‘Don’t talk to them!’ on the promise and the pitfalls of liaison policing at COP26

ABSTRACT

Initially introduced and hailed as means of offering more democratic and facilitative policing, but increasingly subject to question by protestors, Police Liaison Teams (PLTs) are one of the primary tactical options used by Public Order Police in the UK. This paper will analyse the deployment of PLTs over the 14 days of the global COP26 summit in Glasgow in 2021. The police plan for the event emphasised Human Rights, dialogue and facilitation, but some protest groups accused PLTs of ‘intelligence-gathering’ and urged activists not to speak to them. This paper draws on participant observation and interviews with both police and protestors to analyse the deployment of PLTs at the summit and consider why some groups chose not to engage with the liaison officers. Responding to calls for more evidence-based analyses of PLT deployment, we highlight the difficulties of police-protestor liaison at a Global Summit and outline why protest groups might choose not to engage.

KEYWORDS:

• Policing
• protest
• public order
• liaison
• COP26

Introduction

The COP26 Climate Summit, held in Glasgow between 31st October and 12th November 2021, was attended by 120 Heads of State and over 40,000 delegates. It witnessed constant protest events, including a 25,000 strong Youth (or ‘Fridays for Future’) March and the ‘Global Day of Action for Climate Justice’ demonstration which involved some 100,000 people. COP26 was not only an important environmental landmark, it was also a major public order event – probably the largest in Scotland’s history – made all the more significant by controversies over police repression and crowd violence at previous COP events.

Over 10,000 officers were brought in from across the UK, but Police Scotland insisted that they could ensure the integrity of the summit whilst upholding the right of protestors to dissent. Prior to COP26 they issued a statement headlined ‘Police Scotland puts human rights at the heart of COP26 protest plans’ which began: ‘Police Scotland will do everything in its power to ensure people who want to protest peacefully at the COP26 climate change conference can do so safely’.¹

This strategy of facilitating peaceful protest was critically dependent upon the deployment of specially trained and distinctively dressed Police Liaison Officers (PLOs) in Police Liaison Teams (PLTs). As the overall Police Commander (Gold) told us pre-event: ‘the role of the PLO is really critical’. Ahead of the Youth March, Police Scotland tweeted: ‘The #FridaysForFuture March takes place in Glasgow on Friday, 5th November. Our Police Liaison Team will be there to help you if you need them and will be wearing blue Police Liaison Team vests’. This message was accompanied by a picture of a liaison officer to better enable protestors to identify them.

A group named ‘Climate Camp Scotland’, however, replied to the above tweet with a photo of someone holding up a placard saying ‘Don’t talk to them’ with an arrow pointing to Liaison officers. This was part of a campaign by NETPOL – The Network for Police Monitoring, ‘a coalition monitoring and resisting excessive, discriminatory and violent policing’. NETPOL argued that PLTs were intelligence gatherers, urged protestors not to engage with them, and claimed: ‘There’s no such thing as a friendly conversation with the police’.²

In this paper, we draw on research with police and protestors at COP26 in order to examine the deployment and perception of PLOs. We investigate the role they play in facilitating peaceful crowd protest and in facilitating police management of crowds; we examine the factors which lead protestors to see them more or less positively; and lessons for developing forms of policing that effectively uphold the human right to peaceful protest. We begin, though, with an overview of the literature on police liaison.

Dialogue and liaison-based policing

In 2009, a bystander died during robust policing of London’s G20 summit and Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Policing (HMIC) launched the most significant review of public order policing in a generation. The resultant Adapting to Protest reports (HMIC 2009a, 2009b) emphasised ‘the British Model of Policing’ by consent, and drew on contemporary legal and theoretical frameworks to foreground the need to facilitate protest and challenge myths about the ‘madding crowd’. One key area identified for improvement was communication between police and crowd participants. Here police should:

… seek to improve dialogue with protest groups in advance where possible, to gain a better understanding of the intent of the protesters and the nature of the protest activity; to agree how best to facilitate the protest and to ensure a proportionate policing response. (2009b, p. 10)

In 2010, public order training material was updated, and the Keeping the Peace Manual (NPIA 2010, p. 11) stressed that ‘engagement and dialogue should be used, whenever possible, to demonstrate a ‘no surprises’ approach’.

