Review of: Shutting Down the Streets: Political Violence and Social Control in the Global Era by Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez, and Christian Scholl

There is growing scholarly consensus that since the late 1990s democratic states have shifted in the ways they respond to protest. In the period between the 1970s and 1990s democratic states and their police often placed a premium on the protection of free speech and assembly rights, were relatively tolerant of disruptive protests, communicated openly with activists through an institutionalized permitting process, and showed restraint in the use of force and arrests. Things, however, have changed. Now democratic states selectively protect freedoms of speech and assembly, are less tolerant of disruption, face activists that believe the permitting process is illegitimate, and more readily use force and arrests. In Shutting Down the Streets, Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez, and Christian Scholl adeptly map the new contours of state efforts to control social movements in a global era

Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks

During the 1970s, the predominant strategy of protest policing shifted from “escalated force” and repression of protesters to one of “negotiated management” and mutual cooperation with protesters. Following the failures of negotiated management at the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) demonstrations in Seattle, law enforcement quickly developed a new social control strategy, referred to here as “strategic incapacitation.” The U.S. police response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks quickened the pace of police adoption of this new strategy, which emphasizes the goals of “securitizing society” and isolating or neutralizing the sources of potential disruption. These goals are accomplished through 1) the use of surveillance and information sharing as a way to assess and monitor risks, 2) the use of preemptive arrests and less-lethal weapons to selectively disrupt or incapacitate protesters that engage in disruptive protest tactics or might do so, and 3) the extensive control of space in order to isolate and contain disruptive protesters actual or potential. In a comparative fashion, this paper examines the shifts in U.S. policing strategies over the last 50 years and uses illustrative cases from national conventions, the global justice movement and the anti-war movement to show how strategic incapacitation has become a leading social control strategy used in the the policing of protests since 9/11. It concludes by identifying promising questions for future research

Changes in the Policing of Civil Disorders Since the Kerner Report: The Police Response to Ferguson, August 2014, and Some Implications for the Twenty-First Century

The Kerner Commission identified factors contributing to police ineffectiveness during the 1960s civil disorders. Since release of the Kerner report, the frequency and intensity of civil disorders has declined and the policing of disorders has changed. Using the report recommendations as a framework, we analyze changes in police disorder management during the 2014 events in Ferguson as these involve operational planning and equipment. Data for the Ferguson case are constructed from media reports, police and activist accounts, after action reports, and field observations. We link changes seen in Ferguson to larger institutional changes in law enforcement over the last fifty years. We conclude with discussions on what did and did not work in the policing of Ferguson and highlight implications for policing of protest and disorder in the twenty-first century

Construction and evaluation of a scale of consumer shopping experience.

Generally speaking consumer psychology have focused primarily on the problem solving and decision making processes underlying buying behaviour. As a result, the experience of consumers engaging in the activity of shopping has been neglected. The purpose of this study was to construct and evaluate a scale of consumer shopping experience. The instrument indicated that shopping experience is not merely a means to an end, but in many cases an end in itself. The Shopping Experience Survey consisting of 54 items was developed and administered to 426 respondents consisting of students at a large tertiary institution. The study indicated that the Shopping Experience Survey is highly reliable (rxx=0,965) and sensitive to group differences

A Randomized Depression Prevention Trial Comparing Interpersonal Psychotherapy—Adolescent Skills Training To Group Counseling In Schools

Given the rise in depression disorders in adolescence, it is important to develop and study depression prevention programs for this age group. The current study examined the efficacy of Interpersonal Psychotherapy-Adolescent Skills Training (IPT-AST), a group prevention program for adolescent depression, in comparison to group programs that are typically delivered in school settings. In this indicated prevention trial, 186 adolescents with elevated depression symptoms were randomized to receive IPT-AST delivered by research staff or group counseling (GC) delivered by school counselors. Hierarchical linear modeling examined differences in rates of change in depressive symptoms and overall functioning from baseline to the 6-month follow-up assessment. Cox regression compared rates of depression diagnoses. Adolescents in IPT-AST showed significantly greater improvements in self-reported depressive symptoms and evaluator-rated overall functioning than GC adolescents from baseline to the 6-month follow-up. However, there were no significant differences between the two conditions in onset of depression diagnoses. Although both intervention conditions demonstrated significant improvements in depressive symptoms and overall functioning, results indicate that IPT-AST has modest benefits over groups run by school counselors which were matched on frequency and duration of sessions. In particular, IPT-AST outperformed GC in reduction of depressive symptoms and improvements in overall functioning. These findings point to the clinical utility of this depression prevention program, at least in the short-term. Additional follow-up is needed to determine the long-term effects of IPT-AST, relative to GC, particularly in preventing depression onset

Field comparison of the point velocity probe with other groundwater velocity measurement methods

