The impact of the local: Police public-order strategies during the G8 justice and home affairs ministerial meetings

Much public order policing research attempts to, first, elucidate general trends of public order policing change and, secondly with respect to the policing of transnational summits in particular, focus on the deterministic effects of international and national priorities concerning the way they are policed. While the authors recognize the important contribution of such research towards an understanding of policing in this arena, in this article they put forward a crucial further dimension, namely the complementary need for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic relationships involved in protest policing at the local level. To this end, this study not only draws from participant observation of a specific event, namely the policing of one round of G8 meetings between Justice and Home Affairs Ministers taking place in Sheffield, England, in June 2005, but also a wealth of interviews undertaken with city council officials, media representatives, police and protesters alike.