This emphasis reflected worries that Public Order policing ‘had begun to lose touch with a core Peelian principle of policing through consent’ (Pearson and Stott 2022, p. 273), but also drew on updated understandings of crowd psychology. Hoggett and Stott (2010, p. 233) observed a ‘relationship between the police officer’s theoretical understanding of crowd dynamics and the tactics they use’. They noted that attachment to ‘classical’ accounts of crowds as inherently irrational, unpredictable and violent fed into policing strategy based on ‘mass containment and dispersal through the threat and use of force’ (ibid.). The revised Adapting to Protest reports, therefore, drew on the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM) which outlines the social and psychological processes through which crowds may unite in opposition to police, and highlights policing approaches which may contribute to an escalation of conflict (Reicher 1996; Stott and Reicher 1998). Drawing on the ESIM, Reicher et al. (2004, 2007) and Stott (2008) set out four key principles for effective public order policing: education, facilitation, communication and differentiation. These principles are echoed in the OSCE/ODIHR (2020) Venice Commission Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and have been integrated into public order training (HMIC 2009b).

ESIM maintains, and the British Police now acknowledge, that police should strive to understand the values, beliefs and objectives of protest groups so as to avoid confrontation and facilitate the lawful objectives of protestors. ESIM advocates meeting the legitimate aims of crowd members even if some members of the crowd are being disruptive. Central here is the need for ongoing and dynamic channels of communication, especially in situations of emerging tension (Reicher et al. 2004, p. 568). The underlying insight here is that crowds are not homogeneous. ‘If there is one watchword we would advocate for crowd policing it is differentiate! Do not treat all crowd members as the same. Be aware of their different identities, their different ways of acting and of reacting’ (ibid. 568). The aim is to foster trust and contact with protestors. The outcome, as Stott et al.’s (2008, p. 131) study of the policing of England football supporters at the 2004 European Championships found, was that those who experienced legitimate and interactive policing (rather than ‘paramilitary-style’ public order units) were more likely to identify with the police, distance themselves from potential troublemakers and engage in self-policing.

The shift towards more dialogic and facilitative policing in the UK has also been driven by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the requirement for police actions to be compliant with it. The Human Rights Act (1998) states that ‘no restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety’.³ Indeed, the Act creates a legal obligation for the state to facilitate the rights of freedom of expression, conscience and assembly that are protected under Articles 9, 10 and 11 of the ECHR. This is in line with the OSCE/ODIHR (2020) Venice Commission Guidelines on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly which stipulate that:

States have a positive duty to facilitate and protect the exercise of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly … It includes a duty to facilitate assemblies at the organizer’s preferred location and within ‘sight and sound’ of the intended audience.⁴

The altered theoretical and legislative framework has prompted an emphasis on dialogue and facilitation in the UK, best seen in the creation of Police Liaison Teams (PLTs) (Gorringe et al. 2012, Stott et al. 2013, Gilmore et al. 2019). These were inspired by Sweden’s Dialogue Police, who are placed within a crowd - allowing them to sense its mood and offer dynamic risk assessments that can de-escalate tensions (Holgersson and Knutsson 2010, p. 201). Dialogue officers often used their ‘on-the-ground’ vantage point to challenge, and alter, commander’s decisions and plans (ibid.). Similarly, PLTs are seen by commanders as helping to build trust and rapport, acting as a bridge between police and protestors, potentially enhancing the legitimacy of the police, and enabling the facilitation of protest (Gorringe and Rosie 2013, Stott et al. 2013, Lydon 2021).

Research suggests that PLTs can make ‘a significant difference towards rapport building and effective communication flow’ (Kilgallon 2020, p. 33), and ‘play an effective role in reducing the potential for conflict during events’ (Stott et al. 2013, p. 222). Both Gorringe et al. (2012) and Kilgallon (2020) note the key role of PLTs in ‘policing the police’ and clarifying and defusing situations that might otherwise result in escalation. However, most of these studies also reported instances of PLTs being viewed as ‘intelligence gatherers’ or ‘spies’, and noted the difficulties they faced engaging leaderless groups (Holgersson and Knutsson 2010, Gorringe et al. 2012). Gilmore et al. (2019, p. 48) concluded that ‘consensual (dialogue) and coercive (mass arrest) policing were mutually reinforcing strategies’. A related study found that ‘the general perception of protestors is that PLOs seek to build relationships primarily to advance operational objectives rather than as part of a meaningful commitment to negotiation and facilitation’ (Gilmore 2020, p. 363).

