblies in democratic countries. The diverse content, perspectives, and lessons learned presented in this volume will serve as a useful guide for all people working in the field of public order management, including police officials, policymakers, and researchers. This edited volume was written by and for practitioners, pracademics, and academics to review the complex and demanding task of policing public order.

Colonel Bernd Bürger joined the Bavarian State Police, Germany, in 1997 and has managed assemblies and large events since 2000. He was responsible for managing camps and assemblies at the Garmisch-Partenkirchen G7 summits in 2015 and 2022. Between 2015 and 2020, he was the commanding officer of the Dachau special public order unit (evidence gathering and arrest unit) where he was also deployed 'on the front line' at the Hamburg G20 summit. He has served as head of the Police Operations Department at the Institute of Further Education of the Bavarian Police since 2020. In addition to his practical experience, he is a renowned public order scholar, lecturing in various German and European states. He also was a speaker at the 2018 International Association of Chiefs of Police Meeting and 2019 the Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, together with Tamara Herold and Ryan Lee. He holds a master's degree in criminology and police science from the Ruhr University Bochum (ECTS A), Germany, a master's degree in Public Administration - Police Management (ECTS A) as well as a PhD in Public Administration from the German Police University.
Tamara D. Herold currently serves as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. National Institute of Justice and is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA. She received her Ph.D. with an emphasis in Crime Prevention from the University of Cincinnati, USA. She uses the crime science perspective to study the criminological impact of the design and management of places, as well as crowd and neighborhood dynamics associated with violence. Her publications translate theory and research evidence into practice and policy. Her co-edited book (with Johannes Knutsson), Preventing Crowd Violence, has been translated into foreign languages to guide international police practice. Herold researches, develops, and delivers police and security crowd management training across the world. She has published numerous practitioner-focused research papers, including two Problem-Oriented Policing Guides funded by the COPS Office on preventing crowd-related violence.
Chief (retired) Ryan Lee has served over 22 years in the policing profession. He served nearly 20 years with the Police Bureau in Portland, Oregon, USA, specializing in public order policing for nearly 17 of those years. He rose through the ranks of the public order unit from line officer to senior leadership. Lee has deployed hundreds of times in public order operations ranging from peaceful gatherings to riots. He served as a front-line supervisor during the 2011 Occupy Portland Protest and as the Operations Section Chief during the 2016 Election Riots and 2017 Inauguration Riots in Portland. Chief Lee has been a subject matter expert in public order policing for the National Institute of Justice, the Center for Domestic Preparedness, the International Association Chiefs of Police's Collaborative Reform Initiative Technical Assistance Center, the National Tactical Officer Association, and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center through work with the Federal Protective Service. He was a keynote speaker at the International Public Order Workshop of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from California State University at Sacramento, USA, and a Master of Criminal Justice from Boston University, USA.