By Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO — After violent clashes between police and protesters in downtown Chicago over the weekend, it seemed everyone from lawmakers and civil rights advocates to activists were accusing officers of “kettling,” a controversial practice for controlling crowds.
The tactic usually involves lines of police officers corralling a group of people, who are either contained in a small area or are allowed to leave through an exit controlled by police. Some call it “trap and detain.” Others say it is dangerous and unconstitutional and should be outlawed.
Chicago police Superintendent David Brown denied his officers resorted to the practice as they struggled to control demonstrators during a protest Saturday night that injured at least 17 officers and led to at least two dozen arrests.
“I haven’t heard those allegations that there was kettling going on,” Brown said, a day after organizers specifically used the term to describe police tactics.
Berto Aguayo, 26, executive director for Increase the Peace, said he was at the protest and it was clear what officers were doing. “They were surrounding us and making the circle smaller and smaller and not letting — even though people wanted to leave the protest, they weren’t letting us go home.
“We get to Adams and LaSalle and we’re kettled in,” he said. “There’s no way out and people are having panic attacks because they want to go home.”
[Read: The difference between kettling and encirclement]
Protesters across the country have repeatedly accused police of using the tactic during the marches and demonstrations sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the end of May.
Basically, the tactic involves herding demonstrators into a confined space so they can’t leave. Officers can then make arrests or slowly break up the crowd. If there have been violent clashes, supporters of the tactic say, kettling helps police control a space and detain those causing the trouble.
But critics say the situation can become dangerous if police use force and there is no way for people to escape. “Kettling is potentially dangerous and raises serious constitutional concerns,” said Rebecca Glenberg with the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.
“For example, during protests against the Iraq War in 2003, police trapped hundreds of protesters on a block of Chicago Avenue east of Michigan Avenue, then arrested them for failing to disperse, even though most of them had not heard the order and could not disperse anyway because they were trapped between police lines,” Glenberg said.
A federal court held that the arrests were unconstitutional, and the city of Chicago settled the case for $6.2 million.
A similar lawsuit was filed last fall in St. Louis on behalf of scores of protesters who said they were forced into a “kettle” during a downtown demonstration.
“It can certainly be just a horrifying experience,” said Noam Ostrander, a professor at DePaul University who has studied violence in Chicago. “In popular culture you could use a ‘Game of Thrones’ example. It is very much a war-type tactic, surrounding your enemy and pushing in.
“It really does create this pressure cooker,” he said. “You have a lot of people that get confined to a small space, you have people charging towards you, batons flying and ramming bikes into people and shields into people.”
Ostrander said the practice is “constitutionally questionable.”
“People are being detained without being told they’re being detained,” he said. “It does sweep up everybody indiscriminately and there’s a concern about violating the First Amendment.”
Kettling can also backfire, according to David Stovall, a professor of Black studies, criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“I always see the strategy as problematic,” he said. “It’s based around the preemptive suppression of a violent threat. The belief is, oftentimes, that if you show force then people won’t respond as vehemently, and actually what we’ve seen is that that’s not the case.
“When law enforcement escalates, there’s a greater chance of escalation,” he said.
On Sunday, United Working Families, a frequent critic of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, posted an open letter to Brown and the mayor, insisting that kettling took place.
“We once again condemn Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown for their use of police force against these demonstrators Saturday night, and for the continued escalation of surveillance, violence and detention of protesters,” the letter said. “Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown stationed thousands of officers downtown, where they kettled, pepper-sprayed, and beat demonstrators.”
The Chicago Police Department declined to comment on the letter or expand on Brown’s denial earlier Monday.
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