In an undated discussion of PLOs, NETPOL documented reasons why activists view them as intelligence gatherers whose aim is to facilitate the repression of protest and protestors.⁵ Such concerns were exemplified by an internal Metropolitan Police Service document, obtained through a Freedom of Information request and made public by NETPOL in 2014:

Any suggestion that PLT's are intended to be ‘intelligence gatherers’ is likely to undermine efforts to build trust and confidence amongst protest groups and individuals. This said, recent experience does tell us that PLT's do gather accurate intelligence in the normal course of their duties. This is mainly because, pre and post event they are engaging with protest groups and do elicit information in the course of these duties which could be regarded as intelligence … Similarly, on the day of the event, the PLT's are likely to be working inside or around the group in question and, as a result, are likely to generate high-quality intelligence … As a result, all PLT officers must ensure all intelligence is recorded on Crimint [Internal database].⁶

In their discussion of dialogue policing, Holgersson and Knutsson (2010) note how ‘one instance of distrust can destroy the possibilities for a successful dialogue for a very long time’, and stress that the role must be clearly defined as ‘different from that of gathering and disseminating intelligence’ (p. 202, 204). For Stott and Gorringe (2013, p. 248): ‘Unless these perceptions are tackled carefully through the appropriate use of PLTs, we may subsequently see the opportunity for conflict management that they offer being irreparably damaged’. To understand what this might mean one need look no further than the example of Forward Intelligence Teams (FITs).

As detailed in the HMIC report (see HMIC 2009b, p. 128), FITs were initially seen as a bridge between protestors and police akin to the Swedish Dialogue model, but a lack of clarity for the role has meant that they have increasingly been involved in intelligence gathering and activist surveillance. These actions have seen them lose the trust of protestors and be reprimanded by UN Special Rapporteurs (Pickard 2019). PLTs were developed to address this breakdown in police-protestor relations and build police legitimacy. The Don’t Talk to Them campaign suggests that amongst some protest groups there may be significant barriers to building trust.

The challenge of COP26

Overall, then, there is a tension between the potential use of information gathered by PLOs to facilitate protestors’ aims and the use of that information to frustrate those aims. This tension is particularly acute in international events where the Police face security concerns alongside their human rights concerns (Ericson & Doyle, 1999; della Porta et al. 2006). The stakes involved, world leaders in attendance and number of protests involved, conspire to mean that international summits often witness heavy and repressive police control (della Porta et al. 2006).

At COP26, for instance, Police Scotland were absolutely committed to preserving the integrity of the conference site, alongside their wish to facilitate protest. When, on the last day, two protestors climbed the perimeter fence, they were quickly and forcibly removed. COP26, thus, provides a particularly challenging context for examining whether rights policing, facilitation, dialogue and, more particularly, the use of PLOs in achieving these can ever be more than a fond hope (or a cruel deception as the critics contend). This is the challenge we address through an examination of police and protestor perspectives.

Research method

Our multi-institution research team combined expertise in law, sociology and social psychology. Twelve members of the team attended various events during COP26, with at least four researchers present on every day of the summit. Data collection involved a combination of ethnographic conversations and fieldnotes on events to best capture the interactions between protestors and police on the ground (cf. Baker 2014). This data were supplemented by recorded interviews, and video film taken both by team members and a professional film-maker attached to the project.

Half of the research team focused on police and the other on protestors. We were open about the overall project to all respondents, but the separation of teams enabled us to engage with protest groups who may have avoided those working with the police (cf. Jackson et al. 2019). Each sub-team engaged in informal discussions with (respectively) police officers and protestors whilst attending and observing protest events. The sub-teams discussed fieldnotes, impressions and experiences each day to ensure that we had captured key moments and issues from different perspectives. While the team collectively discussed what happened and how it was perceived, we were careful to retain any confidential information about what respondents had done or were planning to do within the sub-teams. This was critical to avoid ‘leakage’ of such information between police and protestors and loss of trust with our respondents (Vestergren and Drury 2020).

Post-summit, we carried out interviews with senior and frontline officers and a range of activists to capture experiences and perceptions. All quotes that follow are from interviews conducted before, during and after the summit. Interviewees are anonymised. Where the speaker occupies a specific role we made this clear to the individuals involved and obtained explicit permission to use their quotes given their potential identifiability. The research received ethical approval from the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh (PPLS ethics approval 5-2122/11).

Analysis

Following data collection, researchers familiarised themselves with interview transcripts, noted important points and established codes informed by both prior areas of interest (e.g. ‘facilitation’) and new points raised in the interviews. After several iterations of this process, we established key themes and sub-themes. We used reflexive thematic analysis to identify and analyse patterns in the data (Braun and Clarke 2012). Where possible we triangulated data sources to secure different perspectives on each event. Discussions amongst the research group allowed us to explore multiple assumptions or interpretations of the data and observe new patterns of meaning (Braun et al. 2019).

