Police Department Perceptions of The Occurrences of Civil Disturbances

Quarantelli, E. L.; Ponting, J. Rick; Fitzpatrick, John S.

Police Department Perceptions of The Occurrences of Civil Disturbances

Files

WP59.pdf (1.11 MB)

Date

1974-04

Authors

Quarantelli, E. L.

Ponting, J. Rick

Fitzpatrick, John S.

Publisher

Disaster Research Center

Description

This paper reports on a part of a larger study of four different civil disturbances that occurred in the summer of 1969 in four large American cities with a substantial nonwhite population. Each riot centered around a confrontation between some black "ghetto" inhabitants and predominantly white-manned social control agencies such as the police and the National Guard. The disorders ranged from relatively minor to relatively major incidents as measured by number of participants, and by the degree of looting, fires and casualties involved, although were close to the massive disturbances that occurred in Watts, Detroit, or Washington (as reported e.g., in Conot 1968; Locke, 1969; and- Gilbert, 1968)