I took out several sports game and festival-related riots from the list because random destruction of property might show discontent, but little meaning can be derived from it. I included the resurrection of Cedar Fest in the list before deciding on this rule, and did not take it out because its organization was more of a political action organized via Facebook than mere rowdiness. This Fest has also seen regular arrests of participants before it was banned, so there’s something of a mystery to it that bares contemplation. There were also plenty of incidents where a single individual protested and was jailed for it, as in the case of Tim DeChristopher who bid $1.8 million he did not have on land that would’ve otherwise gone to oil and gas corporations and served 21 months for it. So, the above are arrests of more than one person after a pretty large protest, which has been covered in the news. There might have been thousands of protests that led to arrests that were not covered in the news, but I would not have been able to easily gather the needed data on them.
I noticed that in many of the mass arrests where 1,000 or more individuals were arrested, the organizers set out to break records of the number to be arrested, as was the case with the Tar Sands Action; they told protesters to bring $50 to pay the anticipated fine. On the other hand, some of the other mass arrests with only a few hundred people, as in the Brooklyn Bridge arrest that same year, the protesters were lured onto the bridge by the police, perhaps to meet some arrest quota the police had. The notion that any city can profit from civil disobedience arrests seems far-fetched as the costs of a mass-arrest are staggering. Oakland nearly bankrupted its police department when it was hit with a series of arrestable protests and had to fire a large portion of the department to cover losses from lawsuits, damages, and having to hire outside lawyers to prosecute all those they managed to arrest. Most mass arrests either end up with most of the protesters convicted on felony or misdemeanor charges. I wonder if millions in civil and federal settlements for the victims of wrongful arrests will end up incarcerated.
A few or even dozens or reporters are typically arrested together with the center of the crowd in most incidents, and they are usually briskly let out and if they were roughly handled in the exchange, they typically win lawsuits, as Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman did ($100,000).
The protesters typically win lawsuits if they did not veer off the course directed in properly obtained demonstration permits.