The analysis identifies four linked themes. The first pair concern the relationship between liaison police and protestors, and ask: (a) is liaison policing simply gathering intelligence by another name? and (b) does liaison policing have elements of both facilitation of protest and intelligence? The second pair of themes relate to the relationship between liaison police and other officers. More specifically, (c) are liaison police so closely linked to officers in more repressive roles as to be indistinguishable from them? And, (d), do liaison officers impact upon overall policing decisions? There is no simple yes or no answer to these questions. Rather, they are better regarded as dilemmas and domains of argumentation both within and between police and protestors, through which actions and attitudes towards police liaison play out. With this overall perspective, let us consider each of the themes in turn.

1. Facilitation vs. Intelligence

As the previous literature has shown, the simplest and strongest criticism of PLOs is that ‘dialogue’ is a cover for collecting intelligence which may then be used to control protest.

This view was expressed to us by many of those protesting at COP26, both organisers (to quote one COP Coalition steward) … :

Extract 1: Within the police forces in Scotland at least the police liaison officers are intelligence gathering officers.

 … and crowd members. In the following extracts, one can see that the perceived duplicity of officers who presented as friendly and helpful made the intelligence gathering more pernicious. Some protestors we spoke to, for instance, emphasised the disingenuous nature of PLO intelligence gathering and its dangers, both within and beyond the immediate event:

Extract 2: The most unsafe I felt with police was actually with the Police Liaison Officers, because everything they said, it was practically word-for-word from a book trying to get me to say something.

Extract 3: This constant gathering of information that’s not necessarily of use at the time, but like with the filming as well. That makes me uneasy. What happens to all that information? Is it all going to be, when we do become a fascist state, is it all going to get rolled out and we’ll get … or is it actually destroyed at some point?

One consequence of this was suspicion and refusal to enter into dialogue with the PLOs. From the perspective of one senior officer, from Devon and Cornwall, those saying ‘don’t talk to them’ seemed to predominate and the exhortation extended to all police not just the PLOs. This was not his experience of previous protests in South West England

Extract 4: I found all of the people in and around that area [of COP26] really anti- and suspicious of police, which I don’t find at other protests. I can normally find someone to engage with and find out what’s going on … Scotland felt really quite edgy … it just felt that every time I engaged with someone, they were kind of anti-, and I’ve never really felt that before.

When a researcher was chatting to a (uniformed) PLO some distance from a protest, an activist approached, asked if we ‘know they are a police officer’, and warned us against talking to them. Such interventions helped to deter people from engaging.

For police, the campaign misrepresented PLOs. Both the Gold Commander and one of his Silver Commanders (responsible for translating overall strategy into specific tactical options) forcibly rejected the criticisms of PLOs as disingenuous intelligence gatherers:

Extract 5: So, you’ve got protest liaison officers which is: ‘what do you want to do? Commander, they want to do … ’ Then you’ve got intelligence officers that say ‘there’s a group of fifty people, can we get some PLOs down here to engage with them to find out what they want to do?’ And then they may very well say ‘within this group of fifty people we have identified risk individuals associated with X football club, it would appear they have infiltrated this group of peaceful protestors.’ So, the intelligence; whenever you say somebody’s an intelligence officer, they always think of dark arts and subterfuge and all the rest of it, but actually intelligence officers will do things like read the newspapers and read XR comments about ‘we’re going to protest at … ’ So, a lot of our intelligence gathering is things that are in the public domain anyway … But I do accept that the word does paint an image.

Extract 6: I know you’ll have people who don’t trust the police and they’ll tell you not to talk to the PLOs because they’re intelligence gatherers, I would argue they’re not intelligence gatherers because they are so overt. And, actually, the information that they then gather doesn’t go onto our intel systems, for example.

For these officers, information gathering is overt, intelligence is covert (this may reflect a Police Scotland position, given the assertion that PLO reports do not inform intelligence systems, unlike the Met as noted above). It is an argument echoed by the PLOs themselves who often brought it up spontaneously. One PLO insisted:

Extract 7: That rhetoric that’s come out on social media that the police liaison and people who wear blue bibs are just intelligence gatherers. Which, particularly in Scotland, I can’t speak for my colleagues in England, it just isn't true. We are overt, we are open and transparent with anybody who we’re engaging with that we will act as a single point of contact and a bridge between them and the policing command.

An experienced PLO, bemoaned:

Extract 8: The NetPol stuff and the constant battering, the constant being accused of being something that you’re not. I know it’s not personal, but it’s hard when you’re in that role doing it for the right reasons and trying to do the right thing, getting battered all the time and trying to defend yourself all the time, it just gets tiring.

If these arguments might be expected, what is perhaps more surprising is that some officers not only described protestors as believing that PLOs were involved in intelligence collecting but endorsed that view themselves. One Bronze Commander (in charge of a local sector of events) from a non-Scottish force said:

Extract 9: That campaign ‘don’t talk to the PLOs’ is because they’re evidence gathering. Well, they’re always information gathering … Yes, they are police officers so they will intelligence gather, they will have to deal with crime if it comes in front of them, but they are not there to police the march, they are there to liaise with the leaders as their role fits.

