Les villes artificielles comme espaces de formation de l’ordre politique : l’entrainement aux scénarios apocalyptiques des polices européennes

Abstract

In a recent development, the policing of protest (demonstrations, rallies, etc.) is simulated worldwide, including in Europe, in mock cities. In those artificial settings police forces train what they anticipate as real challenges in protest policing. For this purpose, they develop scenarios that they implement with the extensive use of equipment and personnel. This article investigates these police simulations in Europe from an urban and political sociology perspective. It undertakes an ethnography of police simulations in Germany, France, England and Northern Ireland and raises the question of the convergence between simulation and reality. The text puts forward the argument that the trainings have as a characteristic a policy of the worst that adds to a contemporary trend in policing protest: as the trainings present demonstrations in an exacerbated way as situations of high danger and escalation, they encourage a social construction of demonstrations as events that call for a tough policing.

Keywords

• Artificial cities
• policing
• police
• Europe
• training
• simulation