Field testing of a new tool for measuring groundwater velocities at the centimeter scale, the point velocity probe (PVP), was undertaken at Canadian Forces Base, Borden, Ontario, Canada. The measurements were performed in a sheet pile-bounded alleyway in which bulk flow rate and direction could be controlled. PVP velocities were compared with those estimated from bulk flow, a Geoflo® instrument, borehole dilution, colloidal borescope measurements, and a forced gradient tracer test. In addition, the velocity profiles were compared with vertical variations in hydraulic conductivity (K) measured by permeameter testing of core samples and in situ high-resolution slug tests. There was qualitative agreement between the trends in velocity and K among all the various methods. The PVP and Geoflo® meter tests returned average velocity magnitudes of 30.2 ± 7.7 to 34.7 ± 13.1 cm/d (depending on prior knowledge of flow direction in PVP tests) and 36.5 ± 10.6, respectively, which were near the estimated bulk velocity (20 cm/d). The other direct velocity measurement techniques yielded velocity estimates 5 to 12 times the bulk velocity. Best results with the PVP instrument were obtained by jetting the instrument into place, though this method may have introduced a slight positive bias to the measured velocities. The individual estimates of point velocity direction varied, but the average of the point velocity directions agreed quite well with the expected bulk flow direction. It was concluded that the PVP method is a viable technique for use in the field, where high-resolution velocity data are required.The NSERC/Motorola/ETI Industrial Research Chair in Groundwater Remediation, NSERC, CRESTech, the National Council for Scientific Research of Lebanon (NCSR), OGSST, and NSF under grant 0134545 are acknowledged for funding this work. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Carl McElwee performed the high-definition slug tests; Peter Kearl performed the colloidal borescope measurements; and Bob Ingleton, Paul Johnson, and Greg Friday assisted with probe construction and field installatio

Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Occupy Wall Street in New York City, 2011

The US national response to the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks accelerated the adoption and refinement of a new repertoire of protest policing we call ‘strategic incapacitation’ now employed by law enforcement agencies nationwide to police protest demonstrations. The occupation movement which formally began 17 September 2011 was the most significant social movement to utilise transgressive protest tactics in the United States in the last 40 years and posed a substantial challenge to law enforcement agencies. This research seeks to better understand the implementation of strategic incapacitation tactics through a detailed analysis of the policing of the first 2 months of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests in New York City. Original data for this study are derived from 2-week-long field observations made in New York City during the first and second month anniversaries of the OWS occupation in Zuccotti Park. These are supplemented by activist interviews, activist accounts posted on OWS websites, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds as well as news reports, official police documents, press releases and interviews with legal observers

A method for estimating pore water drainage from marsh soils using rainfall and well records

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Elsevier B.V. for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science 79 (2008): 51-58, doi:10.1016/j.ecss.2008.03.014.Rainfall events during low tide exposure cause the water table in marshes to rise. If one has long time series of both rain events and water levels in wells along transects from creek bank to marsh interior, one can correlate well response with rain amount. In cases examined so far the well response is found to be a linear function of rain amount. As it is reasonable to assume that the amount of tidal infiltration required to restore the water table to the elevation of the marsh surface is equal to the amount of rain that would be required to do so, one can estimate the annual drainage of pore water from a well site by dividing the mean drawdown of the water table at low tide by the slope of the response-versus-rain regression and then multiplying the result by the number of tidal drawdowns in a year. Integration of such results along the transect then gives an estimate of the total annual drainage. An example of the use of this method is given for two well transects in a Typha and a Spartina marsh at the Plum Island Estuary Long Term Ecological Research (PIE-LTER) site in Massachusetts, USA. Both transects yielded pore water drainage rates of about 160 m3 yr-1 per meter of channel length. Although the annual volume of pore water drainage is small compared to the annual volume of the tidal prism its impact on nutrient budgets in the estuary could be large because of the high concentrations of nutrients in marsh pore waters. We also discuss the possible effects of the capillary fringe, air entrapment and tidal forcing during rain events on these results.Partial funding for this work was provided by National Science Foundation Grant Number OCE-0423565

Dystrophin deficiency affects human astrocyte properties andresponse to damage

In addition to progressive muscular degeneration due to dystrophin mutations, 1/3 of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients present cognitive deficits. However, there is currently an incomplete understanding about the function of the multiple dystrophin isoforms in human brains. Here, we tested the hypothesis that dystrophin deficiency affects glial function in DMD and could therefore contribute to neural impairment. We investigated human dystrophin isoform expression with development and differentiation and response to damage in human astrocytes from control and induced pluripotent stem cells from DMD patients. In control cells, short dystrophin isoforms were up-regulated with development and their expression levels changed differently upon neuronal and astrocytic differentiation, as well as in 2-dimensional versus 3-dimensional astrocyte cultures. All DMD-astrocytes tested displayed altered morphology, proliferative activity and AQP4 expression. Furthermore, they did not show any morphological change in response to inflammatory stimuli and their number was significantly lower as compared to stimulated healthy astrocytes. Finally, DMD-astrocytes appeared to be more sensitive than controls to oxidative damage as shown by their increased cell death. Behavioral and metabolic defects in DMD-astrocytes were consistent with gene pathway dysregulation shared by lines with different mutations as demonstrated by bulk RNA-seq analysis. Together, our DMD model provides evidence for altered astrocyte function in DMD suggesting that defective astrocyte responses may contribute to neural impairment and might provide additional potential therapeutic targets