Others were not as forthright, but suggested that there was lack of clarity over what PLOs were and should be doing and that perhaps PLOs from different parts of the UK may be functioning in different ways:

Extract 10: In Lancashire, we first used [PLTs] during our fracking protests, whether it was the characters that were doing it or not, there was just a bit of a lack of understanding from both sides as to what the role was. I would imagine a force like Police Scotland, or the Met, who use them on a regular basis, because of the amount of protests they get, will have a better understanding. But for me, I don’t see the value.

What we see here is not simply a difference of opinion between (some) police and (some) protestors, but a failure to understand the perspective and the motivations of the other which has the potential to fuel further conflict. That is, for the police voices we have heard (extracts 5-8), the overtness of liaison policing makes it credible and makes them all the more frustrated and distrustful of those who reject it. Conversely, for the protestors (extracts 2 and 3) it is the perceived pretence to be friendly and open that enhances their distrust. Extracts 9 and 10, from police respondents, illustrate continued grey areas. It is possible, thus, that PLTs will not only fail to improve police-protestor relations, but could also make them worse.

1. Facilitation and Intelligence

While some protestors rejected liaison policing outright, others argued that it had a dual role involving both facilitation and intelligence. Indeed, the COP Coalition steward cited in extract 1 went on to develop a more nuanced account:

Extract 11: [PLOs] serve two functions, they serve as a communication line between the protest organiser and the event commander, but they also try to provide as much information from the protest itself to the event commander so the event commander can make better decisions on the protest event.

For the major protest group at COP26, Extinction Rebellion (XR), this logic led them to develop their own police liaison teams and officers, identified by their own distinctive bibs. The aim was to channel liaison through specific individuals who understand both the promise and the pitfalls of engagement. They receive training on how to communicate their demands without giving away information they don’t want the police to know. An XR activist from London explained:

Extract 12: we don’t suggest anybody else talks to the police, we suggest it’s just us, because the police will try to gather intelligence about what protestors’ intentions are. And to the unsuspecting protestor who maybe has a view that the police are nice, they’re helpful, ‘oh, this guy seems really friendly, this police liaison is really friendly, yeah we’ll just have a chat about what’s going on’, but all the time the police are gathering intelligence about that person, about other people, about what might happen next. And we don’t want them to know that. So it’s better that we deal with the police, particularly because we can protect some of the key organisers of a protest from being apprehended by the police.

XR see many advantages in such an approach (referred to as an information ‘bottleneck’), as the following XR liaison activist spells out:

Extract 13: What is helpful is the system of, you know, we’ve got our police liaisons and they’ve got their police liaisons and we just communicate through that … Nobody’s incriminating themselves by making concessions and you’re not sort of, you are not giving away too much that will allow them to prevent you from locking on somewhere or whatever, or of arresting someone on suspicion to commit something … before they have actually committed it. On top of that there are a lot of people who come to protest who want nothing to do with the police. They really hate them, they don’t want to speak to them and the best thing you can do to enable these people to come to protest is to keep the police as far away as possible.

An activist summed up the basic premise of protest liaison as, ‘not so much ‘don’t talk to police’ but; ‘we have people in roles who are trained to talk to police, please leave that job to them’’. The virtues of engagement were articulated by an activist police liaison, who noted that: ‘if you can give them a clear idea of what’s going to happen, particularly when things [blockades, lock-ons etc.] are going to end, you’re going to have a much easier interaction with them’. They were, however, frustrated that the PLOs did not respect their structure and sought to ‘talk to everybody’.

1. PLTs and other police.

Trust in PLTs was further eroded when, whether or not they themselves gather intelligence, they worked closely with officers who do. Sometimes, this was unintentional. One PLO, for example, recalled the following incident:

Extract 14: I’ve dealt with [an activist group] for six weeks and then [at the protest] someone turns up from the Evidence Gathering Team and is over my shoulder! I’ve completely and utterly lost my autonomy and that confidence and support of what we are doing … It [the PLO role] is about building up trust, but you can’t.

More usually, however, the issue was to do with the relationship between Police Liaison Teams and Forward Intelligence Teams (FITs). Historically, as seen earlier, the latter played an aggressive role, which disqualified them from effective liaison. As the Gold Commander explained:

Extract 15: they were first introduced to combat football hooliganism down south, and they would literally stand outside the [home of the] number one casual fan for Millwall on matchday, and when he came out of his house they would literally follow him about. If he went into the pub, they went into the pub and stood next to him. If he went into the bookies, they’d go into the bookies and stand next to him. And it was a really aggressive tactic.

Despite this clarity in principle, the two were repeatedly rolled together in practice. Speaking of how to gauge the mood of a non-responsive crowd, for example, a public order Bronze Commander said: ‘you take a step back and you deploy the PLOs and deploy the FIT Teams to try and go in and engage, to give me an idea of what I am faced with’. Another Bronze Commander told us:

Extract 16: Anything pops up, you send those two pairs, one in a blue bib [PLOs] and one as a FIT team, and when they get there they’d work – or should do – seamlessly together and decide who is going to go forward. ‘This is a really engaged crowd, we’ll go and talk to them’, ‘this is not an engaged crowd, the FIT team will go and engage.’ And they’d work together at really low level.

Pressed on the conflation, the public order Bronze conceded that: ‘Difficulty is, they both wear blue, so no separation between me as PLO and the FIT team’. This is compounded when, as happened on a number of occasions during the Summit, liaison and intelligence officers interacted amidst the crowd. Given the findings of Adapting to Protest, and the clear recognition of protest perceptions in our interviews, this seems like an avoidable barrier to winning trust. As one PLO pointed out:

Extract 17: We would just go and speak to people and engage with them, whereas FITs just kind of lurk on the outside and glare at people. Can’t really speak to them.

Where PLTs are deployed in tandem with FITs (or with Evidence Gathering Teams) they will inevitably be seen as involved in intelligence gathering, and their ability to establish dialogue and build trust will be compromised.

1. The impact of PLTs

The final theme again has to do with PLT relationships with other police. Here, though, the question is less to do with being too close to others than being ignored by them. The question is not the extent to which PLOs are pernicious, but whether they are pointless. Does their input impact command strategies or does it get ignored even if they themselves are committed to using information to facilitate peaceful protest?

Certainly senior commanders insist that PLTs have a positive impact on overall policing strategy, but commanders and PLOs (as in the following extract) acknowledge that PLTs themselves lack decision-making power.

Extract 18: In a situation … where there’s a senior officer on the ground, if they’ve decided to put a cordon in place or put a containment on, it’s the senior officer in place which is normally an Inspector or above. They’re the officer in charge … so they make the ultimate decision based on the information that everybody’s given to them. So, obviously if somebody committed a crime in front of me I have the autonomy to make a decision from a criminal point of view, but when it comes to making decisions around what protestors maybe can and can’t do, or what members of the public can and can’t do, or where they can and can’t go, if that’s impacting on the containment then I don’t have the authority to make a decision, to say ‘yeah, you can go through there’. I need to get that cleared by my senior officer.

Despite this, PLOs argue that they do have an influence on decisions. One reflected:

Extract 19: we managed to facilitate a lot of [protest] events. Even so that they said at the end, if it wasn't for our engagement with liaisons then absolutely they would have been stopped and probably had their equipment seized and all that kind of stuff. We were almost able to act as an ally for them and say [to commanders] ‘listen, completely engaging with us, we know exactly where they’re going, what they’re doing, no issues at all.’ And that kind of gave the police a level of comfort that ‘okay, they are engaging so we’re not going to seize their protest equipment.’

The Silver Commander confirmed this view, using a concrete example involving a Greenpeace vessel which sought to sail up the River Clyde:

Extract 20: it was only through the PLOs that we discussed and agreed ultimately what was to happen, notwithstanding the fact that they breached the Harbourmaster’s regulations, notwithstanding the fact that they probably sailed, pardon the pun, fairly close to culpable and reckless conduct given how close they were to the underside of that bridge … Greenpeace got to do what they wanted to do, they highlighted the message they wanted to highlight, and they got their photographic opportunity of that boat coming under the Erskine Bridge … So, real success stories in terms of that facilitation of protest, again even although it’s technically unlawful.

Not everyone is as positive, however. Several PLOs complained that senior officers made it impossible for them to fulfil their liaison role. This worked both ways round. On the one hand they ignored (or did not know how to use) information from the ground:

Extract 21: Some commanders within the force have very little experience of policing protests or working with liaison officers, so with that inexperience sometimes comes a bit of nervousness. And without criticising the job, with that nervousness can sometimes come poor decision making, in my personal opinion.

On the other hand, Commanders failed to provide critical information to officers on the ground:

Extract 22: If we know why that police action’s been taken then we can explain to people why it’s been taken and give them a reason … And nine times out of ten, if you explain why it’s happened, then that can help to bring the tension back down. But it doesn’t help when we’re not cited on why something’s happened, and then we’re trying to explain it or trying to legitimise it, and we don’t really know why ourselves.

For protestors, such issues led to situations where the PLOs were either unable to provide information or the information provided couldn’t be relied upon. One interviewee recalled a situation where the details of an art protest had been agreed in advance with PLOs but, on the way to the action, their van was stopped because the information had not been passed on. Such experiences lead protestors to bypass the PLTs and seek to engage directly with the Commanders. Speaking of one of the un-notified marches during the summit, an XR police liaison activist noted that:

Extract 23: At that particular protest it made more sense, I think, to speak directly to the Bronze. And I think that is how they didn’t come in really, really hard when we started marching on the road. Because if we had just gone through the Police Liaisons I imagine they would have gone back and forth and we probably wouldn’t have got anywhere with it.

Discussion

The promise of Police Liaison is self-evident. If police are to uphold the human right to peaceful protest, while at the same time ensuring the safety of both protestors and those they are protesting against, they clearly need to establish dialogue and mutual trust with the crowd. The question is whether PLTs constitute an appropriate and effective mechanism for establishing such dialogue and trust. This is especially important in contexts where the right to peaceful protest has to be balanced against issues of security and safety, and where there is a history of distrust. COP26 therefore provides a critical test for the operation of PLTs.

Our analysis does not provide a simple ‘yes/no’ answer to whether the policing passed this test. Rather it presents a mixed picture in which liaison policing undoubtedly defused some tensions and facilitated some peaceful protests that may otherwise have been prevented. Simultaneously, there was palpable distrust of the liaison police and refusal to engage with them at several COP26 events, not least those involving groups advocating non-violent direct action (NVDA). Our evidence suggests that the ‘Don’t Talk to Them’ campaign was not limited to those groups who are irremediably anti-police: as well as the evidence from our interviews we saw a number of leaflets and information cards circulated at protest events promoting the campaign. We also repeatedly witnessed – and members of the team were subject to – advice from protestors urging people not to talk to liaison officers. It is, therefore, important to reflect on the concerns which give this traction.

As we have seen, there are four issues which moderate the response to liaison policing. The first (and most basic) is whether the implementation of novel initiatives, such as PLTs, is simply old repressive wine in new bottles. Are these structures and the publicity around them simply a ruse for collecting intelligence with which to frustrate protestors’ aims? The fact that, at worst, some police documents do suggest an intelligence function for PLTs and that, at best, there is disagreement and confusion amongst different officers from different forces around the country, does not bode well in this regard.

Whether protestors are willing to engage with PLOs and give them information rests on whether they believe that this information will be used for or against them. The second issue, thus, is whether it is possible to separate out the use of information to facilitate peaceful (even if unlawful) protest, and the use of this information to control and constrain the crowd. The question here is whether PLTs can help facilitate protestors’ aims as well as the commanders’. This question is particularly acute amongst NVDA groups. Those groups who do believe that some degree of facilitation is possible are willing to enter into dialogue – but very much on their own terms and through their own structures of liaison. Such groups are deeply suspicious of police interaction with general members of the crowd and seek to limit liaison to their own spokespersons.

With the third issue, we shift to the relationship between PLTs and others involved in the policing operation. Even if activists were to accept that PLOs are not covert intelligence officers, does the fact that they are so closely intertwined with overt intelligence officers (the Evidence Gathering and Forward Intelligence Teams) mean that the information they gather inevitably seeps into the intelligence process? Moreover, whether that actually occurs or not, does the police operation give protestors good reason to believe that it does? Even those who champion the liaison role (the PLOs themselves) acknowledge that operational issues may support the perception of collusion – especially where PLTs and FITs work in tandem, the ways in which they interact informally, the colours of their uniforms.

Fourth and finally, do PLOs have any impact on the police operation? Can liaison deliver meaningful changes in policing approaches to protestors, or should protestors seek direct negotiation with commanders? Views here are mixed amongst both police and protestors. There were certainly aspects of police operations at COP26 – such as failures to keep PLOs informed about command decisions – which brought the impact of liaison into question.

Each of these issues point to practical considerations about the nature of liaison policing. First, there needs to be greater clarity within the police about the nature and function of PLTs and about separating what they do from the intelligence process. There needs to be greater transparency, including avoidance of linguistic distinctions to deny an intelligence function which may sound like sophistry and make things worse. Secondly, there needs to be greater understanding of, and respect for, the liaison structures of protest organisations (such as XR), both in terms of recognising the legitimacy of their own liaison officers and also of the unwillingness of others to engage with them (a key point we shall return to later). Thirdly, there needs to be a much clearer separation between PLOs and other officers – especially those involved in intelligence functions – during the police operation. In the same way that we instituted protocols to prevent information leakage across our own research sub-teams, the police must develop similar protocols. Moreover, these must be open and transparent so that they can be seen by protestors.

Last (but not least), PLOs must be effective – and be seen to be effective – in influencing the policing operation. Part of this involves giving PLTs some decision-making powers – and here we would echo Holgersson and Knutsson (2010, p. 210) when they insist that: ‘dialogue police officers need to be granted some discretionary power … officers must be given authority to discuss alternative solutions and to make preliminary agreements. Otherwise, there are no reasons to talk to dialogue police officers’. Another part involves (again) being transparent with protestors about how and when PLOs have influenced command decisions – but also about the limits to their influence. One sure way to undermine claims is to overstate them.

All this is challenging in itself. But it may still not be enough. The real danger of liaison policing is that it may be most effective where it is not really needed and least effective when it is. That is, people may be willing to enter into dialogue where they already trust the police and accept assurances that dialogue will be used for, not against them. But where there is deep distrust (as there was amongst many protestors at COP26) any assurances and invitations to talk will be rejected.

There is also, as we have seen, a danger that liaison initiatives may make things worse rather than better. Some protestors see such initiatives as further evidence of police perfidy. If the police see such refusal to engage as a sign of ill-will and potential conflict and introduce harsher policing then, as the ESIM model predicts, this could create actual conflict. Aspects of this were in evidence on the large Climate March on Saturday 6th November, when police decided to contain a group of Young Communists who refused to engage. As the YCL were surrounded, other marchers switched from climate slogans to cries of ‘let them go’ and ‘Fuck the Police’. This not only reflects ESIM, but echoes Jackson et al.'s (2019) conclusion that those who choose not to engage with liaison officers may be policed differently. This incident posed a number of pressing and relevant questions and is addressed elsewhere (see Gorringe 2024).

Given these dangers, it may be worth thinking more radically about alternative ways of establishing dialogue and obtaining the information necessary for facilitation. In situations of endemic distrust, there may be a role for third party mediators. These could bring several advantages such as being trusted by protestors, being able to pass information between protestors and police without requiring direct interaction between the two, and so on. Equally, they would face many challenges, such as ensuring information reached and influenced commanders and persuading protestors that their interventions were effective.

We are not suggesting that third parties should replace PLTs here, but it is certainly worth considering whether they might have a role as part of a suite of mediation processes. There was third party mediation in COP26 through the ‘Keeping our Cool’ initiative by the Centre for Good Relations,⁷ and a good place to start would be a systematic analysis of their contribution during the Summit.

In sum, it is clear that, for all the promise of PLTs, there is a long way to go in delivering on that promise. Moreover, partial delivery may do more harm than good. If there is one lesson to come out of our study it is the importance of consistent, clear and transparent liaison practices. The problem of COP26 – a massive operation involving police from multiple areas with different experience and understandings of liaison – is that it produced precisely the opposite. Relationships between PLTs and protest groups built over many years were undermined as promises that were made prior to COP26 were not delivered. As one Scottish XR liaison activist concluded:

[COP26] does feel like a betrayal of this very long and hard fought for relationship, where we can trust them [Police Scotland] not to be too oppressive if we – if they can trust us to not do the things we say we are not going to do beforehand. Like, you know, we agree that we won’t go and block North Bridge in Edinburgh if you agree that you are not going to kettle us, blah, blah, blah, you know these kind of agreements. So I think a lot of trust has been lost.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The New Foundation; The New Foundation Institute; University of East Anglia; University of Edinburgh; University of St Andrews.

Notes

1 See the full briefing here: https://www.scotland.police.uk/what-s-happening/news/2021/august/police-scotland-puts-human-rights-at-the-heart-of-cop26-protest-plans/ (Accessed 28/06/2023)

2 See this 2021 article on the topic: Police surveillance and protests - Netpol (Accessed 16/02/2023).

3 See the Act here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/42/schedule/1/part/I/chapter/10 (Accessed 17 November 2022).

4 Edition 3, paragraph 22: https://www.venice.coe.int/webforms/documents/?pdf=CDL-AD(2019)017rev-e (Accessed 17 November 2022).

5 See here: Police Liaison Officers - Netpol Accessed 16/02/2023.

6 Standard Operating Procedure for the Operational Deployment of Protestor Liaison Teams in the MPS v3.doc. Made available by NETPOL at: https://netpol.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/uk-met-plo-foi-sop.pdf (Accessed 20/02/2023).

7 See the CGR web-page here: Keeping our Cool – http://centreforgoodrelations.com/keeping-our-cool/ (Accessed 28/06/2023).